5 ms·

Toyota to spend $13.6bn on battery development in effort to win electric battle

35 points by mardiyah 5y ago

ximeng 5y ago
https://archive.is/iMh1A https://archive.is/iMh1A https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28459727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28459727 Previously
7thaccount 5y ago
Hydrogen not going well?
- dimitar 5y ago
  From TA: "the company has consistently argued that a longer-term fix for global warming should be a mix of hybrids, EVs and hydrogen-powered vehicles instead of a single bet on battery-powered cars." I think this is probably a good call if they want to play the long game. Some places will simply fail to create the infrastructure for EV and that's where hybrids come in the short run. EVs will take off and hydrogen is in theory superior to batteries for range and space, has a huge potential they probably don't want to miss out.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    Hydrogen has a much bigger hurdle: infrastructure. EVs need the same power lines that every country uses. Hydrogen (and natural gas, and oil, for that matter) require a second parallel set of infrastructure. That makes a big difference as far as appeal. If I'm India, I'd rather have a beefier electrical system than maintain an electrical system AND a hydrogen pipeline system.
    - tomtimtall 5y ago
      > I'd rather have a beefier electrical system than maintain an electrical system AND a hydrogen pipeline system. Sure, but so what? India is not dependent on you personally maintaining a hydrogen infrastructure and this narrow-minded “there can be only one way” would not just have us staying on fossil fuels because “why maintain both gas AND electric?” It wouldn’t even have us providing both gas and diesel by the same argument.
      - thehappypm 5y ago
        It's not a narrow-minded approach, it's a cost-oriented approach. If you want renewables to win, cost is EVERYTHING. Electric infrastructure is not net new. It's plug and play. That's a massive, massive benefit.
    - wil421 5y ago
      Lots of buses, delivery vehicles, and trash trucks around me have propane stickers. Not sure where the fueling station around me but I used to live 5 minutes from one in my old house. All they need it storage and trucks to supply them. Same as gas or propane. Lots of people in the country get their natural gas delivered and it’s no big deal.
      - aitchnyu 5y ago
        Can home/apartment equipment fill a gas tank of a vehicle?
        wil421 5y ago
        Yes if you have space for a tank. Plenty of trucks have gas tanks you can put in the bed for fueling diesel equipment. Lots of farms also have above ground gas tanks to fill farm equipment. Not sure it would be legal in a place like NYC or Manhattan but I’m sure it’s legal in more spread out cities like LA.
    - letitbeirie 5y ago
      > Hydrogen has a much bigger hurdle: infrastructure It has an even bigger hurdle than that: direct solar water-to-hydrogen isn't scalable (yet) and hydrogen is a petrochemical until it is.
      - zardo 5y ago
        Thats not a hurdle, that's the reason to pursue hydrogen, it maintains the market positions of existing oil companies.
- hkarthik 5y ago
  It's unclear if hydrogen had serious R&D problems, or just the go to market approach for hydrogen cars was flawed. Hydrogen needed a Tesla-like company to strip away everything that made a car a car, and rip away all the legacy at once. Getting away from ICE requires starting from the ground up, and avoiding picking up too much legacy auto baggage along the way. This is exceedingly hard to do. Toyota branding their vehicles as hydrogen with the Toyota logo and trying to go it alone was sort of doomed to failure. They had no opportunity to build a buggy v0 of these vehicles with something novel and exciting to entire new customers because they had to convert the average Toyota consumer. They had to utilize the existing dealer network (and get them to buy in), and simultaneously work with governments to build up the infrastructure and work through government approvals. I see a few of these Mirai's hanging around in California but nothing compared to the number of Model S, Model Y, and Model 3 that I see at every 4 way stop.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    There was a Tesla-like company that stripped everything away only to discover that Hydrogen is not economically viable for cars: Tesla. I don't know how much of the original "manifesto" documents of Tesla survive at this point post-Musk's takeover, but they were very public early on about pointing out Hydrogen as a huge red herring that traditional car companies threw way too much R&D money at and treated as a sunk cost to recuperate, and that was most clearly a direct "subtweet" of Toyota. Stripping a hydrogen car all the way down: In addition to an expensive to build fuel cell and an expensive to maintain "tank" for liquid hydrogen, you've got an electric motor and a need for a large battery. Why carry around the weight of an expensive fuel cell and an expensive to maintain "tank" when you've already got the ingredients for an okay BEV (electric motor, large battery)? Everyone without the sunk costs of say Toyota's massive multi-decade R&D effort should look at that on paper as a massive red herring and that you should just optimize your weight distribution for a better/higher density battery rather than waste weight/space on expensive fuel cells and tanks.
    - WorldMaker 5y ago
      To be fair, when most car companies began researching Hydrogen in the 80s there was no indication that bets on battery research and the incredible density wins we've seen in especially the Lithium-Ion family of batteries would pay off nearly so well. At this point though, the writing should be on the wall that hydrogen fuel cells can't compete with modern battery density.
- jimrandomh 5y ago
  Hydrogen as an automotive fuel is not, and was not ever, a viable technology. This isn't something that's necessarily obvious to laypeople, but it is something that should be (and should always have been) obvious to the top engineers and executives at car companies.
_hilro 5y ago
I sense a big payday coming up for US politicians.
panick21 5y ago
To win in electric battle you actually need electric cars. Magical new battery technology will not suddenly mean that you end up winning. Their claims about solid state have been repeatably delayed and a commercial product isn't close, and even if they did bring it out, it would be years before any real numbers were produced and even then it would likely not be competitive for the cheap and mid priced cars anytime soon. Toyota is living very dangerously right now.

