Toyota's green image is suddenly black-and-blue
Mark Rechtin Automotive News December 10, 2007 - 12:01 am ET
LOS ANGELES - For years, Toyota's environmental reputation has been beyond reproach. But now it seems everyone from the Detroit 3 to the Sierra Club is questioning the green credentials of the company that gave America the Prius.
In fact, environmental activists are distancing themselves from Toyota - especially since the company sided with General Motors, Ford and Chrysler on the subject of how much and how fast to raise CAFE standards.
And Toyota's bigger redesigns of the Tundra pickup and Sequoia and Land Cruiser SUVs have not endeared the automaker to green advocates.
Is Toyota worried? Not so you could tell.
"We don't get caught up in the rhetoric," says Jim Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. "We have thick skin."
Environmentalists have begun piling on. The Natural Resources Defense Council has launched a Web site titled "How Green Is Toyota?" The site underlines what it calls the company's hypocrisy, calling out Toyota for "trying to move America backward on fuel economy."
3-point message Toyota's new corporate advertising campaign emphasizes these ideas.
- Green vehicles
- Local production
- Social responsibility
Joining the club
In the past, Sierra Club leaders held Toyota up as an example of a car company willing to exceed standards. But more recently it has called the automaker's alignment with the Detroit 3 in this year's congressional fuel economy debate "deeply disappointing."
Unlike Honda and Nissan, Toyota opposed legislation before Congress that would boost fuel economy for all new vehicles to 35 mpg by 2020.
Meanwhile, Toyota's competitors, especially GM, have been pushing their own green credentials hard - and tweaking Toyota along the way.
The Chevrolet Tahoe Two Mode Hybrid has nine decals and badges proclaiming its hybrid status - including a strip of decals 3 inches high running along the sides of the hulking SUV.
At the recent Los Angeles auto show, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz told reporters that the Two Mode Tahoe gets the same fuel economy in city driving - 21 mpg - as the four-cylinder Toyota Camry.
An advertising campaign will tout GM's environmental steps, in an attempt to close the automaker's green perception gap with Toyota. GM also is continuing its drumbeat about the Chevrolet Volt hybrid, which is expected to start production in 2010.
And GM is boasting that the publication Green Car Journal named the Tahoe Two Mode Hybrid its "Green Car of the Year" at the Los Angeles auto show. The automaker neglected to mention that no Toyota vehicles were eligible this year because they had won the award in the past.
Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore., said GM's tactics are smart.
"Hybrids are a revenue godsend," Spinella says. "They raise the average MSRP, raise the average transaction price, can potentially raise or at least add profits. Everyone wants a lick from this particular frog."
But Toyota isn't panicking. The U.S. umbrella company, Toyota Motor North America, recently launched its own green advertising as part of a larger corporate image campaign touting the company's environmental stewardship, social responsibility and U.S. economic impact.
But the green portion of the campaign has been in the works for seven months and is not a reaction to recent changes in the political winds, a Toyota spokesman said.
Lentz says neither Toyota nor Lexus plans a hybrid marketing push to boost sales.
Still short of Priuses
"Our hybrid intention numbers continue to rise," he says. "We still can't build enough Priuses. We're at 16 days' supply, but we'll be back into single digits by month's end."
Environmental magazines such as Plenty still gush over the Prius. And the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy listed four Toyotas in its top 10 "greenest" vehicles.
Bill Reinert, Toyota's resident alternative- fuels guru, said the company will not trumpet future technological developments before they are ready for the public. He compares Toyota's restraint to GM's active hyping of the Volt hybrid.
"In 1997, no one had ever heard of a hybrid, even though Toyota had been working on it secretly since 1992," Reinert said. "We didn't say anything. We didn't show clay models. We just did it.
"You can't let competitive PR pressure affect your own long-term plans because then you become reactionary rather than progressive."