Why Akio Toyoda Might Just Be Right & the Prius Deserves an Apology

By now, you’ve likely heard Akio Toyoda’s rather unfashionable claim: hybrid vehicles – those unassuming, humming half-petrol, half-electric workhorses – might actually be less polluting than fully electric vehicles. Shocking? Only if you’ve not been paying attention. Let me explain, in the style of someone who has spent more time in a garage than in a boardroom.

Akio has made a somewhat bold claim as well. According to Toyota maths, EVs pollute three times more than a hybrid so the carbon footprint for nine million EVs is equivalent to twenty-seven million hybrids. And don’t mention the disruption, chaos, and loss of jobs that would follow.

Now, I’m not against EVs. There is a roll for them in the future of transportation. And they can be rather clever. They are quiet as well and they accelerate with a sort of undignified glee. But, as Toyoda-san rightly points out, the world doesn’t run on good intentions and lithium alone. The reality is messier, and Akio Toyoda, you know the great grandson of the creator of Toyota, believes with a passion that only 30% of the world’s vehicle fleet can ever be EVs.

Here’s the thing: while EVs produce zero tailpipe emissions (mainly because they don’t have tailpipes), they come with baggage. Big batteries, which require mining rare earth materials, shipping them across continents, and assembling them with carbon-intensive methods. By the time you’ve driven your brand-new EV out of the showroom, you may have already ‘spent’ more CO₂ than a hybrid will in its first five years.

Hybrids, like Toyota’s Prius – long mocked and misunderstood – are a marvel of efficiency. They sip fuel, regenerate electricity while braking (very clever), and they don’t demand a nationwide infrastructure overhaul just to function. You fill it up like a regular car and drive it like an EV in town. It’s the best of both worlds, without the smugness.

Akio Toyoda’s point, which publications like Engine Patrol and Automology have echoed, isn’t that EVs are bad. It’s that EVs alone are a simplistic and impractical mantra, especially in places where electricity still comes from coal or where a charging network is as rare as a quiet Ferrari.

So yes, the hybrid is old tech. But old tech that works. Rather like a good wristwatch or a well-made toaster. And in a world desperate for carbon reduction now – not later – it may be the unsung hero we need.

Now pop out and apologise to your Prius. It was right all along.