[JoongAng Ilbo] “Electric cars？ Still engine cars？”．．．Why world number one Toyota is right “We will likely maintain our number one position in the world even five years from now．”

(Omitted)
As demand for electric vehicles has recently become increasingly sluggish in the global auto market, the market is once again turning its attention to Toyota, or rather, to Chairman Toyoda. The Toyota empire, which once claimed that electric cars were premature, has singlehandedly put hybrid cars to the forefront and is doing well. Professor Jeffrey Liker of the University of Michigan, a well-known Toyota expert, predicted in a recent email interview with the JoongAng Ilbo that “Toyota will maintain its number one position in the world for another five years.” (Omitted)
Chairman Toyoda first began to attract attention from the global business community in 2009. After Toyota overtook General Motors (GM) the previous year to become the world’s number one automaker, he became the youngest president at the age of 43. In 2010, he faced a major crisis. The problem concerns cars produced by Toyota, where the driver’s seat mat gets caught on the accelerator pedal, causing sudden acceleration. Ten million Toyota vehicles have been recalled worldwide. To make matters worse, the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred in 2011, dealing a heavy blow to production facilities across the country. As a result of this, Toyota was pushed back from number one in global auto sales to third place, pushed out by GM and Volkswagen. (Omitted)
◇ A meticulous and thorough calculation by an “electric vehicle pessimist” = Chairman Toyoda is labeled as an “anti-electric vehicle.” Toyota is more pessimistic than passive about the electric vehicle market, which has been led by Tesla and has seen other global automakers join in. But Toyota has focused on what it does best — hybrid cars — at a time when other automakers have accelerated their shift to electric vehicles. Hybrid cars, which have both an internal combustion engine and an electric motor, have a more complicated production process than electric cars. The key is the technology to adjust the two types of power systems so that they operate smoothly. Toyota’s strategy that hybrid cars would sell better than electric cars for a while proved successful. Following Toyota’s record performance last year, it sold 970,000 hybrid cars in the April-June period this year, up 22 percent from the same period last year. 40% of Toyota’s sales were hybrid cars. This is in stark contrast to the electric vehicle market, which is struggling with stagnant demand. Toyota’s operating profit for the April-June period increased 17% from the same period last year to 1.3084 trillion yen, while sales increased 12% to 11.8378 trillion yen. “No matter how much the shift to electric vehicles progresses, I believe that the market share of electric vehicles will be a maximum of 30%,” Toyoda said at the beginning of this year. The remaining 70 percent will likely be made up of hybrids, hydrogen electric vehicles, or hydrogen engine vehicles,” he said, pointing out the limitations of electric vehicles. He added that “engine vehicles will definitely survive.” Still, that doesn’t mean Toyota isn’t developing electric vehicles. In May last year, the company announced that it would increase its investment in electric vehicles by 1 trillion yen, bringing the total to 5 trillion yen by 2030. ◇Toyota’s transformation, from leadership to factories = In anticipation of the gradual transition to the era of electrification, Chairman Toyoda appointed Tsuneji Sato as his successor as president in April last year. Sato, who became president of Lexus in 2020, is the person who led the group’s electrification, including the launch of Lexus’ first pure electric sports utility vehicle (SUV), the RZ. Chairman Toyoda praised President Sato, saying, “He is an employee who has worked extremely hard on the front lines, and is the ideal person for the job as Toyota moves forward toward becoming a mobility company.” It was an extraordinary personnel move, as he was appointed over three other vice presidents. Toyota is also conducting various experiments as it transforms itself into a mobility company. One of them is a factory without conveyor belts. At a technical workshop in June last year, the company presented a new assembly method along with a next-generation electric vehicle platform. This method eliminates conveyor belts within the factory and allows electric vehicles being assembled to drive themselves to other assembly lines within the factory. This will reduce the burden of initial capital investment, making it possible to produce a wide variety of products in small quantities in the automotive industry. Professor Riker predicted that Toyota will maintain its number one position in the world five years from now.

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