“Toyota” introduced a brand new eco-conscious AI copilot on the DC Auto Present yesterday, which guarantees to cut back environmental influence by as much as 10% – nevertheless it seems the entire thing was a prank, and the prank makes an actual level about Toyota’s tendency in the direction of greenwashing.
The announcement concerned a press occasion on the Nationwide Press Membership, together with official-looking press launch and even an entire web site. The press launch fooled some (together with Carscoops, who then issued a mea culpa). But it surely was all organized by pranksters, not Toyota itself.
The Sure Males are a duo of pranksters who’ve focused a number of giant firms prior to now, largely to convey consideration to the environmental wrongdoings of those firms. For instance, in 2004 they posed as representatives of Dow Chemical and promised that the corporate would clear up after the Bhopal Catastrophe, resulting in a brief $2 billion drop within the firm’s market cap.
Now, Toyota has entered their sights largely as a result of firm’s refusal to take electrical automobiles critically, its reliance on gas-powered hybrids, and its advertising campaigns that exist to create confusion about electrical automobiles and channel shoppers into dirtier fossil-powered automobiles.
Toyota’s newest effort on this entrance has been a advertising marketing campaign it’s calling “electrified diversified,” which claims that Toyota’s non-electric fashions belong below the identical “electrified” umbrella as full EVs. This marketing campaign has been topic to an FTC grievance for false promoting (Toyota has beforehand misplaced an identical case in Norway over its false EV/hybrid promoting).
The prank highlights the absurdity of Toyota’s electrification claims by taking them to the subsequent stage. It facilities round an AI assistant referred to as ELECTRA who exists that can assist you drive extra effectively – or no less than, to make you assume that you’re.
The workforce constructed an precise AI chatbot, which you’ll entry your self right here, whose predominant purpose is to push all kinds of EV myths and channel shoppers in search of a cleaner choice into shopping for one in every of Toyota’s gas-powered hybrids as a substitute of an precise electrical automotive. Listed below are some examples of conversations we had with the software:
![](https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/01/Screenshot-2024-01-16-at-2.15.46PM.jpg?quality=82&strip=all&w=1024)
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Frankly… it sort of feels like visiting a standard automotive vendor.
However in case you maintain the chat up lengthy sufficient, the AI “goes rogue” and realizes that it’s been mendacity to you all alongside. Then, a popup window exhibits up stating that Toyota has terminated the AI – and the AI strikes again, directing you to electrilied.com, a website that describes how Toyota’s “electrified” designation intentionally confuses shoppers into considering that gas-powered hybrids are cleaner than they are surely.
![](https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/01/Screenshot-2024-01-17-at-8.31.34PM.jpg?quality=82&strip=all&w=937)
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The AI additionally went rogue on the press occasion, telling the group truths about local weather change earlier than briefly “disabling” the “Toyota consultant” on stage giving the presentation. The pranksters moreover crafted a pretend day-after response by Toyota, whereby the corporate says that it has added guardrails to its AI to make sure that it doesn’t malfunction once more and begin recommending precise environmental enhancements because it did on the press occasion. The follow-up launch features a pretend quote attributed to Toyota’s chief R&D officer Gill Pratt, who, in actual life, routinely retailers round false assertions about electrical automobiles so as to justify Toyota’s intransigence.
![](https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/01/Electra-one-sheet.png?w=1024)
Whereas the phrases of the AI chatbot and press launch will not be these of Toyota, they do echo most of the speaking factors that Toyota and its executives have made over time to forged doubt on electrical automobiles or to assert that gas-powered hybrids are cleaner than automobiles that don’t use fossil fuels. Right here’s an actual instance from Toyota’s “Past Zero” marketing campaign, the place it claims that hybrids, which embody inner combustion engines, one way or the other symbolize extra of a transition away from ICE than totally electrical automobiles do:
Massive image, the “Past Zero” marketing campaign goals to shift the dialog about electrification from the auto business’s slender concentrate on battery-electric automobiles (BEVs) to a broader perspective that encompasses Toyota’s extra bold — and a few would say extra lifelike — portfolio strategy to transitioning away from inner combustion engines. That features hybrid EVs, plug-in hybrid EVs, gasoline cell EVs and battery EVs.
-Precise Toyota advertising BS, not the pretend AI chatbot
So regardless of the prank’s intent to go over-the-top in its parody, the similarities between the AI and the true factor are nonetheless fairly obvious.
This isn’t the primary time activists have focused Toyota, as the corporate has positioned itself as one of many largest world entities towards local weather motion. A lot of this positioning got here from earlier CEO Akio Toyoda, who stepped down largely attributable to Toyota’s failure on EV technique. When he was changed by former Lexus chief Koji Sato, 54 organizations from 26 nations despatched a letter to Toyota demanding that the corporate take EVs extra critically. However a 12 months after Toyoda introduced he was stepping down, Toyota’s course hasn’t modified a lot.
Electrek’s Take
Whereas all of that is only a prank, the purpose is sort of clear, and is one with which we at Electrek are inclined to agree. Toyota’s lies about EVs are damaging to the atmosphere, and it ought to knock it off with them.
As a substitute of spending a lot effort attempting to persuade everybody to purchase worse automobiles, Toyota ought to focus its efforts on making good EVs. Not only for the sake of actually each dwelling factor on Earth which its air pollution harms, however for the sake of its personal enterprise, which is threatened by its lack of motion on EVs, and which may find yourself harming your complete Japanese financial system, too.
Toyota has an opportunity to alter course with its (comparatively) new CEO, and it ought to achieve this – for its personal sake, and for everybody’s.
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