A Toyota motor store du ge photographed
Author | Redundant
Edit | Wan Jiali
Source | CarVisibility
Toyota Motor (TM.US) has been a "successful person" for most of its life, but now it is in a "midlife crisis".
Akio Toyoda has repeatedly released electric vehicles, especially after the Japanese government announced its carbon neutrality strategy, saying that rushing to promote electrification will seriously impact the auto industry and bring with it a threat that 5 million auto industry workers may face an unemployment crisis.
However, in the middle of December last year, Akio Toyoda made a 180° change and vigorously punched himself in the face.
On December 14, Toyota released 16 electric vehicles, and Toyota Akio also announced a 10-year electric vehicle transformation plan, announcing that from 2022 to 2030, Toyota will invest 8 trillion yen in electrification transformation, introduce 30 pure electric models, and turn Lexus into a pure electric brand.
What exactly changed Akio Toyoda's attitude towards pure electric vehicles?
The last glory
Toyota is a relatively long-standing automobile company, and has strong technical reserves in all fields of automobiles, especially in the field of fuel vehicles, Toyota is definitely the "king".
The global sales champion in 2021 is still Toyota. From January to November last year, excluding its subsidiaries Daihatsu and Hino Motor, sales had reached 8.7639 million units, which was less than 120,000 units away from Volkswagen's annual performance of 8.882 million units. Adding to Daihatsu and Hino's sales, Toyota Motor Corporation had sold 9.562 million units by November, leaving second-place Volkswagen behind.
Toyota Motor not only sells more sales, but more importantly, the profitability of the company is strong. From the world's top 500 list released by Fortune magazine in 2019, it can be seen that Toyota beat Volkswagen, GM and other car companies with a profit of 16.98 billion US dollars, becoming the world's most profitable car company.
In the field of hybrids, Toyota is also the king.
The industry describes Toyota's hybrid system this way: "There are only two kinds of hybrids in the world, one is the Toyota THS hybrid and the other is the other hybrid. "In January 2020, Toyota Hybrid's cumulative global sales exceeded 15 million units.
However, in the field of pure electric vehicles, Toyota has achieved little.
In theory, it is not difficult for Toyota to conquer pure electric vehicles with its technical advantages in hybrid systems. Why is Toyota still lagging behind other new energy vehicle companies?
To answer this question, you have to understand the Toyota family behind Toyota.
Toyota motor is a public company, but more of a family business. Toyota Motor's current president, Akio Toyoda, is the grandson of Toyota Founder Kiichiro Toyoda. During his reign, he led Toyota out of the shadows of brake doors and created the Lexus "myth".
The decision makers of this family business lead the business forward like parents. The personality of the decision maker of the enterprise, the strategy he makes, has a distinct family character.
If you bet on the field of pure electric vehicles, it is a difficult choice for Akio Toyoda, and the architecture of the entire Toyota system will face major adjustments. Leading the Toyota family forward is not an easy task.
Toyota, on the other hand, is a very pragmatic automotive company that is extremely profitable. In fiscal 2020, Toyota Motor's inventory amount, accounts receivable turnover days and other data have been "abnormal".
One of the important reasons why Toyota can "stand out from the crowd" is the low inventory. From FY2005 to FY2017, Toyota's inventory did not exceed RMB150 billion in RMB terms, but in FY2020, Toyota's inventory expanded to RMB172 billion.
In terms of accounts receivable turnover days, Toyota's accounts receivable turnover days in 2019 were less than 30 days, but in 2020, this data soared to nearly 80 days, more than doubling. In other words, Toyota's funds have been "occupied" by dealers for a longer time, and the sales collection situation is much worse than before.
In the case of abnormal operating data, Toyoda Akio is even more afraid to venture into the field of pure electric vehicles, he can only continue to promote research and development in the field of hybrid on the basis of maintaining the advantages of the fuel vehicle market, and then slowly transition to the field of pure electric. Perhaps in their view, this is the only way to ensure that the financial indicators do not appear abnormal.
Moreover, "big Mac" companies like Toyota have their own pride, they have obvious advantages in the field of fuel vehicles and hybrid technology, so long as they hold the territory can firmly wear the title of "world's first", and why compete with a group of car "small white" for the market.
Unfortunately, these advantages become the other side of the coin. While bringing profits and applause to Toyota, it has also become an obstacle to Toyota's expansion in the field of new energy.
