Toyota proves that winning eco-customer loyalty takes more than one green product

If you ask me, as the price of fossil fuels helps push sustainability into the mainstream, the eco crowd looks a lot like today's early adopters for tomorrow's mass market. That's why, a couple of weeks back, I wrote (here and here) about how companies could win over the eco-conscious (hint: by not making uninhabitable the planet that six billion of us call home).

I said that making a splash with the greenest product in a sector might win you sales but not loyal, long-lasting customers. Because unless your company demonstrates a true commitment to sustainability and makes the eco-worried fall in love, they will simply move on when the next company comes out with an even greener product.

Toyota has done me the favor of proving my point.

Seven years ago, when the car maker came out with its Prius hybrid, the Sierra Club invented an award for excellence in environmental design to give Toyota. Now, according to Newsweek, the head of Sierra's global warming project, Dan Becker, calls the company a "hypocrite" for siding with Detroit car makers in opposing higher fuel efficiency standards for cars. "It's embarrassing to have applauded Toyota for the Prius," says Becker, "and now have them acting so irresponsibly."

Newsweek writes:

The environmental community has turned on Toyota. First, it quietly castigated the car maker for joining the Detroit Three in a lawsuit against California over legislation to reduce global-warming gases from cars by 30 percent within a decade, which would require cars to get up to 43 miles per gallon. Opposition increased when Toyota—in contrast to Honda and Nissan—sided with Detroit to try to block legislation currently before Congress to boost fuel economy for all new vehicles to 35mpg by 2020, up from 25mpg today.

That makes Toyota a traitor in the eyes of the environmental community, and what they have to say about car makers matters more and more as gas prices skyrocket.

Several environmental groups have launched a "How Green Is Toyota?" publicity blitz, which includes a letter-writing campaign they say has clogged the inbox of Toyota's top U.S. exec with more than 100,000 e-mails. In Detroit last month, eco-warriors stormed a Toyota dealership and draped it with a banner showing flag-wrapped coffins beside the slogan "Driving War and Warming." "Is Toyota really committed to being green, or are they just green scamming?" asks Rob Perks of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

And the funny thing is, for all the blacking of its own eye with environmentalists, Toyota looks like it hasn't even got what it wanted. Congressional negotiators have finally reached a deal energy legislation that would force American automakers to improve the fuel efficiency of their cars and light trucks by 40 percent to 35 miles per gallon on average by 2020. Notice I said good, not great, because what most environmentalists say we really need is at least 40 miles per gallon.

Which brings me back to my point about integrity, a true commitment to sustainability, and the loyalty of eco-conscious customers. Six months ago, if I thought of buying a car, I wouldn't have even bothered researching before getting myself a Prius. Now, suddenly, Nissan and Honda look pretty attractive.

Toyota blew it.

After all, who's better? The companies who don't stand in the way of nationwide fuel efficiency standards, or the company who produces one fuel efficient car and then fights for the privilege of producing more SUVs?

Photo of a Rainforest Action Network's Freedom from Oil protest courtesy of The Under Story.

Comments

[Rumpole84]

Has anyone considered that this is a strategy to drive the Detroit car makers out of business? If Ford and GM are not required to raise fuel economy, they will likely continue to make cheap cars with low economy, and people will soon stop buying them, making more market share for Toyota. In short, by siding with Detroit, Toyota makes more Priuses (Priii?)

[marymuses]

I've also read that the metal Toyota uses to make their cars is mined by a company that uses slave labor. So two strikes against Toyota. They are supposedly looking into it, but as far as I can tell have taken no real action to correct the problem. The same is true of Nissan.

My husband and I share an '03 Honda Civic Hybrid. As of yet I haven't found any negative info about their production, but if I did, we wouldn't buy from them again. We can, after all, always just ride our bikes.

