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The argument is purely technical so you can divorce it from the mouth it is being uttered from and consider it on its own merits. To me it makes sense, but I h
by jeremy_clarkson 4y ago
The argument is purely technical so you can divorce it from the mouth it is being uttered from and consider it on its own merits.
To me it makes sense, but I had similar thoughts independently before reading this article. The only assumption is that battery manufacturing will remain challenging for the near future.
- brnt 4y agoOstensibly purely technical arguments can be carefully crafted to present a particular message. It's a tactic that works well for certain audiences. It does not matter either way, in the EU selling anything but full electric will be illegal as of 2035. If Toyota wants to get out of that lucrative market, it can go ahead.
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago> It does not matter either way, in the EU selling anything but full electric will be illegal as of 2035. That is not accurate. It will not be possible to buy a new non-zero emission car.
- semi-extrinsic 4y agoMy take is that Toyota is 100% correct here, but simultaneously too late with this messaging today. Imagine if the EU and others had taken a reasonable stance 15 years ago, and said "every car sold after 2015 must be an EV or a series hybrid with more than 50 km realistic range on pure electric". The transition towards zero carbon emissions from the road sector would have gone exponentially faster. I mean, even if you look at the countries with the highest rate of EV adoption, like Norway with 65% of the vehicles sold in 2021 being pure EVs, it's still only making a tiny dent in the amount of gasoline and diesel sold - around 5% decrease when you compare Q4 2021 to Q4 2019, and then it's still a bit unclear how much of that drop is attributed to WFH and covid.
- blkhawk 4y agowell its vehicles sold not cars driving. I would expect that to add up quickly over the next decade.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago> Imagine if the EU and others had taken a reasonable stance 15 years ago, and said "every car sold after 2015 must be an EV or a series hybrid with more than 50 km realistic range on pure electric". The transition towards zero carbon emissions from the road sector would have gone exponentially faster. This is basically what they did. Generally laws try to avoid specifying the technology these days, to prevent locking things in, but the EU and other sensibly governed places have been putting tighter emission standards in place for decades. People were free to meet these goals with whatever tech they came up with, better aero, lighter materials and so on. If PHEVs were the answer, we'd have more of them, but pretty much everyone realised that going straight to BEV made sense as soon as the oil/battery price passed a certain ratio, and that it was only going in one direction in future. Here's a 2011 (11 years ago), McKinsey slide: https://therationalpessimist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/mckinsey-battery-study-jpeg.jpg https://therationalpessimist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/mck... This is also where the $100 per KWh target people talked about a lot comes from, if batteries get sufficiently cheap, BEVs win, and they did.
- semi-extrinsic 4y agoI don't buy this, and I'm very much against the principle of having laws that don't specify how to achieve things. The result has been that for several decades manufacturers have been meeting emissions targets by plain manipulation, whether it's dieselgate or it's creating ECU maps tailored for the test driving cycle. We have achieved only emissions reductions on paper, when we could have been mandating PHEVs and actually solving problems. If you look back at when California was actually able to do something about their smog problem, it was through mandating specific technologies - first it was positive crankcase ventilation, then catalytic converters.
- dzhiurgis 4y agoHypothetically, if we banned BEVs today to sacrifice their batteries for PHEVS and only sold PHEVs for next 10 years it would be way better for emissions. Of course no one really wants a PHEV anymore!
- semi-extrinsic 4y agoI absolutely would want a PHEV for my next car, assuming that it had a sensible pure-electric mode. I've test driven both a BMW and a Mitsubishi a few years back, and the UX was absolutely horrible.
- libertine 4y agoSo they better start increasing the standard of living if they want people to be able to afford EVs in all EU countries.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoTCO for EVs in the EU already crossed over, so they'll actively increase the standard of living by introducing EVs: https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/new-energies/europe/analysis/evs-are-past-tco-tipping-point https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/new-energies/europe/analysis/...
- pjmlp 4y agoStill looking forward how we are getting the required infrastructure for recharging the batteries, in a usable time across all legacy gas stations, where the electricity is supposed to be generated from, and into which dump the used batteries will be pulled up, in similar vein to current junkyards.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoWe already have the infrastructure. Any place that can run air conditioners during the day can charge vehicles over night. An average family generates 5kg of waste per day. A 400kg battery every 15 years is not going to make a dent in that waste, especially when the 400kg can be profitably recycled.
- pjmlp 4y agoI guess we are talking about US infrastructure for air conditioning then.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoIndia and Africa are adopting air conditioning very rapidly.
- pjmlp 4y agoYeah, when one is rich enough to own them. Why spend money on basic infrastructure for human living conditions, lets give everyone air conditioning and an electric car.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoWhen temperatures regularly get above 45C or 110F then air conditioning is basic infrastructure for human living conditions. The link between temperature and human productivity is well established, air conditioning is one of those things that seems frivolous but pays for itself. And of course transportation of food and other goods is also basic infrastructure for human living conditions. So maybe not electric cars, but electric trains definitely.
- eckesicle 4y agoI just don't know enough about the subject to be able to 'divorce the subject from the mouth' confidently. Perhaps a bit unfair, but I'd rather dismiss what he says than risk being misled. It's like the opposite of 'appeal to authority' :)
- agumonkey 4y agorebel bias ? :)
- mikelward 4y agoIt says it's a problem carrying around more battery than you need most days. And implicitly argues it's better to carry around a combustion engine (and gearbox) you don't need most days. I guess that means less rare metals, but then wouldn't pure BEVs with a small battery be ideal by his logic?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- discreteevent 4y agoI assumed from his argument that the engine is lighter than the extra battery for equivalent range.
- tashbarg 4y agoBack of the envelope: for 20-30 kWhs of capacity less, you put in an ICE that can burn gas for 10kWh/kg.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoWe had the technical argument about a decade ago. Toyota lost. I'm genuinely surprised to see them still fighting this battle as we're way past plausible deniability and getting into "this is embarrassing" territory. PHEVs are better than HEVs and both are better than ICE, hydrogen is a non-starter (technically better than ICE but there's no infrastructure so it'll be niche) so the future is BEV for wheeled transport. In depth numbers: https://theicct.org/publication/a-global-comparison-of-the-life-cycle-greenhouse-gas-emissions-of-combustion-engine-and-electric-passenger-cars/ https://theicct.org/publication/a-global-comparison-of-the-l... https://theicct.org/publication/ghg-benefits-incentives-ev-mar22/ https://theicct.org/publication/ghg-benefits-incentives-ev-m... They're probably starting this campaign to try to prevent the phase out being brought forward again, and/or spreading to other countries as it's been going so well.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]