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Japan is holding back as the world rushes toward electric cars

• helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20210822084045/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/business/electric-cars-japan.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210822084045/https://www.nytim...
• jankotek 5y ago
  Japan has very good public transport, and does not really need cars. In america the question is why invest in carbon based transportation? It is "obsolete technology"! In japan cars are "obsolete"!
  • qubyte 5y ago
    This isn’t correct. My family live in the countryside and they’re more than an hour drive from the nearest rail station. There are buses but only a couple a day and they take a very long time. Their situation is pretty common.
    • tluyben2 5y ago
      Yeah, usually people who talk about good public transport in any country are talking about the (big) cities (probably the only place they visited). In cities in Portugal and Spain the public transport is good as well, but I lived outside those in both countries and you have no chance without a car if you have any urgency to get somewhere. A bus once a day (early morning) to pick up and once (early evening) to drop off; so if you rely on public transport, you lose 1 entire day if you go shopping.
  • kuroguro 5y ago
    While US has a lot more cars, per capita Japan isn't that far behind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...
  • wodenokoto 5y ago
    Nobody drives in Tokyo. There’s too much traffic.
    • pmyjavec 5y ago
      Less than half the population of Japan lives in Tokyo.
    • cehrlich 5y ago
      Those two sentences seem a bit contradictory
      • josephjrobison 5y ago
        “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” -Yogi Berra
      • jokoon 5y ago
        well if traffic is generated by 1% of the population and if that traffic is already very crowded, it's almost true. that would mean the streets are very narrow.
      • pb82 5y ago
        It's a quote from Futurama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIrlZSYB6tE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIrlZSYB6tE (Nobody drove in New York, there was too much traffic)
      • remir 5y ago
        That's the joke.
        • Dylan16807 5y ago
          It's not a great joke because it's easy for both of those things to be true as long as you don't try to read "nobody" literally.
  • asutekku 5y ago
    Totally inaccurate. While yes, you can get in densely populated areas almost anywhere near jy with a public transport, in countryside more and more lines are being stopped and car is a necessity
  • IkmoIkmo 5y ago
    Not really.. Japan ranks among the top 10-15 countries in terms of cars per capita.
• SimeVidas 5y ago
  You could probably ask the same question about digital vs. physical paperwork. Japan is old-fashioned.
  • hkmurakami 5y ago
    they accept "digital chops" now!
  • philliphaydon 5y ago
    Japan only just started converting from Tape to Digital for advertising material for broadcasters a couple of years ago, while tape is almost a thing of the past for the rest of the world. They were so concerned about businesses whose job it is to make the tapes that they literally built a new business to migrate these workers into new jobs.
    • phatfish 5y ago
      I think the concern this shows for workers livelihoods is something that much of the rest of the world could learn from. The implementation seems a bit inefficient though.
  • ekianjo 5y ago
    > Japan is old-fashioned. It's a little reductive. I'd rather say Japan is typically happy with local maximas instead of aiming at better, newer systems. Sometimes this means that Japan is stuck with obsolete technologies for what seems no good reason, some other times Japan is actually advanced in other ways that seem alien to the rest of the world (the rest of the World not using washlets to clean their butts seems old-fashioned to anyone living in Japan).
  • danjac 5y ago
    So is the US, it's like travelling back in time when you go over there and people still use checks and paper money.
    • majjam 5y ago
• belorn 5y ago
  > The rush into electric vehicles has been spurred in part by plans in China, in European nations and elsewhere to either mandate higher sales of electric cars in the coming years or to ban gasoline-burning vehicles. > Electric cars, Mr. Toyoda pointed out, are only as clean as the electricity that powers them and the factories where they are built. Japan, Toyota’s second-biggest market, plans to go carbon neutral by 2050, but as long as it continues to rely on fossil fuels to generate electricity, he said, the vehicles’ environmental benefits will remain a mirage. It should be noted that no country are planning to ban fossil fuel-burning power plants. The "carbon neutral" plans seems to be all plans by a few countries to export more renewable energy to surrounding countries than their own consumption of fossil fuels. The intention is still to continue rely on fossil fuels to generate electricity. For countries like my own that have a set date for both banning the sale of new gasoline-burning vehicles and a date for "carbon neutral", we need to set a date where no new fossil fueled power plants may be built. Preferable the same date. If there are no sales of new ones then the old ones will die off after a while.
