Japan’s car makers have always seemingly been at the cutting edge of automotive design and technology.
Except, that is, with electric cars. Stand at the side of the streets of Tokyo, the world’s largest city, and you would do well to spot an electric car. I didn’t knowingly see one in the best part of a week there, for the recent Japan Mobility Show.
But that shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise: from 2016 to 2021, EV sales accounted for between 0.4% and 0.6% of the entire Japanese market, which averaged more than five million vehicle sales a year during that period, according to Jato Dynamics data.
EV sales increased to 1.7% in 2022 and 2.3% this year, to the end of September, but growth is minuscule and there isn’t any obvious charging network to support electric mobility either.
Japan wonders why it should be going electric just because the rest of the world is, given the very different energy circumstances it finds itself in. It simply wants to use less fuel – regardless of where it comes from. Using as little energy as possible in Japan is so important that some companies won’t turn the air conditioning on in buildings until the outside temperature reaches 28deg C.
This shows the appeal to Japan of hybrids and their real-world efficiency gains – without using significantly more raw materials or being meaningfully more energy-intensive to manufacture – and hydrogen, with its potential as a power source not just for cars but also the country as a whole.
“In Japan, most of the energy we consume is imported in one form or another,” says Mazda chief financial officer Jeff Guyton. “Japan has been more keen to look at a total carbon life cycle than a lot of other countries.
“The economics of power generation in Japan means it is agnostic to all of that. Hydrogen and, I would argue, hybrids are about using less energy, period, or being more flexible about energy sources.
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