Sunday, January 24, 2021

Just A Reminder, Toyota's President Says Electric Vehicles Are 'Overhyped' (TM; TSLA)

We last mentioned Toyota in July when CMA CGN joined the CEO-and-above pressure group The Hydrogen Council:

These are not the little guys.
The new co-chair is Takeshi Uchiyamada, Chairman of Toyota ($275 billion revenue).
He joins BenoĆ®t Potier Chair and CEO of Air Liquide ($26 billion revs.) who has been co-chair since 2017.  

Uchiyamada and his lieutenant Mr. Toyoda run one of the few organizations that can command greater automotive resources than Elon Musk.

Which may set up an interesting confrontation as Mr. Musk is on record as saying hydrogen fuel cells are "mind-bogglingly stupid."

He's also called them  “incredibly dumb” and “fool cells.”

Anyhoo, Here's the Wall Street Journal last month: 

Toyota’s Chief Says Electric Vehicles Are Overhyped
Akio Toyoda says converting entirely to EVs could cost hundreds of billions of dollars and make cars unaffordable for average people
TOKYO— Motor Corp.’s leader criticized what he described as excessive hype over electric vehicles, saying advocates failed to consider the carbon emitted by generating electricity and the costs of an EV transition. 
Toyota President Akio Toyoda said Japan would run out of electricity in the summer if all cars were running on electric power. The infrastructure needed to support a fleet consisting entirely of EVs would cost Japan between ¥14 trillion and ¥37 trillion, the equivalent of $135 billion to $358 billion, he said.

“When politicians are out there saying, ‘Let’s get rid of all cars using gasoline,’ do they understand this?” Mr. Toyoda said Thursday at a year-end news conference in his capacity as chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.

He said if Japan is too hasty in banning gasoline-powered cars, “the current business model of the car industry is going to collapse,” causing the loss of millions of jobs. 
Advocates of EVs say they can be charged at night when electricity demand is low and, over time, can grow in tandem with other green technologies such as solar power....
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On the other hand Tesla's market cap at $802 billion is approaching 4x that of TM's $207 billion