Pump Fakes and Tailpipes: How Toyota and Oil Giants Play the Green Game
By Adam Zuckerman
When I’m not campaigning against polluters like Toyota, I geek out on basketball, devouring podcasts about the intricacies of the game: salary cap machinations, draft positioning, and player feuds.
I was listening to one of my favorites when my two worlds collided. Toyota interrupted my relaxing weekend with this ad that mocked drivers for their “electric vehicle phobia.”
Dr. Ross: Okay Chad, today you’re gonna drive the all-electric Toyota BZ.
Chad: (gulp) But my electric vehicle phobia! I’m not ready, Dr. Ross.
Dr. Ross: I believe in you.
Chad: Oh, I got ya. Oh my gosh! We’re inside it.
Dr. Ross: Try to take deep breaths, okay?
Chad: Ventilated seats! They’re touching me! Ahh!
Dr. Ross: You can do this, Chad. Drive the car. How do you feel, Chad?
Chad: I feel…cured! Woo-hoo! I’m doing it! I’m doing it!!
Deep, gravelly male voiceover: The all–electric BZ. One drive can change your mind. Toyota: Let’s go places.
It feels a bit rich for Toyota to be mocking drivers for listening to the EV-phobia it has helped to spread. It’s like someone yelling “fire!” in a crowded movie theater and then laughing at the people who run out, calling them cowards.
This is Toyota, the same company that has spent the past several years leading the charge against electric vehicles. While in 2024 over 20% of all new vehicles sold around the world were fully electric, for the world’s largest automaker, it was around 1%. Toyota has also built a massive influence operation to undermine electric vehicles, becoming the most aggressive anti-EV lobbyist and largest funder of climate change deniers in Congress. Akio Toyoda, the company’s longtime CEO and current Board Chair, regularly uses his platform to spread anti-EV misinformation.
A bit incredulous, I did an internet search to see if this was a one-off. It turns out it’s not. In September Toyota launched a similar ad featuring Randall Park, the beloved comedic actor from Veep, Always Be My Maybe, Fresh off the Boat, and the Residence. He plays a doctor in a futuristic lab who diagnoses a hyperventilating patient with “EV anxietus” and cures her by showing her “the future of Toyota battery electric vehicles” with “more range and less charge time.”
Range anxiety is a real worry for consumers, and automakers are right to point out that improved battery technology is making it more and more practical for anyone to drive an EV. However, it’s a bit much coming from Toyota. This new marketing campaign is so at odds with the rest of the auto behemoth’s business and lobbying strategy that it’s hard not to be cynical.
The advertising campaigns a company employs say a lot about how they see their customers— and specifically what their customers value. One study showed that 82% of customers want to buy from brands that share their values and three-quarters of consumers have parted ways with a brand over a conflict in values. By presenting itself as a green champion, Toyota is able to trick customers who care about the climate crisis. Those buyers make up a large portion of Toyota’s customer base. When pollsters told 1,000 Toyota owners about the company’s opposition to climate policy, it led to a 32% drop in Toyota’s favorability rating. Seventy five percent of polled Republicans and 90% of polled Democrats who own Toyotas said that the company should support stronger emissions standards.
Toyota was a climate leader in the late 1990s when it introduced the Prius. However, in recent years it has become an industry-worst climate obstructionist and an EV laggard. Instead of greening its vehicles, it has tried to green its image. It misleadingly markets its gas-powered hybrids as electric vehicles and spends nearly $2 billion a year in the U.S. alone on marketing. Last year Toyota ranked #5 out of all brands—automotive or otherwise—for the most product placement in the top 50 most-watched films. In June, ahead of the new Superman, it released a glossy Superman-themed ad for the one Toyota-branded EV it sells in the U.S., which is also featured in the film. To some extent, the greenwashing is working. With Elon Musk’s embrace of fascism, many Tesla drivers have pasted on bumper stickers that read “This Car Identifies as a Toyota” or “This Car Identifies as a Prius,” unaware of how much the automaker has strayed since its green heyday.
But cracks are starting to show in Toyota’s green veneer. Thanks to pressure from Public Citizen and allies like Jane Fonda, a prominent Hollywood climate group agreed to drop Toyota. The automaker had spent 25 years funding the group, which in turn got A-List celebrities to drive Toyotas, and it made sure that they were photographed doing so.
Toyota did not invent greenwashing. Big oil helped to pioneer the practice, “confer[ring] companies with an aura of environmental credibility while distracting from their anti-science, anti-clean energy disinformation, lobbying and investments.” For example, in 2009 Chevron launched a series of ads with message text over its customers’ faces like “I will leave the car at home more” and “I will use less energy.” Its aim was to generate feel-good emotions and green its image without actually doing anything to reduce its customers’ gas usage, which, of course, would cut into its profits.
In contrast, Toyota cultivates that aura through big green technology pronouncements that it often quietly rolls back or never produces at all. Toyota has been teasing game-changing battery technology since 2010. It is now claiming it will produce solid state batteries that last for forty years and deliver 745 miles of range after charging for only ten minutes.
It was first supposed to produce them in 2020, then in 2023, then 2026, and just last month it released details of the battery it says it will now release in 2027 or 2028. Each time, it generates a positive media cycle, burnishing its green image without ever having to produce green technology.
This is not new for the automaker. Toyota introduced a concept EV at the 1973 Tokyo Motor Show and then did not actually produce an EV for nearly fifty years. By the time it produced the Lexus UX300e in 2020 and the Toyota BZ4X in 2021, the automaker’s peers had lapped it in the EV market. And by then, its tech was behind. Lexus did not introduce an EV to the U.S. market until 2023. Consumer Reports called that debut “a disappointing first EV effort” and noted that its “meager range and EV tech are already behind the times.” The popular auto site Top Speed published the article “The 2023 Toyota bZ4X is What Happens When a Carmaker Doesn’t Want to Sell EVs.” While Toyota did make significant improvements to newer models, the company’s EV sales still pale in comparison to those of its competitors.
Toyota’s marketing presents the company as a green pioneer, but its dismal EV production belies that it is a climate laggard. Its advocacy is even worse, sounding a lot like the numerous climate change deniers whose congressional campaigns it funds. The question is whether Toyota actually wants to be a climate leader or if it just wants to seem like one. As long as it gets away with its greenwashing, it’s unlikely to change.