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Japan to Phase Out Gasoline-Powered Cars, Bucking Toyota Chief

All new vehicles must be hybrids or fully electric starting in mid-2030s, government says

TOKYO—Japan said it planned to stop the sale of new gaso­line-pow­ered cars by the mid-2030s, buck­ing crit­i­cism by Toy­ota Mo­tor Corp’s chief that a rapid shift to elec­tric ve­hi­cles could crip­ple the car in­dustry.

The plan re­leased Friday fol­lowed sim­i­lar moves by the state of Cal­i­for­nia and ma­jor Eu­ropean nations, but it has faced re­sis­tance from auto ex­ecu­tives in a coun­try that still makes mil­lions of cars an­nu­ally that run solely on gaso­line en­gines.

Japan would still permit the sale of hy­brid gas-elec­tric cars af­ter 2035 un­der the plan. Many mod­els from Japan’s top car mak­ers—Toy­ota, Honda Mo­tor Co. and Nis­san Mo­tor Co. come in both tra­di­tional and hy­brid ver­sions.

Ear­lier this month, Toy­ota Pres­i­dent Akio Toy­oda said that if Japan banned gaso­line-pow­ered cars and moved to elec­tric ve­hi­cles too hastily, “the cur­rent busi­ness model of the car in­dus­try is go­ing to col­lapse.” He was speak­ing on be­half of Ja­panese auto mak­ers in his role as head of a lo­cal in­dus­try as­so­ci­ation.

Mr. Toy­oda said the elec­tric­ity grid couldn’t han­dle ex­tra sum­mer de­mand and ob­served that most of Japan’s elec­tric­ity is gen­er­ated by burn­ing fos­sil fu­els.

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Starting in mid-2030s, all new vehicles must be hybrids or fully electric, Japan’s government says