  • goodcanadian 5y ago
    I am replying more to the line you quoted than to you, but even when the electricity is generated by fossil fuels, it is still generally more efficient than burning it in your car. The reason being that the power plant is always operating near peak efficiency (often over 50%) whereas the car engine rarely runs at peak efficiency (often under 30% on average), especially when in stop and go traffic. The electric car also benefits over time from improvements in the power plant mix. While you may be technically correct that no country yet has a plausible concrete plan to get to 0% fossil fuels in electric generation, most countries seem to be aiming to greatly increase their percentage of renewable generation.
    • siliconunit 5y ago
      yep having a centralized pollution source is much more controllable and optimizable, a breakthrough in emission filtering techology and in a short time span it can be effectively implemented vs decades long new cars renewal cycle... although replacing a tiny percentage of roofs with solar tiles would make for a robust and smooth transition in sunny countries at least..
• phatfish 5y ago
  Quote: "if Japan mandated a shift to all-electric vehicles — which have fewer components and are easier to manufacture — it could cost millions of jobs and destroy a whole ecosystem of auto parts suppliers." This is the real reason i think, Japan is scared of the reduced complexity of electric cars meaning that their engineering and supply chain advantages are diminished. Also having a large existing ecosystem built for fossil cars means it is harder for them to change. China is the big winner from that (and consumers from cheaper electric cars hopefully). This is also a reason I am not that fond of hybrids. It's a nice idea, but I would rather just have the electric engine that is less likely to have mechanical issues. The dirty power plants are not the real problem, because when when coal/gas power generation is eventually taken offline this immediately benefits all the electric cars that use that power. Getting people to switch to electric should be be main focus, and mandating that fossil engines will not be sold in the future is the best way to do this.
  • ekianjo 5y ago
    Electricity is far from cheap in Japan now that the nuclear power plants have all been shut down after 2011. That's also a factor that's not going to change anytime soon.
    • cbmuser 5y ago
      That’s fakenews. 10 plants are already back online, more are being prepared for restarts. > http://www.genanshin.jp/english/facility/map/ http://www.genanshin.jp/english/facility/map/
      • ekianjo 5y ago
        According to https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E5%8E%9F%E5%AD%90%E5%8A%9B%E7%99%BA%E9%9B%BB%E6%89%80 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E5..., only 8 are currently online, and that's out of 50 reactors. So yeah, nuclear is mostly shut down in Japan. Call me again when it reaches 50% of its former capacity instead of arguing small numbers.
• speedgoose 5y ago
  The first paragraph of the article is wrong. The first mass produced EV of this generation is not the Nissan Leaf but the Mitsubishi I-Miev.
  • amgutier 5y ago
    I was also surprised to see no mention of the (not quite mass produced) 1990s RAV4 EV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV
• cbmuser 5y ago
  Because Japan has a comprehensive hydrogen strategy with the plan to produce the hydrogen in high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. > https://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/energy_environment/global_warming/roadmap/innovation/thep.html https://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/energy_environment/glo... > https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.html https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.htm... For that matter, Japan brought its HTGR back online. > https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Japanese-gas-cooled-reactor-restarts https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Japanese-gas-coo...
  • _ph_ 5y ago
    Why not charge electric cars directly with the output of those reactors? Even if you get to higher efficiencies with the electrolysis, the overhead for handling and transporting hydrogen remains.
