Toyota's electrification strategy is questioned: it needs to provide customers with more choices

According to foreign media reports, on June 15, Toyota Motor said it needs to provide a variety of model options to suit different environments and customers.However, investors believe that Toyota is slow to developin the field of pureelectric vehicles .

At Toyota's annual shareholder meeting, the company's executives responded to a variety of questions, including itselectrificationstrategy, chief executive officer (CEO) succession plans and an ongoing chip shortage.

Toyota, which was praised by environmentalists for popularizing the Prius hybrid more than 20 years ago, has come under fire from some investors for not phasing out gasoline-powered cars and lobbying on climate policy.“Our goal is carbon neutrality,” Masahiko Maeda, Toyota’s chief technology officer, said at the meeting in response to a question from the AkademikerPension, a Danish pension fund that also asked Toyota not to engage in lobbying that undermines the transition to pure electric vehicles.However, Maeda said, "customers need a variety of options" to promote electric vehicles, including hybrids.He also pointed out that the company should offer customers a wide range of model options and should not narrow it down.

Toyota believes that hybrid vehicles still make sense in markets where the infrastructure is not ready to support a rapid transition to pure electric vehicles, and Toyota is also exploring the viability of green fuels, including hydrogen, for combustion engine vehicles.

Toyota pledged last year to spend 8 trillion yen ($60 billion) on electrification by 2030, half of which will be used to develop pure electric vehicles.However, the company expects annual sales of its electric vehicles to be just 3.5 million units by 2030, about a third of its current total.While Toyota launched its first domestically produced all-electric vehicle (lease-only) last month, gasoline-electric hybrids are still far more popular than all-electric vehicles in Japan.

Image credit: Toyota

Asked about CEO succession plans, Toyota Chief Executive Akio Toyoda, who has led the company for 13 years, said he was "thinking about the timing of retirement and successor.""I will choose someone who understands the company's philosophy as my successor," he added.Akio Toyoda tried to overhaul Toyota's corporate culture, spending more time with younger executives and cutting some senior roles.In 2020, he appointed company veterans Maeda and Kenta Kon, then 51, to top positions.

However, there is no indication within Toyota that Akio Toyoda plans to retire.Akio Toyoda, 66, the grandson of Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda, led the company through a dark period when Toyota recalled millions of vehicles several times, sales plummeted, and Lost billions of dollars.

Toyota will sell 10.5 million vehicles in 2021, far outpacing rival Volkswagen Group.But the company has cut production several times this year due to the global chip crisis.Kazunari Kumakura, Toyota's head of procurement, said on the same day that although the chip shortage showed signs of improvement, it was expected to continue.