A few days ago, I came across an interesting Twitter post/tweet from Car Dealership Guy. In short, he feels that Toyota was smart enough to either expect the recent U.S. government and industry turn toward more plugin hybrids and less EVs, or at least was forward-thinking enough to do hybrids first before everyone else.• Made Toyota the #1 brand in the world.In this article, I’m going to discuss how this is right, how it’s wrong, and how it will probably become more wrong over time.
So, if we want to go all-in on EVs now instead of later, we’re probably stuck with buying battery cells from China instead of rapidly building up the battery cell supplies from liberal countries. For this reason, we’ve seen Japanese automakers shy away from EVs. Hopes for hybrids, hydrogen, and anything other than full EVs have stayed alive for what seemed like an irrationally long time there, to the point where Japanese auto manufacturers have been mocked and derided for the choice.
So, companies like Toyota were right to avoid entanglements with the Chinese government and the heavily subsidized companies under its thumb, but choosing to focus on boondoggles like hydrogen instead of developing better alternative supplies was the strategic error. Sadly, it’s the same strategic error most US automakers made, so we’re stuck in the same boat.