Archives

Don't blame GM, Toyota exec says. (http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061220/BUSINESS01/612200410/1014)

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/GM_EV-11.jpgMark Phelan - Detroit Free Press - Dec. 20, 2006

GM got a raw deal – EV1 was pulled from the market simply due to a lack of sales, not corporate malficience says Toyota.

It's the kind of thing you hear over dinner every week in Detroit, but it comes as a surprise when a top executive with Toyota leans across the table to make the point.

"The movie 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' was terribly one-sided," Ernest Bastien, Toyota Motor Sales vice president for vehicle operations, said intensely. "It was not balanced at all."

We were talking in Charlotte, N.C., a couple of weeks ago. I was there to drive Toyota's new 2007 Tundra pickup, and the change in topic was completely unexpected.

If it's not surprising enough to hear Toyota defending GM, try this on for size: The film's director pretty much agrees.

"We let Toyota off the hook for how they subverted the program" to sell electric cars because GM had a higher profile, director Chris Paine told me over the phone Sunday.

The automakers, of course, don't think they subverted anything.

GM's Saturn EV1 electric car and Toyota's RAV4-EV electric SUV failed for the same reason -- customers didn't want them - said Bastien, who was point man for Toyota's short-lived effort to sell the RAV4-EV in California.

GM delivered about 800 EV1s to customers from 1996 through 2000, while Toyota delivered 342 RAV4-EVs in 2002-03.

The film, which suggested GM sabotaged a promising technology that could reduce fuel consumption and pollution, caused a furor when it was released earlier this year.

The movie also intentionally ignored Toyota's experience to make its case, Bastien said.

"We shared all our experience with the RAV4-EV," but the filmmakers intentionally omitted it, he said.

He said the movie's suggestion that GM "chose not to make money on a car people wanted to buy in California" is ridiculous.

"They spent a huge amount of money advertising that car in California," Bastien said. "People wouldn't buy them."

Toyota did everything it could to attract buyers to the RAV4-EV, too. It subsidized the price, so customers paid $279 a month - the same price as the company's hit Prius hybrid. The price included an expensive home charging station.

Toyota used the same savvy Internet-intensive marketing model that fueled the Prius craze. It even gave its dealers a sweetheart deal so they could make twice as much selling a RAV4-EV as a Prius.

To no avail. Toyota sold about 300 RAV4-EVs in 2002, compared with 20,119 Priuses. Buyers waited in line for the hybrid. They avoided the electric car like it was a downed power line and Toyota, like GM, pulled the plug on the project.

"Customers are not willing to compromise on things they need," Bastien said. "They need cruising range. They don't want to worry about running out of fuel, and they don't want to wait five hours to recharge. The movie didn't give any consideration to that fact."

Filmmaker Paine bought a RAV4-EV, but he's not buying Toyota's explanation.

"I don't agree that they made a good-faith effort to sell the car," he said. "Their priority was the Prius. The EV1 and RAV4-EV were never properly marketed.

"Toyota was no better than GM."

Which brings us back to the original question: Why was the movie so much harder on GM?
It made a better target.

"GM handled it so poorly," Paine said.

His crew filmed protesters outside Toyota's offices, but the company's security guards came out and gave them bottled water and Toyota key chains.

GM, Paine said, turned the water sprinklers on protesters. GM insists they were timed sprinklers, and the protesters just happened to be there at the wrong moment.

Whatever the case, the GM footage was more dramatic, entertaining video. It made it into the movie. Toyota wound up on the cutting-room floor."I don't want to say that we picked on GM," Paine said. "The EV1 was the iconic electric vehicle. That's why we focused on GM."

Let me translate that: GM ended up in the crosshairs because it invested the most time and effort into its electric vehicle. The futuristic EV1 was designed from the start to be a revolution. It was the poster child for electric vehicles. The sedate RAV4-EV looked like just another small SUV.

GM declined to comment.

The nail that sticks up will be hammered down, as they say. GM was the nail. "Who Killed the Electric Car?" was the hammer.

And Ernest Bastien deserves credit for sticking up for the truth, regardless of hammers.

Hi All:

___And more interesting still … This rebuttal was posted just a few hours after the Detroit Free Press article went up.

Plug In America, a non-profit organization advocating for plug-in vehicles, takes great exception to Mark Phelan’s one-sided column on EVs. While Mr. Phelan interviewed members of Plug In America (PIA) for his column, none of the information we gave him was included in his column. He essentially gave Toyota a free ride with no rebuttal.

