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Tokyo Auto Show returns as local carmakers play EV catch-up
Published Oct 25, 2023
Tokyo's rebranded auto show returns this weekend just as China looks set to overtake Japan as the world's biggest car exporter after Toyota, Nissan and others got stuck in the electric vehicle slow lane.
Since the last edition in 2019, the EV market in Japan has been sluggish and the country's carmakers have been late to tap a growing appetite elsewhere.
Just 1.7 percent of cars sold in Japan were electric in 2022, compared with around 15 percent in western Europe, 5.3 percent in the United States and nearly one in five in China.
Japanese firms fared badly in a recent Greenpeace ranking on phasing out internal combustion engines, with Suzuki last and Toyota - the world's biggest carmaker by revenue - third from bottom.
Fewer than one in 400 Toyotas sold are EVs, the environmental group said. Japanese manufacturers have long bet instead on hybrids that combine battery power and internal combustion engines, an area they pioneered with the likes of the Toyota Prius.
Foreign EVs "feel like products from the previous generation", Chinese car industry employee Gao Yulu, 32, told AFP at a recent auto show in Beijing.
"For Japanese brands, there are very few products to begin with. And their product strength isn't strong in terms of price and performance," she said.
For Mitsubishi Motors, the debacle in China is such that this week it announced it was halting production there.
Like in Europe and North America, Chinese EV makers are now even trying to gain a foothold in Toyota and Nissan's backyard.
Teaming up with 'Godzilla'
One of the only three foreign auto firms exhibiting in Tokyo will be BYD, which is vying with Elon Musk's Tesla to become the world's top-selling EV maker.
Although export figures are skewed by Japanese companies having major factories abroad, becoming number-two to China this year, as expected, will still hurt for an industry that itself was once the disruptor, experts said.
"It's kind of reminiscent of what happened to Japan in the 1980s, when they started exporting a lot of automotives," said Christopher Richter, an auto analyst at CLSA.
Japanese automakers have vowed to up their game, with Toyota aiming to sell 1.5 million EVs annually by 2026 and 3.5 million by 2030. It has invested heavily in battery technology.
Toyota showed off a plethora of battery-powered concept cars at the show, including the FT-3e design study that previews a more affordable EV crossover model.
On show in Tokyo will be a number of new Japanese EVs, although they will mostly be concepts such as a car and motorbike from Honda made of recyclable acrylic resin.
The show has also been reborn as the Japan Mobility Show to expand its scope beyond cars to include areas such as robots, software and batteries.
This has more than doubled the number of exhibitors in the show, which opens to the public on Saturday, to 475 including an armada of start-ups.
The trade show will also feature a special "Emergency and Mobility" zone devoted to transport solutions after natural disasters, with displays of robots, drones and self-propelling stretchers.
To hammer home the point, organisers have teamed up with the new "Godzilla" movie.
"In Japan, we have... many natural disasters in Japan, and people's lives and towns have been destroyed," said Jun Nagata from the organising committee.
"Because of global warming this year, it's like Godzilla coming to cities," he said.
Japan's automakers unveil EV galore, vie for supremacy at Tokyo show
TOKYO OCT 25, 2023 - 12:56 PM GMT+3
"We love battery EVs,” said the executive in charge of electric vehicles at Toyota Takero Kato not once, but twice, to underscore what he considers the message at this year’s Tokyo auto show.
It’s a message ringing clear at the Tokyo Mobility Show, which will run through Nov. 5 at Tokyo Big Sight Hall, where battery-powered electric vehicles are the star at practically every booth.
Mazda Motor Corp. is highlighting a sportscar concept that is a plug-in EV packed with its signature rotary engine. Honda Motor Co. is showing off its Prelude sportscar EV concept. Toyota Motor Corp.’s lean angular Lexus concept, set to sell in 2026, is an electric vehicle running on lithium-ion batteries.
Journalists got a preview Wednesday ahead of the show’s public opening Saturday.
