So Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda’s comments at the company’s year-end press conference deserve notice and no little amount of respect. He knows more about cars and their economic ecosystem than just about anyone else on the planet.
CarBuzz has mischaracterized Toyoda’s comments. It’s not “disdain for EVs” he’s expressing. It’s disdain for the failure to count the cost of what politicians are proposing. More EVs will demand more electricity.
Toyoda is getting at two things. One, EVs are not powered by magical unicorn emissions, they are powered by the means we use to generate electricity. In Japan, the United States, and everywhere else, that’s fossil fuels to the tune of a huge majority of our electric power generation (61% in the U.S., with wind and solar making up about 17%, while Japan relies more heavily on nuclear power than most due to its lack of indigenous oil). Imagine taking every car in Japan or the United States and powering it not by gasoline or diesel, but by electricity. This will require a dramatic expansion of the amount of electric power we currently generate. There is no getting around this fact. We would be displacing gasoline or diesel for another power source. We’re still pulling something out of the ground and burning it in some way. The main question is where is it being burned?
How will we generate power to meet the new level of demand? Some will claim we can do it by ramping up renewables — wind and solar — but that’s not realistic. Drive out through West Texas between Llano and San Angelo out to Midland-Odessa and you’ll see a curious sight: hundreds and hundreds of towering windmills. Those are just the ones you can see from the road. There are more of them farther from the beaten paths. That part of Texas generates more wind power than the entire state of California. Wind farms cover mile after mile after mile. But all those hundreds of windmills only generate about 15% of Texas’ electricity. Wind is not economically competitive yet, so it’s subsidized by the government. Neither wind nor solar are cheap or reliable enough to displace oil and especially natural gas in our grid. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. Oil and natural gas always burn.
The Wall Street Journal was in attendance and noted the CEO’s disdain for EVs boils down to his belief they’ll ruin businesses, require massive investments, and even emit more carbon dioxide than combustion-engined vehicles. “The current business model of the car industry is going to collapse,” he said. “The more EVs we build, the worse carbon dioxide gets… When politicians are out there saying, ‘Let’s get rid of all cars using gasoline,’ do they understand this?”
CarBuzz has mischaracterized Toyoda’s comments. It’s not “disdain for EVs” he’s expressing. It’s disdain for the failure to count the cost of what politicians are proposing. More EVs will demand more electricity.
Toyoda is getting at two things. One, EVs are not powered by magical unicorn emissions, they are powered by the means we use to generate electricity. In Japan, the United States, and everywhere else, that’s fossil fuels to the tune of a huge majority of our electric power generation (61% in the U.S., with wind and solar making up about 17%, while Japan relies more heavily on nuclear power than most due to its lack of indigenous oil). Imagine taking every car in Japan or the United States and powering it not by gasoline or diesel, but by electricity. This will require a dramatic expansion of the amount of electric power we currently generate. There is no getting around this fact. We would be displacing gasoline or diesel for another power source. We’re still pulling something out of the ground and burning it in some way. The main question is where is it being burned?
How will we generate power to meet the new level of demand? Some will claim we can do it by ramping up renewables — wind and solar — but that’s not realistic. Drive out through West Texas between Llano and San Angelo out to Midland-Odessa and you’ll see a curious sight: hundreds and hundreds of towering windmills. Those are just the ones you can see from the road. There are more of them farther from the beaten paths. That part of Texas generates more wind power than the entire state of California. Wind farms cover mile after mile after mile. But all those hundreds of windmills only generate about 15% of Texas’ electricity. Wind is not economically competitive yet, so it’s subsidized by the government. Neither wind nor solar are cheap or reliable enough to displace oil and especially natural gas in our grid. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. Oil and natural gas always burn.