    • Youden 5y ago
      FCEV (fuel-cell electric vehicles) and BEV (battery-electric vehicles) are a tradeoff. I found [0] from an FCEV proponent to be really interesting (it's hard to find any comparisons that aren't obviously biased, if anyone can suggest one, I'd like to read it). My overall feeling is that BEVs and FCEVs will _both_ be used in the future. BEVs have some compelling advantages for short-distance travel like intercity commuting (like being able to charge them at home) while FCEVs have compelling advantages for long-distance travel, like higher range and efficiency and faster refueling. One interesting point from that report is that it addresses the widely-quoted point ([1] for example) that generator -> wheel efficiency for FCEVs is lower. While this is true, it stops just short of the metric we really care about: generator -> miles driven efficiency. A BEV has to spend a lot of its stored energy just moving its batteries around, while an FCEV uses a relatively light cylinder, so when you look at efficiency in terms of W/miles driven, the reduced weight of an FCEV can render it overall more efficient than a BEV. FCEVs are also a relatively young technology compared to batteries, so there's likely to be some substantial efficiency improvements still on the table. [0]: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2014/03/f9/thomas_fcev_vs_battery_evs.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2014/03/f9/thomas... [1]: https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/08/hydrogen-or-battery--that-is-the-question.html https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/08/hydroge...
• kh1 5y ago
  Aside from the points mentioned in the article, I see a lot of arguments about economy: Real income isn't rising while cars are getting more and more expensive. Just checked the price of new Leaf, and it costs the same as median 1 year salary (before tax). I think that explains why much gasoline "kei" cars (i.e. cars with less than 0.66 liter engine) are popular. They are much cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain, etc.
  • sokoloff 5y ago
    > Real income isn't rising while cars are getting more and more expensive. New cars have risen in price slower than overall inflation for decades (at least in the US). In real terms (comparing against flat real incomes), cars have gotten cheaper, not more expensive. https://images.app.goo.gl/evJLcuDezo1scu8e9 https://images.app.goo.gl/evJLcuDezo1scu8e9 In case that Google image link dies soon, here’s another, slightly different one that’s likely more durable: http://dvschroeder.blogspot.com/2013/08/college-tuition-has-outpaced-inflation.html?m=1 http://dvschroeder.blogspot.com/2013/08/college-tuition-has-...
    • lostapathy 5y ago
      Also worth factoring in is that cars last longer and with less maintenance than they did a decade or two ago. Electric cars should require even less maintenance. If today's car costs 50% more than a car from a decade ago, but it lasts more than twice is long, isn't it actually cheaper?
      • fomine3 5y ago
        Here in Japan, it's considered that it's good timing to replace car before 100,000km, 200,000km is too much, and 300,000km is really overkill. Maybe the BEV advantage isn't much attractive since such lower mileage and people run reliable Japanese car.
    • kh1 5y ago
      I meant arguments I see in Japan. In fact, car price movement is different in Japan, steadily rising since the 90s. [0] (Written in Japanese; The second chart is CPI-adjusted car prices) Also PPP against US has been declining. [1] [0] https://news.yahoo.co.jp/byline/fuwaraizo/20200519-00178444 https://news.yahoo.co.jp/byline/fuwaraizo/20200519-00178444 [1] https://knoema.com/atlas/Japan/topics/Economy/Inflation-and-Prices/Purchasing-power-parity https://knoema.com/atlas/Japan/topics/Economy/Inflation-and-...
• bryanlarsen 5y ago
  I don't see why Toyota or Honda should panic or rush now. They have a reputation for reliability that will ensure that when they do introduce electric vehicles they will sell well. They have experience with hybrid vehicles, which are essentially electric vehicles, so are unlikely to screw up the design. They have a reputation for logistical mastery, which appears to be a major challenge for other manufacturers during the transition. Presumably they have a good relationship with Panasonic, the premier battery supplier. So why jump in now and fight over 3% of the market, when they can jump in a few years time when it's a bigger market? If they plan on jumping in in volume in a few years they need to be securing battery supply now, but that wouldn't necessarily be visible to us.
