Toyota: 'No One Wants Us To Build Electric Cars'

Well, here's one that may give electric-car owners and advocates a Friday morning chuckle.

Toyota is well-known not only as one of the world's three largest carmakers, but also the global leader in hybrids.

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And it's a staunch proponent of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles that has repeatedly said it doesn't believe battery-electric vehicles will be viable in the auto market.

Pursuing that point, in a recent Los Angeles Times article about plans for fuel-cell cars from Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai, a company executive made a rather remarkable claim.

"No one is coming to our door asking us to build a new electric car," according to Craig Scott, the company's national manager of advanced technologies.

Now, we can think of at least a handful of drivers who might disagree somewhat with that assertion.

They'd be several hundred owners of surviving and beloved first-generation Toyota RAV4 EVs, now well into their second decade.

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They'd be the 2,600 drivers of the current Toyota RAV4 EV, whose sales are now winding down as Toyota has sold enough to meet its minimum compliance-car mandate.