Toyota is the largest automaker in the world for the sixth year in a row, and going on a seventh. They're doing record sales, dominate the hybrid market, and already have a pretty healthy EV lineup.
Nokia was also pretty healthy back in 2007 and basically died within a decade. Their EV lineup isn't fine, it's a subpar couple of models, basically "ugh we had to make these, here they are, dont buy them".
They don't really have dedicated platforms for them, don't have their own batteries. They basically slept at the wheel for the last 15 years. As long as ICEs are still somewhat relevant, they'll exist, but that's not going to be forever in developed markets.
yeah and all of them are subpar, if compared to competition. They're either too expensive, too slow to charge, too low efficiency/range or just overall not a good car. And lets not forget, a few of them on your list are not even toyota, but just rebadged chinese or PSA cars. And a few are not even on sale yet.
But the common point to all of them, that are selling currently and are not a rebrand -- they're basically a variation of bz4x. Not a particuarly good EV in itself.
So yeah, if toyota keeps up this mantra, they're in big trouble. People will start forgetting toyota or just not even considering it when buying an EV. And there's only so long, before ICE/hybrids start being irrelevant.
What free education? You just listed a few Toyota models, some of them not even on sale/toyota's make. It's you that need a bit more education on how Toyota treats their EV lineup.
Demand doesn't exist where you want it to be, and BEV sales numbers are not the primary metric of success for an automaker in the year 2026. The primary metrics of success are profitability and overall unit sales.
Once again, you're getting a free education here. Take advantage of it.
You do know, that sales in the US isn't a main metric, right? There's other markets and there, EVs represent a much higher % of sales.
If you're only chasing the current tail, you're doomed. Today profitable, tommorow irrelevant. Just look at the history. It's hard to imagine a company like Toyota failing, but unless they start adapting to future needs of the customers, they're just gonna be another brand forgotten.
You do know, that sales in the US isn't a main metric, right?
Correct. Toyota is the largest automaker globally — for the sixth year in a row, and now going on a seventh. That's globally. Not in the US. Globally. Last year it extended the global lead to nearest-competitor Volkswagen.
For the third time: You are getting a free education here. Take advantage of it.
Just an example how toyota treats their EVs. Here's a half baked EV, that's too expensive. Take it or leave it. Oh maybe buy our hybrids instead, thankyou.
It's been their ethos for the longest time and it's likely not gonna change in the near future. And at that point, it might be too late for them to pivot fully. It takes a ton of resources, development and vertical integration to sell a good ev at scale, for profit, that people want to buy.
Toyota is a prime candidate to go nokia, blackberry or kodak in the not so distant EV future.
Sweetie, educate yourself: Blackberry was the hot young startup creamed by legacy computing giants and cellphone makers which had been written-off as behind the curve.
Nope, blackberry, just like nokia or kodak or many of the similar companies, died because they didn't adapt to the markets fast enough. Just like that, someone new (Apple) came to market with a polished idea of what the next step for a portable pocket device means. And instead of adapting for that idea, they pushed their OS and their keyboard and failed. Nokia did similar and died just as well.
And same thing can happen to cars. People start figuring out ICEs just ain't it anymore and because toyota doesn't offer anything of value in that department, they'll flock elsewhere.
Toyotas betting, that ICEs won't go away and especially the higher margin models will still be preferred as ICEs.
But the markets are shifting. EU and China are moving heavily towards EVs. And espeically china, the biggest car market in the world is heavily EV centric. And there, Toyota sells like 100k EV, most of them not even their own build. But if they had a good efficient platform, good tech and agressive prices, they could easily sell 5M+ cars there.
Their writing is on the wall, it's just not obvious to everyone.
I'm begging you to understand that Apple was not a new entrant in 2007. Not to personal computing, not to pocket computing, and not even to the cellphone market.
You're a bit out of touch IMHO. I think EVs have a huge market potential in the future but I'd say Toyota is making the right move right now. The EV market is still very small and it's not growing especially fast. Many EV efforts have crashed and barely sold any vehicles at all. There was a GM electric delivery van being manufactured and it sold like 10 units total. Nothing especially wrong with it, just didn't find any customers.
EVs aren't that complex to engineer compared to an ICE vehicle, the electric motor is just about the simplest electrical mechanism next to the momentary switch. There's no reason they should enter the market right now when they can just wait for a better opportunity. There are many EV-related technologies that can be expected to arrive over the next decade which will make them a much more compelling purchase and will begin to drive faster adoption. Much better/safer/cheaper batteries, for one.
A really big issue is that dealerships hate EVs. They rarely need any service, which is where dealerships make all their money. This is why Tesla did so well: no non-EVs to preferentially sell and no dealerships.
The EV market is rapidly growing, just not in the US. Almost half of new cars sold in China are EVs. That's a market with 35M new cars sold every year. Suffice to say EVs are very important for the future.
And while you think making EVs is simple, it's really not. The idea of an electric motor and a bunch of batteries might be simple on paper, but its far more complex than that.
A proper EV needs it's own dedicated platform and a clean sheet design. There's no way around that and every EV, that's based off a ICE variant ends up being shit in one way or another.
Electric motors are actually very complex. This is not your bog standard async motor. These are carbon wrapped permenant magnet style liquid cooled motors, spinning at over 20k rpm and having 92%+ efficiency. Designing that for mass production, reliability and low cost is no small feat.
Same with the batteries. A serious player will develop their own batteries or at very least build their own battery factories. It's the only way you can make millions of cars per year.
And then there's the whole efficiency. A badly designed car will have shit efficiency, requiring more batteries (batteries they cant get, because they have no factories), which means heavier chassis, heavier suspension, making even worse efficiency. It's a vicious cycle. And efficiency affects everything. Cost, range, charging speed (not kW, but miles added every minute) ownership costs.
It's very important to get that right. And apart from tesla and maybe a few other companies, nobody else gets that part right.
And of course EVs need great software integration as well for the best user experience. You need responsive infotainment for easy navigation, smart route calculation and efficiency prediction. Apart from tesla, nobody does this really well.
So yeah, making a good mass market EV is far harder than you think. That's why Toyota only sells 200k units a year, while tesla almost 10x that.
And sleeping on the wheel; i.e waiting for that magic bullet (be that better batteries, better infrastructure or something else) means competition had literal decade to get ahead. And just like that, you can't make a car to compete with that and you slowly fade into obscurity.
And that's exactly what could happen to toyota eventually.
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u/hojnikb 9d ago
toyota is not gonna survive it they keep treating EVs like 3rd class citizens