Here is VW's 5-10 yr vision. What is Toyota's?

VW says > 30 pure EV models by 2025 (slide 18)
2-3 million e-cars by 2025 for 20 to 25 % of their total sales.
By 2021 fully autonomous vehicles with self driving system - in house development (slide 19).

http://www.volkswagenag.com/content/vwcorp/info_center/en/talks_and_presentations/2016/06/together.bin.html/binarystorageitem/file/Presse_englisch_NICHTanimiert_Version_24.pdf

Toyota had mentioned earlier that they wanted their entire fleet to be hybrids. Is this still their position? That was aggressive 5 yrs ago. What is their next bold vision?

Is the Prime Toyota's ugly duckling? That is, it seems like an afterthought now, but will they come to embrace it and see that this is the direction they'd like to go? Will huge sales sway their strategy? How long will they try to create a hydrogen world?

 

I wouldn't underestimate VW despite some emissions cheating - actually, their cheating shows intricate knowledge of "how things work". It is nice to have a vision. VW isn't alone in catching the EV fever as well as the autonomous driving paradigm. Both of these will transform transportation, perhaps even more so than the transition from horse powered to mechanically powered.

My 90 yr old father-in-law just crossed the line in being allowed to drive - got lost for 5 hrs and we found him 1 mile away in a minor fender bender. When I hit that age (hopefully) I won't have to worry about being able to drive - I will just have to worry about whether or not I can remember where I want to go in the first place.

 

It's all about making money, keeping their employees functioning effectively by giving them just enough money, job growth, and job satisfaction , making products that the customers will buy, which taken altogether will make their shareholders happy, boosting the price of their stock which in turn increases the wealth of the higher paid / higher impact employees which completes the circle of life. And bad corporate image / pr negatively affects sales which negatively impacts the circle of life, thus you need to say a few things to keep a good image going

That is not a vision, it is a corporate principle/ethic.
As in that doesn't help the design engineers when they are planning the next design which will launch 4 yrs later.

Intel had a guiding principle to not do anything that would look embarrassing if it made the front page of the newspaper. That avoided doing things which were legal but wouldn't be viewed as 'OK' by the general public. That principle would have saved VW from the recent embarrassment if followed by the VW people involved. I'm sure they have a principle written down somewhere to not do illegal things, but if you don't preach it constantly, people may tend to "slip up".

 

Doesn't seem that crazy. Germany has just indicated that it wants 100% EV new car sales by 2030.
Germany Pushes For All New Cars To Be Zero Emissions By 2030
Sure that is ambitious, but OK, if they hit 85% by 2030, it is still impressive.

Volkswagen Targets Sales Of 2-3 Million EVs Annually By 2025, 30 All-Electric Offerings (Update)

 

I've got the EV fever as it might be obvious. I'm no VW fan, will probably never buy a car from them, but I just hold them up as a canary in the cage. Others will follow. Norway has already decreed that everything shall have a plug. The trend is there and the switch is coming. Look at all of the models BMW is coming out with. Germany is really aggressive with the wind and the solar and German car companies are feeling the Zeitgeist of moving away from fossil fuels. I'll be happy when everyone is bitching about the particulate pollution caused by car tires as they roll on the roads.

Most of the 2nd/3rd world countries with oil economies seem to be doing quite poorly - just encourages bad behavior by their dictator rulers, so the sooner we get off oil the better as far as I'm concerned. So when VW announces they got the EV fever too, I'm happy and think the fever will spread to car companies that I'd consider buying from (hint: GM isn't one of them). It can't happen too soon as far as I'm concerned.

Pretty exciting to be living during this time of transition.

Germany's position:
The German Plan
The German government has pledged to reduce its CO2 emissions by 80–95% by the year 2050, and the goal to be an all electric vehicle nation by 2030 is part of that plan.

Following Volkswagen's emissions scandal, Angela Merkel pledged subsidies for the purchase of electric cars, and German car maker Daimler recently announced an investment program to accelerate the adoption of electric cars. Secretary of Economy and Energy, Rainer Baake, has said that to meet the ambitious CO2 goals above, all newly registered vehicles would have to be electric by the year 2030 (although he did not claim this to be a mandate).

The hope is to increase the number of electric cars on German roads from the current 0.6% to 8% by 2025 and increase that to 6 million vehicles by 2030.