Toyota, the world's largest car company, has changed its head.

  On January 26, Japan's Toyota Motor Corporation announced a personnel adjustment. From April 1, the current Lexus president Tsuneji Sato will serve as Toyota's president and CEO.

The current president and CEO Akio Toyoda, who has been at the helm of Toyota for 13 years, will step down and assume the role of chairman.

  As the grandson of Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda, 66-year-old Akio Toyoda has always been doing one thing to promote the long-term development of Toyota.

In 2009, Akio Toyoda became the president of Toyota. At that time, Toyota suffered its first loss in history under the subprime mortgage crisis. ", the Great Earthquake in Japan, and the new crown epidemic. In an article published on the Toyota Times news website, Akio Toyoda called these 13 years "days of hard survival day after day."

  According to the Nikkei News, from 2009 when Akio Toyoda took power to 2022, Toyota Motor's global sales increased by about 30%, reaching about 10 million vehicles, and continued to occupy the throne of the world's largest car company by sales.

At present, its total market value exceeds 30 trillion yen, which is more than twice that of when Akio Toyoda became president.

  However, Toyota is being left behind by competitors as global automakers rush to catch up with the electrification wave.

According to the "Wall Street Journal", as of November 2022, electric vehicles will account for less than 1% of Toyota and Lexus' global retail sales.

  "I am an older generation, and I also feel the limitations of being a 'car maker'. I think it is necessary to retire in the new era." Akio Toyoda said at a press conference.

Akio Toyoda, who voted for Tesla, has become the "mortal enemy of electric vehicles"?

  Toyota Motor's slowness in electrification transformation is obvious to all. Its insistence on hybrid vehicles has made it slow in the electrification process, and Akio Toyoda himself has repeatedly made shocking remarks and made bombardment of electric vehicles.

  Toyota's lag is particularly evident in the Chinese market.

In 2022, Toyota Motor's new car sales in the Chinese market will be about 1.9406 million, a year-on-year decrease of 0.2%. This is the first time Toyota Motor's sales in the Chinese market have declined in 10 years.

Toyota's high-end brand Lexus has also experienced a decline in sales. In 2022, Lexus' cumulative sales in China will reach 183,900 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 18.6%.

  In China, a big country of new energy vehicles, a negative attitude towards electric vehicles is tantamount to giving up market share voluntarily.

In 2022, retail sales of passenger vehicles in China will increase by 1.9% year-on-year, while new energy passenger vehicles will achieve a year-on-year growth rate of 96.3% in the same period.

Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the Passenger Passenger Association, once pointed out that the market share of fuel vehicles is shrinking sharply, while the new energy vehicles of Japanese car companies are still at a disadvantage, and some of their sales are shunted by self-owned brand new energy vehicles, resulting in a decline in market share.

  When Akio Toyoda was at the helm, his negative remarks on electric vehicles also caused him to be labeled as the "mortal enemy of electric vehicles" by some netizens.

  At the end of 2020, Akio Toyoda bluntly stated at the year-end press conference of the Japan Industry Association that electric vehicles have been overhyped and are not truly environmentally friendly vehicles.

When the news spread to China, He Xiaopeng, CEO of Xiaopeng Motors, forwarded the report on Weibo, and attached a story about the sad exit of Nokia mobile phones, insinuating that Toyota is missing the opportunity.

  In December 2022, Akio Toyoda stated again during his business trip to Thailand, "The participants in the auto industry are basically the silent majority. Is it really okay to go all-in on electric vehicles? But they feel that this is the general trend, so they can't speak loudly." Speak out." As soon as the news came out, there was another uproar.

  However, what is interesting is that, as a “pioneer” of anti-electric vehicles in the automotive industry, Akio Toyoda invested in Tesla more than ten years ago, and Tesla was just a little-known startup company at that time.

  According to a BBC report in May 2010, Toyota invested US$50 million in Tesla Motors, and the two companies announced a partnership to produce electric vehicles. The deal allowed the Japanese giant to acquire about 2.5% of Tesla's shares.

At this time, Akio Toyoda had just taken over the company for a year.

Not only that, but Toyota also facilitated the low-price sale of its U.S. joint venture NUMMI factory, which is now Tesla's Fremont factory.

  However, in 2016, Toyota sold all Tesla stocks. Some people believe that the young Akio Toyoda failed to withstand the pressure of Toyota's internal "retainers" and turned to a conservative route.

  Of course, Akio Toyoda did not show mercy to Tesla in the end.

  Ten years later, on June 10, 2020, Tesla's market value exceeded US$190 billion, surpassing Toyota in one fell swoop to become the world's most valuable car company.

On Toyota’s earnings call a few days later, Toyoda said, “Tesla doesn’t make real things, consumers are just buying recipes. Toyota has kitchens and chefs, and we can make real food. "

  Toyoda believes: "Tesla has seriously overvalued itself and has not matured enough to influence global automotive trends, especially in the field of electric vehicle technology."

Betting on Hybrid and Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles

  To despise Akio Toyoda just because of his fierce rhetoric about electric vehicles is actually somewhat one-sided.

Many people in the industry believe that Akio Toyoda is buying more time for Toyota's smooth transition on the technical route.

  For a long time, Toyota Motor has been deeply cultivating hybrid electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Akio Toyoda has also repeatedly expressed his views that "pure electric vehicles are just a transition to hydrogen energy" and "there will only be two driving forms of hybrid and hydrogen energy in the future".

  It is worth noting that Toyota's gasoline-electric hybrid technology and the common plug-in hybrid technology in the Chinese market are two different technical routes. The gasoline-electric hybrid technology cannot be charged externally, and the power comes from fuel. Energy and braking energy are recovered and stored. Therefore, gasoline-electric hybrid technology is not classified as new energy vehicle technology.

