The world’s biggest carmaker clings to the view that battery-electric vehicles aren’t necessarily the future. Toyota has been famously slow to adopt all-electric drivetrains, but years ahead of its rivals in hybrids and almost unique in bringing a functioning hydrogen fuel cell car to market. Gill Pratt, its ex-MIT, ex-Pentagon head of research, is in Hiroshima to bend G7 delegations’ ears on the limitations of all-battery cars, which he says a) won’t be that clean in places like India that still burn coal for almost all their electricity and b) need rare earths and metals that will take decades to mine in sufficient quantities for a full transition. He’s right, but that doesn’t make petrol engines any cleaner.
