The FUD accusations seem a bit hasty here. The linked Senate hearing doesn't seem to contain negative things about BEVs (it only criticizes the "narrow focus" on them), but instead opts for including hybrid and hydrogen, with the argument being that "recent data shows that plug-in hybrids can achieve nearly the same or better GHG reductions than BEVs depending on your daily driving patterns, the carbon in the electric grid, the carbon resulting from battery production, and other factors." https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/E2EA0E4F-BAD9-4...
That may be wrong, but the ars article didn't have any counter arguments.
It would be nice if Toyota actually had any interest in plug in hybrids. Their only one, the Prius Prime, is more expensive than its competitors and offers less than half their range. What's the point of getting a PHEV if I still spend half my commute running on gasoline?
Exactly. GM showed with a Volt that a PHEV could be effectively a BEV 90% of the time and perform excellently even when falling back into ICE mode, but the Prime came out after the Volt and its drivetrain is inferior in every way to it. I understand the Prime is roomier and so on, but in terms of drivetrain it's woefully inferior.
As a Volt and Mitsu Outlander PHEV owner I obviously have nothing against the PHEV concept. But just comparing the two I can say that the Volt is more of a BEV with high quality range extension, while our Outlander is just a soft hybrid that can only sometimes use the battery exclusively. Pretty much all the PHEVs (including the Prime) are like that, and they gave the whole concept of PHEV a bad name.
EDIT: the Outlander has other attributes that make it innovative and good for us, though, such as its AWD system which uses dual electric motors, negating the need for a longitudinal shaft and differential etc.
My ideal vehicle would be a Volt made by Toyota. I have several mechanic friends and all have warned me against buying any GM vehicle, especially one with as complex a drive system as a Volt.
The drivetrain in the Volt is exceedingly reliable. Like, 0 problems for most people. There's almost no maintenance required.
Other things in the car are the issue. Stupid things like the infamous "shift to park" issue (crappy $2 switch in the shifter mechanism so it doesn't recognize that you're in park even when you're mechanically in park and complains when you turn it off). Or just generally typically mediocre Chevy interior, etc.
Still love driving mine, I'd have a hard time giving it up. It somehow feels very sporty. I find Toyota's very boring to drive.
My impression is that GM had trouble making the Voltec drive train work in larger cars. The Volt is a low-slung, very aerodynamic car. As soon as you turn that into a crossover (as they were rumored to be doing) or a small SUV, both range and gas mileage are going to suffer.
It's too bad. We have a Volt and I would have loved the same drivetrain in a car with more ground clearance and a bit more cargo space.
To be fair Toyota announced their new lineup of BEVs just last month, to be released next year. Toyota is late to the party, but they are on their way.
That’s what’s so frustrating! They had the technology and the scale to go nearly all-in on battery electric about 2 decades ago (maybe with gas backup in the early days) but they squandered it.
Toyota bet on Electric and Hydrogen, then proceeded to double-down on hydrogen. Then never really went all-in on electric and this sadly lost them their early lead.
> Their only one, the Prius Prime, is more expensive than its competitors and offers less than half their range. What's the point of getting a PHEV if I still spend half my commute running on gasoline?
The Prime has a 25 mile battery range, which is well over the average driven commute distance in the US (its about the average daily driven distance for drivers.)
It’s about half of what you’d need to comfortably go without gas the vast, vast majority of time. The Chevy Volt has about the right plug in electric range (50 miles) for a future where we have to basically synthesize all fuels.
This year they introduced the RAV4 prime, with 48 miles electric.
The Prius prime is still in it's initial design iteration. Major updates occur typically every 7 years for auto manufacturers, so one would expect a new, improved range Prius prime somewhere in the 2023 range.
RAV4 prime is woefully underproduced. Wait times of 2 years, and it'll be almost impossible to get in areas outside of coastal US. Sounds like they haven't nailed down the battery supply chain for it.
But can that 48 miles be exclusively electric or does it fall back to turning on the ICE every time you punch the accelerator? This is my grief of every PHEV I've tried other than the Volt; they cannot be driven as a true EV even when the battery is full because they use the ICE for performance boost, etc. The Volt runs better without the ICE.
I have the Prius prime, it gets a little over 25 mi EV-only and the only time it needs to burn gasoline is if you turn on the windshield defroster because the heat pump can only do so much I guess.
But the performance feels much sportier in EV mode and it has no trouble pulling up to 80mph without any ICE
I live in a small town so the only time I drive more than 25 mi in a day is when I'm driving 200+ miles, and then I'm glad it takes gasoline. But yes, 50 mi would be better, but they already took the spare tire out to make room for battery as is (out of curiosity I googled it and wow, Tesla's don't have a spare either. That's probably my least favorite thing, I had to get towed my first week in the car because of the wimpy high-efficiency tires.)
Yes it is, very much so. You need to know your needs well to maximize your purchase, but for us it was cheaper than a Leaf to buy and it works exquisitely. I only hoped Toyota had never bet on Hydrogen for everyone, and ended up with zero-emissions in the hands of no one.
The rav4 Prime is sufficient at nearly 50 miles of electric range, but it sucks that it took 2 decades to get there when even GM had the technology basically perfected a decade ago with the Volt.
It’s literally better than their hydrogen vehicles. Even if you had to synthesize the small amount of gasoline they might use.
Longer range plug in hybrids plus electrically synthesized liquids beat pure hydrogen vehicles in cost, refueling ease, and overall emissions.
> GM had the technology basically perfected a decade ago with the Volt.
The Volt is tiny car with limited utility. The RAV4 EV has vastly more cargo and passenger space.
For a single person going from point A to point B it might not matter, but the technical challenge of battery range plus utility isn't the same as battery range disregarding utility.
I have a Volt and it's awesome. It's a hatchback with lots of cargo space (5 seats in the Gen 2 Volt, too). Don't know that you mean about "limited utility." The Volt powertrain would've worked fine in a crossover vehicle like the Rav4 with only a small scale-up.
> I have a Volt and it's awesome. It's a hatchback with lots of cargo space
It has 10.6 ft³ of cargo space. A Yaris (a subcompact) hatchback has 15.4 ft³, Prius Prime has 19.8 ft³, Honda Civic Hatchback has 24.5 ft³, RAV4 Prime has 33.6 ft³ (for models with folding seats, those are all without seats folded.) The Volt doesn't have “lots” of cargo space, it has miserably small cargo space whether compared against other compact cars or other PHEVs.
Depends on where they're located. Outside America, subcompact cars are still the norm unless you need the utility of something large for your immediate family/job. Only got 2 kids? Subcompact.
> Outside America, subcompact cars are still the norm unless you need the utility of something large for your immediate family/job.
Yes, and by that standard the Volt is a big car (not a subcompact), but still has small cargo space for a hatchback (2/3 of a Yaris, which is a subcompact.)
By American standards, its a fairly small car that has very small cargo space relative to its size, and so tiny cargo space compared to what the market expects. And also small compared to competing PHEVs, which to be fair generally also have small cargo space relative to size.
It may be good but no one (in America) wants 48 miles. People complain about the range on current EV’s during winter. A nice round number like 100 has a much better chance of appealing to consumers.
Right but the advantage of a PHEV is that it can switch to using its ICE. With a full tank you should have a range of 1000km+.
Theoretically (if it works well) it’s an EV for short trips combined with an ICE for longer trips in a single car. That should overcome the range and charge time objections to BEVs.
More expensive and substantially less specs on paper is pretty par for the course for Toyota. But motorcycles only really work when the weather is good and people buy those too. People rationalize these purchases in other ways.
3 major problems none of the EV evangelists are addressing about with EVs are
1. What happens to all the giant lithium batteries on these vehicles after they reach end of life?
2. How will people be able to evacuate a city or state in an emergency situation when charging/electric supply is not present (which is always likely to happen)?
3. Coal burning infrastructure is still inextricably involved in generating the power to charge these vehicles, that must be considered in terms of overall value of EVs in reducing environmental impacts of fossil fuel elimination.
We need to realize that the motivation to deploy EVs too early is driven by profit rather than by motives in environmental protection and conservation of resources, then the really productive conversations can occur.
3) 36% of global grid power comes from coal down from 41% in 2013. It’s expected to hit 22% by 2040.
Secondly coal isn’t nearly as bad as you might thing relative to gasoline. Simply producing gasoline releases significant CO2. Refineries alone release approximately 2.5 lb of CO2 for each gallon of gas, add in exploration, extraction, and transportation means gasoline is doing a lot of damage before reaching your car. Next gasoline > car engines > transmissions is vastly less efficient than EV’s coal > power plants > electric grid > batteries > EV transmission.
Net result while some of the energy comes from hydrogen in gasoline it’s still actually worse for the environment than coal, much worse than natural gas, and vastly worse than everything else.
there are published papers stating exactly this; one of the first google hits i've got states 54% in a realistic comparison. if they're 2x off the mark it's still a worst-case break even.
> 3 major problems none of the EV evangelists are addressing about with EVs are
This is straight up false. These same points are addressed again and again and again and again by EV supporters but I guess (if I took your claim seriously) no one actually pays attention? (See the sibling comments for folks responding to them.)
I mean, you might still disagree with what they have to say, but you CANNOT claim they don’t address those extremely common points. Is it okay to just repeat a lie like that for rhetorical purposes?
For #2, I'm not so sure the situation is strictly worse than with gas. I lived in NYC during Hurricane Sandy, and it took many days for gasoline to become available (a few weeks, IIRC). Electricity was plentiful, though.
>2. How will people be able to evacuate a city or state in an emergency situation when charging/electric supply is not present (which is always likely to happen)?
I never understood this scenario. Any situation where there is no electricity supply also means you wouldn't be able to pump gas. You do realize gas stations run on electricity right?
> Any situation where there is no electricity supply also means you wouldn't be able to pump gas. You do realize gas stations run on electricity right?
If you are concerned about emergency readiness, keeping a reserve fuel level in a typical gas (incl. hybrid) cars tank that provides more range than even the overly generous EPA-listed range of any pure electric short of a Tesla Model S Long Range Plus is eminently practical. So, if there is a recharging/fueling outage and need to evacuate, gas wins.
Good point! You could carry the gas generator with you when you leave. Maybe some EVs would let you plug in while driving! You'd just have to redirect the generator exhaust out the back via some sort tail-pipe...
Yep, I'm sure you can jerry-rig something. Afterwards, when the emergency has passed and you are back to your boring life, you can then put the generator back in the garage instead of bringing it everywhere you go.
And for 3, it's not all or nothing - it can happen incrementally. I fully charge my Tesla using the panels on my roof, no hydrocarbons were ever involved.
More answers to add to the others already given...
2. Mass evacuations by car are inherently inefficient, we should use public transport.
2. or... petrol supply requires transportation whereas electrical supply does not, the former does not seem inherently better than the latter.
2. or... it's as impractical for everyone to fill up their cars in an emergency as it is for everyone to charge their cars.
Honestly, I don't think petrol is any better here – we've just got more cases of this mostly working with petrol cars, and no examples either way yet for electric cars.
3. Oil refinement for an amount of petrol takes roughly as much energy as an electric car takes to go that distance, so we aren't just shifting oil -> electricity, we're actually doing (oil + electricity) -> electricity. This gives us an immediate and significant win on overall fossil fuel emissions even if electricity is entirely generated with fossil fuels.
3. Coal burning infrastructure is not in any way inextricably linked to the power to charge electric vehicles. Coal burning happens to be how much of the US/China gets its electricity for powering electric cars but the fact that solar power can be fed into the grid with no changes to anything else shows that the "inextricably" is false.
3. Coal burning happens to be used in some countries but in others, green energy production is far more available and there electric cars are much better for the environment.
> We need to realize that the motivation to deploy EVs too early is driven by profit rather than by motives in environmental protection and conservation of resources, then the really productive conversations can occur.
Companies are driven by profit, yes, however there are vast, immediate, benefits to the use of electric cars, as well as significant future benefits that can be realised as we transition off fossil fuels. Saying that EVs cannot be motivated by environmental benefits is disingenuous.
EVs get cleaner as the grid does, there is no need to wait. EVs are already at least on par with the cleanest ICE cars on every mix of energy generation in the US and only getting better as coal plants shut down and the grid shifts to renewable. Waiting is letting perfect be the enemy of good. No one is suggesting switching to EVs is a solution to climate change. Cleaning up the grid and electrifying everything is a solution, of which EVs are a part.
Used EV batteries command a serious premium for all sorts of re-use. Recycling of the raw materials will be economically valuable once batteries are no longer useful for even stationary grid storage
As others have pointed out, when the power is off gas pumps don't work either. If you're concerned about evac practice good charging hygiene the same way you would store potable water and food. Plug in each day and the battery will always have tons of range.
> Coal burning infrastructure is still inextricably involved in generating the power to charge these vehicles
only in countries which haven't yet decarbonised (decarboned?) their energy infrastructure. In france for example, 90% of electricity is non carbon, and that rises to 100% for several smaller countries
This assumes power grid won’t keep getting greener or more efficient. Unless we go zero carbon we are just delaying the inevitable and sometimes easy short term carbon reduction actually hampers our efforts to zero emissions.
