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Toyota warns about rushing into electrification

29 points by nixass 5y ago

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
I wonder if burning your corporate credibility contributes to GHG emissions. Will be interesting to see which brands survive this discontinuity.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Due to the buyer demographics Toyota has spent 15+yr courting and the brand image they have been cultivating they have really stagnated themselves into a corner. The cheap enough and nice enough EVs other brands are bringing to the table are going to cost them a lot of sedan and hatch buyers. And the Tacoma/4Runner/highlander money printer is going to get run over by the EV F150 and other big electric family haulers that the other OEMs have in the works. Vehicle platforms take time to develop and bring to production. Toyota is gonna be late to the game. And being late to the game can be the same as not being in it when you're chasing the fickle high end consumers they are. Their credibility is worth something if they sell it now. It might not be worth anything down the line. So selling their credibility while telling themselves it'll be ok might simply be the best they can do.
aslilac 5y ago
They’re only skeptics about electrification when you’re talking about battery electric. If you start talking about the horse they’ve spent the last decade backing (HFC) they’ll change their tune. Toyota is just bitter they backed the wrong horse. Their blatant lies and lobbying have ensured I’ll never buy one of there cars again.
- Spivak 5y ago
  Company that backed technology A over technology B because they believed that technology B had fundamental issues stays consistent on their stance, people very angry for some reason, news at 11. Also this is just wrong, Toyota has right now on the market competitive battery electric cars. But Toyota is a mass-market budget car marker and so faces way different challenges than luxury automakers selling to the already affluent who own their homes, and live and work in areas dotted with superchargers. Toyota, Honda, and GMC are stuck with solving the problems for the 90% of car users. Personally, I expect that if you banned the sale of new ICE cars today or in the near future it will completely destroy the new car market and screw the used car market even more than it already is right now. I feel like people forget how little control the typical American has over their living situation. If you live in a cheap rental with street parking and need your car to commute to work you're just stuck waiting.
- causi 5y ago
  Yep. At least once a week I wish the Chevy Volt had been made by Toyota. I'd adore a PHEV that combined Toyota reliability with enough electric range to get through my whole commute. The Prius Prime is just sad with its 25 mile max EV range that drops to 17 at highway speeds.
  - baldeagle 5y ago
    They (Toyota) did make the only successor to the Volt - the RAV4 Prime. I literally just made the upgrade and it delivers on the promises the Volt made.
    - ip26 5y ago
      Right, and they've built a whopping 25,000 of them. They build 400,000+ RAV4 annually, so while the product might be good, that doesn't look like a very serious attempt.
      - frumper 5y ago
        I almost bought one of those 25k Primes, but the dealer bundled it with $6k worth of heavily overpriced dealer accessories, $2k for some kind of A/C enhancement that gets you "2-6mpg more!" that sounded very much like snake oil and then added another $5k "market adjustment" line item. I bought a Model Y instead.
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  Doesn’t Toyota make the best hybrid cars right now?
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    Yes. Well, they have a license sharing agreement with Ford. But their early patents have run out, so there's the possibility of other brands building effective hybrids now. Though Hyundai/KIA have made strides in the Big Ass Starter method of hybridization.
    - philliphaydon 5y ago
      I know nothing about cars. I was watching videos recently trying to understand hybrids because I’m considering buying one when I move back to NZ. It seems like you can save a bit of money with them (hybrids) It seems the older models before 2017 should be avoided and after 2018 they are really good. And currently Toyota get quite a lot of extra milage. I looked at Mazda and Honda and hybrid adds a lot of extra cost to those compared to Toyota. But bit worried about the original commenters comment that he would never buy Toyota again. Is there something wrong with them?
      - lostmsu 5y ago
        Honda is cheaper than Toyota though, at least in the US.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  So you feel that the points raised by Toyota have no merit?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tonmoy 5y ago
    Their points are not insurmountable and apply even more strongly to HFC. However, Toyota is still lobbying and advertising heavily on HFC, so it is hard not to question the good faith behind their arguments
  - Maarten88 5y ago
    Yes. The affordability issues do not seem to affect Chinese car manufacturers, who are producing EV cars that are quite economical without subsidies. EV's may introduce new challenges for the grid, but when a country is unable or unwilling to fix that then all those batteries could also present an opportunity to balance that same grid using software. The problem that they do not mention is that they have huge investments in engine manufacturing that are useless for EV's. EV's are much simpler technology, the only hard parts are batteries and software. Switching too fast will make their existing manufacturing capabilities worthless, and this is what is really threatening them. That is also making EV's "expensive" to build for them (but not for Tesla, or anyone building new factories). I think that anyone in a developed country buying an ICE car now is already throwing money out the window: a few years from now nobody will want it anymore, depreciation will be very high.
    - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
      > anyone in a developed country buying an ICE car now is already throwing money out the window: a few years from now nobody will want it anymore, depreciation will be very high. Far from universally true. Many developed countries do not have widespread access to charging stations, especially in rural areas. I'd buy an electric truck if I could go camping and tow a boat for a weekend without refueling, but as far as I can tell that's not possible yet.
- nojito 5y ago
  HFC is more than likely going to win out in the end. The larger issue is that Hybrids were jumped over for no reason.
  - tonmoy 5y ago
    HFC is unlikely to win over because of how inefficient it is if you consider carbon free sources of hydrogen. If you don’t consider carbon free sources then why not just stay with gasoline? Hybrids have not been “jumped over”. You’ll find plenty of hybrids in the market, more so than electric. However in the long run we’ll have to eventually more to zero carbon, and pure EVs are already starting to be as useful as hybrids.
  - metalliqaz 5y ago
    I would love to hear your evidence for that opinion, because everything I've seen is that HFC is only likely to succeed in long haul trucking.
    - nojito 5y ago
