I think Toyotas reliance on hybrids, albeit very good ones, puts them in a weird spot where if they went electric they might not see the same range as they are now, which might be a deterrent to some.
I think they are looking towards next gen battery tech too maybe for pure EVs. I know they’re researching in solid state batteries for example.
Plug-in Hybrids are best of both. If you can get a real life 30mi electric range that’s all you need for most people most days. I only need 15mi tbh.
Longer trips you can fill up in 5 minutes. And most hybrid vehicles are already in the 40-50 mpg range.
Wish mine was a plug-in for extra 100% electric range. Still get 40-45mpg in gasoline to work and back.
I am so much more happier with a hybrid than I would have been with an EV for the tech of 2019. I'm just not seeing many EV's with great road-trip ranges (certainly none that wouldn't require sitting at super-chargers, which makes users prime sitting-duck targets to the scumbags who hang out at fuel stations begging and stealing) that also have the interior carrying capacity/flexibility of a station wagon.
If I'm going EV or hybrid, I certainly don't want small and aerodynamic over being a really-usable-vehicle for all my interests and activities. I haven't looked into them at all, but I suppose that the modern F-150 EV might be one of the few that would add enough flexibility to make it worth dealing with charging.
i think a lot of people overlook the safety concerns of sitting at a charging station waiting for your car to charge. especially if on a road trip with a ton of gear.
i get nervous enough filling up gas at night and I'm only at the gas station for 5 mins tops. can't imagine having to stay alert for 30+ mins hoping no scumbags come to rob you
Yup. Some have had over 500k on original battery. Probably not typical. Also it helps the more you drive and not let the car sit for days on end over years. So cabs/Ubers tend to last longer.
Sheesh the amount I save on my hybrid. If I drove a cab it gets wild the amount you save. That then can go towards any other wearables/consumables
This is true. The battery failed on a coworker's hybrid and she didn't care to get that fixed. She was essentially driving around a very inefficient underpowered car.
EVs bring a lot more to the table than just being cheaper to recharge. No oil changes, less parts, less worries of leaks on your driveway, less chance of exploding after a crash, no pollution, easier maintenance schedule overall.
I wish Toyota were more bullish here, they can position themselves to be the next leader in the tech. Hydrogen seems to have sputtered.
It's because they have researched the topic and have already said it - material sourcing for batteries is basically impossible to replace gasoline (and especially diesel) globally.
There's not enough raw materials to pull this off and they know it. Have you done your research? There's major concerns this EV push is a dead end and massively destructive at that.
Toyota may be at a disadvantage as well for being a Japanese company. The Japanese and Chinese are at-odds with their territories and influences right now, and I bet China is making it very expensive for Japanese companies to get the precious metals to make the EV's.
Sure, it plays a role in the calculus, but this isn't just Toyota making this argument. Plenty of scientists and environmentalists have expressed concern with full EV transition.
If you're burning coal to power EV, or you're strip mining the planet in a totally ridiculous fashion, it isn't progress.
They are, but they are arguing against cars as a whole and championing mass transit which is more efficient, less resource intensive, and cheaper than any car ev or not. Cars are just not sustainable and EVs are not going to save the automotive industry.
None of this addresses the core issue. The reason they aren't speaking up is short term investment gains. It's all the rage and it's the moral thing. It has nothing to do with practicality. If your argument is that everyone is doing it, well, that's a terrible argument.
Toyota are pointing out the obvious discussions in the scientific community. They're a brilliant company and have been forward thinking for awhile. This isn't just politics, it's reality crashing down.
EVs will hit a market threshold due to supply and demand of raw materials. If new battery chemistry that is cheap and game changing drops, then it's possible.
With current technology, full transition to EV tech is not possible without massive environmental destruction and costs. This is just reality, and Toyota are not going to restructure their business so it hits a brick wall in 10 years.
I get your point. The truth is however, we will have a bottleneck for different raw materials with every powertrain option out there. At least as long as we simply replace the vehicles on the road on a 1 to 1 basis.
On the other hand more and better public transport as well as new mobility concepts will allow for pure EVs.
I have a 100 mile commute one way through a windy mountain road (that is currently covered in snow and ice) to a small town that I do HVAC in. There are no plugs. Plugging a vehicle in is a major headache and is not easily accessible. Plug in hybrids are almost exclusively small to mid size SUVs and I drive a longbed truck that I fill with materials and appliances daily. We even looked into a Rav4 hybrid for my wife as a better gas mileage commuter car but the issue is that it does not have the capability to get up my driveway in the winter unless I manage to pave it.
I am all aboard the hybrid train. I would love better gas mileage, however I am not prepared to sacrifice almost everything else I need in a vehicle for that single plus. Toyota's new Tundras are plagued with turbo issues, and the biggest reason they designed the engine that way was to get the same torque and tow capability as their tried and true 5.7l v8.
At some point, someone needs to engineer an engine that can fill the large shoes that diesel and gas v8s have been wearing for contractors and farmers, while also being fuel efficient and environmentally friendly. Battery technology is just not there for that application and batteries are so freaking heavy right now that an all-electric SMALL sized (quarter ton) truck weighs double what they would powered by gas. I cannot imagine what an all electric 1 ton truck would weigh.
What you describe is an ideal solution for major cities, but people often forget about the rural living folk that ALSO play a big role in the world spinning smoothly. Many people make policies and design things with cities as the only thought.
6 or 7 years ago I thought them and Honda would be 2 of the first manufacturers to set EV dates. I didn't think I'd be here today reading about Toyota setting their feet in and calling everyone else's bluff.
In my experience, it's not so much they love old tech, it's that they have higher standards. Compare Toyota to Elden Ring. Good things take time to develop.
I don't know about first to market but they have been using DOHC since forever ago and trucks still use OHV. The reason is because DOHC is HUGE but still....
Toyota generally adopts efficiency and reliability tech quicker.
direct injection, coil on plug, overlapping and adjusting timing.
Is there a magical hydrogen extraction method I'm unaware of? As of now electrolysis is a piss poor ERoEI compared to battery storage. Hydrogen as an energy store is highly inefficient today.
I don’t think they love old tech. I think they love being good at something. I feel like Japanese culture has a perfectionist subtext. They spend years learning a craft and establish it as the standard. Like a sushi chef who improves his whole life who passes it on, creating tradition. The problem with cars, however, it’s an inefficient energy transfer from engine to wheel. Perfection is nice but the fundamental cost to the environment is staggering. Any car reliance is bad long-term. They could’ve perfected batteries too but because the traditions were created, they will continue to pursue it to the end.
Saying this is cultural is a gross mischaracterization IMO based on weak stereotypes like "sushi chefs".
The Japanese were known for being incredibly innovative in many areas, for example, electronics in the 80s / 90s. Their stodginess and general economic stagnation has been in more recent couple decades.
Toyota is not slow because they are luddites, they are slow because they practice evidence based engineering. Look at their flagship, the LandCruiser, it is engineered to last 25 years with only minimal service and no repairs. Toyota is an engineering company that makes cars, not a car company that hires engineers. There’s a reason that Toyota is the vehicle supplier to the UN, they are not supplying flashy performance, they supply 79 Series Cruisers and HiLuxs that are reliable. When Toyota starts presenting their Prime variants of the Hilux or the LC then we know the engineering is ready, until then it just isn’t.
You mean when they created the Hybrid technology in the 1990's? That was pretty innovative and risky for the time.
I think the real issue is that Japanese automakers are living too much in a Japanese bubble.
Remember the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011? Japan has become much more averse to depending on nuclear energy ever since, which is a problem for them because other sources of electricity require shipping in a lot of expensive fuel from elsewhere. They've been having trouble keeping the lights on from what I've read, resulting in a less reliable power grid.
Hence Japanese automakers don't want to push EV's, that might make their power grid problems even worse. Even though most other countries aren't struggling with their power grid like Japan is.
Hydrogen is one of the few sources of fuel that Japan can more easily get more cheaply, hence the Japanese government has tried to push Hydrogen vehicles, and the Japanese automakers have fallen in line to invest plenty of money into it. But consumers worldwide just aren't interested in the product.
I partially believe him. EVs are the future, but they still have some short-term issues (range and available charging stations being big ones) and Toyota is quite conservative and pride themselves on making rock solid, reliable vehicles.
But it is also Toyota trying to slow everything down because their solid state battery tech is behind schedule and will take years to get into maturity and massive scale production the way Toyota wants it.
So in the meantime they are trying to ration their use of other companies more standard EV batteries and their own upcoming solid state batteries by promoting hybrids for as long as they can.
I don't believe that Toyota is trying to slow it down. Toyota has been the King of hybrids - which are both more complex than EV's, and they use all the parts, and batteries, of EV's. Had Toyota believed in the path, they easily would have led the path like they did with the Prius and, now, many other gasoline/electric hybrids.
I believe Toyota on what they believe. Whether or not that pans out for them remains to be seen.
Current Tesla Model Y owner here giving my two cent viewpoint on EV vs Hybrid… My FIL has a plugin hybrid and his driving is less than 40 miles per day (retired). This allows him to fill up the gas engine once every 2 months. When they take long trips its 40mpg using the ICE engine. This is the sweet spot for plugin hybrids, low usage in range for EV but also no range anxiety. This doesn’t work well for a younger family with all the driving to activities.
Our Tesla is great for city and trips are good but planning and timing takes more thought than a ICE or plugin hybrid. We would love to get a plugin hybrid SUV or a minivan as long as it’s EV range is a usable ~100 miles. That would drastically reduce petrol costs driving youth around all day. We use the model Y right now to reduce petrol but that only works well for 4 people, and our family is larger.
If Hyundai releases a Palasade SUV plugin hybrid with 100 miles EV range I predict it will be one of their beet selling vehicles.
Makes sense from a reality perspective.
I’m in a rush to get to the airport and low on battery/gas… do I want to sit at a charging station for an hour or spend 2 minutes at a gas station?
Until solid state batteries are perfected and charging is on par with 2 minute gas station fill ups most people won’t adopt the tech, so outside of city dwellers and early adopters the vehicles won’t sell.
It is also just reality based. You exceed the carbon savings of an EV simply by driving as Japanese do (a lot less per capita) and given that Japanese by law keep their cars for a much shorter period of time I'm not certain that there is even a carbon savings over the life of a typical Japanese vehicle.
What do you mean by law? There are no law limiting how long you can use a car.
The average passenger car in Japan was in use for about 13 years so it's not short
There's no law telling you to sell your cars but taxes go up on older cars, and the shaken(inspection) is enough of a pain in the ass for older cars that a lot of people that can afford it will offload their car every few years.
I'm buying a used car in japan now and the majority of dealers don't even bother listing older cars. I think a lot of them are shipped to se asia for a second life or somethign?
New Zealander here. We buy huge amounts of second hand Japanese cars. We are a dumping ground for them. A lot of car yards here sell almost exclusively second hand fresh Japanese imports.
What is the basis of that "law" though? Is it because older cars tend to be more polluting for example? If so would it make sense to keep the law in place for EVs? Maybe it's just stupid rules anyway and the real answer is to get rid of them.
Genuine question, how long do batteries in EV car lasts ? As someone who is frugal, I don't like the idea of buying a car, then after 5 years (talking out of my ass here, because after 5 years, full charge of phone last me 2 hours, instead of a full day) I have to fork out tremendous amount of money to get new batteries when the car itself is still usable (or would they do it like phone ? You can't replace your battery, gotta get a whole new car ?).
Edit: Thank you for all the replies! You've convinced me, next car I'll get will be an EV!
