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Lots of people saying Toyota missed the boat on EVs. I'm not convinced the technology, infrastructure or battery supply is ready for true mass production of EVs

by rr808 4y ago

Lots of people saying Toyota missed the boat on EVs. I'm not convinced the technology, infrastructure or battery supply is ready for true mass production of EVs. Toyota makes 10 million cars a year, they'll be selling good EVs soon enough to put Tesla to shame.

urduntupu 4y ago
Toyota is building one of the most reliable and robust cars for the masses. With attitude to build cars they will be competitive for very long.
- speedgoose 4y ago
  But Toyota isn’t on top of the reliability rankings.
  - clouddrover 4y ago
    Toyota scored 1st and 2nd (Toyota and Lexus) in Consumers reports 2022 reliability rankings: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars-a7824554938/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf... Lexus is number one in JD Power's 2023 rankings: https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehicle-dependability-studyvds https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehi...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - qclibre22 4y ago
    https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars-a7824554938/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf... : "Toyota, Lexus, and BMW are the top three most reliable brands in our annual auto reliability brand rankings" https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/consumer-reports-reliability-study-2021/ https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/consumer-reports-reliabil... : 5 of top 10 are Toyota
    - switch007 4y ago
      BMW, number 3?! They must build them different in the US, surely.
      - _huayra_ 4y ago
        BMW = "Bring My Wallet" because those multi-thousand $$$ shocks won't replace themselves for free after 4 years In the US it seems like they're built to barely make it to the end of the leasing period and then implode. They're really going to town with the "snap-in" fittings for hoses in the engine because putting a metal hose clamp on seems to increase COGS I guess.
        dsfyu404ed 4y ago
        > They're really going to town with the "snap-in" fittings for hoses in the engine because putting a metal hose clamp on seems to increase COGS It's a labor saving thing. It's cheaper to design a fancy snap-together plastic connector once, buy a few million from overseas and than it is to have expensive first world labor tighten hose clamps.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - kube-system 4y ago
    They are consistently at the top of reliability rankings. https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars-a7824554938/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - Eumenes 4y ago
    My new Tacoma is garbage, so many electric/computer problems and under 20k miles. Has spent at least 4 weeks in shop during first year of owning it.
  - speedgoose 4y ago
    My bad, I got a wrong source.
- Snitch-Thursday 4y ago
  Agreed. I'm hopeful to see if their research into synthetically created hydrogen fuel powered cars will get us fuel created by green energy that we can run in hydrogen fuel cell cars so we get the best of both cutting fuel emissions to net zero and still have the flexibility of cross-country drives and fast fuelings without having to have all our (agriculture, industrial, etc.) vehicles be BEVs.
  - sbradford26 4y ago
    So Hydrogen's perk would be quicker fueling but I don't know how many people are going to be willing to pay the fairly large additional cost for that convenience. Toyota Mirai: Tank Size: 5.6 kg of hydrogen Cost per kg of hydrogen: $13.11 Miles of range: 402 Cost per mile: $0.18 Ioniq 5: Battery Size: 77.4 kWh Range: 302 miles Miles per kWh: 3.5 Cost per kWh (Currently at my house): $0.27 per kWh Cost per mile: $0.08 Ford Maverick Hybrid (My current vehicle): Tank size: 13.6 Gallons Range: ~500 miles Average fuel economy: 38.5 mpg (my average currently) Cost per gallon: $3.40 (last price I saw on the way into work) Cost per mile: $0.088 To get an equivalent cost per mile electricity would have to $0.63 per kWh. Largely though that is currently with hydrogen made from natural gas, versus green hydrogen which will end up being intrinsically lin.18/ked to the cost of electricity. From what I have seen it is somewhere around 3 watts of electricity to get 1 W equivalent of hydrogen which might be able to get a 2 to 1 ratio in the future. I think certain sectors like aerospace will be okay with the additional cost due to other advantages but regular consumers it seems less likely. Cost for Hydrogen (I went with the lower number): https://h2fcp.org/content/cost-refill https://h2fcp.org/content/cost-refill
thenerdhead 4y ago
Yep. Related to their principle of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genchi_Genbutsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genchi_Genbutsu
clouddrover 4y ago
