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This is spin. Toyota is very late to EV’s having bet a lot on Hydrogen. As you will see this “next-gen” battery will be in development for at least another 5 ye

by mcot2 6y ago

This is spin. Toyota is very late to EV’s having bet a lot on Hydrogen. As you will see this “next-gen” battery will be in development for at least another 5 years and probably much longer before the $/kwh is at parity with lithium ion. Thats also comparing against todays Lithium Ion batteries forget about any advancements happening in the next several years.

chrisseaton 6y ago
> Toyota is very late to EV’s Huh? Didn't Toyota define EVs in the 2000s with the hybrid Prius? It became iconic, broke into practical use and the mass market, and led the way for things like the Tesla. They were innovators and disrupters, not late to it. Toyota worked on EVs when they were unfashionable, impractical, and unlikely. And they made them work in spite of all that. Now people are talking about them like they're EV laggards. Madness.
- ianai 6y ago
  Agree. They just didn't build it solely around one big battery without any ICE engine. Look, if you live in an apartment it most likely is impossible to charge and own an EV. That’s a huge market segment to not address. They can all comfortably buy hybrids though.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    I don't get why range extenders aren't more popular. A little motorbike-size engine that you can fuel from any petrol station on the planet that can charge the battery overnight, not connected to the drive train and running at optimal RPM for the alternator.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Because electricity is ubiquitous. It’s literally everywhere. Some states have mandated apartment complexes accompanied EV owners, and with the Biden administration, I expect federal standards in short order. It’s a policy problem, not a technology problem. Tesla has deployed an enormous fast charging network on their own dime, so it’s reasonable more can be done faster with government support (including mandating and funding EV chargers for apartment dwellers). No one wants to charge their EV from a Honda generator at their apartment complex. If you’re a Tesla owner in an apartment with no apartment parking EV charger access, you pop over to a Supercharger once a week (which, while suboptimal, is equivalent to gas stations until EV chargers are more widely available).
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        Is that an idealistic statement, or a practical one? Yes an electricity supply is available everywhere most people would want. Practical charging facilities, however, are not. I frequently find myself in situations where I can get petrol very easily but cannot practically plug in anywhere. With a range extender I could run a very efficient little engine and reduce my emissions today.
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        My statements are pragmatic, based on the uptake of Tesla EVs in the marketplace versus consumers who want to drag a generator around with them to charge.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        I quite often drive beyond the range of an EV, to a place where there are no chargers at all. If I could just have a little range extender motor that I could put petrol in and use to charge overnight, I could fully commit to EVs right now forever. But I can't yet. That little bit of pragmatism would make it all work. It'd even fit in the front cargo space of a Tesla!
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        But you can! Get a portable Honda generator [1] and plug into it with a mobile connector to charge (my Tesla can charge from a 120V 15a circuit, or a 220v dryer outlet). If that doesn’t provide you enough charge, find a surplus generator on a trailer [2] and haul it behind you with a hitch. If it’s a diesel, you can even run it on vegetable oil instead of petroleum. When you’re not going to the boonies, you’re fully electric without dragging a generator with you, and can rely on charging stations. [1] https://powerequipment.honda.com/generators https://powerequipment.honda.com/generators [2] https://www.ebay.com/b/Industrial-Trailer-Mounted-Generators/106437/bn_1519997 https://www.ebay.com/b/Industrial-Trailer-Mounted-Generators...
        6y ago
    - ianai 6y ago
      I agree. Those generators should also be optimized for optimal power output for exactly what the batteries need. It’d probably be more efficient than a larger engine in a traditional machine. Mazda is working on a model with a range extender. BMW just took them out of their models, but they’re not quite the same segment.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > They were innovators and disrupters, not late to it. Until they focused too much on where the puck was and not enough on where the puck is going to be. Toyota OWNED the hybrid market. They are barely part of the EV market now.
  - lettergram 6y ago
    Tbh I never want to own a full EV. Many in the suburbs or country can’t afford to wait 20 min at a charging station. Many of us like the idea of EV, but also drive 100-200 miles a day or in cold weather or mountains, etc (all of which reduces the range of EV)
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > Many of us like the idea of EV, but also drive 100-200 miles a day. Isn't the range of a Tesla already well over that? What holds you back if your range is only 200 miles? You can charge at home can't you?
      - lettergram 6y ago
        No you can’t that’s the “range” if it’s sunny Southern California on flat terrain. And even that might only be 160 miles. people regularly drive to cities which is like 300-400 miles round trip. They need to pull 1 ton in a truck. There’s snow on the road and no charging station, do you want to freeze? I’m not saying we won’t get there, just saying right now hybrids (which I actually own) are the only real option for people outside of a metropolitan area (or if they just want to drive local, which is fine). Pacifica hybrids are great, they have 30 mile full battery power. Then switch to gas. I drive locally 90% is the time, but can still drive to the closest major city 160 miles away