I wonder if these arguments take into account decreased battery life with a smaller battery in a plug in hybrid. From what I know about li-ion, the larger battery should expect many more charge cycles before degradation than the smaller one, given the same power draw.
There would have to be some kind of argument that the bigger battery leaves capacity on the table during its life somehow, which would mean the battery is still expected to be useful when the car is retired?
It really depends on the battery technology. Lithium-Titanate batteries are starting to be used in hybrid vehicle powertrains.
It is much lower energy density than typical BEV batteries. It is also rated at 20x the cycles and can be charged and discharged very quickly with minimal issues.
The technology has come a long way from the NiMH cells that die after a decade.
My laymen understanding is that all EV batteries are composed of lots of smaller cells. So a larger Tesla battery is simply more cells, not larger ones. That would put EV's and hybrids on the same level.
Generally speaking, yes, a larger battery with the same technology is more cells, not larger cells. But the larger battery will use less of each cell's capacity for a given distance driven. So it will cycle each battery less, comparatively.
> I wonder if these arguments take into account decreased battery life with a smaller battery in a plug in hybrid.
I would think that it would be primarily a function of how much of the battery is treated as a 'reserve'. If you have 10-20% set aside that is not "useable", regardless of total capacity, then you could get similar cycles.
There's also the possibility for using super-caps taking some of the brunt for high discharge (2-4s) events which could help with longevity. How expensive are they for these type of use case?
The latest ICCT report shows that in the european market fossil car are around 250gCO2eq/km in life cycle analysis, hybrid at 180 and EV at 80, so it seems quite wrong.
This is the key point. Modern highly efficient turbocharged 4 cylinder ICE vehicles can be equally or more efficient than a hybrid in the right circumstances as well. But the vast majority of driving is city streets <45mph, where ICE can't even come close to BEV.
Well in the case of urban areas, outside of some select locations, the charging infra is just not there for BEVs. Even if there were good EV infra in urban areas, a compelling case could be made for improving and upgrading public transportation instead which is going to be more efficient than any personal vehicle - including BEVs.
A sidenote but unless public transport vehicles are electric, they won’t be better than battery electric vehicles. Typical diesel buses with typical occupancy rates have worse emissions per passenger mile then, say, a model three with a typical occupancy rate and grid emissions factor in US.
BEVs are fantastic, have SOME level of infrastructure literally everywhere with electricity (you literally can charge from a 120V outlet just fine), and we’ll need basically all vehicles to be battery electric to get to where we need to be.
It also is trivial to add EV charging infrastructure, which is another under appreciated aspect. It’s easier than installing a streetlight.
Personal vehicles also have a much larger carbon footprint in general (from manufacturing, maintenance, etc) aside from just emissions during operation of the vehicle.
Operations dominate the total carbon footprint of a gasoline fueled private vehicle. (And public transport buses as well.) so the comparison still is valid. To compete, buses need to also be electric (which is, to be fair!, super easy… electrifying all city buses is incredibly easy compared to electrifying all personal vehicles.)
There's been quite a few studies questioning the current focus on EVs with ranges of 400km and more. Largely because they are so heavy and are therefore not very energy efficient. The argument is that most peoples daily commute is less than 50km (in Europe), but they still by an overly heavy EV for the 5-10 times a year they go on longer trips. Instead a plugin hybrid could be much more efficient, because you can use it in EV mode for your commutes, but you can still use the car for long trips, without the significant weight (and corresponding inefficiency) increases of an EV. I suspect this is very much a function of the driving pattern, and I suspect in the mid-term future this will change with more efficient battery technology.
The current focus on long ranges is largely because Tesla is leading the charge in electric vehicles and Tesla is an American automaker. Commutes are often longer and conditions vary widely across the country and from season to season making predicting the true range difficult.
Plug-in hybrids may make sense, but I would imagine that including both a full power ICE and electric motor together and having them work together makes a more complex vehicle with more potential points of faliure. You also have the added weight of the duplicate components. The Chevy Volt, for example, weighs more than a base Model 3 and only slightly less than the long range configuration of the Model 3.
But... are we pretending here that the ICE and gas & all the plumbing etc don't weigh anything? It's not like PHEV have zero additional dead weight.
A quick search says "Car engines can weigh up to 1,000 pounds" and "Tesla S has a massive battery weighing 1,200 lbs" - so, are your really saving that much weight with PHEVs?
You can size the PHEV range extender engine to be much closer to the steady state power requirement, and tune it towards such as well. The BMW i3 uses a literal scooter engine for the range extension.
It can do more than that, especially if you've got the Euro-spec Hold State of Charge coded to be enabled. With HSOC, you just drive as normal and the scooter engine tries to keep the battery at the charge level you turned it on at. You only really notice that the car is noisier.
Car engines can weigh up to 1000 pounds, but the standard weight is much lower. the VW group 1.4 turbo (probably one of the most common engines around) comes in at 230lb
If we're questioning "focus on range of 400km or more" then we're already looking at the high-end EVs. Sure there are ligther engines around, but so are lighter batteries, no? Heavy powerful ICEs sell because they're desirable, not because they're the most practical. Long-range EVs sell because they're desirable, not because they're the best match for the average person. I have no doubt that as soon as reasonable city infrastructure exists for EV charging, there'll be a lot of BEVs with small batteries for driving around the city.
That's my point exactly, the buy the EV to be dimensioned for the occasional weekend trip, but could often be much better of with a car with EV dimensioned for the daily commute and use ICE for the couple of long trips. This would likely be more cost efficient and ecological.
Don't get me wrong I like EVs, but the current crop's design is not such a straight forward winner in terms of ecological footprint over PHEV as many EV fanboys believe.
I feel like at least some of this depends on whether the ICE in a hybrid is coupled directly to the wheels or not. I believe in all current consumer vehicles it is, but there are other applications like hybrid trains and city buses where the engine is just running a generator at a constant RPM. Surely that kind of configuration would be the absolute best case scenario for ICE efficiency, and probably even for overall system efficiency (with battery loses accounted for) depending on the ratio of city to highway driving.
In a Chevy Volt, there’s a mechanism that mechanically attaches the motor to the wheels at speed above 35 mph for greater efficiency but below that it is a pure serial hybrid, disconnected from the wheel directly. But it rarely ever runs the engine. Pretty much only if you run out of charge.
The Chevy Volt actually uses a continuously variable transmission for that. Makes it sound really weird as there’s not a direct correlation between the sound of the motor and the speed you’re driving.
It seems that most driving in city streets by individuals is largely unnecessary: items can be delivered (by EV) instead of picked up and commuting can largely be electronic. Long term, it seems that the most important use case for the personal vehicle could end up being long distance travel.
Personal cars act as like a personal room on wheels. Peopl store stuff there and use it as a place to retreat to at work. “Personal vehicle as private space” is a super normie idea, but it’s weird how little play it gets in these conversations. It’s NOT replaced by rideshare or public transit.
Why are we giving them the benefit of the doubt? Toyota has been consistently and EV. They consistently lie about emissions of their hybrids. Their marketing is always spreading FUD about EVs.
Worst of all Toyota has been the leader against all kinds of environment laws all over the world.
Not to exactly counter your point, but Toyota has been doing shady things for a while so I’m not sure if they can be given the benefit of doubt.
The things include - going against those new California emissions standards when Trump rolled back emission limits, donating heavily to the politicians who wanted to overthrow the 2020 US elections, and having deals with Panasonic to block easy public access to batteries (better discussion here - https://reddit.com/r/technology/comments/oskyfm/_/h6p62gq/?c...)
There's a long pattern of behavior with Toyota lobbying and arguing against battery EVs and basically spreading FUD about the whole concept. Their marketing for "self charging hybrids" is something they were peddling recently. Sounds awesome until you realize that they did not invent a perpetuum mobile and that instead this means "we burn petrol/diesel to run the engine to charge the battery". That's right, Toyota still makes hybrids that you can't plugin. The 20 year old Prius is a nice example of this "future". Every single mile these things drive are powered by a combustion engine. They have some proper plugin hybrids as well obviously but the marketing here is just awesomely cynical and obviously aimed at drivers who are a bit on the fence about wanting to buy a BEV.
They have a single compliance BEV that they are shipping in China only. It's a hard requirement to be active in that market. They make them in comparatively low volume of just slightly over 10K cars, which is of course next to nothing in the Chinese market. Also, that's only slightly less than the total number of hydrogen cars they have ever produced. Which of course they still insist is the future. Except they don't seem to be in any particular hurry building that future. A cynical person might say that they actually don't believe in that enough to put their money where their mouth is. Though they certainly seem to waste no opportunity to invest in marketing to convince people otherwise.
They are not actually arguing against BEVs because they believe BEVs are impossible. Obviously they are and essentially all their competitors are proving that by shipping electric buses, trucks, vans, cars, sports cars, etc. in increasingly large volumes. Toyota is merely trying to stem the loss of market share for ICE and hybrid vehicles here while they come up with an alternative. They do that by bad mouthing the whole concept of BEVs, by using misleading marketing like self charging hybrids, arguing that instead we should look at hydrogen, and generally just lobbying and arguing that BEVs are a bad thing.
However, at this point it looks more like they are dragging their feet simply because they are late with getting battery supply secured. They couldn't ship anything worth shipping in volumes that matter even if they wanted to and had the factories, designs, etc. ready to go. You need batteries for that and battery producers are fully booked building batteries for their competitors at this point.
To fix that they might prefer addressing this with their own solid state batteries. Which is something they've been investing in quite a lot. The only problem: they're not ready yet. However, they are apparently quite close to announcing a proper EV this year which might actually be using this. It will be interesting to see how quick they can go from a concept car to volume production. It will take a lot of investment and time probably.
So, one cynical interpretation is that they are just trying to buy some time until they are actually ready to start competing on their own terms. Which clearly they just aren't right now. They have no hydrogen car worth talking about (beyond the few concept cars they shipped). No infrastructure to fuel it. And the one EV they ship in China is clearly nothing more than a compliance car. So self charging hybrids it is for now. If they deliver a BEV with solid state batteries and awesome range (both of which might happen soon), my guess is hydrogen stops being the future at Toyota and self charging hybrids will be phased out as well. But even then, it might be years before they catch up.
Specific facts don't really matter in this case. What matters is that Toyota is engaging in behavior (lobbying against EV adoption mandates) that its prime customer demographics (in the West at least) consider icky.
Because of how media works these days writing about that is worth money. There's a lot of rage clicks and eyeball hours to be gleaned by pointing out to these people that yes, Toyota, a brand you people have been putting on a pedestal for a decade will sociopathically act in its own interest including influencing legislators, just like every other bigCo.
The government is interested in welfare of itself, the state and its resources. If vehicular emissions cause a lot of CO2 emissions and hence climate change, the government will want to protect itself, it’s resources and its people. As for making rules or laws - that’s how the government implements such goals or objectives. (This is a slightly broad answer.)
The Japanese car companies have done pretty poorly in the 2010's in supporting the energy transition. Toyota has been extremely slow to adapt after the Prius, which makes sense because of their ridiculously large volume of sales of basic, gas-efficient passenger vehicles.
I give Toyota big props for the Prius, which was the original Green Vehicle 15-20 years ago, and still is a HUGE player in the efficiency space. IIRC, The number one vehicle trade-in for TSLA has been Priuses. Was there even a car before the Prius that used regenerative braking? In many ways, Prius "primed" the market for greener vehicles.
And yet, Toyota had no great BEV follow-up. In a high-tech educated country like Japan, an island nation with extremely large amounts of coastline, I'd assume Toyota and Honda would wise up to climate change earlier.
Toyota in particular has been quite dirty and backwards facing. They strongly opposed the tightening of vehicle emissions standards in the USA as one of three companies (fiat-Chrysler and GM being the others). They are constantly lobbying against EV tech, whilst pushing hydrogen as a technology which is no viable alternative in the medium or near term future (this can be seen as a big oil ploy as hydrogen is and will be made using “natural gas” / methane). Plug-in electric only became a thing with Toyota very recently, despite them having had hybrids for decades.
All quite a sorry state for one of the largest car companies out there.
At this point, they’re doing more harm then good and I’d call them a dirty company and would avoid buying any of their products. They are wasting all their good will that they gained due to them pushing hybrids.
I know Americans like to hate Nissan but outside the US the Leaf was a pretty reasonable first stab at an electric car, before Tesla and is into its second rev now. It’s by no means the best one but given they were early to the market it’s a little unfair to blame all Japanese car makers.
Carlos Ghosn is an interesting character, and maybe not the best person, but some of the things he said to Nissan's board at the time about EVs were prophetic. He did give Nissan a leg up versus other Japanese brands. It is interesting to wonder if his original plan for Nissan America might have been the best call and Americans would have a very different view of Nissan had it happened. (Nissan America makes entirely different cars from every other division of the company. Ghosn's plan at one point was to rebrand the gas guzzler-focused Nissan America as [back to] Datsun, reintroduce Nissan in America as an EV brand and plan to eventually jettison New Datsun as soon as its profits dropped below a threshold that the board would allow it.)
