Anytime society has an enormous demand for something, especially people/institutions with money, it gets done.
If there are hundreds of billions or even trillions riding on upgrading the grid and securing mineral resources/researching alternative solutions, it will get funded and figured out.
There will be $20,000 economy EVs with crappy everything but still go A to B. There will be grid upgrades to handle everyone charging (really topping off is more realistic, few drive more than ~25 miles/day, the upgrade to accommodate this might simply be "grid smart" chargers). There will be alternative chemistry batteries that don't need rare earths (like LFP in some Teslas).
Toyota is just stubbornly refusing to take the L on their 30 years of research into this. I don't blame them, but I'm not them, so I'll call it how it is.
EVs are definitely going to remain a first-world item for my lifetime at least. If everyone other than Toyota goes completely electric, Toyota is going to be the monopoly automaker in every underdeveloped country and will be laughing all the way to the bank. I’m with the Toyota CEO on this one. If you’ve stepped outside a devolved country for even a few days… I just can’t fathom how all-electric is going to be realistic
>There will be $20,000 economy EVs
The mindset of the group of people that think $20,000 is economy (and that it "will" definitely get done) reflects everything that is wrong with a lot of recent ESG propaganda and policies. That is, ignorance of the state of most of the world outside of rich, first class bubbles.
This is so patently false it's scary. There is an enormous demand for a cure for cancer, dementia, heart disease etc. Yet they haven't even close to materialized. There is an enormous demand for room environment super conductors yet it isn't fixed. It's all sunflowers and rainbows to think like you are thinking but it's just not reality.
Yes, exactly. Toyota is refusing to take the L on this because Toyota is the market leader in gas-electric hybrids and Toyota is not the market leader in EVs. This is business strategy 101.
I think you are ignoring an important part of this question, which is what is going to happen in India and Northern Africa, where most of the population growth will take place over the next 50 years. I don't think these countries can afford an 'economy' EV, or widespread infrastructure to support them, certainly not in the near term. India is certainly making some encouraging moves [1], but your comment seems quite too optimistic and Western-centric.
20k? EV drivetrains are so much simpler than ICE. The fact you can buy in some market somewhere a 20k ICE car means in equivalent dollars, a 10k EV car is possible once the tech maturity of sodium ion and components and all that scaling happens.
We are so used to EV drivetrains being more expensive, we can't think of the possibility of EVs become so cheap, but I predict they will, and with sodium ion batteries at 140wh/kg coming into production next year, along with 200+ wh/kg LFP and LMFP, it's going to h ppen sooner than I would have guessed only a couple years ago.
I will agree with Toyoda that a PHEV has a functional place in the next two decades. They were one of the top PHEV companies so they probably have the platforms already, so may as well use them.
But make no mistake the arrival of usable sodium ion to me is the game changer for the mass production EV: the napkin math says that 140wh/kg cell density if it is efficiently packed (90% is current cell-to-pack expected ratio) will make a 200-300 mile car. That's no cobalt, nickel, or lithium.
And a city car only needs 150 miles of range for the "second/third world" urban centers in some teeny car.
200 wh/kg (cell) LFP/LMFP should be 300-400+ mile cars. That leaves the cobalt-nickel and whatever comes out of initial solid state into exotics, supercars, and long haul trucking.
And if those sulfur batteries papers are legit, that will also be dirt cheap and near-solid state densities.
But yeah, I think in ten years a cheapo EV will be 1/2 the cost of what a cheapo ICE will be. We'll know when the Chinese invade the US market. Luxury cars and big cars will still be dominated by equivalent doodads costs, but I think possibly in ten years the industry will hit 50% of ICE drivetrain cost.
IMO the biggest challenge is the rapid recharge (< 5 minutes).
You just think of a college football Saturday where 100k people drive in, tailgate all day and then either stay in a hotel or head back the same day. Often coming from 3-4 hours away.
It’s simply not realistic for all those vehicles to need to do 45 minutes of charging.
When that gets solved, you’ll see rapid adoption.
It might happen but it might not happen as quickly as they would like. Recent geopolitical issues have substatically harmed supply chains for EVs. There's a reason Tesla has abandoned their plans for a mass market vehicle and are instead sticking in the $40k+ vehicle business.
Many of Toyotas competitors have de-emphasized investments in their ICE products to pursue EVs that they can't produce in large enough volumes for longer than anticipated. Toyotas strategy is going to work well at least in the mid term.
I really don't see the L here. Plug-in hybrids are essentially more capable EV's, Toyota makes them, and if they bet wrong on EV's, it's not going to be difficult for them to convert production from plug-in hybrids to full EV's. On the other hand, if Toyota is betting right and everyone else is betting wrong, it's going to be a lot harder for other companies once they lose the know-how to make ICE cars or hybrids.
"There will be $20,000 economy EVs with crappy everything but still go A to B."
It's called the Nissan Leaf and it's been available for years!
Counter example: electronic medical records.
Billions was poured into this and I remember it being a big item in healthcare reform. But im still answering the same questions and filling out the same forms every time I go see a doctor.
Generally more money and mandates from top down don't work
EVs = Tesla is probably the biggest misunderstanding many people have. EVs are about the energy source for propulsion and not about the smarts (real or claimed). A car with10 year old features powered by electricity is a perfectly usable vehicle without needing any of the glamorous things that tesla adds.
$20k is still too expensive of a car for a lot of people in the US, and for most outside the developed world. Toyota is just keeping that population in perspective.
I learned it takes a lot of grid power to extract, ship, process, store and sell gasoline than it takes to just charge an EV… seems that the reduction of demand of fuel would also reduce grid loads.. plus, just charge at night. cheaper rates usually.
> There will be $20,000 economy EVs
Tata Motors launches $10,000 electric car in India to further its lead
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tata-m...
Here is a walk around of the car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RCXDsfVniY&ab_channel=Autoc...
There are already cheap EVs, the made by Wuling is only $5k, 75 mile range and top speed of 62 MPH.
Toyota has looked at the tea leaves and feels Hydrogen is the future. I think they are correct.
