Agreed. The use case needs to drive the car selected.
I do think that Toyota will -gradually- go electric, as they move to utilize a mix of EV, hybrid and ICE once the charging infrastructure is in place
That seems prudent and should result in fewer hiccups which Mercedes-Benz experienced in modifying their electric-only lineup rollout, although a friend is (impatiently) waiting to place his order for an AMG E 53.
I think Toyota is going to be the big winners in the long run. That correctly recognize that EVs do not work everywhere for every use case. Especially in rural or developing nations where there is no real electrical grid such as Africa.
Toyota is a global car maker so they need to cover all the various cases. For places like China who are liquid hydrocarbons short and coal heavy with very high density cities and a strong power grid EVs are the way forward hence their dominance in that market now.
Toyota will get rid of manual and automatic transmissions all together the Camry is just the first model after the Prius to go to a electrical drivetrain. Their power split drive is perfect for blending mechanical ICE at average load with peaks covered by the electric motors. With a single one way dog clutch you can go fully electric at any speed allowing for plug in hybrid modes.
One platform,one electric drivetrain five or six choices of drive power. First is normal hybrid where the ICE spins above 45mph always and a tiny battery only used to capture regen brake and peak loads this has been proven to double MPG in the city and improve hwy by 25+%.
second mode same EDU (electric drive unit) with dog clutch with allows both motors to power the vehicle torque need while any mechanical connection is not rotating. In other words this EDU has a pure electric drive mode. This version has a mid sized battery pack sized to cover 50 miles in the USA or 30km globally. Those are the average daily drives and would shift all but the longest 5% of trips to electric mode with great second law efficiency. This pack is dual chargeable it can take AC from the grid or be charged on the move with one of three power sources all it the pack cares is DC voltage at the right amps. The source of that DC voltage is a very efficient ICE Toyota makes the world’s most efficient spark engine in a vehicle it drives the Prius and rhe Camry hybrid at 38% BSFC. Or run that same over expansion ICE on hydrogen Toyota already has hydrogen ICE in racing car form. Hydrogen allows for 5 min refuels or less. 10Kg per minute H2 gas rates have been demonstrated for trucks one Kg H2 is equal to the LHV of one gallon of gasoline. Finally if you are going hydrogen then a fuel cell would be twice as efficient vs ICE in converting H2 into DC voltage halving the Kg need to go 100 miles or 100km which is how the rest of the world measures fuel efficiency how much to cover 100Km in L/100Km or Kg/100Km. Japan has zero liquid hydrocarbons but a strong history of nuclear power and is going back big into nuclear power they will use it to make hydrogen by the millions of tonnes bank on that.
The last option is to have a very large battery pack sized for 200 to 400 miles and have fast DC 400kw V4 standards plus three phase AC charging in the EU where 3 phase is common at the residential level. Here again Japan has high density cities ,nukes and a strong grid perfect for EVs.
With a single platform Toyota can cover all the different use cases globally this is how they will be going forward the Camry is just the first model after the Prius to go fully EDU every other Toyota will follow shortly.
Their 2.5 engine in the Camry platform can be run off alcohols as well at even better efficiency than gasoline VVT slow a for variable compression and expansion ratios with E85 or E98 you can go to 16:1 and get into the mid 40% BSFC range that’s approaching heavy MCCI ranges with
out the particulate or NOx limits. Brazil and equatorial Africa come to mind both places can and in Brazil’s case does grow massive amounts of ethanol. A properly designed engine runs cleaner and last longer on ethanol,methanol or isopropyl Clearflame has the independent data to back that up at the class 8 size and Brazil for decades has used pure ethanol for a sizable portion of their vehicle
fleet of all sized trucks to motorcycles.
Toyota won’t go fully EV nor should they the global market cannot be fully EV especially in Africa and Latin America where there is no infrastructure for it people still live in hand made dwellings with micro solar power or no power at all