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        > people regularly drive to cities which is like 300-400 miles round trip A second ago you only needed 100-200 miles a day? > Many of us like the idea of EV, but also drive 100-200 miles a day.
- jacquesl 6y ago
  They were focusing on hydrogen cells and this slowed them down as the EV market took off.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    I don't think Tesla would have been possible if Toyota hadn't blasted the way for them. Before Toyota's work people didn't think any kind of EV was practical.
    - gpapilion 6y ago
      I’m not sure Toyota would have invested in the super charging network. I’m also not sure a Tesla would have been good without it. If you want to do a road trip in an EV Tesla is often the best/only option.
    - btilly 6y ago
      The classic business book on disruptive innovation, produced before the Prius existed, shows that people who cared actually knew better. EVs were not viable until battery technology improved enough. Batteries have been improving about 7%/year. Based on those figures from the 1990s and an estimate of minimum acceleration, range, and recharge time to be acceptable on the road, EVs were predicted to become viable for the mass market around 2020. Guess what. Those trends held and EVs became viable for the mass market around 2020. :-)
- btilly 6y ago
  Hybrids and EVs are very different. And what you need to do to make one does not translate very well to the other. Before either hybrids or EVs were commercially viable, The Innovator's Dilemma included a case study done for the car industry on the switch to electric. The case study concluded that, based on the history of disruptive innovation, the requirements of driving, and the trends in batteries, electric vehicles would become economically viable around 2020. It also concluded that traditional manufacturers would pursue hybrids but would have trouble moving into the EV market. As a prior correlated example, shortly before steam became competitive for trans-oceanic travel, sailboat manufacturers briefly produced hybrid sail/steam ships. In so doing they made acceptable compromises to sail to allow for the reliability of steam near land. However none of the companies that did that survived into the steamship era. In fact every detail of that case study has happened as predicted except that they predicted that EVs would start at the bottom of the market and move up, while Tesla started at the top and moved down. However the jury is still out on who will wind up winning the EV market - Tesla or one of the Chinese or Indian manufacturers who produce low-end EVs in higher quantity than Tesla. If it is China or India, then that case study will work out in every detail. But the point remains. Designing an electric engine whose job is to be a boost to a gasoline engine, compromising both power and range, is not on a natural technological path to a pure electric vehicle. And history suggests that companies that go that route will have trouble when pressure comes to switch to the more natural technology. Therefore Toyota's migration to hybrids is not only not a move to EVs, but it was both predicted and is suggestive that they would have trouble moving to pure EVs.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    (Disclaimer: I hold very long positions on TSLA.) > Tesla or one of the Chinese or Indian manufacturers who produce low-end EVs in higher quantity than Tesla I don't see Tesla ever becoming a gargantuan multinational carmaker giant like Toyota or GM - it's just not in their corporate ethos. I compare Tesla to Apple: they're technological leaders who set the benchmarks (and own the patents) but who also keep a relatively small and simple product matrix. There's loads of computer form-factors that Apple doesn't produce products for (e.g. rugged laptops, industrial control computers, "affordable" computers, and so on) - the demand for these products which are typically lower-margin are met by other manufacturers and I see Tesla being fine with this: let Toyota, GM, etc stress over meeting demand for a sub-$30k BEV while making hardly any profit. I think the importance of self-driving / autonomous cars should also be considered. GM has Cruise, but Toyota, Ford, Honda, etc are either uninterested for some reason, or hoping Google or Apple will license them their Waymo or Titan system, or playing catchup very, very slowly - given Tesla is looking like they'll make their FSD an open-beta this year (and a public 1.0 release before the year's end, I hope!) that further widens their moat and with their current (overinflated, I admit) valuation that could see them buy-out a smaller carmarker to cement themselves should anything detrimental happen in the medium-term.
- novok 6y ago
  Sometimes your blackberry and then calcify like blackberry.
tuatoru 6y ago
I agree. Toyota is reacting (woefully late) to EU announcements about banning or restricting the sale of ICE vehicles starting around 2030, with PR spin about a magical new technology that isn't even in pilot project stage. Those (magical new untested technologies) always turn out to be manufacturable, reliable, durable and profitable, of course.
- denimnerd42 6y ago
  Don't the 2030 regs include hybrids which Toyota is the master.
  - addicted 6y ago
    Yes, I don’t think the response is to regulations, but the fact that EVs have taken off while the Japanese carmakers have been placing massive bets on hydrogen which does not look as promising.
FieryTransition 6y ago
Spin is believing that no one tried to bring electric vehicles to market before Musk and had been working on the problem for a while

by mcot2 6y ago

chrisseaton 6y ago

> Toyota is very late to EV’s Huh? Didn't Toyota define EVs in the 2000s with the hybrid Prius? It became iconic, broke into practical use and the mass market, and led the way for things like the Tesla. They were innovators and disrupters, not late to it. Toyota worked on EVs when they were unfashionable, impractical, and unlikely. And they made them work in spite of all that. Now people are talking about them like they're EV laggards. Madness.

