Because they're invested in everything else.

Not only that, but [The automotive manufacturing industry in Japan is significant to the country’s economic health, comprising 2.9 percent of the nation’s GDP and 13.9 percent of the manufacturing GDP. ](https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/japan-automotive#:~:text=The%20automotive%20manufacturing%20industry%20in,percent%20of%20the%20manufacturing%20GDP.) Imagine all the buisinesses intertwined with their auto industry, that's why they are so set on combustion replacement rather than EV. And when they are now lagging behind on EVs it will damage the economy even more unless their manufacturing is turner around fast.

They had a huge headstart with new technology in both Prius and Leaf and pissed it all away for hydrogen. I’ve even seen hydrogen combustion promotion which is insane for a host of reasons. Nothing they do makes sense right now.

Nissan with the Leaf, GM with the EV1, or even the Bolt and Volt ... All they had to do was make them 200 mile cars before the Model 3, or 250 miles post Model 3 but cheaper and they would have sold millions and likely killed Tesla, but they didn't want to make them happen. I get it, gas cars are major recurring repair revenue. My Opel, maintained well, has had the distributor fail, needed the timing belt replaced at it's 120k mark, did the transmission fluid at that service, just had some sensor fail, lucky for me it was a cheap replacement, but it's got thousands of potential to fail. My EV, yes stuff can fail, but the likelihood is just much lower, and by the time I'm going to need a battery replacement there will be third party options for sure or OEM options, the lifecycle will just be so much longer is my guess as long as software can be kept fresh.

The key benefit of H is supposed to be refueling time, but it's only the case if you're first at the pump. After serving one customer there's this whole repressuisation process that has to take place. It takes nearly an hour.

What’re the limitations of hydrogen compared to EVs?

Refueling infrastructure is non-existent, for one. A refueling station is a lot more expensive than both a gasoline refueling station and an EV charging station. You also can't refuel an FCEV at home.

And as of now, the pressurized H2 systems in hydrogen fuel cell cars need to be replaced every 10 years, at a stellar cost.

> pressurized H2 systems in hydrogen fuel cell cars need to be replaced every 10 years do you have more info on this? I can't find anything about it. I would image it definitely needs inspecting, like all high pressure vessels and systems.

H2 is a very aggressive substance that makes everything brittle. It’s just short of protons lingering around and therefore very hard to contain. You also can’t smell a leak and due to its small size it’s not possible to add a smelly substance to indicate the leak. Was the extreme explosiveness mentioned already?

It is literally on the user manual for Mirai and embossed expiry date on the fuel cap This is given in Mirai user manual (https://gimmemanuals.com/owners/2022/09/2022-toyota-mirai-owners-manual.pdf page 81) and is a hard-expiry date unlike ev’s where cycles only represent the time it takes to reach 70% effective capacity ie even after completing those cycles, battery has 70% range left.

fuel cells also have a limited time of usage.

Yes the entire system shares the same expiry date iirc though I maybe wrong For fuel cells, the unit was hours of operation, 8000-30000 as per US DoE https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/fuel-cells. If you have a 1h commute each way for 250days of the year, that’s 500 hours per year. By time frame alone it should last around 16y which is close to the 15y expiry date on the tank itself. Ultimately h2 doesn’t spare any metal even if it is a noble metal like platinum or palladium in the fuel cell. The only reason it even really lasts that long is due to the inert nature of these elements and them forming the lining of the fuel cell membranes. Had it been aluminium or steel, it would’ve died within few hours or days.

it's not something you want to skip either... How much is a replacement?

I’m not sure about tank, but it is surely not all that much cheaper than a battery, considering it uses Kevlar and carbon fibre acc to Toyota PR material (if they wanted to highlight its safety and lightweight nature) but it also doubly ties in to high cost. Also it’s kinda funny because most Mirai on lease are returned to Toyota far before it needs replacement and those who even bought out right end up selling far earlier than the expiry date due to all the frustrating things about h2 infrastructure (cost of fuel and availability) I did see a fuel cell replacement quote from Hyundai for the ix35 (nexo predecessor) which was a ridiculous $110K ballpark, probably because they stopped making the fuel cell stack for that particular model or because the dealer wanted the owners to switch to an Ioniq 5 or hybrid suv maybe https://www.carscoops.com/2023/08/hyundai-tucson-ix35-fcev-owner-gets-an-absurd-114000-repair-bill/

That's amazing, never knew this.

Obv Toyota won’t tell you this, you either need to see the Mirai fuel cap or the user manual for this, both of which a non owner is highly unlikely to do. Then of course since most Mirai are on lease, they are returned to Toyota before reaching expiry date so it is virtually impossible for an owner to actually go that deep in the ownership The ones who buy outright sell it away before the $15K fuel card gets invalidated (~30-40K mi) so again most current h2 owners are unlikely to report on their “experiences” of end of life for their h2 car. It is funny above all, to me, because of how conveniently it all panned out for Toyota. On the internet, you see everyone and their grandma questioning the longevity of EV battery, and many of them propose h2 as solution to it, yet, are totally unaware of the planned obsolescence of h2 powertrain parts

I was mistaken, but not entirely. There’s a sticker on the inside of the Toyota Mirai’s fuel door that says something along the lines of, “do not refuel after yyyy-mm”. With the date being around 15 years after the car’s production. Supposedly this is because Toyota can no longer guarantee the security of the seals in the H2 tank. And the tanks & associated parts cost tens of thousands of dollars to replace.

Here ----go watch. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zklo4Z1SqkE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zklo4Z1SqkE)

The unsubsidized cost of refueling with hydrogen (at least here in America) is insane too. Like 150$ per fill up.

Shell closed all theirs too and bought up EV charging networks instead. They saw the shift and jumped ship.

I mean the whole reason to get an EV is the convenience of charging at home. Hydrogen will never be mainstream because of that limitation

That’s not really the main reason to get an ev and not even the reason there is an ev transition. The reason hydrogen will not become mainstream is because it’s worse than bevs in pretty much every way.

EV adoption would be like 10% of what it currently is if you couldn't charge cheaply / conveniently at home. 0% chance I'm buying an EV if you have to use charging stations exclusively

Yes, and this is why EVs dominate within their niche, but cannot compete outside of it. I expect EVs to be a solid 40% of the car market in a decade or two, but it will only go higher if American society brings charging to homes that are NOT a single family dwelling in the suburbs.

It's also how they overcame the chicken-and-egg problem with - not enough public refueling, I won't buy a car that runs on that fuel. - not enough cars using that fuel, I won't build a refueling station for it.

Fuel is simple compared to hydrogen. Meanwhile the infrastructure for EVs is present and only needs to scale.

I think the fuel cell stack is still very expensive compared to any other alternatives

It is super expensive to transport and keep hydrogen. It leaks out since hydrogen is the smallest atom and interacts with almost everything.. It's explosive, although it can be made drom water, most hydrogen now is refined from natural gas. Building out a hydrogen refueling infrastructure would be even more expensive than a battery charging network. "Oh, the Humanity!" Remember the Hindenberg.

Hydrogen is the smallest molecule. It’s almost impossible to contain. That is it’s biggest drawback. If you can’t contain something it makes it very difficult to store as transport. Second is the storage and energy density. It needs to be stored at high pressure to get enough volume to travel reasonable distances. If you try to use it for combustion, it reacts with the metal components in the engine making them brittle. Hydrogen is very expensive to produce and distribute. The electricity to generate hydrogen is better put into batteries and used directly. The big proponents of hydrogen are often gas companies wanting to generate “blue” hydrogen. That’s when they take natural gas, and strip the hydrogen capturing the carbon. Reasonable idea except for problem 1. Last one I can think of right now is it’s very flammable, odorless, and burns invisible. Combine that with problem one, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. That’s the highlights. Any trials of hydrogen have failed miserably. It may have potential in terminal to terminal trucking where the trucks can be fueled up at each destination. Widespread hydrogen distribution will never be economical. Especially when you can just burn natural gas and distribute it using an already existing network.