Volkswagen makes 10 million cars a year and they're pushing hard for EVs now. The main difference between Volkswagen's and Toyota's situation is that Toyota is still in a good position to meet fleet emissions requirements globally because they've been selling hybrids for so long. But Volkswagen needs to pump out EVs now to meet their fleet emissions targets. Fleet emissions fines are simply dead money. You're much better off putting that money into your EV development program. Toyota has to sell EVs at scale eventually because new car ICE vehicle sales bans now and into the future mean that all car manufacturers have to.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  “ Toyota has to sell EVs at scale eventually because new car ICE vehicle sales bans now and into the future…” The EU is pushing that 2035 date. Are other countries following?
  - clouddrover 4y ago
    Other countries are leading. The UK is 2030. Norway is 2025.
  - oblio 4y ago
    The EU is about 450 million people with above average disposable income for global levels. I'm not sure if other countries are following, but they will :-)
    - sethhochberg 4y ago
      Somewhat similar story in the US with California and New York pursuing 2035 sale bans - other states don't necessarily have to even follow, California has been the benchmark for US vehicle emissions standards for decades. The state has big car culture and a big population. Automakers often build things to the California standard and sell the CA-standard cars in the rest of the country. Its just not cost effective for them to make minor variations in the models.
- sangnoir 4y ago
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
If Toyota misses the boat there's not much coming back from that. Once things shake out and brands develop reputations for certain classes of product it takes an act of god to change them. In the 1970s the US was really good at making fairly luxurious barges but then suddenly the consumers wanted smaller cars. The US automakers already made compacts and small cars but they were value-engineered to within an inch of their lives for people who couldn't afford better. Japanese automakers absolutely killed because they already made "nice cars for nice people" in the form factors people wanted. The US had plenty of nicer cars in production at the time but they weren't form factors anybody wanted. So when you look at the average car that actually got bought and put on the roads the Japanese cars were nicer all around (and priced accordingly). The reputations took off from there and the US automakers got left holding the bag of low end customers and the Japanese carmakers got the high end customers further cementing their place in the midsize and compact car market. Minivans and then SUV becoming the "new hotness" for those buyer demographics and some by all accounts spectacular midsize car platforms of the 80s and 90s (Taurus, Escort, W-body (e.g. Lumina), Neon) still didn't unseat the Japanese car-makers dominance of the higher priced and higher end portions of the midsize and compact car market. I would not bet against something similar happening to Toyota (and a couple other brands) with the transition to EVs. The big three look poised to capture the pickup and large SUV market. The Koreans look pretty well positioned in the crossover and hatchback segments. Tesla is king of high end sedans right now. I think there's room for another player in the crossover market and some room in the midsize SUV market (Honda Pilot, Ford Explorer type stuff) and there's probably room in the sedan market for a boring non-flashy EV (something Toyota already has a reputation for in the ICE segment). Will Toyota develop an EV or several that's a big enough winner to cement their place beside the current players in those segments? If I knew the answer to that question I'd be buying stocks.
pornel 4y ago
Their current offering is "meh" from the EV perspective. It doesn't look like their experience with small-battery low-voltage hybrids gave them skills and experience to execute a good BEV. ICE reliability is a different game than batteries, efficiency, and software game of BEVs. I think there's a high chance that Toyota will be sidelined by EV-first automakers from Korea and China just like US automakers were sidelined by Japanese automakers in the 20th century.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Good thing Europe doesn't produce cars any more.
- chasd00 4y ago
  i cant even imagine how hard it would be for an ICE manufacturer to pivot into EVs. Those decades of engine/transmission refinement expertise? out the window. Imagine trying to organize and pitch a new vehicle without including the powertrain people and, instead, a team with nothing on the road yet.
  - oblio 4y ago
    Nobody said it's easy, but if you don't live in the US, you should be aware that there are already loads of EVs out on the road and available, all from "legacy" car manufacturers. VW: https://www.arenaev.com/volkswagen-electric-vehicles-2.php https://www.arenaev.com/volkswagen-electric-vehicles-2.php (add Audi, Skoda, Seat, etc to that) Mercedes: https://www.arenaev.com/mercedes-electric-vehicles-6.php https://www.arenaev.com/mercedes-electric-vehicles-6.php BMW, Kia, Hyunday, Volvo, Renault, BYD, Opel, Cupra, ...