It's unfair to blame all Japanese car makers, but it is definitely fair to blame all American brands of Japanese car makers (as the weird, highly profitable step-children that they are).
I wasn’t aware of the US specific aspect to Nissan, here in the UK the Qashqai flies off the production line as is pretty much single handedly keeping the North East economy alive with the Sunderland plant kicking out 500,000 cars a year
Agreed that the Nissan Leaf was not a bad introduction to EVs. It sucks that they took so long to get to 200-250 mile EPA range, though, which really ought to be the minimum (along with 100kW DC charging) for a pure electric vehicle. But at least they were doing something.
Sadly it did take them a long time to get up to the higher ranges. I think they wanted to wait for the new rev to come out on the typical 7 year cycle and out their efforts into that model rather than extensively improve the (ugly) first version.
They've got some weird obsession with hydrogen.. even recently I've seen a lot of online advertising for their hydrogen vehicle the Mirai which is wildly impractical in the US and probably anywhere else.
It’s partly bc it would be much easier for Japan to become fully independent w/ hydrogen whereas with batteries they would be reliant on other countries to produce them. So the Japanese government prefers hydrogen.
The Mirai is 196 inches long (same as a Model S or BMW 5 series) yet has less than 10 cu ft of trunk space. The volume required to fit all the hydrogen fuel cell components is massive. It's not especially practical as a result. Even if there was a refueling network, it's not like you're going to take it camping or road trip with such a small trunk, and for an around town grocery runner it's on the large side.
It's not like there's a good source of hydrogen that doesn't come from electricity generation anyway. It's "just" a different take on the battery, one that appears to be mostly worse other than charge times.
> I give Toyota big props for the Prius, which was the original Green Vehicle 15-20 years ago, and still is a HUGE player in the efficiency space. IIRC, The number one vehicle trade-in for TSLA has been Priuses. Was there even a car before the Prius that used regenerative braking? In many ways, Prius "primed" the market for greener vehicles.
> And yet, Toyota had no great BEV follow-up
Prius sales trends since debut in 1997 reflect this sentiment in that they were first, executed well, and thus had most of the market. Current Prius sales are dropping off very steadily by year, though.
But to your point on the trade ins, current Tesla Model 3 sales are getting close to Prius' best all time sales of +200K units/year.
Automotive writers in Japan has been heavily biased to Japanese car industry (but also like driving German cars despite there is no Autobahn). Now they write how BEV isn't quite good as Tesla says, and next EU decarbonization regulation is a bit conspiracy to make Japanese cars hard to sell.
Those arguments are true in some part but meaningless or misinformation in some part. I agree that LCA CO2 regulation is win for EU/China and lose for Japan car industry, and now EU car manufacturer become able to make BEV in clean energy so EU pushes the regulation, but decarbonization is now obviously justice so blaming it is nonsense. We're stuck in small land/grid and against nuclear for now.
They also hype about hydrogen cars. Hydrogen seems to good to investigate for truck or other industry vehicle, or dedicated storage, but they overly hype about car with fuel cell or even ICE burning hydrogen. Maybe because who read such article loves ICE.
I think Toyota and Honda did well for decarbonization until the solution become making BEV that needs massive amount of Li-ion (material and power intensive battery).
H2 does not, and cannot offer the end-to-end efficiency of battery electric vehicles. The distribution infrastructure for H2 is inherently less efficient than electricity distribution alone, making BEVs 3x more efficient:
The primary advantage is faster refueling. The price is no in-home refueling -- a big win for BEVs, as most trips will not require refueling on the road. There are also real safety concerns about storing and transporting H2 at very high pressure.
Tesla invested a significant amount of money into building out a charging network for their cars. Toyota has been selling fuel cell vehicles for longer than Tesla has been in existence and they've made no such effort to create a network of hydrogen fueling stations. Even now with the threat of battery electric vehicles becoming the next platform for personal transportation Toyota continues to sit on it's hands when it comes to supporting it's own technology. Even their lobbying efforts aren't around trying to push hydrogen, it's around protecting their hybrid and gasoline vehicle business. Their actual efforts around hydrogen vehicles tells you everything you need to know: it's not viable and they know it. Toyota could be selling as many Mirais as Tesla sells vehicles, the demand is clearly there and people would pay a hefty price to get them like they do for Teslas. So why don't they?
Complete nonsense. Most Hydrogen is produced with natural gas. And the conversion makes and end to end efficiency makes it actually far worse both economically and environmentally.
Maybe in some imaginary future that will not actually happen it is as green.
> refuels 10x faster than any battery based car
Waste overestimation and in reality even if that was true, you are gone spend 100x more times refueling then in an EV. Because EV you simply charge at home and 99% you not gone use any fuel-station.
And Hydrogen charging station still have many problems if you actually attempted to have a high volume of cars using them.
> They chose wrong maybe, but they chose, and chose a path they though most viable.
The path that would give them the most government subsidies and allow them to delay EVs as long as possible.
> To claim they aren't in the game is beyond unfair.
What is your source that Hyundai is all in on hydrogen? Hyundai has Kona, and at least according to this press release intends to be the top 3 EV manufacturer by 2025:
Production of batteries is the constraint ... previously, currently, and in foreseeable future (<5-8 years). Simply don't have the capacity to make 100% EVs.
Further, given this capacity, the numbers work out such that we are, on the macro level, DRASTICALLY more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly by putting more hybrids and Plug-in Hybrids (which have fewer batteries) on the road than we are by reserving said batteries for fewer pure EVs.
2.5 Priuses are better than 1 EV.
When battery technology and production capacity are NOT the constraint, then pure EV will make sense.
All cars should be mandated hybrid soon (or all manufactures must meet a minimum hybridization level across their line ... sort of like fuel efficiency standards are measured today). All cars should be mandated Plugin Hybrid at some point after that. Maybe someday, we can mandate Pure EV.
In general I agree with you. Simply taxing things with negative externalities enough to cover the true cost would simply and conclusively fix a lot of things we struggle with, faster and without relying on politicians.
I think it's politically very unpopular, but the economic theory behind it is extremely sound.
If you priced everything according to the negative externalities they cause, you would have poor people unable to afford $10/gal milk and probably pay more than the dairy farmer subsidy in healthcare costs related to poor nutrition for this entire class of people. I think nuance is needed, but the danger is that this nuance is where industries see opportunities for regulatory capture. Sometimes I think the American political system is too brittle with too much of a focus on who has the most money in the room to perform needed change. Everything in recent decades seems to be a half measure that comes too little too late.
I think the problem of poor people not being able to afford adequate nutrition has to be tackled separately. You're right that there will be all kinds of unintended effects. You're also right (in my opinion) that the US political system seems incapable of solving those kinds of hard problems anyway.
Yuup. 80% of democrats (and a majority of Americans) support Medicare for All but the DNC rejected it from their 2020 platform. Sadly, lobbyists are running our party system to a much greater extent than the citizenry.
communism is a good idea, but it's unpopular, for a reason i say.
The reason for the idea of taxing externalities being unpopular isn't really proven yet - after all, it hasn't been instated, but just spoken about, and the silent majority don't have an opinion!
Communism is unpopular because it says people on average are unimportant and the "greater good" is more important. Most people aren't going to glom onto that when they realize that's the real result as easily demonstrated in any number of failed communist countries, even China gave it up and moved to a more totalitarian one party system that allows some free market ideas in. apparently they're even moving to a dictatorship steadily rather than communism.
> So whether communism is a good idea or not remains to be seen.
You are being too charitable. There is no shortage of data on communism after the last century. The results are so unequivocally bad across the board, you have to be ignorant of history or just ignorant in general to still think it's a good idea. As soon as someone tells me communism is a good thing, I realize I'm taking to someone who is not very intelligent and look for a way out of the conversation.
Edit: You can downvote, but you can't change history. There are levels of being wrong, but thinking communism is a good idea is just an extremely wrong opinion completely contradicted by history in over 40 countries (I counted) over a period of 100 years - with not a single example in favor.
On top of that, the evils perpetuated by communist countries upon their own citizens were not surpassed by any regime of the 20th century, not even the genocidal ones like Rwanda, or Nazi Germany. And yet some clueless class of people, largely located in academic institutions still somehow thinks it's a good idea. They are not only wrong, they are so wrong as to be stupid, and while I don't condone ad-hominen attacks generally, I feel it fits accurately here.
Nazi Germany and Rwanda weren't communist. What are you saying? It would help to have a grounding on what communism is before repeating tired talking points.
>with not a single example in favor.
Soviet Russia went from a couple of potato farmers to a global super power in the span of 30 years under communism before transitioning to totalitarian dictatorship. Likewise there was nothing inherent to communism and more the lack of a strong republic.
> Nazi Germany and Rwanda weren't communist. What are you saying?
I didn't say they were. Go back and read it again.
> Soviet Russia went from a couple of potato farmers to a global super power in the span of 30 years under communism before transitioning to totalitarian dictatorship.
No, it already was a totalitarian government from the start. Also Soviet Russia is an excellent example of the failures of communism, citing it in support is not helping your argument.
I down-voted your comment because of your superiority complex, the terms like communism are too generic and the reality is that most communist countries were "kicked" in the balls by the capitalist.
I seen a comment by a "intelligent dude" like you, in his intelligence he compared North and South Korea, ignored that sanctions for the North and the tons of money US dropped on south and he got the conclusion he wanted.
The truth is that there is not enough good data, I would like to see some examples of countries that were not under sanctions or under a cold war or had some insane dictator leading them.
There is plenty of good data. 40 counties make up around 20 independent failures out of as many attempts at implementing communism.
> I seen a comment by a "intelligent dude" like you, in his intelligence he compared North and South Korea, ignored that sanctions for the North and the tons of money US dropped on south and he got the conclusion he wanted.
Don't even get me started on the story of the two Koreas. Everything you need to build an open and shut case against communism can be found in the recent and well recorded history of those two countries.
You can object to my "superiority complex" but at the end of the day I'm still right and your still wrong. This is not one of those things where reasonable people can have differing opinions.
If you can explain how comparing North and South Korea is fair I would be impressed , previous dudes seemed to have no idea about history or their mind was missing the logic skill, maybe you can do a semi decent attempt.
Btw China is a big economy and many of HNers tell me that their are communists and the party dictates everything etc, so you need some other skillful argument to attribute all the good in China to US and capitalism and of-course blame all the bad on communism.
Also I personally believe that most of us understand by communism is not superior to the systems we see in Western Europe, my objection was to your bad argument that there are good clean data where you can extract clear conclusions.
> previous dudes seemed to have no idea about history or their mind was missing the logic skill
I'm getting less and less sure you're qualified to judge that as we go.
> Btw China is a big economy and many of HNers tell me that their are communists and the party dictates everything etc, so you need some other skillful argument to attribute all the good in China to US and capitalism and of-course blame all the bad on communism.
They're economically very capitalist with stock markets, free enterprise, billionaires etc. Having a totalitarian government has not been all bad for them, which is not an endorsement of such a system. However, communism very clearly failed for China, and the story did not change until they abandoned it - at which point that had a success story every bit as impressive as that of South Korea.
> Also I personally believe that most of us understand by communism is not superior to the systems we see in Western Europe, my objection was to your bad argument that there are good clean data where you can extract clear conclusions.
How much more data do you need to see before you can have a clear conclusion? You've got literally 40 case studies, roughly 20 of them independent "experiments", and 100% failure rate. Seriously, it's case closed already. This is not something reasonable people can disagree on. It's the economic equivalent of trying to argue the Earth is flat.
you want to prove that green color is better then red, so you put a rat in a green box, a rat in a red box, then you starve the rat in the red box and give a ton of food to the green rat.
Then like a "genius self claimed scientist" you claim to prove that this is a valid experiment that proves that green is better then red.
Really. Why don't you go through all 40 counties one by one and explain why it's a flawed experiment that proves nothing?
You've made up your mind without looking at the evidence, as you've already demonstrated your ignorance of history, and somehow think that qualifies you to reject all of it - without having even considered it. You've proved my point rather nicely I think.
I done it already for Korea , N Korea suffers from external interventions like sanctions, S Korea received a lot of money from US. So it is not a clean experiment.
Would be more simple if you find the perfect example from those 40 and let's talk that one.
Mostly because it makes the poors even more poor and when you live in a democracy that's a hard feat to overcome because they're going to vote for candidates who promise to make them not more poor.
> heavily taxing carbon emissions and having the market find the best solution?
Public perception may be one reason. If a carbon emissions tax directly leads to big increases in fuel costs, it can cause problems for drivers / vehicle users for whom fuel cost is a significant concern. The 2018 Gilet Jaune protests [0] in France were partly due to public dissatisfaction with fuel price rises. Regulatory instruments (such as fuel efficiency standards) are more opaque and may obfuscate the connection between between political decisions and the inevitable price rises.