      It's a chicken or the egg problem. Once the infrastructure gets built out, there's no reason not to use an HFC for any mode of transportation.
      - metalliqaz 5y ago
        I think compressed cryogenic H tanks are a reason.
        nojito 5y ago
        Storage is a solved problem. The issue is transportation. With the US being as big as it is...it's a very unique challenge.
- Swenrekcah 5y ago
  I don’t understand why some BEV fans hate hydrogen so much and some hydrogen fans hate BEV so much. There are drawbacks to both and advantages to both. BEVs work well for small and city vehicles, hydrogen for large transport vehicles and off-road type stuff. Best of all, if we use two, three or four energy sources for our stuff instead of just one, that spreads the load on earth’s resources.
  - tcfhgj 5y ago
    Hydrogen is often used to make arguments against battery cars and for hydrogen cars (not large transport vehicles, planes, industrial applications with no alternatives, etc.)
  - ip26 5y ago
    The argument from hydrogen advocates often goes something like, don't bother doing BEV now because hydrogen is going to be so much better ten years from now. (Meanwhile, keep buying fossil fuel cars please) It's especially hard to swallow when that advocate is Toyota, largest fossil fuel carmaker in the world.
    - metalliqaz 5y ago
      Toyota is also the manufacturer of the Prius, which outnumbers any other hybrid or BEV model that I see in my day-to-day.
  - danans 5y ago
    > I don’t understand why some BEV fans hate hydrogen so much and some hydrogen fans hate BEV so much. > BEVs work well for small and city vehicles, hydrogen for large transport vehicles and off-road type stuff. They don't "hate" each other's tech. The entire conversation has up until this point has centered exclusively on light duty passenger vehicles. In that segment it's been clear for a long time that BEVs are the better technology. If there are any resentments from BEV advocates it is due to the way hydrogen fuel cell tech has been used as a way to slow down the electrification of light duty passenger vehicles. Only recently has the conversation started about where hydrogen makes more sense (trucking, aviation, and perhaps most importantly, long duration renewable energy storage).
- darkteflon 5y ago
  Same. I’m a resident of Japan. The interests of carmakers have shaped national industrial and environmental policy here in ways that ensure we - and our kids - will be living with the byproducts of hydrocarbon combustion in our cities and homes for a long time yet - decades probably. Could not be more disgusted, would never buy one of their products. Their cancerous influence on US environmental policy is also well-documented. The silver lining is that refusing to cannibalize their own product lines will cost them big - and soon. I suspect they’ll end up as a case study for MBAs. “Toyota” for me is a byword for venality, cynical anti-social exploitation, regulatory capture and gerontocracy.
- RickJWagner 5y ago
  They may have bet wrongly, as it seems Honda may have as well. But I would not pledge to avoid Toyotas. Their quality is second to none, by a large margin.
_aavaa_ 5y ago
"refueling infrastructure (power grids), battery availability, consumer acceptance, and affordability are huge constraints which must be figured out". Valid concerns. Especially the ability of the grid to handle all of the extra cars. Both in terms of producing enough electricity and being able to deliver it.
- cowmix 5y ago
  Just a note, it takes A LOT of energy (and electricity!) to refine oil into gasoline. In CA for instance, the power it takes to refine fuel could, almost, be used watt for watt to power EVs going the same distance. You can also add in the energy costs to extract, transport, store, etc fuel too (but EVs have a lot of that overhead too).
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    Do you have a citation for this? Not that I don't believe you (it's actually a very plausible statement), but I have so many questions on the technical details here.
  - PheonixPharts 5y ago
    You seem to be implying that increased EV usage will dramatically decrease the need for oil refinement. Do you have any evidence of this? In just the US, EV purchases have grown nearly exponentially over the past decade [0]. However total petroleum consumption in the US has slowly but steadily risen [1] during the same period (excluding, of course, the pandemic). Gasoline consumption has remained roughly flat. There's a common and understandable assumption that "more green technology usage means lower GHG emissions" but in reality there is little evidence to support this. Globally, green energy usage has only served to supplement energy demands. Since the industrial revolution we, as a species, have never reduced our usage of an energy source [3] Surprisingly we still burn as much wood as we did when every home was heated by wood burning. The only dips we ever see in GHG emissions are during periods of economic disruption, but that's a path people are very unwilling to even discuss so it's not worth bringing up. Point being, people dramatically over estimate the certainty that an increase in EVs will someone also mean a decrease in overall oil consumption. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_the_United_States#/media/File:US_PEV_Sales_2010_by_PHEV_vs_BEV.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_t... 1. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WRPUPUS2&f=W https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=W... 2. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...
Comevius 5y ago
Most of mainstream media reported this with a title indicating that Toyota is against electrification, when in fact they merely stated that there are unsolved challenges to be able to do it at scale. Just because EV exists as a luxury option for enthusiasts interested in the EV experience does not mean that it is ready for mass adoption.
- formerkrogemp 5y ago
  Toyota has spent billions on hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen technology with little to show for it. They are justifiably upset on that front. They've been against electric vehicles for years now.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    > They've been against electric vehicles for years now. This is such a weird take when the Toyota Prius has been around for over 20 years.
    - formerkrogemp 5y ago
      Let me clarify: BEV. Not hybrids.
  - c22 5y ago
    Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are electric vehicles.
    - formerkrogemp 5y ago
      I guess? Most people draw a necessary distinction between HFCV and BEV. They're very different animals with different infrastructure and challenges.
      - c22 5y ago
        Okay, but the distinction isn't that one of them is not electric.
01100011 5y ago
In the near term, EVs are a great way to lower the emissions of a small number of vehicles. Hybrids allow us a better way to allocate our currently limited supply of batteries and reduce fuel usage across the fleet. Of course both of these compete with mass transit and simply driving less. Disclosure: I own an EV. While I believe hybrids are better for society as a whole, I like my EV and there's a 50/50 shot I'll stay with EVs when my lease expires. That said, it would be nice to avoid the hassle of charging and get rid of my range anxiety.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  There’s also a huge segment of professional vehicles (specialized, delivery vans, ambulances) which are going to stay firmly in the diesel land for the foreseeable future.
