The breakfast, held last fall at Toyota’s annual dealer meeting in Las Vegas, was an exclusive, invite-only event where attendees were told to cover their cellphone cameras with red stickers.
Stephen Ciccone, Toyota’s chief lobbyist, spoke. He said the industry is facing an existential crisis – not due to the economy or fuel prices, but because of upper exhaust pipe pollution limits proposed in the United States. He said the rules were “bad for the country, bad for consumers and bad for the auto industry,” in line with a memo he later distributed to Toyota dealers and was reviewed by The New York Times.
“For over two years, Toyota and our dealer partners have been fighting alone against unrealistic electric vehicle mandates,” he wrote, using an acronym for battery-electric vehicles. “We have received many signals from environmental activists, the media and some politicians. But we didn’t give up – and we won’t give in.”
On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized tailpipe emissions rules that require automakers to satisfy strict new average emissions limits. These policies are amongst the most significant in U.S. history to combat climate change.
However, the rules relaxed major elements of the earlier, stricter proposal. In particular, the final rules favored hybrid cars, which run on each gasoline and electricity, giving a greater role to a market where Toyota dominates.
Toyota appeared to have won.
Toyota, once a pacesetter in clean cars, has cemented its role as a warning voice against electrifying the auto industry too quickly, using its lobbying and public relations clout to oppose rapid changes that experts say are key to fighting climate change.
It’s a major change for the automaker that pioneered hybrid technology in the late Nineteen Nineties by giving the world the Prius, a high-mileage vehicle that won favor amongst early adopters of greener cars.
But lately, Toyota has pivoted to a continued role in hybrid and gasoline cars, in addition to vehicles powered by hydrogen moderately than batteries, which has apparently left Toyota in a difficult position as electric automotive sales began to grow rapidly.
In a press release Friday, Toyota said it has long maintained that “the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible and as quickly as possible is to provide consumers with a wide range of choices that meet their needs.”
In 2019, Toyota sided with President Donald J. Trump against California’s efforts to impose stricter automotive emissions regulations. He also opposes policies around the world forcing automakers to change to selling electric vehicles.
Toyota also stood out from other automakers by strongly opposing tailpipe regulations proposed last yr by the Biden administration that require automakers to satisfy strict new limits on average emissions across their product lines. Ford, for instance, tried to thrust back some compliance dates regardless that it largely agreed with the overall numbers.
Toyota completely objected. The regulations were “arbitrary and capricious,” relied on “error-filled data sets” and would impose “significant costs” on gasoline vehicles, the automaker said in comments on the proposed regulations. Battery supply chains, vehicle charging infrastructure and automotive buyers weren’t ready for electric vehicles, the company said.
In January, – said Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda he believed that electric vehicles would achieve at best a 30 percent market share, with the remainder of the market taken by hybrids, hydrogen fuel cell cars and gasoline-burning vehicles.
“When we think of Toyota, people think it’s technologically great and green — and they deserve it,” said Margo T. Oge, former director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Transportation Air Quality, who has advised each automakers and groups coping with environmental protection in the field of ecologically clean cars policy. But recently, she said, Toyota has been “using all kinds of delaying strategies.”
Toyota said it has continually urged the EPA to offer more flexibility to satisfy the regulations. She also said her argument prevailed, noting that several firms have recently announced plans to supply more hybrid cars than electric ones. “It appears that the industry has moved closer to the position that Toyota has consistently maintained,” he said.
She also called the EPA’s final rules “aggressive” and said there are still major challenges in meeting them.
In spreading its message, Toyota leveraged dealer power each through Mr. Ciccone’s contact with Toyota dealers and in other ways. For example, the company’s dealers played a job in gaining support for a separate letter-writing campaign aimed toward urging the Biden administration to be cautious about electric vehicles, in line with two individuals with knowledge of the matter. They say Toyota dealers in at the least two states distributed the letter at dealer meetings.
