electrek.co/2024/05/14/toyota-once-again-ranked-as-worst-automaker-on-climate-lobbying-globally/
Toyota once again ranked as worst automaker on climate lobbying globally
This is unfortunately correct. While Toyota slows overconsumption of vehicles and has popularized hybrid vehicles, their lobbying against China in their own business interest remains a problem that overshadows the good they’ve done.
Fighting the Chinese electric vehicle market is a longstanding battle. Automakers know the minute major Chinese brands were able to sell in the US that existing automakers in the market would lose billions overnight.
I’d be curious to learn more about what track causes the biggest environmental impact though, manufacturing one Prius and driving it 12k miles per year for 20 years, or manufactura 2 small electric vehicles and driving them the same distance yearly for 10 years at a time.
Most none biased papers (that take in the full lifecycle of petrol) on it I have read put a long range EV (that's a bigger foot print that a small Chinese ev) crossover in footprint with a Prius at around 30000km. That number will only improve as renewables generation becomes more dominant and the scale of production increases (reducing the indervidual production footprint of each ev) .
So about two years.
Makes sense. The small range Chinese EV’s would likely crush that number even more so. Likely meaning that manufacturing new EV’s for American households every 4-5 years would still be more so sustainable than driving a basic hybrid (and of course even more so a gas vehicle.)
Imo if Toyota can prove their solid state battery solution viable in the future that would still be a game changer. They are likely fighting for tariff’s to keep profits stacking as they wait for their innovation to come to market. It’s kind of the world against China, but ironically of course most of these major automakers are huge customers of Chinese factories.
China is almost 50% of the global market and the Chinese economic zone definitely is. We are lucky here in New Zealand we have a free trade agreement so we have seen some of the vehicles. However the new government is a reactionary one and is trying to slow them as best it can. They won't last.
Chinese made EVs including the Shanghai Tesla's are amazing the quality of production exceeds anything we see from elsewhere. Best seen in the Tesla's the difference between a California model 3 and a Shanghai one is night in day in build quality.