Toyota wants hydrogen to succeed so bad it’s paying people to buy the Mirai

Who wants a free car? If you hurry, you can get $40,000 off a 2023 Toyota Mirai, a fuel-cell vehicle which retails for $52,000. When you factor in the $15,000 in free hydrogen over six years and the available 0% interest loan, Toyota is essentially paying people $3,000 to take the car off its hands. … Read more

Some Hydrogen Car Owners Are Still Waiting For the Future to Arrive

“We have a giant, beautiful, red paperweight in our driveway,” Snell says. Snell is just one of many California hydrogen fuel-cell car owners facing difficulties as a confluence of unfortunate events—tech limitations, rising station operating costs, policy changes, even the Russian invasion of Ukraine—have hiked hydrogen fuel prices and taken hydrogen fueling stations offline. Just … Read more

Toyota group plant raided in test cheating probe as automaker says it sold 11.2M vehicles in 2023

TOKYO — Japanese transport officials raided the plant of a Toyota group company on Tuesday to investigate cheating on engine testing, as the company reported it kept its status as the world’s top automaker in 2023, selling 11.2 million vehicles. Hours after the probe began at Toyota Industries Corp.’s plant in Hekinan, Aichi Prefecture, central … Read more

Toyota recalls thousands of vehicles with air bag defects

Toyota has issued an immediate do-not-drive advisory for the 2003-2004 Corolla, Corolla Matrix and 2004-2005 RAV4 vehicles due to a defect in the cars’ Takata air bags that could “explode and shoot sharp metal fragments” and seriously injure or kill drivers and passengers, it said in a statement. Toyota said it will repair or replace … Read more

Toyota’s Robots Are Learning to Do Housework—By Copying Humans

As someone who quite enjoys the Zen of tidying up, I was only too happy to grab a dustpan and brush and sweep up some beans spilled on a tabletop while visiting the Toyota Research Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts last year. The chore was more challenging than usual because I had to do it using … Read more

This Connecticut physician leases a Toyota RAV4 with a $718/month payment — insists she ‘needs’ an SUV for the snow. Caleb Hammer responds

‘Justification, justification, justification’: This Connecticut physician leases a Toyota RAV4 with a $718/month payment — insists she ‘needs’ an SUV for the snow. Caleb Hammer responds Even newcomers aren’t immune to America’s auto loan crisis. Aleena, a 31-year-old physician on a U.S. work visa, pays a hefty $718 per month to lease her Toyota RAV4. … Read more

Toyota shares slide 4% after vehicle recall, Daihatsu safety issues

Japanese automaker Toyota led losses on the Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index Thursday, closing lower by 4%. The sharp fall came after Toyota announced a recall of about a million vehicles on Thursday. The safety recall involved certain 2020-2022 Toyota and Lexus models in the United States. The sell-off also comes after Toyota subsidiary Daihatsu halted shipments of all its vehicles on Wednesday, after an investigation found … Read more

GM and Toyota are shaping up to be the biggest losers in the EV transition

GM may have mortgaged its future last week. On Wednesday, the automaker announced that it would boost its dividend and buy back $10 billion worth of its shares, effectively erasing this year’s net income and then some. The move pleased shareholders, with GM’s stock trading about 10% higher than before the financial engineering moves were … Read more

Toyota Hilux Champ is a bare-bones, $13,200 truck for emerging markets

Developed for emerging markets, the Toyota Hilux Champ is here to prove a new pickup doesn’t need to cost as much as a luxury sedan. It was previewed by the Rangga concept unveiled in August 2023, and it costs less than the average late-model used car in the United States. Visually, not much has changed … Read more

Robotics Q&A with Toyota Research Institute’s Max Bajracharya and Russ Tedrake

For the next few weeks, TechCrunch’s robotics newsletter Actuator will be running Q&As with some of the top minds in robotics. Subscribe here for future updates.  Part 1: CMU’s Matthew Johnson-Roberson This week, we’ve got a two-fer. Toyota Research Institute’s Russ Tedrake and Max Bajracharya split the job. Tedrake is TRI’s vice president of Robotics … Read more