[garyrichardson]

I had a conspiracy theory level explanation for why Toyota is dragging their feet on EVs -- they need to have the inherit unreliability of ICE cars in order to make selling highly reliable Toyotas viable. Stay with me on this one.

Toyota vehicles are already highly reliable. If you take Toyota level quality and apply it to already simplified EV cars the average lifespan of their cars would go from 15 years to 30 years (guestimates) since there's 1/100th of the moving parts (or less?) in an EV. You'd sell fewer cars and your parts division would sell fewer replacement parts. You can't be profitable on wiper fluid and tires.

Toyota execs saw the end of their business if they ever adopted EVs so they need to ensure future vehicles were powered by explosions -- you still gotta have an entire ICE powertrain in a hybrid. They knew hydrogen was a dead end, but by the time everyone else figured it out it would be 30 years later.

[lastyearman]

I have the same theory. Only competive advantage Toyota has right now is thin margins through massive scale (and thus relatively cheap prices) and reliability. First point is not yet possible with EVs and reliability may not be as big of an issue anymore with EVs.

More complicated the drivetrain the better for Toyota since not many can make it reliably at scale. EVs seem to be fairly easy to make given how many startups are popping up.

[user3939382]

My unqualified opinion is you’re trading one set of problems for another. With combustion you have a lot of parts under stress for a long time. With EV you’re dealing with battery science and seemingly intractable supply chain problems.

[r00fus]

This is the real game. Toyota see EVs as the demise of their business model. It may well come to pass since they're so late to the game and too big to shift.