> Toyota is just stubbornly refusing to take the L on their 30 years of research into this. I don't blame them, but I'm not them, so I'll call it how it is.
no Toyota is just not buying the "all in" bet on EV, and they keep researching on other alternatives such as Mirai with fuel cells; the article is quite clear on that.
this imho makes Toyota more reliable than other manufactures who are running at making only SUVs with shitload of batteries just to please the market, greenwashing and not innovating at all.
> few drive more than ~25 miles/day
I hope a lot of these people (assuming they're not willing to go car-free, which would be ideal) will switch to low-speed electric vehicles. They're much cheaper than standard cars, take up less space, and are far less dangerous to other road users. This one from Polaris is $15k, and there are off brands for much less. https://gem.polaris.com/en-us/e4/
I refuse to buy new and my current car cost me $15kAUD. Which is 10KUSD (ignoring supply chain issues for a while). My previous car was an older generation of the same model and lasted over a decade. My current car should too. And upkeep is fairly cheap all things considered.
20K isn’t economy. Half that and make sure the car still runs for over a decade with reasonable maintenance costs.
There is only a sliver of society that is demanding EV’s. I have a normal amount of friends, hundreds of acquaintances and work associates and guess what? Not one of them is demanding EV’s. The government on the other hand is doing it’s best to lure me with incentives and scare me with high gas prices. So what society are you talking about that is demanding them?
While demand for EVs is certainly growing and in some areas a total switch may be already possible, there still is an enormous critical demand for ICEVs in the world. There are areas in the world where people drive long distances by car, but the homes don't have electricity yet. Especially in non-Western countries.
Nobody in their right mind would buy an EV there. It may look differently in 10 or 15 years from now, but this is the reality today and this is one of Toyota's markets. They are the maker of the Land Cruiser and the Prius.
There is a reason, why the Prius is so wildly popular all over the world. It is capable of driving long distances anywhere, but it saves money at the same time, while it almost never breaks down. Toyota is not ignorant at all. They realize that now is the time for gradually transitioning to EV, but not for making a sudden dogmatic switch to EV, while ignoring what people actually need. The logical outcome of this though process is the hybrid car. And then the plug-in hybrid. And then the EV - at some point in the future.
> There will be $20,000 economy EVs with crappy everything but still go A to B.
Believing that money can change geology, and physics and chemistry laws, is idiotic at best.
There’s huge demand for solutions to problems people have, not huge demand for specific technologies.
People don’t want EVs specifically. People want cheap reasonably clean ways to quickly get from point A to point B.
heh... you talk about
>"There will be $20,000 economy EVs with crappy everything but still go A to B."
but you know? https://tiagoev.tatamotors.com/
tata tiago ev is a $10,000 ev that launched a FEW DAYS AGO. Sure it wont have all features of tesla but it is still ncap 5 stars so its not a death box and will be sold hopefully by thousands
Until you can charge from empty to full in under a few mins and get 700+ real range miles EV's will remain a niche product. It's just not worth the hassle of have to plug your car in any chance you get like an old iphone.
2030 is around the year I think they will become an intelligent buy.
but there is no "enormous demand" for EVs. Some (small) demand is manufactured by huge subsidies. There is also a subset of the upper middle class that does it for environmental/prestige reasons, but that's also small
> few drive more than ~25 miles/day
Where do you get that stat?
How much money was in 3D TV? Battery powered vehicles will ends up in same bracket as 3DTV. Impractical gimmick.
The grip of gasoline and corruption of government is severe enough that it is unlikely EV's will be able to scale to current gas vehicle use.
1. Electric charging will never be standardized. Gas is gas. Until we pass laws saying your electric car cannot have subscriptions or non compatability for charging you will always be stuck with specific types.
1. Gas stations are contracted to sell gas. That contract can say "no electric". The stores make money from gas customers. The drive range of EV's would have to run circles around gas to compete, and if it does, they won't be customers anyways.
2. The vast majority of people cannot charge an ev rapidly, if at all. Parking infra did not take access to electricity into account. I know at universities you have to pay extra, and it's just a normal 15A outlet.
3. Ev companies, especially Tesla, are rent seeking. The average consumer cannot afford it. Packages and subscriptions to your own vehicle are a cyberpunk dystopia.
We already cannot properly handle power demands. 100% green initiatives lack on demand scaling, especially in disaster conditions. The base cost of natural gas electric generation means it must take up a chunk of overall power gen.
Toyota and their engineers were years ahead of everyone else a couple decades ago.
Unfortunately they didn't listen to their own engineers.
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...
His vision for Toyota's eco-friendly autos goes beyond the Prius line. "The next step is to apply hybrid technology to other models, and to reduce its price," he says. After that, he has his sights on dispensing with CO2-belching gasoline engines entirely: "Ultimately, the future is in electric power." It might sound like an eco-platitude. But if someone is going to bring an electric car to your driveway, there's a good chance Hori will be the one to do it.
The plan to go 100% EV seems odd to me. There are many people who have cars with no place to charge at home because they lack in premise parking. Not sure how that plays out.
Power delivery exists more places than gasoline delivery. The number of places that have gas but no power is very, very low. Enough to ignore.
It's amazing to me we have put all this work into a fantastic logistics network for gasoline and cough at the thought of chargers in all the same places.
The plan shouldn’t be to replace 100% of existing ICE cars with electric cars. The carbon impact of the construction of those would still be too high. The plan should be to invest in public transport and electric bicycles, and use electric cars when either of those options isn’t enough, to complement.
All cities built around cars (and that’s almost every American city for instance) will have to change—either by arranging for bicycles and building public transport or through floods, fires, and hurricanes.
That's an easy problem to solve, though. Lower-speed L2 charging could easily be made ubiquitous anywhere that street parking exists.
Since the wattage demands are relatively low, it would not be too difficult to have L2 charging available anywhere that residential parking exists. Unlike fast-charging, you wouldn't need a lot of expensive high-power infrastructure, and if the power utilities were smart they'd do it themselves.
They could put little parking-meter size boxes by the side of the road—tapped off of existing residential power infrastructure—with credit card tap to pay.