  - tcfhgj 5y ago
    Delivery vans? Germany, seem to be electric at my place, and cargo bikes are used in the city as well. A recent advancement: https://ebike-news.de/75-tonner-bald-geschichte-db-schenker-setzt-auf-riesen-cargo-e-bike/200926/ https://ebike-news.de/75-tonner-bald-geschichte-db-schenker-... I don't think there are any issues of removing diesel here. I can't think of why ambulances couldnt be electrified as well. Low center of gravity thanks to the battrry could help here.
    - WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
      Ambulances sometimes have a lot of distance to cover. There’s life outside large cities, too.
      - tcfhgj 5y ago
        Life outside cities arent a problem for evs, usually at least. At least in europe you wont be driving for hours with an ambulance.
kd913 5y ago
I'll just put it out here. If the UK alone meets it's plans for phasing out ICE engines for EV, it would consume 9 months supply of Lithium and 2 years worth of cobalt/nickel. Add on the plans for the rest of the EU countries, US states, Singapore, and Canada and frankly Toyota has a point. Significant chunks of that nickel comes from Russia hence the price rising 500% since the war began. There is a complete mismatch in the scaling of electrified 'smart' products and raw materials going forward. There needs to be multiple horses in play, along with a fundamental realization that the pipedream of a house in a suburb with 2 EV cars for every individual isn't a sustainable plan.
- irrelative 5y ago
  Lithium-Iron-Phosphate chemistries appear likely to be the choice for less flashy vehicles, and don't require cobalt or nickel. It's slightly less energy dense, though has some other benefits. Lithium mining can be increased, though perhaps not at current price points (unsure about this). I'll agree that 2 EVs per suburb house is a bit absurd, but it was absurd before EVs too.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    Lithium mining can be increased quite easily and is absurdly profitable at current prices which are about an order of magnitude above where it was 3 years ago. The problem is time, it takes about 5 years to bring up a mine or a processing plant. Then the worry is that everybody will do it, crashing the market due to over supply. There are a bunch of mines halfway through this process, but even when they come online in 2025 or so, they're not enough to meet demand. So any crash in Lithium prices is unlikely to come before 2028. But would you invest in a new mine to come online in 2028?
- bin_bash 5y ago
  In 1894 The Times said "In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure". What they missed in their prediction was how cars would replace horses. If lithium really does become such a scarce resource we can change laws if we have to. Or maybe we’ll just get better at recycling and mining it.
1970-01-01 5y ago
>require overcoming tremendous challenges, including refueling infrastructure, battery availability, consumer acceptance, and affordability This is a laughable quote. Tesla built their own charging infrastructure [1], designed and secured their battery supply [2], doesn't advertise, [3] and is selling to millions [4]. Toyota missed their e-chance and have no right to "warn us" about electrification. [1] https://www.finder.com/tesla-superchargers-map https://www.finder.com/tesla-superchargers-map [2] https://electrek.co/2021/11/01/tesla-secures-lithium-supply-contract-ganfeng-lithium/ https://electrek.co/2021/11/01/tesla-secures-lithium-supply-... [3] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-marketing-strategy-is-no-advertising/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-marketing-strategy-is-no-adv... [4] https://cleantechnica.com/2021/01/02/tesla-499550-vehicles-delivered-in-2020-509737-vehicles-produced/ https://cleantechnica.com/2021/01/02/tesla-499550-vehicles-d... https://www.engadget.com/tesla-q4-2021-year-end-deliveries-sales-production-183514314.html https://www.engadget.com/tesla-q4-2021-year-end-deliveries-s...
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Tesla's self-built infrastructure manages to deal with the (perhaps) 2.5M cars they have put on the road. That's roughly 1% of the total number of automobiles in the USA. I don't think I need to say any more.
  - JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
    I was just talking to my girlfriend about this the other day. Even in our low Tesla usage state the chargers are increasingly occupied. We pull up and now 6/8 stalls are being used. What happens when even a fraction of all the gas cars switch over? What happens when 100% of the population needs them and needs to charge for an hour? I don’t know.
    - colordrops 5y ago
      Charge at home! We go to a supercharger once every few months.
Ferrari911 5y ago
la6472 5y ago
I think we should have driven in hybrid mode until we figure out a better battery/energy technology.
olivermarks 5y ago
'...As Wimmer pointed out, only 2% of cars in the world are EVs. That’s a tiny sliver, yet automakers and governments are acting like the EV formula has been cracked. The problems Wimmer brought up before the Senate, refueling infrastructure (power grids), battery availability, consumer acceptance, and affordability are huge constraints which must be figured out before the industry goes charging headlong in the EV direction'. This is without the reality that meanwhile ICE powered vehicles have never been cleaner or more fuel efficient, while tire pollution issues have never been greater, arguably the most important issue around transport. I think Toyota are wise to remain conservative given their stellar performance creating efficient hybrid vehicles (ceurrently circa 35% of vehicle markets). Priuses replaced diesel Mercedes as the world's taxis. I'd back Toyota on this, we have a very long way to go before BEVs are practical or viable except for the VS crowd.
- tonmoy 5y ago
  Pure EVs provide more miles per kg of carbon emitted over their life even if you consider 100% coal power generation and most fuel efficient ICE vehicles. I’m not sure what tire pollution you are talking about, but to me it seems like it would apply to both ICE and EVs and should have no significance in an argument between ICE vs EV
  - olivermarks 5y ago
    https://www.tiretechnologyinternational.com/news/regulations/pollution-from-tire-wear-1000-times-worse-than-exhaust-emissions.html https://www.tiretechnologyinternational.com/news/regulations... BEVS are very hard on tires due to battery weight, torque characteristics https://www.fleetmaintenance.com/equipment/brakes-tire-and-wheel/article/21157542/contending-with-accelerated-bev-tire-wear https://www.fleetmaintenance.com/equipment/brakes-tire-and-w...
Barrin92 5y ago
Another important limitation in the article that is not mentioned is that how 'green' electric cars are isn't determined by the engine, it's determined by the energy input. The lifetime emissions of an electric vehicle are still about ~70% of a conventional one in most countries. Accelerating electrification when all you've done is move the resource consumption from the car to a conventional power plant isn't really that helpful.
- latortuga 5y ago