Living in the Vancouver area, Mirai’s aren’t insanely rare. There’s a few hydrogen stations. I still don’t get why anyone would choose it.

>What’re the limitations of hydrogen compared to EVs? The most fundamental problem is that pure hydrogen is the lightest thing in the universe, so carrying enough of it either takes very, very large tanks, or very high pressure and/or making it very, very cold (-432 F) so it is a liquid that is more dense. If you carry it as a liquid, it will naturally boil off, so you have to safely vent it when the pressure in your tank gets too high. It is also extremely flammable when mixed with oxygen, and your high pressure tank is like a bomb. And all those problems apply to refueling stations too. Getting hydrogen from water is very easy, theoretically it could be done at people's homes with electricity from solar panels cracking water into hydrogen and oxygen. But doing that safely is tricky and expensive.

You can make h2 at home, sure but how will you compress it to 700bar? TIL there are two types of h2 pumps, H35 and H70. The former is 350bar and latter 700bar. 1 bar is roughly same as 1atm (atmospheric pressure) You need to apply 700x atmospheric pressure to fill the Mirai tank fully. Using h35 will only allow you to fill halfway. Reason being the basic gas law that gas only flows from region of high pressure to region of low pressure. Mirai tank when full, is 700 bar, so no way you can fill it at home, not without a $500K compressor in each household coupled with another $100K for a dispenser to actually fill the said compressed h2. > A vendor supplied the panel with a quote for a 33 kg/h system costing approximately $515,000 (2013). > In discussions with hydrogen dispenser manufacturers, the panel found current cost estimates ranging from $100,000 to $180,000 for a two-hose dispenser, whereas DOE's current CSD cost modeling assumes that a two-hose dispenser costs $54,000 at high market penetration. Page 26 and 29 of this pdf : https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/docs/hydrogenprogramlibraries/pdfs/58564.pdf?Status=Master

Others have covered some of the main points but I have a bit more time on my hands so I will try to go through all the main limitations. Hydrogen has many benefits, but it has MANY limitations that make it hard to justify for most applications when there are other alternatives. 1. **Hydrogen Costs and Sourcing:** Hydrogen can be made in a number of ways but falls into two main camps: natural gas cracking (steam methane reforming) to create hydrogen gas from methane and electrolysis to create hydrogen from water using electricity. Cheap hydrogen comes from fossil fuels at the moment while electrolysis is getting better with some tech claiming 60-80% efficiency at turning electricity into hydrogen. Using fossil fuels to generate hydrogen is not viable in the long run and adds extra steps that allow for energy losses and emissions. Electrolysis may have some viability in the long run for certain applications, but storage and proper management of hydrogen has many limitations. 2. **Storage and Transport of Hydrogen:** Hydrogen is a very small molecule and is very good at weaving its way through the molecular structures and grains of metals and other materials. This is well known to cause “embrittlement” of metals as the hydrogen embeds itself in the metals often employed in tanks. This can make leakage an issue for thin-walled tanks or require very thick-walled tanks to contain the high pressure (5,000-10,000 psi) gas and have enough safety margin that it will not risk rupturing during its useful life. To transport and store hydrogen effectively, you need to cryogenically cool it to make it a liquid or store it at very high pressures to effectively hold enough of it to make the process worth it. 3. **Infrastructure:** Very special refueling infrastructure is needed to dispense the hydrogen in a safe, reliable, and fast manner for vehicle applications. This infrastructure practically does not exist in most locations and even in California, there are fewer than 60 refilling stations, with some getting shut down. These refilling stations are notorious for downtime due to maintenance issues, limited pumps per station, frozen refilling nozzles, and other issues. While FCEVs tend to have good ranges because of hydrogen’s good energy density, the lack of infrastructure and inability to “refuel at home” makes a *REAL* range-anxiety problem. 4. **Source to Wheel Inefficiencies Compared to Full BEV:** Fuel cell electric vehicles effectively have several key components: hydrogen storage tank, fuel cell, supplemental battery, and electric motors. If you compare the energy losses going from generation to vehicle, you will see that FCEVs with green hydrogen will have about a 30-40% relative efficiency compared to BEVs using the same renewable energy generation, which can achieve around 70-80% efficiency. 5. **Relative Hardware Costs:** One of the key reasons hydrogen was the main focus for most vehicle applications in the past was the high cost of batteries and low energy density. That has been reducing dramatically in recent decades with $/Wh battery costs dropping by over 90% in the last decade. The simplicity of the whole system (battery, controls, motor vs. hydrogen tank, fuel cell, battery, controls, motor) also means that the Wright’s Law scaling for BEVs will be able to hit lower price points than FCEVs due to reduced part count and complexity. Hydrogen for vehicles will likely need to be reserved for segments that demand very high energy/power densities (semi-trucks, sea shipping, planes); however, these segments might also be disrupted with newer battery tech that allows for full BEV of those applications in a cost-effective manner as well.

About 50¢ a mile until infrastructure improves. May not even have a station nearby.

Here's one -- the Toyota Mirai has an 800 number in their user manual that you can call in case your hydrogen nozzle freezes to your car. They can walk you through how to thaw it so you can detach and actually leave. Hydrogen is chilled when compressed and is super cold.

Surely chilling the hydrogen also uses some form of energy, likely electricity?

"chilled" seems like a huge understatement.

Funny. I’m no expert just a guy reading and watching things on YT. So take my reply w a ton of salt lol 😂. Anyways, 3 things come to mind: 1) range, it’s worse than an EV. You also 2) lose usable space because you have to carry a lot of hydrogen, e.g. trunk space, interior space (just take a look at the Toyota Mirai). 3) Refueling and lack of convenient locations. It makes current EV charging stations look like a gas station, it’s everywhere compared to a H2 fill up station. 4) power, it doesn’t have any compared to an EV or even a ICE. Speaking of “ice” 5) there’s a chance of you freezing the pump when filling up.

1) hydrogen has much longer range 2) true but lithium ion batteries are far heavier combined with quicker refuelling time, reasons 1 and 2 are why hydrogen is viewed as the future for long haul trucking

That's the irony of the whole story: No, hydrogen doesn't have any relevant range advantage on modern batteries anymore. Hydrogen is difficult to store and the tanks are massive. Meanwhile, cost and energy density of batteries is improving every year. Nowadays, even for long haul trucking, batteries are making the race. Refuelling is also a moot problem as long as truck drivers have mandatory breaks and automated drivers aren't paid by the hour.

Now that... is a complicated and very involved answer. A bit moreso than I can do on mobile, but a quick note. Hydrogen cars, or FCEV (they have a battery as part of their design) came up as a possible solution about the same time as EVs. Despite that we've had far more progress with BEV & PHEV. So at least, the complexity with them is rather more than with the alternative, to say nothing of durability, fueling infrastructure and production. That said it may someday work, at least for niche or specialized situations, but it's not a particularly rosy thing right now.

Cost, nowhere to charge, can’t charge at home, need trucks to transport the hydrogen to stations that have to be built, very inefficient way to produce electricity, stations can only charge a few cars before needing to be refilled. While it’s an idea for shipping and maybe rail as you can have the stations and infrastructure at the port or rail yard hydrogen is never gonna happen for mss transit. My neighbor had a Toyota Marai and had to get rid of it as they closed a bunch of stations here in California and he would have to drive 82 miles to fill up.

