Ford Exits EVs As Toyota Move In

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 6, 2:43PM EDT

Quick Read

Toyota Is World’s Largest Car Company
EV Market In The US Weak
Ford Has Abandoned EV Sector

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Ford Exits EVs As Toyota Move In — © Toyota Prius 004 (CC BY 2.0) by Rutger van der Maar

Ford (NYSE: F) left the EV business for dead earlier this year. It does appear it will enter again, on a small scale, next year. At the same time, Toyota (NYSE: TM), which sells about as many cars in the US as Ford does, is pressing to expand its EV fleet. Someone is making a mistake.

According to the FT, “We think 2026 is going to be the starting point for Toyota’s full electric shift.” Masahiro Akita, an analyst at Bernstein, wrote. And then added, ‘Most global carmakers had “cancelled or wound back EV targets and booked large losses. On the other hand, Toyota, which was criticized as the biggest laggard in this area, is now ramping up their EV adoption.”’ The paper also noted that Toyota’s unit sales are a fraction of Tesla’s, and, as often pointed out, By the way, Toyota is the largest car company in the world by unit sales at 10 million. The only company that is close is VW, which has also struggled mightily with its EV plans.

What does Toyota see? First, its plans appear to be to develop a lineup across EVs, gas, plugins, and hydrogen. That means no base is left uncovered

However, Toyota must be looking further into the future. Its EV decision comes just as anxiety about global oil supply surges. And, based on geopolitics, this may not change. The future may be one of $ 100-a-barrel oil.

Toyota has to know it needs to do at least moderately well in China. It is the world’s largest EV market, but it is also the most crowded. There are dozens of EV companies there. Not all will last, but the battle for market share means discounting.

The EU and UK are also promising markets. Over 90% of the new cars sold in Norway are EVs. The region is choking because most of its oil and gasoline are imported. While the US is the world’s largest producer of crude and largest exporter, Europe is oil-poor

The problem Toyota cannot solve is the lack of EV sales in the world’s second-largest car market, which is the US. Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is the only car company with substantial EV sales in America; Toyota’s path to EV success in this country will be extremely difficult.

If EV sales in the US ever pick up, Toyota make have a footprint in a market Ford, and other legacy car companies have given up on,

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.