The Toyota Prius is not a car that you would associate with motorsports. When it was introduced in 1997, car enthusiasts made fun of the slow hybrid. Who would’ve expected that 26 years later, I am at Southeast Asia’s most popular racetrack, the Chang International Circuit in Buriram, Thailand, being heckled and mobbed by fans clamouring to take a photo with the 67-year old chairman of Toyota posing next to a Prius. Jeremy Clarkson would’ve called this “Bollocks.”

He is not Chairman Akio Toyoda. Today, he is Master Driver Morizo

Akio Toyoda is a name that EV lobbyists love to hate. They say he wants to delay the world’s transition to a 100% battery EV-only future by pushing for hybrids like the Prius. They also say that he is the reason why the United Nations is still using a diesel-powered Land Cruiser, and farmers in Chiang Rai are using a Hilux instead of a Tesla Cybertruck.

To them, Akio is the end-of-the-world anti-Christ that Tesla and BYD cars-driving, plug-in charging Angels say we must all gather to fight against.

If Akio Toyoda is the anti-EV anti-Christ, then I must be at hell’s greatest party. We are just hours away from the start of the 2023 10-hour Idemitsu Super Endurance Southeast Asia Trophy.

When the pit lane and race track opened for a pre-race walkabout, there was only one superstar everyone wanted to meet – Morizo, as Akio Toyoda wants to be known once he dons a racing suit. Don’t talk business with Morizo. He just wants to drive.

Days earlier, Morizo was in Bangkok for the Toyota GR Festival at the Toyota Alive Drive Park brand experience centre in Bang-Na district. Fans waited under the hot sun for the faint possibility of being given a chance to take a taxi ride in Morizo’s rally-spec Toyota Yaris WRC.

After rounds of drifting and tyre-shredding donuts, the 67-year old Morizo climbed and pushed himself out of his rally car’s roll cage as if he was 18. He waved to the crowd, and shouted, “I love cars.” The crowd went crazy.

I am not sure if it’s right to call Akio Toyoda the anti-Christ of EVs, but seeing him riding on an open-top Toyota Hilux Champ to greet so his fans, he sure looks like the Pope of Motorsports, with his own Popemobile.

The relentless pursuit of making Ever-Better Cars

As Chairman, Akio Toyoda no longer runs the day-to-day operations at Toyota. He is now the figurehead to cheer his successor and protégé President Koji Sato, the former chief engineer of the Lexus LC, to build ever-better cars.

The choice of words is important: ‘To build ever-better cars,’ instead of the more intuitive ‘To build the best cars.’

‘Ever better’ reflects the Japanese kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement. There is no such thing as the best. There’s always an improvement to be made. Those who can’t see the gaps in their skills are clearly not at the level worthy of a Takumi title.

Best in Town’ is more important than ‘Best in the World’

Also, customers in different parts of the world have a different understanding on what makes the best car for them. Which is why Toyota’s goal of building ever-better cars is complemented by the second goal of ‘Best in town’, as opposed to aiming for ‘Best in the world.’

This is why Toyota strives to build the ‘Best in town’ Toyota Hilux for Southeast Asia, the Toyota Tundra for North America, the Toyota C-HR for Europe, the Toyota Alphard for Asian megacities, and the Toyota Land Cruiser for the Middle East.

BEV, HEV, FCEV, H2 ICE, E-fuel - The customer is the one who decides

Toyota serves customers from all income groups, across the world. There is no one size fits all solution, which brings us to the third pillar of Toyota’s goal – Multi-pathway solutions towards achieving carbon neutrality.

The enemy is carbon, not internal combustion engines. Whether it’s battery EVs, hybrids, hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen combustion engines, or synthetic fuels (also known as e-fuels), the customer will decide what’s best for their local needs.

Europe has a high level of renewable energy in their power grid, at nearly 60%, so battery EVs make sense for them.

In other parts of the world – cattle farmers in the Australian Outback and those living in Borneo for example - a trusty diesel-powered Toyota Hilux is what separates live and death. If your car breaks down there, help can only come by helicopter.

For the in-between regions, places like Malaysia, where renewable energy will only reach 40% even by 2035, Toyota’s to message is this: “Please don’t hate hybrids, it’s an immediate and affordable solution, right here, right now. Hybrids don't rely on infrastructural upgrades. Their smaller batteries require only a fraction of the resources needed to build a battery EV."

Toyota's message however, is unlikely to get the Malaysian government's attention because hybrid is a mature technology that doesn’t create new business opportunities like EV charging or driverless robo-taxi services, so there’s no grand IPO dream to sell, which is why it doesn’t win the hearts of investors or support from politicians looking to promote themselves. No voter will say no to a tax-free car right?

In today's woke climate, saying that you don’t believe in a 100% electric-only future can get you cancelled. For daring to give a counterpoint, Akio and Toyota attracted huge backlashes from battery EV agenda-promoting channels.

But Toyota’s multi-pathway is philosophy is not the outlier that EV lobbying channels paint it to be. China’s Geely and Chery, Korea's Hyundai and Kia, the American-European Stellantis, and Germany’s BMW are all pursuing similar multi-pathways approach as Toyota.

Half of BYD's sales in China are contributed by plug-in hybrids, but few make that distinction because China groups PHEV and BEV sales figures as one EV sales figure, a figure which is often erroneously interpreted by many as total battery EV sales.