[Sans auto]

I understand your point completely, but I think we need to take a step back and look at the big picture. Increasing fuel economy is good, except we have to remember that it takes energy to do so. We also need to remember that miles per gallon is not linear, it's logarithmic. So if you want to drive a car to your Grandma's house that is 100 miles away and had a choice between cars that got 10, 20, 30, 35 and 40 mpg, how much gas would each consume?
10mpg-10 gallons
20mpg-5 gallons
30mpg-3.33 gallons
35mpg-2.85 gallons
40mpg-2.5 gallons
100mpg-1 gallon
The best example here is that going from 10mpg to 20 mpg will save you 5 gallons of gas per 100 miles, but going from 20mpg to 100 mpg will only save you 4 gallons of gas per 100miles. If you graph this, it asymptotes at about30-35 mpg. The goal shouldn't be to force companies to expend more and more energy to get better fuel economy, the focus needs to be on getting the low economy vehicles off the road and start moving away from fossil fuels completely.

[Nick]

The problem is that increasing fuel-efficiency standards really doesn't help a whole lot. Sure, for those of us who drive a fixed/limited amount of the time, it allows us to make those trips with less environmental impact. But for most people, it just means that they can drive MORE and spend the same amount of money in gas as they did before. So what is the overall impact of this legislation? Nothing. Short of controlling the amount of gas distributed in the first place (rationing, anyone?), the laws of economics will turn any increase in efficiency into a wash as people just get more done with the same amount of resources consumed as before.

[Katy]

To Nick, I don't know anyone who buys a more fuel effenet car so they can drive more. Most people who look at mpg when car shoping are trying to get to where they need to go cheaper.
Speaking of cheaper... I would say that is my number one problem with the idea of hybrids. They cost more, but more importantly, they are incredibly expensive to fix. When I was car shoping I didn't have a lot of money to play with. I bought a Saturn because I got a good deal on it and I know that when the time comes to change a tail light it isn't going to cost me $300.

[Ariel Glenn]

I'm sorry but let's just all get on our bicycles and let em' put their cars where the sun don't shine. Even with improved fuel "efficiency" if everybody wants to commute to work alone each day for 45 minutes to one hour, one way, then the Prius won't help much. It will just allow us to continue the patterns of consumption that are killing us. I liken this to giving adult-onset Type II diabetics drugs rather than helping them via social support, nutritional counseling, and regular exercise to change their life rather than rely upon expensive drugs that do not work well in the long run.
Bikes are far more efficient, cost effective to produce, easily maintained, and healthy! Just a thought.

[DawnK]

Bikes are a little chilly, in Wisconsin, in the winter! Also, after a snowstorm, a warm day and now temps below freezing, it's a little icy, too. I'd rather go in my car, thank you. Right now it's 22 degrees with a windchill of 15. Not exactly optimal bike-riding weather.

[Andy]

marymuses - What makes you so sure that your bikes are so free of metals mined using slave-labor? Or your current car? Raw metals are a fungible commodity - the ingot of iron mined by slaves is completely interchangeable with that mined by workers with full health and retirement. The only way to avoid it for sure is to mine your own.

sans auto - Retake math. First, it's not logarithmic. It's 1/x. Second, the asymptote is y = 0, and you seem to be completely mistaken as to what that word means. Also, producing more high-efficiency vehicles does move low-efficiency vehicles off the road. Not as swiftly as smashing them right away, but certainly more defensibly.

Ariel Glenn - Bikes are also completely inadequate. Do you think that the modern world can function without large scale transportation, currently operating primarily via fossil fuels? Go ahead and try it - it doesn't.

[jeff]

People ski when it's 22 degrees with a wind chill of 15 and think it's great (and if they're skiing downhill they pay lots of money for it). I've always wondered why people think biking in cold weather is so crazy.

If you can't get down the road that's one thing (one might consider studded snow tires or chains like people in cars do), but if it's just cold you can always put on another layer. I routinely ride in temperatures in the twenties and even the teens. I guess it's not for everyone but I enjoy it very much.

@sans auto - good example and to quote you "The goal shouldn't be to force companies to expend more and more energy to get better fuel economy, the focus needs to be on getting the low economy vehicles off the road and start moving away from fossil fuels completely." I could not agree more.