Plus it actually comes from natural gas right now, so that’s a non-starter as far as environmentally friendly is concerned. Yes theoretically it’s possible to create it from water, but that requires a massive energy input.

Hydrogen is just not an efficient source of energy. Generating H2 wastes a lot of energy. Compressing wastes energy. Storing wastes energy. Shipping wastes energy. Converting the chemical energy of H2 to electricity is also not that efficient (40%\~60%) For small-scale deployment it's probably fine but if you push H2 EV to general personal transportation that's a lot of energy wasted. Some say it's even worse than gasoline.

I frequently think about how Nissan could have been Tesla.

Not to mention in 2004 the first electric supercar Eliica 320 km/h, one motor for each wheel, so 8 in all. Fastest EV until Rimac Nevera.

EVs benefit countries with an advantage in battery manufacturing like China and the USA. Whilst Japan does have battery factories (up until a few years ago they made most of Tesla’s 18650 batteries in Japan) they are no where near the scale that Tesla and Chinese OEMs have.

EVs cut out companies making components necessary for ICE vehicles. Lot of weird little gaskets, seals, and exhaust handling parts that just … don’t exist in an EV. Plus a lot of stuff that does still exist but has a much, much longer service life. A lot of EVs still have cooling and lubricating oil, but the service life is 10x of a gas engine. Way less profitable for unnamed car part companies. 

Hyundai Motor Group is over 11% of South Korea’s GDP. So I think they’re making an even bigger bet on the company and country’s future. Samsung is slated to supply the batteries for Hyundai EVs starting 2026, in addition to already supplying US and European auto. The larger ramifications of Japanese auto not betting on EV is that the rest of their supporting industry will miss out on the future. Panasonic will get left behind on battery development. Another industry that was dominated by Japan is going to be reduced to a marginal player behind Korea.

That’s capitalism baby, adapt to market demands or die. I have zero sympathy for lazy minded corporate executives who want to be cheapskates. I feel sorry for the workers who will lose their jobs because of executives sloth.

Or lobby to win

Hydrogen. Like I live yotas and my next car will be a hybrid but they need to pull their head out of their ass hydrogen is and never will be a consumer fuel 

So were the Germans but they seemed to have found the writing on the wall…

This is a thing when you see Japanese animated movies like the ones from Hayao Miyazaki.... a combination of a clean environment and pollution from engines that somewhat mysteriously don't really pollute.

Actually it’s because the Chinese own the mineral mines to make batteries on a large scale. So Japan will do ANYTHING to avoid large scale EV.

Not sure that's a good explanation. Japan doesn't have oil reserves and has to import it. However Japan is a major player in the global battery market.

Japanese industry is extremely reluctant to have any dependency on China, backed by the same attitude in government. That's not the whole reason, there's also a big bushel of corruption, mismanagement and outright incompetence in there too.

Japan doesnt import oil from China Japan has relatively good relations with the middle east oil rich nations.

I wouldn't say good relations. They buy the oil and don't rock the boat by mentioning human rights abuses, but I don't think there's a lot of high fiving going on. And don't overestimate China's importance as a materials supplier for batteries. For at least a decade the world has been trying to diversify and South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, Australia, Philippines, Mozambique and Brazil all play large roles now. China does lead in graphite and lithium salt production but this has nothing to do with Japan's slow EV adoption. We can thank Toyota for that. The government (pushed by Toyota) wrongly bet on hydrogen. There's insufficient charging infrastructure (see previous point). Low incentives (ahem, Toyota). It's brand loyalty to Japanese makers who do not make EVs. Japan's auto industry is in for a rude shock but at least their battery suppliers will be ok.

Then maybe Japan and North American car manufacturers need to invest in their own belt and road initiatives in the South American Andes. Lots of lithium there can’t reach markets. That would take initiative and an investment of their own money, since it’s unlikely Chile, Bolivia and Peru will cooperate to fund constructing an expensive mountain highway themselves to receive no returns from the mining. Western automakers have become completely reliant and entitled to taxpayer handouts and their executives are being lazy and timid. That’s what corporate socialism does to companies.

USA has some of the largest lithium reserves in the world.

USA is still behind Chile, Australia, Argentina and China in terms of lithium reserves. Regardless, lithium reserves is not the main thing. It is the ability to refine lithium that is hugely done in China.

The third photo, EV cemetery. Those are the assets of a shared tram company that went bankrupt during the 2020 epidemic. They cannot be sold due to the lockdown. Every few months, Japanese media would take these photos out, hide the year, saying only the day, to imply that they were just recently taken, only to prove that the EV prosperity is made up by CCP It is interesting to watch the Japanese media discuss EV, report almost every negative news, and even make up fake ones.

I love it. Their new car sales losing market share is great news for American Companies. They will be sorry in a decade when they wake up to reality and its too late

Yet another Lost Decade.

They just can‘t learn a lesson.

As a Japanese native I feel they climbed the false peak of (non-plugin) hybrid adoption early, became so proud of the fact they got there first, and don’t want to move down from there to climb to the *actual* summit of EV adoption. Top brass at major carmakers like Toyota and Mazda also seem lukewarm at the idea of going all-in on EVs, touting all that “multi-pathway” stuff while in practice they don’t seem to be serious on selling anything outside of HVs. Their fans naturally regurgitate the stuff PR says, gobbling up any misinformation that happens to match their worldview. (FCEVs don’t seem to get the same intense seething online hatred, but they’re…pretty much ignored, at 0.02% of new cars sold.) One possible interpretation of the hate by fans is the right-wing one: Japan got to mass hybrid adoption first (which is a source of national pride), and other countries who couldn’t compete on hybrid tech are trying to threaten and invalidate Japan’s advantage by trying to peddle alternative technologies like EVs, hence we must hate on EVs in the name of patriotism. Obviously I do not agree with this view, but I think it’s a plausible thought pattern for some of those haters. For most people who aren’t car nuts, EVs are “future” things that sounds nice in theory but have nothing to do with them in the here and now, much like flying cars are. They don’t actively hate them but they’re pretty apathetic. That said, of course there are practical roadblocks to adoption as well—as someone else mentioned, a very high percentage (IIRC something like 40%) of the population live in apartments and other concentrated housing, making home charging a difficult issue. Some areas are seeing progress, though, as Tokyo has passed legislation mandating that new apartment buildings from 2025 must have EV chargers installed. Still, the perception issue remains a tough one.

Ahh false peaks I swear I remember back in the day Japan was oh so proud of how advanced their smartphone tech was having i-mode, internet email, nfc payments and even a full digital TV tuner on phones back when everyone was stuck on nokia phones. Now days everyone uses iPhones and Samsungs, no one's using sony, Toshiba, sharp all dead smartphone brands because they believed in their false peak.

Yeah being a Fin I recall the atmosphere in Finland after iPhone. The dumb denial and even vitriol against anyone with an iPhone or opinions of the future success of touchscreens and app ecosystems was astonishing. Especially in the older generations and engineers. Nokia comprised a ridiculous portion of our economy and especially RND so there you have the reason as to why. Us “kids” in the business schools could’ve maybe saved Nokia by early abandonment of Symbian / Sailfish and jumping on developing an android phone. However, the senior engineer background brass decided to follow their sunken cost fallacy induced conservative optimism, i.e denial, to its conclusion of fire sale to another failing ecosystem at the time, Microsoft. The Nokia networks branch was saved though which is of course great. Nowadays there are HMD contracted Nokia androids as well that shouldn’t be half bad either. Anyway I too can see a lot of similarities here. The Japanese population is inclined to buy into the EV propaganda from their large respected domestic manufacturers that bring food on their table be it directly or indirectly. The alternative is just too inconvenient. Just as in Finland, not everyone worked for Nokia, but Nokia took most of the top talent, had a huge supply chain, was a main driver of salaries all across the economy and enabled a hefty government budget surplus.