Even Wan Gang, the policy architect behind China’s battery electric vehicle industry's prowess does not believe in a 100% battery electric future and is working to establish a hydrogen economy in China. But because the engines-loving Akio is an icon and Toyota is a world No.1, Big T becomes an easy target for EV investors and lobbyists looking for a cause to rally the troops.

Toyota Prius, by Gazoo Racing

With so much public relations attack targeting Toyota’s hybrid-for-the-common man approach, Toyota’s response is to win the hearts of customers – because it’s the only voice that matters. The fifth generation Toyota Prius is developed to do just that.

Like a show-and-tell session, Morizo will be racing the latest iteration of Prius, the nameplate traditional car guys in the 2000s used to make jokes of, especially those in the US.

An amped up road-going GR version of the Prius is rumoured to be under development and some say this racing specs Rookie Racing-liveried Prius is its prototype. The car’s official name is Toyota Prius CNF-HEV (Carbon Neutral Fuel-Hybrid Electric Vehicle) GR concept, which lends some credibility to the rumour.

Rookie Racing is Akio Toyoda’s privately owned B-team for experimental carbon neutral powertrain cars whose goal is not to win races, but to test parts in race conditions and feed data back to the factory.

We were allowed to get close to Morizo's Prius but the team’s technicians politely declined our request to take photos of the engine bay, which leads us to think that there might be something new under the hood.

Curiously, chief engineer Satoki Oya told us with a straight face that the racing Prius’ engine is the standard car’s 2.0-litre naturally aspirated unit, with the only modifications to the engine bay being additional radiators and a stronger brake control system (specifics were not revealed).

However he did say that there’s an upsized battery with 25% more capacity (figures undisclosed) but the rest of the Prius’ hybrid components, including its inverter, are same as a standard Prius, which makes 193 PS (223 PS for PHEV variant).

Also read: 5th gen 2023 Toyota Prius debuts - adds 2.0L PHEV, 0-100 km/h in 6.7s, with looks Mazda will be jealous of

The focus that Toyota wants to show to the public at this race is that the Prius is running with carbon neutral synthetic fuels (sometimes referred to as e-fuel or CN fuel), made from a blend of biomass extract and hydrogen. It’s an extremely expensive fuel, costing around RM 50/litre – thus giving fodders to critics that this is a silly pipe dream by Toyota to stall a full transition to EVs - but Toyota believes that with more partners onboard, production efficiency and cost will improve.

The Prius finished the 10-hour endurance race 11th overall, and 6th in its D2 category. It’s a very impressive feat when you can consider that 64 cars started the race, and rival teams with higher powered cars either suffered mechanical failures or got involved in accidents. Even Rookie Racing’s own GR86 had to be wheeled into the pits to fix a wheel hub-related problem.

The Morizo-Kachorn pairing in the Prius, along with Super GT drivers Hibiki Taira and Naoya Gamou maintained a strong and consistent pace, keeping the car safe from accidents, allowing them to move up the ranks as rivals in more powerful cars either broke down or crashed out.

The Prius also needed less pit stops for fuel, thus allowing it to stay out longer and close to gap with more powerful cars. This race don't allow F1-style pressurized high-speed refueling, only gravity feed from a fuel filler can be used so pit stops takes really, really long. The slow refueling amplifies the Prius' fuel economy advantage, allowing it to keep climbing up the ranks as rivals pit for fuel.

Morizo's driving partner Kachorn Chiaravanont, who flew to Buriram in his private jet, is from the family behind CP Group. The company supplied hydrogen fuel to Morizo's other race car, a hydrogen-burning combustion engine GR Corolla. The hydrogen fuel is generated from chicken manure from the CP Group's poultry farms, demonstrating a method to turn biowaste into fuel, thus contributing to Thailand's national energy security.

Toyota’s official Gazoo Racing Team Thailand crossed the finish line in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th positions. Rookie Racing’s other car, a Toyota GR86 running not with the standard car’s boxer engine, but a 1.4-litre turbocharged inline 3-cylinder running on synthetic fuel, finished 4th. Morizo's experimental GR Corolla finished 55th.

This is not the first time a Prius participated in a race, but it is the first for a near-standard Prius. Previous attempts were made by Japanese team APR Racing for the GT300 class in Japan’s Super GT. That car however rode on a heavily modified mid-engine rear-wheel drive chassis, but with the standard Prius’ hybrid system retained.

Few manufacturers dare to race their hybrid road cars. Leave out Formula 1 and WEC’s LMPh cars. Those cars have little in common with the road cars you can buy.

Porsche, Mercedes-AMG, BMW, Audi all have very fancy plug-in hybrids that make a lot of power than the Prius, but none have seen any real wheel-to-wheel, fender-to-fender close contact combat like the supposedly weaker Toyota Prius.

There are hybrid touring car series like the BTCC, but those are running unified Delta-Cosworth 'spec' battery and motor that have no relation with the production cars' hybrid system. Racing with the production car's hybrid system is what makes Rookie Racing's Prius the better Ever-Better Car.

Closer to home, many have expressed interest in the beautiful fifth generation Toyota Prius, but as explained in this earlier article, Malaysian current tax policy puts the Toyota Prius at a dead-end.

Our tax structure favours imported battery EVs at the expense of hybrids. This is very different from Thailand's multi-tiered tax incentive structure - starting with small fuel efficient combustion engines (Eco Cars) to hybrids to battery EVs, all taxed by their CO2 emission. Malaysia does not have any CO2 tax. But we do have a Low Carbon Mobility promotion policy. You don't need to study a lot to see the contradiction.