Toyota NZ CEO Neeraj Lala told Checkpoint the company is concerned people might delay a vehicle purchase, thinking an electric option would soon be on the market, after the messaging from the government.
"That's a big concern for us. We followed up with a comment there, just to clarify Toyota's position. And that was that we weren't in a position to make a full battery electric Hilux available inside of that two year window."
He said he has not seen any sign of a drop in purchases.
"If there was any chance of that happening, we would have seen customers cancel orders today which we haven't seen. We will monitor that closely over the next two weeks.
"We do not have a full battery electric ute in our development plan for the next 12 to 24 months at least.
"I can't comment on where the government's information has come from... our product development life cycle which we've been transparent on won't see a full battery electric Hilux in our market within the next 24 months.
"We're hopeful of an electrified option, which I think Minister Wood had intimated, so we will have hopefully a low emission ute available but again, it's not going to be across the entire range. It'll be in some of the higher grade models, not necessarily a standard specification in every truck."
