Toyota Sets The Stage To Pull Out EV Market - Blames Non-Green Power Grids

Toyota Europe has said it could walk away from the electric car market unless it is confident that electricity supplies will be decarbonised in the future.

Didier Stevens, Toyota Europe’s head of government affairs and environmental issues told RTCC that policy makers and utility firms also had a role to play in ensuring electric vehicles got off the ground.

“We need to cooperate with the electricity providers so that what we present to the market, in its totality, is a clean solution, otherwise we’d prefer to step back,” he said.

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trmckin - 6/11/2013 10:04:13 AM

+1 Boost

Gutsy for Toyota to step up and say that. It's been the argument against EV's since they've started hitting the market. Applaud toyota for not glossing over the subject.

Agent009 - 6/11/2013 3:01:05 PM

-5 Boost

The same think we have been saying for quite sometime. You can make a nuclear car that runs 100 year with out refueling. But it isn't environmentally friendly.

LexSucks - 6/11/2013 11:09:46 AM

-11 Boost

Big oil is somewhere smiling.

LexSucks - 6/11/2013 5:29:27 PM

-9 Boost

If only you could figure out how to interact with people here without getting banned.

LJ745 - 6/12/2013 7:22:55 AM

+2 Boost

I doubt this is the reason for pulling out of the EV market. I have run the numbers and here is what you find:
1. Averaged across the U.S. for all electricity provided, an EV is about twice as clean as an ICE.
2. Averaged across West Coast states (CA, WA, OR), and EV is three times cleaner.
3. If you run an EV purely on electricity from a coal power plant, carbon output is equivalent to an ICE.

So, no matter how you cut it, EVs are never worse than an ICE, though they may be no better in some settings. It is more likely that Toyota sees it as a loss. Tesla need $68 million in ZEV creidts from CA to turn their first ever profit of $11 million. That means they $57 million in the hole after 10 years running. What start-up can throw away 10 years of money and still have investors? Toyota sees that hybrids are more viable for the next 50 years at least. Battery tech/super capcitor tech simply aren't advancing fast enough to make EV's practical or affordable.