Toyota vs Honda | A Fight for the Future | 4
Business Wars
Audible
4.6 • 13.5K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2022
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Year 2000 is approaching and Toyota’s new boss Hiroshi Okuda’s looking to the future. After years of cautious success, he wants to be bold and take the fight to the world’s motor king, General Motors.
And to kickstart Toyota’s new direction, he wants Toyota to deliver the world’s first gasoline-electric hybrid. But Honda’s also working on an eco-car of its own and it’s about to crash the party.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Prime Members, you can binge off for episodes of Business Wars Toyota vs Honda, |
| 0:05.2 | ad-free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:07.0 | Download the app today. |
| 0:09.0 | A note to listeners, this episode contains descriptions of violence. |
| 0:20.0 | Please take care while listening. |
| 0:23.0 | September 1996, Toyota City, Japan. |
| 0:30.0 | Toyota's 63-year-old president Hiroshi Okuda looks up from his desk. |
| 0:35.0 | The company's research chief has just entered his office. |
| 0:38.0 | Ah, Mr. Wada, thank you for coming. |
| 0:41.0 | Please sit. |
| 0:43.0 | Okuda lets Akihiro Wada sit, and then he promptly drops the bomb. |
| 0:50.0 | I've decided that the Prius will launch in December 1997. |
| 0:55.0 | Wada stares at Okuda's long face. |
| 0:58.0 | The engineers creating the Prius think the current deadline of late 1998 is already too aggressive. |
| 1:04.0 | Now, Okuda wants to launch the world's first mass-produced hybrid a whole year earlier. |
| 1:10.0 | Stun, Wada gently pushes back. |
| 1:14.0 | 1997 may be too soon, the team struggling with the batteries, they're only getting half the power they should. |
| 1:20.0 | And even when that's fixed, they have to shrink the batteries to fit in a compact car. |
| 1:25.0 | Okuda's unmoved. |
| 1:27.0 | The Kyoto Protocol to reduce global carbon emissions will be adopted in December 1997. |
| 1:33.0 | For maximum impact, we must launch the Prius before the Protocols adopted. |
| 1:38.0 | Wada says nothing. |
... |
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