Akihabara News (Tokyo) — The announcement by Subaru that it will be building Japan’s first dedicated Electric Vehicle (EV) factory cannot disguise the fact that this nation is already far behind in an industrial race which it should be leading.
Also part of Subaru’s announcement is that it will invest a total of ¥250 billion (US$1.9 billion) over five years in EV production, with the aim of having 40% of its new global car sales be electric by 2030.
The automaker’s flagship EV effort appears set to be the Solterra model, an all-electric SUV developed in cooperation with Toyota Motor Corporation.
The EV penetration rate is a mere 1% in Japan, and in recent years it is barely growing at all.
Meanwhile, in China, about 3.4 million EVs were sold last year, and by December 2021 they were accounting for about 20% of all new car sales.
The top five EV automakers by global sales in 2021 were Tesla, Volkswagen, BYD, General Motors, and Stellantis–in other words, not a single one is a Japanese company.
This is quite a fall from grace for a nation that has been known for decades as an automotive powerhouse, and which itself led the hybrid revolution a short decade or two ago.
Rather than anticipating the direction of a global automotive market that it used to lead, Japanese industrial leaders, led by Toyota President Akio Toyoda, stubbornly refused for many years to accept that the EV era was arriving, and now they find themselves playing catch-up.
It remains to be seen if they still have the time and resources to return the forefront of global auto-making, or if the sun is setting on this vital dimension of Japanese industrial leadership as well.
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