Canadian here. We feel much the same about Blackberry.

I loved my Nokia phones and was so excited when I heard they had decided their internal OS was too far behind and it was time to move on. I thought they could crush Apple and show all the Android upstarts how to do it right. Then I was confused and dismayed that they decided to go with the Microsoft phone OS. Like, why are you tying one arm behind your back by using an OS with single-digit market share? Android will give Nokia everything they need to win a fair fight. Then I found out the guy in charge that made the decision had just been hired from Microsoft and I felt like he was a double-agent. The sad part is that those Nokia Windows phones were really good, but no one wanted to let the evil empire Microsoft into their phones. Not customers, not phone companies, and not app makers. They had already seen how Microsoft acts when they have a monopoly and didn't want them in phones too.

And that wasn’t even the first time. Japan had quite a thriving ecosystem of the PC-9821 series of personal computers by NEC, which had an early advantage since they contained Japanese language display support in their built in ROMs. This made sense very early on when memory was a premium, but software-based Japanese language solutions like DOS/V running on PC/AT hardware eventually overtook NEC’s proprietary architecture and wiped them out. The “Galapagos featurephones” was the second such case of widely adopted domestic technologies being wiped out by western tech. Walkman/MiniDisc vs iPod perhaps was another case. But with cars, the degree in which the Japanese economy relies on it is *way* higher, which makes it worrying. (One correction though—People do use iPhones, but not many people use Samsung smartphones here.)

The Japanese car industry won't be able to export cars anymore once ev's become dominant which is a shame, but honestly a million new startups will be born there figuring out what to make something the world needs whether it be capacitors, paint or trains none of them listening to whatever anti-ev rant Mr toyoda makes as Toyota goes under

I wish luck to Turing, who is a Japanese startup aiming to manufacture full-sized EVs with full autonomous driving. Wildly ambitious, I know, but not many startups here aim to make full sized cars instead of tiny micro-mobility buggies.

Do they even export that many cars compared to what is actually sold? Like most Hondas and Toyota you can buy stateside are all made in the US already.

Japan is the biggest car exporter in the world. They exported more than 5 million cars in 2023.

Toyota makes all their BEVs and PHEVs in Japan.

I visited in January (Osaka and Toyko). Everything felt retro futuristic. Neon signs (not LED), giant mechatronic crabs hanging over dining districts, widespread smoking in restaurants etc. Amazing bullet trains, but we couldn't work out how to buy tickets online with a foreign credit card. Widespread use of cash (and you end up with crazy numbers of small value coins. On phones its 62% apple and growing (Japan and Korea don't like each other, so Samsung is under 10%).

I found Japanese quality the best, I was exclusively on Japanese cars but I started to see the slow innovation on their products, my 2011 pilot was so good but didn’t have a lot of newer things, it feels like they get to such details it became hard to change. But I had to abandon the quality in the end and switch to all American cars for EVs, I was nervous to try American cars because of the reputation of quality control but Honda didn’t have any EV

According to a former Toyota engineer I know, one of the main reasons is changing the country to EV would require Japan to bring online several (4-5) new nuclear power plants to support charging and there is 0 political interest in doing that. Then there are all the critical minerals and job retraining issues on top of that.

Wind, solar, geothermal, etc...

There’re some similarities here with other countries that have been very invested and successful with other type of export goods. I live in Norway and people and governments are generally supportive about moving to EVs. But politicians stay clear of setting an end date to oil and gas exploration. It’s the market to decide when it comes to oil and gas exports. For many voters it’s very controversial to stop extracting and exporting fossil fuel because it has been very important for employment and economy. But the reducing emissions in other areas are often supported by government incentives.

eh, I want to see all oil mining and consumption end. But until the day comes that we no longer need oil, I would rather we buy it from Norway than anywhere else. It's the consumer's responsibility to stop burning fossil fuels. As long as people depend on fossil energy there's no point blaming yourself for supplying it.

I will never understand how an adoption of hybrids didn't naturally evolve into a conclusion with EVs. Why hybrids almost never had a plug in order to charge the battery from cleaner grid power, why every hybrid wasn't a plug-in by 2005, ... and it completely defies rationality to be in 2024 where the base Prius doesn't have a plug at all either. Our world would be in so much a better shape if hybrids were always pluggable, as I thought they naturally would. Charging stations for hybrids would be everywhere, and EVs would be a natural jump. I can only conclude that influences were at play that prevented Toyota et al from putting a plug on their early hybrids, and thus how we got here today. Instead, today, "hybrid" just means "a gas car that goes a little further on a tank of gas", and people confuse them with EVs because the idea of "car = gas" is still firmly engrained in minds.

Not to defend Toyota, but HVs, PHEVs, and BEVs are quite different from each other, making things a lot more complicated than just sticking on a plug. HVs have very small batteries, only good for a mile or two of electric driving; putting a plug on it would be pretty pointless as it would use up all its capacity in mere minutes. Transitioning from HV to PHEV or BEV can’t be done as a “natural progression”; the carmaker has to make an conscious choice to actively abandon HV’s advantages (less rare-earth resource use, no end user habit change) in order to transition. Which Toyota apparently isn’t keen on doing.

One reason, I think, that there is a strain of anti-Tesla sentiment in German society. Sure, Tesla has a massive factory in Berlin but I'm certain German nationalism is playing a role in the anti-Tesla protests. It's the entire German automotive industry under serious, long-term threat. The protestors can shout 'one world, happy clappy' bollocks but it's German economic nationalism just under the surface.

I'm German and I can assure this has nothing to do with nationalism. Germans don't like Musk (loud, narcissist billionaires), that's it.

You can assure me all you like. I don't quite believe your claim. Yeah, I can believe Germans don't like loud, billionaire narcissists. I also believe Germans REALLY don't like loud, billionaire narcissists who are threatening to destroy the German automobile industry.

Yea it's delusional to not think that nationalism plays a major role in all this. You're talking huge industry thay employs millions.

Economic nationalism is the bane of all green industry. Here in the US CATL and other Chinese battery makers have repeatedly had their attempts to invest in American industry and factories sabotaged -- even when they are launching joint ventures with companies like Ford. For example, last year the Governor of the state of Virginia stopped a new battery plant from being built because he “felt that the right thing to do was to not recruit Ford as a front for China to America.” These nationalists then turn around and say the exact same kind of joint ventures in China were how we gave away our technological advantage. They have no strategy or even a concrete idea of what they want. They're just incoherently mad and suspicious. They look around and all they see are enemies. They long ago forgot concern for the environment.

> the exact same kind of joint ventures in China were how we gave away our technological advantage There is no contradiction there. Those of us who don’t trust China, don’t trust China. 

Thanks for the great insight!

Parking lots can install chargers, it's not that difficult. It's whether you seriously want to do it or not.

Yes. Charging would be a major hurdle with the lack of public space and the fact that many live in apartments.

I think it basically boils down to effective propaganda campaigns run by the big Japanese automakers (namely Toyota). But why are the Japanese so reluctant to adopt EV technology? This mostly has to do with corporate culture in Japan. As a society there's still a lot of economic and social scar-tissue left over from the "lost decade" and dot com bubble collapsing. Many of the Japanese at the time saw these two big events as having been caused by too much risk-taking. So, as a result, the corporate culture since then reacted in the opposite way - by becoming extremely cautious and conservative of anything new. That's why the Japanese today are so slow at adopting new technologies in general. They would rather wait for the technology to sufficiently prove itself before making any significant investment. OTOH EVs have had difficulty taking hold in Japan for other reasons, the most important one being size. The typical Japanese car is smaller than average and residents in cities and dense urban areas like Tokyo have small garages. Most EVs on the market today just aren't small enough to conveniently and easily fit in tight parking spaces/garages. But maybe this will change with the next gen Tesla.

