Hiroko Tabuchi
Despite Toyota?s image as the world?s greenest automaker, the company that brought us the Prius?totem of the environmentally conscious?has fallen behind in the race for the all-electric car.
Mitsubishi Motors started leasing its all-electric vehicle, the iMiEV, in June. Nissan Motor is set to release its electric car, the Leaf, next year. But Toyota does not plan to roll out an all-electric car until 2012. Instead, later this year, it plans to introduce a plug-in electric-gasoline hybrid, and only a few hundred initially.
?Why is Toyota waiting on electric cars?? asked Tadashi Tateuchi, a former race car designer turned electric-car evangelist.
Electric technology could help determine winners and losers in the auto industry of the future, but Toyota has been highly sceptical of electrical vehicles. ?The time is not here,? Masatami Takimoto, Toyota?s executive vice-president, said. Noting that electric cars ?face many challenges,? he said, ?To commercialise pure EVs, we need a battery that far exceeds the current technology.? If Toyota is right, its competitors will have spent billions on a technology that will be slow to take off.
But if electric cars win drivers over, Toyota?s rivals could take the lead.
Toyota would like to profit all it can from the current technology before shifting to a new one, analysts say, especially because the company is facing a second down year after a loss last year of about $4 billion.
Toyota executives rattle off reasons to be sceptical of electric cars: They do not travel far enough on a charge; their batteries are expensive and not reliable; the electrical infrastructure is not in place to recharge them. Executives also say that Toyota?s reputation for reliability could be tarnished if the company forged ahead with an unproven technology.
It remains unclear how soon there will be a mass market for expensive cars with limited range, Toyota says.
Even when electric cars are sold widely, the company says, they will be suitable only for short trips and form a decidedly niche market.
Toyota is instead building on its hybrid technology, bringing out a plug-in, gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle later this year that runs a short distance on batteries before the hybrid system kicks in.
But electric car enthusiasts say Toyota is being unnecessarily cautious, ignoring technological breakthroughs that would allow it to develop electric cars more quickly.