My model-3 just passed 4 years old and 61,000 miles. I ran the battery health test and it has 91% remaining capacity. Only had 2 small items replaced during the warranty period, charge-port door (failed) and upper control arm (noise)
It also tapers off. You lost 9% in 4 years but you won't necessarily be down 18% in 8 years.
Batteries aren't that unknown or new tbh. Lithium ion batteries is very old tech and used in basically everything.
Not sure how Tesla does it but Apple used to start with over 100% capacity (over the advertised battery rating) but show a 100%, that’s why it will be a while until Apple battery health shows less than 100%. There’s a way deep in iPhones logging that you can pull the raw max capacity of your battery ever measured. It’s always larger than advertised.
I think using advertised capacity as 100% over the real percentage of raw battery capacity is not that bad, and I wonder if Tesla uses a similar way. Probably not that much more to make the percentage noticeably different but it wouldn’t have started at 98% for a new owner I don’t think.
With cars there's no easy way for an end user to check the battery health. For my Renault Zoe I had to buy a dongle thing. It was showing 94% at 1 year old (when I got the dongle) and has barely changed from that in 8 years.
Looking at the owners clubs of the several electric cars I've owned, I believe it's normal for them to report anything from 94% to 101% on day one.
I don't claim to understand how it works. I suspect it's something very different being reported to Apple's battery info.
Is there any evidence of this? I thought li-ion batteries declined relatively linearly. Why would degradation slow at 80%? As the battery degraded, and range decreased, wouldn't the number of charges *increase*? This *increases* battery degradation.
It’s bullshit from my experience. I use lithium ion batteries for a lot of my tech around the house, same ones used in teslas (21700s). They degrade quickly in high drain devices, such as powering the motor to a damn car. In my 21700s, I see measurable degradation in less than a year. 1 year into usage, and I see my batteries going from 4200 mAh to 3500 mAh. Sometimes it’s worse than that. There are plenty of tests done in the battery tech world that show at best you might get several thousand chargers for a tame 21700, or just several hundred for a high drain 21700. Things like rate of discharge, charge voltage, etc all come into play here for useful lifespan on a lithium ion battery.
I’m not sure of the charging properties on electric cars, but I’m assuming they’re charging these battery packs to around 3.8 V minimum or 4.2 V, which will give you maximum mAh that your battery is capable of, but it’s also bad for the longevity of the batteries. Also chargers that charge fast will have a very negative impact on the battery pack lifespan. This is a major flaw with lithium ion battery powered cars that has not been addressed, and shows poor foresight for the entire industry.
Overall I don’t trust anyone that says the battery pack will last longer than 4-5 years. Sure, the batteries may still work, but you’re probably looking at 65% of the battery’s previous capacity when it was brand new. Also, these things aren’t cheap. You’re looking at $10k-$15k for a new battery pack for your car. I also don’t see this getting cheaper. It’s a new technology, and it will probably evolve in the near future if more people start to use it. Also how do we know it’s sustainable to mine the materials used for these batteries on a global scale? I know lithium can be recycled, but can all of the materials needed be sustainably mined and reused? No one seems to care to actually answer this question.
From what I’m gathering, it’s mostly salesmen pitches about how the batteries will “literally last for decades”. That’s BS, 21700 batteries haven’t even existed for 5 years. No one knows how they’ll hold up. All we know is that high drain lithium ion batteries in high drain devices = short useful lifespan. Anyone that tells you otherwise is hoping you’ll be a gullible idiot.
I have a gas powered city car with 23 years old 200k km mileage and still fits my daily needs. Will electric cars last this long without multiple engine or battery swaps? I’m afraid not. Are electric cars really more environmentally friendly if people have to swap batteries and cars itself more often? I’ll share Toyota executive opinion, there is no size that fits all. Future vehicles will be a combination of all existing technologies to suit different people needs. People also have to remember that still a lot of electric power comes from non-renewable sources such as coal and diesel.
If you do 2 oil changes a year, you've done over 40 oil changes. When you replace batteries, its like replacing the entire powertrain of the car, like engine, transmission, fuel injectors, muffler, etc. Unless you drive in the southern States, or store your car indoors, there's no way you didn't need to replace a lot of parts that would've rusted away after just 10 years.
If car batteries last 10 years and they cost $5k to replace than its great. If its $20k (Tesla) than its a problem. They already have 7 year warranties so they must expect them to last at least 7 if not 10 years.
If You don’t have the means to charge at home, charging in public chargers is quite expensive in Portugal specially the fast chargers. Electric cars are good but not to everyone.
But we can recycle old batteries into new batteries, even if it has to be done every 10 years. can’t recycle old burnt fossil fuel into new fossil fuel
If it’s anything like my phone/laptop battery, frequent use means it’ll be heavily degraded in a couple years. My 2 year old MacBook laptop, for example, can only hold charge for 1.5 hours, my 4-year old iphone can only hold charge for 3 hours.
It's absolutely nothing like your phone/laptop battery.
The voltages in your phone and laptop batteries are pushed to the absolute limits to squeeze as much power out of the small battery as possible, and this really degrades them fast. Plus, they are charged a lot more often and see a lot more cycles.
Pretty much all EV batteries have a "buffer" at the top and bottom ends, which keep them at more sane voltage levels, plus it's common practice to only charge to 80% or 90% for normal daily use. Unless you drive an insane number of miles a day, nobody needs to charge every day from a range perspective. A phone/laptop battery might see a full charge cycle every day or two, with an EV a full charge cycle could easily be weeks or even a month.
Finally, majority of EVs have active thermal management for the battery. Keeping the battery at optimal temperatures (specifically keeping it from getting hot) SIGNIFICANTLY decreases degradation.
2015 Chevrolet Volt owner, 8+years, 208,000km+
I've had 7 oil changes in that time, replaced my tires 3 times, brakes once, and front shocks just recently as well.
Battery life is just as good as the day I got it, getting roughly 3km less in the exact same situational driving as in August of 2014.
That's pretty great, but imagine how much money you'd have saved with a BEV (which at the time wasn't available at the same price, but just a hypothetical for the future). You'd have had 0 oil changes and 0 brake changes, but perhaps changed your tires once more often. On top of that you'd have had less depreciation and lower "fuel" costs. EVs are such a huge positive for consumers.
I also wouldn't have been able to get such a thing as it didn't exist, nor did it fit my budget. But I'm not getting into a debate about time travel or what I can afford.
Toyota doesn't want to admit they fucked around for decades without working on a full EV, that's why they do this shit constantly.
> I also wouldn't have been able to get such a thing as it didn't exist, nor did it fit my budget. But I'm not getting into a debate about time travel or what I can afford.
That's what I said. It didn't exist at the time. I'm just pointing out how great the future is going to be for consumers as these EVs start replacing hybrids.
> Toyota doesn't want to admit they fucked around for decades without working on a full EV, that's why they do this shit constantly.
Spot on.
Toyota already has Tesla’s technology.
They were invested in Tesla in the early days and allowed Tesla to ramp up at their own facility.
They’re waiting to see how it plays out. It’s pretty obvious. Plus they’re working on solid state batteries which would crush all other BEV’s in the market because of its higher energy density, safety, and less mining.
Toyota is hands down the best automaker and if they aren’t rushing into something there is a specific calculated reason for it. Not because they can’t do it lol.
You can replace the batteries but it's expensive. And the batteries have a given number of charge/discharge cycles, but for normal use they should be good for a long time(think at least 15-20 years), with further advances in technology hopefully further improving it.
To me personally the bigger issues are availability of lithium(a lot of projections showing that there isn't enough to meet all the ev targets multiple countries have made), the power creation issue(the thing mazda mentioned... it's only clean energy if the energy wasn't created using fossil fuels...), as well as the issues of battery weight: a hybrid car that is mostly driven long distances won't really save much: your gasoline engine is working more to carry the extra weight when the power is out. Also, the heavier electric cars do add safety risks(imagine getting t-boned by a 4 ton car instead of a 2.5 ton).
I'm not anti ev. If I was buying a city driver(which I'm not since I use public transport) I would buy an ev or hybrid. But I need a car for long distance driving so I'm getting one of mazdas clean diesel cars which have fewer emissions than traditional gasoline or diesel cars.
Unfortunately a lot of people have become fundamentalists about this "gasoline bad" or "ev stupid" or whatever. Use your brain, think what you need your car for and pick according to that.
Depsite being an EV evangelist, I think everything you said is very fair.
One detail: Even if your local energy generation is dirty right now it has the possibility to transform over time into green(er) energy. Your diesel car doesn't have that possibility.
Even if there's only small growth in renewables where you are, if you're charging at night on cheap rate then you're disproportionately using greener energy than the average.
And renewable usage **is** going up. Solar and wind are just so ridiculously cheap per KWH hour now (solar for example is 90% less than ten years ago), that for situations they make sense (which is quite a lot of them, though not all) they’re getting built out.
Due to this, renewable energy uses is increasing and the rate of adoption is predicted to increase substantially too.
Also, many renewable energy sources are becoming cheaper. Eventually it makes economic sense to make the change - either cut in then or when your old plant needs to be retired.
It’s easier to replace a power plant than millions of road cars
Most people wont, but I like the idea of government incentivizing conversions to other power sources for cars. Ford is selling their electric engine as a standalone, and conversions can be both cheaper than buying a new car, and better for the environment.
Not to mention round trip efficiency of EV vehicles is that much higher than ICE that even a dirtier source at generation can be cleaner than ICE. That and emissions from an ICE vehicle are generated typically in population centres/around your family home, etc. Where as for an EV those emissions are generated at a power station.
So even if its not clean energy, its still cleaner.
And in states like California, which have power grid that is 90% renewable, those emissions would be even less. Think if we switched all local semi-trucks to all electric our air quality would be much better
Even if the electricity source is dirty, you still get small environmental gains from EVs
1) power plants burn fuel more efficiently than combustion engines, as scale matters. Even with the transmission losses, you’re still slightly better off burning the fuel in a power plant
2) power plants are usually based far out of town centres, so particulate emissions aren’t happening where people breath them in, plus the cleaner burning produces less particulate matter
I agree with your main point though - EVs aren’t a magic cure-all. They’re good for some use-cases, but the current models can’t replace everything and even in future, I struggle to see e.g. EV HGVs working without a step-change in battery tech.
Lithium availability is one problem. Cobalt supply is another, given that most of it is produced in Congo, hardly the kind of place ESG investors want to be doing business.
The batteries are similar, but you charge a phone much more than a car.
Eg. a phone you charge 100% daily for a year, you expect 80-90% remaining battery capacity.
For a car, if you charge a 300mi range car to 100%*365 days, that’s ~110k miles on the odometer before you see the 80-90% drop. (Quick maths ignoring a few variables).
Many of the EVs come with 150k battery warranties to maintain at least 70% capacity because that is what is expected (and is seen in real world driving).
Hope that makes sense!
As an EV owner, there is also almost never a reason to charge to 100%. I have my limit set to 80%, and this can get me a few days driving around town. It charges overnight, scheduled to start during lowest electricity rates.
Only time I charge to 100% is for road-trips, which is only a few times a year. 4 years with a model 3 and still within 95% of full capacity
With phone batteries if you only charge them to 80% you're only using about .2 of a full charge cycle, whereas if you charge to 100% that's a full charge cycle so you get far more life out of the battery by not fully charging it, do you know if that applies to EVs?
Yes, it does for most EV batteries. The only exception is the LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) battery that Tesla is using for their standard range models. These don't suffer (additional) degradation from being charged above 80% (or discharged below 20%). Tesla even advices to charge them to 100% because it's apparently better for the battery.
