Toyota’s Recent Success Is Getting in the Way of Its EV Future

A couple of hours west of Tokyo by bullet train, in the midsize town of Mizunami, a shuttered middle school is providing Japan’s carmakers with a different kind of education. A reverse-engineering company called Caresoft Global Technologies Inc. has turned the old junior high into a laboratory for electric-vehicle design. It pulls apart cars to study the innovations within, devise cost-saving proposals and pitch them to rival automakers. Some visiting clients study piles of parts in old classrooms, where blackboards are still dusted with chalk. Over in a room that once stored volleyballs, others review data gleaned from high-energy X-rays. ...