  - Merad 4y ago
    I think Toyota is in much better shape in this regard than you might expect. Most/all of their hybrid vehicles use an eCVT transmission to drive the front wheels that's radically different from a traditional transmission. And their AWD hybrid models provide the AWD via an electric motor on the rear axle (no connection to the ICE engine) that's essentially identical to the setup in electric cars.
mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
I think Toyota's issues will just be supply chain around battery packs. They have already been designing and engineering hybrids for a decade or more. I don't think its a revolutionary change for them to remove combustion engine and accessories and go with all electric motors plus larger battery packs. If anything it might simplify internal designs. I'd rather they flow this through their internal typical processes and come out with a product that meets their historical standards rather than any "catch up" to the market. Once they have a Corolla like EV platform I bet it will outsell most competitors and likely won't have gimmicky features.
- fomine3 4y ago
  It was my thought before bZ4X was released. After I read reviews about it, I'm not sure.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Only if they can produce it cost effectively and in large volume. This is going to be a learning curve that will take them years. Hybrid cars are not the same as an EV. Toyota needs to start worrying about their existing revenue not drying up before they can master the same learning curve that other manufacturers have been trying to master (with varying degrees of success). Corolla like EV platforms already exist. Several Chinese manufacturers sell those in their domestic market for prices as low as a few thousand per car. And several of those manufacturers are ramping up their exports to the US, Europe, and Australia.
- hindsightbias 4y ago
  Some analysts like Munro think legacies will take much longer to catch up to Tesla because they're evolving ICE designs/standards into their EVs and crippling them. Toyota is so huge they could have afforded a clean-sheet platform but waited too long so they'll fall into the same cycle.
  - somerandomqaguy 4y ago
    They do have a clean sheet design: e-TNGA. The Toyota bZ4X and the Subaru Soltarra are both based on the design, along with the bZ3 and the upcoming Lexus RZ.
TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
As an owner of BEV (Skoda Enyaq) I agree with this sentiment. My experience is that BEVs are expensive to purchase and expensive to use. This is a niche car for rich people, not Toyota Prius for common folk. I am currently getting rid of the car and going back to ICE because my whole experience was a painful joke. Toyota is getting ridiculed today, but they will be last one who will be laughing, when prices for BEV and for batteries are currently going up [0] [0] https://about.bnef.com/blog/increase-in-battery-prices-could-affect-ev-progress/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/increase-in-battery-prices-could...
- sokoloff 4y ago
  I've had a Nissan LEAF for 8.5 years. It was more expensive to buy than the alternative I was considering (a used ICE), but wasn't that much more expensive than a comparable new car (ignoring incentives, which made the LEAF cheaper). Plenty of people were spending ~$30K on new 4-door sedans in 2014. The running costs have been noticeably lower, driven by lower (almost non-existent) maintenance costs. I'm about to buy two tires for it, but other than that, my #1 maintenance expense has been wiper blades and #2 expense washer fluid.
  - abakker 4y ago
    AND!!! compared to a similar sized car with an anemic little 4 cylinder, the leaf is much better to drive, IMO. (I have a 2020 model). Its not a mercedes, but the torque off the line is so much better.
  - oblio 4y ago
    My guess is that this is highly dependent on where you live, incentives/subsidies, local infrastructure, electricity cost. Based on the car presented by OP, Skoda Enyaq, I'm guessing they're in Europe where electricity is expensive. If the charging infrastructure isn't there, both at home/work and fast chargers, BEVs most likely suck.
    - RodGodKiller 4y ago
      Gasoline and Diesel is also very pricey. If you charge at home, electric cars are a (small) fraction of the price to ‘fill up’, even in Europe; if not, likely not worth it.
Aloha 4y ago
I dont disagree - I think it's true of all of the large manufacturers. They'll wait til the infrastructure develops a little bit closer to maturity, then go all in. I think the transition to electric cars will take about a generation, but I think overall it'll be a good thing.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