I don't think it would take that long to reach a large density of that type of inexpensive, overnight charge systems.
My neighbourhood (London, UK) has on-street charging ports. Some of them are in lampposts and some of them are sunk into the pavement (sidewalk). This seems to work well.
Most of the places they drive their car to, will have chargers. Supermarkets, workplaces, parks, etc.
You don't need to charge at home. It's just the most convenient.
That's true for city dwellers in the west. I wonder how a 100% electric world would work in the parts of the world where the Toyota Hilux is a necessity.
It won't be a big deal. Just like there are apartments without washing machines and people deal with it. The batteries are big enough that you really only need to charge once a week with a good EV and an average amount of driving. Tesla super chargers are often co located with grocery stores so people will just end up charging while they grocery shop once a week it will be a non issue. It's what I did for the first couple months before I installed an at home charger. minor inconvenience at worst.
I never understood what the problem with hybrid EVs was. They seem like the best of both worlds. Drastically improved gas mileage - competitive with the effective mpg of a full EV - but without the requirement to build superchargers everywhere (and add 30-60min stops on your longer trips)
Most people don't need to charge every night. You likely don't refuel every night, do you?
The average commute is like 40 miles a day. Go somewhere and recharge once a week while you have a coffee.
It isn’t perfect, but 120V outlets are not that bad for overnight charging, and pretty easy to add. Some 50kW chargers nearby can top you off when you need extra.
Some claim it’s impossible to add such outlets to parking everywhere, but I’ve noticed some wintery towns already do this- for block heaters!
The plan is more like 80% EV. A key feature of technological progress is that some people and some places will always be left behind. At least without massive government intervention.
Once EVs are in a clear majority, gas station network will start shutting down, as it is no longer a profitable business. Without easy refueling, old ICE cars will become almost useless for most purposes, and that 80% will start looking more like 100%.
Feel like solar panel roof/hood are an underrated solution here. Lots of people park outdoors and the trickle charge of 20-40 miles a day is nearly enough to meet the everyday needs.
This isn't the odd part for me.
The part I'm curious about is how will militaries manage the change?
It's clear fuel isn't going to disappear but will the military or the government end up refining their own petrol for cost reasons or will they just end up shipping around batteries as if they were fuel.
And at one time there was no place to put gasoline into your automobile. How did that play out? It played out very well and you can fuel up with multiple types of fuel in every corner of the continent. EV charging is simple by comparison.
800v cars can charge to 80% capacity in ~20 minutes on fast chargers, and that's for well over 300 miles of range.
However: EVs don't fix the problems inherent with high rates of individual car ownership in high population density areas, or with low occupancy vehicle, short distance travel.
There seems to be some movement in putting PV on the roof of cars. With that you can get a significant part of the needed electricity of everyday driving (average is between 30-50km, if you remove long distance trips you end up with much lower numbers).
Most people also lack a gas station in their driveway, seems to work out.
The same way it works out for ICE vehicles.
Do you have a gas station at home?
Can you estimate the percent of households which aren't able to plug in an EV overnight?
Put chargers wherever they park
I'm a layman but to me its about optics when Toyota doesn't have any EVs but is spending money on hydrogen development, and the aeons-old Prius. Most people are convinced that gas vehicles are not the future, and that renewable-energy powered personal vehicles and mass transit are.
BMW and Toyota just look like they got caught with their pants down by not having appealing vehicles, and other companies are now stealing their lunch. On top of that, Toyota has had some shady business too: https://cleantechnica.com/2021/07/30/toyota-actively-lobbyin...
Maybe that’s the optics but I’m inclined to believe him, the EV adoption plan relies on technology that doesn’t exist and the simplistic idea we take all the gas cars and replace them with electric cars I’m not convinced actually scales. I think we’re literally going to run out of the worlds natural resources before because we get even close to making enough EVs.
I actually see a need to shift more people to not using cars as much or at all, and having those people walk/bike/transit. I also think lighter EVs such as scooters may be popular and they have ones with swappable batteries which work like swapping a propane tank. I also think the hybrids Toyota sells which require significantly less of certain resources will be appealing. Also finally telecommuting will be a big thing among white collar workers who won’t need anything more than a hybrid or light EV.
My money is on Toyota being correct and is seeing gas cars being around for quite a lot longer than anticipated. I see the person of the future being less mobile. However technology is inherently unpredictable and advances in mining in particular could change this.
Toyota is probably only company who understands that poor people can't afford BEVs and will be left behind. And introducing another EV Hummer or Cybertruck for 100k USD won't really help them to get affordable EV.
I am convinced that BEV are not the future, because there is not enough of material, especially there is not enough copper.
Assoc Prof Simon Michaux on shortage of copper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/14/copper-is-key-to-electric-ve...
Toyota has phevs (plug-in hybrids) that can run fully off of the battery. They have gotten a lot of shit over the past year for arguing that these should be incentivized by the government in addition to full electric vehicles, but I think there is some merit to their position.
Right now a lot of people who buy electric cars are wealthier people who also own other cars. This is not inherently bad and, for example, if a household that is going to own multiple cars either way chooses to make one of those electric it may be a win for the environment, but if people are buying extra cars because they are excited about electric cars but also need a conventional car when they go longer distances, that may not actually be that great.
Until there are sufficient charger networks everywhere, it might actually be better to incentives phevs to build up the infrastructure and ensure that people who can only afford to own one car but need to travel longer distances can still use electricity for shorter trips in the form of phevs rather than continuing to use conventional cars. It's not completely clear if EV adoption will continue to accelerate or if it's going to hit limits when we run out of people who can easily switch. Toyota may have a point in that the current timetable for full adoption of evs may be unrealistic, and if it is, it might be better to compromise slightly more if it makes it easier to build up the infrastructure on a more realistic timetable rather than risk hitting a wall
If we set the goal as 100% of vehicles being EVs in a relatively short amount of time, we're going to run into problems who are currently unable to use EVs because of the lack of a fast charger network. (In reality, battery swapping would probably make sense for longer trips once everyone is using evs, but there is zero infrastructure for that right now.)
