Without a notice, on December 14, Toyota released 16 electric vehicles in one go, covering cars, SUVs, MPVs, sports cars, pickups, and K-Cars.
Deep way screenshot
The car company, which holds the top spot in the world (Toyota's sales ranked first in the world in 2020), has previously been scornful of electric vehicles.
The helmsman, Akio Toyoda, has shelled pure electric vehicles several times. In December last year, he publicly stated at the annual meeting of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association that "pure electric vehicles are being over-hyped."
In November, Toyota spearheaded its rejection of a commitment to phase out fossil fuel vehicles by 2040, opposing the signing of the Glasgow Declaration on Zero-Emission Vehicles and Vans, which is seen in part as a global ban on combustion.
Unexpectedly, the punch in the face hit quickly.
A month later, Toyota "retaliated" with more than a dozen electric vehicles. At the press conference, Akio Toyoda also made a 10-year-long electric vehicle transformation plan - 35 billion US dollars for new energy vehicles related research and development and equipment investment, by 2030 to launch 30 BEVs (pure electric vehicles), BEV global annual sales plan to reach 3.5 million units.
Toyota almost played the slogan of "pure electricity, we are serious".
As the gatekeeper of "promoting the internal combustion engine in the era of electric vehicles", why did Toyota make a 360-degree turn?
Play hard
Akio Toyoda "say no" to pure electric vehicles, and the reason seems to be very good:
In Japan, if all cars are powered by electricity, there may be a shortage of electricity in the summer.
At present, japan's domestic electricity is mainly supplied by burning coal and natural gas, and when the number of electric vehicles produced, the more electricity it needs, making carbon dioxide emissions more serious.
Millions of auto jobs could be at risk.
The world is promoting electrification transformation, electrification has become the trend of the times, is it Akio Toyoda can not see the situation clearly?
Anyone familiar with Akio Toyoda knows that he is a businessman with a strategic vision. In 2011, Akio Toyoda strategically put forward the slogan of "China's most important", relying on the emphasis on the Chinese market, Toyota Motor is now the car company with the highest global market share.
Akio Toyoda "shelled pure electricity", talking about the dispute over routes, behind which is actually business.
In the field of fuel vehicles, Toyota is the absolute darling. Toyota's global market share remains high. In China, last year, the car market fell into a state of pantomime because of the epidemic, but Toyota's sales still went out of an upward curve.
The biggest advantage of Japanese cars, especially Toyota, at this stage is fuel economy, and once it is fully electrified, the existing advantages of Japanese car companies will disappear.
Source / Toyota Official Blog
More critically, Toyota has been betting on hybrid technology and hydrogen energy for more than two decades, and if it re-turns the bow layout of pure electricity at this time, its efforts will be in vain.
Akio Toyoda touches porcelain everywhere and constantly speaks out, in fact, he is shouting for hybrid technology and hydrogen energy technology, and also buying time for the transformation of Japanese car companies.
But time is not waiting for anyone, and what happened in 2021 has completely broken Toyota's illusion, and Toyota has reached the moment when it must make a choice.
2021 is the year when smart electric vehicles are the most aggressive. The market value of Tesla's car company has exceeded the sum of more than ten traditional car companies such as Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors. The new domestic forces Wei Xiaoli have taken the lead in the field of pure electricity, and the sales volume is like a bamboo, and the stock price is rising.
The alarm bells have been sounded completely, and there is not much time left for the transformation of fuel vehicles.
The former overlords of fuel vehicles have panicked that they will become the next Nokia. Traditional giants such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW, which see the situation clearly, have released new electric platforms non-stop and vigorously entered electrification and intelligence.
Global car companies have turned the bow of the ship and chosen the pure electric route, and it is impossible for Toyota not to panic.
Moreover, the technology of pure trams is maturing. Toyota's concerns about battery life and charging frequency have also been partially addressed. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the average cruising range of pure electric passenger cars has increased from 253 kilometers in 2016 to 378 kilometers in 2020. By 2021, many car companies have launched models with a cruising range of more than 600 kilometers.
The most critical thing is that the new energy policies and development paths of various countries are gradually becoming clear.
Since 2015, some countries in the European Union have announced plans to stop selling fuel vehicles. Norway, for example, requires that by 2025 all new cars sold in the country be electric vehicles, and France and the United Kingdom have also announced a complete ban on the sale of fuel vehicles by 2040.
Last December, the Japanese government released a "green growth plan" to achieve complete carbon emissions-free by 2050 and ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.
Today, China's total sales of new energy passenger cars account for almost half of the world's new energy sales. For the entire new energy market, the direction of the Chinese market has become particularly important. Since 2012, the development of new energy vehicles in China has basically determined the development path of pure electric as the main development. Another big auto country, the United States, is now also based on pure electric as the main development path.
The policies of various countries have pointed out the direction for car companies - taking the pure electric route.
Technology, market, policy, have opened the door for pure electric vehicles, Toyota will not enter the market is too late, can only grit its teeth hard.
Did Akio Toyoda bow his head?
16 electric vehicles in a row, does this mean that Toyota has completely bowed to pure electric vehicles?
Not really.
Akio Toyoda is still hesitating in the face of the pure electric route.
At the press conference, most of the pure trams released by Toyota are concept cars, and some models are still based on existing fuel vehicles. Akio Toyoda explains this: "We live in an era of diversity and difficulty predicting the future. No one product is available for everyone. Therefore, Toyota wants to provide our customers around the world with as many options as possible. ”
In other words, Toyota's launch of pure electric vehicles is more of a compromise that has to be made due to the pressure of reality, rather than really betting on the pure electric vehicle route.
