Excerpt from techwireasia.com
Japanese automaker Toyota has long been known as the pioneer of hybrid vehicles. Unfortunately, as the world evolved and moved towards an electric vehicle future, Toyota only dug its heels deeper with hybrids and fuel-cell vehicles. It came to a point where a movement to boycott Toyota started garnering global attention.
But things took a turn last month when Toyota, which is also one of the world’s largest automakers, announced that it intends to sell 3.5 million EVs globally by 2030 and market 30 different electric models within the same period. The sales goal is a 75% shoot up from its previous target of two million while the intended number of new electric car models to be marketed were doubled as well.
“Even 2 million units is huge — we raised the number to 3.5 million today,” Toyota’s CEO Akio Toyoda said, stressing the number is comparable to the annual production volume of Daimler or Suzuki. “If some insist that we are still negative about electric cars after announcing 3.5 million cars and 30 models, we want them to tell us what more it takes not to be viewed negatively.”