We Need To Talk About Toyota

With the exception of Nissan’s highly-popular Leaf, Japanese car manufacturers have been exceptionally slow and reticent to commit to producing battery electric vehicles, instead doubling-down on internal combustion engine vehicles, including hybrids.

This is despite the obvious role that internal combustion engine vehicles play in the Climate Crisis, and an increasing number of nations committing to ban ICEs from 2030 onwards.

Instead, it seems that many Japanese automotive manufacturers have sunk more time and money into promoting disinformation about battery electric vehicles than they have in researching and developing them.

Today we take an urgent look at the world’s largest automobile manufacturer, Toyota, and how they have responded to the Climate Crisis.

Hybrids Hoopla

In 2020, Toyota overtook Volkswagen as the single largest manufacturer of cars in the world, creating 9.5 million vehicles last year, despite its global sales falling by 11.3%. Every single one of the cars produced by Toyota – or its subsidiary brands, Lexus and Daihatsu – was either an internal combustion engine vehicle or, in very few cases, a hydrogen vehicle.

The Toyota group has committed to hybrid cars – which are still reliant on fossil fuels – in a way that few other manufacturers have, selling over 15 million hybrid vehicles since the Prius was first launched in 1997.

In May 2021, Toyota issued a forecast stating that it expects 70% of its sales to come from ‘electrified’ vehicles by 2030. See our article Electric Not Electrified for more detail on how car manufacturers are grouping hybrids with battery electric vehicles in order to appear more ecologically-minded than they really are.

In recent years, Toyota have doubled-down on their promotion of hybrids with their so-called ‘self-charging hybrids’. These vehicles, as the name suggests, are promoted on the basis that they can recharge their batteries without needing to be plugged in, with their TV adverts showing these cars not needing to stop while traditional ICEs and EVs do.

“Having the advantage of both electric and petrol power doesn’t mean you can run your hybrid without fuel… Even though a hybrid can operate in electric-only mode, it must have fuel in the tank – even if only a little. Trying to run the hybrid purely on the electric engine without having the fuel to power the conventional engine will result in damage.”

“Trying to run the hybrid purely on the electric engine without having the fuel to power the conventional engine will result in damage” - Toyota

This messaging was reiterated in 2020 due to the global pandemic restricting vehicle use, with Toyota issuing the following statement on social media:

“Vehicles are less likely to be in use during the COVID-19 period. To maintain batteries in good health, we recommend to use the vehicle for a minimum of 30 minutes every 15-20 days.”

As such, it is clear that Toyota’s ‘Self-Charging’ hybrids are inherently promoting the consumption of fossil fuels, despite more than 25% of global CO2 emissions coming from road vehicles – of which personal transport accounts for the greatest percentage.

Which is probably a good point to reiterate that a collaborative study by Transport & Environment and Greenpeace has found that carbon dioxide emissions from plug-in hybrid vehicles are up to two-and-a-half times greater than official tests and manufacturer marketing suggests.

In fact, Toyota’s own C-HR TV ad, which ran under the slogan of ‘Lead the Charge’, carried a disclaimer that their model “spent an average of 56% of its time in electric mode in test drives covering 416,000 miles at an average speed of 22mph”.

When did you last travel at an average of 35kph over a distance of 416,000 miles?

Overhyping hydrogen

Alongside hybrids, Toyota has heavily thrown its lot in with hydrogen vehicles while actively turning its back on electric vehicles, with its President, Akio Toyoda, erroneously stating last year that “the more EVs we build, the worse carbon dioxide gets.”

Even then, it would cost you around €72-€109 (£63 to £95) to fill up – compared to an average EV costing €4.70 to charge in public in Ireland, according to the SEAI.

To put this into context, you could buy a Tesla Model 3 for €48,990 with a range of 448km and still have change to buy a Nissan Leaf with a range of 270km, with €2,865 worth of spending money left over for the same price as a Mirai that you currently can’t fuel in Ireland.

“Ireland doesn’t possess a single hydrogen fuel station - the nearest one being in Sheffield, some 380km from Dublin, or 645km from Cork”

Yet, Toyota Ireland’s website is too busy telling consumers that the “Mirai goes beyond zero emissions – effectively cleaning the air as it moves” to inform them that you can’t currently charge one anywhere on the island of Ireland.

If the claim that the Mirai “cleans the air as it moves” strikes you as a little odd, again Toyota has form in this area of bending or stretching the truth.

Just this year, Toyota has launched a so-called ‘Clean Assist’ programme, which Autoblog describes as: "Toyota proceeds to generate or buy an equivalent amount of California-sourced Renewable Energy Certificates to match your 'regular energy' with 'renewable energy.'"

There is a significant problem with this, as carbon offsetting does not actually reduce emissions in any way, it just masks them. In fact, a 2017 study by the European Commission found that 85% of offsetting projects failed to reduce emissions, which is why the EU will stop allowing carbon offsets to be counted towards emissions reductions targets from 2021.

Find out more about the myths of carbon offsetting here.

Marketing or Misleading?

It is clear that Toyota is not going to stop promoting hybrid or hydrogen vehicles any time soon, despite the obvious benefits offered by battery electric vehicles and the role that ICEs (including hybrids) play in worsening the Climate Crisis.

It used reader opinion to claim it had the lowest CO2 emissions. Not facts, not evidence, not data. Opinion.

And, even then, the article acknowledged that Toyota may still breach its CO2 targets. Not to mention that most automotive manufacturers pool their emissions to circumvent CO2 emissions targets, or that Tesla – which only produces battery electric vehicles which have no CO2 emissions – is a mass manufacturer.

“Toyota used reader opinion to claim it had the lowest CO2 emissions. Not facts, not evidence, not data. Opinion”

When our Editor queried Toyota on their use of opinion when supporting purported ‘factual’ claims, he was sent an article from Toyota Ireland’s website which stated the following:

“New nationwide research into the trends and changes in Sustainability and Climate Action carried out by iReach, has revealed that Toyota is perceived as being a leading brand tackling climate change in Ireland. The nationally represented research of 1,000 Irish citizens highlights that the unprompted majority (10%) of the Irish public mentioned the Toyota brand first, ahead of any other brand in Ireland, motor or otherwise, for doing the most to tackle Climate Change.”

While the rest of Toyota’s press release about this dubious poll states their hybrids will offset a certain amount of emissions over their lifetime, it negates to inform readers that this is compared only to petrol and diesel cars, whereas they will produce vastly more emissions than any electric vehicle – which will not produce any, and which will offset emissions from their manufacturer after 30,000km of use.

Without context and truth we cannot make progress on tackling the Climate Crisis. Those brands who do not act responsibly or transparently in reporting and reducing their greenhouse gas emissions – CO2 and otherwise – are serving only to worsen the situation for their own financial profit.

We’ll leave our readers to draw their own conclusions about Toyota based on the evidence presented in this article.