U.S. automakers like General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. aren’t exhibiting at the show and have not taken part for some years. The Americans make up a very tiny fraction of Japanese auto sales and have had a hard time cracking a market where domestic makers remain powerful.
Among the foreign makers taking part are Mercedes-Benz, a perennial Japanese favorite and China’s BYD.
Kato denied he repeated his words because he is worried Toyota isn’t perceived as loving EVs enough.
Toyota executives have acknowledged that Japan’s top automaker has fallen behind rivals in EV development like Tesla of the U.S. and China’s BYD Auto. That is partly because of Toyota’s past success in hybrids, exemplified in the Prius, which has a gasoline engine and an electric motor.
Toyota already sells a tiny two-seater called C+pod and the bZ4X, co-developed with group company Subaru, as electric offerings, but not much else. And it is eager to play catchup.
As the first serious EV from Toyota, the Lexus LF-ZC will serve as a true test for how Toyota fares in a sector that still comprises a minority of the global market but is growing quickly, given priorities like climate change.
In Japan, EVs make up less than 5% of the auto market, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In the U.S., where Tesla dominates, EVs account for just under 10% of auto sales, although President Joe Biden is pushing for requiring at least 54% of new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2030. In China, a third of vehicles sold are EVs.
Tesla’s global vehicle deliveries last year grew 40% from the previous year to 1.31 million EVs. BYD sold more than 1.85 million electric cars, including plug-ins.
Toyota, meanwhile, sold fewer than 25,000 EVs worldwide last year, although in the first eight months of this year, it sold 65,000, mostly outside Japan. Toyota is targeting sales of 1.5 million EVs a year by 2026 and 3.5 million by 2030.
“We are looking toward an electrified future that we hope to build together with our customers,” Kato said.
Catching up is challenging but not impossible, said Joshua Cobb, senior automobiles analyst at BMI.
“Over the short term, we see Chinese EVs from brands such as BYD, SAIC-GM-Wuling and Tesla-branded EVs will continue to gain market share as there is little competition at the moment,” he said.
But, Cobb added, “One thing not to underestimate is the strong brand loyalty in Japan.” He said Japanese consumers may hold off on EV purchases until more domestic models hit the market.
Nissan, an early EV maker among the Japanese with its Leaf going on sale in 2010, is showcasing four EV concept cars.
Among them is the Hyper Tourer minivan concept that Nissan says has advanced technologies like autonomous driving. It runs on high-energy-density solid-state batteries.
Senior Vice President Alfonso Albaisa said Nissan is focusing on virtual reality and other breakthroughs that allow vehicle designers to shorten model development time.
“At Nissan, we have been racing forward with our dramatic digital shift just as other industries, like gaming,” Albaisa said.
Manufacturers also note that EV technology is changing how a vehicle drives.
Batteries and a motor for an EV generally take up less space than a gas combustion engine. That means EVs can have a lower center of gravity while offering more cabin space, making it a nifty powertrain for sportscars, vans, pickups and SUVs.
In Nissan and elsewhere, a key issue for EVs is battery charge time and driving range. While all the world’s major automakers are working to shorten charge time and lengthen cruise time per charge, the U.S. startup Ample has developed a different solution – battery swapping.
Instead of charging the battery in the car, a module containing the battery is taken out and replaced by a fully charged battery at a drive-in facility built especially for the procedure. The swap, done by robots, takes just five minutes.
The approach is already being used by Uber drivers in the San Francisco area. Ample’s battery-swapping arrives in Japan this winter through a partnership with Mitsubishi Fuso, a Daimler group truck company. The swapping is being demonstrated at Mitsubishi Fuso’s booth.
De Souza said another attraction of battery swapping is its greenness. A battery can be charged flexibly, using renewable energy at times of the day with low demand for power, he said.
“We decided what worked really well about gas is that you stop for a few minutes,” said John de Souza, Ample’s president and founder.
