The Toyota Tesla partnership ended Saturday when Toyota Motor Corp announced it has sold its last Tesla shares at the end of 2016. This brings to an end a partnership designed to develop electric vehicles and various components for them. Toyota had paid $50 for a stake of 3.15% in the California-based company.
The partnership did make some progress up to 2012. A new electric car had been developed based on Toyota’s RAV4 SUV, using motors and batteries developed by Tesla. The partnership sold around 2,500 of these electrically-powered SUVs in and around California. However, there have been difficulties with relative corporate policies and little progress had been made since then. It is a shame, because the vehicle had looked promising.
It was announced Saturday by spokesman Ryo Sakai, that Toyota had initially sold down some of its shares in 2014, and completed the sale of the rest at the end of last year. The partnership had failed to make any new developments since the initial share sale, carried out as the result of an investment review. The final shares were sold because of a lack of progress since then.
Toyota is Japan’s largest car manufacturer, and in November its president was appointed leader of a new electric car division. Toyota had historically been slow to take up electric car technology, but this development indicated a change of direction with regard to the technology. Rather than continue jointly with Toyota Tesla partnership, Toyota will now pursue its own goals in this field.
Its new electric vehicle department will develop its own strategy to meet increasingly tight global emissions regulations in its own way. Toyota will continue to develop and market electric cars to meet an expanding market for this type of vehicle. Environmental regulations with regard to emissions are becoming stricter worldwide, particularly in the US, China and Europe.
Along with improved mileage figures, this has resulted in intensified competition and a race to develop commercially viable modern-generation electric cars and hybrids.
Toyota has historically focused more on fuel cell technology than battery power. Fuel cells are based on the electrochemical reaction of hydrogen with oxygen. This produces electricity which powers the car – and emits only water from the exhaust pipe! Toyota’s first fuel cell vehicle, the Mirai, was unveiled at the 2014 Los Angeles Auto show.
However, the project was curtailed due to a lack of hydrogen refueling stations. It is easier to set up electrical recharging stations for fully battery powered cars. The Toyota Tesla partnership is now over, and Toyota is focusing on electric cars rather than fuel cells.
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