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.
