Toyota is the leader by profit, has been selling cars with batteries and electric motors for 3 decades and simply doesn't want to pile into a crowded space where you effectively have to be dumping your product at cost to have a chance of success.
While most others are wasting money on failed forays into the EV market, Toyota has quietly made their entire fleet (modulo trucks) hybrid.
At this point anyone can design a chassis to accommodate a skateboard battery and some drive motors. The only thing Toyota would need to wholeheartedly jump into EV is the supply chain and production capability for big battery packs. Admittedly this is a biggie, but don't discount the possibility that batteries are not at the end of their evolution and early entrants might get burned by some new chemistry or form factor.
> early entrants might get burned by some new chemistry or form factor.
the iphone is an outlier imho, and i dont think EV will replicate this.
The manufacturing capacity of batteries in china will continue to be a dominant force, and prevent competition in other countries from really setting up properly.
Not to mention the chinese EV giants have the R&D budget to be the ones to discover new chemistry.
I think this might be more like a TSMC situation where the rest of the world is always behind.
China will have a critical mass of research, scientists, manufacturing, engineers, and the right government buy in to stay ahead because there's so much demand.
Yeah, my Toyota BZ is great.
Nokia was the leader by profit until they weren't. They even experimented with hydrogen powered phones!