Toyota will finally launch its first all-electric vehicles for the mass market in the United States later this year, the world’s leading automaker announced on Wednesday, although it did not offer further details on vehicle type or price.
Toyota said earlier that it is developing an electric SUV on a new flexible platform that can power multiple EVs, following in the footsteps of Volkswagen, General Motors and others. The two new EVs will be announced alongside an unspecified Toyota hybrid.
“We remain the electrification leader that started with our pioneering launch of the Prius almost 25 years ago,” said Bob Carter, executive vice president of sales for Toyota North America, in a statement. “Toyota’s new electrified product offerings will give customers a variety of powertrain options that best meet their needs.”
Toyota helped create and popularize hybrid vehicles, which use electric motors to reduce emissions and increase fuel economy. But unlike most other major automakers, it has resisted investing in all-electric vehicles outside of China. He only sold a fully electric vehicle in the USA: the Rav4 EV. It existed in a few different ways, although Toyota only made and sold a few thousand of them.
In its announcement, Toyota praised the success of its hybrid models, but once again relied on a fragile argument as to why it is resistant to all-electric vehicles. The company says it has done an internal survey that found that the total greenhouse gas emissions from all-electric and hybrid vehicles are “almost the same … taking into account the pollutants created by the production of electricity for the average power grid. USA used to charge batteries “.
It is a debatable idea taken at face value, but this argument crucially ignores that fully electric vehicles only become cleaner as renewable energy makes up a larger part of the network.
Still, it is a popular line of thought at Toyota; the company’s billionaire CEO Akio Toyoda said in December that he believes electric vehicles are exaggerated in part because of emissions from power plants – a statement that must have been music to the ears of the oil industry, since it is one of your favorite pieces of disinformation.