That said, another issue with electric cars in general is that for the type of short trip where they make the most sense, it might arguably be better for the environment to focus on electric public transportation when possible anyway (especially non-battery-powered street cars and light rail which aren't affected by supply of some of the elements required for batteries).
Also, if we can't hit the targets for EV adoption we may have difficulty hitting environmental goals in general.
I wouldn’t put BMW in the same bucket as Toyota. BMW actually tried to sell electric cars and they just went too far selling an eco friendly car.
The BMW i3 was the first mass produced carbon fiber chassis, was produced entirely with hydroelectric power, was made from a high percentage of recycled materials and had an optional 3 gallon take with a range extender as an option.
I’m not convinced pure EV solutions are going to be the answer for everyone. The idea of smaller range EVs with range extenders still feels the most practical option for the next decade or two.
BMW? Why makes you think they are caught with their pants down? BMW i4 is a fantastic EV and I think a lot of people would go for it instead of a Model3 which has a better range but pales in comparison when it comes to interiors, luxury and ride quality.
Most people can be often wrong. As for EVs, I don't think there's much development to be done, save for batteries - the powertrains are dead simple, and we have been building electric motors for longer than ICEs.
And the thing with battery technologies is that there is quite a bit of stagnation as there has been very little improvement in power density - higher densities, and safer chemistries that can do more cycles are still the subjects of research, and it's still a question of 'if' and not 'when' that a given promising technology (like solid state batteries) will pan out.
There are multiple solutions - plug-in hybrids, which Toyota makes can almost match EVs for emissions for a lot of people. I, for example commute about 30km per day, and take longer trips only every 2 weeks or so, and well made ICE engines have such a low emission for long trips that combined with the rarity of use, make their environmental impact negligible.
I think you've hit on something here. In this day when what is seen on social media is all that matters, practical engineering and science concerns definitely take a back seat.
But there's another explanation for why Toyota does not have an EV lineup - they have been pursuing hybrid, hydrogen, and other tech for years. They have a long term vision instead of one that is just based on what is in social media or on what politicians have suddenly decided to subsidize. Since when is ground truth found on social media or from politicians?
It remains to be seen who will be caught out.
It also seems nonsensical to place all our eggs in the EV basket.
I agree Toyota doesn't have very appealing vehicles, but they were the best-selling manufacturer for one Q last year and they've been #2 only to GM for quite some time. Given what happened during COVID supply issues, I'd say they're the ones stealing lunches.
Don't they have the bZ4X? Granted it's only one model, but still it's one more than "doesn't have any EVs".
Putting a metric ton of (what is essentially) rechargeable AA batteries into a car-shaped form factor is like strapping a jetpack to a horse. This is not the way of the future.
The future will probably involve lots of electric transportation, but it won't look like this. (But judging by the electric transportation that people are actually buying right now, it will be much more personal and portable.)
> Toyoda also believes there will be “tremendous shortages” of lithium and battery grade nickel in the next five to 10 years, leading to production and supply chain problems.
This is the main reason why I believe the current all-electric goals are too ambitious and not practical.
Translation, Toyota has not yet secured access to resources because it has been dragging its feet making the necessary investments. Other manufacturers have in fact been making such investments and are growing production volumes at a nice rate. Toyota will eventually have to choose between letting market share slip or investing to catch up as more countries are starting to see sales dominated by EVs.
We're talking about a company that has been talking about hydrogen cars and is still pretending that they are going to do that at scale; despite no evidence at all of that in the form of production capacity and infrastructure related investments. Speak of supply chain problems! Where is the hydrogen even going to come from? And where's the distribution network for that? And how many hydrogen cars did Toyota actually ship so far? Hint, the volume of their very low number of compliance EVs in places like China is actually higher. They've actually already produced more EVs than hydrogen cars. I doubt those numbers will ever turn around for them.
Toyoda sounds like a broken record just rehashing the same excuses over and over again as to why they are late in a market where other companies are raking in really fat profits on EVs that seems to be going through some exponential growth.
Lithium is interesting because we could get really creative in how/where we get it. For example, GM is planning to buy Lithium extracted from the Salton Sea. [1]
Nickel and Cobalt are, IMO, tougher to solve for. Nickel is rich in places that are not North America, which will run up against certain domestic sourced stipulations in EV subsidies... We have one nickel mine as of 2021 and it produces far less than the Eurasian mines.[2]
I think an EV future will really depend on innovative battery chemistries like LiFePO4.[3]
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/the-salton-sea-could-produce...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1284604/us-nickel-mine-p...
There will be sodium-ion batteries in EVs too. Niu is going to launch a two-wheeler with a sodium-ion battery next year [0].
[0] https://www.electrive.com/2022/08/08/niu-to-debut-two-wheele...
That, and available generation capacity.
Hey Toyota, nobody asks you to be all in. But how about you start by no lobbying against climate rules, making advertisements demonizing EV and stop to sell the hydrogen snake oil to the politicians.
That might be a good start.
> But how about you start by no lobbying against climate rules
The only lobbying I've heard of is against the narrow focus of BEV-only[1] policies and to include hybrid, HEV, etc. What other lobbying are you referring to?
1: https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/E2EA0E4F-BAD9-4...
I personally like a lot plug-in hybrid vehicles. For example the Toyota RAV4 plug-in has an electric-only range of 42 miles. Very few people commute more than that one way. If you can charge at home, and then charge at work too, you will not need to use gas for your commute. You will end up reducing your gas usage by a factor of 10 easily. And if we reduce all our emissions by a factor of 10, we are net negative (because forests sequester more than 10% of the emissions).
Except now you're lugging around the weight of the gas engine and taking on all the extra maintenance complexity of the gas engine, just on the off chance that for some reason you're going to need to road trip longer than the equivalent pure EV's range and won't be able to rent a more appropriate vehicle for it.
That model has a 18kWh battery. My EV has a 33kWh battery, and a 135 mile epa range, so something seems wrong with the Toyota's 42 mile battery-only range.