If societies answer to climate change is "Don't punish/impact poor people who negatively effect the environment" Then we might as well just pack our bags for Mars now.
Over the next 100-200 years, every (poor) 3rd world country is going to continue to get more and more industrialized and impact the environment more and more. Maybe I'm 100% off here but i'd be surprised if we (rich countries) can lower our emissions enough to offset the increases elsewhere in the world. And limiting the increases of "their" impact will directly effect "their" quality of life improvements unless "we" step in and aid them with more complex (expensive?) solutions. Likely at the expense of any domestic improvements that could be done without added cost of that aid.
> If societies answer to climate change is "Don't punish/impact poor people who negatively effect the environment" Then we might as well just pack our bags for Mars now.
Dealing with climate change will include costs and sacrifices that affect individuals and societies. Politicians unwilling to deal with these costs, for ideological and / or electability reasons, will not in my opinion be likely to advocate for the measures necessary to address climate change.
(Also, I'm assuming that when the billionaires go to Mars they won't make the mistake that is common in Stephen Baxter's Scifi novels, where the colonisers always seem to include a subpopulation of disaffected criminals / lowlifes / etc who inevitably mutiny.)
There's an easy solution to that though. You redistribute all the money from a carbon tax back to the people, either equally to everyone, or better, based on income.
We already know that wealthy people generate the most carbon. If that activity was taxed and then the money was given to poorer people who can't afford to transition to clean energy, it would still be a net win, because it will reduce emissions while making sure it doesn't unfairly affect the poor.
People like to rip on the US war machine, but as far as percent of GDP, the US isn't even the biggest spender. Also, the entire world benefits from the US army, which helps protect global trade routes. For example the US patrols for pirates off the coast of Africa, protecting ships that are taking goods from one country to another in which the US has no involvement in any of it.
>but as far as percent of GDP, the US isn't even the biggest spender
The great thing about statistics is you can maneuver them to support your conclusion. Here's some that support mine: in real numbers, "The United States spends more on national defense than China, India, Russia, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and Australia — combined."
That sounds nice in theory, but it'll be years until it could pass through actual legislative channels in the US federal government. Neither side wants it, the GOP hates new taxes and loves fossil fuel companies; the Dems hate anything that looks regressive, which a gas tax would at first before the pay-back checks come (if it's a neutral scheme, who's to say how the carbon tax would be used).
This is true in theory, but in practice I think hybrids are the worst of both worlds. I've had two Toyota Priuses and a Honda Civic Hybrid all of which we drove to around 150,000 miles each. One of our Priuses and the Civic Hybrid needed their hybrid batteries replaced during their lifetime. Not only was this a significant cost but I've got to believe that it negates a lot of the environmental benefits of the vehicle. It's not an uncommon problem either, there are plenty of 3rd parties selling refurbished hybrid battery packs, it's a common enough problem that a whole industry has built up around it. In addition both of our Priuses started burning oil at some point over 100,000 miles. This is a notorious problem with the Prius and there are lots of discussions about the problem in online forums. It certainly ruins any illusion I had about clean emissions from the cars over the course of it's life. I never fail to notice the little puff of grey smoke when behind Priuses at stop lights when the engine starts up again, so much for being the clean air poster child.
We have a Tesla Model 3 now with about 50,000 miles on it, we've only seen about a 2-3% decrease in range so far, if even that. The only maintenance so far has been refilling the washer fluid and we've replaced the tires once. I see no reason why it won't easily go to 150,000+ miles. The difference with the hybrids we have had is night and day, it's not even close. Toyota does not have a winning hand to play here and they know it. They bet on the wrong tech and they are tied down by a dealer network that is dependent on maintenance costs to support them.
I think the elephant in the room is always going to be people who can't afford new cars and have to contend with used cars. 25% of cars on the road today are at least 16 years old (1), and the trend is the average car continues to get older. A working class person might buy a car for $2000, then junk it once it has some catastrophic repair bill they can't afford, and buy another $2000 car afterwards that might be slightly newer and cheaper than the repair on the first one. What will a $2000 used EV look like? Will it have a decent range? Will it need an expensive battery replacement? Will it even be competitive with a $2000 gasoline car? These are all open questions, but I think they will have to be answered sooner than later if we are to realistically imagine a future without gas cars. It's just not going to come by everyone in America buying or leasing one new from a dealership, even with the government subsidies in place it only knocks EV prices down to brand new entry level gasoline car price, nowhere close to used car prices.
On the flip side, going all EV puts 2.5x more pressure on the supply chain to remove battery production and capacity as a constraint, which might be optimal long term.
The 2nd Gen Chevy Volt was the Model 3 we deserved, but couldn't appreciate.
40-50 miles EV range meant that most people would have an EV most of the time, and use gas only on one off trips.
And while people 10 years behind on ICE advancements would immediately start yelling about dragging around a dead weight ICE all day, modern ICEs are incredibly light, efficient, and reliable in the type of application the Volt had them in, where they only need to run run at their optimal power band.
It didn't even look bad, and it had the same sensor suite AP1 did (of course GM used Mobileye's sensors as designed, so you weren't tempted to take your hands off to play mobile games, and they didn't end up in the back of firetrucks)
Volt was a great car and 5 years ago it was a great solution. Now that long distance road trip charging is good enough I think the value of a PHEV is greatly diminished. They are an especially poor solution to the largest charging hurdle still remaining of apartment and street parkers since PHEVs must be plugged in nightly for carbon reduction ROI.
The issue isn't so much weight as volume and packaging. Having 2 powertrains really eats a lot of interior space. Pure BEVs can have some impressive packaging with a truly impressive amount of leg room and spaces to shove tons of stuff. My parents love their Volt, but there is no denying it's a very tight squeeze and even with the hatch there is not a lot of space in there not taken up by batteries and engine.
I also agree with this. I bought a Volt in 2011 because it was the best solution for 2011. In 2021, that gas generator that I hardly ever use unless the car tells me I have to because the fuel is getting stale feels like a huge weight and maintenance liability to carry around. The Volt seems a lot less like a great solution for 2021, especially as I've watched the rise in better cross-country charging networks and my friends are starting to buy Teslas after years of me as the early adopter telling them EVs were the present, not just the future. I'm convinced that my next car will be a full BEV and don't see any reason to look at any "hybrid" in today's present. (I'm just not yet sure which one yet, my Volt is doing great as the car I already have, and with the number of models expected to be announced in 2023-2025 am in something of an "I can afford to wait and see what happens next" mood.)
That's actually not true, you significantly underestimate the weight and space requirements of batteries necessary for long range EVs. There was just a comparison by heise.de of the Mercedes Eqa and GlA [1] and in comparison of space they write that the more EV the less space, i.e. ICE>PHEV>EV
That's because the EQA is built on the same platform that GLA uses, which was designed for ICE vehicles.[1] The newer crop of electric vehicles that are built on dedicated platforms designed for EVs end up providing much more space than ICEs, mostly due to the ability to have the battery in a flat skateboard layout that is not possible with an ICE platform.[2]
PHEVs end up making the same compromises by shoving a larger battery into an ICE platform, which is why, for instance, the RAV4 Prime ends up having less cargo space than the regular RAV4 hybrid.
There's no particular reason why PHEVs have to be worse than ICE for cargo space. The new Ford Maverick is designed as a hybrid first, for example. I know they don't have a PHEV version yet, but it's expected to come as one in a future model year.
There isn't a PHEV version of Maverick yet, but I'm sure there will be since the platform is shared with Ford Escape which has a PHEV. Notably, the PHEV Escape loses storage space compared to its hybrid and pure combustion siblings. PHEVs need batteries an order of magnitude bigger in size and capacity compared to regular hybrids and they need to go somewhere.
Using skateboard batteries for PHEV would help mitigate the packaging issues for PHEVs, but then you're still stuck hauling around a combustion engine and all the design compromises that entails like long, tall hoods filled with components.
Skateboard batteries mean deep, expensive changes to platforms, the kind automakers only do every decode or so. With the cost of batteries plummeting and emissions rules like EU7 coming, most companies have chosen to focus their development dollars on pure EVs and cheaply retrofit their PHEVs on to existing ICE platforms.
The mechanics are related with the Escape, but AFAIK, it's an entirely different body. The claim I've seen is that the regular hybrid version doesn't take up all of the battery space available, and that area is designated for the PHEV version when available.
The platform that the RAV4 uses (TNGA-K) was also designed with hybrid in mind, yet the compromises still had to be made for the larger battery that the PHEV version requires. The larger battery has to go somewhere, so I suspect the situation for the Ford Maverick won't be so different if they do come out with a PHEV version.
For extreme range the extra weight starts to cost efficiency and you get diminishing returns, but I think my model 3 sr+ is close to the optimal balance. 50 kWh battery gets me 400 km range and weighs right in line with other compact and midsized sedans at 1600 kg. Charging speed is fast enough that long road trips are not a big deal. There isn't a single ICE car in the same footprint with that much storage space or forward visibility.
Tesla happens to be one of the most efficient EV drivetrains out there, but the hyundai/kia twins are right there with them, so it isn't out of reach.
EQA isn't a dedicated EV platform, so of course packaging isn't optimized to take advantage of the space savings available in a BEV.
>There isn't a single ICE car in the same footprint with that much storage space or forward visibility.
That is demonstrably false. The size of the Tesla is the about same as a Volvo V60. The V60 has >500 l of storage volume compared to the 385l of the Tesla. Similarly the Seat Octavia has also more than 500l storage volume (even in the sedan version). So yes there are plenty of ICE cars of that size which have the same storage space, in fact most ICEs of that size have more storage space.
Also the model 3 according to the ADAC [1] in the standard version has an efficiency of 19.5 kWh/100km and around 300 km range, in comparison the Hyundai Ioniq has 14.7 kWh/100km so the Tesla is not even close. The VW ID3 has 19.3 kWh/100km so very similar to the Tesla, it is quite a bit smaller and it's storage is also smaller at 315l (however much easier to get to). So it does not seem like the Model 3 is one of the most efficient.
> The size of the Tesla is the about same as a Volvo V60
Of course a model 3 doesn't have as much space inside as an estate/wagon. It makes more sense to compare a model y there. I could only find rear seats folded where it's 1920 L for model y and 1440 L for v60 (That might include the Y's frunk as well; the sources are not clear).
The 3/Y also crush the volvo for aerodynamics at 0.29 vs 0.23
In real world driving at 110-120 km/hr I get well under 150 kWh/100 km in my SR+. I wasn't able to find the ADAC testing, but they either did it at 130 km/hr+ or it was quite cold out.
1.5L engines are still pretty sizeable once you take into account the head, valve cover, oilpan. Then all the external parts needed to support combustion like water pump, radiator, coils and their wires and engine mounts. The total volume is a lot more than the 1.5L cylinders. Add in the fact Volt can directly power the wheels with the engine and now you are forced to put certain components in very specific, highly valuable places.
BMW managed to hide their rex engine really well in i3 since it isn't connected to the wheels. That comes with it's own downsides as well, since you can slowly lose battery charge with the engine running while climbing steep hills in a rex i3.
Don't get me wrong, I think volt is one of the best cars ever made and at the time it came out it was the most cost effective way to cut your transportation carbon footprint while retaining a private car.
PHEVs are the best and worst of both worlds at the same time. The worst now outweighs (in this case literally as well as figuratively) the best. The downsides of pure EV are now at a point where they only truly impact edge case needs (apart from cost that needs to come way down, but PHEVs are very expensive too).
> 1.5L engines are still pretty sizeable once you take into account the head, valve cover, oilpan. Then all the external parts needed to support combustion like water pump, radiator, coils and their wires and engine mounts. The total volume is a lot more than the 1.5L cylinders. Add in the fact Volt can directly power the wheels with the engine and now you are forced to put certain components in very specific, highly valuable places.
This entire paragraph is like saying an electric motor needs batteries and those batteries need cooling systems and those cooling systems need pumps and those pumps need power and...
No one claimed the entire drivetrain is 1.5L, but 1.5L gives you an idea of how relatively small the engine is. All the components you listed scale down in turn. Smaller engine running at a better point in its power band needs less cooling, less oil capacity, fewer oil changes, etc.
> The worst now outweighs (in this case literally as well as figuratively) the best.
I don't believe in this view point if we're being realistic about a low emission future.
We have an extensive gas infrastructure just sitting there today, meanwhile we have grids that can barely handle our current demands.
PHEVs are a chance for innovative solutions to that. Imagine power companies being able to direct people to use gas during (what will be increasingly frequent) extreme weather events then switch back.
And consider that PHEVs don't need to be Voltec-style all-in drivetrains. Conventional car designs can be converted to PHEVs like the old 3 series ActiveHybrid was.
And while people immediately recoil at the less than optimal results of not designing from the ground up around batteries and EV requirements, there's no changing the fact that designing new cars is expensive.
Affordable PHEVs based on current designs could open up EVs to more segments of the market than currently possible.