I will also point out that if we think we're going to manufacture our way out of this mess, we need to think again. Consider the embodied energy in a new car. That is all of the energy (mostly coal and oil derived) used to mine and refine the ore, turn it into useful metal and then into parts, assemble them, ship parts and final products around the world etc., etc. Marginal increases in fuel economy or even shifting to other fuels will not offset the impact of these activities.

If we're going to take low efficiency vehicles off the road we should consider retrofitting them and putting them back on the road rather than buying new vehicles.

When mining becomes digging in landfills rather than mountain top removal or "mining" the air for carbon to make carbon fiber or something, then we'll be talking about real change that could make a difference. Buying a new car will not help.

[arduous]

The problem is, I think, that the Toyota Prius gets the best mileage of the hybrids.

So, do you support a company that sided against Detroit, but that has a slightly worse-performing hybrid?

Or do you support the company that sided with Detroit, but has a better-performing hybrid?

I don't really know the answer.

[jessica elgin]

The bottom line is the dollar. Toyota made a hybrid because of consumer demand--they could make money off of it. There's no reason to believe any of these companies do anything for any other reason.

[reason]

The problem is, by today's snapshot of how a car gets built in the US, the higher MPG would create too much disruption within the already fragile auto worker job security. A notable number (again by today's numbers) would most likely loose there jobs. I am very optimistic that these things could change with the help of companies like Toyota et al in the near future.

By 2006 figures, more, per car, is spent on Health Care benefits than steel. That's how insane entitlements and the over-managed, over-litigated, medical industry has gotten. Plain and simple.

"Knee jerk liberals" thrive off of negative (read victim) narrative. Governments are the LAST resort for solving problems of the marketplace involving choice. Always was, always will be. But it sounds great on the campaign trail, doesn't it?

If the above statement pissed you off, consider these facts:

According to research by UCDavis, the number one reason people buy a Prius is "image."

It takes more energy to manufacture a Prius than is does a Hummer.

Smart consumerism is a choice. We all need continuing education in order to make what we think are wise decisions.

[reason]

@Rumpole84
Couldn't agree more
Bravo!

[Lab Rat]

Taxes, Taxes and more Taxes: Make owning a car that gets less than 40 MPG a luxury and tax the hell out of it at both ends. Make all roads toll roads with satellite tracking devices on anything moving that is powered by a combustible engine and tax the hell out of it by miles driven. Then take all that money and build more nuclear power plants like most of the developed world so we can use 100% electric cars for our daily commutes, and make that electricity free when we recharge at home on vehicle-specific meters. Make the battery manufacturing companies a public utility and set strict standards on recycling, with all the profits going to mass transit.

Eventually, there just won't be any large combustible engine vehicles on the road.

You can't take personal high speed vehicles away from people, there would be a civil war. We are too spoiled.

[arduous]

@ reason, I agree that we in the US are greatly hurting our domestic car companies by forcing them to be health care companies that sell a few cars on the side. But until Americans wake up and realize that we NEED universal health care, I'm not sure what can be done on that front.

[csim33]

"It takes more energy to manufacture a Prius than is does a Hummer."

How about a site for that? I believe that study/article has already been discredited. It was written by a student for a college newspaper using a study that was highly flawed if not incorrect. Before it was discredited it was picked up and printed by several other sources.

[Rosa]

The Ford plant in St Paul, which Ford is shutting down, has always had hydropower. The union is trying to attract a green industry to take over the site and the workers. Maybe we should all bike at least half the year and invest the savings in a wind turbine or solar-plant mirror company.

You can't tell people to keep buying cars in order to employ auto workers, when the industry has spent the last 30 years trying to automate and offshore American automakers out of existence.

[reason]

@arduous
and any other Universal Health Care converts.
Name ONE successful government-based enterprise. Dumping this on the government sounds great in theory, but it won't work. It takes market forces, and the right to chose to change the way it works now. Government can help influence, but it can't solve it.

Arnold has proposed a plan in California and can't even get it through his own (left of center) state's Leg. (It's essentially the same as what Hillary's proposing she'd do on a national scale. Even used the same "experts" to scribe it.)