  A 30% emissions reduction is amazing, why would you use that argument? Gas engines will always use gas while electric motors can use any kind of electricity. Transferring generation from car to power plant is a fantastic plan. Economies of scale kick in and it allows you to aggressively invest in cleaner tech which causes a virtuous price cycle.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    >why would you use that argument? Because dynamics like the Jevon's paradox exist. Marginal efficiency or sustainability improvements generally just lead to increased consumer demand. This is exactly the dynamic of the traditional car engine. It's why despite the fact that green energy output has increased by several magnitudes in terms of production, globally we've only lowered carbon dependency by marginal amounts. Gains are being eaten by increased consumption. In fact this applies even to green energy infrastructure itself which often needs to run for a long time to pay for its own construction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#Energy_conservation_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#Energy_conserva...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tonmoy 5y ago
  We should not just switch to EV and keep everything same. The power generation needs to switch over to more renewables or probably nuclear at the same time if we want to reach zero carbon soon. However if we don’t switch to EVs then there is no other way for us to cut the carbon from transportation. We can’t wait for the magical carbon free transport that may come in 20 years and just keep using ICEs in the meantime
techdmn 5y ago
We have a century plus of developing resource extraction and refueling infrastructure for ICE transportation. It seems unreasonable to expect electric infrastructure overnight. New charging stations are being built all the time. Renewable energy infrastructure is being built all over the world. Fossil fuels have a lot of positives, if they didn't, we never would have developed them. The infrastructure we've built out makes it easy to continue using them, not to mention the political inertia of disrupting big players. However, fossil fuels also have major downsides: local environmental impact, global environmental impact, geopolitics, etc. I'm a car guy, even a Toyota fan. There's an '87 Supra in my garage right now. Fossil fuels had a good run, but it's time to move on, hopefully in time to maintain a habitable planet. I think sooner than we expect, we'll look at ICE vehicles the same way we look at coal powered steam locomotives: The tech is neat, some people still love them, there's a community of hobbyists, even if it's in miniatures. But as transportation, everyone knows they are horribly slow, inefficient, noisy, dirty and smelly, and nobody would dream of taking one to work every day. I wish Toyota would quit spreading FUD, and instead help us move to a cleaner future.
carapace 5y ago
Batteries in cars do not make sense. Hybrids using alcohol fuel do make sense, if you grow the fuel as part of local regenerative farms. "CSA for fuel." - Most ICE cars can be converted to use alcohol. (We can use the existing cars longer, rather than replacing them, which would save a TON of resources.) - The exhaust is non-toxic. - It's carbon neutral. (The carbon in the fuel came from the air, not the ground.) - Pretty much anyone can make it. It's not hard. - The byproducts are good animal feed. (Yeast is protein, fermentation converts the sugars and starches into yeast and alcohol. So alcohol production improves the inputs rather than destroying or degrading them!) - Alcohol has (much!) higher energy density than batteries. - Batteries have all kinds of problems once they are wrecked: cars have spontaneously erupted into flames a week after the crash that sent them to the wrecking yard. When they do burn they put out crazy toxic smoke.
parasense 5y ago
I think Toyota is being realistic, and prudent. There is a lot of hype around EV's, and perhaps a certain level of ignorance, blissful or willful. On the blissful side of things, you have the average EV consumer who after waiting months for their back-ordered EV will plug the vehicle into the electric grid. Obviously this increases the load on the grid, which entails many things. If the EV owner uses standard household 15/20 amp (120 volt) receptacles, the Toyota charger will use about 11 ~ 12 amps, which obeys the 80/60 rule. Meaning 12 amps is 80% of a 15 amp circuit breaker, or 12 amp is 60% of 20 amp breaker, leaving a little spare capacity on the circuit to hopefully not trip the breaker. If the EV customer upgrades to 240 volt charging, the circuit must use a larger cable, and thus less resistance, and the result is more amperage may flow. So without going into Ohms law, your average Lvl-2 charger will do about 30 amps. Or put another way the circuit is protected by a 37.5 amp breaker, again obeying the 80% electrician "ampacity" rules. So... just imagine a bunch of homes adding on average 30 amps ambient load to the electrical grid, not all at once, but probably at night, or probably at certain times of day like after rush hour, etc.. So then imagine places like California, or Texas with large populations, and electrical grid capacity issues. In California they have infamous problems with "not in my back yard" problem, unable to expand the electricity grid to meet future expected demand because the various municipalities don't want power lines in their back yards. Also, California's grid is apparently already unsafe, having caused wild fires from old overloaded high-lines, etc. The situation in California is sad because it's probably the most progressive EV market anywhere in the USA. As for Texas, their electrical grid is probably better than in California, but most of the power is from natural gas fired power plants, and there is a second energy grid... the natural gas grid and the quality there is lagging behind. So there is a nexus of causality, and if the NG grid cannot sustain higher load, then the electrical grid beyond will not be capable of delivering the higher demand, etc... and one only has to point towards the winter of 2021, if that implication wasn't apparent already. All of this ignores the more fundamental issues of mineral extraction, and scarcity. This topic will from an economics perspective act as a natural constraint on EV growth. This may provide enough time for the "grids" to upgrade their capacity, which represents huge regulatory hurdles, and if effectively a mega project in terms of bureaucratic hoops, and actual deployment. So if in an alternate universe we had ample spare lithium, nickle, cobalt, etc... then the constraint would be the speed at which we could upgrade the electrical grid. One last note about the grid regarding rooftop solar. The grid is not designed for a bunch of homes back-feeding the grid at scale, and there are legitimate safety issues. This is a related issue, in a similar way maybe 1% of homes back-feed solar power, so the grid can absorb the increase for now, but not at scale. Because while we're updating the grid to handle more delivery from power stations, we may as well update the last mile to handle solar rooftop generation. This is perhaps an even more ambitious mega project, as it involves increasing circuit "ampacity" along the last mile, which is like 90% (exaggerating so you get the point) of the total grid cost.

