At the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF), Toyota's chief scientist Gill Pratt outlined why the automaker has decided to approach carbon neutrality with a multi-direction approach.

As you may be aware, the Japanese giant is often accused of being hesitant to adopt electric vehicles, with environmental groups often condemning its stance towards EVs. Pratt explained to delegates at WEF that becoming carbon neutral and achieving net zero is the most important thing to do for the environment.

Despite plans to establish more lithium mines, Pratt notes that, by 2040, there will be an ever-growing deficit between supply and demand. "There won't be enough lithium, and the reason is that mines take 10 - 15 years in order to get established, and battery factories only 2 - 3 years. There's going to be this huge supply crunch."

That's not to say Toyota is entirely against electric vehicles.

The company pioneered hybrid technology and has started to offer BEVs like the bZ4X, with many more on the horizon. So, what does Toyota believe is the way forward?

"We should electrify vehicles as much as possible, but we don't have to electrify them in only one way. The one way you're most familiar with is the pure battery-electric vehicle, but it turns out that uses a lot of lithium." Pratt also discusses the plug-in hybrid and regular hybrid setups, noting the former and the latter use less lithium than a pure EV.

Toyota's chief scientist explains the problem behind lithium battery-powered EVs through a simple example. If 100 ICE-powered vehicles emit 250 g/km of CO2, the fleet average is, of course, 250 g/km overall. Using 100 kWh batteries for one electric car reduces the fleet average to just 248.5 g/km.

"Our thesis is that this isn't necessarily the best thing to do all of the time ... because, in this case, we've replaced only one, but 99 others are still traditional ICE cars. The average of the emissions has dropped only a little bit." If the 100 kWh worth of batteries were spread across six plug-in hybrid vehicles, the fleet average would drop further still to 244 g/km.

It's a similar story with regular hybrid vehicles, where the same 100 kWh of batteries could be used for 90 hybrid cars. In this scenario, the fleet average decreases to 205 g/km. This is despite the fact that individually, these cars emit more CO2 than a pure electric vehicle.

"To be really clear, we're not proposing that we switch entirely to using hybrid cars. In fact, Toyota is going to make 3.5 million battery electric cars per year by 2030," remarked Pratt.

"But we think that in certain parts of the world, where charging infrastructure is not as green [and] there are people that don't have easy access to the charging network, that some of these other options may be better," he added.

Furthermore, Pratt notes that Toyota sees diversity as the best solution because only some regions can respond to climate change with the same answer. Many groups have targeted Toyota for its more realistic approach to the future of mobility. Still, the automaker is quick to point out that it's behind many environmental initiatives.

Like several other brands, Toyota has embarked upon recycling vehicle batteries. Plans are afoot to utilize old hybrid and EV batteries to power entire electricity grids. Still, Pratt also says the company is looking into engineering a reverse assembly process for recycling vehicles. This would make it easy to determine which parts can be reused and reduce the required energy.

This isn't the first time Pratt has expressed concerns over EVs and lithium-ion batteries and has previously said that he sees PHEVs as the best compromise at this stage.

One must not forget that Toyota also believes in hydrogen as an alternative fuel. The automaker already sells the Mirai sedan in certain markets and hopes to introduce additional vehicles in the future. Through various motorsport exploits, the brand has proven that hydrogen truly is a viable alternative.

However, there are certain barriers that need to be breached. At the unveiling of its Corolla Cross hydrogen concept, Toyota is yet to confirm whether the technology could be used in future road vehicles.

If you're interested in watching the presentation (it's well worth the time), click here.