Therefore, it is not easy to change the pride and confidence of Toyota in the field of fuel vehicles in the past century.
Devoured markets
Under the disdain of Akio Toyoda, a number of new energy vehicle companies have entered an era of barbaric growth. Tesla (TSLA.US, in particular, has gradually grown into a car company that threatens Toyota's position in the course of these years of expansion.
In 2020, due to the impact of the epidemic, global automobile sales fell sharply. According to the global automobile market sales released by Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, the total global automobile sales in 2020 fell by 13% year-on-year to 78.03 million units, a decrease of more than 11 million units from 2019. This is the first time in recent years that the global auto market has experienced a double-digit year-on-year decline.
Toyota motors were also affected. According to Japan's Kyodo News Agency, Toyota Group (including Daihatsu Industries and Hino Motors) sold 9.528 million vehicles worldwide in 2020, down 11.3% year-on-year.
Tesla, however, is largely unaffected. According to data released by Tesla, it delivered 499,600 vehicles in 2020, an increase of 36% year-on-year; in the fourth quarter, it delivered 180,600 vehicles, accounting for 36% of the vehicles delivered in the whole year.
The roof leaked during the overnight rain. Tesla has pulled Toyota down from the first throne of the total market value of the car. On June 10, 2020, Tesla's stock price of $995.27 and a market value of $184.598 billion surpassed Toyota for the first time to become the world's largest car company in terms of market capitalization.
As of the closing price on January 18, Tesla's stock price is $1049.61, with a market value of $1,054.1 billion, and Toyota's stock price is $210.69, with a market value of only $291.8 billion. In just one and a half years, Tesla's market value has exceeded trillions, and the speed can be described as amazing.
The market is bullish on Tesla's future prospects. After all, in 2020, the sales volume of new energy vehicles will account for only 4% of the global automobile market, which means that the market share of new energy vehicles still has a lot of room to rise.
When Tesla is soaring, China's new energy vehicle companies are also struggling to move forward.
In 2021, China's new energy vehicle production and sales increased by 1.6 times year-on-year, with production reaching 3.545 million units and sales of 3.521 million units. Among them, the production of pure electric vehicles increased by 1.7 times year-on-year to 2.942 million units, and sales increased by 1.6 times to 2.916 million units; the production of plug-in hybrid vehicles increased by 1.3 times to 601,000 units, and sales increased by 1.4 times to 603,000 units; while the production and sales of fuel cell vehicles increased year-on-year, they were only 0.2 million units.
That is to say, in 2021, the production and sales of pure electric vehicles in the mainland will be close to 3 million, while the production and sales of plug-in hybrid vehicles + fuel cell vehicles will only be hundreds of thousands.
Toyota's strategy of relying on hybrids to fight the Chinese market obviously does not work, and in emerging markets, Toyota has lost its former ease.
In the face of the constantly swallowed market share, Akio Toyoda is very anxious, he can only continue to "shell" electric vehicles in public, trying to prevent new energy vehicles from accelerating the pace of progress. In December 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that Akio Toyoda criticized electric vehicles for being "over-hyped" at the press conference, and he believed that once the market fully shifted to electric vehicles, the increased demand for electricity would lead to Japan facing a power shortage in the summer.
In the face of the accelerated global electrification process, Toyota still has resistance. The Glasgow Declaration on Zero-Emission Vehicles and Vans, issued at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, is also considered a "global fire ban". Eleven automakers, including Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and BYD, have signed the manifesto.
In November 2021, Toyota took the lead in opposing the signing of the Declaration, rejecting a commitment to phase out fossil fuel vehicles by 2040 and announcing cooperation with Subaru, Mazda, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and Yamaha to develop alternative eco-friendly fuels and hydrogen technologies that can be used by vehicles with internal combustion engines.
However, in the face of the trend of the times, Akio Toyoda's opposition can not change anything.
The elephant turns
When Toyota is still fighting, it still opens a comprehensive layout of pure electric vehicles.
This transformation makes the outside world feel a little incredible. Just one month after opposing the "declaration of emissions reduction", Akio Toyoda has publicly announced that he will actively embrace pure electric vehicles.
In December 2021, Toyota held an electric vehicle launch. Akio Toyoda announced that from 2022 to 2030, Toyota Motor will invest 8 trillion yen in electrification, of which 4 trillion yen will be used for pure electric vehicle models (BEVs), and the remaining 4 trillion yen will be used for hybrid models (HEVs), plug-in hybrid models (PHEV), and hydrogen fuel models (FCEV).
