Toyota Motor North America, Inc. (TMNA) CEO Ted Ogawa believes that EVs will only make up 30 percent of new vehicles in the US by 2030.
In an interview with Automotive News, Ogawa said that the Japanese automaker would rather go with customer demand, meaning “electrification” or hybrids in its various forms.
Currently, TMNA is building a $13.9 million battery power plant in North Carolina to be used in its EVs and hybrids sold in North America.
Since 2021, Toyota has invested about $17 billion into its US manufacturing operations to build mostly hybrids.
Despite the industry regulations demanding that electric vehicles should be more than half of each car company’s new vehicles by 2030, Ogawa seems to have no plans of complying with it.
“Our current plan is like 30 percent,” he said.
“We are respecting the regulation, but more important is customer demand.”
According to them, Toyota is one of the top-selling automakers in the US, but EVs only accounted for less than one percent of total sales last year.
The Japanese carmaker has been big on hybrids all along and only sells just one EV for each of its two US brands, the Toyota bZ4X and Lexus RZ450e crossovers.
Critics, however, note that Toyota is only downplaying the impact of EVs in the market and its potential in the near future. For them, the company is just worried about the threats of Chinese vehicles, such as BYD cars, entering the US market. The latter are more affordable and have already toppled electric vehicle giant, Tesla, in most markets, particularly in their own home turf in China.