The thing is that if Toyota wants to be a leader in this space, they should not wait for this to happen but be making it happen. The reality is that they have not been doing that. And others have. If they wanted to be a leader in this space, five years ago would have been late to start putting in place the strategy, infrastructure, supply chains, etc. you need to build EVs. They did not do much five years ago other than insisting that they did not need to. And really, ten years ago would have been better, that's when Tesla started looking like a serious company and making concrete plans for scaling their business. I don't see Toyota shipping EVs in volume any time soon. The new CEO is likely to have been tasked to actually start making this happen. But it's not going to happen overnight because they haven't built any factories yet, they haven't secured any battery supplies yet. They've built a few proof of concept / compliance cars that they are struggling to build in meaningful numbers and that they've had to withdraw from the market because of construction issues repeatedly. When they do start doing this, they'll have a little learning curve to master. So, the new CEO has his work cut out. As for being convinced about scale, the market volume is now millions of cars per year. Soon tens of millions. Tesla is a market leader with a target of getting to 2 million cars per year this year (up from 1 this year). And their cars are now the #1 best selling cars in many markets. They have really juicy margins on their products. It's a proven market with high margins and high volume at this point. Tesla is not alone in this market and there are quite a few other manufacturers also starting to move some serious volume. Any of those have what Toyota does not have: volume, scale, and proven products being sold as fast as they can be produced. The technology is there. The infrastructure is there and rapidly expanding to keep up with supply and demand. New battery factories are being announced and opened all the time. We'll soon be measuring the collective output of these factories in twh per year rather than the hundreds of gwh per year it is right now. Toyota if it wants in has a lot of catching up to do.
- brobdingnagians 4y ago
  The future has a funny habit of being different than we anticipate. I think this might be one of those cases, but time will tell.
- starkd 4y ago
  Going all in on EV's is also a very big gamble. Sure, there is probably a profitable segment in the market, but with so many other car companies going all-in, Toyota could be in a good position by having a wider line-up of products. There is something very strange about the herd mentality around EV's. As if we are going to fix the environment if only everybody gets an EV for ALL use cases.
mgfist 4y ago
Millions of EVs are now sold per year. It's still a small percent of total car but increasing rapidly and while all other manufacturers are spending time and money building up expertise and infrastructure Toyota is ignoring it. Switching from ICE to EV is not easy and takes years to do so and the later Toyota delays it the more painful it will be.
- starkd 4y ago
  There is no reason it all EV. There are legitimate use cases for both EV and ICE.
  - mgfist 4y ago
    In the not too distant future EV will be better than ICE for 99.9% of use-cases. And for passenger vehicles that'll be more like 99.999%.
    - starkd 4y ago
      That was not my point. The consumer should be able to decide when/if that happens. Not some arbitrarily imposed timeline. Advances in technology should be tested in the consumer marketplace.
      - mgfist 4y ago
        There's no "if". And the when is just a matter of time required to bring up mineral/battery supply chains. EVs are already (in most cases) cheaper than equivalent ICE vehicles over the lifetime of a vehicle. Soon they will become cheaper upfront as well. ICE won't compete very well after that, except in the luxury/enthusiast market. Consumers choose automobiles over horse and buggy. They are choosing EV over ICE too, in greater quantities every year.
        starkd 4y ago
        There's a significant percentage of EV owners that regret their purchase. They either sell it and buy and ICE vehicle, or their next purchase is not an EV. (I have talked to such people. They are not hard to find.) Admittedly some are happy with it, but your statement ignores the fickle nature of consumer demand.
b34r 4y ago
There are so many nuanced things that go into making a great EV: advanced software with OTA updates, highly efficient electric motors, material science breakthroughs in battery tech and other components. Toyota can get there in time but there’s so many things to do and they’re facing increasingly rough headwinds the longer they wait to properly electrify.
cowmix 4y ago
I guess I understand why Toyota hasn't gone full-hog into EVs. There's a lot of life left in their hybrid and ICE drivetrains. What I don't understand is why whatever BEVs they have tried so far, have been pretty crappy. For instance, the bZ4X is a total joke in almost all aspects -- features, range, etc.