Moreover, Toyota has also released 16 pure electric vehicles. With its strong technical research and development strength, Toyota has issued a war letter to Tesla and other new energy vehicle companies.
Toyota motor will also introduce 30 electric vehicle models (BEVs) by 2030, and by 2030, the total sales of electric models will reach 3.5 million. Toyota also intends to convert Lexus to a pure electric brand, planning to sell 1 million pure electric vehicles in 2030.
The conference was seen as a Toyota show muscle. As the world's largest sales volume Toyota, the technical reserves are extremely strong, very early began the layout of the pure electric field.
As early as 2016, Toyota set up an internal innovation organization dedicated to the development of pure electric vehicles. In November of that year, Toyota said it was interested in developing electric vehicles and would no longer use hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and plug-in gasoline-electric hybrids as "optimal alternatives" to traditional cars. Not only that, Toyota has also promised to achieve zero emissions from cars by 2050.
In 2017, Toyota issued a plan for the popularization of electric vehicles, saying that it will fully carry out the electric vehicle business from 2020, expand the number of pure electric vehicle models sold worldwide to more than 10 by 2025, and achieve an electrification rate of 50% of its models by 2030.
In 2019, Toyota announced its global strategy for electrification, saying that it will target 1 million pure electric vehicles in 2025.
In 2020, Toyota plans to launch 10 pure electric models, and Toyota also positions 2020 as the "first year of the EV" (EV is the Electric Vehicle).
In October 2021, Toyota Motor Corporation announced that it would invest $3.4 billion in the production of lithium batteries in the United States by 2030, of which $1.29 billion will be used to build a battery manufacturing plant with four production lines, each of which can supply lithium batteries for 200,000 cars. The battery manufacturing plant is expected to come on stream in 2025.
Timeline of Toyota's pure electric strategy process
In terms of new technologies such as autonomous driving, Toyota has previously established Woven Planet Holdings to specialize in this business. The company has Woven CORE and Woven Alpha. Woven CORE is responsible for Toyota's research and development and application of autonomous driving technology, while Woven Alpha is responsible for incubating more innovative projects, such as the new smart city "Weaving City", which officially started construction on February 23, 2021. This "weaving city" is the "testing ground" for Toyota motor to verify advanced technologies such as autonomous driving and robotics.
In this way, Toyota's start is not late, but it has put more energy and investment into hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
Under the multi-faceted layout, Toyota's "elephant turn" may not be as difficult as the outside world imagines, and Toyota will not fall because of it, at least not at present. As a century-old car company, it has faced a worse situation.
During the period from 2007 to 2009, the European and American markets proposed that toyota's brake throttle was problematic, but at that time Toyota thought that it was only because European and American owners were accustomed to European and American cars and were not used to Toyota cars, so it only symbolically recalled some cars. It wasn't until August 28, 2009, that the accelerator pedal of a Lexus on a U.S. highway was stuck, and the car was eventually destroyed. The owner of the car was a patrol officer, and there were his wife, daughter and brother-in-law in the car at the time, and 4 people died in the car accident.
After this incident, there was also an incident in the United States in which Toyota cars suddenly accelerated and caused a crash. American society began to "encircle" Toyota, and the United States also set up a supervision and investigation committee to deal with the Toyota incident.
However, Toyota's attitude has been very good, the apology, the compensation, but also in cooperation with the relevant U.S. departments of the investigation, provided 150 sets of black box reading devices, so that the United States can read the data of the relevant vehicles.
Many people thought that Toyota would be "cool" in this incident, but Toyota carried it with its super toughness, and the final investigation results also returned Toyota a clean, and its electronic throttle control system had no problems. If Toyota hadn't apologized and stabilized the market, perhaps they wouldn't have even been able to wait for this belated innocence.
As long as the roots are still there, everything is not yet in the final situation.
The current situation is actually not too bad for Toyota. Because the field of pure electric vehicles is still in the juvenile stage of thriving growth. Toyota, which is wrapped in strong technological research and development strength and huge network, will not be easily thrown off on the pure electric track.
It's just that this conversion process is too abrupt, so that the outside world feels that Toyota is contradictory. Akio Toyoda, who has a stubborn personality, must have also gone through a painful choice.
END