  Regarding Toyota's hybrid technology, there has been a saying in the automotive industry that "there are two hybrids in the world, one is Toyota and the other is others".

As early as the 1990s, Toyota chose hybrid technology as the core technology for research and promotion. In 1997, Toyota Prius was launched. This is the world's first mass-produced gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle. Since then, hybrid Become a brand new branch of automotive products.

  However, such a technical pattern is being broken. As policies, markets, and development trends continue to push back, car companies represented by BYD have begun to shake Toyota's accumulated advantages over the years with hybrid technology that is closer to pure electric drive.

  On the one hand, it is the insistence on the existing gasoline-electric hybrid technology. On the other hand, the firm belief in the prospect of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle technology is also constraining Toyota.

  As the name implies, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles use hydrogen as the power source. Unlike petroleum, hydrogen is highly available in nature and can be produced through electrolysis of water. At the same time, the core components of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the stack and hydrogen cylinders The most common, only a small amount of precious metal platinum is used in the manufacturing process, which greatly reduces the dependence on resources compared with electric vehicles that use a large amount of rare metals such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel.

  For Japan, an island country, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that do not rely on resource imports are undoubtedly more beneficial. Therefore, Toyota's technical route has also been respected by the Japanese government.

However, since the radiation leakage accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, the Japanese government has insisted on reducing its dependence on nuclear power as much as possible, which has poured cold water on the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry, which has a huge demand for electricity.

It is not until 2022 that the Japanese government abandons this position and instead seeks to "maximize" the use of nuclear power.

  As far as the global market is concerned, data released by the market research organization SNE Research shows that from January to October last year, the total global sales of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles were only 16,100, an increase of 8.8% year-on-year.

In the U.S. market, where hydrogen fuel vehicles are widely accepted, Toyota has only sold about 14,000 vehicles since 2015.

Although countries around the world are vigorously promoting the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles from an energy perspective, due to storage, transportation difficulties, and hydrogen production costs, there are many negative voices in the industry.

  Regardless of the prospects for hydrogen energy, it has to be admitted that Toyota, which bet on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, has missed the moment.

  In September 2021, Nihon Keizai Shimbun cooperated with Patent Result, a patent investigation company, to investigate patents related to pure electric vehicles in the United States. At that time, Toyota ranked first in patents, Ford in second, and Tesla in eighth. Researcher Fukao Sanshiro said that if Japanese car companies cannot convert patented technology into business as soon as possible, they may repeat the mistakes of Japan's electronics industry being overtaken by other countries in the field of pure electric vehicles.

Sato Hengji takes over, can he turn the elephant around?

  For Toyota, which has repeatedly won the first place in global sales, the outside world often uses "elephant" to describe its huge size, while critics use "elephant" to describe Toyota's slowness to market changes and arrogance to new technologies, even Akio Toyoda They have all admitted to being "slow and half-beat" to the market.

  Under the sweeping wave of electrification, Toyota Motor has actually begun to move forward on the road to electrification.

In 2019, Akio Toyoda personally took charge and established a new department within Toyota, focusing on the research and development of new energy vehicles.

  In addition, Toyota is also actively looking for allies.

As early as March 2020, Toyota and BYD announced the establishment of a joint venture BYD Toyota Electric Vehicle Technology Co., Ltd.

According to Japan's "Asahi Shimbun", Toyota Motor announced on October 24, 2022 that it has jointly developed a sedan-type electric vehicle bZ3 with BYD. Its goal is to expand its share in the Chinese market through cooperation with BYD.

  In terms of electrification planning and layout, Toyota Motor released its electrification strategy called "the most radical in history" more than a year ago.

At the end of 2021, Akio Toyoda unveiled 16 pure electric models, including 14 new pure electric concept cars and the Lexus RZ electric crossover. He also said that by 2030, Toyota will produce 3.5 million electric vehicles a year.

  Unfortunately, the market situation of Toyota's new pure electric products has not met expectations, and it has not yet shown the competitiveness that can effectively attract consumers' attention.

Toyota Motor's first pure electric SUV model bZ4X was exposed to safety hazards shortly after its launch. In August last year, Toyota Motor began to recall its model worldwide.

In the Chinese market, the cumulative sales volume of Toyota's electric models is only a few thousand, which is tantamount to transparency under the melee of giants such as Tesla and BYD.

  Regarding the appointment of the new boss Tsuneji Sato, what the industry is most looking forward to is whether he can lead Toyota, the elephant, to turn around successfully.

  Koji Sato, 53 years old, graduated from the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Faculty of Science and Engineering of Waseda University. He focused on internal combustion engine research in college and joined Toyota Motor Corporation in 1992.

He is the chief engineer of Lexus GS and LC models, and is also a rare technical developer among the technicians who have served as the chief engineer of Toyota. Corolla, Prius and other brand parts development, currently in charge of Lexus.

  It remains to be seen whether Toyota's focus will shift under Sato's leadership.

However, many analysts pointed out that Akio Toyoda will continue to serve as chairman or will actually control the company.

  With Toyoda remaining chairman, Sato is unlikely to directly challenge the policies of his former boss but could accelerate change, the Journal said.

In his speech, Sato Hengji said that Toyota’s vision is to create better cars and become the best car company, “We must fulfill this commitment with actions and products, such as promoting electrification transformation and better responding to diverse and localization needs.”

  It is worth mentioning that Akio Toyoda proposed in his "most radical" electrification strategy in history that by 2030, Toyota will produce 3.5 million electric vehicles per year.

In contrast, for 2030, Elon Musk's sales target for Tesla is 20 million electric vehicles.