Clerics of Climate Change Attack the Truth

Akio Toyoda is chairman of Toyota. Recently he has come under attack for supporting the truth about EVs. As the WSJ reports, it’s a shame he’s the only auto leader with the courage to do it.

It wasn’t long ago that Toyota was all the rage with the climate change left. Now even questioning the climate lobby’s electric-vehicle orthodoxy can lead to a truckload of troubles, especially with government pension funds and progressive investors.

A Truckload of Heresies

What heresies did the Toyota chairman lay bare? “Toyota’s board isn’t sufficiently independent of management” is the bogus claim.

Toyota discloses its CO2 emissions and has pledged to make all its vehicles carbon neutral by 2050. This should please the climate crowd. Yet progressive investors are seeking to oust Chairman Akio Toyoda and are pushing a resolution at its June 14 shareholder meeting to make the world’s largest auto maker disclose its climate-related lobbying.

According to news reports, California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers) and New York City’s public-worker pension funds have voted against Mr. Toyoda’s re-election. Furthermore, reports the WSJ, the proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis has recommended that shareholders do so as well. Mr. Toyoda deserves the boot, they argue.

Clerics of Climate Change Attack the Truth

• Doubting the West’s hell-bent EV transition.
  Toyoda made news in December, continues the WSJ, when the Chairman Toyoda claimed that a “silent majority” in the auto industry “is questioning whether EVs are really OK as a single option. But they (the silent majority) think it’s the trend, so they can’t speak out loudly.”

• Questioning the goals of battery-powered
  Toyota is promoting its hybrids and plug-in hybrids as alternatives to battery-powered EVs. Plug-in hybrids contain an internal combustion engine that can kick in when the battery runs low, which alleviates range anxiety. They are also cheaper than EVs.

How Long Do You Have?

In a Toyota memo to auto dealers in April, the auto manufacturer explained the challenges to full electrification.

For instance, most public chargers can take anywhere “from 8-30 hours to charge. To meet the federal [zero-emissions vehicle] sales targets, 1.2M public chargers are needed by 2030. That amounts to approximately 400 new chargers per day.”

The U.S., by the way, isn’t close to meeting that goal (WSJ).

Hell Bent on EV Transition

An interesting aside from the WSJ: Toyota is not unionized. It also has a large plant in W. Virginia.

Speaking of which, progressives have attacked Toyota for lobbying against aggressive EV mandates. Toyota backed the Trump Administration’s lawsuit against California’s stringent emissions rules. It also pressed West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin to oppose a $4,500 tax credit bonus for union-made EVs.

As Dennis Prager warns readers at Prager U, “Our energy infrastructure is deteriorating and becoming more vulnerable to blackouts and brownouts. We are increasingly becoming more dependent on our biggest adversaries – Russia and China.”