Toyota aims to nearly eliminate gasoline cars by 2050

Good on Toyota for setting lofty goals. Touch wood they'll find ways to use fewer hydrocarbons along the way.

I think in 2050 people will look back on the past and wonder why a valuable resource like petroleum was burned in the amounts it was knowing it has so many other possible uses.

I wish they'd commit to something a lot sooner than 2050. That's pretty far away.

aiming to sell hardly any regular gasoline vehicles by 2050

Hardly ambitious!

35 years is quite ambitious given where we are now but I'm skeptical as to its feasibility. If "they are 120% confident," that's great but that's just from a security company analyst. They'll say anything. But I commend the fact that Toyota actually voiced the actual target year nevertheless.

But they (experts) are divided on whether all gasoline engines will disappear, or they’ll stay on, thanks to greener internal combustion engines, as well as the arrival of clean diesel technology.

The term 'clean diesel' is a joke now. The VW fraud opened the Panda's box. VW cheating is out the question but other manufactures' 'clean diesel' cars are also spewing a lot more NOx and PM (traditional pollutants and PM is cancer causing) much more than their test data show on the actual road running condition. Please stop using this misnomer.

35 years is quite ambitious

Are we to write off hydrogen, Tesla/Panasonic's gigafactory, viable renewables and the very planet itself?

Shame on Toyota!

So no need to change Article 9 of the Japanese constitution in the pretext to safeguard Japan's ability to safeguard its oil imports. This is good news.

It's great to see targets like these being made by carmakers. It will take a long time seeing as it would be corporate suicide to stop selling petrol cars in the near future, but they will be ideally placed for the coming decline of petrol cars.

Looking at the pace of developments(and a closer look at a Tesla car) I think the big car makers of today will have a hard time to defend themselves against Tesla, Google, and Apple cars, because those people think much more out of the box.

The big oil companies, OPEC and other nations that are dependent on export of natural resource must be pi$$in in their pants right now.

This is going to set off a fire sale of oil in the not so distant future since if Toyota targeting 90% in 2050 the probability of market shre of fuel cell vehicles in 2030 would probably be around 30~40% globally and maybe around 50~60% in the industralized nations.

While 35 years is a long way away, if they can actually stop automotive emissions by then it would be great.

Ise acknowledged some gasoline engine cars would remain in less developed markets, but only in small numbers.

Not if they become more expensive than 'clean' cars they won't.

The big oil companies, OPEC and other nations that are dependent on export of natural resource must be pi$$in in their pants right now.

Here's hoping! Here's to an energy revolution for our other needs (heating/power generation) too.

Ise acknowledged some gasoline engine cars would remain in less developed markets, but only in small numbers.

Condescending attitude from Japan Inc. Developing countries will disrupt existing carmakers a$$es. Just as SMS on basic mobile phones disrupted Africa's middlemen when farmers learned the true market price for their crops, these same communities will develop transport to bring their crops to market and their kids to school.

Unlike Tata's disastrous, reverse-engineered, de-specced Nano, however, these cars will be engineered from the wheels up with world-beating cost efficiencies that the incumbents couldn't possibly fathom.

The less developed nations would be using second hand cars that would steadly be supplied from the leading industrial nations. That is why there would be a difference in time in adopting the fuel cell cars as a market.

I'd love to see cars, trucks, buses, ships, and planes powered by eggshells and banana peels, but let's be real, people. Mr Fusion is science fantasy much like Rumplestiltskin's spinning gold from hay.

The less developed nations would be using second hand cars that would steadly be supplied from the leading industrial nations. That is why there would be a difference in time in adopting the fuel cell cars as a market.

While it's true a lot of our used cars go to developing countries, don't forget that their burgeoning middle classes love their toys just as much as the rest of us. There are plenty of older cars in the mature markets, too, and let's not be too fooled by the misleading headline:

Toyota aims to nearly eliminate gasoline cars by 2050...

as the flag-carrier is merely

aiming to sell hardly any regular gasoline vehicles by 2050, only hybrids and fuel cells, to radically reduce emissions.

Poverty of ambition from Toyota.

I'm pretty sure batteries will be good enough for electric cars by 2025, if not 2050. With tech like printable solar PV not that far away, I don't understand why Toyota is completely dismissing electric while pushing fuel cells.

It sounds like Nissan the company have lost a lot of money with their Leaf and the contracts they set up for its production, so I don't think we are quite there as yet for electric cars in Japan.

BRAVO!!

I totally agree the project by toyota.

First, the project by toyota leads by example as the significant role in auto industry in order to tackle with global warming and pollution. That would encourage other auto industries to produce only hybrids and fuel cells.

Secondly, Jpanese economy would rely on fuel less, that would make japanese economy more steady than depending on exports fuel.

therefore, i m side on the project by toyota. That would have a great effort to deal with not only the global warming and pollution. That would make a great effort to revamp the dependence japanese economy.

The idea is not as crazy as it sounds. Thanks to developments in better battery designs spurred on by the needs of cellphone and tablet computer manufacturers, we may soon get electric cars capable of going 500 km or more on a single charge with far smaller battery packs than now by as early as 2025. At that range, electric cars start to become viable replacements for cars powered by internal combustion engines.

Fuel cell technology is advancing in leaps and bounds as well, especially in development of new catalyst.

GM and Ford came to Japan in about 1950,s. When Mitsui-Toyoda began promoting a car, that was not by Nissan, no one thought there would be another car maker. Later, Mitsui separated Toyoda and became Toyota. (Da in kanji is also Ta). Now everybody in the world knows Toyota. Some day, people might ask what is gasolin car.