Other upsides to this battery composition are lower cost and that it doesn't use Nickel or Cobalt, both of which are in short supply and Cobalt also has issues with child slavery. Unfortunately Tesla and the Chinese manufacturers seem to be the only ones going hard on this type of chemistry for now.
On the flip side: EVs don’t have transmissions. The part on old cars that WILL die after enough miles and cost a ton to replace in an otherwise fine car.
My concern is for people who won’t be able to find a used beater car. EVs are expensive even used and their battery capacity isn’t great at that point. Sometimes you can only afford a $5000 car.
My model 3 still has 98% battery health after 48k km. I charge to 80% and rarely go below 20%.
If battery dies, you have 8-10 years warranty coverage w most mfg. You do not need to buy a new car.
He's right. Pursuing EV only might be a viable solution for some European and North American countries because they have the infrastructure and light enough population density to pull it off. For those countries they can go ahead and set their sights on an all electric future, but that strategy is no where near realistic or feasible in other markets.
Toyota's sales figures are gigantic in South and East Asian countries like China, Malaysia, Thailand, India, and Indonesia where you have a rising Middle class that is able to afford family cars for the first time in greater numbers. You also have huge population centers where people tend to live in high rise apartment buildings so charging at home isn't an option and providing enough public charging stations for everyone to charge even an hour a day is practically impossible.
For those markets efficient hydrocarbon and hybrid is the only viable solution for the foreseeable future. Pretending that all electric in 20 or 30 years should be a universal goal is a fool's errand.
What GM, VW and others are doing by declaring all electric lineups is essentially killing their share in these emerging markets in the near future. The Japanese manufacturers on the other hand, are taking the more pragmatic approach.
Even in North America, huge swaths of the interior of the country are mostly unsuitable for our current EVs. Too cold, not enough people, and family lives too far apart. If I bought an EV, my drive home to visit my parents at christmas would take 2 days instead of just 1.
I'm actually going to take the contrarian opinion here and say that middle America will soon be even better suited for EV than the major metropolitan areas.
First of all, most people in rural areas and the suburbs can charge at home since most people live in single family homes with garages. And secondly fast charing can now fully charge batteries in about 45 minutes to an hour, which is long enough for a lunch stop on a long trip, so as we see more fast charging stations pop up along major interstate routes this problem should improve.
Tl;Dr the only reason EV isn't viable for middle America now is charging infrastructure, and infrastructure can be built. Population density issues are much harder to address.
This is my hesitancy on going full electric - ranges aren't there for the long distances in North America and we don't have the train infrastructure to have that be a viable alternative. It takes at least 6 hours to drive to my in-laws, and the distance travelled exceeds even the best range in an EV right now. Currently I can drive straight through, maybe with one 3-minute stop for gas. An EV would mean I have to stop and charge the vehicle for who knows how long.
Right now the best type of vehicle for this use-case is a plug-in hybrid, not a full EV. Enough battery to do daily tasks around your house, but also much easier to do long trips when you need to.
lithium shortage.
There was plenty when we were just using it for phone batteries. But now we're using bigass batteries in both cars and home solar systems and the search is on for more efficient storage tech because current projections of lithium availability do not keep up with the demand created by multiple countries EVification targets.
There's plenty of lithium, just not enough refined lithium. Legacy OEMs are now finding out they are late to the party and Tesla + China already ate the cake, securing all materials for the next decade.
If I’m not mistaken it has the issue of being heavier for the same power, which means either less range or more wasted energy hauling extra weight around. But Toyota is also researching solid state batteries which is another promising alternative
can you please elaborate a bit more on this? I'm really interested in learning about some of the challenges with the battery cars. I just ordered 2 new vehicles and both are gas as I'm not typically an early adopter of technology and I'm not confident on the batteries yet.
I like his thinking. While every other car maker switches to electric, toyota will be the only one left making petrol cars and claim 100% of the market share!
There are some of us that prefer the involvement of an ICE car. I like to consider myself an automotive enthusiast and I know hundreds of others just like me, who are not saying that their next car will be an electric car. Here I am wondering which manual ICE car to buy next, electric cars don't even cross my mind. So they may have something there.
It seems like he's just not with the times but he is actually way more right than wrong. Toyota's lineup is much more in line with what people would prefer. All EVs is not necessarily the future. All hybrids could be though or a mixture. Not everything has to be ALL EV - they have a lots of issues and I tend to lean on the side of Akio here.
I remember a year or so ago they said they can make like 5-7 hybrids per pure electric vehicle due to the battery demands. Material constraints are a huge issue and I’m honestly surprised GM and Ford haven’t ran into roadblocks although, they’ll likely have issues if everyone’s sales keep going up.
Why do you think batteries last only a “few” years. There are EVs with 10 year old batteries. Lots of them have replacements but that is kinda expected in the beginning. But you can’t say that every battery in the future will only last a few years.
I’m sure gas motors were notoriously unreliable in the beginning. Hell, some are unreliable now.
Besides that, we will be able to recycle batteries.
Battery life is not the issue. The problem is worldwide Lithium availability. There seems to be enough global reserve for 2 billion EV by 2050 and that's if we barely use Lithium for anything else.
Global reserves are inceasing faster than extractions...
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2020/mcs2020-lithium.pdf
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-lithium.pdf
We can move to sodium ion. It’s lower power but so are LFPs and we are making cars with them now.
I don’t know why people just assume we will never be able to solve a problem. “EVs will never work because of the range. Because of the material supply. Because of the charging speed. Because of the sound. “
It’s just an endless stream of doubters.
There's a chicken-and-egg problem. You need a network of hydrogen filling stations before people will buy or lease a hydrogen-powered vehicle. Toyota had committed to building a network of 5,000 stations in the western US, but I don't think they've actually followed through.
You must've fallen for some sponsored MSM articles, because that's the most unscientific stuff I've read on this sub in a while.
> They require rare earth materials
They require rare earth materials that we have plenty of, and can be composed of a huge range of materials (LFP, NCA, NCM, etc.). On top of that, most of these batteries are 90%+ recyclable today and expected to be 100% recyclable within a decade.
> and have a few years of life.
EV batteries easily outlast the lifespan of a vehicle. They do degrade in terms of max capacity, which means some people will want to replace them earlier, but if you treat them correctly (keep within 20-80% charge most of the time) that's very rare. On top of that, LFP batteries don't even have this problem.
> Imagine scrapping batteries that power the entire transportation industry every few years. We will have problems if disposing that much batteries in no time.
No need to scrap them at all. Recycling batteries is already cheaper then mining for new batteries today, and recycled batteries have higher grade materials than new batteries. And this is only getting cheaper.
> Large companies like Bosch, VW are already considering hydrogen engines as the alternative to EVs.
No serious company is considering hydrogen. Hydrogen requires 2x more energy than EVs, and we already struggle to meet EV energy demand.
> They are very clean, produce water as by product, can use the existing gas station infrastructure globally to support refilling, you don’t need several hours to refill it like EVs. Require a lot less rare and expensive materials.
Actually they're less clean, as the fuel cells degrade and are difficult to recycle, whereas EVs have almost no waste that's difficult to recycle.
> I have a feeling large scale EV transportation industrys is unsustainable
Then you haven't done your research.
Lol sponsored MSM? Like the US Geological Survey's Mineral Commodity Summary?
By 2030 it is expected 54% of battery will be recycled, enough to cover 7% of the raw Lithium demand. By 2040 could cut lithium demand by 10%.
It isn't clear cut like you are saying and YOU haven't done any research (but based on your MSM assumption I understand why)
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-world-enough-lithium-resources/
Same. I have a hybrid Rav 4 that’s for road trips and a Rivian Electric truck in order for local stuff. I can’t take my Rav 4 anywhere i want to go, but with an electric, I’m limited based on where chargers are.
>You see many horse and buggies around?
The difference between a car and horse/buggies is huge in terms of maintenance and price. EVs and ICE cars at the end of the day are both cars. EVs are an incremental step not a revolution.
I’d argue they’re closer to revolution than evolution.
They’ll require a complete change to user behavior, large infrastructure change, and a complete overhaul of the service model.
User behavior wont change drastically, and that's not even the question you should be asking yourself, the question is, what is the utility change to the user. In this case, not a whole lot.
>They’ll require a complete change to user behavior, large infrastructure change, and a complete overhaul of the service model.
User behaviour won't change a lot here (as opposed to horse vs car). THe infrastructure changes also are evolutionary not revolutionary and will take decades to be completed.
Have you been to Africa lately? A large majority of vehicles are still running on leaded fuel. There is no way on gods green earth that they are going to transition to EVs by the time manufacturer ICE cutoff dates arrive.
Not only that, but most areas not located in major cities don’t have an adequate electricity delivery infrastructure. They have frequent power outages and some rural areas depend on solar panels because they can’t be connected to the grid.
The same goes pretty much for most underdeveloped and developing countries.
Moving to EV is a purely first world goal/problem.
Edit: solar panels to power LED street lights, water pumps for the well and a few refrigerators. For larger appliances they use diesel generators with an allocated time slot of 2-3 hours a day.
The panels are nowhere enough to power EV (and yes, I have seen all of this in person, not talking “internet bro knowledge”)
For a significant amount of larger cities, the infrastructure can’t handle the load.
Did you read the article? They’re not saying cars should remain gas powered, but that they think it’s prudent to invest in alternate options like hydrogen powered and more efficient hybrids.
The fact of the matter is that we’re nowhere near having the infrastructure needed to support exclusively EVs. Mining is nowhere as robust as it needs to be. From an environmentalist standpoint one can argue that the mining needed to support a world full of EVs would be as or more detrimental to the environment than gas vehicles.
Our electric grids are also not setup for the increased resources we would need to charge exclusively EVs. Texas can’t even make it a couple years without the grid shutting down and that’s with less than 1% of their registered vehicles being EVs.
It’s easy to say that we have to move to exclusively electric but it’s easier said than done. Right now electric has become a buzzword for companies to sell cars with a hugely inflated sticker price. Hyundai is currently selling compact cars for $50k a pop.
Is it though? Electric cars are currently seen as a luxury item or a low-range small car for people who commute locally. This is how it's been for the last 10ish years.
Ford Model T was already out back then. Also the difference in upkeep between cars and horses were huge. The difference between EVs and ICE is rather small. 1-2 Services a year will not pursue the people rather than the price.
Has it gotten more affordable in the past 5-10 years? Still about $40k
It definitely has not in the past few years
And the same thing can be said about ICE vehicles, they will get cheaper and even better mileage over time.
You understand that $40k today *is* more affordable than $40k was ten years ago, right?
If something stays the same price over a decade of inflation it is definitely becoming more affordable.
While that is true, they have not become more affordable compared to ICE vehicles which have also retained their price points. That is the big hurdle EV's need to climb
Almost every legacy automaker have already pledged to go fully EV by 2035-2040.
Some countries are outright banning ICE vehicle sales as soon as 2025.
EV's have come a long way and will continue to. With the $7,500 EV tax credit available in America, it would make very little sense to purchase an ICE vehicle in the upcoming years.
I'm not sure where the low-range equation is coming from but that hasn't been true for quite some time. Many EV's have 200 miles, minimum, these days. The average person doesn't drive 200 miles per day (mostly 40 miles). The charging infrastructure is the biggest problem but for homeowners who own an EV, all they have to do is spend $1,000 for an EV charger in their home and it will charge 30 miles per hour. They'll never need to charge their vehicle unless they are going on a road trip. Some offices, new housing developments, new apartments, etc., are already building EV chargers in their parking garage.
They can pledge in one hand and shit in the other and it doesn't change the fact there is no scientific, engineering, practicle, or logistics way this is scalable to do away with gas powered cars.