In addition to pure electricity, they still have not given up the hybrid and hydrogen energy routes.
Of the $35 billion Toyota plans to invest, only half will be invested in the direction of pure electric vehicles, and the remaining half will be used in new energy vehicles, including hybrid vehicles and fuel cell vehicles.
Compared with other car companies, Toyota's determination to transform is not so great, and Toyota aims to sell 3.5 million pure electric vehicles by 2030, equivalent to one-third of current sales. Rival Volkswagen Group announced that it expects half of its car sales to be pure electric vehicles by 2030.
Source / Wall Street Journal, company website
Cartography / Deep Path
In Toyota's logic, the road to carbon reduction is not only pure electricity, but hybrid and hydrogen energy are the right way. Toyota believes that the future new energy vehicle technology line should start from fuel vehicles, take hybrid vehicles as a transition, and eventually move towards the ultimate solution of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
For more than two decades, Toyota has been developing along this path.
Toyota showed off its first new hybrid concept at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1995, and two years later, the Toyota Prius, the world's first mass-produced hybrid car, was officially launched. Since then, Toyota has established its own hybrid kingdom. In 26 years, Toyota has sold more than 10 million hybrid vehicles.
However, due to its obsession with hybrid technology research, Toyota did not release the relevant hybrid technology for free until 2019. The patented technology was opened too late, the threshold of Toyota hybrid technology is too high, and more and more brands choose to abandon hybrid technology and develop pure electric technology. Toyota has failed to build a hybrid-centric vehicle ecosystem. On the road of hybridization, Toyota lacked supporters and had to fight alone.
While laying out hybrid vehicles, Toyota has not stopped research and development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. In 2014, Toyota came up with the first mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. However, the cost of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is too high to be mass-produced on a large scale. For the current Toyota, the hydrogen fuel project is a business that does not see the hope of making money and does not see the commercial landing.
The parallel three routes of "hybrid, hydrogen energy, and pure electricity" are not a good choice for the current Toyota. But Toyota can't stop.
If the research and development of hybrid and hydrogen energy is suspended and focused on the development of pure electricity, the sunk cost is too high, and Toyota is likely to lose the watermelon and cannot pick up the sesame seeds. On the other hand, the general direction of the new energy revolution is the pure electric route, Toyota in order to retain the existing market share, had to turn around and invest in pure electricity, but today's pure electric jianghu competition is fierce, in the field of pure electricity has been lagging behind, Toyota is obviously somewhat inadequate.
Late to the birth of Toyota, is there still a chance to catch up?
Looking back at Toyota's new energy development history, you will be surprised to find that Toyota has rubbed shoulders with the pure electric route several times.
Toyota began to develop pure electric vehicles as early as 1996, but the pure electric pioneer eventually chose the two routes of hybrid and hydrogen energy, abandoning the pure electric route.
In 2010, the Tesla Roadster was born, and electric cars had the same speed as top sports cars. Toyota saw the potential of pure electricity and chose to cooperate with Tesla. Not only did Toyota spend $50 million to buy Tesla's stake in a future IPO, it also sold a factory near Silicon Valley (now the Fremont factory) to Tesla. In return, Tesla helped Toyota build electric cars.
It was an opportunity for Toyota to most likely catch up with the tide of the times, but toyota missed it once again. Because electric vehicle sales fell far short of expectations, Toyota's honeymoon period with Tesla ended and the two companies broke up completely.
Until 2021, faced with increasing competitive pressure and the approaching timetable for banning the sale of new fuel vehicles, Toyota had to re-pick up the pure electric route and launch pure electric products non-stop.
After more than 20 years, the pure electricity market has already undergone earth-shaking changes.
Today, Toyota is too far behind on the road of pure electricity.
As for Toyota, the first pure electric car bZ4X, lexus' first pure electric car LF-Z are just unveiled. Its pure electric platform, the e-TNGA platform, has not yet had a production car off the production line.
Source / Network
In pure electric tracks, in addition to electrification, the most important thing is intelligence.
PwC has systematically analyzed the Volkswagen ID series in the research report: the ID series is an excellent electric vehicle, but it is not smart enough. Driven by Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal, the Chinese market has entered the second stage of electric vehicles: electric vehicles + smart cars.
Electric vehicles that are not smart enough will find it difficult to successfully enter the Chinese market. But in Akio Toyoda's speech at the December 14 conference, only two words appeared: electric vehicle, battery, and the words software and platform were not yet visible. Toyota has not begun to really lay out intelligently.
For the traditional fuel vehicle giants, the intelligent pure electric track is a new track, and the ability accumulated in the fuel era cannot be translated to the pure electric market. Even Volkswagen, which began its resolute transformation six years ago, is still agonizing in the face of competition: "We are the best in the world of the internal combustion engine, but in the new world we call NEW AUTO, what awaits us is a war that has never been experienced before." ”
For Toyota, there are not many cards to play in the hand, and the only advantage may be solid-state batteries. Ouyang Minggao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and vice chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, once said: "From the national point of view, Japan attaches the most importance to all-solid-state batteries, does the best, and has the largest scale... In contrast, Japan is five years ahead of China. ”
Toyota has set a flag for itself to achieve its goal of selling 3.5 million electric vehicles a year by 2030. This goal is an extremely difficult task for Toyota today. Toyota has a lot more to make up.