29 points by nixass 5y ago

I wonder if burning your corporate credibility contributes to GHG emissions. Will be interesting to see which brands survive this discontinuity.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Due to the buyer demographics Toyota has spent 15+yr courting and the brand image they have been cultivating they have really stagnated themselves into a corner. The cheap enough and nice enough EVs other brands are bringing to the table are going to cost them a lot of sedan and hatch buyers. And the Tacoma/4Runner/highlander money printer is going to get run over by the EV F150 and other big electric family haulers that the other OEMs have in the works. Vehicle platforms take time to develop and bring to production. Toyota is gonna be late to the game. And being late to the game can be the same as not being in it when you're chasing the fickle high end consumers they are. Their credibility is worth something if they sell it now. It might not be worth anything down the line. So selling their credibility while telling themselves it'll be ok might simply be the best they can do.

aslilac 5y ago

They’re only skeptics about electrification when you’re talking about battery electric. If you start talking about the horse they’ve spent the last decade backing (HFC) they’ll change their tune. Toyota is just bitter they backed the wrong horse. Their blatant lies and lobbying have ensured I’ll never buy one of there cars again.

Spivak 5y ago
Company that backed technology A over technology B because they believed that technology B had fundamental issues stays consistent on their stance, people very angry for some reason, news at 11. Also this is just wrong, Toyota has right now on the market competitive battery electric cars. But Toyota is a mass-market budget car marker and so faces way different challenges than luxury automakers selling to the already affluent who own their homes, and live and work in areas dotted with superchargers. Toyota, Honda, and GMC are stuck with solving the problems for the 90% of car users. Personally, I expect that if you banned the sale of new ICE cars today or in the near future it will completely destroy the new car market and screw the used car market even more than it already is right now. I feel like people forget how little control the typical American has over their living situation. If you live in a cheap rental with street parking and need your car to commute to work you're just stuck waiting.
causi 5y ago
Yep. At least once a week I wish the Chevy Volt had been made by Toyota. I'd adore a PHEV that combined Toyota reliability with enough electric range to get through my whole commute. The Prius Prime is just sad with its 25 mile max EV range that drops to 17 at highway speeds.
- baldeagle 5y ago
  They (Toyota) did make the only successor to the Volt - the RAV4 Prime. I literally just made the upgrade and it delivers on the promises the Volt made.
  - ip26 5y ago
    Right, and they've built a whopping 25,000 of them. They build 400,000+ RAV4 annually, so while the product might be good, that doesn't look like a very serious attempt.
    - frumper 5y ago
      I almost bought one of those 25k Primes, but the dealer bundled it with $6k worth of heavily overpriced dealer accessories, $2k for some kind of A/C enhancement that gets you "2-6mpg more!" that sounded very much like snake oil and then added another $5k "market adjustment" line item. I bought a Model Y instead.
philliphaydon 5y ago
Doesn’t Toyota make the best hybrid cars right now?
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Yes. Well, they have a license sharing agreement with Ford. But their early patents have run out, so there's the possibility of other brands building effective hybrids now. Though Hyundai/KIA have made strides in the Big Ass Starter method of hybridization.
  - philliphaydon 5y ago
    I know nothing about cars. I was watching videos recently trying to understand hybrids because I’m considering buying one when I move back to NZ. It seems like you can save a bit of money with them (hybrids) It seems the older models before 2017 should be avoided and after 2018 they are really good. And currently Toyota get quite a lot of extra milage. I looked at Mazda and Honda and hybrid adds a lot of extra cost to those compared to Toyota. But bit worried about the original commenters comment that he would never buy Toyota again. Is there something wrong with them?
    - lostmsu 5y ago
      Honda is cheaper than Toyota though, at least in the US.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
So you feel that the points raised by Toyota have no merit?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tonmoy 5y ago
  Their points are not insurmountable and apply even more strongly to HFC. However, Toyota is still lobbying and advertising heavily on HFC, so it is hard not to question the good faith behind their arguments
- Maarten88 5y ago
  Yes. The affordability issues do not seem to affect Chinese car manufacturers, who are producing EV cars that are quite economical without subsidies. EV's may introduce new challenges for the grid, but when a country is unable or unwilling to fix that then all those batteries could also present an opportunity to balance that same grid using software. The problem that they do not mention is that they have huge investments in engine manufacturing that are useless for EV's. EV's are much simpler technology, the only hard parts are batteries and software. Switching too fast will make their existing manufacturing capabilities worthless, and this is what is really threatening them. That is also making EV's "expensive" to build for them (but not for Tesla, or anyone building new factories). I think that anyone in a developed country buying an ICE car now is already throwing money out the window: a few years from now nobody will want it anymore, depreciation will be very high.
  - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
    > anyone in a developed country buying an ICE car now is already throwing money out the window: a few years from now nobody will want it anymore, depreciation will be very high. Far from universally true. Many developed countries do not have widespread access to charging stations, especially in rural areas. I'd buy an electric truck if I could go camping and tow a boat for a weekend without refueling, but as far as I can tell that's not possible yet.
nojito 5y ago
HFC is more than likely going to win out in the end. The larger issue is that Hybrids were jumped over for no reason.
- tonmoy 5y ago
  HFC is unlikely to win over because of how inefficient it is if you consider carbon free sources of hydrogen. If you don’t consider carbon free sources then why not just stay with gasoline? Hybrids have not been “jumped over”. You’ll find plenty of hybrids in the market, more so than electric. However in the long run we’ll have to eventually more to zero carbon, and pure EVs are already starting to be as useful as hybrids.
- metalliqaz 5y ago
  I would love to hear your evidence for that opinion, because everything I've seen is that HFC is only likely to succeed in long haul trucking.
  - nojito 5y ago
    It's a chicken or the egg problem. Once the infrastructure gets built out, there's no reason not to use an HFC for any mode of transportation.
    - metalliqaz 5y ago
      I think compressed cryogenic H tanks are a reason.
      - nojito 5y ago
        Storage is a solved problem. The issue is transportation. With the US being as big as it is...it's a very unique challenge.
Swenrekcah 5y ago
I don’t understand why some BEV fans hate hydrogen so much and some hydrogen fans hate BEV so much. There are drawbacks to both and advantages to both. BEVs work well for small and city vehicles, hydrogen for large transport vehicles and off-road type stuff. Best of all, if we use two, three or four energy sources for our stuff instead of just one, that spreads the load on earth’s resources.
- tcfhgj 5y ago
  Hydrogen is often used to make arguments against battery cars and for hydrogen cars (not large transport vehicles, planes, industrial applications with no alternatives, etc.)
- ip26 5y ago
  The argument from hydrogen advocates often goes something like, don't bother doing BEV now because hydrogen is going to be so much better ten years from now. (Meanwhile, keep buying fossil fuel cars please) It's especially hard to swallow when that advocate is Toyota, largest fossil fuel carmaker in the world.
  - metalliqaz 5y ago
    Toyota is also the manufacturer of the Prius, which outnumbers any other hybrid or BEV model that I see in my day-to-day.
- danans 5y ago
  > I don’t understand why some BEV fans hate hydrogen so much and some hydrogen fans hate BEV so much. > BEVs work well for small and city vehicles, hydrogen for large transport vehicles and off-road type stuff. They don't "hate" each other's tech. The entire conversation has up until this point has centered exclusively on light duty passenger vehicles. In that segment it's been clear for a long time that BEVs are the better technology. If there are any resentments from BEV advocates it is due to the way hydrogen fuel cell tech has been used as a way to slow down the electrification of light duty passenger vehicles. Only recently has the conversation started about where hydrogen makes more sense (trucking, aviation, and perhaps most importantly, long duration renewable energy storage).
darkteflon 5y ago
Same. I’m a resident of Japan. The interests of carmakers have shaped national industrial and environmental policy here in ways that ensure we - and our kids - will be living with the byproducts of hydrocarbon combustion in our cities and homes for a long time yet - decades probably. Could not be more disgusted, would never buy one of their products. Their cancerous influence on US environmental policy is also well-documented. The silver lining is that refusing to cannibalize their own product lines will cost them big - and soon. I suspect they’ll end up as a case study for MBAs. “Toyota” for me is a byword for venality, cynical anti-social exploitation, regulatory capture and gerontocracy.
RickJWagner 5y ago
They may have bet wrongly, as it seems Honda may have as well. But I would not pledge to avoid Toyotas. Their quality is second to none, by a large margin.

