Business
Toyota Drops Electric Car Sale Plan
Toyota Motor Corporation
has
scrapped plans for widespread sales of a new all-electric minicar, saying it
had misread the market and the ability of still-emerging battery technology to
meet consumer demands.
According to Reuters, the Japanese automaker which had
already taken a more conservative view of the market for battery-powered cars
than rivals General Motors Company and Nissan Motor Company, said it would only
sell about 100 battery-powered eQ vehicles in the United States and Japan in an
extremely limited release.
Toyota company had announced plans to sell several thousand
of the vehicles per year when it unveiled the eQ as a pure-electric variant of
its iQ minicar in 2010.
“Two years later, there are many difficulties,” Takeshi
Uchiyamada, Toyota’s vice chairman and the engineer who oversees vehicle
development, said.
By dropping plans for a second electric vehicle in its
line-up, Toyota cast more doubt on an alternative to the combustion engine that
has been both lauded for its oil-saving potential and criticized for its heavy
reliance on government subsidies in the
United States.
“The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet
society’s needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs,
or how it takes a long time to charge,” said, Uchiyamada, who spearheaded
Toyota’s development of the Prius hybrid in the 1990s.
Toyota said it was putting its emphasis on that technology,
an area in which it is the established leader. Toyota said on Monday that, it
expected to have 21 hybrid gas-electric models like the Prius in its line-up by
2015, adding that out of that total, 14 of the new hybrids will be all-new, the
automaker said.
Toyota plans however, to have a hybrid variant for every of
its brand. In a gas-electric hybrid like the Prius, a battery captures energy
from the brakes to provide a supplement to the combustion engine, boosting
overall mileage, particularly in stop-and-go city traffics.
Cornerstone of Financial Services
A survey of more than 1 000 global finance leaders undertaken by digital payment network Ripple shows that 72% of respondents believe they need to offer a digital asset solution to remain competitive.
According to Ripple, leaders from the banking, fintech, corporate and asset management sector have made it clear that the “digital asset revolution is happening now”.
“Digital assets are quickly becoming a cornerstone of financial services, underpinned by progressive regulation, growing interest from Tier-1 banks, a steady consumer shift from banks to fintech providers, and booming stablecoin adoption,” Ripple says.
The survey was conducted in early 2026 and the findings released in March.
Stablecoin Boon or Bane?
Ripple has experienced significant success in the stablecoin sector since launching its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in 2024.
With a market cap of $1.56 billion, it is considered a major regulated player in the market.
No doubt the platform was pleased to learn through its own survey that financial leaders were most bullish about stablecoins.
Roughly three-quarters of respondents believed they could boost cash-flow efficiency and unlock trapped working capital.
Ripple noted that finance leaders were thinking about stablecoins as more than “just a new way to execute payments”; instead, they viewed them as effective tools for treasury management.
In March 2026, Ripple began testing a new trade finance model built around RLUSD in a bid to increase the speed of cross-border payments.
The pilot initiative, developed alongside supply chain finance company Unloq [https://unloq.com], is running on the XRP Ledger inside a testing framework developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The Asian city-state is one of the platform’s biggest growth markets.
The idea behind the project is to see whether stablecoin-based settlement can streamline trade finance, too often hampered by reliance on intermediaries and slow reconciliation.
The only potential drawback is that if the initiative takes off, the Ripple to USD price could be negatively affected.
Ripple has always championed its native XRP token as a bridge asset, the “middleman” in the process of a financial institution turning dollars in the US into pounds in the UK, for example.
Ripple converts dollars into XRP and then back into pounds.
If RLUSD can do exactly the same thing, questions will be asked about XRP’s relevance.
That is a bridge Ripple will have to cross if it gets to that point.
Tokenisation Partners
Another interesting finding from Ripple’s survey is that most banks and asset managers are seeking tokenisation partners to help execute their strategies.
Some 89% of respondents said digital asset storage and custody were top priority. “Token servicing/lifecycle management also ranks highly for banks at 82%, while asset managers place greater emphasis on primary distribution at 80%,” Ripple found.
The survey also revealed that just more than half of fintechs and financial institutions want an infrastructure provider that can offer a “one-stop-shop solution”. This rose to 71% among corporate financial leaders.
Ripple attributes this to institutions and firms wanting uncomplicated, cohesive systems.
Infrastructure Rules
In its final analysis, Ripple says companies across the board are looking for partners and solutions that are “secure, compliant, battle-tested and that enable growth and execution”.
“The message is clear: infrastructure decisions made today will shape competitive positioning tomorrow.”
No surprise that this is precisely where Ripple is placing much of its focus.