> All the components you listed scale down in turn
But don't go away altogether, which is my point. There is a space cost to be paid in any PHEV that is significant, both in absolute volume terms as well as prime placement. The engine occupies extremely valuable real estate. In a pure EV that's space you can move the cab forward for more legroom or cargo space (or just make the car's overall footprint smaller).
> Affordable PHEVs based on current designs
What affordable PHEVs are there? They still command a price premium over the ICE version. Here in Canada Kia Niro hybrid is $27K, PHEV is 34.5K and BEV is $45K.
PHEVs also vary wildly in carbon reduction based on owner action. If the owner plugs in each day consistently they are great. Unfortunately, in the EU PHEVs have turned into tax shelters and studies have shown most drivers never plug them in, resulting in more emissions than if they had just bought the regular hybrid.
5 years ago PHEVs were a great solution while batteries were very expensive, but their window of value is rapidly closing and will be gone once batteries hit $100/kWh in likely mid 2023. I certainly wouldn't spend money on a new one now knowing that inflection point is coming so soon. Used Gen2 Volt is one of the great deals to be had in cars at the moment, but new PHEVs just don't make sense to me.
There's no point continuing this if you insist on displaying such a deep misunderstanding of PHEVs.
You literally still can't get past the fundamental point half of what you listed as needed for an ICE is already needed for a BEV. Even the Model 3 has an oil pump and filter!
The packaging challenges faced are not somehow forcing you to stick the engine in some magical super important place where batteries would never have to be either, like I have no idea why you're acting like a frunk is some sacred place you're robbed of if there's an engine there when several BEVs have come out without them.
Like do you not realize a Model S has a radiator? Or that there are ICE cars with engines everywhere from the front to the back of the car?
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And theres are no cheap EVs besides econoboxes priced above their bracket. Phev or not.
That's why as far as I'm concerned we're not on a realistic path to reducing our emissions.
Everyone is throwing out deadlines for ICE production and patting themselves on the back until those deadlines approach and are kicked down the line.
An entire classes of EVs hasn't appered yet, and for now we can blame the cost of batteries or something, but eventually we'll run out of excuses.
The true reason is because companies that have been incrementally updating the same platforms for a decade won't go and redesign their cars as EVs and keep them affordable. That's why the Model 3, which really is the EV equivalent of a Camry, costs 10-15k extra.
Meanwhile the Rav 4 Prime is equipped similarly to a Rav 4 Limited but only costs 3k more (also comes with 100 more HP...)
PHEVs are poised to fill the gap when reality comes home to roost. When our power grids are failing to cope with basic cooling, no one is going to force people to look at other options.
> displaying such a deep misunderstanding of PHEVs.
Don't misunderstand them at all, and I have volt in my top 5 best cars of the last 20 years for regular people. I just think the time of the PHEV has come and gone. Used they are still interesting buys, but I wouldn't spend any money on a new combustion engine anymore.
> I have no idea why you're acting like a frunk is some sacred place you're robbed of if there's an engine there when several BEVs have come out without them.
Never said engine space needed to be used for a frunk (though that has been a common choice). MEB is a notable BEV platform with no frunk, but they used that space to move the cab forward significantly, adding valuable passenger and luggage space. MEB cars have pretty insane rear seat room for their overall size class and it's becuase the whole passenger shell moved forward by approx. one transverse engine. Frunks are not necessary, but what's valuable is re-claiming prime space that has always been eaten by engines. Having an engine connected to the wheels forces your hand on a whole bunch of decisions about front wheel and steering rack placement, length of the front control arms, height of the hood, etc. The list is very long.
> Like do you not realize a Model S has a radiator?
And it's 1/3 to 1/4 the size of an ICE radiator of similar kW power output.
>Or that there are ICE cars with engines everywhere from the front to the back of the car?
Mid-engine cars are great to drive, but come with extreme space sacrifices in the pursuit of weight distribution and handling (not to mention typically horrible access for maintenance). Rear engine cars like beetle and 911 are truly interesting for packaging, but have a number of downsides of their own. It took porsche 30 years and tons of developments in tire technology to kill the lift-off oversteer in the 911.
> PHEVs are poised to fill the gap when reality comes home to roost
When studies showed the majority of PHEV owners in the EU didn't ever plug them in I soured significantly on PHEVs as a concept. Turns out people having to actively choose daily to reduce emissions doesn't result in the best results. Perhaps if there was punishing enough carbon taxes, but as it stands PHEVs in the rear world have fallen far short of the ideal.
> Like do you not realize a Model S has a radiator?
> And it's 1/3 to 1/4 the size of an ICE radiator of similar kW power output.
Oh so now you get having a smaller sized component matters?
Also, no. It's not "1/4th" the size of a similar power output. The 60D radiator is larger than the one on a 480HP Charger...
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And all the talk of handling dynamics... Porsche was sticking 500HP to the rear wheels only of 2,500lbs cars with 0 weight in any other part of the car in the days before traction control and modern rubber.
It's hilarious to act like grocery getters, or even luxury sports sedans face those problems.
> When studies showed the majority of PHEV owners in the EU didn't ever plug them in I soured significantly on PHEVs as a concept. Turns out people having to actively choose daily to reduce emissions doesn't result in the best results.
Wait, you mean to tell me that when we don't have widespread charging infrastructure, but we heavily subsidize PHEVs until they're cheaper than comparable gas-only cars... people buy them for the rebates instead of the EV benefits????
People who didn't even have wall outlets to slow charge their cars were buying PHEVs because you could get a 3 series for 10k under sticker for a comparable ICE-only model, there's 0 surprise that they'd be using gas.
Where you can actually examine real world effects of them is when we've reached the point where people can actually charge them, and gas prices continue to rise. And even compared to 5 years ago both are happening.
You don't need a carbon tax to punish people for charging EVs, you just need to make charging make sense.
The bonus here is that solving the problems that made PHEVs end up running on gas solves problems for EVs in general.
Before you reach the point where BEVs have widespread appeal you solve the issues PHEVs face 10 times over.
There is a price to be paid in space for the prime still. Rav4 ICE and hybrid have 37.5 cu ft / 1060 L behind the rear seats. Prime has 33.5 cu ft / 950 L.
If you look at actual data you will see that people simply don't charge these cars as often and end up driving lots of miles with inefficient gas engines.
Your analysis basically assumes that people perfectly optimize their consumption, but actual usage data shows that they don't.
Also these cars driving experience simply can't compare to actual EV. Because of the high cost you simple and up with a cheap EV motor and a cheap gas motor.
There is a reason why GM didn't want to sell a million of them.
That is what the Voltec drive train does. The gas engine only directly powers the wheels in some narrow range of conditions, and I challenge you to tell when. It feels 99% like a BEV driving experience.
A problem with most approaches to having the ICE drive the wheels to is that you don't run the ICE at it's most efficient setting. You gain in the drivetrain, but lose in the actual combustion. Whether you lose more in one than you gain in the other is an issue.
Except Voltec was also able to run the ICE at its most efficient setting by switching to Serial hybrid mode, where it was acting like the e-Power mode.
The latest ICCT report shows that in the european market fossil car are around 250gCO2eq/km in life cycle analysis, hybrid at 180 and EV at 80, so I don't agree at all that more hydrid are better than less EV, and even it seems quite a wrong reasoning, more EV will bring more money to lithium mining just look at Rio Tinto entering the lithium carbonate market with a 2.4B$ investing.
So, assuming the same total number of vehicles is sold and used, then the mix of p% full EVs + (100 - p)% ICE vehicles can be better than the entirely hybrid fleet when
80 p + 250 (1 - p) < 180
170 p > 70
p > 7/17 ≈ 41%
So 1 EV and 1.5 ICE are roughly equal to 2.5 hybrids. And anything more is an improvement.
In addition to not betting on evs, Toyota along with many other car makers fail to understand the human desire for safety and convenience in their vehicles through the use of current camera technologies and computer applications.
A typical Tesla vehicle has 8 cameras thus providing a 360 degree vision to help assist the car/driver in a few applications. Security, safety and convenience.
A close second in terms of safety systems is Subaru with their eyesight features.
My personal experience and testing of my Toyota Sienna van’s PCS, otherwise known as a pre-collision system to assist in applying the brakes and or warn the driver that an object is detected in close proximity to the vehicle during moving speed, is almost absent. The system is too slow, delayed or late. Sense of safety from the pcs is non-existent.
These along with others things pushes me to have a greater interest in cars like Tesla despite it’s premium price.
At this point, we should point out that now there are such thing as smart cars (Tesla) vs dumb cars (toyota) and others and that safety should not be a second class feature but should be prioritized through the use of current camera technologies. Other than focusing on just the safety of a vehicle during a collision, although important, systems to prevent collisions should be prioritized as well.
Apart from the fact that all car makers had drive assist systems for years and this is by no means a Tesla invention, if safety measures really are the main factor for people to choosing a car, we should be seeing Volvos almost exclusively.
But your comment which asserts that only Tesla does proper drive assist says everything. Somehow Tesla managed to convince everyone that they are the only innovators and everyone else is just old. While I appreciate Teslas contribution of pushing EVs to the mainstream, I do not believe that they are the most technologically advanced of the car manufacturers.
Interesting. What other car makers has self driving capabilities, runs on ev exceeding 250 mi on range, and has cameras around the car? Last I checked Volvos doesn’t even come close.
> What other car makers has self driving capabilities [...] and has cameras around the car?
Very nearly every luxury car on the market has that stuff and has had it for years.
Mercedes has had speed-adjusting cruise control since 1999, complete with auto-stopping since 2005, for example. Before Tesla ever even made a vehicle at all. Most other auto makers are just vastly more responsible in how they brand their self-driving capabilities than Tesla, but they pretty much all have them.
Tesla's "industry leading" innovations are really scoped to a few key things - the electric powertrain, massive in-car displays that replace switchgear (debatable if this is actually an innovation or just a cost-cutting measure, though), and OTAs.
Volvo C40 and XC40 Recharge both meet that standard. As does Polestar 2, which is a Volvo in all but name.
L2 autonomy features like Tesla's autopilot are extremely common and Tesla isn't even the best. GM's Supercruise is currently the best L2 system out there.
Toyota has radar and ultrasonics and I’ve been perfectly satisfied with the number of bells going off alerting me of cross traffic and pedestrians. The PCS has stopped by from rear ending someone in traffic but will grant that it waits til the last minute, but I chose a car whose automation is based on informing me and saving my ass vs taking control of all the decisions like a Tesla
edit: also most Toyotas are not in the price bracket of 8-camera vehicles but all the safety equipment is standard, so I might argue Toyota is doing more for public safety by making these systems affordable, whereas tesla is making the public less safe by beta testing self driving software on city streets.
To continue the analogy with smart and dumb phones - the traditional car makers are struggling to match against the new threat from Tesla (who makes the “iphone”). Makes you wonder whether an Android equivalent OS will come out of Google or another tech company to compete back.
I've driven a new Rav4 (in the US) and a Corolla hybrid (in Norway) and they both had what you're describing. If anything, the Corolla's system was a little _too_ sensitive.
Same thing happened the other day when a gloss by The Verge was trending on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27961606 I get that some folks may not want to pay to subscribe to The New York Times, but it's unfortunate that HN is sending so much traffic to sites that are just rewriting others' original reporting (and slapping their own advertising on it).
Perhaps another dynamic is that as these sites post their rewrites, HN posters can submit fresh URLs for the same topic over multiple days, rather than just the "canonical" NYT URL?
Sitting in the US EVs seem like the clear winner. I was shocked too learn that there are no Toyota EVs because they somehow thought hydrogen was the future. I expected more from my most trusted car company. A recent visit to Germany made me less certain. I saw and drove in quite a few hydrogen-powered Mirais. Of course my short experience there isn't representative at all. It's hydrogen bigger elsewhere? Might we see a future where the US had predominantly EVs and Japan and/or Europe hydrogen cars?
Toyota should pull an Intel, and become the TSMC of automobiles. I've waggishly said I'd buy a Tesla made by Toyota. Surely there are other EV efforts that would benefit from Toyota's manufacturing prowess and capacity.
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Solid hydrogen fuels will be the next wave. Specifically non-gaseous, before anyone has a spaz attack. We know! Storage, transportation, distribution of H2 is not practical.
Plasma Kinetics' has a light activated fuel cell. https://plasmakinetics.com There are many other nanomaterial research efforts. Like consumable silicas and reusable graphenes. Am less than noob, so can't guess which notions have most potential.
Pay attention to the technology maturation lifecycle. Solid hydrogen today is maybe comparable to Li-ion in 2005.
Imagine we hit "peak" Li-ion around 2030, producing 75 tWh annually. (Amazing, right?)
That'd buy us some time to develop solid hydrogen, which will hopefully be shipping in actual products by then. And hopefully address use cases and applications poorly served by Li-ion. Like trucking, rail, maritime, whatever.
Remove any remaining excuses for the die-hard fossil fuel hold outs.
