When it comes to hybrids, Toyota is saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if it's a winning formula, don't alter it — double down.
That's why Toyota Motor Corp. on Monday announced (in a press conference and release titled: "TMC Announces Status of Its Environmental Technology Development, Future Plans") a drastic scaling back, close to an abandonment, of its all-electric vehicles — the iQ and eQ EV models — in favor of a dramatic ramping up of its plans for developing and producing new hybrids.
"Toyota’s engineers have been involved in Electric Vehicle (EV) research and development for over 40 years, since 1971," Toyota's press site notes. "Developed in parallel with the company’s pioneering full Hybrid (HV), Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV) and Fuel Cell (FCV) vehicles, the EV represents Toyota’s long-term vision for short range sustainable mobility."
It turns out that long-term vision was more short-term than anticipated when it comes to EVs.
The Japanese automaker established, defined and has dominated the market for hybrids around the world with its Prius family, and company executives today said that they expect to have a total of 21 gas-electric hybrids in the company lineup by 2015.
Of that number, a whopping 14 hybrids will be all-new. Meanwhile, Toyota's EV plans now call for only the launch of an all-electric version of the RAV4 model in the U.S. and a handful of the new eQ, the pure-electric variant of the iQ minicar that is sold under the Scion brand in the U.S.
That's a dramatic call on one of the central energy and technology questions being faced by the global auto industry. Toyota already had been much more conservative in its expectations and plans for all-electric vehicles than just about every other major automaker, including General Motors, Ford and Nissan.
But Vice Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada made things crystal clear on Monday that the company had grown even more bearish about all-electric vehicles in the wake of recent developments, including consumers' obvious ambivalence about the technology — and the unabated success of the Prius in the wake of Toyota's introduction of a handful of new versions recently.
"There are many difficulties" with Toyota's previous plans to sell several thousand a year of eQ, Uchiyamada said. "The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society's needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge."
Toyota even remains disappointed in consumer acceptance of plug-in hybrids like its own Plug-In Prius and the original, GM's Chevrolet Volt. "We believe that there is social demand for the plug-in hybrid, but our efforts to let the customers know what it is have not been enough," Uchiyamada said.
So, more of the Prius and other "conventional" hybrids it is, for Toyota. In fact, Toyota just launched a U.S. marketing campaign for its four-vehicle "family" of Prius vehicles, showing them traversing a Candyland-like landscape and emphasizing that there's a right Prius for everyone. And, by implication, a right EV for just about no one.
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