It is starting to look like Mr. Toyoda and company had a better grasp of the electric vehicle market than fellow legacy marques Ford and General Motors.
An important story from former Alphavillain David Keohane, no the FT's man in Japan, February 6:
World’s biggest automaker’s bet on technology justified by a nearly 50% increase in hybrid-electric car sales in latest quarter
Rising sales of hybrid cars helped Toyota beat estimates in the third quarter as the world’s largest automaker raised full-year profit forecasts and provided further vindication of its bet on the technology.
The Japanese company increased its operating profit forecast for the year to March to ¥4.9tn ($34bn) from ¥4.5tn and said that profit in its fiscal third quarter hit ¥1.7tn, an increase from ¥957bn a year earlier. The results beat analyst expectations, according to LSEG data, and sent its shares up 4.8 per cent by the close in Tokyo.
The carmaker said the increase was mostly owing “to marketing efforts as sales volume increased in all regions”, especially for higher margin and hybrid electric vehicles, while the weak yen provided an additional benefit.
“In all regions, the share of hybrid sales has gone up, so as a realistic solution hybrids are still favoured by our customers,” Toyota’s chief financial officer Yoichi Miyazaki told journalists.
“Last year, hybrid vehicles sold 3.4mn to 3.5mn units. In 2022, I think it stood at 2.6mn or so. So within the year, there has been an increase of slightly less than 1mn in demand for hybrids globally. And I think demand is likely to reach 5mn units by around 2025,” he said....
....MUCH MORE
Of course the plug-in only EV makers don't have the option of filling this market so they are locked into driving down the price of their offerings until they reach a point the value proposition for the consumer becomes irresistible.
It's going to be brutal and that is the reason Elon Musk said there are only going to be ten surviving battery-electric vehicle manufacturers, and nine of those are going to be Chinese.
