You know how you and yours sometimes have one of *those* years? those years where things just don’t work out as planned, when it seems like the universe has decided that the gloves are off and they will be for this arbitrary length of time that we have created to give our lives some sense? From this seat (about 6,000 miles away), Toyota seems to be having one of those.
Shoichiro Toyoda, son of the man who took his father’s Loom Works business into a new, rather more lucrative company tragically passed at the beginning of the year. This more of less coincided with the announcement that Akio Toyoda is leaving the top position of the company that…almost carries its family name. This sent shivers across enthusiasts and made the stock price of the company tank for a bit. It seems not only people with gasoline in their veins remember the sorry state of Toyota vehicles before he came along. The edict of “no boring cars” has resulted in things like the GT/GR 86, The Land-Rover destroying GR Yaris, and the BMW Z4 carrying a supra badge. Not to mention essentially removing the collective memory of the Sudden Unintended Acceleration problems that they faced in the early 2010s.
Nowadays people’s complaints about Toyota are rather more social in nature. The vehicles may not be boring, but Toyota has been noticeably reticent to join with the current wave of BEV vehicles, instead focusing on Hybrids and FCEVs as a short/medium and long-term bets while at the same time working on things like solid state batteries just in case those FCEVs don’t launch. Naturally, this has brought the ire of everyone who thinks there is only one way forward for mass electrification.
Further conversation on this topic is sure to be incredibly well measured, civil, and reasonable, so we’re just going to leave it at that and go back to the source of concern, the man who took Toyota out of the sea of beige going away.
It’s not guaranteed they will go down the drain. Toyoda’s replacement, Koji Sato, has spent the recent past of his career in Both Lexus and Gazoo Racing. But he no longer has to please Toyoda. At least, not beyond how much you have to please a chairman of the board. They spend quite a lot of time away from operations. But failure to maintain Toyota in its relatively secure and comfy position could indeed bring great shame to the board…and be rewarded accordingly.
Akio Toyoda’s stewardship brought Toyota back from irrelevance in the face of superior competitors that would be every bit as reliable as their vehicles (if their warranties are anything to go by) and made potential customers of people who would like something apart from “I want my car to be practically indestructible”. If Sato can maintain this course they should be able to make it out through the biggest transition the automotive industry has seen in a while.
Especially if they make that “Holy Grail” Solid State Battery work.
