WASHINGTON – Senior White House adviser John Podesta said Toyota Motor Corp had “been a laggard” in producing electric vehicles but is now “fully committed” after recently meeting with senior officials from the company of the Japanese car manufacturer.
“I think they’re going to stick with plug-in hybrids for a while, maybe longer than some of the other companies, but now they’re fully committed under their new leadership to electrification,” Podesta told Reuters reporters and editors at a roundtable. meeting on Tuesday.
He met with Toyota Research Institute CEO Gill Pratt and Toyota North America Chief Administrative Officer Christopher Reynolds.
Last month, Toyota said it would introduce 10 new battery-powered models and target sales of 1.5 million electric vehicles a year by 2026. Toyota, including its luxury brand Lexus, now only has three battery models on the market and sold less than 25,000 last year. of them around the world.
Investors and environmental groups have criticized Toyota for being slower to adopt battery cars than Tesla and others.
Toyota said in August it would increase its planned investment in a North Carolina battery plant from $1.29 billion to $3.8 billion.
Last month, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed big emissions cuts for new cars and trucks through 2032. The EPA estimates that 67% of new vehicle sales by then will be electric vehicles.
The Biden administration has repeatedly refused to approve setting a firm date to phase out gasoline-only vehicles as California has done. “I don’t think that’s necessary at this point,” Podesta said Tuesday.
White House infrastructure adviser Mitch Landrieu and Podesta met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in January. Landrieu said in the joint Reuters interview with Podesta that the administration had constructive conversations with Musk about electric vehicles.
“They are a key player. They were the first,” said Landrieu. “They were very open and workable and have been a great partner.”
Biden pledged to build an American network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations by 2030 using $7.5 billion in infrastructure funds.
“We got (Tesla) … to open up their network, which brought us much closer and much faster to the ultimate goal of building the backbone of electric vehicle charging stations. We have 500,000 of those we need to expel. We need about 3 million more,” Landrieu said.
