You may have noticed for all the hubbub of talk about Electric Vehicles in the past year or so, there have been a few automakers whose names have not been mentioned. Two of these are Japanese manufacturers Mazda and Toyota, but their exclusion may be for a clever reason. Mazda was mum on the topic, but Subaru US CEO Tom Doll told news media that by handing back, avoiding the initial rush to compete in the crowding market, and waiting for the tech to get better, Subaru will be able to compete better when they do join the party. Well, with an improved engine block for Mazda about to release, and Toyota being a major owner of Subaru’s stock, the companies definitely can survive not joining the electric race for a while. Neither Mazda nor Subaru offer a purely battery-powered electric vehicle in their respective lineups. Subaru, however, will launch the plug-in hybrid version of the Crosstrek later this year, but a full-on EV is still some time out. Both Japanese automakers are fairly small compared to other mainstream automakers so R&D resources are far more limited. But that’s okay. Neither company minds. Bloomberg has an interesting report about why neither automaker is aggressively pursuing EVs at the moment. The answer, at least for Subaru, is very simple and brilliant business wise. “If we put one (an EV) out now, we’re going to be competing in the teeth of the market with everybody else,” said Subaru US Chief Executive Officer Tom Doll. “This way, we can let them kind of sort it out, then we can come in.” In other words, let the bigger and wealthier competition do all the heavy leg work, the technology will spread across the industry, and only then will Subaru get in the game, saving a ton of money in the process. No one from Mazda could be reached by Bloomberg to comment, but it’s also clearly in no rush to launch an EV, so it sounds like its strategy is very similar to that of Subaru. Click here to continue reading
The featured article Mazda and Subaru Not Joining EV Race Makes Good Business Sense is republished from autonews.cardaddy.com
source https://autonews.cardaddy.com/mazda-and-subaru-not-joining-ev-race-makes-good-business-sense/
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