LAS VEGAS – In response to criticism that the firm is moving too slowly toward EVs from some investors and environmentalist groups, Toyota Motor is standing by its electric vehicle strategy, including hybrids like the Prius.

Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda announced on Thursday that the company will move forward with plans to offer a variety of so-called electrified vehicles for the foreseeable future, ranging from hybrids and plug-ins to all-electric and hydrogen electric vehicles. Toyoda has built a corporate strategy around the idea that EVs aren’t the only solution for automakers to reach carbon neutrality.

A day after addressing the company’s Toyota dealers at their annual conference in Las Vegas, he added, through a translator, during a small media roundtable, “Everything is going to be up to the customers to decide.”

Toyoda said the automaker will “present the hard facts” about consumer adoption and the overall environmental impact of producing EVs compared with hybrid electrified vehicles in order to persuade sceptics of the company’s strategy, including government officials focusing regulations on all-electric battery vehicles.

Toyota claims to have sold more than 20 million electrified vehicles globally since the Prius debuted in 1997. According to the firm, such sales have reduced CO2 emissions by 160 million tonnes, or the impact of 5.5 million all-electric battery automobiles.

The business will “play with all the cards in the deck,” Toyoda said, and provide a wide range of vehicles for all customers. He made similar remarks to hundreds of Toyota dealers and staff on Wednesday.

Toyoda, who has referred to himself as a “car man or car nerd,” added in a recording of the talks played to reporters, “That’s our plan and we’re sticking to it.”

Toyoda reaffirmed the company’s forecast that all-electric car adoption “would take longer to become commonplace” than most people think. He claims that it will be “difficult” to follow new laws that, as declared by California and New York, demand for the prohibition of conventional automobiles with internal combustion engines by 2035.

Toyota officials have said that while they are a part of the solution to fulfilling more strict global emissions rules and attaining carbon neutrality, they are not the sole one. This is true even as they increase their investments in all-electric vehicles. Toyota continues to invest in alternative technologies, such as hybrid vehicles like the Prius that combine EV technology with traditional internal combustion engines.

The corporation claims that because of the expensive cost of the vehicles as well as a lack of infrastructure, not all regions of the world will adopt EVs at the same rate.

Environmental organisations like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace have attacked Toyota’s strategy and have placed the Japanese carmaker at the bottom of their rankings for the past two years for the decarbonization of the auto sector.

Toyota is to spend around $70 billion over the next nine years on electrified vehicles, including $35 billion on all-electric battery technologies. By 2025, it hopes to have roughly 70 electrified vehicles available worldwide.

By 2030, Toyota intends to sell just around 3.5 million all-electric vehicles annually, or about a third of its current annual sales.