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Toyota claims battery breakthrough in potential boost for electric cars
- sylware 3y agoNear empty article. Probably about mass production of sodium anode batteries I guess.
- jqpabc123 3y agoJapanese firm believes it *could* make a solid-state battery... The key word here is obviously *could*. Add one more to the pile of claims and beliefs floating around that have yet to transform into viable products. I have been a Toyota fan from way back. I have owned a number of their vehicles. But in my mind, they lost a lot of technical credibility when they tried to apply political influence in a short sighted attempt to steer the marketplace toward hydrogen. This was really just a thinly veiled effort to prolong the marketplace viability of the internal combustion engine --- to the detriment of the global environment.
- mavhc 3y agoJapanese firm believes it could still exist in 10 years
- loeg 3y agoAnother key word is "Toyota" -- even if the battery tech is great, is Toyota really going to start making EVs or selling batteries? Japanese manufacturers have been dragging their feet on full EVs, possibly because the domestic Japanese grid can't really support EVs.
- jqpabc123 3y agopossibly because the domestic Japanese grid can't really support EVs. The domestic grid has no impact on most Toyota/Japanese cars which are exported or built elsewhere --- often using engines made in Japan. This was about saving a large segment of the Japanese economy which is centered around the internal combustion engine and associated expertise and know how. https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims-to-save-internal-combustion-engine-from-extinction/ https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims...
- FreshStart 3y agoVery similar to Germany. Als tooting the hydrogen horn.. Again similar to Germany. A wild pattern of sabotaging the successor by naming his little brother king emerges.
- sieabahlpark 3y ago[dead]
- Shawnj2 3y agoThey’ve been selling the Bz4x for about a year now which is basically an electric RAV4
- throwaway5959 3y agoIt’s comically bad. The charging curve is horrible, entertainment system is a joke, doesn’t look appealing and has issues with retaining charge on the 12 volt battery.
- jqpabc123 3y agoNot to mention the wheels falling off. It's almost like they released a bad car in an attempt to give EVs a bad name.
- benj111 3y agoDon't their hydrogen cars use fuel cells. Ie they use electric motors not ic engines
- jqpabc123 3y agoYes but you're missing the point. The infrastructure needed to fully support hydrogen would take decades to develop. Starting with some way to efficiently manufacture hydrogen without using even more fossil fuels. It's the stall that they wanted --- to give them more time to milk ICE and adapt. There is no corresponding infrastructure delay for EVs which are already being adopted.
- Projectiboga 3y agoToyota has actually pivoted and partnered with Mazada to share tech to fill watch other's gaps. Toyota is releasing a full electric car in about 12-15 months.
- jqpabc123 3y agoYes --- they're now being forced to play catch-up after their ridiculous attempt at diversion went nowhere. Here is what they were spouting less than 2 years ago. “By promoting further collaboration in producing, transporting and using fuel in combination with internal combustion engines, the five companies aim to provide customers with greater choice”. https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims-to-save-internal-combustion-engine-from-extinction/ https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- _hypx 3y ago> There is no corresponding infrastructure delay for EVs which are already being adopted. That's an utter fantasy. We are nowhere near having enough infrastructure to do this.
- craig1f 3y agoExactly this. Hydrogen is like crypto. It has just enough interesting tech to attract (using D&D terminology here) high INT, low WIS people. Hydrogen will probably never work unless someone comes up with a stable molecule that includes hydrogen, is large enough to not move through solid objects, and still retains enough chemical energy to be useful. Ammonium is one option, but it is highly toxic. Only really practical in cargo ships. Hydrogen also can be useful for inherently expensive things like rockets and jet planes. But never cars. It was never going to compete with electric. EVs have been slandered for so long that people just assumed we would come up with something better. But EVs are great. Driving an ICE car after being in a Tesla feels like playing a first-person shooter over dial-up.
- _hypx 3y agoThat's a completely ignorant statement. Hydrogen cars actually exist and work exactly as advertised. There are no fundamental challenges. This reads like one of those anti-BEV posts from a decade ago. In both cases, the author is totally oblivious to the current state of technology. > It was never going to compete with electric. EVs have been slandered for so long that people just assumed we would come up with something better. Hydrogen cars are EVs. This is a deep misunderstanding of the issue.
- alphager 3y agoThe production and storage of hydrogen is expensive, had the downside of requiring a large tank in the car and is less efficient than just using a battery.