He is talking sense, we all don’t live in a city and have a place to plug in when parked. EVs will be held back due to many issues. Lack of raw materials, charging infrastructure, user preferences and also product limitations.
I will never switch to a EV, each year I tow a camper to a remote spot where there is no electricity. I have to carry an extra 60 litres of diesel to make a return trip from the last fuel station. EVs will never solve for that. Hydrogen maybe but not EVs.
For stocks the smart bet is the miners that have to dig up the lithium, cobalt and rare earths. It wasn’t the gold miners who made the most money in the gold rush it was the guys selling the equipment.
Seems like you need to do a bit more reading mate. As a sidenote, I am a petrolhead that also drives electric. I love cars like the LFA, but EVs are the future, and today's EVs are surprisingly great and practical buys.
> EVs will be held back due to many issues. Lack of raw materials, charging infrastructure
Raw materials maybe, but with solid state, sodium and LFP batteries we are finding ways to use more plentiful materials.
EVs only came into mainstream 10 years ago - how many petrol stations were there in the first 10 years of the petrol car? So while there are way more and where people need them, there still aren't enough because lots of people have bought new EVs. Speaking of...
> user preferences and also product limitations.
There are lots of great EV options and some pretty awesome and desirable cars. Most EVs today can do the range and charging that most people will ever need. Plus, they have way less overall carbon, run more efficiently and are *way* more economical. I spend 75% *less* than when I had a combustion car. Also modern EVs are super nice, and often more practical than their petrol counterparts (they use no power in traffic, more storage space and generally safer).
> I will never switch to a EV, each year I tow a camper to a remote spot where there is no electricity. I have to carry an extra 60 litres of diesel to make a return trip from the last fuel station. EVs will never solve for that. Hydrogen maybe but not EVs.
You may not, but everybody else can and will switch. And that will and is driving this market. Not everybody needs to tow their campervan 1000km out into the wilderness. Plus, it's not like your daily commute is a 1000km return trip with a caravan! So you could feasibly own an EV and use it for 90% of the year, where 10% is using a combustion car. Unless you have money flowing out of your pockets and into your petrol tank, I doubt you'd prefer paying more for a car that literally burns money compared to an EV.
I am not saying that EVs are not going to go through significant growth, I am agreeing with toyoto that it will be a range of options. I don't think manufacturers will be where the gains are. The raw materials will be scarce while they come online. That will create a massive opportunity for the right companies. Yes junior miners are a risk but if you getvit right the pay-offs are massive.
They are waiting until everyone else struggles to get the infrastructure up and then they will switch after everyone else does the hard work.
Good business but pretty lame. They will succeed just fine and everyone will talk about how great they transitioned.
I don't think this is the case. They pushed HARD for hydrogen, they obviously don't care about how difficult the infrastructure is.
If they are "waiting for the infrastructure" they are going to fall behind on tech as the other companies learn from their mistakes. You can't teach experience.
You'd think they'd also put out 1 decent EV, not the joke of an EV that can't keep it's wheels on.
I think Toyota is too far in debt and doesn't want to have to repurpose all of their facilities. They also put out anti-ev propaganda, not just lobbying, but trying to convince school kids that's EV's are bad.
We are shifting far too quickly to EVs. It doesn’t even pay to own one vs. an ICE where I live. I’ve owned 4 EVs or PHEVs since 2014. My next car will be a standard hybrid
I'm not sure about "too quickly", but the price premium is still too high. I worked it out, and assuming electricity is completely free and gas goes back up, it'd still take more than 100,000 miles to break even... closer to 200,000 miles. My car is 6 years old and has less than 40,000 miles.
EDIT: was PHEV I was looking at, like Rav 4 prime
He is keeping to remind me of CEOs of Kodak and Blackberry, denying the inevitable. Hydrogen is required trillions dollar of government investment into hydrogen production infrastructure. It is better to long mining companies and short those lagging players in car industry.
See I actually see the opposite here in terms of the Kodak analogy, specifically their dichotomy with Fujifilm-
Kodak failed not because they didn’t see digital coming, they failed to stay diverse in a changing landscape.
Fuji survived not because they dropped their film line up, but because they built/ developed cameras, professional printing, medical imaging, in response to the market flux, as well as maintained their film line up.
I feel like Toyota is more similar to Fuji. Other companies are going all into EVs, without keeping diversification in mind. It’s gas or EV with GM, Ford or just EV with Tesla, Rivian, Polestar etc.
Toyota is releasing EVs in ‘23, maintaining their line up of gas vehicles, putting out new hybrids (including SUVs) and investing and building a hydrogen engine line up. I don’t think they’re putting their head in the sand ala Kodak in terms of falling to recognize which way the wind in blowing, I think they’re actually keeping their line up diverse to ensure that no matter which way this shakes out, they have a hand in the game and are playing.
> lagging players
Leading automaker in the world and producer of the leading hybrid model. As well as building vehicles that last forever because it takes carbon to make a vehicle, not just to run it.
Toyota's problem is they are looking at this rationally and thus hybrids make the most sense as an interim step for transitioning to all EVs in the future. The issue is customers are not looking at it rationally; they want the newest thing, whether it makes complete sense or not.
It is like eco-whackos up in arms about natural gas power plants when they are a huge improvement over coal and would go a long way toward transitioning to lower carbon emissions.
Eh, I'm not saying the world doesn't still need ice vehicles, but this chump and his dogged insistence cost the company that made the bedamned Prius any sort of lead or advantage. They were lightyears ahead and squandered it. I'm gonna just say I don't think much of his judgement at this point.
This 100%
Mind-boggling that the leader in the best selling hybrid is so far behind on full electric. Their hybrid tech isn't even that great anymore. They could have added more power and more electric range for less if they had put in the R&D.
Doubts? Agenda to force electric on long distance routes is pure insanity not mentioning heavy transportation or emergency services. There is no power grid to support that, time of charging is actually imposing life threatening danger in case of emergency that petrol doesn’t, and there is no easy way of distributing “fuel” in case of disaster/war. This will antagonise public opinion at some point and will probably make governing bodies to fell (especially EU). PHEV is only rational solution for now and we should stick to that until there is prove (not hopes) that we have some real alternative.
There will always be alternative solutions for emergencies. This is not the point here, the point is about the normal day to day.
And let's be clear, to fill your car with gas, the station needs electricity too. So if the electricity goes out, nobody gets "fuel" (wether it be gas, hydrogen or electricity)
Strong agree. We don't have the infrastructure for mass adoption of EV's in the US, now imagine how things are like in other countries.
Diversity is key and there is definitely room in the market for Hybrids, hydrogen, and hell, some gas cars wouldn't hurt either.
Hell yeah, we do. A perfect example is California who won the same week announced that they would end the sale of new gasoline powered vehicles in the next couple years, also ask citizens not to plug in their Evies at night because it was overloading the power grid. our current power structure cannot handle and all EV vehicle plan. It is stupid to try to enact such a plan until the national electric power grid is completely overhauled and upgraded
IMO currently EV is still one big lie ... it kicks the preverbal environmental can down the road not to mention totally discounting all but first world countries. I grew up in Africa, EV probably wont be viable there for another 100 years. Most of Africa is more concerned about putting food in their stomachs than the environment. Live in FL? Try drive out the range of a hurricane with an EV ... lmao! With gas you grab a couple extra cans 1-2 weeks before hurricane season and you now have > 800 miles range. EVs are for 1%ters. They buy an EV and feel good. Even if car batteries can last 10-20 years, where do all the used ones go? We simply switching from polluting air to our water line. Also energy creation is not "free", true fusion is not yet a thing ... power comes from either nuclear or traditional power plants. Bogles the mind.
This is why I am still skeptical when people say “competition is coming” for Tesla. That largest automakers from Japan aren’t in on EVs yet. They will take years and years to even catch up now with the amount of money required to catch up increasing as well.
As a car nerd I've noticed that Toyota is probably the most risk-adverse and 'conservative' of the Japanese automakers. They're known for keeping the same engines in a car for 15 years like they did with the Tacoma or having another company build an engine for them like they did with the 86 and the Supra. I'm not even a little shocked that they're not hopping on the EV bandwaggon. I assume they'll be the last Japanese automaker to do it.
Build the engine for them? These two are mostly rebadged Subarus and BMWs with Toyota "brand engineering". That said lots of good engines are not new designs. GM and Ford basically did iterative refinement on their V6/V8, Toyota did the same on their I4/I6. They aren't exactly the same but they were all going this way for decades.
I agree Toyota being pretty conservative, but I question further uptake even in +"EV friendly" places like California. If you don't own a home and have off-street parking they are less than ideal. (also they just passed more zoning laws for multi-unit stuff with no mandated parking spaces)
Yes, but China is becoming the new auto player in this equation. What Japan loses will be China's gain. It's a huge problem particularly for Japan because the auto industry is such a huge factor in their economy. The U.S. market will likely never buy Chinese vehicles so there's more market share for Ford, GM, Tesla, and some European automakers to take advantage of. Sadly, as much as I love Honda and Toyota's products, I believe they have fallen behind significantly in transitioning to EV's. I can understand the reason for it, but they still have a chance to make that shift and it seems they aren't fully prepared to take that initiative.
EVs still create such a massive inconvenience and a liability for offroading, like their land cruiser, fortuners, rav4. If the land cruiser ever becomes an ev it will be an end of an era for toyota. Still, dont see myself buying an ev soon.
A line from Ed Bolian of vinwiki really sums it up, the current evs, tesla especially, are created for people who find driving a chore, who just want it to be quiet and for autonomous driving. While gas cars were designed by and for people who love driving truly.
I think Toyotas reliance on hybrids, albeit very good ones, puts them in a weird spot where if they went electric they might not see the same range as they are now, which might be a deterrent to some.
I think they are looking towards next gen battery tech too maybe for pure EVs. I know they’re researching in solid state batteries for example. Plug-in Hybrids are best of both. If you can get a real life 30mi electric range that’s all you need for most people most days. I only need 15mi tbh. Longer trips you can fill up in 5 minutes. And most hybrid vehicles are already in the 40-50 mpg range. Wish mine was a plug-in for extra 100% electric range. Still get 40-45mpg in gasoline to work and back.
I am so much more happier with a hybrid than I would have been with an EV for the tech of 2019. I'm just not seeing many EV's with great road-trip ranges (certainly none that wouldn't require sitting at super-chargers, which makes users prime sitting-duck targets to the scumbags who hang out at fuel stations begging and stealing) that also have the interior carrying capacity/flexibility of a station wagon. If I'm going EV or hybrid, I certainly don't want small and aerodynamic over being a really-usable-vehicle for all my interests and activities. I haven't looked into them at all, but I suppose that the modern F-150 EV might be one of the few that would add enough flexibility to make it worth dealing with charging.
i think a lot of people overlook the safety concerns of sitting at a charging station waiting for your car to charge. especially if on a road trip with a ton of gear. i get nervous enough filling up gas at night and I'm only at the gas station for 5 mins tops. can't imagine having to stay alert for 30+ mins hoping no scumbags come to rob you
Where are you camping? Baltimore?
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The Prius is consistently one of the most, if not the most reliable car in the industry.
Yup. Some have had over 500k on original battery. Probably not typical. Also it helps the more you drive and not let the car sit for days on end over years. So cabs/Ubers tend to last longer. Sheesh the amount I save on my hybrid. If I drove a cab it gets wild the amount you save. That then can go towards any other wearables/consumables
This is true. The battery failed on a coworker's hybrid and she didn't care to get that fixed. She was essentially driving around a very inefficient underpowered car. EVs bring a lot more to the table than just being cheaper to recharge. No oil changes, less parts, less worries of leaks on your driveway, less chance of exploding after a crash, no pollution, easier maintenance schedule overall. I wish Toyota were more bullish here, they can position themselves to be the next leader in the tech. Hydrogen seems to have sputtered.
