Global Courant 2023-04-21 18:22:44
TOKYO – Toyota Motor, the world’s largest automaker and Japan’s most valuable company by market capitalization, has been dismissed by analysts as lagging behind in the development of battery electric vehicles (BEVs).
But chief executive officer Koji Sato has stressed that there are multiple paths to the company’s ultimate goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
“It’s not about how many BEVs we sell, but how much Toyota is able to reduce CO2 emissions,” he said in response to a question from The Straits Times at a media roundtable on Friday.
The 53-year-old is a Toyota man through and through who joined the company in 1992 and succeeded family member Akio Toyoda as chief on April 1.
While Toyota has failed to keep pace with companies like Tesla of the United States and BYD of China in developing BEVs, he said it was not alone in its race for industrial dominance, given that regions such as developing countries in Asia do not have the necessary infrastructure for electric vehicles.
“Perspective is very important. We have to think of the whole planet to achieve carbon neutrality, and the solutions have to match the speed of development and the needs of each region,” he said.
“For example, there are countries without power infrastructure. If we try to introduce BEVs there, we will not bring any convenience to customers, especially if infrastructure construction cannot keep up.”
Toyota is the world’s largest automaker by sales, with 9.57 million units sold worldwide by 2022. But only 0.26 percent of this figure, or 24,466 vehicles, were BEVs.
At a press conference earlier in April, Mr Sato said Toyota will launch 10 new BEV models by 2026, aiming to sell 1.5 million units a year.
“As we look at our global business portfolio, we need to look at the needs of each region and be practical to drive electrification in each market,” he said, adding that the US, China and Europe are key markets for BEVs.
“We’re going to have to adapt to different speeds and have different solutions that we can offer for each of these different regions, especially for Asia.”
Mr Sato stressed that green has long been a key focus for Toyota, which had already reduced carbon emissions by 30 percent between 2000 and 2019 with the development of hybrid vehicles.
The next step is to reduce emissions by another 50 percent by 2035, with the ultimate goal of being carbon neutral by 2050.
To achieve this, a priority is to popularize hybrid vehicles, including plug-in models, across Asia as a means of transition to carbon neutrality, he said.