  • TheParkShark 5y ago
    By waiting on the sidelines they risk being left behind by expanding technologies that they’re not a part of because they don’t believe in them like other companies. While a car is a car, an full BEV is not pretty much the same as an ICE vehicle. This is the same mistake that Toyota and others seem to be making.
  • foxfluff 5y ago
    Otoh there are locations where the share of electrics is much higher. Norway: "In total, 17,323 new passenger plug-in electric cars were registered in June, which is 128% more than a year ago and 84.9% of the total car market!" https://insideevs.com/news/517969/norway-plugin-car-sales-june2021/ https://insideevs.com/news/517969/norway-plugin-car-sales-ju... I can't say what's the best business strategy for auto makers but I feel like getting a strong foothold of the electric market early on could prove to be a good long term plan. And a lot of people, including me, are seriously considering an electric for their next car. My boss just got an electric. To me it seems like now would be a good time to have good products on the market. I'm looking at the Honda e but for its range & price, it looks more like a .. prototype/halo car than a real product for the consumer market.
• softwaredoug 5y ago
  I love my 96 Miata, and I keep saying the next car I want is an electric Miata. I can't think of a more "no-duh" car to be electric given its light weight... But maybe this explains why it hasn't happened yet. EDIT: TIL - next Miata generation to be electrified, sadly "by 2030" https://www.motor1.com/news/515992/next-gen-miata-hybrid-electric/ https://www.motor1.com/news/515992/next-gen-miata-hybrid-ele...
  • pcdoodle 5y ago
    Miata is the perfect car for electrification. Most sports car drivers would be okay with 200 mile range (less batteries) in exchange for light weight. I think the most I ever put on mine in a day (NA/R) was 120 miles, when parking it for the winter.
    • thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
      In the UK you have to travel to Scotland or Wales for the best roads. A small range makes that a lot more difficult.
    • bradlys 5y ago
      Problem is that sports car drivers don’t drive their cars with the expected EPA mpg. My car is rated for 18/25, I barely get 16mpg and I am still on the freeway quite a bit. I’m less aggressive than I used to be when I was getting 11-12mpg.
    • Rumudiez 5y ago
      Not for everyone – I like to take one of my motorcycles or my sports car out for drives 4-5 days a week and never drive less than 100 miles at a time, all back roads and never on the freeway. That means fueling up every time I ride my Ducati with its ridiculously small fuel tank.
  • iwintermute 5y ago
    there're conversions kits: https://youtu.be/VZws7kE3U5k https://youtu.be/VZws7kE3U5k
  • 5y ago
• papito 5y ago
  Japan is a weird mix of old and cutting edge. It's a country that worships traditions, but traditions need to be regularly questioned and challenged. Traditions prevent you from thinking out of the box and trying new things. There are examples of this in Japan - they are still trying hard to break away from using paper faxes.
• bouncycastle 5y ago
  A lot of people in Japan drive "kei cars". These are very compact, have tiny engines and are very simple and cheap. (Not to mention the registration incentives). Until electric cars become simple and cheap, they won't be able to compete with "kei cars".
  • antattack 5y ago
    Number one selling EV in China is a 'kei car': https://insideevs.com/news/525542/china-wuling-hongguang-sales-july2021/ https://insideevs.com/news/525542/china-wuling-hongguang-sal...
  • marto1 5y ago
    Not to mention bicycle usage, walking, etc. is quite widespread in urban environments.
