Interview with Didier Leroy, Toyota Motor Europe
In this Enterprise 2020 interview with CSR Europe, Toyota Motor Europe's President Didier Leroy talks about Toyota's views and achievements in the areas of environmental leadership, technologies of the future, and working with local communities.
The interview with Didier Leroy is the fourth in a series of interviews on the future of responsible enterprise with business leaders from CSR Europe's member companies.
You can watch 3 short videos of the interview or read the summary below.
Part 1 - On environmental leadership
Environmental leadership is one of our main targets. We started by introducing a totally innovative car 13 years ago - the first generation Prius - and now it is quite obvious to everybody that hybrid technology is the mainstream of the future. We have already sold 2.5 million hybrid cars in the world, and just based on that we saved 13 million tonnes of CO2 for the planet.
But we don't just have the leadership in hybrid technology; we already go to the next step - the plug-in hybrid. We have now launched a limited lease programme in Europe with 200 plug-in-hybrid cars on the road in various European cities.
We have also developed our environmental leadership in two other areas. The first one is our manufacturing plants. We have a 360 degree approach for our environmental leadership, and two plants in Europe have been selected within the five pilots at the worldwide level to excell in environmental matters and become sustainable plants.
We have also developed our environmental strategy with our retailers. We currently have 3,000 retailers in Europe and have selected three of them as our pilot sustainable retailers. In addition, we are alone in Europe to introduce environmental requirements in our retailer cooperation standards.
Part 2 - On future technology
We are working on all the different aspects of mobility. Of course, we are already leaders in hybrid and plug-in hybrid, but we also consider all the other hypotheses.
We are developing some prototypes of electric cars, and will be ready by 2012 to introduce our first electric car on the US market.
We also working very hard on fuel cells and hybrid technology combined on the same car. Our vision currently is that fuel cells and hybrid technology will be mainly introduced on large cars, and we will be ready by 2015. Electric cars are for the small range or specifically for urban mobility in the short-term future.
Hybrid and fuel hybrid, as we currently have, plus the plug-in hybrid, is really the trend for the next years. So, the right car for the right time at the right place.
Part 3 - On working with the local community
The key for us is to make sure that we will be the most admired and respected company on the local level and globally. For that we have three key dimensions: the first one is our employees, after that our suppliers and our retailers.
We also have, of course, a lot of different activities and programmes with the local communities. For example, since 2002, we have developed what we call the Toyota Fund for Europe. It is a way for us to support specific activities at the local level. We have already supported more than 300 projects to make sure that we can help our members to contribute to the local community.
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