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I hope Toyota wins this. They have sound manufacturing principles and have demonstrated them for decades and caused radical shifts in the way cars are made acro
by leoh 6y ago
I hope Toyota wins this. They have sound manufacturing principles and have demonstrated them for decades and caused radical shifts in the way cars are made across the world — including in the US and in Europe. Much of what Western carmakers learned from them is articulated in the exceptional book "The Machine That Changed the World" — which Musk has almost certainly read, despite being written in 1990 (there are clear sections that seem to incredibly presciently predict Tesla's strategy — exceptional entertainment value in the car, self-driving capabilities, and electric engines).
Toyota employs far more people, produces cars that are incredibly low-key yet functional, and is backed by robust teams that work incredibly well together, as opposed to Tesla, which is generally functioning okay, but operates largely at the whims of Musk, much as Ford did back in the day. Which works for a while, but is not a sustainable mode for innovation. Apple is a semi-notable exception to this rule, of course, so we'll see what happens. But again, rooting for Toyota.
- chmaynard 6y agoBack before the Model 3 was announced, I was hoping that Tesla and Toyota would form a partnership to build and service a mass-market EV. From a purely business point of view, I think this would have been a huge win for both companies. Despite the success of the Prius, Toyota made a decision to focus exclusively on fuel cell technology and wasted ten precious years. After Toyota lost that bet, Tesla's superior EV technology could have helped Toyota catch up with the competition. Tesla had no experience with the formidable supply chain and production issues involved in building high-quality cars on a large scale. This is one of Toyota's great strengths. Unfortunately, there seemed to be bad blood between Toyota and Tesla management. I suspect this may have prevented consideration of such a partnership.
- bob29 6y agoThere was a Toyota and Tesla partnership in 2010, producing a small number of RAV4 EVs, combining Tesla's battery pack and electric drivetain with Toyota's chassis. I haven't found many details outside of wikipedia, not sure the nature of the partnership. If it was about Toyota getting tax credits, Tesla testing an EV drivetrain without having to engineer an entire vehicle platform, or something else.
- r00fus 6y agoI still think there’s space for both companies but I hope EVs win. ICE car manufacturers have coasted for decades on blissful ignorance of externalities and 2020 just saw the world on fire across the globe. Coincidence? No, I don’t think so. People know our fossil fuel obsession has cost us dearly. Plus EVs have much better maintenance profiles other than just saving money in gas.
- ppf 6y agoI don't get the obsession with how EVs will change the world. Cars represent a fairly small percentage of our energy usage, and EVs take significantly more energy to manufacture. Do you also have electrically-powered domestic heating and hot water? It's the same argument.
- aeternum 6y agoEVs could help because they give each home a huge battery. Ability to store energy on a large scale could be the answer to making solar and wind viable as primary energy sources. Many homes use gas-powered heating and hot water because it used to be cheaper. It's inefficient for power plants to burn gas, turn it into electricity + waste heat vs. homes just turning the gas directly into heat. That likely won't be the case for long since renewable electricity sources should drive down the cost of electricity.
- jerkstate 6y agoAre there any bidirectional chargers that make use of the battery to power the home yet?
- dzhiurgis 6y agoIn Japan - yes. Even hydrogen cars have a Chademo port hidden somewhere. First Tesla's had that built in, but found no one were using it.
- ppf 6y agoIt's a nice, techie-sounding idea, but there isn't enough lithium in the world to make that many batteries. It also has the downside that most people with cars expect to use them daily, and not find they have been depleted while in use as grid storage. There is also the related issue of excessive charge cycle wear on those batteries. The energy harvested from a wind turbine (or solar panel) is quite small compared to the energy required to make that generator, when compared to the equivalent figures for a fossil fuel plant. I just don't buy the idea that renewables are cheaper sources - just looking at the energy returned on energy invested, power produced will be more expensive. That's ok, because us humans should learn how to use drastically less energy in our daily lives, but it doesn't help to pretend that it will make energy cheaper.