A Brief History of Everything Wireless Blog: Toyota vs. the World, part 2

Toyota vs. the World, part 2

2026-04-21 [Petri]

What a difference two years can make: Toyota has finally woken up and smelled the coffee: the EV transformation is inevitable, and it is time to hop in headfirst in order to survive the change.

In my earlier blog entry, I was deeply concerned over the messages coming from the Toyota top management, even at a time when their hydrogen-based approach was already a highly visible failure.

Now, as most US car makers have capitulated to the Trump admin’s approach to EVs and cut down their plans by billions just before Trump pushed gasoline prices sky high, Toyota is investing one billion to their manufacturing sites in Kentucky and Indiana. Purely for EV production.

Their bZ model is now on track to be America’s best-selling non-Tesla EV, and as Tesla’s unsold inventory has reportedly passed 50,000 units, bZ could easily make the #1 spot in not so distant future.

Toyota has also simplified its former password-level name of their model, which may help. It is quite surprising that someone actually authorized something as faceless as "bz4x" for a consumer product.

Now even Toyota's premium brand Lexus calls their latest model "RZ". Still fuzzy but simpler.

This change of heart may be based on the prediction that the whole US political landscape will flip again to be 100% Democrat-lead, which will naturally bring an earth-shattering reversal to the existing energy policies.

Or maybe it is just the fact that what happens in the US, the Chinese are coming, and if nothing is done, they will do the same to the Japanese manufacturing that the Japanese did to the American manufacturing.

Again, Trump might be the unexpected catalyst that revamps the whole US energy environment: his version of Putin’s “Special Military Operation” has got the US gas prices to rise to approximately half of the European prices, or as they call it in the US, “Sky high”. California being the exception that is closing on being on par with Europe soon.

EV-related searches have gone through the roof, used EV stock sales have doubled, and smug existing EV owners are all smiles from ear to ear.

This waking up of Toyota is not just a US issue: already in order to counteract the Chinese push “at the source”, Toyota has slashed prices of some of their EV models in China to around $15.000. This model, called bZ3X, has sold 80,000 units in China.

As a latest, very visible twist, the outgoing CEO of Toyota, Koji Sato, recently said:

“Unless things change, we will not survive. I want everyone to acknowledge this sense of crisis," referring to the automotive industry as a whole, and particularly to Toyota.

To combat the rise of the Chinese manufacturers, Toyota is now relaxing its internal rules for component sourcing: basically, if a part has a minor visual defect that is not directly visible to the customer, the part is no longer rejected.

The former utmost Kaizen and Shokunin target of perfection is softened in areas where it does not matter, with the aim of driving down the costs as a whole.

Toyota still has the muscle to do this shift to the rapidly expanding EV space successfully, albeit it can be seen to be a bit late in the game. But as the pioneers of hybrids, they certainly have the experience to go fully electric.

The new market is being segmented right now, and you simply have to be in the game to survive.

Permalink: https://bhoew.com/blog/en/165

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