Some of the world’s leading automotive markets have already committed to – and in some cases, legislated – a hard timeline for the adoption of battery-electric vehicles (BEV). Led by those who currently sell a significant majority of their products in these markets, a number of manufacturers have already introduced BEVs into their model line-ups and committed to BEV-only line-ups within similar time frames. These decisions are entirely logical, as they tend to be smaller manufacturers, producing vehicles in a limited number of factories, unable to sustain the costs of developing and building both ICE and BEVs. In contrast, the heads of two of the largest vehicle manufacturers have cautioned against the timeline and commitment to BEVs as the only solution to carbon reduction.
Akio Toyoda of Toyota frequently reminds us that “carbon is the real enemy, not a particular powertrain” and says: “We
