Toyota, and more generally the automotive industry must adapt quickly to technological changes and tightening environmental regulations or risk falling behind.
The latest research shows the industry is on the cusp of a tipping point, with rising emissions targets, the low-carbon vehicle transition and advanced technologies in the form of autonomous and shared driving posing opportunities and risks to the industry.
Putting the spotlight on the huge changes that are currently being witnessed in the auto industry, the research suggests that over 30% of new car sales are projected to be zero emissions and plug-in hybrid by 2030, representing a potential USD 1 trillion market. Electric vehicles could become as affordable as traditional petrol and diesel cars as early as 2022, making it easier for carmakers to profit from a low carbon economy.
CDP (Carbon disclosure project) analysis ranked 16 of the world’s largest publicly-listed automotive companies on business readiness for a low carbon transition with a total market capitalization of USD 790 billion, representing over 75% of the global passenger vehicle market. In the report, the highest ranked companies include BMW, Daimler and Toyota, whilst Suzuki, FCA and Subaru are at the bottom.
To address the global warming issues, Toyota is declaring six targets for 2030.
- Make annual global sales of more than 5.5 million electrified vehicles, including 1 million zero-emission vehicles.
- Reduce Co2 emission by 25% or more over the entire vehicle life cycle compared to 2013 level.
- Reduce Co2 emission from global plants by 35% compared to 2013 level.
- Minimize water usage and implement water discharge management based on individual local conditions.
- Complete establishment of battery collection and recycling system globally. Complete set up of 30 model facilities for appropriate treatment and recycling of End-of-life vehicle.
- Realize “Plant in harmony with nature”-12 in Japan, 7 overseas- as well as implement harmony-with-nature activities in all region where Toyota is based in collaboration with local communities and companies.
Toyota’s strength was for long time the hybrid engine, and therefore Toyota was slow in moving to the fully electric car. This appears clearly in the first challenge, mentioning an enthusiastic 5.5 million “electrified vehicles” (mainly plug-in hybrid cars) and a limited 1 million zero-emission vehicles (which include fuel cell cars, such as Mirai).
We suggest that Toyota invests more on fully electric car, even if there is a risk of cannibalism with the profitable hybrid line.
Source:
-CDP report (2018)
-Toyota global challenge 2050 (2015)
MBA 19J Koyomi Kobayashi, Masahiko Yoshii
Is there any particular reason for Toyota to be focusing on Fuel Cell based vehicles whereas the rest of the world has made huge progresses with Battery Electric vehicles?
It is great to talk about electric vehicles but we need to think about the infrastructure needed in order to make this vehicle popular, like charging stations, super-chargers like battery, and so on.
Is there anything that Toyota is trying to do in order to spread this infrastructure further, trying to reach more people?
It is great that Toyota sets this targets but it would be great to understand which particular actions they are taking to meet them. For instance, in order to reach the stated 1 million zero-emission vehicles sales by 2030, do they plan to develop new vehicles or decresase prices? Or maybe they just expect the demand to increase without doing anything?