Thats all accurate and thats kind of the problem.
For one they had such a large lead in the prius and pissed it away.
The same problems you see for them as they must have seen is that they couldnt scale EVs at the numbers they needed and that is exactly the type of corporate stubbornness that im highlighting. They probably thought they could out leverage the entire global market and have suffered at least a decade of setback in my estimation from that poor decision making. Even the Prius overall was lacking development and has to this day a horrible image. Now that literally everyone is onboard we can see how little investment they put into even the exterior design of the vehicle. For a whole decade people thought EVs were just ugly.
The challenge of being this large and solvent is actually a blessing in terms of scale and rollout. An opportunity they failed to capitalize on.
A challenge that new comers are now solving for and actually building out what will be highly dominant charging networks.
This radical shift in fleet announcements thats totally un-toyota with all these half baked mockups and concept cars is a an act of desperation. Dont be fooled.
I dont know if you remember but T has been blowing smoke about fuel cells, hydrogen and all sorts of vaporware for the last ten years as well now this comes out of the blue.
Now wether you think the Toyota brand can elevate their image to the level of full tech forward EV fleet is another topic (they cant), which is why i think the only smart move they have made is the Lexus fleet. That is what will put them into the price / profitability range to produce such vehicles in the first place and not radically go upmarket with T until EV prices are more in line with that brand. But at the same time its not like they dont have any economy EV competitors to the corolla and the Prius was never very cheap. Im also well aware of the lack of profitability from Tesla for example, but in this modern landscape of literally free money, its a terrible long term business strategy to ignore the largest market shift in vehicles since i dont even know when. The worlds largest automaker failed to grasp this and its crazy to think that is even possible to do with how much we know Gov intervention is going to accelerate things. Just truly dragging their feet.
Not saying that our domestic manuf are any better, they are literal zombie corps at this point (GM).
Also keep in mind i like Land Cruisers, there is no other Toyota i would ever even be in the market for.
I dont even like the brand in general, i like the reliability aspect. I am not in the market for anything T and I dont see any compelling reason to stick to Lexus with EVs.
Thats exactly the type of thing a mega corp could have done to retain me, have a massive infrastructure plan.
Im not an Elon fan but at least he knows what hes doing. You cant argue against that.
Toyota is very very behind which should be a shock to anyone paying attention.