Published Oct 25, 2023
Tokyo's rebranded auto show returns this weekend just as China looks set to overtake Japan as the world's biggest car exporter after Toyota, Nissan and others got stuck in the electric vehicle slow lane.
Since the last edition in 2019, the EV market in Japan has been sluggish and the country's carmakers have been late to tap a growing appetite elsewhere.
Just 1.7 percent of cars sold in Japan were electric in 2022, compared with around 15 percent in western Europe, 5.3 percent in the United States and nearly one in five in China.
Japanese firms fared badly in a recent Greenpeace ranking on phasing out internal combustion engines, with Suzuki last and Toyota - the world's biggest carmaker by revenue - third from bottom.
Fewer than one in 400 Toyotas sold are EVs, the environmental group said. Japanese manufacturers have long bet instead on hybrids that combine battery power and internal combustion engines, an area they pioneered with the likes of the Toyota Prius.
Foreign EVs "feel like products from the previous generation", Chinese car industry employee Gao Yulu, 32, told AFP at a recent auto show in Beijing.
"For Japanese brands, there are very few products to begin with. And their product strength isn't strong in terms of price and performance," she said.
For Mitsubishi Motors, the debacle in China is such that this week it announced it was halting production there.
Like in Europe and North America, Chinese EV makers are now even trying to gain a foothold in Toyota and Nissan's backyard.
Teaming up with 'Godzilla'
One of the only three foreign auto firms exhibiting in Tokyo will be BYD, which is vying with Elon Musk's Tesla to become the world's top-selling EV maker.
Although export figures are skewed by Japanese companies having major factories abroad, becoming number-two to China this year, as expected, will still hurt for an industry that itself was once the disruptor, experts said.
"It's kind of reminiscent of what happened to Japan in the 1980s, when they started exporting a lot of automotives," said Christopher Richter, an auto analyst at CLSA.
Japanese automakers have vowed to up their game, with Toyota aiming to sell 1.5 million EVs annually by 2026 and 3.5 million by 2030. It has invested heavily in battery technology.
Toyota showed off a plethora of battery-powered concept cars at the show, including the FT-3e design study that previews a more affordable EV crossover model.
On show in Tokyo will be a number of new Japanese EVs, although they will mostly be concepts such as a car and motorbike from Honda made of recyclable acrylic resin.
The show has also been reborn as the Japan Mobility Show to expand its scope beyond cars to include areas such as robots, software and batteries.
This has more than doubled the number of exhibitors in the show, which opens to the public on Saturday, to 475 including an armada of start-ups.
The trade show will also feature a special "Emergency and Mobility" zone devoted to transport solutions after natural disasters, with displays of robots, drones and self-propelling stretchers.
To hammer home the point, organisers have teamed up with the new "Godzilla" movie.
"In Japan, we have... many natural disasters in Japan, and people's lives and towns have been destroyed," said Jun Nagata from the organising committee.
"Because of global warming this year, it's like Godzilla coming to cities," he said.
Japan's automakers unveil EV galore, vie for supremacy at Tokyo show
TOKYO OCT 25, 2023 - 12:56 PM GMT+3
"We love battery EVs,” said the executive in charge of electric vehicles at Toyota Takero Kato not once, but twice, to underscore what he considers the message at this year’s Tokyo auto show.
It’s a message ringing clear at the Tokyo Mobility Show, which will run through Nov. 5 at Tokyo Big Sight Hall, where battery-powered electric vehicles are the star at practically every booth.
Mazda Motor Corp. is highlighting a sportscar concept that is a plug-in EV packed with its signature rotary engine. Honda Motor Co. is showing off its Prelude sportscar EV concept. Toyota Motor Corp.’s lean angular Lexus concept, set to sell in 2026, is an electric vehicle running on lithium-ion batteries.
Journalists got a preview Wednesday ahead of the show’s public opening Saturday.
