Why has the success of gasoline electric vehicles been a stumbling block for electric vehicles in Japan?

Japan is certainly a major automaker, but in the rapidly growing EV market, Chinese and Western automakers dominate 90% of the market. The EV market, once dominated by Japanese automakers, now accounts for less than 5% of the market. Gasoline electric vehicles could be one of the key factors in their success.

In 2010, Japanese automakers accounted for over 70% of the global EV market and as much as 90%, including at one point the world’s first mass-produced electric passenger car, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV and the Nissan Leaf. It was the dominant EV for many years. In Hedong’s ten years of operation, the layout of electric vehicles has completely changed.

In 2022, global sales of all-electric vehicles (accumulated from January to November) will reach 6.8 million units. BYD-led Chinese automakers will have 2.9 million units, Tesla-led American automakers will have 2.1 million units, and European automakers will have 2.9 million units. It will contribute 1.2 billion units from Volkswagen and Renault. 10,000 vehicles typically show a condition of 40%, 30% to 20%.

Led by automotive leader Toyota, as well as Honda, Nissan and other Japanese auto groups, annual EV sales are only about 200,000 units, which is 2% to 3% of the entire market. In the absence of accidents, the annual calculation will not exceed 5%. Why such a big comeback?

All-electric car factories in China, the United States and Europe
In addition to having fewer spare parts for electric vehicles, new automakers can enter the market faster, keeping pace with the global trend of reducing carbon emissions and picking up their pace. Diesel engines, originally slated to improve fuel efficiency for conventional automakers, have changed since the 2015 Volkswagen “Dieselgate” emissions fraud incident, forcing automakers to actively develop all-electric vehicles.

These two factors greatly explain the rapid electrification of automakers in China, the United States and Europe, but why are Japanese automakers not keeping pace? After Volkswagen left Dieselgate, European governments started focusing on the next policy to cut carbon emissions, but diesel has hit a wall and petrol-electric technology has failed to catch up with Japan. The European government has decided to bypass ‘low carbon’ and go straight to ‘zero carbon’, fully subsidizing clean electric vehicles and joining efforts to reduce carbon emissions and the auto industry. In contrast, the Japanese government, taking into account the diesel engine accident in Europe, decided to support gasoline-electric technology and introduced a “low-carbon environmental protection subsidy and tax relief” that only allows vehicles electric, petrol vehicles. and grants for hydrogen electric vehicles. From the point of view of Japanese society, there are already relatively low-carbon gasoline-powered electric vehicles, and there is no renewable energy base like in Europe. Japanese companies do not take the mass production of lithium batteries and the use of coal seriously. Electricity to recharge cars. A great way to reduce your carbon footprint.

However, this perspective also creates blind spots. After all, the Japanese market accounts for only 5% of the global car market. When automakers focus on gasoline electric vehicles and local market safety, they risk missing out on global auto market trends. With a relatively slow electrification process, Honda aims to stop selling fuel-powered vehicles by 2040, while Toyota believes focusing solely on EVs isn’t the best recipe.

If you take a longer look at the history, the undoubted pioneers in the use of electric motors in the automotive industry were Japanese automakers. Gasoline electric vehicles 20 years ago and all-electric vehicles 10 years ago dominated Japanese automakers. In 2010, EVs accounted for less than 1% of new car sales, but when EVs finally crossed the 10% mark in the global new car market,