by rr808 4y ago

urduntupu 4y ago

Toyota is building one of the most reliable and robust cars for the masses. With attitude to build cars they will be competitive for very long.

speedgoose 4y ago
But Toyota isn’t on top of the reliability rankings.
- clouddrover 4y ago
  Toyota scored 1st and 2nd (Toyota and Lexus) in Consumers reports 2022 reliability rankings: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars-a7824554938/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf... Lexus is number one in JD Power's 2023 rankings: https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehicle-dependability-studyvds https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehi...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- qclibre22 4y ago
  https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars-a7824554938/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf... : "Toyota, Lexus, and BMW are the top three most reliable brands in our annual auto reliability brand rankings" https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/consumer-reports-reliability-study-2021/ https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/consumer-reports-reliabil... : 5 of top 10 are Toyota
  - switch007 4y ago
    BMW, number 3?! They must build them different in the US, surely.
    - _huayra_ 4y ago
      BMW = "Bring My Wallet" because those multi-thousand $$$ shocks won't replace themselves for free after 4 years In the US it seems like they're built to barely make it to the end of the leasing period and then implode. They're really going to town with the "snap-in" fittings for hoses in the engine because putting a metal hose clamp on seems to increase COGS I guess.
      - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
        > They're really going to town with the "snap-in" fittings for hoses in the engine because putting a metal hose clamp on seems to increase COGS It's a labor saving thing. It's cheaper to design a fancy snap-together plastic connector once, buy a few million from overseas and than it is to have expensive first world labor tighten hose clamps.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- kube-system 4y ago
  They are consistently at the top of reliability rankings. https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars-a7824554938/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- Eumenes 4y ago
  My new Tacoma is garbage, so many electric/computer problems and under 20k miles. Has spent at least 4 weeks in shop during first year of owning it.
- speedgoose 4y ago
  My bad, I got a wrong source.
Snitch-Thursday 4y ago
Agreed. I'm hopeful to see if their research into synthetically created hydrogen fuel powered cars will get us fuel created by green energy that we can run in hydrogen fuel cell cars so we get the best of both cutting fuel emissions to net zero and still have the flexibility of cross-country drives and fast fuelings without having to have all our (agriculture, industrial, etc.) vehicles be BEVs.
- sbradford26 4y ago
  So Hydrogen's perk would be quicker fueling but I don't know how many people are going to be willing to pay the fairly large additional cost for that convenience. Toyota Mirai: Tank Size: 5.6 kg of hydrogen Cost per kg of hydrogen: $13.11 Miles of range: 402 Cost per mile: $0.18 Ioniq 5: Battery Size: 77.4 kWh Range: 302 miles Miles per kWh: 3.5 Cost per kWh (Currently at my house): $0.27 per kWh Cost per mile: $0.08 Ford Maverick Hybrid (My current vehicle): Tank size: 13.6 Gallons Range: ~500 miles Average fuel economy: 38.5 mpg (my average currently) Cost per gallon: $3.40 (last price I saw on the way into work) Cost per mile: $0.088 To get an equivalent cost per mile electricity would have to $0.63 per kWh. Largely though that is currently with hydrogen made from natural gas, versus green hydrogen which will end up being intrinsically lin.18/ked to the cost of electricity. From what I have seen it is somewhere around 3 watts of electricity to get 1 W equivalent of hydrogen which might be able to get a 2 to 1 ratio in the future. I think certain sectors like aerospace will be okay with the additional cost due to other advantages but regular consumers it seems less likely. Cost for Hydrogen (I went with the lower number): https://h2fcp.org/content/cost-refill https://h2fcp.org/content/cost-refill

thenerdhead 4y ago

Yep. Related to their principle of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genchi_Genbutsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genchi_Genbutsu

clouddrover 4y ago

Volkswagen makes 10 million cars a year and they're pushing hard for EVs now. The main difference between Volkswagen's and Toyota's situation is that Toyota is still in a good position to meet fleet emissions requirements globally because they've been selling hybrids for so long. But Volkswagen needs to pump out EVs now to meet their fleet emissions targets. Fleet emissions fines are simply dead money. You're much better off putting that money into your EV development program. Toyota has to sell EVs at scale eventually because new car ICE vehicle sales bans now and into the future mean that all car manufacturers have to.

