How Tesla CEO Elon Musk Reacted To Toyota's Views On Electrification

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday responded to Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp‘s TM views on electrification.

What Happened: “Sigh,” Musk wrote in response to the Toyota Chairman’s forecasts for EVs.

At a lecture on Toyota’s production system from earlier this month, Akio Toyoda said that he sees battery electric vehicles securing no more than 30% of the global automotive market share, leaving the majority to other fuel technologies including hybrids, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and conventional combustion engine vehicles.

"The important thing is not to convert to BEV or FCEV. The enemy is CO2. So, let's all think about reducing CO2 right away," Toyoda said.

The chairman is further of the opinion that engine cars will remain. "That's why Toyota Motor Corporation, which is competing all over the world, has a full lineup of multi-pathway products."

This is contrary to Tesla’s product portfolio which involves only battery electric vehicles. In a blog post dating back to 2013, Musk described the mission at Tesla as creating mass-market electric cars. In December, Musk said that he sees electric cars replacing combustion cars as cars replaced horses at the start of the 1900s.

“We will look back upon combustion engine cars with the same quaint disregard that we currently possess regarding steam engines,” Musk said in another post last year.

The CEO is also critical of hydrogen as a source of energy to power cars, slamming it as a ‘dumb way to store chemical energy.’

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