On December 14 last year, Toyota Motor held an online conference on Toyota's future transformation, which Toyota China officials described as "a heartfelt speech by President Akio Toyoda.".
The industry regards it as "Toyota's pure electric strategy conference", combined with Toyota Motor's announcement in October last year to stop the development and production of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which shows that Toyota, the leader of the hydrogen fuel cell technology route, must also follow the pace of Nissan and Honda, and begin to fully turn to the pure electric technology route that Toyota Akio has publicly "attacked" many times before.
As the twelfth president in the history of Toyota Motor, Akio Toyoda, 66, and president Akio Toyoda, who is from a family (the fourth generation of the eldest grandson), can not stab Louzi until he wants to retire, but Akio Toyoda, who has been president for 13 years, has left the deepest impression on us so far only in 2010 to apologize for coming to China.
In 2021, Toyota motor once again beat Volkswagen to become the world automobile company sales champion, since the official he took charge of Toyota motor in 2009, Toyota Akio's former opponents fell and slipped one by one, and the core reason why Toyota motor still stands seems to be conservative and steady, as well as sincere apologies.
However, the trend of market turning has been obvious, when all players have begun to turn to the electric car license plate game, Toyota has to follow the entry, the crisis behind Toyota, perhaps the President of the Internet department from the Chapter Has long been aware of this, although he has always expressed his attitude against the pure electric route, but finally showed the bottom card.
Conservative Toyota
A financial crisis has completely broken the three giants of the United States, more than ten years have not recovered, Volkswagen experienced infighting and emissions scandals, has already opened the electrification and intelligent transformation, Toyota as the leader of the Japanese car brand, in the choice of route to bet on hydrogen fuel cell technology.
The result of conservative technology launch is that Toyota's products have always performed well in terms of reputation for quality stability, and the reason is simple, consumers who pursue new technologies will not choose Toyota's products, and consumers who want product stability are Toyota's target users.
Toyota Akio is well aware of the importance of the Chinese market, Toyota as early as the 1970s and 1980s to develop turbo technology, but the car environment and regulations at that time, the international market for the practicality of turbo technology is not too clear application trend, Toyota therefore stopped the research and development of related technologies.
It was not until Volkswagen's TSI+DSG combination, which was first launched in the Chinese market in 2008, was widely recognized by the market and won the Chinese auto market for more than a decade, all of which made Toyota finally bow its head for the market, until 2014, when Toyota announced the "resurrection" of the 2.0T turbocharged engine on the Lexus model.
The resurrection of "new technology" did not allow Toyota to catch up with Volkswagen in the Chinese market, for a long time, Toyota motor in China is Volkswagen's catch-up, but in the process of catching up, Toyota, which has always hoped to hold a big move, was eventually surpassed by Honda Motor, which came later and put more radical technology into the market.
The rapid change of today's industry has made many traditional forces feel pressure, Volkswagen's comprehensive transformation is obvious to all, in addition to the strategy in the field of SUVs, but the speed of Volkswagen's make-up class is also convincing.
From 2012 to 2016, China's SUV market developed rapidly, and many brands made successful breakthroughs with SUV products, and before 2017, domestic Volkswagen only had one product, so in 2018, Volkswagen released an SUV strategy and quickly invested in a number of new SUV products, and the results were also obvious, helping the north and south volkswagens to rank at the forefront of the sales rankings all year round.
Toyota Motor is ahead in the field of technology research and development, such as hydrogen fuel power in 1992, but the actual technical investment in the Chinese market is very conservative, until 2015 to introduce domestic hybrid power technology in China, began to fully promote hybrid technology products, until 2016 did not stop using the 4AT gearbox.
According to official data, in 2012, Toyota motor sold 840,000 vehicles in China, and in 2021, Toyota sold a total of 1.944 million vehicles in China, of which hybrid car sales increased by 25% to 475,900 units.
Even if Toyota is conservative, it should be able to see clearly the Preference for New Technologies in the Chinese market.
10 years TNGA came to an end
In order to counter Volkswagen's strong performance in the Chinese market, Toyota proposed the TNGA framework in 2012, which is objectively speaking, a concept that is very unfavorable to communication, and almost no one can clarify its situation in simple terms, including Toyota Itself.
Over the past ten years, through our observation and understanding, the actual result of TNGA is "better-looking Toyota", through the TNGA structure of the product, in terms of shape design, than the previous generation of models look more fashionable and dynamic.
As for the power performance, control and other aspects, there is no obvious improvement, Toyota's largest sales product Corolla (including Leiling) was jokingly called "mobile barricade" by netizens.
Fuel economy is mainly reflected by hybrid models, but compared to competitors, whether it is Honda's IMMD or BYD's DMI, Toyota's hybrid technology has no first-mover advantage, which is also one of the reasons why Toyota finally chose to enter the field of pure electricity after ten years of TNGA development.