germinalphrase 4y ago
“ Toyota has to sell EVs at scale eventually because new car ICE vehicle sales bans now and into the future…” The EU is pushing that 2035 date. Are other countries following?
- clouddrover 4y ago
  Other countries are leading. The UK is 2030. Norway is 2025.
- oblio 4y ago
  The EU is about 450 million people with above average disposable income for global levels. I'm not sure if other countries are following, but they will :-)
  - sethhochberg 4y ago
    Somewhat similar story in the US with California and New York pursuing 2035 sale bans - other states don't necessarily have to even follow, California has been the benchmark for US vehicle emissions standards for decades. The state has big car culture and a big population. Automakers often build things to the California standard and sell the CA-standard cars in the rest of the country. Its just not cost effective for them to make minor variations in the models.
sangnoir 4y ago

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

If Toyota misses the boat there's not much coming back from that. Once things shake out and brands develop reputations for certain classes of product it takes an act of god to change them. In the 1970s the US was really good at making fairly luxurious barges but then suddenly the consumers wanted smaller cars. The US automakers already made compacts and small cars but they were value-engineered to within an inch of their lives for people who couldn't afford better. Japanese automakers absolutely killed because they already made "nice cars for nice people" in the form factors people wanted. The US had plenty of nicer cars in production at the time but they weren't form factors anybody wanted. So when you look at the average car that actually got bought and put on the roads the Japanese cars were nicer all around (and priced accordingly). The reputations took off from there and the US automakers got left holding the bag of low end customers and the Japanese carmakers got the high end customers further cementing their place in the midsize and compact car market. Minivans and then SUV becoming the "new hotness" for those buyer demographics and some by all accounts spectacular midsize car platforms of the 80s and 90s (Taurus, Escort, W-body (e.g. Lumina), Neon) still didn't unseat the Japanese car-makers dominance of the higher priced and higher end portions of the midsize and compact car market. I would not bet against something similar happening to Toyota (and a couple other brands) with the transition to EVs. The big three look poised to capture the pickup and large SUV market. The Koreans look pretty well positioned in the crossover and hatchback segments. Tesla is king of high end sedans right now. I think there's room for another player in the crossover market and some room in the midsize SUV market (Honda Pilot, Ford Explorer type stuff) and there's probably room in the sedan market for a boring non-flashy EV (something Toyota already has a reputation for in the ICE segment). Will Toyota develop an EV or several that's a big enough winner to cement their place beside the current players in those segments? If I knew the answer to that question I'd be buying stocks.

pornel 4y ago

Their current offering is "meh" from the EV perspective. It doesn't look like their experience with small-battery low-voltage hybrids gave them skills and experience to execute a good BEV. ICE reliability is a different game than batteries, efficiency, and software game of BEVs. I think there's a high chance that Toyota will be sidelined by EV-first automakers from Korea and China just like US automakers were sidelined by Japanese automakers in the 20th century.

jacquesm 4y ago
Good thing Europe doesn't produce cars any more.
chasd00 4y ago
i cant even imagine how hard it would be for an ICE manufacturer to pivot into EVs. Those decades of engine/transmission refinement expertise? out the window. Imagine trying to organize and pitch a new vehicle without including the powertrain people and, instead, a team with nothing on the road yet.
- oblio 4y ago
  Nobody said it's easy, but if you don't live in the US, you should be aware that there are already loads of EVs out on the road and available, all from "legacy" car manufacturers. VW: https://www.arenaev.com/volkswagen-electric-vehicles-2.php https://www.arenaev.com/volkswagen-electric-vehicles-2.php (add Audi, Skoda, Seat, etc to that) Mercedes: https://www.arenaev.com/mercedes-electric-vehicles-6.php https://www.arenaev.com/mercedes-electric-vehicles-6.php BMW, Kia, Hyunday, Volvo, Renault, BYD, Opel, Cupra, ...
- Merad 4y ago
  I think Toyota is in much better shape in this regard than you might expect. Most/all of their hybrid vehicles use an eCVT transmission to drive the front wheels that's radically different from a traditional transmission. And their AWD hybrid models provide the AWD via an electric motor on the rear axle (no connection to the ICE engine) that's essentially identical to the setup in electric cars.

