Environmental organization Greenpeace is not pleased with Toyota’s performance. Of the world’s ten largest car manufacturers, Toyota is currently the least advanced in phasing out the combustion engine, according to Greenpeace.
Greenpeace has ranked the world’s ten largest automakers based on how far the companies are in making the auto industry ‘decarbonised’. Greenpeace has taken a close look at Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai-Kia, Nissan, Renault, the Volkswagen Group, Stellantis and Toyota. The latter is assigned the first and in this case the worst position.
Greenpeace says that none of the ten carmakers surveyed will ban the combustion engine by 2035 and that seven of the companies have no concrete plans to phase out the combustion engine completely. “Toyota has no intention of stopping the sale of cars with combustion engines,” said Ada Kong of Greenpeace East Asia, the branch of Greenpeace that published the research.
The car manufacturers have been assessed, among other things, on their plans to phase out the combustion engine and for the steps they are taking to make their production chain CO2 neutral. The heading ‘phasing out the combustion engine’ weighs the heaviest with 80 percent.
According to Greenpeace, Toyota, Honda and Ford sold the smallest number of electric cars compared to their worldwide sales. At Toyota, EVs accounted for a 0.12 percent share of the whole in 2020. At Volkswagen, Daimler and Renault, those percentages were successively at 2.43 percent, 1.86 percent and 4.37 percent. As said, Toyota finishes in first and therefore worst place, followed by Stellantis, Ford and Daimler. Toyota does have an arsenal of new EVs in the barrel. In Europe, by 2025, 10 percent of every car sold by the manufacturer must be emission-free (electric or hydrogen).
Greenpeace says it believes automakers will have to kiss the combustion engine cars goodbye in major markets by 2030 to prevent global warming by more than 1.5 degrees, which will happen by 2028, according to the environmental organization. The environmental club is also unhappy about the increasing popularity of SUVs, partly because the average consumption of such cars is higher. In addition, more steel is needed for the production of such models. Greenpeace says it wants to emphasize that ‘the EV’ is not the answer to all problems, as the energy needed for electric cars should also be renewable. Greenpeace also believes that car ownership should be less self-evident, the organization says that cars stand still on average 94 to 96 percent of their existence.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl