Toyota Just Proved That Electric Vehicles Aren't Going Anywhere
"So this whole electric car thing, that's all going away now, huh?"
When I struck up a conversation with a stranger at a bar recently, that's where our friendly chat went when he asked what I did for a living. I was taken aback at first. Then I realized that this person wasn't an electric vehicle owner or actively shopping for one. Nor did he work in the automotive industry.
A normal person, in other words. A civilian. And that take is probably a reasonable one for anyone who doesn't pay close attention to this business on a minute-to-minute basis.
After all, President Donald Trump has a very different perspective on an EV-focused future in America than his predecessor did. The tax credits could be going away, federal funding for fast chargers already has, the not-a-mandate EV "mandate" was erased by executive order and the entire climate and green energy space is on the ropes.
To top it all off, the world's EV leader, Tesla, can't go one weekend without angry picketers gathering outside its stores to protest CEO Elon Musk's slashing of the federal workforce and full-throated support of the President's agenda. Tesla's stock price has been dropping faster than embarrassed owners can dump the cars. Even Trump's White House Lawn Auto Show was more a display of support for the company owned by his chief financier rather than for the technology itself.
When you take all of that together, it's understandable why an ordinary person might think the EV sector was a flash in the pan. Just another technology that was supposed to take off, but didn't—the 2025 equivalent of laserdisc or 3D television or the metaverse.
But that's not the case at all. More crucially, neither is electrification—the act of adding battery power to automobiles in some form or fashion. And Toyota, the world's largest automaker, may just be the one to prove it.