That Akio Toyoda presides over a company with which he practically shares a name is no coincidence. The president of Toyota is the grandson of Sakichi Toyoda, founder of a Toyoda Automatic Loom Worksa machine-made loom company. That company opened its car division in the 1930s with Kiichiro Toyoda in front. The eldest son built an empire that Akio Toyoda now presides over.
It is also no coincidence that Akio Toyoda has had a passion for automobiles since he was a child. And that, now, completely defines his position at the head of the company.
“I feel very alone”. “I’m the only one who does it. I feel very alone.” Those are the words that Akio Toyoda has responded to Auto Expressan English media outlet that has been able to have a conversation with the president of Toyota regarding the steps the company is taking.
What Akio Toyoda is talking about is your defense of the combustion engine. “Three or four years ago, he was the only one saying he loves the smell of it, he loves the sound of it, he loves the engines and he wanted to keep the engine suppliers’ jobs.” Toyoda assures that he feels very alone in this defense.
The greatest fear. Asked what his worst fear is in the automobile industry, Toyoda is clear: “that everyone was switching to electric cars was my biggest fear.” And the reason, he assures, has nothing to do with being late to technology or that the path taken by Toyota was not the correct one.
“If I only seek to balance the accounts and achieve profitability or if I only seek carbon neutrality… that is not interesting,” Toyoda defended. “If someone tells me, ‘hey, you’re too late, you should have gone electric sooner,’ well, we’re people who love cars and those people, including myself, have to fight within companies“he stressed.
The Toyota electric. Toyota’s relationship with the electric car is nothing short of tumultuous. The leaders have always defended that the electric car it will not be the future of the automobile. Or at least will not be the dominant position in all marketswhich has marked its line of business until now.
And it is that he Toyota Bz4X It was until very recently the company’s only car. It also arrived with manufacturing problems and a price that was too high, which buried its possibilities in the market. With an updatethe company has managed to skyrocket its sales and the electric Toyota C-HR also seeks to give a good boost to this part of its technology.
Furthermore, the company has been announcing new releases for the coming years and has a clearly marked roadmap for the production of solid state batteries. Decisions that seem to go against what was said by its own president and that explain those statements in which he says that he himself has to fight within his company.
To each market, its own. Toyota’s decision has a lot to do with practicality. When the European Union announced a roadmap to ban combustion engines, many of its manufacturers threw themselves into the arms of the electric car and announced that They stopped the development of these engines.
Toyota, on the contrary, continued to bet on hybrids, aware that they would continue to be very important in the future. Time has proven them right in part because the European Union has slightly opened its hand but, above all, because our market is a very small part of global automobile sales.
For Toyota, the United States remains a gigantic market where last year it sold 2.5 million cars. It is the same market that has paralyzed the promotion of the electric car. Only in Japan does it sell the same cars as in all of Europe. And in China, although he has tried to go on his owncontinues to have the obligation to associate with a local brand, so the performance of the electric cars launched there is lower.
An alternative. Toyota defends that the electric car will not exceed 30% market share. We don’t know if Akio Toyoda has changed his perception since he made that statement, but he has always made it clear that solid-state batteries are the ones that can truly change the game. Until then, and like other Japanese brandsToyota continues to investigate new alternatives.
Of them, hydrogen is said to be the most interesting. For now, your Toyota Mirai (the fuel cell car) remains exceptional in Europe and in US faces lawsuits over false advertising. The high cost of transporting hydrogen safely to a service station and, first, producing it makes the product too expensive, which still has no clear advantages.
But Toyota has found another way to continue studying: burn hydrogen. This, they claim, allows a combustion engine to operate without expelling CO2 (although other polluting substances such as NOx) and at the same time maintain the sound and sensations typical of this type of propellant. Although It is even less efficient than the hydrogen fuel cellthat doesn’t seem to matter to Toyoda.
a defense. And at this point, I’m going to make a defense of Akio Toyoda. The president of Toyota, a company that invented a new way of working and that perfected the just in time and with them their profits, he is right when it comes to defending that not everything should be done with profitability in mind.
Toyota has become one of the few brands that continues to launch purely passionate cars without any specific objective. There is no car like it Toyota GR Yaris in the market, years ago they took advantage of their collaboration with Subaru to launch the Toyota GT86 (then GR86) and invested together with BMW to launch the new Toyota Supra. In recent months we have learned that they are launching a new and spectacular racing car adapted for the street, the Toyota GR GT. A few days ago they presented a radically sporty special edition of the Toyota Corolla that will not reach Europe.
All these launches do not produce a direct impact on the company’s accounts but they do generate a love among potential customers. They are halo vehicles that give value to the company itself. Stellantis, led by Carlos Tavares, has shown that thinking only about the accounts at the end of the month leads to committing bugs like PureTech engines to save a few euros and dilutes the status of brands such as Maserati, Lancia or Alfa Romeo. Companies whose survival depends on their own and differential character, but without an alternative product to everything that is already done in the market, they lose value.
You have to look at the accounts, yes, because that is what feeds you. But, luckily, the car still has a passionate component that Akio Toyoda is not willing to give up. And that, in the long term, also feeds.
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