My car weighs 3000 lbs and the RAV4 plugin hybrid weighs 4100lbs. Car engines weigh 300-700 lbs, ignoring the gas tank, radiator, exhaust system, etc. Maybe the dead weight from the engine is the issue? Toyota definitely knows its way around a wind tunnel.
Toyota is only charging $2200 for the plug in hybrid upgrade. Why not charge $4400 for a 36 kWh battery, and make the gas engine optional? Presumably the gas engine, exhaust, gas tank and hybrid transmission add over $4400 to the price!
My guess is that Toyota somehow got blindsided by the EV technology transition (despite having a 20 year lead from the Prius), and now they are in damage control mode.
My thoughts exactly! In fact I'd go a step further and say simplify the heck out of gas engine to run as a generator at max efficiency. currently most of the complexity of gas engines exist to achieve multiple goals that are easily solved by EV motor like startup torque, power distribution etc. IMO the best solution is to create something like aquarius engines or a single piston linear generator from toyota itself. pair this with a series hybrid and you have a very robust solution with need of a small battery. also that has none of the problems of engine servicing because of super simple (& accessible configuration).
IMO the fact that the standard car makers have been sitting on there asses and not investing time/energy in creating these solutions is quite disturbing.
A recent oped in the NYTimes argues there’s not enough lithium for all the world’s car. So using smaller batteries like in the RAV4 would stretch the lithium across more cars. Personally I would rarely use gas given the 42mi range. On the occasional long trip the hybrid engine means I don’t have to wait around to recharge. Best of both worlds.
I believe EV adoption will be slow and then sudden. Yes, there will hurdles and EVs aren’t going to make sense for everyone, but there will be a tipping point. Right now you have EVs that check all the boxes and but are over $45,000.
Even with premium pricing, demand already outstrips supply for electric vehicles.
This is also how it went with smartphones. First it’s a status symbol and a luxury item, then a few years later there seems to be a cliff and suddenly it’s highly unusual not to have one.
We have now several examples of markets (California, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Netherlands) that electric vehicle sales follow an S curve like you're predicting.
In a couple of years, I think China & India should make it clear if this will be the global play out as well.
China certainly seems interested in getting off gasoline as fast as possible.
Really because I came to the exact opposite conclusion that the tipping point will be they getting more expensive because of the input costs, namely the raw materials.
How do you figure natural resource extraction will be revolutionised to make EV's dramatically cheaper after enough people buy EVs?
The issue isn't supply/demand it's the availability of resources e.g. lithium.
And those won't just just magically jump from none to plentiful. It will be more gradual.
> but are over 45K
The Kia EV6 is $41K and has > 300 mile range.
Leafs start at $28K ($20K after subsidy), but that is a lower range model.
I agree with the point you are making, but I think we are in the middle of the tipping point. Plenty of models exist at many price points. 100% are back ordered. All the manufacturers have to do at this point is scale their production lines.
Nissan and Kia are probably going to eat a few lunches in the mass market segment.
> Even with premium pricing, demand already outstrips supply for electric vehicles.
Thanks to pandemic stimulus, this is true for almost all vehicle types.
The article points out there's just not enough raw lithium and nickel to go around to convert every gas car to an EV.
If everyone would suddenly want an EV, that would drive raw material prices even higher and would lead to a drastic expansion of lithium mining, without the necessary environmental precautions, which would counteract the environmental benefits of EV adoption.
I’m happy Toyota will continue to invest in hybrids. I want a car with sufficient range. Maybe other folks don’t take a lot of road trips, but that’s something I do in the Midwest and it brings me a lot of joy. Honda Accord hybrid can get nearly 600 miles range and is an absolute pleasure to drive. I’m hoping my next car is a PHEV.
I don’t want to think about charging. I’m worried it would cause delays and affect my route. Hybrids allow more flexibility.
This board goes really hard on EVs. I don’t understand it.
Most EVs have 300 mile range. You can drive for 4-5 hours between charges, and recharging takes under an hour. In a few years, you won't need to worry about range or charging.
Also, EVs are way more fun to drive. For instance Kia likes to point out that their 2023 EV6 ($41k) hatchback has better acceleration than a top-end 2023 Porsche Cayenne coupe.
Infrastructure concerns are way overblown. I charge my commuter car with a 110v outlet. It draws as much as a space heater or electric kettle.
I haven't really looked to hard, but does a hybrid exist that's battery first and then has an ICE to fall back on for charging the battery / supplying electricity to the electric motors?
All I want is to be able to have an electric car, that if I'm in a real jam and need to run it on petrol I can fill up a 20 litre tank and make a few hours of driving, even if it's in 'limp home mode' until I can get a charge again. My range anxiety is real! The Australian outback is big.
Well I live in a very wealthy country by global standards, with lots of space and sun, and many climate concerned people clearly influencing politics, and plans to export renewable energy to other countries. And there is essentially zero charging infrastructure for EVs, and no concrete plan to change that.
Charging infrastructure is the main blocker for adoption. Instead of giving tax credits for EV, government should fund the charging infrastructure. There are 168k gas stations in US. The number of EV charging outlets is 128k. Unfortunately most charging stations can take way too long and "effective density" is pretty bad. There is a huge business opportunity to provide EV charging for, say 50% of gas price. Once such business takes foot hold, others would follow.
Australia? Heh, climate-concerned is the last thing I would say that Aussie politics is.
Why do we need a plan? As soon as the demand gets there you’re going to have a thousand different startups competing to build it. We’re going to see better solutions than we can imagine right now once the competition begins. Countries have spent the past century fighting wars to secure access to oil, but now we’re afraid of being brought to our knees by the prospect of building a charging network?
Ah yes, whenever the topic that EVS won't be the absolute future comes up.
People get ultra religious and evangelical about it. At this point, it should just be a new religion. That is to say, most of the debates aren't founded on logic, but rather hope and belief.
Until it's possible to buy a second hand ev as someone's new car for less than a grand (AUD so $600 USD). EVS won't be the future. $20k for a car is fucking expensive, the "mass market" model 3 in Australia is $60-80k. That's a luxury car price, closer to the top end.
Sounds like blackberry and nokia back then when iPhone was released? If they're not on board the train for the future trend right now, won't they get left behind?