mattbrewsbytes 4y ago

I think Toyota's issues will just be supply chain around battery packs. They have already been designing and engineering hybrids for a decade or more. I don't think its a revolutionary change for them to remove combustion engine and accessories and go with all electric motors plus larger battery packs. If anything it might simplify internal designs. I'd rather they flow this through their internal typical processes and come out with a product that meets their historical standards rather than any "catch up" to the market. Once they have a Corolla like EV platform I bet it will outsell most competitors and likely won't have gimmicky features.

fomine3 4y ago
It was my thought before bZ4X was released. After I read reviews about it, I'm not sure.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Only if they can produce it cost effectively and in large volume. This is going to be a learning curve that will take them years. Hybrid cars are not the same as an EV. Toyota needs to start worrying about their existing revenue not drying up before they can master the same learning curve that other manufacturers have been trying to master (with varying degrees of success). Corolla like EV platforms already exist. Several Chinese manufacturers sell those in their domestic market for prices as low as a few thousand per car. And several of those manufacturers are ramping up their exports to the US, Europe, and Australia.
hindsightbias 4y ago
Some analysts like Munro think legacies will take much longer to catch up to Tesla because they're evolving ICE designs/standards into their EVs and crippling them. Toyota is so huge they could have afforded a clean-sheet platform but waited too long so they'll fall into the same cycle.
- somerandomqaguy 4y ago
  They do have a clean sheet design: e-TNGA. The Toyota bZ4X and the Subaru Soltarra are both based on the design, along with the bZ3 and the upcoming Lexus RZ.

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago

As an owner of BEV (Skoda Enyaq) I agree with this sentiment. My experience is that BEVs are expensive to purchase and expensive to use. This is a niche car for rich people, not Toyota Prius for common folk. I am currently getting rid of the car and going back to ICE because my whole experience was a painful joke. Toyota is getting ridiculed today, but they will be last one who will be laughing, when prices for BEV and for batteries are currently going up [0] [0] https://about.bnef.com/blog/increase-in-battery-prices-could-affect-ev-progress/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/increase-in-battery-prices-could...

sokoloff 4y ago
I've had a Nissan LEAF for 8.5 years. It was more expensive to buy than the alternative I was considering (a used ICE), but wasn't that much more expensive than a comparable new car (ignoring incentives, which made the LEAF cheaper). Plenty of people were spending ~$30K on new 4-door sedans in 2014. The running costs have been noticeably lower, driven by lower (almost non-existent) maintenance costs. I'm about to buy two tires for it, but other than that, my #1 maintenance expense has been wiper blades and #2 expense washer fluid.
- abakker 4y ago
  AND!!! compared to a similar sized car with an anemic little 4 cylinder, the leaf is much better to drive, IMO. (I have a 2020 model). Its not a mercedes, but the torque off the line is so much better.
- oblio 4y ago
  My guess is that this is highly dependent on where you live, incentives/subsidies, local infrastructure, electricity cost. Based on the car presented by OP, Skoda Enyaq, I'm guessing they're in Europe where electricity is expensive. If the charging infrastructure isn't there, both at home/work and fast chargers, BEVs most likely suck.
  - RodGodKiller 4y ago
    Gasoline and Diesel is also very pricey. If you charge at home, electric cars are a (small) fraction of the price to ‘fill up’, even in Europe; if not, likely not worth it.