These efforts culminated in a January letter to President Biden from nearly 4,000 auto dealers in 50 states complaining about weak electric vehicle sales and urging the administration to “slam on the brakes” on its push for more battery-powered vehicles.
However, the letter got here under scrutiny after some dealers who appeared in it claimed they never signed. Among them was Duncan Roberts, majority owner of Swedish automaker Polestar’s dealership in Portland. “It’s embarrassing. I did not agree to this,” he said in an interview.
Toyota said the list was “created through dealer-to-dealer contacts” and that it did not believe Toyota dealers played any undue role.
Sales of electric vehicles have declined in recent months, but are still growing much faster than sales of vehicles that burn fossil fuels. Nevertheless, the traders’ letter provided ammunition for other enemies with more stringent pollution standards.
The American producers of petrochemical fuelswhich represents the nation’s largest gasoline producers, called on Congress for support Republican-sponsored bill citing the letter, it would limit the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars. During the Trump administration, the group also led a secret campaign to change clean car regulations.
Toyota said it would invest more than $17 billion to electrify its fleet, which includes investments in both hybrid and electric vehicles, and has launched one electric car model in the United States. However, Toyota dominates the hybrid segment with about 40% of the market share in the United States, giving it an incentive to keep hybrid vehicles mainstream, analysts say. He invested heavily in technology; Initially, Toyota was losing money on its Prius for a decade before it started doing this in 2001 he made money on hybrids.
Hybrids are currently selling well because some buyers are hesitant to buy fully battery-powered cars for fear of “range anxiety” – that they will run out of power or be unable to find convenient places to charge.
The revised EPA rules announced earlier this week “work for automakers that invest heavily in hybrid vehicles,” said Mark Schirmer, director of industry analysis at research firm Cox Automotive. “And Toyota is certainly a leader on this front.”
Toyota was also trying to do business supplying other car manufacturers with hybrid technologyoffering some of its patents for free, hoping that competitors will turn to Toyota for its expertise and parts sources.
Toyota’s focus on producing hybrid cars rather than fully battery-powered cars is also better for the environment, the company argues.
Mr. Ciccone, the Toyota lobbyist, outlined this reasoning in his memo to dealers: The amount of rare minerals needed to produce one electric vehicle only takes one gasoline vehicle off the road. But the same amount could be used to obtain six plug-in hybrids that require a socket or 90 hybrid cars that do not require a power connection, he added. In his opinion, a serious problem is China’s domination in the battery supply chain.
“It is obvious” to favor hybrid vehicles over electric vehicles, Ciccone said in his letter.
Some experts dispute these numbers. Rachel Muncrief, acting executive director of the International Council on Clean Transportation, a research organization, said Toyota assumed the mineral supply crisis it did not materialize due to improved battery technology and other changes.
Electric vehicles emit significantly less greenhouse gases and other contaminants, as shown by tests, taking into account the production process and their use throughout their service life. “There is no competition,” she said.
Gil Tal, director of the Center for Electric Vehicle Research at the University of California Davis Institute for Transportation Studies, said that while hybrids are “very effective at lowering greenhouse gas emissions by a small amount, they usually are not very effective at getting us to zero emissions in the long term.”
Toyota’s math has gained supporters. GreenerCars, which recently assessed greenhouse gas emissions from 1,200 cars on sale this year, gave it the highest rating for the Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid, which means it can be charged from a wall socket, but can also be powered by a petrol engine. However, experts point out that the cleanliness of a plug-in hybrid can vary significantly depending on how often it is driven in a gasoline car rather than an electric car.
Some changes to the EPA’s car emissions regulations appear to be based on new data suggesting that plug-in hybrids are now more battery-powered than in the past, which will make them cleaner. Toyota said it would share such data with the administration, and on Friday the EPA said Toyota’s comments were reviewed and taken into account in setting the regulations.
Dr. Tal of the University of California, Davis, said it was clear that car companies were in a difficult situation. “They are taking on the biggest risk in switching to electric vehicles,” he said. “So I understand their opposition and I understand why they are upset about it.”
Coral Davenport reported from Washington.