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Toyota just got the timing wrong. And maybe they were too optimistic about H2.
Trying to hold back EV is a dick move. Pisses me off.
Not having a portfolio of technology platforms, something to span the gap from hybrids to hydrogen, was just incompetent.
How much of Toyota's very good outcomes are a matter of Toyota manufacturing versus Toyota design (to including continual improvement based on experience in the field)?
Many of Tesla's teething pains are self-inflicted at the design stage rather than being solely a manufacturing problem.
As a huge fan, I'm very keen to hear the story of Toyota. How'd they lose their edge? Is decline inevitable once you peak? Is death-by-bureaucracy just what happens once you have entrenched stakeholders?
I now feel that Tesla is more Toyota than Toyota (continuous improvement). And becoming more Apple than Apple (monopsony). Plus a dash of Samsung (vertical integration).
[h/t Sandy Munro's teardowns, The Limiting Factor, both on youtube.]
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Tesla somehow champions Wright's Law better than any one else. (Coupled with financial acumen bordering on fraud.) They're maniacal about efficiency, ramping up production, above all else. They eschew model years and just roll out improvements as fast as possible.
I've never worked at place that both scaled up and focused cost reduction; it was always either-or. Even with the human cost, it's kind of exciting. (I worked in hypergrowth orgs in my 20s, at great personal cost. If I was 20 again, I'd be at Tesla (or SpaceX).)
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Tesla has also embraced Apple's monopsony strategy.
For iPod, Apple bought out all mini HDDs. For unibody laptops, Apple bought every milling machine. You couldn't compete even if you wanted to. Why did Apple pursue thinness, past the point of reason? Because they could and no one else could copy them.
In the same way, Tesla has embraced casting giant parts, by using the giant gigapresses. Acknowledging the obvious benefits like reduced part counts, improved quality... The deeper genius is any one who wants to copy them has to wait years to even buy their own gigapress.
I'm sure there are other steps in their production pipeline which competitors cannot easily copy. Because the tools, materials, skills simply are not available at any cost.
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Tesla will be mining their own lithium. That's insane! Who else in the world will own the entire lifecycle of their products?
And because Tesla is so vertically integrated, they'll be able to optimize globally. They'll have manufacturing steps done on site at the mines. Reducing shipping and handling costs.
And since Tesla makes their own solar panels, they'll provide their own power.
Such audacity!
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Plus some kind of crazy. Their misadventures with automation and robots should have killed the company. And yet they pivoted, compressing 40 years of manufacturing experience into 5 years.
How the hell did Tesla pull it off? They've had so many near death experiences. And at every critical juncture, they double down.
I feel like there's a lesson here, but I have no clue what it might be.
> Toyota should pull an Intel, and become the TSMC of automobiles. I've waggishly said I'd buy a Tesla made by Toyota. Surely there are other EV efforts that would benefit from Toyota's manufacturing prowess and capacity.
Arguably Tesla already bought that in spirit if not fact by acquiring the NUMMI plant from Toyota. (The NUMMI plant was the co-venture Toyota built in Fremont, CA in the 80s with General Motors that built Geo brand vehicles and taught 90s GM some of Toyota's agility in manufacturing. Tesla likely didn't get as much direct experience from Toyota in buying the several years shut-down plant at that point, but symbolically it feels related.)
Plasma Kinetics is a company I only hear about in the presence of one Sandy Munro. Is there anything more than just some renders and hypothetical spec sheets?
>Toyota should pull an Intel, and become the TSMC of automobiles. I've waggishly said I'd buy a Tesla made by Toyota. Surely there are other EV efforts that would benefit from Toyota's manufacturing prowess and capacity.
We already have that. Magna Steyr builds custom runs for many auto companies big and small.
> Surely there are other EV efforts that would benefit from Toyota's manufacturing prowess and capacity.
They are not actually that exceptional anymore. At best they are marginally better.
Tesla new architecture of structural cells in a pack connected to massive castings is far better then Toyota EV have.
> Solid hydrogen fuels will be the next wave.
I really don't think that will be the cast.
> Imagine we hit "peak" Li-ion around 2030, producing 75 tWh annually. (Amazing, right?)
> From their website: Storage is 30% lighter, 7% smaller, and 17% less expensive than Lithium-ion battery per kWh.
By the time this technology is even remotely feasible. Li-Air, Li-Sulfer batteries and a whole bunch of other potential chemistries could be ready. All these more advanced chemistries can beat these advantages without issue.
Li-Sulfer battery could be 2-4x as dense ad current LiIon far smaller and far cheaper.
Even current High Nickel Cathode-Silicon Anode that will roll into the market will beat the numbers advertised by the company.
Why would anybody go refuel with solid hydrogen when you can have better range then Tesla Model S with a battery small battery pack you can put in your trunk and a tiny powerful EV motor?
A car based on the technology is simply worst along every single dimension.
I agree with you that betting against lithium is dumb. The ceiling is probably a lot higher yet.
I forget the rationale for why Toyota (and by extension Japan) bet on hydrogen. Probably something to do with access to resources. Constraints that apply to many economies.
We simply have to get off fossil fuels. Zero carbon will involve hydrogen. Maybe not personal transportation. But definitely agriculture. And maybe manufacturing, heavy transportation.
At some point we'll have excess electricity. Using that to produce methane (carbon capture) and ammonia (replace fossil fuels) has to happen. Then we'll have abundant cheap hydrogen.
Maybe not solid hydrogen fuel cells. Maybe ammonia is practical enough. Optimistic me knows someone(s) will do something useful.
A hydrogen fuel cell is the highest energy density battery possible. It doesn't how more advanced li-ion or a variant of it gets, hydrogen fuel cells will still have a higher energy density.
Furthermore, by the time you're talking about metal-air batteries you are basically build a fuel cell but with metals. Which is to say you're just building fuel cells that are fundamentally inferior than something that already exist.
We have basically created an inverted worldview. In reality, the li-ion battery is fundamentally inferior to hydrogen fuel cells, and any attempt to advance EV technology will inevitably produce a hydrogen fuel cell powered car.
Lets compare the tech when its actually in a vehicle and being sold at a few 1000 a year at least. And then compare the whole system and end to end energy efficiency for society.
How hard is it to concentrate hydrogen down post-production to where the Mirai/another FCV could use it? I ask, because I at least understand it's possible to separate hydrogen out of water relatively easily once you've got the water.
(More and more, the ocean seems like a huge resource we're not tapping: the most lithium reserves on earth, pulling carbon out of it (for sequestration), and potential hydrogen source just off the top.)
You lose efficiency when using electricity for electrolysis, compression and transportation of hydrogen. And then through the fuel cell itself which is used to charge a battery.
That entire roundabout process results in a pretty low efficiency for hydrogen. Why not skip all those steps and put the electricity right into a battery with little efficiency loss.
The simplest counter argument is that it’s just cheaper to go with hydrogen. People have created this narrative where “efficiency = cost” when in reality it’s more expensive to go that far in efficiency.
Sure, but you need to carry a fuel cell or ICE, and a hydrogen tank full of hydrogen. I don't think hydrogen based cars will be fundamentally lighter than battery powered ones.
Even the term “fossil fuels” is an inappropriate framing of the chemicals involved since it restricts their use to burning. Consider the processes involved in their formations: organic material grew for eons millions of years ago. It then had to be buried in just the right conditions and later embedded into even further beneficial conditions. It took millions of years, high temperatures, and high pressures to go from plant material to these complex molecular forms. Then we dig them up or seep them out with fracking and further refine them. Then we burn them. Huge losses of energy all along the way. Using oil as fossil fuel is a huge waste of the energy it took to create those molecules.
Your esoteric definition of efficiency isn't very useful.
If you have solar power, the comparison between storing it in hydrogen using electrolysis or a battery is pretty direct and useful and has fuck all to do with hydrocarbons.
To be fair. A Chevy volt can be more environmentally friendly than a Tesla.
Most people don’t drive more than 50 miles per day. Pushing for hybrids with 50-75 mile range might do more for emissions than pushing everyone to EV convert.
Imo what would be even better for commuters and cities would be a push towards ebikes. They go 25mph, most traffic in rush hour goes 16mph so you can beat that if you can squeeze by or have a bike lane. Most have a range of like 20 miles at least, and iirc the average car commute in the U.S. is 5-7 miles one way so these vehicles can cover most commutes. Ebikes are more tolerable to biking in inclimate weather than regular bikes as well. You don't get sweaty biking in the heat, and in the rain or snow you can actually gear up without risk of sweat building and soaking up your rain or snow gear from the inside as you huff and puff on a normal bike. If enough people are inclined to ebike commute, there will be more political support for more bike lanes, even services like plows and salting of the bike lanes over the winter, or even cheap shades over the lanes to keep off rain or sun.
The big barrier of ebikes is their cost. If you want one that isn't aliexpress tier with questionable batteries that might explode, you are going to drop money that could buy you a pretty decent used honda that is way more practical, probably $1500-2000. Plus there is the issue of theft and insuring these from theft or accidents. I'm not sure if theft would be covered by renters insurance or if you'd need a separate policy, it might even depend where the bike was stolen.
If the government is willing to give new EV car buyers $7000, they should give that same stipend to ebike buyers who would be able to get any top of the line model for free with money left over with that amount of subsidy. Not only do you get most of the benefits of electric commuting like with an EV, but you don't have to deal with the congestion that a car sized vehicle like an EV carrying one person at a time brings.
We love our Volt, but GM has discontinued Volt production. My spouse's driving is typical around-town errands with occasional road-trip. From the most recent monthly report:
> Toyota has stepped up lobbying to preserve its investments in hybrids, hydrogen
Am I the only one who thinks it is 100% wrong that companies can give politicians hundreds of millions of dollars?
Politicians are supposed to represent people. Real breathing people.
Sampling a handful of other countries, like Canada, Germany, Japan, etc. I found that they all pretty much banned (or drastically curtailed) donations form companies, unions, and trade associations. Most of them had some combination of publically funded campaigns and incentives and limits for personal donations. In a couple of the countries I looked at there were limits on how long campaigns lasted.
The corporate lobbying that goes on in the U.S. would be illegal in many other countries and counted against them in corruption indexes.
We need an amendment to reverse the supreme court on this. Once we get rid of corporate money from politics we might have a shot at fixing a lot of other problems.
There is an argument that can be made (whether good or not, not sure) that politicians represent the interest of people including whether they want Toyota to flourish or not, and represent the employee of Toyota, etc.
Banning giving money to politicians is fixing a symptom rather than the root cause.
Better is ban government from directing market competition. Why is the gov telling people and companies what to make when? People should do that by their choices. Tesla is a good example of something good is happening by the market. It motivated other companies to innovate in the space.
> There is an argument that can be made (whether good or not, not sure) that politicians represent the interest of people including whether they want Toyota to flourish or not, and represent the employee of Toyota, etc.
We supposedly live in a democracy, where the people are supposed to be in charge, not abstract constructs like companies, unions, or trade associations. People vote, not companies. People should be funding political campaigns, not companies.
Why should a CEO or small group of people get to decide how to deploy enormous resources to influence politician's so that they do things that run counter to the public good, just so they can make more money? This is what corporations are legally obligated to do, right? Make more money.
> Better is ban government from directing market competition. Why is the gov telling people and companies what to make when? People should do that by their choices. Tesla is a good example of something good is happening by the market. It motivated other companies to innovate in the space.
Your comment above seems to imply that people should accept that they fund companies through their purchases and these companies will then fund politicians? That seems contrary to the spirit of the constitution.
Or maybe I'm not following the connection you're making between campaign financing and market competition. To my way of thinking the government should be run by the people, and if the people want market competition among companies then that should be the rule. People should be deciding this, not politicians who feel they are dependent on corporate campaign donations for their ego boosting careers.
It seems like such a flaw in our system. I looked at a handful of other civilized countries and I haven't found one yet that allows this stuff like in the U.S. Time and time again in the news I see companies having their way with our government.
> Why should a CEO or small group of people get to decide how to deploy enormous resources to influence politician's so that they do things that run counter to the public good, just so they can make more money? This is what corporations are legally obligated to do, right? Make more money.
In an ideal world, everyone is looking for each other. But this is not an ideal world. CEOs, politicians, employees, and even the people who vote are all looking for themselves: they all have demands that benefit themselves. Everyone wants more money. I want free education, free transportation, etc. Why think that my wants, are somehow, on a higher ground, that the wants of the CEO? Why think that my wants, if they are the wants of more people, are somehow better the society at large than the wants of a CEO? I feel that might be making many assumptions that are not very obvious, or that I am misreading you.
> Your comment above seems to imply that people should accept that they fund companies through their purchases and these companies will then fund politicians? That seems contrary to the spirit of the constitution.
I apologies if I am understood that way. That is certainly not my intention. I mean that banning the transfer of money from a company to a politician will not solve the problem, because there will always be a loophole.