  • baybal2 5y ago
    In a lot parts of the world, you cannot sell anything bigger, or more expensive than a Japanese kei car. Most of South Asia, and Africa drives Suzuki Altos, and Suzuki SX4s are considered there as big cars. It's definitely, definitely possible to make small, cheap cars on batteries. In fact, easier than bigger ones as power to weight, and driving range scale non-linearly with the car size. Big, heavy cars pay big premiums for not being able to use stamped parts in suspension for example. Small cars use stamped parts for almost everything. Heavier cars almost invariably have to use more sophisticated suspension designs, with more parts to provide an equal level of comfort to lighter cars of the same class. The amount of energy you lose in rolling resistance also varies non-linearly. You often can get an increase in driving efficiency if you have softer tires when you drive on less than idea roads. Etc, etc, etc
    • vagrantJin 5y ago
      > Most of South Asia, and Africa drives Suzuki Altos, and Suzuki SX4s are considered there as big cars. I saw an F150 once. The thing was a monstrosity that took a lane and a half on a suburban road. Why is a car that big?
• ransom1538 5y ago
  The 1986 Honda Civic: Regular Gasoline 46 combined city/highway MPG 42 city 51 highway 2.2 gals/100 miles. We have come so far. lol.
• 4e530344963049 5y ago
  https://trimread.org/articles/326 https://trimread.org/articles/326
• Magnusmaster 5y ago
  The world isn't rushing towards electric cars. USA, Europe and China are. The rest of the world isn't switching to electric any time soon, because electric cars are expensive and billions need to be invested in infrastructure to make them viable.
  • lastofthemojito 5y ago
    I might even say "Urban/Coastal USA, Northern/Western Europe and China" instead of USA, Europe and China. I expect to see the USA and Euro auto markets to become more fractured as climate change deniers, big government resisters, and just folks who romanticize the "good ol days" continue to buy ICE cars. Heck, it's already fragmented - I just looked at the new car inventory for an LA-area Chevy dealer. They have 65 ICE pickups, 11 ICE SUVs, 7 ICE sports cars and 29 EVs, so about 25% EVs, well above the national average. Then I looked at a rural South Dakota Chevy dealer's inventory - 11 ICE pickups, 7 ICE SUVs and that's it. Zero EVs on offer there. It might not be fractured in a regulatory sense, just that manufacturers typically sell their EVs in one sort of place and their gas-powered vehicles in another, and dealers only stock what they know they'll sell.
  • tuatoru 5y ago
    Billions would need to be invested to replace and expand fossil fuel infrastructure too. More billions would be needed for hydrogen. It's just a matter of who gets the government subsidies/favorable tax treatment, cynically. When batteries get cheap enough and PV arrays have been sufficiently tropicalized, there will be some switching in the rest of the world. It'd happen faster without fossil fuel interests being able to get the subsidies, though.
• jmnicolas 5y ago
  I wonder if there are enough rare earth materials available to satisfy the world demand for electric cars. There was an article recently where a British scientist declared that to reach just Great Britain 2050 objectives they would need to absorb most (or sometimes many times more) of the world production of rare earth and other metals. If this is true, and the UE stays dogmatic about it, I suspect that by 2040 driving a car will be reserved to only the most privileged.
  • tedsanders 5y ago
    It's a good question that's been asked for years. I'm not aware of any rare earth elements used in lithium batteries. My understanding is that lithium itself is quite common and there should be enough for everyone to drive an electric car, but it's still an open question as to what future reserves will be discovered and how steeply the supply curve will rise with more investment and technology. E.g.: https://medium.com/batterybits/is-there-enough-lithium-to-make-all-the-batteries-c3a522c01498 https://medium.com/batterybits/is-there-enough-lithium-to-ma... Perhaps a bigger concern than lithium is cobalt, but there are cobalt-free chemistries so I don't believe it's a blocker. I have no idea what you mean by cars in 2040 will only be for the most privileged. There are cars rolling off assembly lines today that will still be on the road in 2040.
    • jmnicolas 5y ago
      It's a pity I can't find the article I was referring to, so I can't answer with certainty, but there was a lot of rare materials needed just to satisfy GB goal. > I have no idea what you mean by cars in 2040 will only be for the most privileged. There are cars rolling off assembly lines today that will still be on the road in 2040. Most of the cars sold now in the EU are not electric. If the materials are as rare as claimed in the article, it won't be possible to equip everybody with an EV.
