Carmaker blazing its own trail as rivals miss out on hybrid gold rush.

Speaking to Toyota employees last month, Akio Toyoda sounded slightly bruised.

The chairman of the world’s biggest car maker described how he had been “beaten up” by critics for refusing to bet all his company’s chips on electric vehicles (EVs).

Instead, he has doggedly championed a so-called multi-pathway approach that spans EVs, hybrids and even hydrogen-powered cars. The Telegraph has the story.

The decision has infuriated climate activists who once praised Toyota for its eco-friendly Prius hatchback, while even industry insiders have wondered whether the company is making a strategic blunder.

“It’s really hard to fight alone,” Toyoda said to staff, according to a translation of his January remarks.

But now the industrialist’s rivals are looking on in envy, as a slowdown in EV sales has left his company in pole position to capitalise on a surge in demand for hybrids.

Toyota sold 10.3 million cars in 2023, an increase of 7.7pc compared to a year earlier.

The total included a combined 3.5 million hybrids and plug-in hybrids – a year-on-year increase of 32pc – but only 104,000 EVs.

For the year to the end of March, the Japanese giant is now forecasting profits of 4.5 trillion yen (£24bn), up from 2.5 trillion yen previously.

Yoichi Miyazaki, executive vice president at Toyota, said hybrids were even selling strongly in China – the world’s biggest market and producer of EVs.

“As a realistic solution, hybrids are still favoured by our customers,” he told reporters.

Meanwhile, rival manufacturers that have driven further ahead with EVs are now pumping the brakes, with Ford, Volkswagen and General Motors among those scaling back production.

After successfully targeting early adopters, they are finding the mass market much tougher to crack – with many consumers still put off by high prices and worries about charging infrastructure.

“EVs have soaked up all of the early adopter and wealthy demand,” explains Andrew Bergbaum, an automotive expert at consultancy AlixPartners.

“But the costs still haven’t come down to the point where they’ve reached the mass market prices you see with internal combustion engine (ICE) cars.

“Hybrids are also considerably cheaper [than EVs], because the batteries in them are so much smaller.

“Once you couple that with range anxiety and concerns about EV resale values, it’s a fairly understandable market phenomenon.”

Read the full story here.