ianai 6y ago
Agree. They just didn't build it solely around one big battery without any ICE engine. Look, if you live in an apartment it most likely is impossible to charge and own an EV. That’s a huge market segment to not address. They can all comfortably buy hybrids though.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  I don't get why range extenders aren't more popular. A little motorbike-size engine that you can fuel from any petrol station on the planet that can charge the battery overnight, not connected to the drive train and running at optimal RPM for the alternator.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Because electricity is ubiquitous. It’s literally everywhere. Some states have mandated apartment complexes accompanied EV owners, and with the Biden administration, I expect federal standards in short order. It’s a policy problem, not a technology problem. Tesla has deployed an enormous fast charging network on their own dime, so it’s reasonable more can be done faster with government support (including mandating and funding EV chargers for apartment dwellers). No one wants to charge their EV from a Honda generator at their apartment complex. If you’re a Tesla owner in an apartment with no apartment parking EV charger access, you pop over to a Supercharger once a week (which, while suboptimal, is equivalent to gas stations until EV chargers are more widely available).
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Is that an idealistic statement, or a practical one? Yes an electricity supply is available everywhere most people would want. Practical charging facilities, however, are not. I frequently find myself in situations where I can get petrol very easily but cannot practically plug in anywhere. With a range extender I could run a very efficient little engine and reduce my emissions today.
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        My statements are pragmatic, based on the uptake of Tesla EVs in the marketplace versus consumers who want to drag a generator around with them to charge.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        I quite often drive beyond the range of an EV, to a place where there are no chargers at all. If I could just have a little range extender motor that I could put petrol in and use to charge overnight, I could fully commit to EVs right now forever. But I can't yet. That little bit of pragmatism would make it all work. It'd even fit in the front cargo space of a Tesla!
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        But you can! Get a portable Honda generator [1] and plug into it with a mobile connector to charge (my Tesla can charge from a 120V 15a circuit, or a 220v dryer outlet). If that doesn’t provide you enough charge, find a surplus generator on a trailer [2] and haul it behind you with a hitch. If it’s a diesel, you can even run it on vegetable oil instead of petroleum. When you’re not going to the boonies, you’re fully electric without dragging a generator with you, and can rely on charging stations. [1] https://powerequipment.honda.com/generators https://powerequipment.honda.com/generators [2] https://www.ebay.com/b/Industrial-Trailer-Mounted-Generators/106437/bn_1519997 https://www.ebay.com/b/Industrial-Trailer-Mounted-Generators...
        6y ago
  - ianai 6y ago
    I agree. Those generators should also be optimized for optimal power output for exactly what the batteries need. It’d probably be more efficient than a larger engine in a traditional machine. Mazda is working on a model with a range extender. BMW just took them out of their models, but they’re not quite the same segment.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> They were innovators and disrupters, not late to it. Until they focused too much on where the puck was and not enough on where the puck is going to be. Toyota OWNED the hybrid market. They are barely part of the EV market now.
- lettergram 6y ago
  Tbh I never want to own a full EV. Many in the suburbs or country can’t afford to wait 20 min at a charging station. Many of us like the idea of EV, but also drive 100-200 miles a day or in cold weather or mountains, etc (all of which reduces the range of EV)
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > Many of us like the idea of EV, but also drive 100-200 miles a day. Isn't the range of a Tesla already well over that? What holds you back if your range is only 200 miles? You can charge at home can't you?
    - lettergram 6y ago
      No you can’t that’s the “range” if it’s sunny Southern California on flat terrain. And even that might only be 160 miles. people regularly drive to cities which is like 300-400 miles round trip. They need to pull 1 ton in a truck. There’s snow on the road and no charging station, do you want to freeze? I’m not saying we won’t get there, just saying right now hybrids (which I actually own) are the only real option for people outside of a metropolitan area (or if they just want to drive local, which is fine). Pacifica hybrids are great, they have 30 mile full battery power. Then switch to gas. I drive locally 90% is the time, but can still drive to the closest major city 160 miles away
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        > people regularly drive to cities which is like 300-400 miles round trip A second ago you only needed 100-200 miles a day? > Many of us like the idea of EV, but also drive 100-200 miles a day.
