Even Toyota Knows The End Of Internal Combustion Is Near

Every company, whether it makes gadgets or home entertainment or software, wants its own technology to win. But it also has to go where the market is going. I'd say that's even tougher in the automotive world these days as global regulations push car companies toward a zero-emission future.

The world's largest automaker by production and sales volume, Toyota, gets this too. And even as it's been behind the curve on purely electric vehicles, its success with hybrids has it plotting the end of pure internal combustion.

Toyota's chief scientist admitted the company is discussing the end date for its non-electrified cars in America, he told Bloomberg this week.

“In the U.S., there is a decision being made now—and I’m not a part of it—as to whether to stop making pure ICE for the U.S. market,” Gill Pratt, Toyota’s chief scientist, told the outlet in an interview. “Just the fact that we’re thinking of that means that, OK, it must be close.”

That may come as a surprise to anyone who's passionate about Toyota's (admittedly very good) internal combustion engines, like the rowdy little three-cylinder in the GR Corolla or the almost-the-last-of-its-kind naturally aspirated 5.0-liter V8 in the Lexus IS 500 F Sport. But if you pay attention to Toyota's sales, you might realize this is the way things have been going for a while. 

Toyota's track record with EVs hasn't been all that great. Its three electric offerings in the U.S. (if we count the related Subaru Solterra as well) are pretty outclassed in range, charging time and overall tech by competitors from the U.S., South Korea and Europe—to say nothing of the Chinese automakers that are leading the way.

But those electric models are still selling quite well, and especially, so are Toyota's hybrid models. Toyota pioneered hybrid tech and now has the biggest lineup of electrified cars of any automaker. In September, nearly half of its U.S. sales were EVs or hybrids. It's moved the ubiquitous Camry to an all-hybrid setup, meaning one of the few four-door sedans to still sell in any meaningful volume in America is now an electrified car. 

For Toyota, that's the future. Not purely ICE vehicles. Company officials have hinted at times that the eventual plan is an all-hybrid-or-electric future in America, but this is one of the clearest admissions yet as to where things are going. 

Pratt has been with Toyota for almost a decade now and is also the CEO of the Toyota Research Institute. Before that, he held leadership roles at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and MIT. This is all to say that he's a smart guy and when he talks about climate matters, he knows what he's talking about. In that Bloomberg interview, he admits to being “thoroughly depressed” by the growing amount of CO2 emissions driven by human activity. “If you’re not scared by this curve, then you’re not seeing it right,” he said.

At the same time, Pratt has been a vocal proponent of Toyota's own skeptical approach to pure electrification as the future of cars. The automaker has instead argued for a "multi-pathway" approach with many different automotive powertrains depending on customer needs, whether those are hybrids, hydrogen vehicles or pure EVs. (It's also worth noting that, again, any company wants its technology to win. And two out of those three things have been driven by Toyota itself.) 

There are two ways to look at that approach. The more critical one is that hydrogen power for passenger cars really isn't panning out so far and that hybrid vehicles, while much cleaner and more fuel-efficient than pure ICE ones, still generate carbon emissions, unlike EVs. But the other, perhaps more pragmatic way to look at it is that anything that takes pure ICE off the road is progress and that it's easier to get people into hybrids—for now, anyway—than it is to shift the entire market in a fully electric direction. Just this past week, Toyota said it would join other automakers in pushing back EV production in the U.S. amid concerns over uneven demand. 

“What I’m trying to emphasize in my talks now is please, please, please, we all want the same thing, but let’s stop the wishful thinking,” Pratt said in that interview. “Let’s think about what really is going to occur, what human nature is like, what politics is like, the capital that folks don’t have to change their cars, and let’s find a way that accepts the reality of all those things, and let’s change what we actually can change.”

But I would say that no matter how you want to think of the evolution of car technology, the world's biggest automaker admitting that pure ICE has some kind of end date is a very big deal. In the near future, every Toyota for sale in the U.S. could be a hybrid, an EV or perhaps a hydrogen car. And that speaks volumes about where everything is going.