      • tedsanders 5y ago
        I did my PhD on rare earth compounds. Rare earth elements are generally not used in lithium ion batteries. The metals most people worry about are cobalt and lithium. Rare earths are elements like lanthanum or ytterbium. Rare != rare earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element (Or perhaps you're thinking about electric motors, which can use rare earths like neodymium.)
• HWR_14 5y ago
  I imagine that a big reason is that it's harder to charge enough plug ins in Japan. Japan produces 60% the electricity per person as the US and has areas with huge densities already. Going to a plug in system vs. a hybrid may not make sense in Tokyo. And then it becomes one of those "it won't work here, but when I think about it I forget to include the word here".
• shadilay 5y ago
  I never understood Japans reluctance to adopt EV's given the country's lack of fossil fuel production.
  • golemiprague 5y ago
    How that going to change anything? they still need fuels to create electricity and since the tsunami they are a bit reluctant relying on nuclear power. In some way hydrogen is more viable solution for them since they can manufacture it themselves rather than importing it
• Animats 5y ago
  "Japanese automakers are “hanging on by their fingernails,” he added, and if Japan mandated a shift to all-electric vehicles — which have fewer components and are easier to manufacture — it could cost millions of jobs and destroy a whole ecosystem of auto parts suppliers." - Toyota CEO. They're terrified. China has all those low-cost electric city cars.
• dmix 5y ago
  This really only holds if you think governments have to force people to use electric cars by x date to be competitive. Investing in the infrastructure needed for mass adoption of fully electric cars is the true national-level barrier. And that's going to take a long time. We've only just scratched the surface in how much charging power it's going to require... for ex: the vast majority of people living in apartment buildings will be left out without massive private investment in their parking lots. Otherwise I'm pretty confident that Toyota, Honda, Nissan, etc can figure out how to make entire fleets of fully electric cars when the time is right.
• morpheos137 5y ago
  Electric cars are dumb. There I said it. The NY times seems to have gaslit itself into thinking its opinions are reality. Battery power cars are not new technology. They are over 100 years old.
• coldtea 5y ago
  It's a fool's errand anyway. Even if we could mandate all-electric tomorrow, it wouldn't make sense or be feasible for quite a while... At the moment there's neither the capacity (or materials available atm) to make enough batteries, nor the infrastructure in eletry production, delivery, and charging, nor the money lying around to buy them (outside the West), to replace the 1 billion cars all around the world in any short timespan (say 20 years)...
  • iknowstuff 5y ago
    That's not what a fool's errand means.
    • coldtea 5y ago
      Isn't it? Because the dictionary says: "a task or activity that has no hope of success." So let me double down: rushing to electric cars without having the capacity/infrastructure (and without the feasibility to have it even for decades) is a fool's errand.
      • zizee 5y ago
        It would be more of a fools errand to try and halt (or slow) the inevitable world-wide transition to electric cars. Japan were world leaders in electric drive trains with hybrids like the Prius. A perfect way to gracefully transition from ICE to all electric. This was almost 35 years ago (1997). But they squandered that lead by focussing on the dead end technology of hydrogen. Why put all your eggs in the one basket?
        • coldtea 5y ago
          >It would be more of a fools errand to try and halt (or slow) the inevitable world-wide transition to electric cars. I don't even see that as inevitable...
  • tuatoru 5y ago
    Cars have an average usable lifespan of around 20 years (treated well), so those billion cars are going to be replaced anyway. The question is, what with?
• newbie2020 5y ago
  Thanks. Electric cars cause so much stress cause you’ve got to actively manage the battery life and where you’re going. That is an additional stressor I don’t need in my life
  • erpellan 5y ago
    When the first ICE cars arrived they had to buy fuel from pharmacies and general stores and probably had the exact same anxiety. Electricity is ubiquitous. Pretty soon charging points will be everywhere, with the added bonus that you start every morning with a full 250+ miles of range.