This reminds me of a review article Written in the traditional media 5 years ago, "Conservative Toyota: The Next Nokia?" Toyota has invested decades in the field of hydrogen fuel cells, and although it has made small achievements, it can not compete with the torrent of reality in the end.
At that time, the author had expected that the development of pure electric technology routes would make conservative Toyota face reality again like the addition of turbocharging technology, from the current point of view, although Apple and Google cars have not appeared, but Tesla as the representative of the new car force, indeed gave the conservative Toyota a huge impact.
Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corporation, who has been "attacking" pure electric lines in the past few years, has suddenly changed his face.
Analysts pointed out that Akio Toyoda, who came from the Internet department, is well versed in the logic of Internet communication, and Toyota Motor, which has been traditionally conservative before, relies heavily on Toyota Akio's performance to ensure the popularity of the brand in terms of public opinion.
Compared with the hybrid technology of planetary gears, TNGA, which lacks core highlights, and the bland product experience, "President Selling Meng" is more attractive to young people's attention in social media communication.
Objectively speaking, the effect of TNGA's strategy is not obvious, toyota's core selling point is still the reputation and stability left by the previous generation of products, and the performance of hybrid technology has also been surpassed by later Honda and BYD.
Hydrogen power can not be introduced, hybrid technology to the limit, ten years is enough time for consumers to understand the obscurity of TNGA, Toyota can only open a new field of pure electricity to attract attention and increase sales.
The real challenge of the multi-faceted president
The first key factor in toyota's brand success in China may be closely linked to Toyota Motor President Akio Toyoda's activity on internet social media.
As the leader of one of the world's top two automobile groups, Akio Toyoda's social media performance is very much in line with the tastes of young people, whether it is racing, baseball or food and travel, if we do not look at the information, we will forget that the fourth generation of the Toyota family will turn 66 this year.
Compared with the competitors, the content presented by Akio Toyoda's personal social media is also more diversified, which can be summarized mainly as follows: Toyota's performance in various events, especially hydrogen-powered events; some of the events in which the president himself participated, holiday blessings, chicken soup for the soul and so on.
It is worth mentioning that Toyota Motor's core strategy in China in the past 10 years, TNGA, has not been mentioned on Toyota Akio's personal social media account. At the end of last year, the pure electric strategy was released, and Akio Toyoda also mentioned on his personal social media platform, is the TNGA structure just a regional publicity strategy of Toyota motor for the Chinese market?
Back in 2020, after the Japanese government announced plans to ban the sale of gasoline cars from 2035, Akio Toyoda, president of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, warned: "If the auto industry is too hasty to switch to electric vehicles, then the current business model of the auto industry will collapse." ”
He also said, "The more electric vehicles we build, the more carbon dioxide will be worse ... When politicians say out there, 'Let's get rid of all the cars that use gasoline', do they understand this?
At that time, the media generally interpreted it as the incident of Toyota Akio attacking electric vehicles, according to the author's understanding of Toyota Motor, Toyota Akio's move has the meaning of maintaining the status of fuel vehicles, but with Toyota's scale and influence in the world, it is also developing electric vehicle projects, so the situation of attacking electric vehicles should not be an expression that Toyota will fully resist pure electric vehicles.
In October last year, Toyota Motor suddenly announced the suspension of hydrogen fuel cell research and development and production, and in December, Toyota Motor suddenly released its own pure electric strategy online, which is considered to be a major shift in Toyota's strategy, which is also a major adjustment of Toyota Akio in the presidency.
It cannot be said that Toyota Motor has no vision for the field of pure electricity, but the pattern of Toyota Motor today is not created by Toyota Akio, Toyota Motor can go to successively compete with the three giants of the United States, and the German Volkswagen to compete for the position of the world's first, relying on the strategy of The former transitional president of Toyota Motor, Watanabe Jieaki, including the pioneer Prius who created the hybrid era, and it is in the hands of Watanabe Jieaki that he became the representative of new energy vehicles at that time.
Since taking over the presidency of Toyota Motor Corporation in 2009, hydrogen fuel cells are a project that Akio Toyota has spared no effort to promote around the world, but the results are not satisfactory, on the other hand, pure electric vehicles have made great strides in the Chinese market, and now only Japanese brands have not really entered the pure electricity market, and only symbolically participate in the electrification game in the Chinese market with "oil to electricity" models.
In the past two decades, the world giants of the automotive industry from the three giants of the United States to the German Empire, Volkswagen due to infighting, counterfeiting and other scandals, there is no time to compete with Toyota in an all-round way, Toyota in 2020 with the "decline is not as large as volkswagen", the first time in 5 years won the global car sales champion throne.
Looks good results, but are the work of predecessors, belongs to Toyota Akio's own glory is not significant, with this pure electricity strategy, if a successful breakthrough in China, then will be left in history.