After the decline in purchase of electric vehicles, many companies are starting to rethink their strategies and find alternative solutions that buyers might like more and that have less drawbacks than battery powered cars. One such company is Toyota, who just announced that they have created a brand-new engine that runs on a mysterious new fuel that they have developed.
Although consumer reluctance to avoid technology is at the forefront of most manufacturers slide back into researching other types of engines, another issue that is not explored enough is that a shift to just electric vehicles would leave a lot of skilled workers on the sidelines and hurt the economy. Building electric vehicles is a completely different process to building traditional gas engines, they require fewer parts, fewer steps, and thus fewer people are needed on the line.
While this is not necessarily a bad thing, there is something to be said about taking time to plan the shift in the industry and retrain all those workers into new positions or find a way to create a new powertrain that brings fresh tech into the fold without tossing out everything that makes current production lines tick. After all, the reliability of older cars is better than the new electric vehicles if only because there are a lot more eyes trained in the moving parts involved.
The new Toyota engine and what it could mean for the automotive industry
While we do not have all the information on this new engine, we do know for sure that it is not electric or hydrogen based, which are two of the most common green energy sources that we have today. What Toyota has announced is that they have found a new fuel formula that promises to slash greenhouse gas output and boost efficiency and that it will be able to be produced in the same factories as regular gas powered engines, which will save in training for employees and in factory reshaping.
This means that the true change and innovation will not be on the actual engine block, those will be familiar to manufacturing personnel, buyers and even mechanics, the change is in the mystery fuel that the company has developed and that according to them might change the future of the automotive industry as it moves the needle on sustainability.
As an additional plus it gives other automakers permission to innovate in a different way that maybe differs from what governments have been trying to implement as the end all be all solution, which is electric vehicles. Since the premise is not working, sales of electric vehicles are declining while traditional engines are getting a second shot, purely because of convenience, it stands to reason that the industry takes one of the two available paths, wither they go back to combustion engines or they figure out a new fuel source that is compatible with the way we use our cars and road infrastructure, which is clearly not electric vehicles.
Of course while the announcement of the new fuel is exciting, it is still just in the testing phase and it still needs to be subjected to a lot more scenarios and production hiccups before we see it anywhere near a car or a road. And, even if it is successful, for the first few years, would cars see the same problems they have with access to electric chargers happen while this new fuel becomes mainstream and available? Likely yes, so it will have to be seen if this new Toyota invention is really the future or just a small stepping stone towards an all inclusive alternative that we can all use.