Polestar: Why Toyota is plain wrong on hybrids and electric cars

Polestar's head of sustainability, Fredrika Klarén, has fired back at Toyota's public questioning of an all-electric future, with the executive saying the Japanese giant should stop focusing on hybrid technology and shift its resources into producing more electric vehicles.

It follows Toyota chief Akio Toyoda's comments to media late last year in which he cast doubt on an EV-only future, and said the "silent majority" of car companies executives agreed with him.

“People involved in the auto industry are largely a silent majority,” he told reporters in Thailand.

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“That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it’s the trend so they can’t speak out loudly. The right answer is still unclear, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to just one option.

"I believe we need to be realistic about when society will be able to fully adopt Battery Electric Vehicles and when our infrastructure can support them at scale. Because just like the fully autonomous cars that we were all supposed to be driving by now, I think BEVs are just going to take longer to become mainstream than the media would like us to believe. And frankly, BEVs are not the only way to achieve the world's carbon neutrality goals."

Toyota has been a pioneer in hybrid powertrains, and has invested in plug-in hybrid technology. It has also announced big plans to electrify its line-up in the future. But Polestar's Klarén told CarsGuide that, by continuing to invest in ICE technology, the brand was missing an opportunity to go all-in on electric vehicles.

"To me, you're still putting gasoline in the car, so, so don't focus on that technology at all," she said. 

"Because if you keep focusing, if you keep having that in your business plan, you are not gonna be able to level up in the way that you need to do in terms of this new technology.

"Leaders are having to walk a very difficult walk. Unfortunately there are so many interests in this, so leaders have to be really, really bold now, now more than ever. That is what is needed for."

Polestar is an EV-only company, having launched the Polestar 2 and unveiled the next model in its family, the Polestar 3 SUV. Klarén says a world not dominated by electric vehicles post 2030 would constitute an irreversible failure in the fight against climate change.

Like Tesla, Polestar is an EV-only company.

"We cannot continue using fossil fuels," she said in response to Mr Toyoda's comments. "So from our standpoint...we've said that we need to be climate neutral by 2040 as company, and we need to halve emissions by 2030. 

"And that's not what we (say we need to) do. That is what the climate scientists are telling us that we need to do as companies. All companies need to have a strategy to enable us to combat climate change in time. 

"So that's kind of our predicament here. And we know that there is no place for non-EVs on a large scale after 2030 in that scenario. It just cannot be calculated to work.

"But OEMs are locked into their business plans. They plan for a transition. And I understand that. But the thing is that the time plan is wrong and it's not in line with climate scientists.

"So what we need to do is tear up those business plans and make new ones and secure all of the money that we are putting into just... making that legacy technology more efficient, and all of the incentives that are supporting ICE cars and the fossil-fuel industry, and put it into clean technology and electric vehicles so that we can start scaling up."