  • theluketaylor 5y ago
    Honestly, the first couple weeks of ownership are like that. Then you realize you can't possibly use 400 km range doing daily tasks and you don't even glance at the range anymore. Plugging in becomes part of the routine like closing the garage. Even road trips are low stress in EVs with good range. The car navigation adds stops and you can just blindly follow. I manage the stops more actively, but I find it fun (I also optimized furl economy in my gas cars too, so same thinking really). You could easily do a 1000 km day without thinking about range once, just follow the directions.
• zizee 5y ago
  It amazes me how many naysayers are always on these threads about electric vehicles. It seems to me that the transition is inevitable. Slowly but surely electric cars are becoming cheaper and more capable. It is really hard to imagine that they will not soon be cheaper than ICE cars. But they just seem so much more convenient and nicer to be around that diesel and petrol cars. No more breathing in exhaust fumes! No more petrol stations! Less servicing! For a site that supposedly caters to forward thinking technologists, there sure are a lot of people refusing to see the obvious conclusion to the current trend.
  • ffggvv 5y ago
    yeah just breathing in the coal plumes used to be power the increased load on the already unstable energy grid
    • pornel 5y ago
      Large-scale power plants burn fossil fuels more efficiently than ICE engines. Electricity transmission and charging losses aren't that big, so I'd expect it to be still a net emissions win for EVs. Plus they don't emit NOx right next to you. If your grid sucks, consider installing solar panels and charging your car yourself. Lithium batteries are already used to aid power grids. Mass adoption of EVs and smart grid could actually help by providing storage for wind and solar.
      • ffggvv 5y ago
        what about hybrid engines?
• fomine3 5y ago
  Li-ion battery is the very big and expensive key component for current BEV. But there's no chance Japan to win cheap Li-ion race for China/EU/US because it needs much energies and materials. Energies need to be clean for the future exporting. Japan is now in bad situation for clean cheap energies, and no materials. So they also bet other techs, but I wish Toyota bets more for Li-ion BEV now.
• bradknowles 5y ago
  So, my situation is more personal. In our neighborhood, there is a history of vehicles being parked on the street that get broken into, damaged, or stolen. This happens much more frequently with more expensive cars. Since our garage is not big enough for two cars, that means whatever I have, will be parked in our driveway. And thus vulnerable. This means I can’t have a Tesla or Lexus, or any other kind of more expensive vehicle, even if I could afford it. The best I can hope for is a nice Toyota or Subaru. Don’t ask about Nissan — you don’t want to get me started on that rant. Since Toyota and Subaru don’t make any decent BEVs and they don’t appear to be likely to do so anytime within the next decade, the next best thing I can hope for is a good PHEV.
• mikewarot 5y ago
  Half of their nation is 50 Hz, the other half 60 Hz, and the interlink between the two is stretched to its limit. It would be crazy to dump huge new electrical loads onto their grid, especially post Fukushima, with the increase reliance on non-renewables.
• CryptoPunk 5y ago
  It makes sense for Japan to pursue this strategy from a practical perspective. There are numerous areas of the economy where the national government could focus on fostering a disruptive domestic industry, and many with just as much of a potential positive impact on the environment and humanity as electric cars. So why instead of choosing one of those other areas, it would choose electric cars, and help accelerate the development of the one technology that would disrupt its most profitable industry?
• sampling 5y ago
  Toyota have their head in the sand. Their roundtable in Dec 2020 shows them cherry-picking facts, stating that though they have a lower rate of electrification than Norway, they have a higher volume of EVs on the road in Japan. However this fails to take into account the per capita stat, with a population of 126m versus 5.4m, Toyota is once again manipulating the stats source: https://toyotatimes.jp/en/insidetoyota/111.html https://toyotatimes.jp/en/insidetoyota/111.html