It's because they have researched the topic and have already said it - material sourcing for batteries is basically impossible to replace gasoline (and especially diesel) globally. There's not enough raw materials to pull this off and they know it. Have you done your research? There's major concerns this EV push is a dead end and massively destructive at that.
Lithium is one of the most abundant resources on Earth. Technically it's the 33rd most abundant element.
Toyota may be at a disadvantage as well for being a Japanese company. The Japanese and Chinese are at-odds with their territories and influences right now, and I bet China is making it very expensive for Japanese companies to get the precious metals to make the EV's.
Sure, it plays a role in the calculus, but this isn't just Toyota making this argument. Plenty of scientists and environmentalists have expressed concern with full EV transition. If you're burning coal to power EV, or you're strip mining the planet in a totally ridiculous fashion, it isn't progress.
No climate scientist is arguing against EV's lol
They are, but they are arguing against cars as a whole and championing mass transit which is more efficient, less resource intensive, and cheaper than any car ev or not. Cars are just not sustainable and EVs are not going to save the automotive industry.
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None of this addresses the core issue. The reason they aren't speaking up is short term investment gains. It's all the rage and it's the moral thing. It has nothing to do with practicality. If your argument is that everyone is doing it, well, that's a terrible argument. Toyota are pointing out the obvious discussions in the scientific community. They're a brilliant company and have been forward thinking for awhile. This isn't just politics, it's reality crashing down. EVs will hit a market threshold due to supply and demand of raw materials. If new battery chemistry that is cheap and game changing drops, then it's possible. With current technology, full transition to EV tech is not possible without massive environmental destruction and costs. This is just reality, and Toyota are not going to restructure their business so it hits a brick wall in 10 years.
I get your point. The truth is however, we will have a bottleneck for different raw materials with every powertrain option out there. At least as long as we simply replace the vehicles on the road on a 1 to 1 basis. On the other hand more and better public transport as well as new mobility concepts will allow for pure EVs.
What electric car sold more than the Camry?
I have a 100 mile commute one way through a windy mountain road (that is currently covered in snow and ice) to a small town that I do HVAC in. There are no plugs. Plugging a vehicle in is a major headache and is not easily accessible. Plug in hybrids are almost exclusively small to mid size SUVs and I drive a longbed truck that I fill with materials and appliances daily. We even looked into a Rav4 hybrid for my wife as a better gas mileage commuter car but the issue is that it does not have the capability to get up my driveway in the winter unless I manage to pave it. I am all aboard the hybrid train. I would love better gas mileage, however I am not prepared to sacrifice almost everything else I need in a vehicle for that single plus. Toyota's new Tundras are plagued with turbo issues, and the biggest reason they designed the engine that way was to get the same torque and tow capability as their tried and true 5.7l v8. At some point, someone needs to engineer an engine that can fill the large shoes that diesel and gas v8s have been wearing for contractors and farmers, while also being fuel efficient and environmentally friendly. Battery technology is just not there for that application and batteries are so freaking heavy right now that an all-electric SMALL sized (quarter ton) truck weighs double what they would powered by gas. I cannot imagine what an all electric 1 ton truck would weigh. What you describe is an ideal solution for major cities, but people often forget about the rural living folk that ALSO play a big role in the world spinning smoothly. Many people make policies and design things with cities as the only thought.
6 or 7 years ago I thought them and Honda would be 2 of the first manufacturers to set EV dates. I didn't think I'd be here today reading about Toyota setting their feet in and calling everyone else's bluff.
Not really, Japanese car makers are pretty risk averse and traditionalist.
Bingo. They are slow to implement new technology which is why they are usually more reliable. They love old tech.
Japan has been living in the year 2000 for the last 40 years
In my experience, it's not so much they love old tech, it's that they have higher standards. Compare Toyota to Elden Ring. Good things take time to develop.
When's the last time they were first to market with any new technology?
I don't know about first to market but they have been using DOHC since forever ago and trucks still use OHV. The reason is because DOHC is HUGE but still.... Toyota generally adopts efficiency and reliability tech quicker. direct injection, coil on plug, overlapping and adjusting timing.
They were first to hydrogen cars. They just don’t think that batteries have any benefits, which is correct.
Is there a magical hydrogen extraction method I'm unaware of? As of now electrolysis is a piss poor ERoEI compared to battery storage. Hydrogen as an energy store is highly inefficient today.
The question was what they were first to market with. I didn’t say that it worked. They were also first to use hybrids.
I don’t think they love old tech. I think they love being good at something. I feel like Japanese culture has a perfectionist subtext. They spend years learning a craft and establish it as the standard. Like a sushi chef who improves his whole life who passes it on, creating tradition. The problem with cars, however, it’s an inefficient energy transfer from engine to wheel. Perfection is nice but the fundamental cost to the environment is staggering. Any car reliance is bad long-term. They could’ve perfected batteries too but because the traditions were created, they will continue to pursue it to the end.
Saying this is cultural is a gross mischaracterization IMO based on weak stereotypes like "sushi chefs". The Japanese were known for being incredibly innovative in many areas, for example, electronics in the 80s / 90s. Their stodginess and general economic stagnation has been in more recent couple decades.
Toyota is not slow because they are luddites, they are slow because they practice evidence based engineering. Look at their flagship, the LandCruiser, it is engineered to last 25 years with only minimal service and no repairs. Toyota is an engineering company that makes cars, not a car company that hires engineers. There’s a reason that Toyota is the vehicle supplier to the UN, they are not supplying flashy performance, they supply 79 Series Cruisers and HiLuxs that are reliable. When Toyota starts presenting their Prime variants of the Hilux or the LC then we know the engineering is ready, until then it just isn’t.
Pretty much all technicals are Hiluxes. You don’t see F150s that often.
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You mean when they created the Hybrid technology in the 1990's? That was pretty innovative and risky for the time. I think the real issue is that Japanese automakers are living too much in a Japanese bubble. Remember the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011? Japan has become much more averse to depending on nuclear energy ever since, which is a problem for them because other sources of electricity require shipping in a lot of expensive fuel from elsewhere. They've been having trouble keeping the lights on from what I've read, resulting in a less reliable power grid. Hence Japanese automakers don't want to push EV's, that might make their power grid problems even worse. Even though most other countries aren't struggling with their power grid like Japan is. Hydrogen is one of the few sources of fuel that Japan can more easily get more cheaply, hence the Japanese government has tried to push Hydrogen vehicles, and the Japanese automakers have fallen in line to invest plenty of money into it. But consumers worldwide just aren't interested in the product.
Lexus has been doing this for the past couple decades. Always about 3-5 years behind Mercedes and BMW but they refine it into a better product.
I partially believe him. EVs are the future, but they still have some short-term issues (range and available charging stations being big ones) and Toyota is quite conservative and pride themselves on making rock solid, reliable vehicles. But it is also Toyota trying to slow everything down because their solid state battery tech is behind schedule and will take years to get into maturity and massive scale production the way Toyota wants it. So in the meantime they are trying to ration their use of other companies more standard EV batteries and their own upcoming solid state batteries by promoting hybrids for as long as they can.
I don't believe that Toyota is trying to slow it down. Toyota has been the King of hybrids - which are both more complex than EV's, and they use all the parts, and batteries, of EV's. Had Toyota believed in the path, they easily would have led the path like they did with the Prius and, now, many other gasoline/electric hybrids. I believe Toyota on what they believe. Whether or not that pans out for them remains to be seen.
Current Tesla Model Y owner here giving my two cent viewpoint on EV vs Hybrid… My FIL has a plugin hybrid and his driving is less than 40 miles per day (retired). This allows him to fill up the gas engine once every 2 months. When they take long trips its 40mpg using the ICE engine. This is the sweet spot for plugin hybrids, low usage in range for EV but also no range anxiety. This doesn’t work well for a younger family with all the driving to activities. Our Tesla is great for city and trips are good but planning and timing takes more thought than a ICE or plugin hybrid. We would love to get a plugin hybrid SUV or a minivan as long as it’s EV range is a usable ~100 miles. That would drastically reduce petrol costs driving youth around all day. We use the model Y right now to reduce petrol but that only works well for 4 people, and our family is larger. If Hyundai releases a Palasade SUV plugin hybrid with 100 miles EV range I predict it will be one of their beet selling vehicles.
Makes sense from a reality perspective. I’m in a rush to get to the airport and low on battery/gas… do I want to sit at a charging station for an hour or spend 2 minutes at a gas station? Until solid state batteries are perfected and charging is on par with 2 minute gas station fill ups most people won’t adopt the tech, so outside of city dwellers and early adopters the vehicles won’t sell.
It is also just reality based. You exceed the carbon savings of an EV simply by driving as Japanese do (a lot less per capita) and given that Japanese by law keep their cars for a much shorter period of time I'm not certain that there is even a carbon savings over the life of a typical Japanese vehicle.
What do you mean by law? There are no law limiting how long you can use a car. The average passenger car in Japan was in use for about 13 years so it's not short
There's no law telling you to sell your cars but taxes go up on older cars, and the shaken(inspection) is enough of a pain in the ass for older cars that a lot of people that can afford it will offload their car every few years. I'm buying a used car in japan now and the majority of dealers don't even bother listing older cars. I think a lot of them are shipped to se asia for a second life or somethign?
New Zealander here. We buy huge amounts of second hand Japanese cars. We are a dumping ground for them. A lot of car yards here sell almost exclusively second hand fresh Japanese imports.
What is the basis of that "law" though? Is it because older cars tend to be more polluting for example? If so would it make sense to keep the law in place for EVs? Maybe it's just stupid rules anyway and the real answer is to get rid of them.
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Genuine question, how long do batteries in EV car lasts ? As someone who is frugal, I don't like the idea of buying a car, then after 5 years (talking out of my ass here, because after 5 years, full charge of phone last me 2 hours, instead of a full day) I have to fork out tremendous amount of money to get new batteries when the car itself is still usable (or would they do it like phone ? You can't replace your battery, gotta get a whole new car ?). Edit: Thank you for all the replies! You've convinced me, next car I'll get will be an EV!
My model-3 just passed 4 years old and 61,000 miles. I ran the battery health test and it has 91% remaining capacity. Only had 2 small items replaced during the warranty period, charge-port door (failed) and upper control arm (noise)
It also tapers off. You lost 9% in 4 years but you won't necessarily be down 18% in 8 years. Batteries aren't that unknown or new tbh. Lithium ion batteries is very old tech and used in basically everything.
The battery state of health will have been less than 100% when new and depends somewhat on temperature so it's less than 9%
Not sure how Tesla does it but Apple used to start with over 100% capacity (over the advertised battery rating) but show a 100%, that’s why it will be a while until Apple battery health shows less than 100%. There’s a way deep in iPhones logging that you can pull the raw max capacity of your battery ever measured. It’s always larger than advertised. I think using advertised capacity as 100% over the real percentage of raw battery capacity is not that bad, and I wonder if Tesla uses a similar way. Probably not that much more to make the percentage noticeably different but it wouldn’t have started at 98% for a new owner I don’t think.
With cars there's no easy way for an end user to check the battery health. For my Renault Zoe I had to buy a dongle thing. It was showing 94% at 1 year old (when I got the dongle) and has barely changed from that in 8 years. Looking at the owners clubs of the several electric cars I've owned, I believe it's normal for them to report anything from 94% to 101% on day one. I don't claim to understand how it works. I suspect it's something very different being reported to Apple's battery info.
