Yes, the emission standards have forced the car manufacturers to offer electric cars. But how does it explain that customers are buying them? Even so much that there are long waiting times when you order an electric car.

The answer is: there are enough customers interested in buying an electric cars but both the available product range and production count limited their ability to do so. With the offerings of electric cars improving, the consumers are happily buying into them.

The car makers are taking a loss/low margin on BEVs sales . Pricing is tuned such that they can sell enough BEVs to meet the regulated fleet efficiency, but no more than that.

Which only means that the customer is of course taking the price into account when buying new cars. As the production costs of electric cars are coming down considerably (manufacturing scaling, battery costs), the prices are coming down and very soon there will be the same margin as with petrol cars. Never mention Tesla, who don't have the problem of compensating their ICE car emissions.

EU CAFE regulation virtually increases (not efficient) ICE car price and decreases EV car price.

I'm not sure that is the whole picture. VW in particular seems to be betting the company on electric.

It looks to me that Toyota has thrown away a huge advantage. Thet could have had an early lead with their experience with hybrids.

It probably won't matter that much. Toyota will start offering BEVs in large volumes eventually. They'll be Toyotas with a different powertrain.

What is a BEV. Had a quick scan, but can’t see a definition.

(Edit) Battery Electric Vehicle

Your first and second paragraph contradict each other. Even though Toyota doesn't offer a single BEV in their lineup, they are completely fine with the stricter emission standards.

Nobody is forcing anyone to sell BEVs, what is forced is efficiency. Full BEV is only one way to achieve that goal. Look at Hyundai Ioniq hybrid - a perfectly capable midsize family car, affordable, introduced to the market in 2017. It will meet emission standards all the way until 2029.

I'm talking about the targets for emissions across the entire fleet, not for the emissions of individual models.

Volkswagen must sell BEVs to meet its fleet emissions standards. Unfortunately for them, they missed their 2020 target so they will be paying a fine:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-idUS...

Volkswagen doesn't want to waste money on fines so they've made a big commitment to EVs. They've become the biggest BEV maker in Europe and in time they'll be the biggest BEV maker world wide, which isn't that surprising. Volkswagen owns 12 automotive brands and they're the world's biggest car company.

Toyota now sells the full-electric Lexus UX 300e in Europe, so it’s no longer true that they “don’t offer a single BEV”.

The specs of that car suggest that they want it to fail. It's not competitive to the EVs out there and is too expensive.

It has a bit more range as my Renault Zoe. Which is now 4 years old. It feels to me that this Lexus is nothing more than a compliance car.

You may well be right. But they do offer a single EV!

And more to follow:

https://electrek.co/2020/12/07/toyota-electric-suv-battery-e...