According to Toyota, neither the gasoline engine nor the manual transmission will be retired. The Japanese refuse to believe that electric cars will take over everything.
Toyota insists that it will continue to build cars with manual transmissions and gasoline engines. It must be possible to build cars for enthusiasts, it says.
"There's still room to speak to the hardcore performance car fans," said Sean Hanley, sales and marketing director at Toyota in Australia, in an interview.
This is what Carsales writes.
Hanley believes that there is still a market for cars with combustion engines and manual transmissions, and that that market will not just disappear overnight.
"Internal combustion engines and manual transmissions will be here for a long, long time," he said.
Toyota: The internal combustion engine will live for a long time
Hanley clarified that it will primarily be Toyota's performance division Gazoo Racing, or simply GR, that will hold on to traditions.
He came in with a Yaris M Concept, which is equipped with a mid-engine. Something that has led the international press to speculate whether Toyota is returning with a new version of the MR2, a car that disappeared in 2005.
But although the marketing manager stressed the importance of speaking to enthusiasts and "that bang (from the exhaust, ed.) we all love so much", the Japanese are not ruling out electrification.
In fact, Hanley believes that there will "without a doubt" be engaging and performance-oriented electric cars on the market in the future.
Hanley also mentioned that GR is considering expanding its catalog of performance parts, and pointed to hydrogen as a potential fuel for future enthusiasts.
In the same interview, Hanley more than suggests that the internal combustion engine's salvation could be hydrogen, something that Toyota is already experimenting with.
Toyota and BMW are the two brands most often associated with fuel cell vehicles (HFCV), i.e. electric cars that get power from hydrogen.
But other brands like Hyundai and Honda are also involved in this kind of thing. However, Hyundai has withdrawn the Nexo model, named after Nexo on Bornholm , from its Danish model program.
The marketing manager's comments on and about hydrogen in passenger cars become more interesting when you consider that Toyota has already combined a manual transmission with a hydrogen engine.
The GR Corolla H2 Concept is a race car that has been converted so that it actually burns hydrogen instead of gasoline made from crude oil.
Liquid hydrogen can also be filled into cars more quickly than hydrogen in gaseous form. But the fuel also has its challenges, including the fact that it must be stored at -253 degrees Celsius.