> Or maybe I'm not following the connection you're making between campaign financing and market competition. To my way of thinking the government should be run by the people, and if the people want market competition among companies then that should be the rule. People should be deciding this, not politicians who feel they are dependent on corporate campaign donations for their ego boosting careers.
Given that the US is not a democracy, people only have a say on who they elect. Politicians decided it is ok to break the market and control it, and they decided it is ok to lobby. Politicians also don't necessarily represent the people of their district/state in the strictest (by the simple fact that many did not vote for them). If it was up for the people, it is hard to say that it will be a better government, because people, like politicians, are looking for themselves and not necessarily for the overall society over time.
>It seems like such a flaw in our system. I looked at a handful of other civilized countries and I haven't found one yet that allows this stuff like in the U.S. Time and time again in the news I see companies having their way with our government.
Can't agree anymore. It is a system that gave birth to some great things and some terrible things.
I didn't mean to sidetrack into democracy vs. representative government (separate discussion!). I may have used the term democracy in my above post a bit loosely, to mean the people's control of the government. It would be more accurate for me to say I'm concerned about the outsized influence money has over the government (corporations, unions, trade associations, and the rich) have over the government, versus the influence people have.
It seems that we enshrined political contributions as free speech in this country, and I'm not sure that right, allowing pac and dark money to buy mass media advertising to manipulate voters at scale. That just seems a way to subvert one person equals one vote. This seems to get worse and worse every decade. We're just starting to see what international companies larger than most governments in the world can do with petabytes of personal data and algorithms designed to take advantage of all that.
I may still misunderstand, but you used Toyota as an example, the political lobbying the company does on behalf of its customers and workers. When I read this I think that they are lobbying on behalf of shareholder profit, often to detriment of their workers (anti-union, for example), customers (less mandated safety), and the public at large (less pollution regulations). it seems more and more that the deck is stacked in favor of large corporations and the rich.
I know that our conversation has drifted around a little bit. I appreciate being able to refine my thoughts on this.
Do you think that some method of publicly funding campaigns would better than what we have now, more in the spirit of one person equals one vote? Also limits to how long campaigns last and how they are conducted? There are other countries that do this. In fact the U.S. seems to be an outlier in how we allow money to influence politics.
I grant that this would need to be done despite the establishment not wanting to change. I also grant, like you said, it may be near impossible to eliminate the effect of money on politics. But it scares me to think what will happen if we continue on our current course.
I think they bet perfectly fine, if you ignore the silly hydrogen efforts. Toyota has never been a technological front runner. They take the Apple approach; wait for something to be truly ready for prime time, then execute it better than anyone else. EV's are still 2% of the US market. And it will be a decade more until a 60+kwH EV is being sold for <$30k total upfront price out the door, which is where they need to be for mass adoption. That gives them time to keep perfecting the solid state batteries that will be crucial to getting Toyota levels of reliability, safety, and longevity from an EV.
And it will be a decade more until a 60+kwH EV is being sold for <$30k total upfront price out the door, which is where they need to be for mass adoption.
“A decade more” seems way too pessimistic given current EV prices and battery capacities. The 2022 Bolt will have a starting price of $32k with a 65kWh battery, for example.
>The 2022 Bolt will have a starting price of $32k with a 65kWh battery, for example.
That's still a totally different class of car buyers. A "starting price" of $32k means no one is walking out the door with one under $40k total upfront cost. When I can walk into a dealership and finance something like that at $25k total loan amount, that changes everything.
When I leased my 2020 Bolt, I could have walked out the door with it on a 24K loan instead. Given that GM chose to stick with the same basic drivetrain on the latest update, I don't expect that to change for the next few years. Excepting the current weird car market that has been momentarily turned upside down by the pandemic-related supply problems.
Even back in 2019, without federal incentives, people were walking out the door with new Bolts under $30k (including tax and registration). It’s more than possible - it’s already happened. The problem is that most Americans buying new vehicles don’t want an EV hatchback - they want either a Tesla or a non-EV SUV.
It was a 2020 model, but it was all discounts by GM. The 2020s(and 2021s) had a higher MSRP, so it was actually closer to only 50% of MSRP that I paid. The extra $2k I didn't finance was tax, reg, etc.
The VW looks similar to my FCA uConnect system. The 4runner looks like an Alpine head unit I put in my 2002 4 runner in the 2008/9 timeframe. Pretty sure Toyota killed the CD player in the last 3-4 years.
> "If we are to make dramatic progress in electrification, it will require overcoming tremendous challenges, including refueling infrastructure, battery availability, consumer acceptance, and affordability," Robert Wimmer, director of energy and environmental research at Toyota Motor North America, told the Senate in March.
That's the supposed FUD? What about that was wrong? Are we just supposed to ignore the challenges ahead of us? I had to read through most of that article to even get there and that was the big controversy. This article is trash.
CivBase had a good comment below about why this article may not be properly balanced, and I wanted to add this:
I see two things that can stall EV growth:
(1) Grid capacity. The US has been taking down nuclear power plants and replacing them with renewables has caused problems in both availability, cost and carbon impact. Ideally we would be able to build clean nuclear power as our grid demands growth from EVs, but it's questionable whether we can. Playing this forward, if the nation starts to have brown-outs or the cost of electricity goes up for this reason, people will not buy EVs obviously.
(2) There's a risk factor that we need to think about as a country. We rely on our vehicles for a lot of really important things - eg emergency services, commuting, business, etc. We have developed fairly robust gasoline supply infrastructure, and it's pretty good to know that even if my house/town loses electricity, I can still get fuel for my car, get around, travel elsewhere, etc. If we get into a place where our transportation is tightly dependent on our power grid, just as our grid is aging/overloading/etc, that could be a risk on the personal and national level.
These are solvable problems but we need to be solving them. Otherwise, EVs will plateau as more people start to recognize these factors.
Grid capacity will keep up with steady growth in demand over the next decades. It's not a problem now it won't likely become a problem. There won't be an overnight spike in growth, just an steadily increasing pace in the roll out of charging infrastructure. Which is typically powered by renewables indeed. Because that's just the cheapest and fastest way to do it. Some grid companies will fail due to years of mismanagement and lack of investment. Some states like Texas might have to swallow their pride and actually connect their grid to the rest of the country (which BTW. would also enable them to export renewable power, of which they have plenty).
Generally, the grid will need to grow a little bit in capacity long term but actually not that much. We're talking 1.x not 2 x or more. And more like 1.2 x than 1.8x. The biggest issues are with the last mile rather than the amount of power. All solvable; just means a lot of work that people will pay for to get done. E.g. solar panels and EVs are a popular combo you see a lot in many suburbs. It makes economic sense to do it. Those EVs are not a burden on the grid and those households are probably net electricity suppliers even.
Having a few tens of GWH of driving batteries on the road could actually help soak up a lot of excess renewable power off peak. In many places this is already something that grid suppliers incentivize and a great easy way to balance the grid. In some cases there are even negative tariffs (i.e. you earn money by charging your car). A virtual power plant based on millions of EVs would dwarf any nuclear plant in terms of instantly available GW and would actually be able to provide power to the grid in case of spikes. One of Tesla's little side businesses that might actually work out. E.g. 1 KW times a million cars would be a about a GW of power. Realistically, you'd probably provide power at the same rate you charge. So something like 5 to 10 KW at home. Millions of cars plugged in when they are not driving (i.e. most of the time) would actually be a pretty awesome virtual power plant. The only snag might be that demand for that power might not be there most of the time because as argued capacity won't need to grow that much. Mostly it's just about stabilizing the grid.
Regarding your second point, recent hurricanes and other natural disasters have quite convincingly shown that gasoline infrastructure is actually not that robust and typically starts failing when these events happen. The added demand for things like generators typically does not help. Basically fuel stations need electricity and when the power goes, they also stop working even when they haven't run out yet. And that's aside from supply issues which typically also become a thing.
EVs are pretty easy to charge. You don't even need the grid for that. E.g. Solar panels on people's houses work fine when the grid fails for example. Many charging stations have solar panels or wind nearby (and batteries). Other EVs can be used for charging as well if the need arises. In emergencies you can even put up mobile charging points powered using batteries or fuel cells. And you can run your house off them as well during a power outage. As EVs become more popular, petrol infrastructure will go in decline and become less reliable. Some petrol stations will close, the remaining ones will sell less fuel. Etc. Especially, remote areas will likely to have more supply issues as that happens.
There are still huge numbers of car owners who do not have off-site parking to charge EVs. Unless EV public charging is able to 'refuel' completely in a couple of minutes, going 100% electric is just not feasible.
There is no way most governments will be able to provide suitable infrastructure in the near future.
It doesn't need to be in a couple minutes if the chargers are where people tend to stay for a while anyways. Stick a fast charger at McDonald's and Chipotle and Target and Safeway, then people will be able to charge while doing the things they already would be. It doesn't even have to be especially fast. It just needs to give a reasonable amount of charge for the time that people would be at the location. If I'm going to be spending an hour at a restaurant, I don't need to have it be done charging in 20 minutes.
My pet theory is that Toyota or Honda will be on life support by the end of next decade, if not dead. They both had a huge head start in batteries with their hybrids (Honda’s first hybrid was released in 1999), and they squandered it. Hopefully the Korean car companies crush them with superior products.
There's zero chance Toyota ends up on 'life support' within a decade. They're a top 10 company globally in terms of revenue, and even in the worst case where they fail to release competitive EV models, the global switchover to hybrid electric (plus legacy ICE sales) in less developed markets will hold them over for quite a bit of time.
that’s a bold prediction. i don’t think it’s going to happen.
building a car is about more than just the engine. It’s about the supply chain, it’s about parts, it’s about service. Toyota and Honda have a lot more experience in this area than a new-ish car manufacturer. They also build reliable, great cars that I like owning and driving.
I like how everyone is up in arms about Toyota doing something [that serves their interest; in a legal way] to influence the government but people pretend Tesla is such a success story, ignoring all the money the govn has pumped into it.
So you’re ok with Toyota spreading FUD as long as it’s legal. Got it.
As for Tesla’s government money, ev credits are available to all manufacturers, it’s not Tesla’s fault others can’t make compelling electric vehicles. All other government loans have been paid back in full.
i agree with you in principle, but (there’s always a but) there are other more impactful things that can be done to cut down carbon emissions (modern cars are already stupid-efficient).
Who has the mora authority to declare that Toyota should roll over and die to attain some goal that may or may not be achievable?
> Who has the mora authority to declare that Toyota should roll over and die to attain some goal that may or may not be achievable?
False dilemma. Toyota could start making EVs instead. If they decide to (stupidly) refuse to do that, then their death would be the result of their own stubbornness, not a declared death sentence from someone else.
And as far as who has the moral authority? Anyone who stands to face the harms of global warming and not profit off it.
lol no.
business decisions are driven by economic incentives. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong but that’s the way the world works today.
you have the authority to decide only to the point of electing politicians that push what you consider to be the right thing. This takes time.
How would you feel if you would personally be targeted in an effort to reduce global warming? While at the same time other actors (that basically do the same thing and/or are protected by regulations do way worse? https://thedigitalmomentum.com/the-top-five-co2-emitting-ind...)
That EV you dream of as stopping global warming may overall be responsible for more CO2 emission that my “normal” car depending on how the power you use has been generated.
> you have the authority to decide only to the point of electing politicians that push what you consider to be the right thing. This takes time.
Funny, a few posts ago you were talking about moral authority. Oh how the goal posts move!
Also, as a society we’ve already decided to use our legal authority to incentivize EVs, that’s what Toyota is whining about! They have lost both the political and the social (“hearts and minds”) argument, and are trying to use bribes to get their way again.
> How would you feel if you would personally be targeted in an effort to reduce global warming?
Drawing a parallel between a person being “targeted” (loaded word) and a corporation making the wrong decisions is extremely weird.
Toyota was not targeted, they failed to take advantage of the incentives available to them. Ford, Hyundai, VW, Porsche, and Tesla all took advantage of the programs available to them, Toyota did not. That’s less “targeted” and more “made a mistake”.
> That EV you dream of as stopping global warming may overall be responsible for more CO2 emission that my “normal” car depending on how the power you use has been generated.
This is actually oil industry propaganda, good to see that it still has legs.
EPA estimates show that an EV is marginally cleaner than a gasoline car for a pure coal powered grid for total emissions. Of course you have to live in West Virginia before “100% coal power” is anywhere close to an accurate approximation of what your power grid looks like.
Also, it’s not a stretch to say that Toyota’s fuel cells are powered by oil. The primary source of commercial Hydrogen is from natural gas.
the question about the moral authority was a rhetorical one. Apologies if it came across as a genuine question.
I think you’re missing the point: Toyota made their decisions (which they probably had more data then you have for) and now they are making the most out of it, while also trying to extract the most value possible.
Does this, in retrospect, look like a mistake? Maybe, but most of the times decisions like this are made with imperfect information and there is a good dose of guessing involved.
Again, I’m not saying that what they did or are doing is good/bad right/wrong. I’m saying that it’s totally understandable and as long as this is within the law I don’t have a problem with it.
