Toyota Executive Calls Market for Electric Vehicles Not Mature Enough, Georgia Has Almost 4,000 Charging Stations

The United States, including Georgia, isn’t ready to fully adopt electric vehicles (EVs), and hybrids continue to be a better alternative for the near term, a high-ranking Toyota executive told the  Wall Street Journal.

High EV prices and a small charging infrastructure are holding the market back, Jack Hollis, executive vice president of sales at Toyota Motor North America said during “a virtual event with journalists,” the Journal reported in its news story.

“As much as you want to talk about EVs, the marketplace isn’t mature enough,” Hollis said.

Hollis also referred to increasingly more expensive raw materials, including lithium, cobalt and other crucial battery inputs that EVs require, which necessarily will lead to even more expensive all-electric vehicles. The current market for EVs is attracting only early adopters to embrace battery-powered vehicles.

“I don’t think the market is ready for what the rhetoric is saying,” Hollis said.

Hollis’ observations followed Toyota’s introduction last year of three EVs for the U.S. market and the automaker’s announcement that Toyota and Lexus models worldwide “will have an electrified option” by 2025.

Hollis isn’t alone in his observations about a weak EV market. Consumer Reports noted last month that buyers are interested in EVs but that most six in 10 surveyed are holding back because of too few charging stations and other problems. The Consumer Reports survey, based on 8,027 interviews, also found that more than half cited EVs’ limited travel range on a single charge as a reason they decided against an EV purchase.

Current electric vehicles can travel an average of 250 miles on a single charge, according to University of California Davis EV Research Center.

There are 3,934 EV charging stations in Georgia, according to PlugShare.com…. (Excerpt from The Star News Network)