Hybrid vehicles have combustion engines however, until they’re plug-in hybrids, not EV cost ports.

A brand new Toyota advertising marketing campaign seems to downplay the distinction. Introduced Monday, the brand new “Electrified Diversified” marketing campaign emphasizes the number of choices accessible from Toyota, encompassing battery-electric, hydrogen fuel-cell, plug-in hybrid, and hybrid powertrains.

In an accompanying press launch, Toyota refers to all of them as “EVs.”

“Toyota believes within the energy of selections by providing a full spectrum of electrified powertrains for shoppers to select from—battery EV, hybrid EV, plug-in EV, fuel-cell EV—there’s an choice for everybody,” the discharge reads.

If automotive buyers got the selection between a “battery EV” and a “plug-in EV,” would they be capable of inform you which EV has the larger battery, or which one plugs in solely and would not have a tailpipe?

Toyota

The pattern video advert included with the discharge doesn’t point out “hybrid EV” or “hybrid electrical” autos, however declares that Toyota is “providing you with the selection on cut back carbon emissions.”

The marketing campaign has already drawn criticism from Public Citizen, which has accused Toyota of “preserving fossil fuels alive” by muddling hybrids and EVs.

“Calling autos with combustion engines ‘EVs’ is greenwashing, and is a blatant effort to mislead shoppers who usually perceive an EV to be a completely electrical automobile, not one which pollutes from a tailpipe,” East Peterson-Trujillo, senior clear autos campaigner on Public Citizen’s Local weather Staff, mentioned in an announcement.

This is not the primary time Toyota has been criticized for evaluating hybrids to EVs in its promoting. Regardless of pushback from shopper teams and a regulatory crackdown in Norway, the automaker continues to market its Lexus hybrids as “self-charging” in Europe, the place it beforehand used the equally complicated “all the time charged” tagline.

2023 Toyota Prius Prime

As for hybrid autos with cost ports, Toyota continues to badge its plug-in hybrids—together with the wonderful Prius Prime and RAV4 Prime—with the Prime title. If buyers navigate previous the battery EV and plug-in EV confusion, that ought to assist differentiate them from each normal hybrids and all-electric vehicles.

Some automakers—Chrysler and Subaru, as an illustration—have opted for the alternative strategy, with understated “hybrid” badging regardless of cost ports on the Pacifica Hybrid and now-discontinued Crosstrek Hybrid, respectfully. Volvo, in the meantime, has gone as far as to confess to creating design modifications to masks exhaust ideas on its plug-in hybrids.