Also, research a bit the solid state battery work that Toyota has allegedly done. I’m not saying it’s going to pan out, but they definitely did not sit around twiddling their fingers and plotting on how to lobby more effectively.
And depending where your battery is produced you need to use your EV anywhere between 2-5 years before you can say that you emitted less than an equivalent gas powered car. This totally ignores PZEV cars btw. It also ignores the environmental impact of the battery after it no longer works.
Also, here is a bulletproof way of reducing carbon emissions and reducing impact on environment: buy less stuff. Including but not limited to buying a new car less often. I’m gonna bet you real money that the impact my SUV has on the environment if own it for 12 years instead of 5 is lower, per year than if I buy an EV every 5 years.
So I’m not sure that you can claim EVs are much much better, but if you have any credible sources I’m open to changing my mind.
also as an exercise: if we could wave a magic wand and force everyone to switch to EVs tomorrow, how much time do you think it would take to ramp up production to the point we can get everyone in to an electric car? (I’m guessing it’s gonna be at least a decade, if it can be done at all with the current battery technology)
Toyota produces 850k cars each month. Tesla 500k per year. Do you think if Toyota straight up replicated what Tesla does they could keep up with the demand?
toyota has the best reputation in the entire industry, runs their business tight, and has no real pathway to life support unless they repeatedly failed on every single major initiative, which seems unlikely.
I just bought a RAV4 Prime, it's a plugin hybrid. It looks like they are rolling out HV to their most popular models over the next few years. That gives them everything they need to make EV, HV, or gas vehicles for the forseeable future.
Honda actually seems to "get it" in Europe and Asian markets and may be on the path to navigating this transition. Honda of America seems the dumb beast too stupid to adapt and there is probably going to be a reckoning when it stops being hugely profitable to build giant gas guzzlers in America. Honda of America seems to have zero foresight or long term plan still.
The Korean car conglomerate is definitely doing well with EVs, but if you are expecting someone to crush Toyota and/or Honda in Asian car sales especially, I'd keep an eye on Chinese EV companies. Some of them are doing wild work, and have got EV car costs down below nearly anyone else in the world with their economies of scale already. If some of those Chinese EV companies come to the American market I'm even curious if it would look just like the Honda/Toyota strategy of the 70s/80s with good value for the money cars that will surprise a lot of Americans that did not know they were looking for that sort of cheap/reliable.
I'd like to see that because it would be a nice big middle finger to all the brain dead fanboys who insist Toyota can never do anything wrong but being a big national company in Japan no matter what they do or don't do they won't be allowed to fail for the same reasons VW or Boeing won't.
This is unlikely. Toyota, anyways, has really excelled in other ways, for example, using supply chains correctly and not taking a huge hit during the semiconductor shortage. The car market is also relatively slow to shift, I do think that there's plenty of time for Toyota to pivot.
They told me they were having the same supply issues as everyone else right now. I wanted to look at a highlander hybrid and they said they were only getting sent 1 every few months and usually didn't know when it would arrive until it was in transit.
I just leased a fully loaded Highlander which I intend to buy out after 3 years. So Toyota is getting my money for next 9 years, unless anything disastrous happens. I actually have another 7 year old Corolla, on which I have a spent a grand total of $140 in maintenance (battery). In fact I plan to purchase an 86 or a Supra in next couple of years or so.
Last time I was driving a Hyundai, the engine lost power in the middle of evening rush hour traffic at 65mph on I-85, and the car had half the mileage of my Corolla.
I've pre-ordered an Ioniq 5. Tesla has a real competitor in Hyundai. If you don't care about the "self-driving" thing, other companies are catching up fast.
The ioniq 5 is a great vehicle. If their adaptive cruise control is anything like the current Sonata (that I have) with the new lane changing tech, it'll already go a long way in making highway drives and stop and go traffic a breeze.
Not sure how well HDA 2 (their term for cruise control ) does but the older version doesn't handle sharper turns well and loses the lines briefly. New tech also steers the car out of harm's way like Tesla does so they've come a very long way.
I was close to getting one 2 years ago. Did the safety tests improve since then? If I recall the 2019 had issues with the roof / pillars, which were not strong enough to support the car in case you flipped it.
A new Prius is basically as expensive as a Model 3. It was great tech 10 years ago but today outside of Ubers I don't see the reason to get it as opposed to a full EV.
The reality is that hydrogen cars are terrible for consumers. Typical price per kg of hydrogen (roughly the same energy as a gallon of gasoline) in California is like $15/kg (although you do get like 50-60 miles of range per kg). There are very few fueling stations, they are specialized (need special permits due to explosive nature of the fuel, like gasoline… plus you need a cryogenic cooler) and expensive (like $1-2million dollars apiece), rely on truck delivered fuel (on-site electrolysis is rare and generally much more expensive), and you’re limited to basically one state in the US. Industrial hydrogen is cheaper, but that’s partly because it’s OVERWHELMINGLY made by steam reforming of fossil fuels.
Hybrids are super easily coopted to just reinforce the status quo fossil fuel centric energy system. They’re somewhat more efficient, sure, but it’s an almost insultingly small improvement compared to BEVs and what we need to actually achieve. It would keep the same dynamic we have today where politicians are hesitant to include a carbon tax or increase fuel taxes.
So how about a compromise: every new vehicle sold must have a plug, be capable of traveling at highway speeds in pure electric, and a 40-50 mile electric range. Including hydrogen cars (which, after all, already are hybrid electric vehicles incorporating a significant lithium ion battery to provide peak power).
This would provide a natural consumer pull for electric vehicle charging infrastructure to be standard in places like apartments and houses and on street parking without hurting anyone’s current use case. It’s enough electric range so that vast majority of people could do it good 80% of the driving on pure electric. Even if you think everyone will have hydrogen cars, this reduces the number of hydrogen fueling stations needed by about a factor of 10. Major car manufacturers have been able to produce decent plug-in hybrids like this for a decade now. And it’s enough range that you could run the car purely electric if you had some reason that you had to do so, like in tunnels or city centers (although some mechanism to enforce this would be needed).
It also reduces the total amount of lithium batteries needed by a good factor of five compared to all-battery, which is important in the near term as we ramp up. And the extra 10-15kWh or so of battery is fairly trivial if you already have an electric powertrain (which HEVs and Hydrogen fuel cell cars do). At automotive volumes, that’s only an extra $1000-2000 or so of lithium ion cells and a vast reduction (>$10,000-20,000) in operating costs over the entire vehicle’s lifespan. (And actually, fuel cells have a limited lifespan, worse than large battery EVs, so making them plug in hybrids would stretch that significantly.)
I just don’t trust Toyota on this. Non-plug in hybrids and hydrogen cars just aren’t sufficient or low cost enough to operate.
Articles like this misunderstand both innovation and capitalism. Progress isn't typically made by some unusually smart person or enterprise gazing into the future and creating the perfect thing. It happens by lots of individuals and companies making bets and guesses, most of which are wrong, but some turn out the be right. That way the overall system can be brilliant regardless of whether or not the individual actors are brilliant. Or, more precisely, you can have a brilliant system without brilliant actors.
Articles like this one look back with the benefit of hindsight and are written from the perspective, "Company X missed obvious trend Y and now they're in trouble". In reality, a bunch of companies made guesses about what could work in an unknown and uncertain future and some turned out to be right and others turned out to be wrong.
Hydrogen for cars was an obvious boondoggle for a decade or more. There's making guesses and then there's ignoring obvious trends. Toyota did the latter.
I'm not sold that this has been established yet: technology moves in mysterious ways.
For example EVs don't have an answer to long distance transportation yet (it should be trains, that are easily automated, but I'm not god emperor). You could imagine a future where greening that industry necessitates a storable, pumpable fuel and suddenly hydrogen infrastructure is a thing that personal vehicles could be built against.
EV range will continue to increase and so will charging speeds and number of stations. Cybertruck and Tesla Semi may have 600+ miles of range. Combined with faster charging, human fatigue will start to become the bigger limiting factor. Driving more than 12 hours per day is a very niche activity. Even truckers are forbidden from doing that by law.
Even in the cases where it absolutely makes sense to distance/time shift some of the grid's output to hydrogen to ship it physically somewhere (such as a festival in the woods, perhaps, that today would rely on diesel generators for power), it's still going to be way more efficient to use a bank of larger than would fit in a car fuel cells in a shipping container creating a "mini-grid" of electricity that things like battery electric cars and other appliances could plug into than to have cars carry around fuel cells "just in case" of events like that.
The problem is that hydrogen has radically improved in the last decade, but batteries have not overcome it’s fundamental weaknesses. For instance, we are now see hydrogen drop to below $2/kg even with entirely green hydrogen. Fuel cells have also gotten cheaper and more reliable.
The efficiency argument might end up being the same argument made against ray-tracing in the 3D rendering world. In that instance, the upside of have correct lighting with a simple algorithm eliminated whatever upside you could get out of a faster but more complex rasterization system. Hydrogen could easily be the way to have a single simple technology that works in all transportation cases.
To engineers it was, but to politics things are more complex. If the politics of the world demand hydrogen it doesn't matter how stupid the idea is you have to do it. Politics can shut your company down completely overnight, bad engineering can do it, but only after decades of bad decisions.
Politically the powers were pushing hydrogen not long ago and nobody should be surprised if they do again.
Don't bet on that. Countries do such things all the time. Japan probably wouldn't, but the US has plenty of manufactures that would love to shut down a competitor, or maybe Germany decides to shut one down. Even California could decide hydrogen is the only way to meet their emissions.
The point of the article isn't "Toyota bet wrong on BEVs, haha they are dumb". The point is "Toyota bet wrong on BEVs, and are now lobbying the government to hinder electric vehicles instead of getting on board".
Is this always true? The iPhone seems like a pretty clear argument to the contrary. As far as cars go, Tesla is a clear outlier pushing innovation. I mean sure you can argue that eventually the rest of the field will catch up, but there are many advantages to being a first mover.
There were smart phones before the iphone. They were badly done giving Apple opportunity to make them useful. (and the first iPhone was bad in a lot of ways that we only know from hindsight)
The parent post stated “you can have a brilliant system without brilliant actors”. I don’t believe that’s true. There are many examples of brilliant stand-out products that make a huge difference in their field, and the iPhone is one of the most obvious.
Also there was very little bad about the original iPhone. It obviously lacked features compred to modern phones, but it was a fantastic device.
Why wouldn't companies pay the price for being wrong for far too long? Why don't they suck it up and let the government make decisions that would ease the transition to the future of EV?
what does “being wrong” even mean. Everyone has an opinion and everyone has their own interests (including people in the gov).
Assuming they are “wrong”, why would they suck it up? Why would anyone do something that goes directly against their self-interest?
are the products not competitive? last time I bought a car it was a Toyota. My next car will probably be a Toyota - probably a hybrid. As much as we like to pretend that the EV are the future and are happening right now, IMHO we’re not there quite yet.
Very good from Toyota. They take a diplomatic approach for the global society.
As they don't enforce a complete structural upheaval in a short period, but rather promise they will support old eco systems until we are really sure what works best in the post gasoline world.
EVs are dumber than liquid or gaseous fuels outside of niche uses. We had EVs 120 years ago too. The fundamental problem has not changed. Batteries and motors are less efficient at converting chemical energy into motion than heat engines, especially when energy density per weight and space are considered.
This is about distribution. Toyotas are sold through dealers. Dealers make little money on selling cars and lots of money fixing them. The Prius appeals to eco concious drivers (who don’t mind that their car drives like a dishwasher) but also appeals to dealers because it needs oil changes, radiator flushed, and frequent brake changes. Full EVs require almost no maintenance so Toyota dealers lack any incentive to market them. Hydrogen has always been a fake out; never remotely close to a viable alternative yet marketed as something amazing coming soon (so don’t buy a Tesla!).
As someone who spends their time maintaining every aspect of my cars (oil, brakes, bearings, everything), Toyotas were by far the easiest, simplest, cheapest, most reliable and longest lasting. What a weak point to make about Tesla over Toyota.
My Model Y has 27,000 miles on it and all I’ve had to do is refill the wiper fluid. Toyotas are great cars. And you buy them from a repair shop. Think about that.
'According to the US Department of Energy, less than 5 per cent of lithium-ion batteries — demand for which is set to boom as carmakers such as Mercedes lay out goals to go “all-electric” — are currently recycled.'
Given that gasoline continues to easily provide the most bang for the buck/weight/volume IMO hybrids are the logical way forward until grids are recreated to cater to Small Nuclear Reactors and rewired to handle volume electrical delivery.
Hybrids are the worst of both electric and combustion powertrains, their time has passed. Small nuclear reactors aren't ever going to happen (can't compete economically with solar/wind backed by batteries).
The FT article I linked is about redwoodmaterials massive infusion of backing.
Solar/wind has serious shortcomings and are not at this point able to store energy 'in batteries' in any volume. Hawaii is making progress here
That may be wrong, but the ars article didn't have any counter arguments.