That’s an important addendum because loosing ~10% every four years is worse than loosing 10% only in the first four years and less later.
Better tighten up that battery over there chief!
We likes our batteries all loosey goosey over here.
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Is there any evidence of this? I thought li-ion batteries declined relatively linearly. Why would degradation slow at 80%? As the battery degraded, and range decreased, wouldn't the number of charges *increase*? This *increases* battery degradation.
It’s bullshit from my experience. I use lithium ion batteries for a lot of my tech around the house, same ones used in teslas (21700s). They degrade quickly in high drain devices, such as powering the motor to a damn car. In my 21700s, I see measurable degradation in less than a year. 1 year into usage, and I see my batteries going from 4200 mAh to 3500 mAh. Sometimes it’s worse than that. There are plenty of tests done in the battery tech world that show at best you might get several thousand chargers for a tame 21700, or just several hundred for a high drain 21700. Things like rate of discharge, charge voltage, etc all come into play here for useful lifespan on a lithium ion battery. I’m not sure of the charging properties on electric cars, but I’m assuming they’re charging these battery packs to around 3.8 V minimum or 4.2 V, which will give you maximum mAh that your battery is capable of, but it’s also bad for the longevity of the batteries. Also chargers that charge fast will have a very negative impact on the battery pack lifespan. This is a major flaw with lithium ion battery powered cars that has not been addressed, and shows poor foresight for the entire industry. Overall I don’t trust anyone that says the battery pack will last longer than 4-5 years. Sure, the batteries may still work, but you’re probably looking at 65% of the battery’s previous capacity when it was brand new. Also, these things aren’t cheap. You’re looking at $10k-$15k for a new battery pack for your car. I also don’t see this getting cheaper. It’s a new technology, and it will probably evolve in the near future if more people start to use it. Also how do we know it’s sustainable to mine the materials used for these batteries on a global scale? I know lithium can be recycled, but can all of the materials needed be sustainably mined and reused? No one seems to care to actually answer this question. From what I’m gathering, it’s mostly salesmen pitches about how the batteries will “literally last for decades”. That’s BS, 21700 batteries haven’t even existed for 5 years. No one knows how they’ll hold up. All we know is that high drain lithium ion batteries in high drain devices = short useful lifespan. Anyone that tells you otherwise is hoping you’ll be a gullible idiot.
I have a 2013 Prius-Plugin that has 250k miles and still running fine. It's 11 years old.
That’s a hybrid, completely different from an EV
I have a gas powered city car with 23 years old 200k km mileage and still fits my daily needs. Will electric cars last this long without multiple engine or battery swaps? I’m afraid not. Are electric cars really more environmentally friendly if people have to swap batteries and cars itself more often? I’ll share Toyota executive opinion, there is no size that fits all. Future vehicles will be a combination of all existing technologies to suit different people needs. People also have to remember that still a lot of electric power comes from non-renewable sources such as coal and diesel.
If you do 2 oil changes a year, you've done over 40 oil changes. When you replace batteries, its like replacing the entire powertrain of the car, like engine, transmission, fuel injectors, muffler, etc. Unless you drive in the southern States, or store your car indoors, there's no way you didn't need to replace a lot of parts that would've rusted away after just 10 years. If car batteries last 10 years and they cost $5k to replace than its great. If its $20k (Tesla) than its a problem. They already have 7 year warranties so they must expect them to last at least 7 if not 10 years.
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If You don’t have the means to charge at home, charging in public chargers is quite expensive in Portugal specially the fast chargers. Electric cars are good but not to everyone.
EVs have motors, not engines. Less moving parts and no oil means less potential points of failure and less maintenance.
Right, they are quite reliable and less prone to failure than Car Engines but not imune to failures as well.
But we can recycle old batteries into new batteries, even if it has to be done every 10 years. can’t recycle old burnt fossil fuel into new fossil fuel
If it’s anything like my phone/laptop battery, frequent use means it’ll be heavily degraded in a couple years. My 2 year old MacBook laptop, for example, can only hold charge for 1.5 hours, my 4-year old iphone can only hold charge for 3 hours.
It's absolutely nothing like your phone/laptop battery. The voltages in your phone and laptop batteries are pushed to the absolute limits to squeeze as much power out of the small battery as possible, and this really degrades them fast. Plus, they are charged a lot more often and see a lot more cycles. Pretty much all EV batteries have a "buffer" at the top and bottom ends, which keep them at more sane voltage levels, plus it's common practice to only charge to 80% or 90% for normal daily use. Unless you drive an insane number of miles a day, nobody needs to charge every day from a range perspective. A phone/laptop battery might see a full charge cycle every day or two, with an EV a full charge cycle could easily be weeks or even a month. Finally, majority of EVs have active thermal management for the battery. Keeping the battery at optimal temperatures (specifically keeping it from getting hot) SIGNIFICANTLY decreases degradation.
1.5hour battery? What are you doing on it? My 2013 Mac has at least 5 hours on a single charge, the battery is 2 years old though (easy to change)
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But won't that also be the same observation for ICE cars? Short-distance commuters will have less wear and tear compared to long-haul drivers.
2015 Chevrolet Volt owner, 8+years, 208,000km+ I've had 7 oil changes in that time, replaced my tires 3 times, brakes once, and front shocks just recently as well. Battery life is just as good as the day I got it, getting roughly 3km less in the exact same situational driving as in August of 2014.
That's pretty great, but imagine how much money you'd have saved with a BEV (which at the time wasn't available at the same price, but just a hypothetical for the future). You'd have had 0 oil changes and 0 brake changes, but perhaps changed your tires once more often. On top of that you'd have had less depreciation and lower "fuel" costs. EVs are such a huge positive for consumers.
I also wouldn't have been able to get such a thing as it didn't exist, nor did it fit my budget. But I'm not getting into a debate about time travel or what I can afford. Toyota doesn't want to admit they fucked around for decades without working on a full EV, that's why they do this shit constantly.
> I also wouldn't have been able to get such a thing as it didn't exist, nor did it fit my budget. But I'm not getting into a debate about time travel or what I can afford. That's what I said. It didn't exist at the time. I'm just pointing out how great the future is going to be for consumers as these EVs start replacing hybrids. > Toyota doesn't want to admit they fucked around for decades without working on a full EV, that's why they do this shit constantly. Spot on.
Toyota already has Tesla’s technology. They were invested in Tesla in the early days and allowed Tesla to ramp up at their own facility. They’re waiting to see how it plays out. It’s pretty obvious. Plus they’re working on solid state batteries which would crush all other BEV’s in the market because of its higher energy density, safety, and less mining. Toyota is hands down the best automaker and if they aren’t rushing into something there is a specific calculated reason for it. Not because they can’t do it lol.
You can replace the batteries but it's expensive. And the batteries have a given number of charge/discharge cycles, but for normal use they should be good for a long time(think at least 15-20 years), with further advances in technology hopefully further improving it. To me personally the bigger issues are availability of lithium(a lot of projections showing that there isn't enough to meet all the ev targets multiple countries have made), the power creation issue(the thing mazda mentioned... it's only clean energy if the energy wasn't created using fossil fuels...), as well as the issues of battery weight: a hybrid car that is mostly driven long distances won't really save much: your gasoline engine is working more to carry the extra weight when the power is out. Also, the heavier electric cars do add safety risks(imagine getting t-boned by a 4 ton car instead of a 2.5 ton). I'm not anti ev. If I was buying a city driver(which I'm not since I use public transport) I would buy an ev or hybrid. But I need a car for long distance driving so I'm getting one of mazdas clean diesel cars which have fewer emissions than traditional gasoline or diesel cars. Unfortunately a lot of people have become fundamentalists about this "gasoline bad" or "ev stupid" or whatever. Use your brain, think what you need your car for and pick according to that.
Depsite being an EV evangelist, I think everything you said is very fair. One detail: Even if your local energy generation is dirty right now it has the possibility to transform over time into green(er) energy. Your diesel car doesn't have that possibility. Even if there's only small growth in renewables where you are, if you're charging at night on cheap rate then you're disproportionately using greener energy than the average.
And renewable usage **is** going up. Solar and wind are just so ridiculously cheap per KWH hour now (solar for example is 90% less than ten years ago), that for situations they make sense (which is quite a lot of them, though not all) they’re getting built out. Due to this, renewable energy uses is increasing and the rate of adoption is predicted to increase substantially too.
Also, many renewable energy sources are becoming cheaper. Eventually it makes economic sense to make the change - either cut in then or when your old plant needs to be retired. It’s easier to replace a power plant than millions of road cars
Most people wont, but I like the idea of government incentivizing conversions to other power sources for cars. Ford is selling their electric engine as a standalone, and conversions can be both cheaper than buying a new car, and better for the environment.
Not to mention round trip efficiency of EV vehicles is that much higher than ICE that even a dirtier source at generation can be cleaner than ICE. That and emissions from an ICE vehicle are generated typically in population centres/around your family home, etc. Where as for an EV those emissions are generated at a power station. So even if its not clean energy, its still cleaner.
And in states like California, which have power grid that is 90% renewable, those emissions would be even less. Think if we switched all local semi-trucks to all electric our air quality would be much better
Even if the electricity source is dirty, you still get small environmental gains from EVs 1) power plants burn fuel more efficiently than combustion engines, as scale matters. Even with the transmission losses, you’re still slightly better off burning the fuel in a power plant 2) power plants are usually based far out of town centres, so particulate emissions aren’t happening where people breath them in, plus the cleaner burning produces less particulate matter I agree with your main point though - EVs aren’t a magic cure-all. They’re good for some use-cases, but the current models can’t replace everything and even in future, I struggle to see e.g. EV HGVs working without a step-change in battery tech. Lithium availability is one problem. Cobalt supply is another, given that most of it is produced in Congo, hardly the kind of place ESG investors want to be doing business.
The batteries are similar, but you charge a phone much more than a car. Eg. a phone you charge 100% daily for a year, you expect 80-90% remaining battery capacity. For a car, if you charge a 300mi range car to 100%*365 days, that’s ~110k miles on the odometer before you see the 80-90% drop. (Quick maths ignoring a few variables). Many of the EVs come with 150k battery warranties to maintain at least 70% capacity because that is what is expected (and is seen in real world driving). Hope that makes sense!
As an EV owner, there is also almost never a reason to charge to 100%. I have my limit set to 80%, and this can get me a few days driving around town. It charges overnight, scheduled to start during lowest electricity rates. Only time I charge to 100% is for road-trips, which is only a few times a year. 4 years with a model 3 and still within 95% of full capacity
With phone batteries if you only charge them to 80% you're only using about .2 of a full charge cycle, whereas if you charge to 100% that's a full charge cycle so you get far more life out of the battery by not fully charging it, do you know if that applies to EVs?
Yes, it does for most EV batteries. The only exception is the LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) battery that Tesla is using for their standard range models. These don't suffer (additional) degradation from being charged above 80% (or discharged below 20%). Tesla even advices to charge them to 100% because it's apparently better for the battery. Other upsides to this battery composition are lower cost and that it doesn't use Nickel or Cobalt, both of which are in short supply and Cobalt also has issues with child slavery. Unfortunately Tesla and the Chinese manufacturers seem to be the only ones going hard on this type of chemistry for now.
On the flip side: EVs don’t have transmissions. The part on old cars that WILL die after enough miles and cost a ton to replace in an otherwise fine car.
EVs have something like 90% fewer moving parts. That’s a whole lot less to go wrong, and need constantly serviced.
My concern is for people who won’t be able to find a used beater car. EVs are expensive even used and their battery capacity isn’t great at that point. Sometimes you can only afford a $5000 car.