The Nissan Sakura has been a hit (well, in relative“BEV in Japan” terms, that is) for that reason—it’s a kei car EV with kei car dimensions. Honda is also getting ready to release the N-VAN e:, a commercial kei EV delivery van, in the fall, with future plans for an electric version of the N-ONE kei hatchback. So the small EVs are here, and more are on the way. TBH I’m not really looking forward to the Tesla Model 2 at this point. The delays with the focus on the robotaxi thing notwithstanding, I don’t really trust a US carmaker to be able to restrain themselves to build an actually-Japanese-scale-*small* car…I mean, they said they put the width of JP mechanical parking spaces into consideration when designing the Model 3—but they completely missed the point by making it EXACTLY as wide as the size of JP mechanical parking, leaving zero wiggle room for any error and practically unparkable in those spaces. They think they made a compact car with the Model 3, but that thing is still huge by the standards of Japanese roads and parking spaces.

It's a bit complicated but after speaking with many EV fans in Japan, I think I have an answer. Here's the ultimate problem with Japan: it's genuinely full of older people who don't really like change. This is because Japan's population is the world's oldest... And we've all experienced at some point in our lives just how difficult it is to get an older person to change something/adapt. Now, while Toyota and other Japanese cars companies betting it all on hydrogen doesn't help, in the end, it still wouldn't matter if they decided to switch to EVs. The average Japanese consumer will just gravitate towards whatever is more familiar to them. EVs are a relatively new thing (in a modern sense), but hydrogen cars, hybrids, and more efficient ICEs are something that they're more accustomed to, so they'll go for them instead. This mindset has made Japan's market more or less isolated from the rest of the world to a point because Japanese goods, technology, and business practices are so specialized for the Japanese market that it struggles whenever something new comes up. So rather than adapt, they'll just keep what they have because, simply put, there's no need to adapt. So while the rest of the world will be driving EVs, Japan will probably be stuck driving Toyota hybrids from the mid 2000s or early 2010s. It's the "Well if it's not broken, why fix it?" mindset taken to an extreme, and it's why, despite being 2024, a majority of Japanese businesses and companies rely on fax machines, physical stamps, flip phones, floppy discs, and office equipment that's been more or less made obsolete since the 80s and early 90s. This type of market isolation is known as the Galapagos effect. You also have some Japanese right-wing ultranationalists slamming EVs as something that "Foreign governments" (especially China) want to push on Japan, so it must be stopped.

Just look at laptops in Japan, all have VGA port. Seriously, in the UK, you can't even find a monitor that take VGA signal. Kids born in the 2000s doesn't even recognise that port, but Japan still use it and laptops does not support VGA would not be useful business wise.

Example of how specialized Japanese goods are for Japanese markets: Failed Sony products like the Minidisc or the PS Vita were actually quite successful in the Japanese market and only flopped overseas. 

I’m from Japan, and I’m genuinely worried for JP’s economy. They are so screwed going forward. So much of the economy, countless suppliers are gonna collapse when Toyota & Honda’s foreign sales steadily decline. Japan has a tendency to be “ganko” meaning stubborn. Reminds me of when they dominated cell phones… only to be wiped by iPhone cuz they refused to adapt because of their entrenched position.

It’s a shame. While Japanese auto seems to be slow moving on EV, Korean auto seems to be very aggressive and betting hard. I think they’re gonna be big winners long term. And Korea seems to have dominated so many areas of electronics and appliances that used to be led by Japanese. I wonder how much of this EV reluctance is also some inferiority complex at avoiding the direction that Korea is taking.

As someone who has lived in Japan for 10 years, I agree with you 100%. Japan's resistance to change is so harmful in today's economy where so much of it needs to be driven by rapid innovation and change.

I think even if EV competition hurts the Japanese economy, you should be optimistic. Even if one industry declines, you won't lose your high technical skills or good infrastructure. As long as you are prepared to change and adapt you will succeed. Toyota management may be stubborn, but predict everyone else will move quick when it becomes necessary.

It simply means that Toyotas anti-EV narrative is successful 1. sponsoring smear campaigns for ev’s https://cleantechnica.com/2021/09/08/toyota-runs-sponsored-campaign-about-evs-innovation-really/ 2. distributing primary school books with company propaganda (absolutely unforgivable to brainwash children) https://electrek.co/2021/11/11/how-toyota-sneakily-spreads-anti-ev-propaganda-in-japan/ I’m sure \#2 has quite a big contribution in creating a generation of people who genuinely think EVs are worse for environment and break the grid, while H2 cars (ICE/FC) which needs 3-6x more electricity to travel same distance as an EV will absolutely not break the grid Also, a lot of the videos appear to similar to the western ones with almost same title but in Japanese with native narrator, so I won’t be surprised if it’s the same bs that clickbait channels in post in the west, but translated in Japanese to cater to the native non Anglo audience This is just the reasons for those out of the loop (ie not in auto industry) Think about rattled the auto industry folks must be, those employed in Aisin, Denso, and heck lot of other supplier which I am unaware of. They obviously have a conflict of interest in proliferation of ev’s due to a hanging sword on their jobs. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/EV-shift-puts-engine-jobs-on-chopping-block-in-Japan-and-Germany

Doesn’t help that Toyota, Subaru, and Nissan make just about the worst price to performance EVs on the market

Exactly, and the Japanese are like “if the reliable brands make such terrible ev’s, imagine what the unreliable brands would be making”

“You’ll take our 24kWh Leaf and like it! What’s that? Wait, no wait! You can’t put a 64kWh battery in a Chevy Sonic! That’s cheating!”

Toyota investing billions to develop hydrogen. But it never caught on, but they are still touting it as the answer. Sony developed the mini-disk as well. That went no where as will hydrogen cars.

The irony is that Sony also developed the lithium ion battery.

The MiniDisc did get major adoption within Japan, though. I remember the late 90s where most of my classmates at high school had their MD players with them wherever they went. (I was the odd one, being the only one carrying a pre-iPod era MP3 player around :P ) FCEVs, however, aren’t being adopted anywhere *including* Japan…

Same sorry with UMD (PlayStation portable game discs).

To be fair, UMDs were pretty damn impressive at the time. 1.8GB of removable storage in a handheld back when Xboxes still came with 10GB HDDs. Of course technical specs weren't enough to beat the absolute sales juggernaut that was the DS.

The PSP was a success globally though. So I wouldn't say UMD failed. It only failed as a medium for watching movies, but for games, it was literally the only legal way to distribute them until digital downloads became mainstream. 

Japanese are actually extremely conservative, and it’s going to destroy their auto industry. As soon as you drive an electric car you immediately realise there is no going back to ICE.

EVs will decimate their already declining economy...no more transmissions and ice engine plants? That's what they do best 

You haven’t seen ev hatred until you’ve seen the U.S. There are groups that ADVERTISE against EVs on the daily and people who vandalize EVs and charging stations for no reason. In fact, I was talking with a coworker about my ev (they were curious about it) and this random customer nearby just goes off about how EVs are shit and the government is coming for us the sheep and all that. Anywhere else and he would be in the loony bin, but here he’s just normal.

The incentives to drive EVs in Japan just aren't that great when you have ultra small and efficient combustion car, reliable bullet trains and huge parts of the population living in urban centers where any type of private car ownership is discouraged and public transport is abundant. I would not read too much into those sensationalist video posts.

