A F#$king Weird Week For Toyota

Sales drop, officials raid offices, recalls, and more made it a newsworthy week for Toyota.

After being lauded as the bright and shining star of auto sales in Q1, Toyota’s global sales dipped in April. The dip was primarily due to heavy competition in China and local shutdowns in Japan. reuters.com

Then things got weirder.

“Toyota admitted Monday to improperly obtaining several vehicle certifications in Japan. Toyota was found to have false certifications and was asked—along with Honda, Mazda, Suzuki, and Yamaha—to halt deliveries for affected cars in Japan.” caranddriver.com

Japan’s Ministry of Transport sent officials to Toyota’s headquarters to further investigate concerns that the manufacturer falsified safety testing data. bbc.com, cnn.com

Bloomberg reported that the extent to which the safety data was “falsified” was trivial enough to regard the incident as a “nothingburger.” bloomberg.com

Meanwhile, in the U.S., over 100,000 Toyota vehicles were recalled due to debris in their engines that could cause them to stall. reuters.com, theglobeandmail.com

Many news and car review outlets covered the launch of the 2025 Crown Signia this week, which replaces the Venza in Toyota's lineup for 2025. Car and Driver quipped, “While somewhat unremarkable to drive, Toyota's latest SUV delivers a premium experience at a surprisingly reasonable price.” caranddriver.com

Bucking the EV development trend, a week after announcing their new North American charging expansion with partner EVgo, Toyota reaffirmed its interest in internal combustion engines, describing their new 1.5- and 2.0-litre engines as a "game-changer solution." finance.yahoo.com, motor1.com, autonews.com

Toyota also announced the closure of a Hino facility in Arkansas and the expansion of its Alabama campus. finance.yahoo.com, finance.yahoo.com

On Friday, Reuters reported Japan's two biggest banks will start divesting their strategic shareholdings in Toyota. Which would equally feel trivial if it weren’t for all the other weirdness from Toyota in the last seven days. reuters.com

Individually, these stories wouldn’t be very noticeable. Collectively, they paint a more confusing picture. Is this simply the activity we should expect in a week from the world’s largest automaker? Or is this the beginning of the end of an empire as Toyota grapples with sales declines in China, likely due to uncompelling or non-competitive products in the world’s largest auto market?

While a lot of Americans are still on the fence about electric vehicles, mostly due to concerns over range. washingtonpost.com

The NYTs reported this week that efficient manufacturing, falling battery costs, and intense competition are lowering prices for BEVs within striking distance of gasoline cars. nytimes.com

Adding to that was the news that General Motors had its best month for EV sales in May. insideevs.com

He might want to, but not even Trump can slow the sale of electric vehicles. nytimes.com

Zeekr’s 007 is a good-looking car, inside and out. insideevs.com

More details on how BYDs new hybrid drivetrain works. carnewschina.com, carnewschina.com

BYD opened its first store in the Caribbean. electrek.co

Polestar and Nio now have an interconnected charging network. Nio looks to replicate that deal with GAC. cnevpost.com, cnevpost.com

Mercedes-Benz is using an intelligent driving solution from a Chinese startup. cnevpost.com

SpaceX launches and lands Starship. bbc.com, cbc.ca

Elon threatens to leave Tesla if he doesn’t get his $56 billion pay package. theverge.com

Elon redirected about half a billion dollars worth of AI chips made by Nvidia from Tesla to Twitter (X) for xAI. Some shareholders aren’t happy about it. businessinsider.com, businessinsider.com

But that doesn’t mean that Elon doesn’t want more compute. He’s looking to procure Nvidia’s newer, faster chips, too. tomshardware.com

Elon and Tesla are involved in a lot of lawsuits. autonews.com

Starlink got faster. Broke internal data latency record. pcmag.com

ROBOT ERA claims their XBot-L is the first humanoid to climb the Great Wall of China (with the help of a bit of duct tape). newatlas.com, youtube.com

Jensen Huang says robots are the next wave of AI. And he’s probably not wrong. businessinsider.com

Another creepy-looking, humanoid robot that can help get your coffee cup off your desk and into the dishwasher by itself. youtube.com, interestingengineering.com

Dongfeng Motor Corporation plans to use humanoid robots in their manufacturing plants. electrek.co

A robot solved the Rubik’s cube in 0.305 seconds. Sets new world record. popsci.com

A new long-duration energy storage (LDES) survey from BloombergNEF suggests that thermal energy storage and compressed air storage are cheaper to build than lithium battery storage. And that gravity energy storage systems average more than double the cost of battery systems. ess-news.com, bnef.com

New polymer might accelerate the production of green hydrogen. phys.org

A study from the Financial Times suggests that Russia's gas giant Gazprom won't recover gas sales lost to the Ukraine war for a decade. And likely, no one other than Gazprom cares. markets.businessinsider.com

Chinese company Dongfang Electric Corporation installs a massive 18MW turbine that can power 36,000 households every year. interestingengineering.com

U.S. diesel demand drops to lowest seasonal level in 26 years. electrek.co

Alberta figures out how batteries work. cbc.ca

And maybe batteries will be made out of trees in the future. interestingengineering.com

Ford’s F-150 Lightning SuperTruck EV is ready to compete at Pikes Peak, and it produces 6000 pounds of downforce. caranddriver.com, motor1.com

Ford CEO Jim Farley says they’ve been working on a low-cost EV in secret. electrek.co

First of the new EV Ford Explorers rolls off the production line in their Cologne Electric Vehicle Center. ford.com

Biden administration relaxes another vehicle emission rule. theverge.com

Only seven EV charging stations have been deployed with the Biden administration’s multi-billion dollar funding program created in 2021. reuters.com, autonews.com

Sellantis CEO Carlos Tavares explains that “The EV race has become a cost-cutting race.” fortune.com

Hyundai is crushing US EV sales with the IONIQ 5. electrek.co

If you own a Kia, maybe you want to park outside until you get your power seat motor fixed. reuters.com

This new VW van has a lot of Ford DNA. drive.com.au

Volvo’s XC90 will be the world’s first vehicle with a battery passport that explains where all the component parts of the battery originated. electrek.co

Honda began assembling the first fuel cell electric vehicle built in the U.S. qz.com

Magna founder Frank Stronach was arrested and charged with five criminal offences, including sexual assault and rape. reuters.com

A Dutch-designed intersection saves lives and slows down traffic for cyclists and pedestrians. thedrive.com

FAA gives Amazon the greenlight for “beyond-visual-line-of-sight ” longer distance delivery drones in Texas. bloomberg.com

A YouTuber was arrested after posting a video showing two people in a helicopter shooting fireworks at a Lamborghini. theverge.com

AI and AI-powered robots might help us sort out our mountains of trash. forbes.com

There’s new music this week from Halsey, Pixies, Luke Combs and Kerli.

If you need a serious EDM fix, listen to this new album by Deathpact.

But I’m most excited about the release of the Jeff Healey Band’s “Road House (The Lost Soundtrack).”

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