The Electric: Modern EVs Were Born in Japan. So Why Have the Japanese Lost Their Way?

In 2010, Akio Toyoda, chief executive of Toyota, the Japanese automaker his grandfather founded decades earlier, sipped red wine in Palo Alto, Calif., with Elon Musk, CEO of electric vehicle upstart Tesla, and drove the entrepreneur’s flashy Roadster. Toyoda, only recently installed as CEO, was taken by Musk’s spirit and determination on the cusp of Tesla’s initial public offering. The Japanese executive agreed to invest $50 million for a 3% stake in Tesla and to develop an EV together. Driving the Roadster, Toyoda said at the time, “I felt the wind, the wind of the future.”

Toyoda may have felt the future, but not sufficiently to do much about it. On Thursday, he stepped down as CEO of a Toyota that in important ways still resembles the company he took over 13 years ago—still championing the hybrid Prius, with a battery a fraction the size of current state-of-the-art technology, and still lacking its own first-rate EV. Don’t expect a dramatic change in company strategy: Toyoda will remain as chair and clearly expects his hand-chosen successor, Koji Sato, head of Toyota’s luxury Lexus division and the company’s chief branding officer, to stay the cautious course. Sato, he said, reflected “Toyota’s philosophy, techniques and practices. Those are exactly the traits I would want whoever stands at the top of Toyota to embody.”