You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
Combined with other EVs the company unveiled this week, it looks like the world’s largest automaker is finally getting its electric act together.
If you believe solely in the power of the stock market, then the world’s most important automaker is Tesla, whose soaring stock valuation reflects faith in Elon Musk and his AI dreams as much as it does the company’s EV sales. But if you care about selling cars, the real most important company is Toyota. The world’s largest automaker delivers more than 10 million vehicles per year, twice the sales of even a giant like General Motors.
The Japanese leader has a complicated relationship with sustainability. Toyota became the world’s signature crunchy car-maker with the introduction and success of the hybrid Prius. It still sells the Mirai, one of the only hydrogen fuel cell cars on the market. But Toyota has also always been reticent about EVs, standing on the sidelines while other legacy automakers rushed in with electric offerings, with its leadership expressing consistent skepticism about the advent of the EV era.
That is seemingly about to change, as the automaker appears ready to stop dragging its feel on full battery power. Toyota teased a few nuggets of important EV news over the past few weeks, And although its nine planned EVs by the end of 2026 are meant for Europe, this is a crucial window into the big brand’s plans.
First: Its initial foray into the pure EV space, the bZ4x, is getting an overdue upgrade. The awkwardly named crossover has been one of the more disappointing electric vehicles on the market, with just 214 horsepower. Its range, which starts around 220 miles and only goes as high as 250, isn’t up to the standards of today’s best EVs. The new version, however, pumps up the output to 343 horses, while also extending maximum range for the American version to around 280 miles. It finally adds simple, obvious features such as integrating charging stops into the in-car navigation system, making Toyota’s EV far more competitive with the state of the art.
The company has also promised, at long last, a deeper lineup of fully electric vehicles set to debut this year and in 2026. First is the C-HR+, a fully electrified version of the quirky little Toyota crossover that was briefly on sale in the United States until it was discontinued in 2022. (I test-drove one once and it was fun, if awkwardly proportioned.) C-HR+ would be the entry-level Toyota EV, with specs similar to the bZ4x but in a smaller and slightly less expensive package.
Then there’s the Urban Cruiser, which fits between the C-HR+ and bZ4x in terms of size. This EV is the spiritual successor to the Scion xD that was sold in America back before Toyota discontinued the Scion sub-brand here. The Urban Cruiser is set to go on sale only in Europe, at least for now. Specs like its driving range are not yet known.
The rest of Toyota’s EV plans lie in the shadows. In addition to the three models it revealed fully, the company also presented a slide that teased six more, depicted only by a faint outline. That’s standard practice in the car world, meant to drum up intrigue about cars yet to come. Tesla, for example, fed years of rumors about a small, entry-level EV that (to date, at least) never showed up by showing it under a sheet in various media presentations.
What’s noticeable about Toyota’s tease? There’s a truck.
Toyota has toyed with making an electric pickup before. In 2023, its engineers built a prototype EV version of the small Hilux truck Toyota sells in huge numbers around the world. That one-off became a real production EV, though only in Thailand and packs just 124 miles of range.
The design Toyota just teased looks like an extended-cab American pickup truck, not the single-row small truck is sells elsewhere. This leads to obvious speculation that Toyota might finally be electrifying the Tacoma and aiming to compete with the likes of Ford, Chevy, Rivian, and Ram, a move that would be a jolt to the sluggish market for EV trucks.
Although Toyota is late to the game — and its participation earlier would have done a lot to juice EV adoption — these moves are crucial. For one thing, the timing is interesting. The giant company’s much-awaited dive into EVs just as the United States government is putting the squeeze on them is further proof that the global market for electric vehicles isn’t going anywhere. We already know that enthusiasm for EVs is hotter in other countries, and Toyota sells cars everywhere.
And who knows? With Elon Musk flailing in the political winds, throwing away Tesla’s huge lead in various EV markets for no particular reason, maybe Toyota finally saw its moment to strike.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.
2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.
Long Islanders, meanwhile, are showing up in support of offshore wind, and more in this week’s edition of The Fight.
Local renewables restrictions are on the rise in the Hawkeye State – and it might have something to do with carbon pipelines.
Iowa’s known as a renewables growth area, producing more wind energy than any other state and offering ample acreage for utility-scale solar development. This has happened despite the fact that Iowa, like Ohio, is home to many large agricultural facilities – a trait that has often fomented conflict over specific projects. Iowa has defied this logic in part because the state was very early to renewables, enacting a state portfolio standard in 1983, signed into law by a Republican governor.
But something else is now on the rise: Counties are passing anti-renewables moratoria and ordinances restricting solar and wind energy development. We analyzed Heatmap Pro data on local laws and found a rise in local restrictions starting in 2021, leading to nearly 20 of the state’s 99 counties – about one fifth – having some form of restrictive ordinance on solar, wind or battery storage.
What is sparking this hostility? Some of it might be counties following the partisan trend, as renewable energy has struggled in hyper-conservative spots in the U.S. But it may also have to do with an outsized focus on land use rights and energy development that emerged from the conflict over carbon pipelines, which has intensified opposition to any usage of eminent domain for energy development.
The central node of this tension is the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline. As we explained in a previous edition of The Fight, the carbon transportation network would cross five states, and has galvanized rural opposition against it. Last November, I predicted the Summit pipeline would have an easier time under Trump because of his circle’s support for oil and gas, as well as the placement of former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary, as Burgum was a major Summit supporter.
Admittedly, this prediction has turned out to be incorrect – but it had nothing to do with Trump. Instead, Summit is now stalled because grassroots opposition to the pipeline quickly mobilized to pressure regulators in states the pipeline is proposed to traverse. They’re aiming to deny the company permits and lobbying state legislatures to pass bills banning the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines. One of those states is South Dakota, where the governor last month signed an eminent domain ban for CO2 pipelines. On Thursday, South Dakota regulators denied key permits for the pipeline for the third time in a row.
Another place where the Summit opposition is working furiously: Iowa, where opposition to the CO2 pipeline network is so intense that it became an issue in the 2020 presidential primary. Regulators in the state have been more willing to greenlight permits for the project, but grassroots activists have pressured many counties into some form of opposition.
The same counties with CO2 pipeline moratoria have enacted bans or land use restrictions on developing various forms of renewables, too. Like Kossuth County, which passed a resolution decrying the use of eminent domain to construct the Summit pipeline – and then three months later enacted a moratorium on utility-scale solar.
I asked Jessica Manzour, a conservation program associate with Sierra Club fighting the Summit pipeline, about this phenomenon earlier this week. She told me that some counties are opposing CO2 pipelines and then suddenly tacking on or pivoting to renewables next. In other cases, counties with a burgeoning opposition to renewables take up the pipeline cause, too. In either case, this general frustration with energy companies developing large plots of land is kicking up dust in places that previously may have had a much lower opposition risk.
“We painted a roadmap with this Summit fight,” said Jess Manzour, a campaigner with Sierra Club involved in organizing opposition to the pipeline at the grassroots level, who said zealous anti-renewables activists and officials are in some cases lumping these items together under a broad umbrella. ”I don’t know if it’s the people pushing for these ordinances, rather than people taking advantage of the situation.”