_aavaa_ 5y ago

"refueling infrastructure (power grids), battery availability, consumer acceptance, and affordability are huge constraints which must be figured out". Valid concerns. Especially the ability of the grid to handle all of the extra cars. Both in terms of producing enough electricity and being able to deliver it.

cowmix 5y ago
Just a note, it takes A LOT of energy (and electricity!) to refine oil into gasoline. In CA for instance, the power it takes to refine fuel could, almost, be used watt for watt to power EVs going the same distance. You can also add in the energy costs to extract, transport, store, etc fuel too (but EVs have a lot of that overhead too).
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Do you have a citation for this? Not that I don't believe you (it's actually a very plausible statement), but I have so many questions on the technical details here.
- PheonixPharts 5y ago
  You seem to be implying that increased EV usage will dramatically decrease the need for oil refinement. Do you have any evidence of this? In just the US, EV purchases have grown nearly exponentially over the past decade [0]. However total petroleum consumption in the US has slowly but steadily risen [1] during the same period (excluding, of course, the pandemic). Gasoline consumption has remained roughly flat. There's a common and understandable assumption that "more green technology usage means lower GHG emissions" but in reality there is little evidence to support this. Globally, green energy usage has only served to supplement energy demands. Since the industrial revolution we, as a species, have never reduced our usage of an energy source [3] Surprisingly we still burn as much wood as we did when every home was heated by wood burning. The only dips we ever see in GHG emissions are during periods of economic disruption, but that's a path people are very unwilling to even discuss so it's not worth bringing up. Point being, people dramatically over estimate the certainty that an increase in EVs will someone also mean a decrease in overall oil consumption. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_the_United_States#/media/File:US_PEV_Sales_2010_by_PHEV_vs_BEV.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_t... 1. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WRPUPUS2&f=W https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=W... 2. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...

Comevius 5y ago

Most of mainstream media reported this with a title indicating that Toyota is against electrification, when in fact they merely stated that there are unsolved challenges to be able to do it at scale. Just because EV exists as a luxury option for enthusiasts interested in the EV experience does not mean that it is ready for mass adoption.

formerkrogemp 5y ago
Toyota has spent billions on hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen technology with little to show for it. They are justifiably upset on that front. They've been against electric vehicles for years now.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > They've been against electric vehicles for years now. This is such a weird take when the Toyota Prius has been around for over 20 years.
  - formerkrogemp 5y ago
    Let me clarify: BEV. Not hybrids.
- c22 5y ago
  Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are electric vehicles.
  - formerkrogemp 5y ago
    I guess? Most people draw a necessary distinction between HFCV and BEV. They're very different animals with different infrastructure and challenges.
    - c22 5y ago
      Okay, but the distinction isn't that one of them is not electric.

01100011 5y ago

In the near term, EVs are a great way to lower the emissions of a small number of vehicles. Hybrids allow us a better way to allocate our currently limited supply of batteries and reduce fuel usage across the fleet. Of course both of these compete with mass transit and simply driving less. Disclosure: I own an EV. While I believe hybrids are better for society as a whole, I like my EV and there's a 50/50 shot I'll stay with EVs when my lease expires. That said, it would be nice to avoid the hassle of charging and get rid of my range anxiety.

