Toyota has decided to scrap Lexus ES manufacturing in Kentucky and make RAV4 and Land Cruiser BEVs there to avoid Trump tariffs. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota-manufacture-ev-suvs-us-kentucky-plant-2025-09-09/
Just a FYI - I think Toyota was smart in staying out of the BEV race to the bottom. At least here, we're not really ready for EV's - there's still a lot of inconveniences built in; requiring a lot of pre-planning which most Americans don't do.
toyota will do anything they can to keep ev's from gaining traction, there's too much long term investment and now profit in hybrids
Does Toyota control you? I worked for them for many years but still am capable of thinking for myself. I will decide if I want an EV not Toyota. If EV's are the most economical and best choice no one will be able to stop consumers from buying them. Chicago-area Tesla charging stations lined with dead cars in freezing cold: 'A bunch of dead robots out here' | Fox Business It's so cold, Teslas are struggling to charge in Chicago : NPR The current lack of popularity of EV's with consumers has nothing to do with Toyota
Chicago ain't got nothin' on us We've been camping at Seeley Lake Montana some 80 miles to the south - in the summertime on several occasions. It has the notoriety of holding the record low temperature for all of the continental United States at -38°f. So yeah, we know cold. Even so, I saw a Subaru EV this yr - left outdoors in the deep freeze w/out taking precaurions to precondition. It's the same kind of stupidity that allows gassers to run out of gas. Sometimes people only learn by mistakes. Everyone seems to understand around here to plug the block heater in, when it's well below zero. Yet I wouldn't doubt many of them had to learn the hard way. .
ev's were never created to be economical. like hybrids, they are supposed to help reduce our carbon footprint. they are economical for some, and not for others. if gasoline were sold at a price based on real costs, ev's would be more economical than they are. as for best choice, that is in the eye of the buyer, but politicians and corporations would prefer control.
Politicians and Corporations may control people in your neck of the woods - not so much in the area I live in - people buy what best suits their lifestyle and economics here and they are able to determine that by themselves.
Generally the trend has been that technology is expensive first, then changes over to some other country where it can be produced more cheaply. For an example, in today's dollars, TVs used to be in the thousands or tens of thousands. But now you can pick one up for a couple hundred dollars brand new. But we're not talking Magnavox or Sony here, but ones made in Korea and China. But now there's a push from governments to stop the trend, hence tariffs. If it weren't for tariffs we may have cheap EV's here in the USA. I'm not saying that wouldn't put some USA companies out of business. This has made cars slightly more expensive than they were for the past few decades, both used and new. There are other factors as well, not just tariffs, but it is what it is. On the other hand things that used to be cheaper are now a lot now expensive. Housing and property has more than doubled in the past few decades when adjusted for inflation. People but what they can afford and what works best, yes. But the price of things change and so therefore so do consumer preferences. This is why you now have people who have the latest iPhone and a 50" TV but no ambition to buy a house.
i saw my first flat screen at a now defunct electronics chain, 'tweeter etc' Tweeter_(store) it was 35-40" and $15,000.
It really does depend on how much you drive and the cost of electricity vs gas. For us, driving the PHEV prius, its way more economical. If we had a PHEV Rav4, that would be a different story because of the base cost of the vehicle. Same goes for a full BEV, for our second car anyway. I only drive to work 3 times a week, and its not worth getting an EV for me. But it is worth it for my wife who drives further, 5x a week, for work, given the price of gas where we live in canada vs the price of electricity. Significantly cheaper for electricity, and it was an even better deal when gas as nearly 2$ a litre right after the pandemic. And with the carbon tax when gas was $1.60 a litre it was still worth it (since we got the tax rebate). Without the rebate, its a bit less worth it for us, as the rebate represented 2 car payments a year. But with tax removed gas went down to $1.20 for a while, which also made it less worth it. But we're back up to close to $1.50 now, so increasingly more worth it - yet again! Like you said, gas is subsidized and it should be more expensive so it would be more economical to go EV (with good home charging rates, never with public charging rates those are high). EVs have really high depreciation though, so used EVs are a great deal. A hyundai ioniq 5 after 2-3 years loses half its value. 30k cad vs 60k cad, you get the used car and you save massive amounts of money. IDK that i'd trust a hyundai anything to go 10-15 years without a big repair, so saving 50% for a 3 year old model, and drive that for 5 years, seems like a good deal to me. That might be our next vehicle if the toyota C-HR EV is too expensive for us.
