Toyota’s chairman and former CEO, Akio Toyoda, has long been a skeptic of the electric vehicle hype train—it was a big reason he stepped down from the top job at the Japanese carmaker earlier this year. Now, he can finally say, “I told you so.” With Elon Musk’s Tesla reporting disastrous third-quarter earnings last week, investors are realizing that EVs are no silver bullet for profit. “People are finally seeing reality,” Toyoda said on Wednesday.
Toyoda has long denied that electric vehicles are the only way for the automotive industry to achieve carbon neutrality, saying, “There are many ways to climb the mountain.” Other major automakers are also slowing their EV rollouts. Lucid has slowed production by 30% while GM has delayed the introduction of the Chevy Silverado EV by a whole year.
President Joe Biden has spent much of his time in office aggressively betting on electric vehicles as part of his ambitious agenda to reduce U.S. carbon emissions and fight climate change. But the EV market is wobbling as high interest rates dampen customer demand for electric and other vehicles. That’s “preventing a lot of people from even getting into the market,” Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmunds, told Fortune.
Though EV sales are still growing, the pace has slowed. In the first half of 2023, EV sales rose 49% from one year before, a slower rate than the 63% increase last year, the Wall Street Journal reported.
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