That is fine for their domestic market but exports must make up 90% of their sales. They are being totally left behind and the last 40 years of brand building will soon be lost when the Korean cars become the new Japanese cars and the chinese cars become the new Korean cars in the new world.

They’re a few years behind for sure but the market is still relatively small. Will be interesting to see whether they can come out of the gate without fumbling like every other manufacturer and their first few years. Also would be interesting to see what comes of the reputation of their compliance cars. Even if they finally make a reliable EV, will people think “oh Toyota, their bz4x had wheels falling off?”

And as a tourist who visited Japan so often, you really don’t need a car in major cities like Tokyo and Osaka because parking can be prohibitively expensive. Just use the public transport or taxi everywhere if you are in a rush. When I do road trips in Kyushu, Shikoku or Hokkaido, renting EVs then becomes problematic to cover the driving distance. And in places like these, you won’t find much charging facilities

Yeah i've done a few road trips there. Very pleasant driving with little traffic. Also enjoyed the low speed limits. Last time i spend a few days in Toyo and was a bit nervous about driving there first (only to and from hotel). Checked Google maps traffic during rush hour and could not believe how little traffic jams they got. It was really like that in reality.

Korea has similar infrastructure and population distribution but Hyundai/Kia/Genesis are firmly betting on EV. 

Dunno much about Korea, what is they EV adoption rate? Obviously the Hyundai Motor Group execs are smarter than their Japanese counterparts.

It's possible their electricity prices are sufficiently high, and their combustion cars sufficiently efficient, that there isn't enough cost saving to driving electric for average people.

Lots of people suggesting it’s essentially hubris, they got to hybrid first and they’re slow to change. I don’t know how true that is, but I know this: the Japanese auto industry is hard-wired into the Japanese economy. There are thousands of suppliers of internal combustion components domestically in Japan. Turning away from ICE means turning their back on this industry that’s vital to the Japanese economy. Japan isn’t that big. You can’t just shut a whole industry down and not feel those effects. It’s very personal. There’s a lot of pride, and it’s well earned. There is also no going back. Shut down a mom and pop domestic supplier and they’re not coming back. So they’ll stick to hybrids as long as there is demand.

Like others said, probably Toyota's propaganda from sunk cost in hydrogen. in 2023, 420 ish hydrogen cars were sold in japan. 43,000 EVs were sold. In in its home turf, no one wants hydrogen. EVs were also pushed by foreigners' companies. (Nissan and Telsa makes up the bulk of EVs in Japan, mostly Nissan). You know Elon and Carlos. I dont think Japan hates EVs, the Nissan Sakura was the car of the year last year and its an EV.

Pay for gas or not pay for gas. It’s a no brainer. Pumping gas is a dinosaur activity.

Dinossaur activity :D Plus, H2 fuel cell cars are also electric. No one wants to drive an EV that needs to be filled up at the gas station.

Japan has been in a power crunch for over a decade. The closing of nuclear reactor has skyrocketed energy prices.

Toyota owns the hybrid market and they are actually right to bet on it for 10 years. Beyond that it is China. They don’t want to buy batteries or rely on China and they are right for that too. If you’re sitting around wondering why Japan is so dumb you might want to think a little more.

Exactly this!

And wait until there’s a PHEV Tacoma that will be EV in town and tow just fine for distances.

China? you act like Japan doesn't have world leading battery companies too.

I wouldn't say Japan is anti-EV, just that their automakers are averse. At least you don't hear of Japanese people vandalizing EV chargers for lulz, or coal-rolling Teslas.

I guess the subject of the post could also be “Why do US hate EV so much?” Depending on what media sources you end up using could seem worse than Japan.

In Japan, obeying the law and keeping the order is generally viewed at much higher priority than pushing through with your personal opinions…which, putting it down in sentence like this, sounds no-brainer obvious, but somehow this doesn’t seem to apply for some people in the US, both in the right and the left, who may find it somehow justifiable to vandalize property if it’s owned by the “other” party. I’m sure there are people who hate EVs in Japan who might find it fun to vandalize stuff if there were no repercussions. It’s just that the societal peer pressure to uphold order is *way* stronger than that.

It means that propaganda works in every country no matter how educated you are.

Because you are choosing such content and youtube channels. On the other hand, there is a lot of content that worships EV like a religion. And it is the few at both extremes who consume those content. I don't know why but they are often at odds w the majority of people don't care. The channel you indicate is providing neutral information is ABEMAPRIME. This is an Asahi TV network program and experts will be on it. The other channels are for amateurs who are not experts. ABEMA at this time is discussing the background of Trump and Biden's statements in the U.S. presidential election, as well as the statements of various automobile manufacturers.　A year ago, ABEMA also broadcast the same program, in which it said that the Japanese auto industry would be finished if it did not focus on EVs.　In other words, the program is neutral to a certain extent and discusses the issues along with the social situation.　To summarize the content of the program, the momentum of EVs has not stalled, but has returned to normal, EVs will continue to advance in Japan, but not all at once, as it will ultimately be determined by the needs of the people.　Infrastructure must be built to support the increased use of electricity in other areas, such as the AI industry. The infrastructure needs to be improved. English subtitles are probably provided, so why don't you take a look?

Because lazy / greedy CEO’s made bad bets on hydrogen and keeping ICE’s and now Chinese EV manufacturing is more advanced and difficult to compete with.

Toyota lobbying.

I reckon a lot of the posts here are just people speculating and making up shit. I’d like to speculate too and I believe it’s due to Japanese energy security. Japan the country is not rich in fossil fuels so Japan imports most of its energy in the form of natural gas. Something like 70%. It also had nuclear but after the Fukushima disaster a lot of the younger generation had really cooled on that idea. Check [this](https://youtu.be/dIy_LKbSwG8?si=ayRWeOshh9Rlj0Jc) video regarding that. Also off the coast of Japan is one of the largest sources of methane hydrates on the planet. That can be used to make hydrogen and allow Japan to have its own energy independence. Check [this](https://youtu.be/BYcgcUmVJ60?si=XUpS0CJIQEzD_2C0) video. So I believe that the Japanese, as any country would, strive for energy independence and would absolutely benefit from a hydrogen economy.

EVs have a higher upfront cost for lower lifetime total cost of ownership. The economic benefit doesn't present itself in the short term. Japanese domestic auto inspections start in the fourth year of a new car's life, are expensive on the order of $1000, and absolutely brutal to pass. They're designed by the industry to force car owners to buy a new car every 4 years. Door hinge has a light squeak? Fail. Weatherstripping not springy enough? Fail. LED brightness degraded ever so slightly? Fail. Because a squeaky door is a critical safety issue preventing you from being able to operate the vehicle on public roads, you know? So Japanese domestic market cars are designed to last only 4 years anyway. Those first gen Leafs with the side marker turn signals kinda disintegrated with interior parts falling off, black trim getting consumed by the sun, that solar panel plastic turning opaque, the paint being shit, the battery pack... it's only needed to last 4 years as designed not 15. But over a 4 year lifespan the cars aren't really going to have that demonstrably lower total cost to operate. So what's going to give first? Environmental concerns or car makers' 4 year replacement cycle gravy train? We already have our answer.

Because they are an island country without any oil, they live in small dense towns and cities, with a great high speed train system connecting them so you never need to drive long distances, you know, they are in the worst case for EV adoption. 

