Toyota finally wakes up.

[AndrueC]

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/14/business/toyota-electric-vehicles-lg-batteries-intl-hnk/index.html

"In the early 2000s, one of Toyota's most recognizable hybrids, the Prius, was received with the sort of excitement and wait lists now seen for Tesla models. Other automakers were criticized for not making similar models at the time.

Almost 20 years after the sensation, however, it is Toyota that is playing catchup in fully-electric cars and SUVs."

 

Maybe they read my criticism on here 🙂

[FROSTYBALLS]

Moved to General Club Discussions.

[Stopeter44]

15 minutes ago, AndrueC said:

Almost 20 years after the sensation, however, it is Toyota that is playing catchup in fully-electric cars and SUVs.

I don't see it that way, and they are increasing their market share of new car sales. I think Toyota are where most people are at, these days. I think an EV is a great choice as a second vehicle, but since I only want to have one car, although I did briefly turn over the idea of keeping the "old" car for those journeys when I was worried about range, it's not yet viable for me.

[Catlover]

I reckon Toyota know fully what they are doing and where they want to be in X years. Lots of surprises for owners of EV in the future I reckon. Maybe they prove not as cheap to run as expected., residuals after x years may also be a concern. Just my thoughts.

[Cyker]

Sadly I don't have the space or insurance money to have more than one car, so my one car has to be able to do everything!!

 

I must admit these critiques of Toyota do annoy me - What they don't seem to realize is how much and how long Toyota have been doing R&D into electrical drive trains. The reason they haven't released anything is they don't think it's ready for general use, and I don't begrudge them taking their time.

I get enough fallout from rushed products as it is in the software industry, which seems to be increasingly turning to a development model of rushing out a buggy half-baked PoS product to get as much money as possible, then try to patch it after release, unless sales tank, in which case they just abandon the product and release a new one later with some of the fixes but new bugs and the cycle repeats.

I appreciate that about Toyota - They don't use *us* as beta testers, unlike a lot of other companies that seem to!

 

[AJones]

I can't see that Toyota has any choice, in many of its markets it won't be able to sell regular hybrids by 2030 but consumers are moving even faster, here in the UK around a third of new cars sold in November were plug-ins, either full EVs or plug-in hybrids. Anyone getting a company car will be looking for a plug-in of some sort because of the huge tax savings. In Norway where the incentives are greater, plug-in vehicles are taking around 85% of new car sales.

Toyota invested in hydrogen fuel cell technologies but it isn't taking off as a fuel for passenger cars, there's very models and they are very expensive, and there isn't the fuelling infrastructure to make it possible to run one. 

The years are rolling by, hydrogen isn't developing as a road fuel for cars, there's a limit to how much emissions reduction petrol-hybrids can achieve, so going down the EV route is the only option available.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Toyota aren't the only ones investing, and still investing in hydrogen. Others include Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, BMW, etc.

Plus together with Mazda, Subaru, Kawasaki and Yamaha they're looking at green alternative fuels - hydrogen and synthetic fuels obtained from biomass - for ICE's.

[flash22]

Tech was not mature enough for Toyota to pull the trigger on multi billion investment, Toyota will have had R&D for 10+ years, it takes 4+ years to take a car to market

Hybrid tech has been around since 1899, so nothing new the same as BEV

[AndrueC]

35 minutes ago, AJones said:

Toyota invested in hydrogen fuel cell technologies but it isn't taking off as a fuel for passenger cars, there's very models and they are very expensive, and there isn't the fuelling infrastructure to make it possible to run one. 

The years are rolling by, hydrogen isn't developing as a road fuel for cars, there's a limit to how much emissions reduction petrol-hybrids can achieve, so going down the EV route is the only option available.

Hydrogen was a mistake. They should have realised that years ago. It's difficult to produce in enough quantities without emitting CO2 and 70% of the energy is lost in the cleanest process. So to supply an equivalent hydrogen fleet would require nearly three times as much electricity when there are already uncertainties about meeting the BEV demand.

Hydrogen might make sense for HGVs and I've heard it could be a useful way to store surplus energy (albeit throwing away two thirds of it) but I don't see it being used in cars.

And it's pretty clear from the market (and this announcement) that Toyota are behind other manufacturers. They have a potentially great solution in solid-state batteries that might allow them to leapfrog back in front but that depends how it pans out.

[AJones]

17 minutes ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

Toyota aren't the only ones investing, and still investing in hydrogen. Others include Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, BMW, etc.

Plus together with Mazda, Subaru, Kawasaki and Yamaha they're looking at green alternative fuels - hydrogen and synthetic fuels obtained from biomass - for ICE's.

There's an issue of technology development and readiness, plug-in vehicles are now a proven technology, the infrastructure is being rolled out and manufacturers are ramping up manufacturing capacity. Meanwhile hydrogen for passenger cars is still very small scale, the infrastructure is probably 10 years or more behind EVs and it isn't clear whether it will succeed. Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes and BMW may be investing in hydrogen but they're all manufacturing and selling EVs today.