I'm not a management guy so I don't know, probably there are a lot of consideration happening and they surely have some strategy, whether it's right or not we'll see
I would love nothing more than to have an EV, a Tesla battery and solar panels at home. But like most Australians, I rent. And when you rent here you can barely put a hook up on the wall without the owners permission (and usually them saying ‘no’ [and don’t even get me started on how paranoid it makes a renter feel to have to ask the owner for permission for something. There’s always the thought of ‘if I ask too much, will they not renew my lease and will I ever be able to find another rental in these conditions?’… but that’s another story])
And that doesn’t even take into account how expensive EVs are here, either.
So for now, it’s my ‘99 Camry all the way.
Two pragmatic suggestions:
- if there are any outlets on the outside of your house, buy the highest amperage charger cable you can (~ $200 US), and trickle charge overnight. This is more than adequate for a reasonable commute in a reasonably efficient car. (Check the miles/kWh or km/kWh of the car, then figure out how many kW the charge cable delivers).
- Lobby for "community net metering". The idea is that you buy shares in a non-profit (or other business entity) that owns a solar panel farm near your home. The power company offsets your bill as though the energy your share of the solar panels produced was produced on your roof. In addition to allowing renters and apartment dwellers to save money by buying solar, it allows them to buy things, like wind turbines, that don't scale down as well.
It also allows poor people to lower their energy costs (as people that currently own solar panels do).
The battery is tougher, assuming you want to use it as a backup. If you just want to time shift power, community net metering (and time of use plans) is good enough.
I like the idea of an EV, always have, even thought by age now they would be the dominant vehicle. Charging hundreds of millions of cars in the US alone overnight and short ranges compared to a gas vehicle didn't factor into my thinking until recent years.
Jay Leno has mentioned several times the numerous advantages steam and electric cars had over gas over 100 years ago but they were not enough to beat the sheer convenience of gas.
I once scoffed at the idea of a hybrid (thinking of them as a stepping stone) but today I realize they make much more sense than I realized before. Think of crossing the Mojave Desert in an EV.
I don't buy this argument.
Most people can charge during the day. Employers often provide free EV charging, but even if they don't, power will be mostly free during daylight hours moving forward (due to solar). Also, employers that require people to commute almost universally provide parking lots that could be retrofitted with chargers.
In the worst case (only charge at night, run battery to 0% every day at sunset, leave at sunrise, power company bans charging at night), someone could install a stationary battery with about 120% the EV's charge. That's overly pessimistic and still only a factor of 2.2 on the price of the battery.
Over a 5-10 year period, EVs currently pay for themselves in saved money on gasoline.
Crossing the Mojave seems easy enough to me. There would need to be charging stations evey ~100 miles. Finding space for the necessary solar capacity would not be an issue. The stations could charge 2-4x "city' rates and would be very profitable.
You can already cross the Mojave in even a low range tesla, for what it is worth. (Victorville -> Las Vegas; they say you need to charge for 20 minutes in Baker, CA)
I wish most car trips were majestic like crossing the Mojave. Alas, 99.5% of my drives are either commutes or errands. I charge the car at home or at work, once a week, if that.
Jay Leno is a petrolhead. Biased opinion to say the least.
The Mojave Desert is not really the kind of driving the average American remotely needs a vehicle equipped for.
Heaven forbid for anyone like Akio Toyoda to have a pragmatic outlook on the future of four wheeled enclosed personal transportation that departs from the popular narrative.
Well sure, he has to say that, because they have zero foothold in the game and have been campaigning to kill electric ev laws. Toyota also has 200 billion, yes 200 BILLION dollars in debt, they are the second most indebted corporation in the world.
is that 200bn debt from their annual report?
Toyota isn't listening to its customers. We've been asking for EVs for a long time. Took forever to get plug-in hybrids. Then it all stopped.
I'm a second generation Toyota buyer, my father before me. 100% of the cars we purchased over the past 20 years were Toyota. We've been asking for electric but Toyota was too stuborn, or dare I say, too pussy to make the leap.
Like many, I've decided my next car will be electric. I'm sad it won't be a Toyota.
I'm very disapointed in everything Toyoda says. Excuses and no dream.
According to the posted article, Toyota does have plans to offer several all-electric models in 3 years (in 2025). My main takeaway from what Toyoda said was Toyota's goal to offer as many options as possible to its customers - this includes ICE, hybrids, BEV, and hydrogen cars. What Toyota is refusing is letting go of developing all other types of vehicles and focusing only on BEV, which is fair imo.
Toyota leads the world in developing volume electric vehicles and it's not hard to see the logic of remaining focused on hybrid for the foreseeable future. No one has done more to bring affordable mass market hybrids to market while the BEV world is an endless cycle of hype and overpromising. In most of the world we have massive electricity supply issues and there are huge questions around what problems BEVs are actually solving and the new problems they are creating.
'Here's What It Takes To Recycle 1 EV Battery' https://youtube.com/shorts/Sj5hI_IiQ7A?feature=share
Toyota does have the most fun to drive hybrid motors though, that is subjective of course. I really thought they would get all in into EVs, but the reasoning around limitations of battery technology does seem to make sense, maybe they will end up as winners in the long term.
The Chevy Volt hybrid was much more responsive and faster than the Toyota hybrids. The Toyota ones tend to fall back on the gasoline engine when pushed.
The problem was that is was more expensive for GM to build than a pure EV and they wanted to make a clear break.
> Toyota does have the most fun to drive hybrid motors though, that is subjective of course.
I can buy that; My Ford Hybrid (drivetrain AFAIR is/was cross licensed from Toyota) has been way more enjoyable to drive than I expected.
Pragmatic.
Can anyone say more how the increased electricity consumption by EVs will pressure the existing grid, and what sources (green or otherwise) will generate the extra capacity?
I charge my EV after 10pm, when demand is so low that I can buy it for 1 cent a kilowatt hour. So first we need enough EVs charging overnight to reach the late afternoon peak before we worry a lot about grid capacity. I also generally charge my EV in 1 or 2 hours, it does not typically take all night. So if grid capacity becomes a problem, a bit of smart scheduling to spread the load should be pretty straightforward.