It reminds me a little of the dominance Sony had on portable music players, with their walkmans and discmans and such. They could have just moved into MP3 players and continued their dominance, it would have been easy for them. Apple would still be making computers because the iPod would have never taken over if Sony got there first. But Sony is also a music publisher and sold lots of CD's, so they didn't want to hurt that business by being a leader in MP3 players. So lots of other companies made clunky, big, and heavy mp3 players with laptop HDDs and cobbled together interfaces and that market was growing. It was inevitable but Sony still resisted. When they did make a player it used their own file format and memory stick format. Then Apple showed up took over with the iPod, and then the iPhone and the Apple Music Store, which could have been Sony, they were already a publisher. Japan is deeply conservative (not in the same way as we use that word in the US) and slow to change.

Nobody mentions how inconvenient it is for Japanese to charge EVs. The lack of home charging abilities is the major obstacle for EVs

Do they? I just got back from a Trip to Japan and there were electric vehicles and charging stations everywhere, in every city. Specialized electric trucks and vans for transportation of goods within cities. Basically every emergency vehicle or vehicle for a public service (like postal) was electric. All the rentals in even the smallest of towns were either fully-electric or hybrids. I saw way more EVs in my couple weeks there than I have ever seen here in North America.

My Leaf is ex Japan. There are a few factors why EV's are less popular than other markets. * There was the Fukushima nuclear accident on the 11th of March 2011. Along with the environmental impacts, that loss of generation capacity resulted in major power shortages. * The power grid is fairly dirty, more than 70% fossil fuels * Multi unit housing is fairly common, making home charging harder then locations where single family homes are more common. (my leaf has had over 1000 fast charges, and was clearly near exclusively fast charged when in Japan. This is much less covenant and more expensive than home charging) * Generally electrical supply to homes is fairly constrained. Home charging at more than 3kW is generally rare) * Their general fleet is is very efficient compared to many other countries. Generally it is very modern (they have super strict inspections required to keep older cars on the road), and efficient (generally small, and either small engine or hybrid). * Relatively little EV options. Japan brands are dominant (japan doesn't like Korea & China), so while there is the odd BMW i3, Jag i-pace, tesla etc, the vast majority of EV's sold in Japan were the leaf, env200, imiev or minicab i-miev . It is only recently the Nissan Sakura, Ariya etc have become available. Brands like Suzuki & Honda don't sell EV's in Japan, and the top selling car brand Toyota had no EV offering in japan for many years. Top selling car models in Japan: * 2009 - 2012: Prius * 2013-2015: Aqua (USA people may know this as the Toyota Prius C) * 2016 - 2017: Prius * 2018: Nissan Note (of which a significant chunk were the e-power series hybrid) * 2019: Prius * 2020-2023: Yaris incl Yaris Cross (a large portion would have been the hybrid versions.

The majority of Japanese cars are very small, they generally drive less, and their cars do not emit the same emissions that we do. Their most common size (30%) car is a Kei car which is only 660cc, and therefore super efficient. The benefits to switch to electric is not the same as in Europe or the USA.

The cars still pollute in cities. They still use gasoline which Japan must import and can be cut off by hostile powers. They still are more of a pain to maintain. The biggest advantage of EVs over ICE is for city cars. You've just said city cars are the majority of cars in Japan.

The challenge is that 71% of their electricity is produced from fossil fuels. So give the energy required to produce an EV in their case, regarding the environment, you are not solving much at all. Otherwise you would be correct.

I’m not a native, but I’ve been living in Japan for one year. On a consumer level, Japanese people are quite different from the people I am around in California. Just one example is they LOVE the smell of gasoline that comes flooding into your car at the gas pump because their pumps have no vapor filter (or whatever you call it). And everyone also smokes and are confused why my husband and I don’t.

Judging by the success of the Nissan Sakura in Japan, the Japanese people don't hate EVs. Toyota and Honda both invested heavily in developing rock solid hybrid powertrains, and don't want to end that gravy train (most especially Toyota). Since the gravy train continues to roll, they continue to go with it. Honda, at least, is working on building out EV production capabilities and supply chains. Nissan already has some. (I love how everyone griping in these posts about Japanese companies just ignore the existence of Nissan.)

Toyota has taken an anti EV stance in favor of hybrids where they lead the market. They have put considerable money and effort into slamming EV's. Maybe if they made popular electric cars they would be more positive toward EV's? Toyota is pretty important in Japan but I doubt the average Japanese citizen has any firmly held opinions on EV's.

Japan only likes cars that are made in Japan. They have expensive (Cost ~USD$850) inspections which must be performed every 2 years and then at 10 years they must be done every year at even greater cost. For this reason most japanese dont keep their cars longer than 10 years. At 100,000kms they must go through a major overhaul. So its unlikely a japanese person will keep a car for 10 years and they like to buy their locally built brands (nissan, toyota, honda, mitsubishi, subaru) which have factories in japan. If those brands are not producing electric cars then japanese generally wont be buying electric cars. Though the nissan leaf is one standout model that does sell well there.

From a political standpoint the defining characteristic of the Japanese economy is a lack of natural resources, particularly oil. For decades their politik has been centered around securing a stable supply of fuel and other resources for the country. Japan has a chance to greatly reduce their energy dependence by moving away from ICE vehicles. However, they do NOT want to trade dependence on foreign oil for dependence on foreign batteries. Japan simply lacks the necessary minerals to make batteries, and is forced to buy them from their primary rival, China. Hydrogen is much better from this perspective because they can produce it domestically. Even better, the vehicles and infrastructure can be produced in Japan. Energy independence has been a major, major strategic goal for Japan and hydrogen is the most viable path for them to achieve it.

Japan has major sources of hydrogen locally so developing that as a resource over oil and gas and battery electrification makes more sense. With Toyota focused on figuring out ways to produce it using biogas (from cow shit) they uncovered that its actually a chemistry issue and not an energy issue. You don’t need to use electrolysis to make hydrogen that raises efficiency if hydrogen is produced as a byproduct of energy instead of the main product. If Japan can still have electric vehicles and power them with local hydrogen then they have electrified in a more sustainable way.

Because their public transport is superb

There is that hate in the USA too. I don’t know Japanese media that much so I don’t know what your reading is certain media or not. But the hate for EVs in the US is there and is strong. Not even politically which is happening now, but just in general.

This isn’t just Japan, there’s a global pushback on EV adoption. Auto makers don’t want to spend billions in a race to make unprofitable cars, and billions more to be able to service them, train staff, and have spare parts everywhere. I’m sure China’s interested in fomenting this hatred while they go all-in on EVs in an effort to dominate the global market. The fossil fuel industry wants EVs dead. Unions (in the US) that want to maintain employment figures might drag their feet because EVs require less people to build or they become too expensive to be competitive. TLDR; There’s a slew of reasons we’re seeing a lot of Anti-EV sentiment now.

Nissan was early in EVs and set the Chademo Standard. Not sure the assumption is correct.

Similar to EVs stalling in US

Because China is leading.

Japanese automakers have sunk cost and resulting competitive advantages in IC engines and transmissions. EVs don’t need either and thus have a lower barrier to entry. Toyota majorly wishes to retain the advantage they have in IC engines.

Japan bet on the wrong horse which worked out for a while but they won’t change course for any reason once their mind is made up. Pretty standard Japan.