[reason]

@csim33
CNW Marketing Research, Inc.’s 2007 “Dust to Dust: The Energy Cost of New Vehicles
From Concept to Disposal”

Most inventions/new technology will take time to become efficient. A Hummer is 'old' technology. You can make a peanut and butter sandwich a lot easier than a gourmet meal. There's obvious trade offs between the two, but the effort involved appears self-evident.

[reason]

FYI, I'm not scientist, but I do know that handling nickel in the production of batteries produces some nasty by-products: such as sulfur dioxide. And the Prius is using big batteries. I'm sure there's a lot of by-product the Prius has generated. It's a by-product of it's innovation, plain simple.

Again, I'm all for advancing technology - for lots of reasons, practical and altruistic, but if your just going to refute anything that doesn't sound right or fit into the environmental status quo vs. the reality of the actual facts, it only becomes an issue of individual taste.

No one person can change anyone's mind. Only you can. Just offering some perspective and hopefully entice you to look into the subject more completely and make up you're own mind. Just remember
1. politics doesn't solve market problems
2. health care is, unfortunately, not a right (we don't come with warranties)
3. capitalism, while not perfect, is the best system for evolving to meet the needs of mankind.
We obviously need to evolve how our Gov represents our best interests. And like good parenting, sometimes you intervene, sometimes you don't.

Knee jerk naivety or band-wagoning will only cloud real solutions when we become irrationally focused on "...looking for a needle to mend our clothes for the night that we forget the warm bed the hay will make."

[reason]

@Lab Rat
I think the taxation without representation thing didn't work out too well for maintaining peace and harmony. I recall a skirmish in Boston over a certain product you steep in boiling water...oh never mind...

[Rejin L]

I think the lesson here is that companies are out to make money, period, so there is no point having "brand loyalty." Corporations do what is right for their bottom line, (not for the environment, their workers or consumers). So consumers have to do what is right for ours. Hopefully, ours is not just about money, but also takes environmental, labor and other issues into consideration.
Afterall, can a car company really be green?

[jeff]

@reason
Here is a critique of the CNW report: http://www.evworld.com/library/pacinst_hummerVprius.pdf
They state that, "A quick re-analysis with peer-reviewed data leads to completely opposite conclusions."

Anyway, you raise another important point. The impact of manufacturing goes well beyond energy use. Nasty by-products are also a big problem and advanced electronics often generate lots of nasty by-products.

Some more things to keep in mind:
1. Markets are efficient at the short term allocation of resources but are lousy at the long term planning necessary to prepare for our children and our grandchildren. Governments (especially democratic ones) can bridge that gap.
2. Anything is a right if enough people say it is. Rights as a concept or as a list are constructed by humans.

@Rejin L - I think you've asked the important question here, can a car company really be green?

[Lab Rat]

@reason,
Market choices and the right to choose...I see most people choosing the easy way; fast food, fast cars...and then let's make sure we have Universal health care to fix eveybody's clogged hearts and destroyed livers, because it's a right? I don't think so, I think it's a privilege, just like driving.

Health care should be delivered on a logarhthmic basis; you don't smoke? great! you don't drink? even better! you have great genes and no hereditary conditions? Wow! You qualify for the highest level of care offered to the human race! Oh, wait, you had unprotected sex and contracted HIV? Well, that bumps you WAY down the chain.

Only children should have the right to Universal health care, after that, you are entirely correct, lifestyle should be a choice.

From where I'm sitting, it looks like everybody is going down with the same ship. Revolutionary War or not, we don't need tea, we are already boiling in the water of Starbucks Coffee and combustible engines.

I want everybody to make healthy, happy choices, but I just don't see that happening...
but who am I...I'm just a Lab Rat.

[Tali]

Hi No Impact Man,

Thought you might be interested to write about this article, or its general topic: (article here)

I think you of all people will have a good perspective on how to keep the holidays green without losing the joy or being a Grinch.

I've been reading your blog for a while and enjoy it so keep it coming :)