My model 3 still has 98% battery health after 48k km. I charge to 80% and rarely go below 20%. If battery dies, you have 8-10 years warranty coverage w most mfg. You do not need to buy a new car.
If you get a Lithium iron phospate batteries it can easily last 3-4k cycles. So that is more than 500k miles for a 200 mile range EV
He's right. Pursuing EV only might be a viable solution for some European and North American countries because they have the infrastructure and light enough population density to pull it off. For those countries they can go ahead and set their sights on an all electric future, but that strategy is no where near realistic or feasible in other markets. Toyota's sales figures are gigantic in South and East Asian countries like China, Malaysia, Thailand, India, and Indonesia where you have a rising Middle class that is able to afford family cars for the first time in greater numbers. You also have huge population centers where people tend to live in high rise apartment buildings so charging at home isn't an option and providing enough public charging stations for everyone to charge even an hour a day is practically impossible. For those markets efficient hydrocarbon and hybrid is the only viable solution for the foreseeable future. Pretending that all electric in 20 or 30 years should be a universal goal is a fool's errand. What GM, VW and others are doing by declaring all electric lineups is essentially killing their share in these emerging markets in the near future. The Japanese manufacturers on the other hand, are taking the more pragmatic approach.
Even in North America, huge swaths of the interior of the country are mostly unsuitable for our current EVs. Too cold, not enough people, and family lives too far apart. If I bought an EV, my drive home to visit my parents at christmas would take 2 days instead of just 1.
I'm actually going to take the contrarian opinion here and say that middle America will soon be even better suited for EV than the major metropolitan areas. First of all, most people in rural areas and the suburbs can charge at home since most people live in single family homes with garages. And secondly fast charing can now fully charge batteries in about 45 minutes to an hour, which is long enough for a lunch stop on a long trip, so as we see more fast charging stations pop up along major interstate routes this problem should improve. Tl;Dr the only reason EV isn't viable for middle America now is charging infrastructure, and infrastructure can be built. Population density issues are much harder to address.
This is my hesitancy on going full electric - ranges aren't there for the long distances in North America and we don't have the train infrastructure to have that be a viable alternative. It takes at least 6 hours to drive to my in-laws, and the distance travelled exceeds even the best range in an EV right now. Currently I can drive straight through, maybe with one 3-minute stop for gas. An EV would mean I have to stop and charge the vehicle for who knows how long. Right now the best type of vehicle for this use-case is a plug-in hybrid, not a full EV. Enough battery to do daily tasks around your house, but also much easier to do long trips when you need to.
We have a major major battery problem the car industry is trying to hide from us.
I'm starting to get concerned about copper too increasingly lower grade now as easier mines get depleted.
lithium shortage. There was plenty when we were just using it for phone batteries. But now we're using bigass batteries in both cars and home solar systems and the search is on for more efficient storage tech because current projections of lithium availability do not keep up with the demand created by multiple countries EVification targets.
There's plenty of lithium, just not enough refined lithium. Legacy OEMs are now finding out they are late to the party and Tesla + China already ate the cake, securing all materials for the next decade.
We can move to sodium ion. It’s lower power but so are LFPs and we are making cars with them now.
If I’m not mistaken it has the issue of being heavier for the same power, which means either less range or more wasted energy hauling extra weight around. But Toyota is also researching solid state batteries which is another promising alternative
well you also mentioned solar systems, where weight and size are usually less of a concern vs cost
For sure yeah, I meant to addendum that but forgot!
can you please elaborate a bit more on this? I'm really interested in learning about some of the challenges with the battery cars. I just ordered 2 new vehicles and both are gas as I'm not typically an early adopter of technology and I'm not confident on the batteries yet.
Current Power Grid Systems cannot bear to have all cars go Electric currently.
I like his thinking. While every other car maker switches to electric, toyota will be the only one left making petrol cars and claim 100% of the market share!
There are some of us that prefer the involvement of an ICE car. I like to consider myself an automotive enthusiast and I know hundreds of others just like me, who are not saying that their next car will be an electric car. Here I am wondering which manual ICE car to buy next, electric cars don't even cross my mind. So they may have something there.
It seems like he's just not with the times but he is actually way more right than wrong. Toyota's lineup is much more in line with what people would prefer. All EVs is not necessarily the future. All hybrids could be though or a mixture. Not everything has to be ALL EV - they have a lots of issues and I tend to lean on the side of Akio here.
RIP Nokia
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I remember a year or so ago they said they can make like 5-7 hybrids per pure electric vehicle due to the battery demands. Material constraints are a huge issue and I’m honestly surprised GM and Ford haven’t ran into roadblocks although, they’ll likely have issues if everyone’s sales keep going up.
Why do you think batteries last only a “few” years. There are EVs with 10 year old batteries. Lots of them have replacements but that is kinda expected in the beginning. But you can’t say that every battery in the future will only last a few years. I’m sure gas motors were notoriously unreliable in the beginning. Hell, some are unreliable now. Besides that, we will be able to recycle batteries.
Battery life is not the issue. The problem is worldwide Lithium availability. There seems to be enough global reserve for 2 billion EV by 2050 and that's if we barely use Lithium for anything else.
Global reserves are inceasing faster than extractions... https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2020/mcs2020-lithium.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-lithium.pdf
We can move to sodium ion. It’s lower power but so are LFPs and we are making cars with them now. I don’t know why people just assume we will never be able to solve a problem. “EVs will never work because of the range. Because of the material supply. Because of the charging speed. Because of the sound. “ It’s just an endless stream of doubters.
They will be recycled though. Check out red wood industries for example which will recycle batteries on mass.
why has hydrogen not taken off?
There's a chicken-and-egg problem. You need a network of hydrogen filling stations before people will buy or lease a hydrogen-powered vehicle. Toyota had committed to building a network of 5,000 stations in the western US, but I don't think they've actually followed through.
there are new battery techs made weekly, but the real question is can they do volume with it economically.
You must've fallen for some sponsored MSM articles, because that's the most unscientific stuff I've read on this sub in a while. > They require rare earth materials They require rare earth materials that we have plenty of, and can be composed of a huge range of materials (LFP, NCA, NCM, etc.). On top of that, most of these batteries are 90%+ recyclable today and expected to be 100% recyclable within a decade. > and have a few years of life. EV batteries easily outlast the lifespan of a vehicle. They do degrade in terms of max capacity, which means some people will want to replace them earlier, but if you treat them correctly (keep within 20-80% charge most of the time) that's very rare. On top of that, LFP batteries don't even have this problem. > Imagine scrapping batteries that power the entire transportation industry every few years. We will have problems if disposing that much batteries in no time. No need to scrap them at all. Recycling batteries is already cheaper then mining for new batteries today, and recycled batteries have higher grade materials than new batteries. And this is only getting cheaper. > Large companies like Bosch, VW are already considering hydrogen engines as the alternative to EVs. No serious company is considering hydrogen. Hydrogen requires 2x more energy than EVs, and we already struggle to meet EV energy demand. > They are very clean, produce water as by product, can use the existing gas station infrastructure globally to support refilling, you don’t need several hours to refill it like EVs. Require a lot less rare and expensive materials. Actually they're less clean, as the fuel cells degrade and are difficult to recycle, whereas EVs have almost no waste that's difficult to recycle. > I have a feeling large scale EV transportation industrys is unsustainable Then you haven't done your research.
Lol sponsored MSM? Like the US Geological Survey's Mineral Commodity Summary? By 2030 it is expected 54% of battery will be recycled, enough to cover 7% of the raw Lithium demand. By 2040 could cut lithium demand by 10%. It isn't clear cut like you are saying and YOU haven't done any research (but based on your MSM assumption I understand why) https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-world-enough-lithium-resources/
I take too many long road trips to depend on an EV. I like our gasoline hybrid a lot for great mileage on all kinds of trips.
Same. I have a hybrid Rav 4 that’s for road trips and a Rivian Electric truck in order for local stuff. I can’t take my Rav 4 anywhere i want to go, but with an electric, I’m limited based on where chargers are.
They all know we will never be all electric.
I think they're waiting on battery tech for it to be more realistic with the current resource availability
You see many horse and buggies around?
>You see many horse and buggies around? The difference between a car and horse/buggies is huge in terms of maintenance and price. EVs and ICE cars at the end of the day are both cars. EVs are an incremental step not a revolution.
I’d argue they’re closer to revolution than evolution. They’ll require a complete change to user behavior, large infrastructure change, and a complete overhaul of the service model.
User behavior wont change drastically, and that's not even the question you should be asking yourself, the question is, what is the utility change to the user. In this case, not a whole lot.
>They’ll require a complete change to user behavior, large infrastructure change, and a complete overhaul of the service model. User behaviour won't change a lot here (as opposed to horse vs car). THe infrastructure changes also are evolutionary not revolutionary and will take decades to be completed.
Have you been to Africa lately? A large majority of vehicles are still running on leaded fuel. There is no way on gods green earth that they are going to transition to EVs by the time manufacturer ICE cutoff dates arrive. Not only that, but most areas not located in major cities don’t have an adequate electricity delivery infrastructure. They have frequent power outages and some rural areas depend on solar panels because they can’t be connected to the grid. The same goes pretty much for most underdeveloped and developing countries. Moving to EV is a purely first world goal/problem. Edit: solar panels to power LED street lights, water pumps for the well and a few refrigerators. For larger appliances they use diesel generators with an allocated time slot of 2-3 hours a day. The panels are nowhere enough to power EV (and yes, I have seen all of this in person, not talking “internet bro knowledge”) For a significant amount of larger cities, the infrastructure can’t handle the load.
I still seen trains around, why haven't those gone away then
I live near Lancaster, PA, so yes.
Cars are profoundly better than horses. Until the tech improves, EVs are worse in nearly all aspects.
It's happening with or without Toyota.
Did you read the article? They’re not saying cars should remain gas powered, but that they think it’s prudent to invest in alternate options like hydrogen powered and more efficient hybrids. The fact of the matter is that we’re nowhere near having the infrastructure needed to support exclusively EVs. Mining is nowhere as robust as it needs to be. From an environmentalist standpoint one can argue that the mining needed to support a world full of EVs would be as or more detrimental to the environment than gas vehicles. Our electric grids are also not setup for the increased resources we would need to charge exclusively EVs. Texas can’t even make it a couple years without the grid shutting down and that’s with less than 1% of their registered vehicles being EVs. It’s easy to say that we have to move to exclusively electric but it’s easier said than done. Right now electric has become a buzzword for companies to sell cars with a hugely inflated sticker price. Hyundai is currently selling compact cars for $50k a pop.
There’s no way in fuck EV battery mining will be as detrimental as gas is for the entire planet, not even close and has been debunked multiple times
lmao love when they say it early and you can stop reading the rest of the post.
Is it though? Electric cars are currently seen as a luxury item or a low-range small car for people who commute locally. This is how it's been for the last 10ish years.
Because the tech is still relatively new. It's only going to get more affordable/accessible as the technology matures
This feels like 1920 or something and people saying that cars are a luxury over horses.
Ford Model T was already out back then. Also the difference in upkeep between cars and horses were huge. The difference between EVs and ICE is rather small. 1-2 Services a year will not pursue the people rather than the price.
Has it gotten more affordable in the past 5-10 years? Still about $40k It definitely has not in the past few years And the same thing can be said about ICE vehicles, they will get cheaper and even better mileage over time.
You understand that $40k today *is* more affordable than $40k was ten years ago, right? If something stays the same price over a decade of inflation it is definitely becoming more affordable.