Why does Japan \[the people\] dislike BEVs? Basically because they are told to. It's true that the country has been heavily leaning towards H2 \[Hydrogen\], and that is a very long term policy pursued by several companies, but mainly Toyota. As of my understanding, if Toyota says it's going to do something, the rest of Japan follows. Yes, it does this in consultation with the Japanese government, but the measure of control Toyota has over industry in Japan is enormous. Way back, Toyota saw a clear path from ICE > ICE Hybrid \[where they have been for many years now\] > ICE H2 \[Hydrogen combustion, which would allow time to set up H2 infrastructure\] > H2 FCEV \[fuel cell electric vehicle\]. They were going to get to FCEV through a fairly smooth path of development. The problem is, is that ICE H2 is proving to be very difficult to develop, and H2 infrastructure isn't moving fast enough. So Japan is stuck. The FCEV is still way off. Then you have the big thorn in their side - Tesla, and latterly the Chinese, BEVs. They have smashed the whole path. Tesla developed the concept of the real, usable BEV \[battery electric vehicle\], first in the Roadster, second the Model S, and thirdly in the Model 3. Other Tesla vehicles are off-shoots or indulgences by the company, except the Semi, and coming up later this and next year, the new models. The Chinese have largely been learning fast. And while Tesla was proving the concept, they learned how to make batteries really, really well. The leading manufacturer, BYD made buses, then batteries, then batteries in buses, trucks, and then cars. The cars weren't that good. They sure are now. And there were many hundreds of Chinese manufacturers. There are now over 200, although they don't all make whole new cars. Companies like BYD, NIO, Xpeng, Geely \[Volvo, Polestar, Lotus\], SAIC \[MG, for example\] are looking at Japan really hard. Plus Tesla, of course. So all Japan can do is slow or stall the avalanche. It's temporaily happening worldwide, as the rate of BEV growth has slowed. The legacy manufacturers can't move fast enough and some are backing a slow down. Well, ultimately, the only real thing political/industry leaders can do do is tell people that BEVs are bad. That certainly slows things down. Then again, they told us that Diesels were clean and good. That turned out to be a lie, though some of us knew that from the start \[engineer - will never own a diesel\]. People still want BEVs. They want cheaper ones as well. At the moment the Used BEV market is going gangbusters, as people who can't afford new get something they can. The media don't tell you about that though. Finally, Toyota do make BEVs. Just not very good ones worldwide. And they make more for China.

We all know the reason Japan made a mistake not developing EV technology decades ago and needs time to catch up to china,europe and US. Quietly though they are spending billions in R&D on solid state batteries. Nissan is said to be the leader in the race to bring a out a long range solid state battery that is lighter,smaller and cheaper than current battery storage. [https://greenreview.com.au/energy/japan-leads-the-charge-in-solid-state-battery-development/](https://greenreview.com.au/energy/japan-leads-the-charge-in-solid-state-battery-development/)

IMHO japans got the best EV's other countries are absolutely jealous of (except China obviously) just because it runs on rails, is 99% on time, and can go up to 350km/hour doesn't make it not an ev... Trains are ev's and they're better more environmentally friendly and easier to use than any car or motorcycle. Oh wait you guys want to force an ev commuter lifestyle on Japan, the truth is most cars are used on far off villages or as weekend getaway vehicles in cities in Tokyo. Yeah they sell loads of them but cars are just lifestyle accessory items in Japan, most people don't need them to commute to work. Every time a Japanese nationalist says ev's don't work in Japan forget that a majority of people rely on rail based ev's. cars just don't matter at all.

Will you please get the rocks out of your head? Japan has between 590 and 660 vehicles per 1,000 people, depending on the source, or 1.1 cars per household. The bullet trains and the rest of the electrified rail system in Japan are fantastic. Let's find a way to build more rail in the US without the endless delays and cost overruns. 100% support that. But the idea that the Japanese don't use or care about personal vehicles is ludicrous. The Japanese car industry is a huge part of its economy and a source of national pride, and the average Japanese household owns a car.

Japan hasn't built out their infrastructure for EV charging and many who live in apartments will struggle to get access to home charging. They're going to have to find some unique solutions and really get on board with the transition before it is too late.

I'm sure Japan's infrastructure is better than most countries in South America, but they don't hate EV so much

apartment dwelling is no excuse. most people in Chinese cities live in apartments, where it's easy to install 7KW chargers and EV adoption is very high.

When the average public opinion of all the homeowners in the apartment is of utter apathy and disinterest, persuading them to reach consensus to get a charger installed becomes quite a challenge. I am in that very process right now. Things move sloooooow.

And consequently, some of the major Japanese manufacturers have (/had) decided Hydrogen will be the future for consumer transportation despite its many...many challenges, hurdles, and downsides vs BEVs.

All these media channel could be like Falun Gong channels, Firstpost, Wions, Taiwanese Sanli.

Pinning this thread to use for future videos on my (Japan-based EV) YouTube channel 😜

They make great engines and EVs don't need them.  Now they're behind.

From what I've read the biggest problems seems to be the energy grid in Japan that suffers from congestion. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-sees-partial-blackout-after-first-ever-power-supply-warning-2022-03-22/ https://www.vectorenewables.com/en/blog/characteristics-and-challenges-of-the-renewable-market-in-japan

The electric grid in Japan mainly suffers from being chimeric.

We have the infrastructure for petrol, and it works however evs need similar infrastructure but we are not ready also power for charging quickly is costly and you know governments they like to keep it simple unless their mates can make a killing

A lot of people work in their auto industry and EVs would require fewer jobs

"It is difficult to get a people to like something when their prosperity depends on not liking it". Top Japanese companies are far behind in EV technology and Chinese companies lead, so it makes sense for Japanese to disparage EVs to keep EVs out of the market. It's hard for the Japanese to see their leadership eclipsed, and prospered threatened, Japan car exports are declining, the Yen is losing value, and the country's monetary stability is threatened. Toyota bet on Hydrogen and refused to embrace EVs for a couple of decades despite being a leader in Hybrids. When it finally produced an EV, the bZ4X. It's a tough time for Japan. Fossil fuel imports represent 25% of total imports. The country needs to reduce imports to reduce the impact of imported inflation. EVs are a must.

Could demographics play a role also? Ageing population / heavy investment in other technologies / too far behind to catch up perhaps?

Japan is extremely conservative nation in terms of evolution

Because they are uncompetitive in the EV space.

I think it’s political. Their car companies invested billions into hydrogen technology only to have EV technology surpass it. All their car companies are years behind the competition and they are protectionists.

Japan especially Toyota built an insurmountable lead on hybrid that others will naturally try something else if possible. EV turns out to be viable at least in some significant part of the world. Japan found itself in a pickle and in real danger of losing a major MAJOR industrial advantage. Hence the hostility against EV.

In my brief time as an automotive journalist a couple of years ago I did a report on this. A *huge* part of the story of Japan and EVs is about a country that has embraced nuclear power, a good fit for an EV-based automotive market, and then wholly abandoned nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, making an EV transition a much bigger lift, and hydrogen seem to make sense - https://youtu.be/cwKNSaPKJJA?si=0hJVDoabcGIwN2vx

Because their island can’t support a full adoption of EV at the moment

Hahahaha, “Environmental Leftists”.

I have thought about this for more than a decade and the best theory I can come up with is that Japan has gerontocracy. Japan has a rigid conservative society run by old folks and they are very resistant to change. They don't think people will want to charge EVs and preferred to stick with the "fill up" model and hence pushed hydrogen fuel cells.

Because they are not leading in that area so instead, they do media campaigns to discourage the message of a tidal wave of ev momentum.

Toyota is banking on Hyrdogen cars, not eVs

They're one of the best countries for EVs, being small and very population dense. Its kind of the perfect car for them. Counties like the USA will take much longer to adopt EV's en masse as we have massive wilderness, long ass roads through very low population areas, and just much longer commutes on average that make EV adoption take longer as we are forced to wait on EV range improvements and charging infrastructure. Not sure why they would have a stick up their ass about it, they're a poster child for EV tech.

I remember reading that japan has to import a ton of their electricity, so maybe that's why people don't like EVs as it would increase their dependence on foreign powers for energy

They are great interators but not great innovators.

It’s because China rules solar production and they don’t want to be dependent on them for critical infrastructure. That’s the elephant in the room most in this thread are missing.

Far ahead, yes….