Toyota has long held out against producing an all-electric car, looking to hydrogen powered vehicles instead but policy changes in China mean it now has to produce an electric car.
POLICY CHANGES IN China mean that Toyota has to look to the production of an all-electric car, likely by 2020 because car makers will now be expected to sell an increasing number of electric or plug-in hybrid cars.
Next year eight per cent of cars a car maker sells in China will need to be electric or plug-in hybrid, growing to 10% in 2019 and 12% in 2020. According to reports out of China, that county’s policy makers see Toyota’s hybrid fleet as no more than petrol-powered vehicles.
While other car makers have been pushing headlong towards electric cars, Toyota has held out, thinking/hoping its hybrid vehicles would be a stop gap until hydrogen powered cars became the norm (until the infrastructure caught up).
Indeed, in 2014, Toyota launched its hydrogen-powered Mirai (read our review by following the link).
At the recent Shanghai Motor Show, Toyota executives spoke about how the company would push sales of plug-in hybrid cars in China in the next couple of years and that an all-electric car would go on-sale in that country too, but no timeframe was set.
Question: Could China be the country that fast forwards the move to electric cars?
China is mandating this to give their manufacturers a leg up. Maybe this will mean a new gen of range extender EVs from Toyota… Not a bad thing at all.
Any car that ugly needs to forced into a u-turn. Not sure what’s in the water in Toyota but it’s not good.
I guess it stands out from the crowd but in all the wrong ways!
It’s bound to have a big effect on all manufacturers who market/manufacture in China. It might also bring Australia up to speed with EVs and PHEVs rather than being behind most of the rest of the Western world.
From what I’ve read on Green Car Reports, the latest article reinforces Toyota’s intention to plough on with fuel cell vehicles and infrastructure to support them whilst continuing to develop BEVs.
They see a need for both.
Good for Australia as most of their Lithium they use is from Australia though makes you wonder why we aren’t doing something with it ourselves.