Nissan Motor showcases its models, including a Sakura electric vehicle, at the company’s global headquarters in Yokohama, Japan, in November. [Photo/Agencies]
Atsushi Ikeda loves his car so much that he founded a club for Tesla owners, but his passion for electric vehicles makes him something of an outlier in Japan.
As China’s U.S. markets race to put more electric vehicles on their roads, the pedal is still nowhere near the metal in Japan, where the hybrid still rules.
Last year, 59,000 new electric vehicles were sold in Japan, a record and a threefold annual increase, but still less than 2 percent of all car sales in the country by 2022.
It’s a situation that may seem counterintuitive, given that Japan’s auto industry, which employs 8 percent of the country’s workforce and accounts for a quarter of all its exports, pioneered the hybrids and electric cars.
But experts said the popularity of hybrids has hampered the adoption of electric vehicles, and Japanese automakers are in no rush to abandon existing lineups.
The skepticism is no secret, and the former head of Toyota, the world’s best-selling carmaker, regularly questioned the growing focus on electricity.
“I think Toyota didn’t want the trend to tilt towards plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles because of their focus on hybrids and also their significant investment,” said Kenichiro Wada, president of the Research Institute of ‘Electrification of Japan, which helped develop the first electric vehicles. at Mitsubishi Motors in the 2000s.
He compared the company to a top-level sumo wrestler, eager to “maintain the status quo as long as possible.”
When Ikeda went looking for a car that was “affordable, safe, polluting free,” he quickly turned to Tesla.
“I like high-performance cars,” he said, describing the few Japanese options on the market in 2016 as small and unattractive.
There are now government incentives for people to go electric, but Ikeda said “the charging infrastructure is too weak in Japan”, blaming “heavy regulations”.
The situation in Japan is increasingly inconsistent with priorities elsewhere.
Electric vehicles accounted for 20 percent of new cars sold in China last year, about 15 percent in Western Europe and 5.3 percent in the United States, according to a PwC study.
Ironically, electric vehicles have a long history in Japan, with Mitsubishi Motors introducing its i-MiEV in 2009, and Nissan launching its Leaf model a year later.
At the time, however, the models were expensive due to their batteries and considered impractical given the lack of a nationwide charging network.
Hybrids seemed like a better bet and have proven enduring popularity, accounting for more than 40 percent of sales in Japan last year.
Government and industry efforts have also been sidetracked by a push to develop hydrogen-powered vehicles, a sector that has grown much more slowly compared to electric vehicles.
The European Union, Britain and several US states want all new cars sold to be zero-emissions by 2035.
However, Japan’s target includes hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the same year.
Despite the obstacles, there are some signs of change, spurred in part by more demanding EV targets in overseas markets.
If they cannot “react quickly” to these new demands, “some Japanese automakers could disappear,” said Koji Endo, an auto analyst at SBI Securities.
Japanese companies have begun rolling out more ambitious electric vehicle targets, even as foreign automakers try to establish a foothold for their electric vehicles in the country.
Last year, Nissan launched its Sakura model, an all-electric car in the mini-sized “kei” category that is popular in Japan. It accounted for one-third of the country’s electric vehicle sales by 2022.
“Japanese drivers’ daily travel range is shorter,” compared to European or American consumers, said Nobuhide Yanagi, Nissan’s chief marketing officer for electric vehicles in Japan.
Thus, small cars “could gain a greater share of the electric vehicle market, not just for Nissan.”
The Japanese government plans to increase the number of charging stations from 30,000 to 150,000 by 2030.
Their embrace comes with a caveat, however, with an official from Japan’s trade ministry warning: “Electric vehicles are expensive and resources are limited.”
“Hybrid technology is affordable and offers significant (emissions) savings,” said Kuniharu Tanabe, director of the ministry’s auto industry division.
He described Europe’s electric vehicle strategy as “extreme” and pointed to a last-minute reduction for synthetic fuel vehicles.
AFP