And after that, we just add more capacity to the grid. The electric company exists to sell us electricity, and if we demand more, they will make more. The kind of growth we'd need to see in the grid to support 100% of all new cars being EVs is entirely within the abilities the electric producers have demonstrated in times past.
Who knows. Caution is commendable but if we want to avoid catastrophe we might have to start taking steps before everything is 100% ironed out, which might mean having less reliable infrastructure in the short term.
Our current system is basically just a bunch of inefficient portable ICE generators running around everywhere. Maybe a short term solution is to install large ICE generators (at existing gas stations, for example). Sounds expensive, but inaction will also be expensive.
It helps tremendously that many people will hold on to their ICE cars for as long as possible. I for one plan to run my truck for a long time yet. So we have a long ramp-up time for shoring up the electrical grid.
The average American home consumes 29kwh per day. It takes 62kwh to charge a base Tesla Model 3 once. Of course, not everyone will be charging from complete empty every night, but if every household is charging one car from 50% to 100% each night, the amount of daily electricity demand per household doubles. And most households own more than one car!
I don't think generation capacity is much issue. Just waste money on renewables and it will be there. Now matching the demand to that production and forcing people not to use their EV-vehicles in certain periods when there aren't enough production... As clearly they should be last ones to get it in high-demand, low supply scenarios.
More and more coal plants have tons of slack as renewables come online. We don't yet have a good system for local generation but that will come. There is no reason that most garage roofs can't be solar storing to banks of lead acid power banks for charging at night.
I’m not sure if anyone read the article but it is incredibly level headed and actually states that Toyota is going to launch 15 full electric vehicles by 2025. I actually owned an electric car and it was amazing and I loved it but I definitely agree with the direction Toyota is going and they have developed some amazing tech with their hybrid systems that I don’t see any reason why they would throw out the window.
50 years from now there won't be gasoline. You must change.
biodiesel will likely be available but not at scale.
ethanol will almost certainly power old cars, but gas stations will be rare.
hydrogen is a non-starter. 95% of hydrogen comes from fossil fuels already and electrolysis is tremendously inefficient. Not to mention a hydrogen car is really just an electric car with hydrogen range extending.
Everything points to it's going to be EVs.
There are a lot of tractors that use diesel and gasoline. Mine is a 1947, still runs like a champ. I've wanted an EV tractor but with each generation of new vehicle, more and more hostile features are added.
- Subscriptions to hardware capabilities
- AUP violations for self repair this is slowly changing, maybe
- GPS tracking and Remote telemetry. GPS makes sense for geofencing and automation but no need to dial home to a cloud, any more so than a drone
- Crazy cost of proprietary batteries / battery packs
All of those things are double-red-flags / hard stops for me.
Batteries are a topic in and of themselves. Batteries are evolving every few years and yet newer vehicles are being designed to take proprietary battery packs and this is only becoming more vendor locked-in with time.
I will buy an EV when the above items are addressed, probably around the time that solid state 3D printed batteries are forced to be in a Standard form factor and battery packs can be quickly swapped by the owner, whatever that may look like. Every part needs to be modular and easy to swap. Bonus would be after-market modules, some being vendor approved and some that obviously void warranties without having to reprogram the ECM like I do with my truck just to replace faulty ignition switches and ABS controllers.
Oh right that is another thing. The EV will need to be compatible and writable by my ThinkTool scanner, meaning the EV vendors will need to publish all of their proprietary codes and encryption keys for vehicle diagnostic tools. If I can not enable/disable features from my tool then the vehicle is not mine and I get my money back.
I also looked into getting a mid-sized EV excavator. Same as everything above. Nothing but owner-hostile features. In my obstinate view, the market is tone deaf and not appealing to the right people. Backing my view I have not seen any construction workers using EV rigs and vendors won't even list prices yet. I had to call them. The only change I have witnessed is smaller 2-stroke engines going electric like chainsaws, some yard maintenance equipment that used to be gasoline, etc...
So perhaps gasoline will be gone in 50 years but I forsee many growing pains in this market and predict blackhat hackers will have to rescue some of the equipment owners, assuming the concept of owning hardware is still a thing. If the concept of ownership vanishes then I expect something better than they existing rental process. e.g. I press a button and the hardware shows up, I use it, then press a button and the hardware goes home and I only pay for the minutes used.
To answer the headline:
> Toyoda reiterated that he does not believe all-electric vehicles will be adopted as quickly as policy regulators and competitors think, due to a variety of reasons. He cited lack of infrastructure, pricing and how customers’ choices vary region to region as examples of possible roadblocks.
> “Just like the fully autonomous cars that we are all supposed to be driving by now, EVs are just going to take longer to become mainstream than media would like us to believe,”
He sound like smart man unlike European communist bureaucrats trying to force EVs down the throat at any cost, which could be only explained by being controlled by WEF.
I'd say going all in on EV or whatever is as "smart" as putting all your eggs in one basket, world ain't black and white and you gotta be pretty naive to do it, hard to imagine scenario where diversification is not (the more) rational approach.
The amount of hot takes in this threat with half completed math and reasoning is amazing.
The Japanese largely copied European car designs in the 1980s, propelling them into the 1990s and 2000s, but they may no longer be able to do so, stalling the process.
just google "Toyota Actively Lobbying To Slow Down EV Revolution"
When a large part of society really wants to do something, my natural tendency is become extremely skeptical. The reason being in today's day and age, the bandwagoning effect is so strong; people get outsed, and critics are shamed out of the conversation. When the mechanism of criticism ceases to function; malaise develops and all kinds of bullshit gets propelled into mainstream narrative.
Not saying EV revolution isn't the right thing to do; but how can we allow space for steelmanning Toyota or areas where EV's don't make sense; how can we make sure power cuts won't leave people stranded and resiliency of transporation infrastructure becomes fragile; after all, a massive part of the GDP depends on transportation. Without it, nations will fail.
We should be a bit more level headed of the EV craze, especially hackers on HN.
