Polestar’s head of sustainability is highly critical of Toyota’s stance
Toyota and Polestar are poles apart, especially if you look at the electrification strategies of one brand and the other.
Toyota has been one of the most reluctant of the major automotive manufacturers to take the step towards the exclusive development of electric cars and still maintains that the best option is to manufacture and develop hybrid vehicles.
On the other hand, we have Polestar, an automotive brand that is very much aligned with reducing emissions as much as possible and ensuring that the impact of the production of its electric cars is as close to zero as possible.
A few days ago, at a press conference, Polestar’s head of sustainability, Fredricka Klaren, criticised Toyota harshly after being asked about the brand. “It is not possible. We can’t go on using fossil fuels.
Toyota has only one electric vehicle on the market, the Toyota bZ4X, an electric car that has been marred from the start with serious problems and has led to its sales in the US in 2022 being derisory. Sales figures for the bZ4X in the US were just shy of 1,220 units sold.
However, Toyota continues to launch hybrid vehicles, such as its popular Toyota Prius, its flagship car that was recently introduced in its now fifth generation of the model and again leaving aside a 100% electric option.
Klaren also gave details of Polestar’s climate change strategy:
“From our point of view, our climate strategy is based on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). It is a top-down approach. We have said we must be climate neutral by 2040 as a company and we must halve emissions by 2030, and that’s not what we can do, that’s what climate scientists tell us we must do as companies.”
He also put the spotlight on companies that want to wait to provide solutions by 2040 or 2050, indicating that it will already be too late.
“We only have seven years left until we reach 1.5 degrees of global warming. That’s a given if we continue on the path we’re on. So, nothing after 2030, we are not interested.”
He finally hit back at Toyota’s strategy, indicating that it is a mistake to keep developing such technology that requires fossil fuels.
“To me, you’re still putting petrol in the car, so don’t focus on that technology at all. If you continue to focus and have that in your business plan, you’re not going to level up in the way you need to in terms of this new technology.”
What is clear is that Toyota is on a fine line where if it doesn’t act soon it could miss the new age automotive bandwagon and making up all that lost ground later will be much harder as the competition will already be ahead of it.
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