A guy calling himself “America’s EV Influencer” once responded to one of my posts, stating, “Toyota is doing well for now, riding the hybrid wave. But without making better and more BEVs SOON, the company will lose significant market share.” While “America’s EV Influencer” might one day be correct, his definition of “SOON” is clearly different from mine.
Mr. EV Influencer is one of the many electric vehicle evangelists who are confident that a swift transition to EV development is critical for the survival of legacy automakers. They believe that any car company not replacing its ICE portfolio with EVs as quickly as possible is doomed to irrelevance at best and destined for ruin eventually.
Interestingly, many of these EV evangelists once viewed Elon Musk as the poster child of the EV revolution. Given Tesla’s rapid rise to become the global EV sales leader, this perspective wasn’t unreasonable. Musk consistently framed Tesla’s mission as “accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” arguing that the faster the world moved to EVs, the better off we’d be in terms of health, climate, and energy security.
Today, however, Musk’s public focus for Tesla has shifted. It’s now less about leading the world’s EV transition and more about Tesla becoming an AI, robotics, and robotaxi company. As Tesla’s EV sales growth has stagnated, Musk has become less vocal about EVs being the best solution for climate change.
With Musk becoming less popular among EV evangelists, what are they doing now? Many continue to double down. They point to the growth of EV sales in China’s heavily subsidized auto sector as evidence that rapid EV adoption will soon occur in the U.S. and Europe. They highlight Chinese automakers like BYD, which have rapidly expanded EV sales not only in their home market, but also in new export regions. For the EV evangelists, this proves that the world’s transition to EVs is on-track, inevitable, and accelerating. They remain steadfast in their belief that any legacy automaker failing to aggressively transition its vehicle portfolio to EVs is doomed to rapid failure.
In my recent TaaSMaster post, “Tesla, China, and EV Hype: Has Everyone Forgotten Toyota?” I argued that Toyota is the master of long-term strategic execution. As the world’s largest automaker by sales volume, Toyota doesn’t chase hype cycles. The company isn’t ignoring EV growth. It’s embracing a diversified approach to vehicle powertrain technologies. Avoiding FOMO has served Toyota well in the past, and this strategy is likely to continue benefiting the company in the future.
Yet, Toyota’s kaizen approach to product development is entirely at odds with the EV evangelists’ vision. It seems as though they would rather see Toyota conform to their moral automotive worldview and fail than having the company succeed with its proven, long-term, technology-agnostic strategy.