I have spent a great deal of time, recently, working on a variety of areas of the website that I hope to become important in the near future (including members areas). During this time, I miss writing on these subjects, so I would open tabs on news articles that had caught my eye – when I turned my attention back, there were more than 1000 tabs. Several hundred are wildlife news, which I will deal with in the near future, but the rest have been grouped. There is a long video embeded in the bottom of the page, which gives similar information but in more detail, if you would prefer (produced by the electric viking)
This grouping is stories about Toyota, and its various moves which appear to clearly show their moves to make the climate worse not better.
Toyota and its alliance with climate change deniers: I am not sure how it is possible for a car company to go from leading the world on environment in car brands to being recognized as one of the worst – but Toyota has done it. As one of the lead brands, with over 11 million cars sold in 2023, this matters. Unfortunately, at the moment, any informed car buyer must recognize that buying a Toyota is saying that I agree with their policies. Despite releasing the Prius 3 decades ago, it then stopped moving forwards.
Tesla was founded in 2003, 22 years ago, and this should have lit a fire under Toyota, to take the next step and go fully electric. So why has it failed to go with the market, and make fully electric cars before anyone else? Well they have voiced a variety of augments from the ridiculous “there is not enough lithium on earth” to people do not want them (how do people not know if they hadnt seen it?) perhaps exacerbated by the fact that, until the Tesla roadster and then the Tesla S, no-one had really made an electric car that was appealing – sure there were cars like the EV1 from GM, but with all previous attempts, the electric cars were obvious. The Tesla roadster, and more so the Tesla S, was the first time that a car was built to take on the fancy huge BMW and Mercedes cars – status symbols. It should be noted, that with the Tesla S having been out in the UK for so long, its price on the second hand market now makes it a cheaper option (when you take into account whole life prices).
Instead they have:
- Funded climate change deniers over the last 3 election cycles (something that presumably old Toyota would be embarrassed about). They have funded 207 climate changing denial congressmen, twice as many as ford and almost 50% more than GM.
- In 2024 this got worse, with them spending 4 times as much as GM and 4 times as much as ford. This alone should stop anyone worried about the climate from buying from them.
- They have in recent years fought more hard than anyone about electric cars, and while they have talked about bringing out many more, the BZ4X, one of their first, was not well thought of, having stuffed all the electronic stuff into the shell of a normal car (it also lead to one of the least efficient electric cars made).
- These campaigns appear to take on a more sinister feel, when you see the lengths that these campaigns go
It should be noted, that this spending has given them great returns, with many of their top supported candidates regularly trying to bring forward new bills to help.
Unfortunately, alongside Donald Trump, many of these people who have been supported by Toyota are returning to power in the USA, and working to block climate action.
So what does Toyota think we should use instead? Hydrogen! The reasoning for this is pretty simple, and basically runs stating “Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe” unfortunately for this argument, there is little to no hydrogen on earth – instead what hydrogen we have is locked in water. It is true that a Toyota Hydrogen car produces no emissions. However, even with the currently small amount of hydrogen being used on earth, the carbon cost for splitting the water to create it, is equivalent to all of the road traffic of the world.
I would argue, that no-one who cares about the planet should be supporting this company until it sorts itself out. But at the very least, restrict yourself to the electric cars that Toyota is releasing – this should help them get the message
