Its amazing that even just here on this blog, we are fortunate enough to have the profound thoughts of so many who know infinitely more about road transport and how to power it than mere Toyota, for instance:

'While Japan was behind China in car output, the Japanese Toyota was the best-selling automotive brand worldwide in 2021, holding some 10.5 percent of the global market. It was followed by Germany-based Volkswagen, which held 6.4 percent of the market.'
https://translate.google.ch/?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl=en&text=larrons%0A&op=translate

As further proof that Toyota has just got lucky, VW were level pegging with Toyota until deciding that now was the time to go all in on big battery BEVs

The initial heavy lifting in setting up supply chains for electric vehicles was done by Toyota with the Prius, which enabled others to buy components in heavier duty versions after the manufacturing capability has already been put in place to serve Toyota.

But what do they know about cars?
Or the guy running it, the physicist who was head of the team which created the Prius.

No doubt many here could have done better in an afternoon in their workshop.

@Davemart,

I am not sure why you want to defend Toyota. In a number of ways, they seem to be hopelessly out of date. The main things I have against them is that they were the one company that contributed the most money to the political campaigns of the US politicians that conspired to keep Trump in power and overthrow our democracy. They back pedaled on this after it became public knowledge and a number of their customers declared they would never again buy another Toyota. But then they lobbied the US Congress to try to prevent California and other states form banning the sell of light duty vehicles with iC engines after 2035 even though Ford, GM, and a number of other major manufacturers stated that they would cease selling vehicles with IC engines in the whole country by 2035 or sooner. In an article above, Audi just announced that they would quit making IC powered vehicles world wide by 2033. Meanwhile, someone in the past year or so attached a presentation that showed that Toyota was planning to sell non-hybrid IC powered vehicles until 2050 and only after 2050 would all of their vehicles be at least hybrid. You can not get to zero emissions by cutting the emissions by 20%.

Now if you want to ask me if I think that I am smarter than the engineers at Toyota, I would estimate that I am smarter that about 98% of them and while I might not know all of the minutia of manufacturing upholstery, etc, I do have a fair knowledge of IC engines, especially diesel engines, along with automotive manufacturing technology, batteries, electric motors, etc. I know enough about engines to know that Toyota could do better with the design of the engine in the above article. A smaller turbo-charged engine would be lighter, produce more power, and get better mileage. If you make an apples to apples comparison of mileage of different vehicles, you will find that Toyota comes out worse than GM or Ford. Why is that if the Toyota engineers are so smart?

@yoatmon

I agree that a good part of the problem is with the Japanese management style and society in general. It is very top down and the younger engineers do not get to make independent decisions and try new ideas. This does not lead to good engineering.

When, I was in my mid-20s, I worked for MIT Instrumentation Lab (now Draper Lab) on the Apollo project (Yea, I am old now). MIT was the prime contractor for the guidance system and I ran the lunar lander simulator. I remember going down to Houston and having a seat around a large boat shaped table when they they went around the table asking MIT are you ready, Grumman are you ready, General Dynamics are you ready, etc. Also, a few years later, I worked on a Navy project that required some robotics expertise. I had an idea to automate the task that was contrary to what they expected. The Navy project manager had a consultant that questioned my engineering judgement. After the meeting, my supervisor asked if I thought my idea would work and when I said yes, he said let's do it your way. When it worked just fine, the Navy project manager looked really pleased as I do think that he really liked the consultant that much. A few years later, I had a supervisor while working on a project to automate the loading of automotive machining lines. He told to concentrate on the engineering and he would run management interference for me.

This is what is missing with Toyota's management style and thus engineering.

@ sd:
Our suspicions have now undoubtedly been confirmed from our adversary.