>people with PHEVs ignore the plug-in functionality and drive it on gas the whole time. even in that case PHEV gets much better mileage than pure ICE and thus

>people with PHEVs ignore the plug-in functionality and drive it on gas the whole time. even in that case PHEV gets much better mileage than pure ICE and thus is a significant improvement. I think the problem with Toyota is that Japan seems to be targeting hydrogen (in particular there were plans for large wind farms on Kuril islands with production of hydrogen and transporting it to Japan), and Toyota probably has bought into that strategy, and thus considers PHEV/BEV as temporary solution, and thus even not investing much in BEV. Hydrogen in a bunch of aspects is better than BEV, and its main issue - infrastructure - is what Japan is perfectly capable of doing. Other countries are very different from Japan, and this is i think where Toyota's miscalculation comes in - the other countries are transitioning to BEV much faster and doing it as as main approach and without any plans for hydrogen totally disregarding that supposedly, under some conditions, better approach. Hydrogen is the Betamax so to speak.