BANGKOK – Media OutReach – 19 December 2022 – Mr. Akio Toyoda, President & CEO of Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”), and founder and team owner of ROOKIE Racing, participated under the driver name “Morizo” in the 25-hour endurance race in Thailand over December 17th and 18th in Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Corolla. This was the first time that this technology has been used in a race outside Japan.
This was also an opportunity for Toyota to demonstrate its multiple pathway approach to accelerate actions towards Carbon Neutrality, by displaying and demonstrating various clean technologies, including Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV), Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV), Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV) that offer diverse environmentally friendly choices to customers across Asian markets. Mr. Hao Quoc Tien, CEO of Asia Region, and other senior executives from Toyota, joined Mr. Toyoda over the 2 day program.
Developing and showcasing the Hydrogen powered internal combustion engine vehicle (HiCEV) marks another step in Toyota’s technological efforts towards achieving global commitment of Carbon Neutrality by 2050.
Toyota believes that ‘carbon is the enemy’, and hence Toyota believes in a Multiple Pathway approach by offering customers the choice of various vehicle powertrain technologies, including HEV, PHEV, BEV, FCEV, HiCEV, or even bio-fuel vehicles. This allows every customer to select cleaner and greener mobility options that are suitable for their economic circumstances, energy source, charging infrastructure readiness, industrial policies and usage needs.
This multiple pathways approach allows decarbonization to start immediately, without waiting for the maturity of all the enablers such as infrastructure and affordability, and hence can gain scale through accessibility. This is in line with Toyota’s “Mobility for All” objective, and allows everyone to participate in the decarbonization journey. Toyota believes that the impact of clean technology can be felt only with its wide adoption across global markets. Beyond new vehicles, Toyota also believes in appropriate life-cycle action to truly decarbonize mobility and its ecosystem, and earnestly tackle climate change from cradle to grave.
Toyota has carefully considered the best way to move to mass and accessible electrification in each market, through a ‘3 Lens’ approach that allow the company to best understand the enablers to accelerate carbon neutrality and electrification. These are 1) Emission Reduction, through well to wheel and lifecycle actions, 2) Economic Impact, including for the customer, government and industry, and most importantly 3) Customer Acceptance.
Specifically, for Emission Reduction, the consideration is to evaluate the total emissions, including tailpipe (tank-to-wheel) power generation (well-to-tank; e.g. fuel, electricity, etc.) and life cycle emission (from manufacturing and life-time usage).