jacquesl 6y ago
They were focusing on hydrogen cells and this slowed them down as the EV market took off.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  I don't think Tesla would have been possible if Toyota hadn't blasted the way for them. Before Toyota's work people didn't think any kind of EV was practical.
  - gpapilion 6y ago
    I’m not sure Toyota would have invested in the super charging network. I’m also not sure a Tesla would have been good without it. If you want to do a road trip in an EV Tesla is often the best/only option.
  - btilly 6y ago
    The classic business book on disruptive innovation, produced before the Prius existed, shows that people who cared actually knew better. EVs were not viable until battery technology improved enough. Batteries have been improving about 7%/year. Based on those figures from the 1990s and an estimate of minimum acceleration, range, and recharge time to be acceptable on the road, EVs were predicted to become viable for the mass market around 2020. Guess what. Those trends held and EVs became viable for the mass market around 2020. :-)
btilly 6y ago
Hybrids and EVs are very different. And what you need to do to make one does not translate very well to the other. Before either hybrids or EVs were commercially viable, The Innovator's Dilemma included a case study done for the car industry on the switch to electric. The case study concluded that, based on the history of disruptive innovation, the requirements of driving, and the trends in batteries, electric vehicles would become economically viable around 2020. It also concluded that traditional manufacturers would pursue hybrids but would have trouble moving into the EV market. As a prior correlated example, shortly before steam became competitive for trans-oceanic travel, sailboat manufacturers briefly produced hybrid sail/steam ships. In so doing they made acceptable compromises to sail to allow for the reliability of steam near land. However none of the companies that did that survived into the steamship era. In fact every detail of that case study has happened as predicted except that they predicted that EVs would start at the bottom of the market and move up, while Tesla started at the top and moved down. However the jury is still out on who will wind up winning the EV market - Tesla or one of the Chinese or Indian manufacturers who produce low-end EVs in higher quantity than Tesla. If it is China or India, then that case study will work out in every detail. But the point remains. Designing an electric engine whose job is to be a boost to a gasoline engine, compromising both power and range, is not on a natural technological path to a pure electric vehicle. And history suggests that companies that go that route will have trouble when pressure comes to switch to the more natural technology. Therefore Toyota's migration to hybrids is not only not a move to EVs, but it was both predicted and is suggestive that they would have trouble moving to pure EVs.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  (Disclaimer: I hold very long positions on TSLA.) > Tesla or one of the Chinese or Indian manufacturers who produce low-end EVs in higher quantity than Tesla I don't see Tesla ever becoming a gargantuan multinational carmaker giant like Toyota or GM - it's just not in their corporate ethos. I compare Tesla to Apple: they're technological leaders who set the benchmarks (and own the patents) but who also keep a relatively small and simple product matrix. There's loads of computer form-factors that Apple doesn't produce products for (e.g. rugged laptops, industrial control computers, "affordable" computers, and so on) - the demand for these products which are typically lower-margin are met by other manufacturers and I see Tesla being fine with this: let Toyota, GM, etc stress over meeting demand for a sub-$30k BEV while making hardly any profit. I think the importance of self-driving / autonomous cars should also be considered. GM has Cruise, but Toyota, Ford, Honda, etc are either uninterested for some reason, or hoping Google or Apple will license them their Waymo or Titan system, or playing catchup very, very slowly - given Tesla is looking like they'll make their FSD an open-beta this year (and a public 1.0 release before the year's end, I hope!) that further widens their moat and with their current (overinflated, I admit) valuation that could see them buy-out a smaller carmarker to cement themselves should anything detrimental happen in the medium-term.
novok 6y ago
Sometimes your blackberry and then calcify like blackberry.

tuatoru 6y ago

I agree. Toyota is reacting (woefully late) to EU announcements about banning or restricting the sale of ICE vehicles starting around 2030, with PR spin about a magical new technology that isn't even in pilot project stage. Those (magical new untested technologies) always turn out to be manufacturable, reliable, durable and profitable, of course.

denimnerd42 6y ago
Don't the 2030 regs include hybrids which Toyota is the master.
- addicted 6y ago
  Yes, I don’t think the response is to regulations, but the fact that EVs have taken off while the Japanese carmakers have been placing massive bets on hydrogen which does not look as promising.

FieryTransition 6y ago

Spin is believing that no one tried to bring electric vehicles to market before Musk and had been working on the problem for a while