Does Japan (Toyota) Want to Crush Tesla?

Good thing nobody is noticing the Nissan Leaf:

• National sales
• Affordable prices
• Limited range appears to be doubling soon

Functionally the Leaf looks like the compact 2003 Prius we bought in 2005. Given enough range to reach Nashville with some 'cold weather' spare range, it is a good solution.

Are Leafs sold in Japan?

Bob Wilson

 

Leafs are sold in Japan and elsewhere.

 

To the OP - yes. METI stated that they want to use Japanese workers to export cars. Having a tesla out there, or even a Nissan which builds cars at the market, is a bad thing for a government agency who wants to pay for green techology for japanese jobs. Tesla and Nissan are exisetial threats to the auto export industry japan.

Think of METI kind of like al gore when he did PNGV, but much more effective. The goal of american jobs, trumped green technology for gore, and he excluded Toyota, which might have helped the program. Similarly pngv went diesel because of unrealistic goals (tail pipe pollution didn't mater, price didn't matter), so too the METI program seems to encourage no plug, which ignores the monetary cost of renewable hydrogen.

The real question, other than corruption is why CARB is favoring imported cars over tesla. Clearly they just changed the rules because tesla was able to get through there fast refueling loophole, and added a bigger tax credit for fuel cells while attempting to kill the state tax credit for tesla.

Toyota attempting to kill plug-ins started long before tesla. Think of this blast from the past.
California may soften electric car mandate

Yes Nissan started out predicting the japanese market would be bigger than the US market, toyota had similar predictions.

In 2013, the most recent year, the japanese plug-in market has 1) leaf, 2) outlander phev, then 3) prius phv as the top sellers. The world market had the 1) Leaf 2) volt, prius phv. The US market 1) volt, 2) leaf, 3) Tesla S.

The tsunami increased the the price of electricity in japan, and the japanese government provided tax incentives for hybrids. The extra hybrid incentives have ended, but plug-ins greatly missed expectations in Japan, while hybrids exceeded expectations. Coal imports in Japan increased again in 2013 and will in 2014. Central power + hydrogen from coal may be better for japan, while increasing coal use, than plug-ins. The situation is opposite in the US, as coal use is being reduced each year, and natural gas, solar, and wind are cheap and plentiful.