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
There’s also a huge segment of professional vehicles (specialized, delivery vans, ambulances) which are going to stay firmly in the diesel land for the foreseeable future.
- tcfhgj 5y ago
  Delivery vans? Germany, seem to be electric at my place, and cargo bikes are used in the city as well. A recent advancement: https://ebike-news.de/75-tonner-bald-geschichte-db-schenker-setzt-auf-riesen-cargo-e-bike/200926/ https://ebike-news.de/75-tonner-bald-geschichte-db-schenker-... I don't think there are any issues of removing diesel here. I can't think of why ambulances couldnt be electrified as well. Low center of gravity thanks to the battrry could help here.
  - WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
    Ambulances sometimes have a lot of distance to cover. There’s life outside large cities, too.
    - tcfhgj 5y ago
      Life outside cities arent a problem for evs, usually at least. At least in europe you wont be driving for hours with an ambulance.

kd913 5y ago

I'll just put it out here. If the UK alone meets it's plans for phasing out ICE engines for EV, it would consume 9 months supply of Lithium and 2 years worth of cobalt/nickel. Add on the plans for the rest of the EU countries, US states, Singapore, and Canada and frankly Toyota has a point. Significant chunks of that nickel comes from Russia hence the price rising 500% since the war began. There is a complete mismatch in the scaling of electrified 'smart' products and raw materials going forward. There needs to be multiple horses in play, along with a fundamental realization that the pipedream of a house in a suburb with 2 EV cars for every individual isn't a sustainable plan.

irrelative 5y ago
Lithium-Iron-Phosphate chemistries appear likely to be the choice for less flashy vehicles, and don't require cobalt or nickel. It's slightly less energy dense, though has some other benefits. Lithium mining can be increased, though perhaps not at current price points (unsure about this). I'll agree that 2 EVs per suburb house is a bit absurd, but it was absurd before EVs too.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Lithium mining can be increased quite easily and is absurdly profitable at current prices which are about an order of magnitude above where it was 3 years ago. The problem is time, it takes about 5 years to bring up a mine or a processing plant. Then the worry is that everybody will do it, crashing the market due to over supply. There are a bunch of mines halfway through this process, but even when they come online in 2025 or so, they're not enough to meet demand. So any crash in Lithium prices is unlikely to come before 2028. But would you invest in a new mine to come online in 2028?
bin_bash 5y ago
In 1894 The Times said "In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure". What they missed in their prediction was how cars would replace horses. If lithium really does become such a scarce resource we can change laws if we have to. Or maybe we’ll just get better at recycling and mining it.

1970-01-01 5y ago

>require overcoming tremendous challenges, including refueling infrastructure, battery availability, consumer acceptance, and affordability This is a laughable quote. Tesla built their own charging infrastructure [1], designed and secured their battery supply [2], doesn't advertise, [3] and is selling to millions [4]. Toyota missed their e-chance and have no right to "warn us" about electrification. [1] https://www.finder.com/tesla-superchargers-map https://www.finder.com/tesla-superchargers-map [2] https://electrek.co/2021/11/01/tesla-secures-lithium-supply-contract-ganfeng-lithium/ https://electrek.co/2021/11/01/tesla-secures-lithium-supply-... [3] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-marketing-strategy-is-no-advertising/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-marketing-strategy-is-no-adv... [4] https://cleantechnica.com/2021/01/02/tesla-499550-vehicles-delivered-in-2020-509737-vehicles-produced/ https://cleantechnica.com/2021/01/02/tesla-499550-vehicles-d... https://www.engadget.com/tesla-q4-2021-year-end-deliveries-sales-production-183514314.html https://www.engadget.com/tesla-q4-2021-year-end-deliveries-s...

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Tesla's self-built infrastructure manages to deal with the (perhaps) 2.5M cars they have put on the road. That's roughly 1% of the total number of automobiles in the USA. I don't think I need to say any more.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  I was just talking to my girlfriend about this the other day. Even in our low Tesla usage state the chargers are increasingly occupied. We pull up and now 6/8 stalls are being used. What happens when even a fraction of all the gas cars switch over? What happens when 100% of the population needs them and needs to charge for an hour? I don’t know.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    Charge at home! We go to a supercharger once every few months.

Ferrari911 5y ago

la6472 5y ago

I think we should have driven in hybrid mode until we figure out a better battery/energy technology.

olivermarks 5y ago

'...As Wimmer pointed out, only 2% of cars in the world are EVs. That’s a tiny sliver, yet automakers and governments are acting like the EV formula has been cracked. The problems Wimmer brought up before the Senate, refueling infrastructure (power grids), battery availability, consumer acceptance, and affordability are huge constraints which must be figured out before the industry goes charging headlong in the EV direction'. This is without the reality that meanwhile ICE powered vehicles have never been cleaner or more fuel efficient, while tire pollution issues have never been greater, arguably the most important issue around transport. I think Toyota are wise to remain conservative given their stellar performance creating efficient hybrid vehicles (ceurrently circa 35% of vehicle markets). Priuses replaced diesel Mercedes as the world's taxis. I'd back Toyota on this, we have a very long way to go before BEVs are practical or viable except for the VS crowd.

tonmoy 5y ago
Pure EVs provide more miles per kg of carbon emitted over their life even if you consider 100% coal power generation and most fuel efficient ICE vehicles. I’m not sure what tire pollution you are talking about, but to me it seems like it would apply to both ICE and EVs and should have no significance in an argument between ICE vs EV
- olivermarks 5y ago
  https://www.tiretechnologyinternational.com/news/regulations/pollution-from-tire-wear-1000-times-worse-than-exhaust-emissions.html https://www.tiretechnologyinternational.com/news/regulations... BEVS are very hard on tires due to battery weight, torque characteristics https://www.fleetmaintenance.com/equipment/brakes-tire-and-wheel/article/21157542/contending-with-accelerated-bev-tire-wear https://www.fleetmaintenance.com/equipment/brakes-tire-and-w...

