Toyota CEO: Low gas prices aren't hurting electric car sales
Toyota Motor North America CEO Jim Lentz on Wednesday said cheap gas isn’t necessarily driving people away from electric cars.
“We've been seeing this shift towards SUV for probably three or four years right now -- almost 70 percent of the market today is light truck,” he told FOX Business’ Stuart Varney. “But an interesting point last month ... our sales for hybrid were actually up about 65 percent… So I don't think people are necessarily walking away from vehicles with batteries in the case of hybrid, but they are definitely rushing towards SUVs.”
Lentz comments come as the Toyota division posted its best-ever August with a 12.3% jump in sales.
Hybrid sales also rose 68.3% last month, and Lentz said the company is betting on the segment to continue to grow, “upwards towards 15%” by 2020.
“We listen to our customer and our customers were looking for value. We believe in increasing our… miles per gallon on an annual basis but today, as you mentioned, with inexpensive gas consumers are very happy with the vehicle that gets 40 or 50 miles per gallon and they don't necessarily have to make that leap today to an electric vehicle,” he explained.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TM | TOYOTA MOTOR CORP. | 172.70 | -0.13 | -0.08% |
According to Lentz the new Corolla hybrid gets about 50 miles per gallon while the Camry and Prius are “in that range” and the Rav4 gets around 40 miles per gallon.
“They're all acceptable mileage based on value the consumers are willing to pay for the vehicle,” he said.
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When Varney asked if gas gets more expensive “would you expect your SUV sales to come down?” Lentz replied: “It depends.”
“I think if you look at the large SUV segment, a vehicle like Sequoia, yes it would be affected by gas prices,” he said. “But I think the interesting thing is in the past we've seen spikes in your price. It's not the actual price of fuel. It's the rate of change in the price of fuel.”