Toyota's Electric Vehicle Program Report Accelerates

Toyota is a company that started very early on the hybrid gasoline – electric hybrid boom, gained a tremendous amount of money and then continued to repeat and improve this idea.

As a result, its hybrid vehicles are among the best in the world, but as the rest of the industry and the public interest both go in the direction of total electrification, Toyota must catch up.

That is why Toyota has decided to speed up its electrification schedule, according to a report released Friday by Reuters. In fact, it plans to derive half of its electric vehicle sales by 2025. This would be a daunting challenge for any company, but Toyota has vast resources, talented engineers and unwavering commitment. So we think that can happen.

Toyota's big hurdle on the road to electrification will come when it will try to find the sources of battery stacks needed to achieve its goals, but it already relies on Chinese cell producers to meet its needs.

"We see ourselves as a manufacturer of electric vehicle batteries, dating back to the time we developed the battery for the Prius"Toyota's executive vice president, Shigeki Terashi, said at a Reuters information meeting." But there may be a gap between the amount of batteries we can produce and the amount of batteries we may need. "

Couple that with Toyota Battery Technology Research, both by improving lithium-ion chemistry to make it less greedy for rare minerals and by working to bring battery technology in the solid state at the market, and things could become very exciting.

All these discussions about electric vehicles should not make you think that Toyota is abandoning its commitment to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Toyota executives have repeatedly stated their belief that fuel cell technology is the future of zero emission vehicles and will continue to develop it.

Hopefully the future FCV will be a little more beautiful than the Mirai.