Toyota says hybrids are better than Teslas, and I say I’m better than Shakespeare

Honestly, I try not to be cynical, I really do, just as I try to be patient with idiots, but it’s a struggle and when I read that Sean Hanley, vice-president of sales at Toyota Australia, had told journalists that hybrid vehicles were “a better fit” for Australians than EVs and would have greater environmental benefits, I took at least eight deep breaths before shouting “oh BULLSHIT” into the void. 

Because here’s the thing, I know Sean Hanley, he seems like a decent bloke, and perhaps blokeier than most blokes, but the fact that he works for a company that has fought long and hard against the idea of EVs, and just happens to offer an enormous number of hybrids in its showrooms, as opposed to, currently, zero electric vehicles, I just had to wonder whether his comments should be viewed through a certain lens, rather than feverishly reported as newsworthy by local media. 

If Mark Zuckerberg declared that Facebook and Instagram were better for Australian conditions than Twitter, would we take him so seriously, or laugh at the absurdly self-serving nature of his comments? Of course, Zuckerberg wouldn’t care enough about us to say such things, where as Hanley’s job is to maintain Toyota’s total market dominance in this country at a time when the Japanese juggernaut sold 21,000 fewer vehicles this year than during the same period last year, while bothersome competitor Tesla sold almost 24,000 more.

A colleague who was on the ground in Japan to hear Hanley’s rant against EVs as being not ready for our roads, not as green as they seem and “impractical for the vast majority of Australian motorists”, pointed out that he sounded just like your Fox News Grandpa ranting against the inevitability of a future in which “young people these days” insisted on believing in ideas like social equality, gay marriage, climate change, an Indigenous voice to Parliament and the possibility that Boomers continuing to spend like their money will never run out, thus pump-priming inflation, while young people struggle to eat, might be a bad thing.

But let’s let Sean speak for himself here: “[Battery electric vehicles] make sense right now in places like Norway where most energy is renewable and incomes are high but Australia is not Europe,” he said. 

“In countries like Australia, our data suggests that hybrids can have a greater impact than full electrification in getting carbon off the road.”

Hang on, so date from a company that sells more hybrids than any other, and which has avoided selling EVs for so long that it’s become frankly embarrassing, suggests that hybrids are a better option than electric vehicles? I’ve got some data here that suggests EV Central is the greatest website on the planet, if you’d like to promote that too, please, Sean?

He went on to point out that that EVs were “powered, in many cases, by electricity generated from coal” and that they remained “impractical” for drivers. 

Did I mention that he made these comments while Toyota was unveiling its first EV, due to launch, finally, in Australia, the much delayed bZ4X SUV? 

Look, I don’t want to keep being cynical, so let me allow someone else to do so, like the Electric Vehicle Council’s chief executive, Behyad Jafari.

“This is an attempt by [Toyota] to try to defend their own failings rather than admitting, as they have at a global level, they got it wrong and they’ve been too slow off the market with EVs,” he said, rather wisely.

“Toyota’s market share has been dropping in Australia and the electric vehicle market share has been growing.”

Again, I don’t want to blame Hanley personally, as he’s just doing his job, which, when you work for a Japanese car company, and I think it’s fair to tar all of them with the same brush, means denying that the sky is blue, but if we don’t do something about carbon emissions it will soon be on fire.