After AGM vote, Toyota shareholders hold firm with anti-EV leadership team
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Shareholders of Toyota Motor Corporation failed to heed concerns about governance and reverse direction on the company’s slow-moving approach to electrifying its global lineup of vehicles at the annual general meeting held yesterday in Toyota City, Japan. At the meeting, shareholders re-elected the company’s ten member board, including Chairman and former-CEO Akio Toyoda, whose public statements opposing EVs and efforts to undermine EV policies around the world have put the automaker behind its competitors in the EV market. In response, Deanna Noel, climate campaigns director with Public Citizen’s Climate Program issued the following statement:
“The reappointment of the notoriously anti-EV Akio Toyoda to Toyota’s Board of Directors is another shameful mark for the company, despite prominent proxy advisors Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services and other investors opposing the appointment.
“Hopes Toyota might turn a corner after Mr. Toyoda stepped down as CEO last year have evaporated as the company only pursues more of the same. Toyota’s foot-dragging on manufacturing zero-emission vehicles is severely out of touch with growing consumer demand and threatens to put efforts to slow the climate crisis further out of reach. Despite shareholder pressure two years in a row to disclose its climate-related lobbying, the automaker continues to aggressively lobby against policies that prioritize cleaner vehicles, choosing to instead mislead the public into thinking some of its gas-powered vehicles are zero-emission electric vehicles.
“If Mr. Toyoda really wants to ‘leave the job of creating the future in the capable hands of the next generation,’ as the chairman’s letter recently stated, then now is the time for him to step fully aside. With Chairman Toyoda pulling the strings, Toyota will be left in the dust by competitors who are embracing the shift to zero emissions while Toyota disregards the harms its climate inaction has on communities around the world.”
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