Aloha 4y ago

I dont disagree - I think it's true of all of the large manufacturers. They'll wait til the infrastructure develops a little bit closer to maturity, then go all in. I think the transition to electric cars will take about a generation, but I think overall it'll be a good thing.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

The thing is that if Toyota wants to be a leader in this space, they should not wait for this to happen but be making it happen. The reality is that they have not been doing that. And others have. If they wanted to be a leader in this space, five years ago would have been late to start putting in place the strategy, infrastructure, supply chains, etc. you need to build EVs. They did not do much five years ago other than insisting that they did not need to. And really, ten years ago would have been better, that's when Tesla started looking like a serious company and making concrete plans for scaling their business. I don't see Toyota shipping EVs in volume any time soon. The new CEO is likely to have been tasked to actually start making this happen. But it's not going to happen overnight because they haven't built any factories yet, they haven't secured any battery supplies yet. They've built a few proof of concept / compliance cars that they are struggling to build in meaningful numbers and that they've had to withdraw from the market because of construction issues repeatedly. When they do start doing this, they'll have a little learning curve to master. So, the new CEO has his work cut out. As for being convinced about scale, the market volume is now millions of cars per year. Soon tens of millions. Tesla is a market leader with a target of getting to 2 million cars per year this year (up from 1 this year). And their cars are now the #1 best selling cars in many markets. They have really juicy margins on their products. It's a proven market with high margins and high volume at this point. Tesla is not alone in this market and there are quite a few other manufacturers also starting to move some serious volume. Any of those have what Toyota does not have: volume, scale, and proven products being sold as fast as they can be produced. The technology is there. The infrastructure is there and rapidly expanding to keep up with supply and demand. New battery factories are being announced and opened all the time. We'll soon be measuring the collective output of these factories in twh per year rather than the hundreds of gwh per year it is right now. Toyota if it wants in has a lot of catching up to do.

brobdingnagians 4y ago
The future has a funny habit of being different than we anticipate. I think this might be one of those cases, but time will tell.
starkd 4y ago
Going all in on EV's is also a very big gamble. Sure, there is probably a profitable segment in the market, but with so many other car companies going all-in, Toyota could be in a good position by having a wider line-up of products. There is something very strange about the herd mentality around EV's. As if we are going to fix the environment if only everybody gets an EV for ALL use cases.

mgfist 4y ago

Millions of EVs are now sold per year. It's still a small percent of total car but increasing rapidly and while all other manufacturers are spending time and money building up expertise and infrastructure Toyota is ignoring it. Switching from ICE to EV is not easy and takes years to do so and the later Toyota delays it the more painful it will be.

starkd 4y ago
There is no reason it all EV. There are legitimate use cases for both EV and ICE.
- mgfist 4y ago
  In the not too distant future EV will be better than ICE for 99.9% of use-cases. And for passenger vehicles that'll be more like 99.999%.
  - starkd 4y ago
    That was not my point. The consumer should be able to decide when/if that happens. Not some arbitrarily imposed timeline. Advances in technology should be tested in the consumer marketplace.
    - mgfist 4y ago
      There's no "if". And the when is just a matter of time required to bring up mineral/battery supply chains. EVs are already (in most cases) cheaper than equivalent ICE vehicles over the lifetime of a vehicle. Soon they will become cheaper upfront as well. ICE won't compete very well after that, except in the luxury/enthusiast market. Consumers choose automobiles over horse and buggy. They are choosing EV over ICE too, in greater quantities every year.
      - starkd 4y ago
        There's a significant percentage of EV owners that regret their purchase. They either sell it and buy and ICE vehicle, or their next purchase is not an EV. (I have talked to such people. They are not hard to find.) Admittedly some are happy with it, but your statement ignores the fickle nature of consumer demand.

b34r 4y ago

There are so many nuanced things that go into making a great EV: advanced software with OTA updates, highly efficient electric motors, material science breakthroughs in battery tech and other components. Toyota can get there in time but there’s so many things to do and they’re facing increasingly rough headwinds the longer they wait to properly electrify.

cowmix 4y ago

I guess I understand why Toyota hasn't gone full-hog into EVs. There's a lot of life left in their hybrid and ICE drivetrains. What I don't understand is why whatever BEVs they have tried so far, have been pretty crappy. For instance, the bZ4X is a total joke in almost all aspects -- features, range, etc.