Toyota boss challenges California emissions plan, bans on new petrol car sales

Toyota president Akio Toyoda says the planned ban on pure petrol-powered vehicle sales in California in 2035 needs to be reconsidered in a broader move towards carbon neutral motoring.

The world’s biggest carmaker believes it will be difficult to achieve a planned ban on the sales of new, non-hybrid petrol and diesel cars in California by 2035 – and has renewed its calls for consumers to be offered a range of efficient vehicle types, not just electric cars.

Toyota has acknowledged the need to move to a carbon-neutral future but believes the California ban – which is now reported to be copied in New York state – is not workable with current technology and for many consumers.

“Realistically speaking, it seems rather difficult to really achieve that,” the president of the Toyota Motor Corporation, Akio Toyoda, told a briefing for reporters in Las Vegas, reported by Automotive News. 

“Everything is going to be up to the customers to decide.”

Mr Toyoda also said a planned national goal for 50 per cent of new vehicle sales in the USA by 2030 to be zero emissions would be “very difficult”.

Toyota led the drive towards petrol-electric hybrids – it has sold more than 20 million worldwide since 1997 including more than 300,000 in Australia – and is also working on hydrogen cars.

Mr Toyoda reiterated the transition to electric vehicles needed to be broader than a one-hit approach, cautioning that regulations “tend to narrow the options available for solutions toward carbon neutrality”.

“Playing to win means playing with all the cards in the deck – not just a select few. So that’s our strategy and we’re sticking to it,” he told dealers and employees at a presentation in the USA.

Although Toyota has been late to move towards battery-electric vehicles, it has a plan to launch 20 electric vehicles by 2030, with the BZ4X coming to Australia as its first in recent times (although US sales are currently suspended because of wheel problems)

“But, just like the fully-autonomous cars that we were all supposed to be driving by now, [battery-electric vehicles] are just going to take longer to become mainstream than the media would like us to believe,” Mr Toyoda said.

“Toyota is a department store of all sorts of powertrains. It’s not right for the department store to say, ‘This is the product you should buy’.”

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