The President of Toyota Motors made some interest comments about Tesla during an earnings call yesterday, even comparing the American automaker to a restaurant.
With Tesla’s skyrocketing share price this year, it is now worth more than $400 billion. To put that in perspective, Tesla is worth more than all seven Japanese automakers combined, Toyota included.
While saying his company could learn from Tesla’s many successes, Toyota President Akio Toyoda also said Tesla still has a long way to go to catch up to Toyota. At least, that’s what we think he said based on the rather unusual analogy he used.
“I am hesitant to say this — Tesla’s business, if you want to use the analogy, is like that of a kitchen and a chef. They have not created a real business in the real world yet. They are trying to trade recipes. The chef is saying ‘Our recipe is going to become the standard of the world in the future!’ At Toyota, we have a real kitchen and a real chef too, and are creating the dishes already. There are customers, who are very picky about what they like to eat, sitting in front of us, and eating our dishes already.”
While it is true that Toyota delivers millions more cars per year than Tesla, the Japanese automaker is also more than 80 years old. They also sell a full lineup of internal combustion engine (ICE), hybrid, electric, and fuel cell vehicles, compared to the 4 vehicles Tesla now sells.
The important part to look at is the fact that Tesla is clearly winning the race that matters right now, and that’s the race to the top of the electric market. It seems Toyota is happy to keep producing ICE, hybrid, and fuel cell vehicles, while barely focussing on what is clearly going to be the future, electric vehicles.
Featured image via brandsynario