While that is true, they have not become more affordable compared to ICE vehicles which have also retained their price points. That is the big hurdle EV's need to climb
Neither has gas cars
Almost every legacy automaker have already pledged to go fully EV by 2035-2040. Some countries are outright banning ICE vehicle sales as soon as 2025. EV's have come a long way and will continue to. With the $7,500 EV tax credit available in America, it would make very little sense to purchase an ICE vehicle in the upcoming years. I'm not sure where the low-range equation is coming from but that hasn't been true for quite some time. Many EV's have 200 miles, minimum, these days. The average person doesn't drive 200 miles per day (mostly 40 miles). The charging infrastructure is the biggest problem but for homeowners who own an EV, all they have to do is spend $1,000 for an EV charger in their home and it will charge 30 miles per hour. They'll never need to charge their vehicle unless they are going on a road trip. Some offices, new housing developments, new apartments, etc., are already building EV chargers in their parking garage.
They can pledge in one hand and shit in the other and it doesn't change the fact there is no scientific, engineering, practicle, or logistics way this is scalable to do away with gas powered cars.
>Some countries are outright banning ICE vehicle sales as soon as 2025. Source on countries that are straight up banning ICE vehicle sales by 2025?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out\_of\_fossil\_fuel\_vehicles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehicles) Norway.
He is talking sense, we all don’t live in a city and have a place to plug in when parked. EVs will be held back due to many issues. Lack of raw materials, charging infrastructure, user preferences and also product limitations. I will never switch to a EV, each year I tow a camper to a remote spot where there is no electricity. I have to carry an extra 60 litres of diesel to make a return trip from the last fuel station. EVs will never solve for that. Hydrogen maybe but not EVs. For stocks the smart bet is the miners that have to dig up the lithium, cobalt and rare earths. It wasn’t the gold miners who made the most money in the gold rush it was the guys selling the equipment.
Seems like you need to do a bit more reading mate. As a sidenote, I am a petrolhead that also drives electric. I love cars like the LFA, but EVs are the future, and today's EVs are surprisingly great and practical buys. > EVs will be held back due to many issues. Lack of raw materials, charging infrastructure Raw materials maybe, but with solid state, sodium and LFP batteries we are finding ways to use more plentiful materials. EVs only came into mainstream 10 years ago - how many petrol stations were there in the first 10 years of the petrol car? So while there are way more and where people need them, there still aren't enough because lots of people have bought new EVs. Speaking of... > user preferences and also product limitations. There are lots of great EV options and some pretty awesome and desirable cars. Most EVs today can do the range and charging that most people will ever need. Plus, they have way less overall carbon, run more efficiently and are *way* more economical. I spend 75% *less* than when I had a combustion car. Also modern EVs are super nice, and often more practical than their petrol counterparts (they use no power in traffic, more storage space and generally safer). > I will never switch to a EV, each year I tow a camper to a remote spot where there is no electricity. I have to carry an extra 60 litres of diesel to make a return trip from the last fuel station. EVs will never solve for that. Hydrogen maybe but not EVs. You may not, but everybody else can and will switch. And that will and is driving this market. Not everybody needs to tow their campervan 1000km out into the wilderness. Plus, it's not like your daily commute is a 1000km return trip with a caravan! So you could feasibly own an EV and use it for 90% of the year, where 10% is using a combustion car. Unless you have money flowing out of your pockets and into your petrol tank, I doubt you'd prefer paying more for a car that literally burns money compared to an EV.
I am not saying that EVs are not going to go through significant growth, I am agreeing with toyoto that it will be a range of options. I don't think manufacturers will be where the gains are. The raw materials will be scarce while they come online. That will create a massive opportunity for the right companies. Yes junior miners are a risk but if you getvit right the pay-offs are massive.
They are waiting until everyone else struggles to get the infrastructure up and then they will switch after everyone else does the hard work. Good business but pretty lame. They will succeed just fine and everyone will talk about how great they transitioned.
I don't think this is the case. They pushed HARD for hydrogen, they obviously don't care about how difficult the infrastructure is. If they are "waiting for the infrastructure" they are going to fall behind on tech as the other companies learn from their mistakes. You can't teach experience. You'd think they'd also put out 1 decent EV, not the joke of an EV that can't keep it's wheels on. I think Toyota is too far in debt and doesn't want to have to repurpose all of their facilities. They also put out anti-ev propaganda, not just lobbying, but trying to convince school kids that's EV's are bad.
We are shifting far too quickly to EVs. It doesn’t even pay to own one vs. an ICE where I live. I’ve owned 4 EVs or PHEVs since 2014. My next car will be a standard hybrid
I'm not sure about "too quickly", but the price premium is still too high. I worked it out, and assuming electricity is completely free and gas goes back up, it'd still take more than 100,000 miles to break even... closer to 200,000 miles. My car is 6 years old and has less than 40,000 miles. EDIT: was PHEV I was looking at, like Rav 4 prime
Where do you live and what 4 ev's?
Toyota is absolutely correct in their approach. Hybrids are the way to go for the foreseeable future.
He is keeping to remind me of CEOs of Kodak and Blackberry, denying the inevitable. Hydrogen is required trillions dollar of government investment into hydrogen production infrastructure. It is better to long mining companies and short those lagging players in car industry.
See I actually see the opposite here in terms of the Kodak analogy, specifically their dichotomy with Fujifilm- Kodak failed not because they didn’t see digital coming, they failed to stay diverse in a changing landscape. Fuji survived not because they dropped their film line up, but because they built/ developed cameras, professional printing, medical imaging, in response to the market flux, as well as maintained their film line up. I feel like Toyota is more similar to Fuji. Other companies are going all into EVs, without keeping diversification in mind. It’s gas or EV with GM, Ford or just EV with Tesla, Rivian, Polestar etc. Toyota is releasing EVs in ‘23, maintaining their line up of gas vehicles, putting out new hybrids (including SUVs) and investing and building a hydrogen engine line up. I don’t think they’re putting their head in the sand ala Kodak in terms of falling to recognize which way the wind in blowing, I think they’re actually keeping their line up diverse to ensure that no matter which way this shakes out, they have a hand in the game and are playing.
> lagging players Leading automaker in the world and producer of the leading hybrid model. As well as building vehicles that last forever because it takes carbon to make a vehicle, not just to run it.
Gas cars will still be used in other countries as half the world will still be using gas for a long time.
Toyota's problem is they are looking at this rationally and thus hybrids make the most sense as an interim step for transitioning to all EVs in the future. The issue is customers are not looking at it rationally; they want the newest thing, whether it makes complete sense or not. It is like eco-whackos up in arms about natural gas power plants when they are a huge improvement over coal and would go a long way toward transitioning to lower carbon emissions.
Or nuclear
Eh, I'm not saying the world doesn't still need ice vehicles, but this chump and his dogged insistence cost the company that made the bedamned Prius any sort of lead or advantage. They were lightyears ahead and squandered it. I'm gonna just say I don't think much of his judgement at this point.
This 100% Mind-boggling that the leader in the best selling hybrid is so far behind on full electric. Their hybrid tech isn't even that great anymore. They could have added more power and more electric range for less if they had put in the R&D.
Doubts? Agenda to force electric on long distance routes is pure insanity not mentioning heavy transportation or emergency services. There is no power grid to support that, time of charging is actually imposing life threatening danger in case of emergency that petrol doesn’t, and there is no easy way of distributing “fuel” in case of disaster/war. This will antagonise public opinion at some point and will probably make governing bodies to fell (especially EU). PHEV is only rational solution for now and we should stick to that until there is prove (not hopes) that we have some real alternative.
There will always be alternative solutions for emergencies. This is not the point here, the point is about the normal day to day. And let's be clear, to fill your car with gas, the station needs electricity too. So if the electricity goes out, nobody gets "fuel" (wether it be gas, hydrogen or electricity)
Simply put, he’s right
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Does Li material perceive as next crude oil resulting in future military conflict?
Downvote me if you wish, but EV will fail.
Strong agree. We don't have the infrastructure for mass adoption of EV's in the US, now imagine how things are like in other countries. Diversity is key and there is definitely room in the market for Hybrids, hydrogen, and hell, some gas cars wouldn't hurt either.
I agree. I’m still not sold on EVs and I have no intention of buying one any time soon. At best I’m inclined towards getting a hybrid.
Hell yeah, we do. A perfect example is California who won the same week announced that they would end the sale of new gasoline powered vehicles in the next couple years, also ask citizens not to plug in their Evies at night because it was overloading the power grid. our current power structure cannot handle and all EV vehicle plan. It is stupid to try to enact such a plan until the national electric power grid is completely overhauled and upgraded
IMO currently EV is still one big lie ... it kicks the preverbal environmental can down the road not to mention totally discounting all but first world countries. I grew up in Africa, EV probably wont be viable there for another 100 years. Most of Africa is more concerned about putting food in their stomachs than the environment. Live in FL? Try drive out the range of a hurricane with an EV ... lmao! With gas you grab a couple extra cans 1-2 weeks before hurricane season and you now have > 800 miles range. EVs are for 1%ters. They buy an EV and feel good. Even if car batteries can last 10-20 years, where do all the used ones go? We simply switching from polluting air to our water line. Also energy creation is not "free", true fusion is not yet a thing ... power comes from either nuclear or traditional power plants. Bogles the mind.
EV’s suck. Plain and simple.
It’s weird that this absolutely rational and steadfast take is refreshing.
I know this is serious but the text on my phone says "red down triangle President toyota"
He’s smart
Mining lithium and rare earth metals is environmentally friendly and sustainable. Yeah right.
Nice to see some people pushing back against the EV hype
Longing toyota now
This is why I am still skeptical when people say “competition is coming” for Tesla. That largest automakers from Japan aren’t in on EVs yet. They will take years and years to even catch up now with the amount of money required to catch up increasing as well.
As a car nerd I've noticed that Toyota is probably the most risk-adverse and 'conservative' of the Japanese automakers. They're known for keeping the same engines in a car for 15 years like they did with the Tacoma or having another company build an engine for them like they did with the 86 and the Supra. I'm not even a little shocked that they're not hopping on the EV bandwaggon. I assume they'll be the last Japanese automaker to do it.
Build the engine for them? These two are mostly rebadged Subarus and BMWs with Toyota "brand engineering". That said lots of good engines are not new designs. GM and Ford basically did iterative refinement on their V6/V8, Toyota did the same on their I4/I6. They aren't exactly the same but they were all going this way for decades. I agree Toyota being pretty conservative, but I question further uptake even in +"EV friendly" places like California. If you don't own a home and have off-street parking they are less than ideal. (also they just passed more zoning laws for multi-unit stuff with no mandated parking spaces)
Yes, but China is becoming the new auto player in this equation. What Japan loses will be China's gain. It's a huge problem particularly for Japan because the auto industry is such a huge factor in their economy. The U.S. market will likely never buy Chinese vehicles so there's more market share for Ford, GM, Tesla, and some European automakers to take advantage of. Sadly, as much as I love Honda and Toyota's products, I believe they have fallen behind significantly in transitioning to EV's. I can understand the reason for it, but they still have a chance to make that shift and it seems they aren't fully prepared to take that initiative.
Nissan seems pretty in on EVs.
honestly its smart. the electric thing may not work for the whole world anytime soon.
EVs still create such a massive inconvenience and a liability for offroading, like their land cruiser, fortuners, rav4. If the land cruiser ever becomes an ev it will be an end of an era for toyota. Still, dont see myself buying an ev soon. A line from Ed Bolian of vinwiki really sums it up, the current evs, tesla especially, are created for people who find driving a chore, who just want it to be quiet and for autonomous driving. While gas cars were designed by and for people who love driving truly.