Toyota Helmsman Discusses Electric Cars: Full Transition Could Lead to Unemployment for 5.5 Million People

Recently, Akio Toyoda, chairman of Toyota Motor, questioned the full transition to pure electric vehicles at a public event. He said that if the automotive industry fully turns to pure electric vehicles, it will lead to the unemployment of a large number of technicians involved in engine-related work. This group reaches 5.5 million people in Japan. Akio Toyoda's remarks once again aroused the industry's attention and discussion on the development of electric vehicles.

From the structure of electric vehicles and traditional fuel vehicles, Akio Toyoda's statement makes sense. Traditional fuel vehicles need to carry engines, gearboxes, and other complex mechanisms. It is estimated that fuel vehicles are assembled from more than 20,000 parts. Extremely complex luxury cars, such as Audi, BMW, etc., can have up to 30,000 independent parts.

These complex parts require a strong supporting system, which cannot be done by a single car company. Producing a fuel vehicle can drive the development of various industries upstream and downstream, thereby supporting hundreds of thousands of related practitioners. In contrast, electric vehicles have higher integration, and the structure of motors, electric controls, and batteries are relatively simple, eliminating many complex mechanisms, so the number of parts in electric vehicles is about 10,000, which leads to the shrinkage of the related supporting system.

Although Toyota Motors also established a development plan for pure electric vehicles, its performance in this field is not satisfactory. Toyota plans to produce 1 million pure electric vehicles by 2026, but its sales of pure electric vehicles in 2023 were only 104,000, far from the target. However, this did not have much impact on Toyota's overall performance. Toyota’s second-quarter financial report shows that although its global sales fell 3.18% year-on-year, revenue increased 12.2% year-on-year, and net profit reached 67.2 billion.

Toyota has been exploring diverse technological paths to reduce carbon emissions. In addition to fully electric vehicles, it has launched a variety of products including hybrid and hydrogen-fuel vehicles. Akio Toyoda believes that there are many ways to achieve carbon neutrality, and it is not necessarily required to fully transition to fully electric vehicles.

In the future, as global requirements for environmental protection and sustainable development continue to rise, the automotive industry will face increasingly severe challenges. The viewpoint of Akio Toyoda also reminds us that while promoting the development of electric vehicles, we should fully consider the interests of related practitioners to avoid causing excessive social impact.