U.S. automakers like General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. aren’t exhibiting at the show and have not taken part for some years. The Americans make up a very tiny fraction of Japanese auto sales and have had a hard time cracking a market where domestic makers remain powerful.
Among the foreign makers taking part are Mercedes-Benz, a perennial Japanese favorite and China’s BYD.
Kato denied he repeated his words because he is worried Toyota isn’t perceived as loving EVs enough.
Toyota executives have acknowledged that Japan’s top automaker has fallen behind rivals in EV development like Tesla of the U.S. and China’s BYD Auto. That is partly because of Toyota’s past success in hybrids, exemplified in the Prius, which has a gasoline engine and an electric motor.
Toyota already sells a tiny two-seater called C+pod and the bZ4X, co-developed with group company Subaru, as electric offerings, but not much else. And it is eager to play catchup.
As the first serious EV from Toyota, the Lexus LF-ZC will serve as a true test for how Toyota fares in a sector that still comprises a minority of the global market but is growing quickly, given priorities like climate change.
In Japan, EVs make up less than 5% of the auto market, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In the U.S., where Tesla dominates, EVs account for just under 10% of auto sales, although President Joe Biden is pushing for requiring at least 54% of new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2030. In China, a third of vehicles sold are EVs.
Tesla’s global vehicle deliveries last year grew 40% from the previous year to 1.31 million EVs. BYD sold more than 1.85 million electric cars, including plug-ins.
Toyota, meanwhile, sold fewer than 25,000 EVs worldwide last year, although in the first eight months of this year, it sold 65,000, mostly outside Japan. Toyota is targeting sales of 1.5 million EVs a year by 2026 and 3.5 million by 2030.
“We are looking toward an electrified future that we hope to build together with our customers,” Kato said.
Catching up is challenging but not impossible, said Joshua Cobb, senior automobiles analyst at BMI.
“Over the short term, we see Chinese EVs from brands such as BYD, SAIC-GM-Wuling and Tesla-branded EVs will continue to gain market share as there is little competition at the moment,” he said.
But, Cobb added, “One thing not to underestimate is the strong brand loyalty in Japan.” He said Japanese consumers may hold off on EV purchases until more domestic models hit the market.
Nissan, an early EV maker among the Japanese with its Leaf going on sale in 2010, is showcasing four EV concept cars.
Among them is the Hyper Tourer minivan concept that Nissan says has advanced technologies like autonomous driving. It runs on high-energy-density solid-state batteries.
Senior Vice President Alfonso Albaisa said Nissan is focusing on virtual reality and other breakthroughs that allow vehicle designers to shorten model development time.
“At Nissan, we have been racing forward with our dramatic digital shift just as other industries, like gaming,” Albaisa said.
Manufacturers also note that EV technology is changing how a vehicle drives.
Batteries and a motor for an EV generally take up less space than a gas combustion engine. That means EVs can have a lower center of gravity while offering more cabin space, making it a nifty powertrain for sportscars, vans, pickups and SUVs.
In Nissan and elsewhere, a key issue for EVs is battery charge time and driving range. While all the world’s major automakers are working to shorten charge time and lengthen cruise time per charge, the U.S. startup Ample has developed a different solution – battery swapping.
Instead of charging the battery in the car, a module containing the battery is taken out and replaced by a fully charged battery at a drive-in facility built especially for the procedure. The swap, done by robots, takes just five minutes.
The approach is already being used by Uber drivers in the San Francisco area. Ample’s battery-swapping arrives in Japan this winter through a partnership with Mitsubishi Fuso, a Daimler group truck company. The swapping is being demonstrated at Mitsubishi Fuso’s booth.
De Souza said another attraction of battery swapping is its greenness. A battery can be charged flexibly, using renewable energy at times of the day with low demand for power, he said.
“We decided what worked really well about gas is that you stop for a few minutes,” said John de Souza, Ample’s president and founder.
