
How Tesla-Toyota Project Led to Culture Clash by Opposites - cpeterso
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-07/how-tesla-toyota-project-led-to-culture-clash-by-opposites-cars.html
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revelation
This article makes it seem as if the Toyota president came out to Elon Musks
California home, and after a ride in the Roadster, suddenly saw the light and
decided to start producing electric cars.

And just how did he decide to execute his grand electrified vision? By
backporting electric propulsion onto an existing SUV platform. Yeah, this is
exactly the moment where this particular piece of journalistic spin comes
crashing down.

The RAV4 EV was sold only in California precisely because it was a compliance
car. Toyota simply decided it was cheaper to leverage their existing
investment into Tesla to produce an EV on the cheap that could get them the
required environmental credits so they could continue to sell their actual
vehicles without having to buy the credits at a (at the time) large cost from
other manufacturers. It was a simple localized business decision, not some
grand strategy.

Of course Musk doesn't just ridicule fuel cells, he affectionately calls them
"fool cells". As someone who builds his businesses by reasoning from first
principles, he justifiably doesn't understand the idea of swapping a 20%
efficient (if you're very lucky) combustion engine with a 10% efficient,
experimental fuel cell when you could instead use a dead simple, clean and
80%+ efficient electric motor.

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rayiner
> As someone who builds his businesses by reasoning from first principles, he
> justifiably doesn't understand the idea of swapping a 20% efficient (if
> you're very lucky) combustion engine with a 10% efficient, experimental fuel
> cell when you could instead use a dead simple, clean and 80%+ efficient
> electric motor.

You're comparing apples and oranges. That electricity isn't generated via a
particularly efficient mechanism after all.

~~~
Aqueous
Combustion engines (and cells) are for the most part less efficient than our
least efficient power generation plants combined with the grid.

~~~
rayiner
That may be so, but that doesn't mean that the string of numbers he rattled
off should be compared to each other.

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robotcookies
It doesn't sound so much like a culture clash to me. Sounds more like a
difference in the direction each company wants to take (EV vs hydrogen).

Just because they didn't share code (since they were both doing it, it makes
it a common mindset for both and not a difference in culture) and one thought
the brakes should be less jerky isn't some massive difference in culture. Any
complex engineering project will have many difference in opinion you can
nitpick. But I saw nothing in the article that shows these differences were
what led to the breakup.

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fragmede
> Toyota engineers also rejected Tesla’s proposed designs for an enclosure
> that would protect the bottom of the RAV4 EV’s battery pack... Tesla
> ultimately added a titanium plate to ... better protect its battery.

That might explain why Tesla was so willing add said plate to the Model S.

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caycep
At least both sides learned something. Better to love and loss than to never
love at all.

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__david__
I think a more interesting culture clash is the one between Toyota and GM.
There was an episode of _This American Life_ dedicated to the story[1], and it
was eye opening (to someone not versed in the ways of car production).
Interestingly, the plant that Toyota sold to Tesla (mentioned in the article)
is the Nummi plant, around which the GM/Toyota partnership was centered.

[1] [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/403/n...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/403/nummi)

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lucb1e
I know this is very meta, but the page is so cluttered... I would link to the
Readability version but it redirects back to the article (previous complaints
"you're stealing our visitors" caused that). So instead I can recommend this:
[https://readability.com/bookmarklets](https://readability.com/bookmarklets)

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titanomachy
"Back in May 2010, as the emerging alliance took shape, Palo Alto, California-
based Tesla’s chairman, who’s also CEO, called the partnership “historic” and
said Toyota was a company he long admired."

This sentence, hurts, my brain.

