And if there isn't enough lithium to power tens of millions of electric vehicles, it needs to be shared with hybrids. Mr. Pratt said creating millions of hybrid cars would reduce CO2 emissions more effectively than using up lithium to service a smaller number of pure electric vehicles.
In a hypothetical model analyzed by Automotive News, Mr. Pratt started with 100 internal combustion engine vehicles emitting 250g/km of CO2. If there was enough lithium to create 100kWh battery packs, a top-spec Tesla could be built, but the remaining 99 cars still use internal combustion engines, and the average CO2 emissions of 100 cars is 248.5g/km. If that 100kWh is allocated to 90 traditional hybrid cars, leaving only 10 internal combustion engine cars, the average emissions will decrease to 205g/km.
This doesn't mean Toyota isn't interested in electric vehicles. Recently, the company announced plans to launch the bZ3X - a sedan similar in size to the Tesla Model 3 for the Chinese market to "support" the previously launched bZ4X SUV. But Toyota still believes that competitors such as Honda, Cadillac, Volvo... are making a mistake by focusing all their efforts on developing pure electric vehicles.
Toyota provides data proving that if only making electric cars will harm the environment - 2
bZ4X is Toyota's first pure electric car model (Photo: Toyota).
Mr. Pratt said: "A crisis is imminent. Time is on our side. These shortages - not just in battery materials, but also in charging infrastructure - will demonstrate that it is impossible to just do one type of vehicle, and the optimal solution is to combine different types of vehicles."
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