Among the heads of traditional car companies, I have always admired two people, Akio Toyoda, the boss of Toyota, and Diss, the CEO of Volkswagen, because I think they are both people with long-term vision and a sense of crisis, leading the two giant car companies to actively embrace the new era.

However, this year, I hardly wrote any articles about Akio Toyoda, because the whole Toyota was silent. In contrast, giants such as Volkswagen, Daimler and General Motors are struggling with electrification and autonomous driving.

The last time I wrote about Akio Toyoda was last month, because at the Toyota earnings conference, he used a very sour sentence to describe Tesla, an electric car company with a market value more than three times that of Toyota.

The original words are probably that Tesla is like a restaurant selling novel recipes, but we have a great chef and kitchen in Toyota, which is the real meal.

Unexpectedly, a month later, Akio Toyoda made another "shocking" remark. This time, diss is not Tesla, but the whole field of pure electric vehicles.

At the annual meeting of Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, Akio Toyoda delivered a speech as the president, arguing that electric vehicles were over-hyped because:

The government did not consider the carbon dioxide emissions generated during power generation;

Did not take into account the social power shortage caused by the surge in the number of electric vehicles;

Did not take into account the blind transition to electric vehicles will harm consumers' rights and interests, because electric vehicles are more expensive than fuel vehicles;

Did not take into account the huge cost of building large-scale infrastructure;

It does not take into account the unemployment tide in the traditional automobile industry caused by the blind ban on fuel vehicles.

To sum up, the so-called policy of banning the sale of fuel vehicles is too hasty, which will lead to a series of problems, and decision makers must think twice before acting.

Why did Akio Toyoda suddenly shell pure electric vehicles? Because not long ago, the Japanese media reported a news that the Japanese government intends to ban the sale of traditional fuel vehicles by 2025 and completely turn to hybrid or pure electric vehicles.

In response to this news, a Japanese government spokesman responded that the Japanese Ministry of Industry will formulate a plan to phase out traditional fuel vehicles before the end of the year, and will announce specific decision details after discussion.

As a representative of Japanese car companies, Akio Toyoda chose to speak before the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the specific decision. In fact, he wants to put some pressure on decision makers. After all, Toyota is the largest automobile group in the world, and his words still carry some weight.

However, after Akio Toyoda's remarks were exported, there were many opposing voices, and many articles refuting Akio Toyoda's arguments can be found in foreign media. Although what he said was aimed at Japan, it was obviously a slap in the face for the whole electric vehicle industry.

I have carefully analyzed several viewpoints of Akio Toyoda, and none of them are tenable.

1. It is a cliche that electric vehicles are not environmentally friendly. Just search online, and there are many articles refuting this view.

In short, simply considering the emissions of electric vehicles after they are put into use is definitely more environmentally friendly than fuel vehicles. Considering the different sources of electricity, coal-fired power is certainly not as environmentally friendly as wind power, but we have to calculate the carbon emissions of an electric vehicle throughout its life cycle. After calculation, we can find that electric vehicles are still more environmentally friendly than fuel vehicles, and the longer the service life, the more environmentally friendly they are.

Besides, renewable energy is also a general trend, and no country can keep coal-fired power for life.

2. If everyone drives an electric car, will there be a shortage of electricity? Theoretically, this possibility exists, but a society is definitely developing. When the demand for electricity increases sharply, the power supply will be adjusted accordingly. Moreover, many electric car owners use the low-valley time at night to charge, which is an adjustment in itself.

Electric cars are more expensive than gasoline cars, so people can't afford cars in the future? Alas, I'm too lazy to refute this. Lower and lower battery cost is the general trend. LG Chem has announced that their battery price per kWh will be less than $65,438+000 next year, and electric vehicles will be the same as fuel vehicles in two years. Moreover, the later use cost of electric vehicles is particularly low, which has long been more cost-effective than gasoline vehicles.

4. Large-scale construction of charging facilities wastes people and money? Well, I just want to ask, is it expensive to build charging stations and hydrogen refueling stations? If you think it's a waste of time and money to build a charging pile, what kind of hydrogen fuel car does Toyota promote? Infrastructure is more expensive.

As for the people facing unemployment risk in the traditional automobile industry, what new technological revolutions will not lead to unemployment? 1779 during the industrial revolution, a group of British workers smashed the machine, which was the famous Luddites. But did smashing machines stop the industrial revolution? Not exactly. Because there will be a large demand in society, those workers who can operate machines will have new jobs.

Similarly, the postman will not unplug the internet just because people write emails after the internet appears. They can become couriers. If there is no delivery one day, there will always be workers who need to maintain unmanned vehicles.

I won't give too many examples. Anyway, I thought that only European and American trade union representatives could do it, but I didn't expect the leaders of car companies to say so, which made Dr. Diss, who competes with trade union representatives every day, angry.

No wonder some people commented that if Akio Toyoda said that lithium-ion batteries were unsafe, there had been many spontaneous combustion explosions around the world, or the mining industry destroyed the environment and hired child labor, we could not refute it, but the above criticism of electric vehicles was really not high.

In fact, three years ago, car companies came forward to shell electric vehicles, that is, the late Fiat Chrysler CEO Malchow. At that time, in 20 17, France, Britain and other countries announced the timetable for banning the sale of fuel vehicles, so Ma Lao stood up and opposed it, saying that electric vehicles were not environmentally friendly because two-thirds of the world's electricity came from fossil fuels.

But as a result, three years later, Fiat Chrysler did not make much achievements in the field of electric vehicles, but was acquired by Peugeot Citroen. Both Volkswagen and GM are actively investing in the field of electric vehicles.

Akio Toyoda certainly has the right to express his opposition, but in his eyes, this kind of voice will not affect the rolling trend of electric vehicles, but will make Toyota be labeled as SAIC "Kodak" and "Nokia", which is not worth the loss.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.