35 points by mardiyah 5y ago

https://archive.is/iMh1A https://archive.is/iMh1A https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28459727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28459727 Previously

7thaccount 5y ago

Hydrogen not going well?

dimitar 5y ago
From TA: "the company has consistently argued that a longer-term fix for global warming should be a mix of hybrids, EVs and hydrogen-powered vehicles instead of a single bet on battery-powered cars." I think this is probably a good call if they want to play the long game. Some places will simply fail to create the infrastructure for EV and that's where hybrids come in the short run. EVs will take off and hydrogen is in theory superior to batteries for range and space, has a huge potential they probably don't want to miss out.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Hydrogen has a much bigger hurdle: infrastructure. EVs need the same power lines that every country uses. Hydrogen (and natural gas, and oil, for that matter) require a second parallel set of infrastructure. That makes a big difference as far as appeal. If I'm India, I'd rather have a beefier electrical system than maintain an electrical system AND a hydrogen pipeline system.
  - tomtimtall 5y ago
    > I'd rather have a beefier electrical system than maintain an electrical system AND a hydrogen pipeline system. Sure, but so what? India is not dependent on you personally maintaining a hydrogen infrastructure and this narrow-minded “there can be only one way” would not just have us staying on fossil fuels because “why maintain both gas AND electric?” It wouldn’t even have us providing both gas and diesel by the same argument.
    - thehappypm 5y ago
      It's not a narrow-minded approach, it's a cost-oriented approach. If you want renewables to win, cost is EVERYTHING. Electric infrastructure is not net new. It's plug and play. That's a massive, massive benefit.
  - wil421 5y ago
    Lots of buses, delivery vehicles, and trash trucks around me have propane stickers. Not sure where the fueling station around me but I used to live 5 minutes from one in my old house. All they need it storage and trucks to supply them. Same as gas or propane. Lots of people in the country get their natural gas delivered and it’s no big deal.
    - aitchnyu 5y ago
      Can home/apartment equipment fill a gas tank of a vehicle?
      - wil421 5y ago
        Yes if you have space for a tank. Plenty of trucks have gas tanks you can put in the bed for fueling diesel equipment. Lots of farms also have above ground gas tanks to fill farm equipment. Not sure it would be legal in a place like NYC or Manhattan but I’m sure it’s legal in more spread out cities like LA.
  - letitbeirie 5y ago
    > Hydrogen has a much bigger hurdle: infrastructure It has an even bigger hurdle than that: direct solar water-to-hydrogen isn't scalable (yet) and hydrogen is a petrochemical until it is.
    - zardo 5y ago
      Thats not a hurdle, that's the reason to pursue hydrogen, it maintains the market positions of existing oil companies.
hkarthik 5y ago
It's unclear if hydrogen had serious R&D problems, or just the go to market approach for hydrogen cars was flawed. Hydrogen needed a Tesla-like company to strip away everything that made a car a car, and rip away all the legacy at once. Getting away from ICE requires starting from the ground up, and avoiding picking up too much legacy auto baggage along the way. This is exceedingly hard to do. Toyota branding their vehicles as hydrogen with the Toyota logo and trying to go it alone was sort of doomed to failure. They had no opportunity to build a buggy v0 of these vehicles with something novel and exciting to entire new customers because they had to convert the average Toyota consumer. They had to utilize the existing dealer network (and get them to buy in), and simultaneously work with governments to build up the infrastructure and work through government approvals. I see a few of these Mirai's hanging around in California but nothing compared to the number of Model S, Model Y, and Model 3 that I see at every 4 way stop.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  There was a Tesla-like company that stripped everything away only to discover that Hydrogen is not economically viable for cars: Tesla. I don't know how much of the original "manifesto" documents of Tesla survive at this point post-Musk's takeover, but they were very public early on about pointing out Hydrogen as a huge red herring that traditional car companies threw way too much R&D money at and treated as a sunk cost to recuperate, and that was most clearly a direct "subtweet" of Toyota. Stripping a hydrogen car all the way down: In addition to an expensive to build fuel cell and an expensive to maintain "tank" for liquid hydrogen, you've got an electric motor and a need for a large battery. Why carry around the weight of an expensive fuel cell and an expensive to maintain "tank" when you've already got the ingredients for an okay BEV (electric motor, large battery)? Everyone without the sunk costs of say Toyota's massive multi-decade R&D effort should look at that on paper as a massive red herring and that you should just optimize your weight distribution for a better/higher density battery rather than waste weight/space on expensive fuel cells and tanks.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    To be fair, when most car companies began researching Hydrogen in the 80s there was no indication that bets on battery research and the incredible density wins we've seen in especially the Lithium-Ion family of batteries would pay off nearly so well. At this point though, the writing should be on the wall that hydrogen fuel cells can't compete with modern battery density.
jimrandomh 5y ago
Hydrogen as an automotive fuel is not, and was not ever, a viable technology. This isn't something that's necessarily obvious to laypeople, but it is something that should be (and should always have been) obvious to the top engineers and executives at car companies.

_hilro 5y ago

I sense a big payday coming up for US politicians.

panick21 5y ago

To win in electric battle you actually need electric cars. Magical new battery technology will not suddenly mean that you end up winning. Their claims about solid state have been repeatably delayed and a commercial product isn't close, and even if they did bring it out, it would be years before any real numbers were produced and even then it would likely not be competitive for the cheap and mid priced cars anytime soon. Toyota is living very dangerously right now.