PIA’s Mike Kane had authored a white paper contrasting Toyota’s marketing campaign for the RAV4 EV with the Prius. That paper was forwarded to Mr. Phelan and he was told that it provided a strong counter to Toyota’s claim that both vehicles received similar marketing help. Mr. Phelan stated in a phone call this morning that he did not have time to read it before publishing his column. He further stated that he did not have time to incorporate our verbal response in his column. In a phone interview last week, Paul Scott of PIA provided Mr. Phelan with anecdotal evidence of his efforts to buy the Toyota EV in 2002. This evidence is backed up by dozens of other prospective buyers of the RAV4 EV that could easily be verified, yet none of this evidence was presented to counter Toyota’s Ernest Bastian.

Phelan states that GM delivered about 800 EV1s while Toyota delivered 342 RAV4 EVs without mentioning that those numbers represented 100% of the vehicles made available for retail lease or purchase. Scott was very specific in countering this common media contention as it is constantly brought up in articles favorable to GM and Toyota as evidence that, even though they tried, GM and Toyota couldn’t sell any more than this paltry number of vehicles. When a carmaker sells or leases 100% of the vehicles offered, and there are waiting lists of thousands of people who are clamoring for more, it is disingenuous to the extreme to claim this program as a failure. Upon further examination, we believe Mr. Phelan would find that the total number of EVs offered by GM and Toyota are not based on what the market would bear, but are notably similar to the minimum number of cars required to be made available by the CARB mandate.

Phelan states that Toyota “did everything it could to attract buyers to the RAV4-EV”. This is patently false! If Phelan had taken the time to read Mr. Kane’s paper, he would know that there was a significant difference in how Toyota marketed the Prius from how it marketed the EV. In fact, Toyota regularly promotes the Prius by denigrating the RAV4 EV with the marketing tagline, "you don't have to plug it in". Those who did hear of the RAV4 EV and tried to get one found that only a few dealers even carried them, and several of those weren't enthusiastic about it, trying to convert customers to other Toyota products. None of this suggests dealers who were given “a sweetheart deal so they could make twice as much selling a RAV4-EV as a Prius”. Most importantly, it should never have been an either/or scenario; there is indeed a market for both.

He further states "Toyota… subsidized the price, so customers paid $279 a month". This, too, is patently false. The list price of the RAV4-EV was $42,500 vs. $21,000 for the Prius. Three-year leases were generally well over $570 per month.

Phelan also says that "Toyota delivered 342 RAV4-EVs in 2002-03", suggesting that the vehicle was available for two years. In fact, it was only available for 8 months, from February to October of 2002. The only reason that Toyota delivered vehicles in 2003 is that they received more orders than they were capable of fulfilling and buyers at the end of the program had to wait several months to take delivery of their vehicles.
Phelan also says “buyers…avoided the electric car like it was a downed power line”. Clever turn of phrase that, but it happens to be completely false. Hardly anyone knew of the existence of these vehicles, and for those who did hear of them, the process of actually buying one was filled with obstacles most buyers would never put up with, and sales staff who openly attempted to turn buyers away from the EV and toward the Prius. This happened all over California and there are many who will testify to this.

Finally, Bastian is quoted as saying "Customers are not willing to compromise on things they need. They need cruising range. They don't want to worry about running out of fuel, and they don't want to wait five hours to recharge. The movie didn't give any consideration to that fact." In fact, the film itself showed consumers expressing exactly these concerns, though Mr. Phelan conversely doesn't consider that today's batteries provide up to 300 miles of range, and that even the 100-150 miles available then is several times the average commute in the US. EVs have never been represented by their proponents as the cars for everyone- neither is the Hummer, and that's not the point. The case for a product, EVs included, is not about the people who don't want the product, it's about the people that do. The only relevant question is whether there are enough of those people to make a business case. But even that question only matters if the company in question truly wants to be in that business. Toyota has already answered that question with respect to the RAV4 EV program; all that matters now is where they go from here- will they rest on their Prius laurels, or respond to consumers' collective demand for better vehicles that run on cleaner, cheaper, domestic energy and minimize dependence on petroleum? Given that the industry takes its cues from NAIAS in Detroit, we're mere weeks from an answer.

Plug In America respectfully asks that the Detroit Free Press correct the many inaccuracies in the Phelan column at the earliest opportunity.

Sincerely,

Paul Scott
Mike Kane
Plug In America
___Good Luck

___Wayne

Heh. I've written Mark Phelan a few times. Gotten me in the paper too.

The link in the original post returns error codes.

I found the article here: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006612200410