- martythemaniak 3y agoWhile Toyota has been busy looking for silver bullets that will solve imagined problems, Tesla has been scaling hard with good-enough technology. Their Q2'23 production is a hair under 2 million units per year, so they're already a mid-size OEM (the size of BMW, MB, Audi, etc).
- goethes_kind 3y agoMaybe Toyota does not want to compete in the luxury EV business because they do not see a profit for them. Toyota's success was not built on their luxury models.
- pornel 3y agoEVs (at least those with road-trippable range) are currently aiming for a "luxury-ish" segment, because it helps hide the cost of the battery. Extra $8K on a $50K car isn't too bad and can be hidden by cutting costs somewhere else. But on a <$20K car there's nothing left to cut, and the extra cost takes it out of the budget segment.
- throwaway5959 3y agoNo one looks at TCO. A $28k EV vs a $20k ICE car will have significantly lower TCO over a ten year period. Oil changes alone will be $1200 if done every six months at $60 a pop.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- petre 3y agoDon't they sell those under the Lexus brand? Toyota is their workmanlike brand.
- ftrobro 3y agoa solid-state battery with a range of 1,200km (745 miles) that could charge in 10 minutes or less For that range I assume the battery holds 150 Wh/km * 1200 km = 180 kWh. Charging it in 10 minutes would require about 1.1 MW. That's a lot of Watts.
- thebruce87m 3y agoProbably not viable for the home, but maybe a super capacitor at service stations.
- petre 3y agoSmall print reads: * Only available at the Niagara Hydroelectric Power Station
- passwordoops 3y agoTime for our regularly scheduled monthly battery "breakthrough" PR campaign! Does this one walk on water?
- readthenotes1 3y agoIt's a better battery bulletin, it has no legs
- passwordoops 3y agoThis is the first time I wish HN had emoji reactions. It would have been :drum:
- robertlagrant 3y agoI can make one that floats on water. Get me a headline[0]! [0] does not hold charge
- samstave 3y agoJust make the whole thing out of potassium.
- moolcool 3y agoThere's a cynical comment like this on every battery story, ignoring the fact that battery breakthroughs do exist, and that lithium ion energy density has ~tripled in the past decade.
- samstave 3y agoMind an ELI5 of how they tripled lith batt density/capacity?
- passwordoops 3y agoShow me one example where a breathless announcement like this contributed to such an improvement
- 3y ago
- whoknowswhat11 3y agoIt’s funny seeing these battery breakthrough articles repeatedly. It’s been years of them now :) I’m always curious who the science writers are who can’t exercise critical thinking and ask a few tougher questions or review a battery breakthrough rubric.
- umeshunni 3y agoAre you implying there haven't been any battery breakthroughs? What do you think the average capacity, density and cycle time of a battery in 2003 vs 2023 is.
- pornel 3y agoThere has been a good gradual progress, and all the incremental improvements added up to much better batteries. However, there regularly are press releases promising breakthroughs, but they either never reach production, or end up being one of the small incremental improvements, not a revolution.
- chris222 3y agoI’d rather an article talk about how panasonic cells achieved 20% more density over 5 years at volume production. Much more impressive. https://electrek.co/2020/07/30/tesla-batteries-energy-density-increase-panasonic/ https://electrek.co/2020/07/30/tesla-batteries-energy-densit...
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoSame - and more globally too. I'd love to know how GM got their quality act together, how Airbus builds 100 a320s a month with no public defects, etc. The real, slow engineering stories have the best lessons
- panick21_ 3y agoToyota position on EV for the last 10 years 'we will have these super uber amazing batteries soon, and then we will magically make amazing cars in high volume quickly'.
- hourago 3y agoI remember this kind of news for tech like hard disks. Day to day it felt that this improvements do not matter but that 20MB hard disk became 100MB then 400MB. It was exciting to see 1GB, it seemed impossible. Now you have for granted 1,000,000MB SSD super-fast high-capacity hard disks. I hope that batteries continue improving like this and other technologies. It is going to be like magic.
- ramesh31 3y agoDear battery technology claimant, Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because: [ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale. [ ] it will be too expensive for users. [ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles. [ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels. [ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures. [ ] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable. [ ] it has too short of a lifetime. [ ] its charge rate is too slow. [ ] its materials are too toxic. [ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode. [ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care. [ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then. [ ] by the time it ships li-ion advances will match it. ----------------------------------------------------------------
- hnburnsy 3y agoI wish journalists would at least ask some of these questions on battery tech articles. Please post this on every battery tech story thank you!