Barrin92 5y ago

Another important limitation in the article that is not mentioned is that how 'green' electric cars are isn't determined by the engine, it's determined by the energy input. The lifetime emissions of an electric vehicle are still about ~70% of a conventional one in most countries. Accelerating electrification when all you've done is move the resource consumption from the car to a conventional power plant isn't really that helpful.

latortuga 5y ago
A 30% emissions reduction is amazing, why would you use that argument? Gas engines will always use gas while electric motors can use any kind of electricity. Transferring generation from car to power plant is a fantastic plan. Economies of scale kick in and it allows you to aggressively invest in cleaner tech which causes a virtuous price cycle.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  >why would you use that argument? Because dynamics like the Jevon's paradox exist. Marginal efficiency or sustainability improvements generally just lead to increased consumer demand. This is exactly the dynamic of the traditional car engine. It's why despite the fact that green energy output has increased by several magnitudes in terms of production, globally we've only lowered carbon dependency by marginal amounts. Gains are being eaten by increased consumption. In fact this applies even to green energy infrastructure itself which often needs to run for a long time to pay for its own construction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#Energy_conservation_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#Energy_conserva...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tonmoy 5y ago
We should not just switch to EV and keep everything same. The power generation needs to switch over to more renewables or probably nuclear at the same time if we want to reach zero carbon soon. However if we don’t switch to EVs then there is no other way for us to cut the carbon from transportation. We can’t wait for the magical carbon free transport that may come in 20 years and just keep using ICEs in the meantime

techdmn 5y ago

We have a century plus of developing resource extraction and refueling infrastructure for ICE transportation. It seems unreasonable to expect electric infrastructure overnight. New charging stations are being built all the time. Renewable energy infrastructure is being built all over the world. Fossil fuels have a lot of positives, if they didn't, we never would have developed them. The infrastructure we've built out makes it easy to continue using them, not to mention the political inertia of disrupting big players. However, fossil fuels also have major downsides: local environmental impact, global environmental impact, geopolitics, etc. I'm a car guy, even a Toyota fan. There's an '87 Supra in my garage right now. Fossil fuels had a good run, but it's time to move on, hopefully in time to maintain a habitable planet. I think sooner than we expect, we'll look at ICE vehicles the same way we look at coal powered steam locomotives: The tech is neat, some people still love them, there's a community of hobbyists, even if it's in miniatures. But as transportation, everyone knows they are horribly slow, inefficient, noisy, dirty and smelly, and nobody would dream of taking one to work every day. I wish Toyota would quit spreading FUD, and instead help us move to a cleaner future.

carapace 5y ago

Batteries in cars do not make sense. Hybrids using alcohol fuel do make sense, if you grow the fuel as part of local regenerative farms. "CSA for fuel." - Most ICE cars can be converted to use alcohol. (We can use the existing cars longer, rather than replacing them, which would save a TON of resources.) - The exhaust is non-toxic. - It's carbon neutral. (The carbon in the fuel came from the air, not the ground.) - Pretty much anyone can make it. It's not hard. - The byproducts are good animal feed. (Yeast is protein, fermentation converts the sugars and starches into yeast and alcohol. So alcohol production improves the inputs rather than destroying or degrading them!) - Alcohol has (much!) higher energy density than batteries. - Batteries have all kinds of problems once they are wrecked: cars have spontaneously erupted into flames a week after the crash that sent them to the wrecking yard. When they do burn they put out crazy toxic smoke.

parasense 5y ago

I think Toyota is being realistic, and prudent. There is a lot of hype around EV's, and perhaps a certain level of ignorance, blissful or willful. On the blissful side of things, you have the average EV consumer who after waiting months for their back-ordered EV will plug the vehicle into the electric grid. Obviously this increases the load on the grid, which entails many things. If the EV owner uses standard household 15/20 amp (120 volt) receptacles, the Toyota charger will use about 11 ~ 12 amps, which obeys the 80/60 rule. Meaning 12 amps is 80% of a 15 amp circuit breaker, or 12 amp is 60% of 20 amp breaker, leaving a little spare capacity on the circuit to hopefully not trip the breaker. If the EV customer upgrades to 240 volt charging, the circuit must use a larger cable, and thus less resistance, and the result is more amperage may flow. So without going into Ohms law, your average Lvl-2 charger will do about 30 amps. Or put another way the circuit is protected by a 37.5 amp breaker, again obeying the 80% electrician "ampacity" rules. So... just imagine a bunch of homes adding on average 30 amps ambient load to the electrical grid, not all at once, but probably at night, or probably at certain times of day like after rush hour, etc.. So then imagine places like California, or Texas with large populations, and electrical grid capacity issues. In California they have infamous problems with "not in my back yard" problem, unable to expand the electricity grid to meet future expected demand because the various municipalities don't want power lines in their back yards. Also, California's grid is apparently already unsafe, having caused wild fires from old overloaded high-lines, etc. The situation in California is sad because it's probably the most progressive EV market anywhere in the USA. As for Texas, their electrical grid is probably better than in California, but most of the power is from natural gas fired power plants, and there is a second energy grid... the natural gas grid and the quality there is lagging behind. So there is a nexus of causality, and if the NG grid cannot sustain higher load, then the electrical grid beyond will not be capable of delivering the higher demand, etc... and one only has to point towards the winter of 2021, if that implication wasn't apparent already. All of this ignores the more fundamental issues of mineral extraction, and scarcity. This topic will from an economics perspective act as a natural constraint on EV growth. This may provide enough time for the "grids" to upgrade their capacity, which represents huge regulatory hurdles, and if effectively a mega project in terms of bureaucratic hoops, and actual deployment. So if in an alternate universe we had ample spare lithium, nickle, cobalt, etc... then the constraint would be the speed at which we could upgrade the electrical grid. One last note about the grid regarding rooftop solar. The grid is not designed for a bunch of homes back-feeding the grid at scale, and there are legitimate safety issues. This is a related issue, in a similar way maybe 1% of homes back-feed solar power, so the grid can absorb the increase for now, but not at scale. Because while we're updating the grid to handle more delivery from power stations, we may as well update the last mile to handle solar rooftop generation. This is perhaps an even more ambitious mega project, as it involves increasing circuit "ampacity" along the last mile, which is like 90% (exaggerating so you get the point) of the total grid cost.