Toyota’s “self-charging hybrid” cars campaign has been called out and it admits these run on petrol.
Gary Hook asked on Twitter if petrol charges the Lexus UX hybrid SUV and received the response: “It is fueled by petrol, yes.”
Toyota has been pushing its “self-charging hybrid” campaign for a while, ranging from questionable ads to even more questionable videos, Teslarati reports.
“Yet, the Japanese carmaker has been quite silent about a significant detail on its ‘self-charging’ vehicles: they run on gas, just like any other internal combustion vehicle out there.”
Teslarati says that despite being called out online and having countries such as Norway banning the marketing effort for being misleading, Toyota has remained firm – even saying ‘The vehicle automatically charges as you drive, there’s no need to wait whilst it charges through a plug in point’.
“Toyota’s steadfast dedication to hybrid technology may end up being a costly miscalculation,” Teslarati adds.
EVtalk has run stories around the debate and has noted the ‘self-charging hybrid’ is a ‘petrol-electric’ whereby an internal petrol-powered motor charges up the electric engine, rather than using an external power source like a plug-in hybrid (PHEV).