I'm so sure Toyoda's doing some 4D chess move here, given world's increasing renewable energy meant there's going to be demand for energy absorption at will and hydrogen is their answer to help managing the renewable grid.
During the height of renewable energy production the cost of energy would probably even drop to negative, and hydrogen no matter how inefficient can still "regen" it into hydrogen. and the rest is just pricing and betterment of technology.
extremely ambitious but if anyone can pull it off it'd be them.
> and hydrogen is their answer to help managing the renewable grid.
All of the hydrogen right now used for vehicle comes from the oil&gas industry. It costs over an order of magnitude more to extract it from water. The worst part is that even at the current rates at the pump, it's hard to justify using hydrogen over batteries.
If lithium batteries didn't exist, it may have been a good path for the long term future. In reality, it's only gonna be viable for very specific industrial use cases.
There is no 4D chess. Toyota is the new Research in Motion, pointing at the iPhone and saying "but it doesn't have a keyboard!!".
I still doubt it because if electricity goes negative you would be far better off storing that energy in a battery which has almost no losses.
More like tiddlywinks.
Only history can tell. But all these are temporary as once the infrastructure is everywhere, the extra baggage and maintenance of gas based car will kill its infra first. And hydrogen … sigh.
Toyota clearly doesn‘t need Norway. Their market share in Norway will be dropping to zero, soon: https://electrek.co/2021/09/23/norway-bans-gas-cars-in-2025-...
Hydrogen Fuel Cell
It’s odd the article didn’t talk about how Toyota is betting big on hydrogen fuel cell winning vs battery.
I think most of the damage has been done by politicians who used populist rhetoric to set those inane time limits after which "all non-EVs will be banned". That is just stupid politicking that's easy to pass because none of them will be in office by that date. How about having both EVs and ICE?
In some european countries, the amounts being paid as subsidies for EVs are insane. In some parts of italy you get a Tesla for like $8000 . But this winter europe will have trouble charging them, and this model clearly does not scale. Let's focus on installing solar and expanding remote work instead
>But this winter europe will have trouble charging thel
No. It's still cheaper to charge EV than fuel ICE during non peak hours. Let's stop pretending EV owners only charge on the highway at expensive, fast charging stations.
>and this model clearly does not scale
What does not scale? Look at Norway.
> In some parts of italy you get a Tesla for like $8000
Completely false.
In Italy, in certain periods and under certain conditions, you get "up to" 6,000 euros of incentives if you buy an EV. You still pay north of 30,000 euros to buy a Tesla Model 3 (the basic model of course) even after incentives.
Let's be clear.
The reason Toyota isn't all-in on EVs is because Toyota is the dominant player in a rival technology: gas-electric hybrids.
This is extremely clear business strategy: Toyota doesn't want to cannibalize its marketshare in hybrids.
Toyota pushed hydrogen fuel cells for years to obstruct EV adoption, just as Elon Musk pushed hyperloop to obstruct high-speed rail adoption. Both hydrogen and hyperloop are fantasy technology: decades away or completely impractical (hyperloop.)
Only after EVs were widely adopted in many countries did Toyota start moving towards EVs. That was a logical business strategy for them.
Toyota isn't all in on EVs because they make lots of money from hybrids. The end.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/climate/toyota-electric-h...
"Toyota Led on Clean Cars. Now It Works to Delay Them." The auto giant bet on hydrogen power, but as the world moves toward electric the company is fighting climate regulations in an apparent effort to buy time.
This is all very clear business strategy. And we shouldn't let Toyota get in the way of a better world for all of us, in exchange for profit for its investors.
He is running a business. He says it will be hard to meet regulatory targets, then the incentives are way too low. Given they are such a a global business it makes sense for them to sell EVs and Hybrids in Europe and California for example and conventional vehicles in the rest of the world.
The only policy that can make a significant change in the climate is a carbon tax. The effects might as well be less driving and more bussing if indeed the rare earth supply is so limited.
I believe he's right. EV's get all the spotlight but 95% of all vehicles still use fossil-fuels. Replacing them in the next 3 decades is nigh impossible IMHO.
We might even endure another oil crisis because we're cutting down on our investment in fossil fuels while the transition to EV's is lagging.
I’m going to guess, without even reading it, that it’s simply because he’s old and only comes up with poor reasoning.
I don’t want ev because I live in a city and dont fancy spending half an hour at electric stations
Assuming it takes you 30 minutes for at least one of your weekly grocery trips, why would you make a habit of sitting in the car waiting for it to charge?
Charge at home. If you can't now, eventually all the landlords will be racing to install charging because demand for it will rise.
What are we going to do with all the excess gasoline when we only need natural gas?
Why will there be excess gasoline? They will reduce production.
What happens to the grid when we go all in on EV?
What happens to coal mines when we all start using steam engines?
EV is not a well defined term. In US it basically means what Elon Musk sells.
I wonder why the joint world’s largest ICE maker would argue against a technology they haven’t developed to the same standard as nearly every one of their competitors. Weird.
Surely he’s only thinking of the environmental consequences and shared material constraints of manufacturing so many vehicles.
Couldn’t be that they planned for a slower adoption and the pandemic accelerated the curve and now they’ve fallen behind. Couldn’t be that they failed to secure critical contracts thinking that this attempt at scaling would fall short and then they could pick up those same contracts later for cheap.
I am convinced EV will be the future, but given how electricity is produced and how batteries are built the most sustainable technology is hybrid https://youtu.be/S1E8SQde5rk
Agreed. There are lithium production issues for the near future so plug-in hybrids mean you can make 10 PHEVs with a range of 40 km instead of one EV with a range of 400 km. Making PHEVs instead of EVs will cut fuel usage more.
+1 Toyota's CEO :)
Also when enviromental crisis will ends we can back to smoking oil or something similiar - reverse engeneering of oil engines technology can give terrible results...
Also industrial vehicles running on electricity is not even in sight me thinks.
How do you imagine the environmental crisis ending?
John Deere is pursuing electrification. It is completely impractical for agriculture, but they're doing it anyway. Because ESG.