[AndrueC]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production#Environmental_impact

and

https://theconversation.com/hydrogen-cars-wont-overtake-electric-vehicles-because-theyre-hampered-by-the-laws-of-science-139899

Although that puts the difference at 2:1 (so hydrogen is half as efficient). Still requires a lot more generating capacity than BEV though.

[FROSTYBALLS]

7 minutes ago, AJones said:

Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes and BMW may be investing in hydrogen but they're all manufacturing and selling EVs today

So are Toyota - two joint ventures in China selling BEV versions of the C-HR, albeit on a small scale, but they are still manufacturing them.

[Cyker]

Yeah I'm not a big fan of hydrogen - If the goal is efficiency or emissions reduction it just doesn't work unless it's made by solar/wind, in which case that electricity could have provided 4-5 times the range in a BEV. If we can up our electrical generation, it would be a good sink for off-peak times, but no matter how you look at it it's just not an efficient process, and we're nowhere near the point like Elite where we can send a spaceship to Jupiter or the Sun to mine hydrogen!

However, it does have some advantages, and for certain sectors I don't see any other option - If they ban diesel, which IMHO is a huge mistake - there is nothing else that is suitable for the huge distances artics cover - BEV artics have been put out but the range is not even close to a diesel artic, and gets even worse once loaded up, plus they will likely weigh more than they are towing! The crazy things they are coming up with to try and make it work is the kind of thing that sounds good in someones head but will not work in real life (The fact that some people think having tramlines above every motorway and A-road is realistic from a practical or economical point of view just shows the sort of people we're dealing with! And when confronted with the blindingly obvious problems they just handwave it away...)

Even JCB are looking into hydrogen for their construction vehicles as, unless their digger remains tethered like an NGE-Eva, they just can't do a full days' work on batteries alone. It also means they can leverage their existing infrastructure and engineering expertise, which is a hidden saving vs building entirely new factories and tooling - All this has an environmental and resource impact which is often hidden from the full picture.

The fundamental problem is we really need a breakthrough in electrical energy storage for EVs to really work for us without having to make major compromises - All the options we have now just have too many downsides.

 

 

[Yugguy1970]

I don't believe they are playing catch up

I think they were waiting to produce a very good EV.

I also don't see EV as the solution to all problems.

[AJones]

28 minutes ago, Cyker said:

The fundamental problem is we really need a breakthrough in electrical energy storage for EVs to really work for us without having to make major compromises - All the options we have now just have too many downsides.

I take a different view, I'd say the Battery technology is already good enough, what is needed is more charging infrastructure. EVs already have 60+kWh batteries, many now heading towards 70 or 80 kWh enough for 200+ miles. Rapid charging has progressed to the point that most can charge up in under half an hour.

What we haven't got is the charging infrastructure in place, it's too patchy and there's too many car parks or destinations without any or enough, but as ownership levels rise sharply it will follow and once you can charge-up easily wherever you go, the batteries will be fine.

[Cyker]

I do agree that the charging infrastructure needs to be improved - The current state of EV charger maintenance is disgraceful in this country - You just can't rely on them, and even EV fanatics admit you always need to have a set of contingency chargers on your route plan.

IMHO every major shopping place should have one in every bay, not these stupid built-for-purpose charging hubs that just waste land that could be used for something useful and basically trap you there with nothing to do for long periods of time.

However, even if the charging infrastructure was up to Nordic levels, that would not encourage me to get an EV - It's a nice sweetener, but basically irrelevant to me: I do NOT want to use public chargers because it wipes out one of the things proponents of EVs tout the most - Running costs.

My Mk4 is already equal/cheaper to run than most EVs if they only use public chargers, and this is before any sort of vehicle tax has been levied against them, and I'm sure when EVs hit a critical mass that will be coming.

The only way for an EV to be cheaper to run is to use home charging, and for that to work the range has to be enough for all of my normal use-cases, even in a worst-case scenario.

I think we'd almost be there with current EVs if they were improving efficiency, but newer EVs are actually getting worse! We were at a point where you could do 5 miles/kW with some of the Hyundais, but this has dropped to a rather pathetic 2-3miles/kW in newer ones, mainly because they're all hausfrauenpanzers, and it only seems to be getting worse!

And frankly, I don't want to be forced to be charging everywhere I go all the time - Part of the draw of an EV for me is not having to take time to go out of my way to refuel - I already resent having to go out of my way to do this with petrol, but that's unavoidable and at least it is less than once a week and only a couple of minutes. The thought of having to do it more frequently and for longer is a massive turnoff - I have better things to do with my life than waste more of it. Even with ICE cars, I generally use one of 2 petrol stations near my house almost exclusively as that works for me - I don't want to be dealing with the hassle of finding public charging in random locations on a regular basis.

At the end of the day, some of the main reasons of owning a car is to reduce travel times and increase convenience. Otherwise, why bother?