Japan, land of the hybrid car, takes slowly to Evs

Atsushi Ikeda loves his car so much that he founded a club for Tesla owners, but his embrace of an electric vehicle makes him something of an outlier in Japan.

As markets from China to the United States race to put more EVs on their roads, the pedal is nowhere near the metal yet in Japan, where the hybrid still reigns supreme.

Last year, 59,000 new EVs were sold in Japan, a record and a three-fold annual increase, but still less than two percent of sales of all cars in the country in 2022.

It’s a situation that might seem counterintuitive, given Japan’s auto industry -- which employs eight percent of the country’s workforce, and accounts for a quarter of all its exports -- pioneered hybrid and electric cars.

But experts say the popularity of hybrids has actually hindered uptake of EVs, with Japanese automakers in no hurry to abandon existing line-ups.

The scepticism is no secret, and the former chief of Toyota, the world’s top-selling carmaker, regularly questioned the growing focus on electric.

“I think Toyota didn’t want the trend to tilt towards plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles because of their focus on hybrids and also their significant investment,” said Kenichiro Wada, president of the Japan Electrification Research Institute, who helped develop early EVs at Mitsubishi Motors in the 2000s. He compared the company to a top-ranking sumo wrestler, eager to “maintain the status quo for as long as possible”.

When Ikeda went looking for a car that was “affordable, safe, with no pollutants”, he quickly turned to Tesla.

“I like high-performance cars,” he told AFP, describing the few Japanese options on the market when he bought in 2016 as small and unattractive.

There are now government incentives for people to go electric, but Ikeda says “charging infrastructure is too weak in Japan”, blaming “heavy regulations”.

The situation in Japan is increasingly inconsistent with priorities elsewhere.

EVs made up 20 percent of new cars sold in China last year, around 15 percent in western Europe and 5.3 percent in the United States, according to a PwC study.

Ironically, EVs have a long history in Japan, with Mitsubishi Motors unveiling its i-MiEV in 2009, and Nissan its Leaf model a year later.

At the time though, the models were expensive because of their batteries and considered impractical given the lack of a nationwide charging network.

Hybrids looked like a better bet, and have proved enduringly popular, making up more than 40 percent of sales in Japan last year.

Government and industry efforts have also been sidetracked by a drive to develop hydrogen-powered vehicles -- a sector that has grown much slower than electric.