After reading the headline my immediate reaction was that: "this scientist is going to try to make the case that PHEVs are the better choice". And of course, that's what he does.
The fact is that Toyota has made a major misstep in focussing on PHEVs (plugin hybrids) instead of full electric vehicles and they've been spreading FUD about EVs for years now.
I'm hardly an expert on this subject matter but just based on the fact that this man is from Toyota casts massive doubts on anything he says. I put exactly zero value to his claims given his obvious and massive conflict of interest.
What are your opinions based on? I've seen some some "propaganda science" videos, which were essentially Tesla fanboys defending Tesla's choice for some reason.
IMHO, nothing ever is that one dimensional. Obviously those who invested in PHEV or something else will defend that point and I can't see how one can be correct and the other can be the wrong choice when all come with pros and cons.
Did Intel made the wrong choice x86? Did Apple made the correct choice with ARM? Isn't it possible that at different stages of maturity of the tech and the market the "correct choice" can be different?
Lately I'm very annoyed of the science and tech propaganda on Youtube. One of my favourite YouTubers, Derek Muller of Veritasium, was criticised for filming a propaganda video for Google[0] and I'm afraid that the critics have a point. Company positions in the skin of scientific discussion are not new but with YouTube is seems like we are having hard time to identify them.
Your focus on Tesla ignores that EVs are simply better than PHEVs. Look, it's a Toyota rep talking about PHEVs when they missed the boat on EVs. So its just like your YouTuber.
Really? hard to argue about that because it's a statement without any backing. "Simply better" , a magical "argument".
My focus on Tesla? My Youtuber? I'm not sure if I should honor this strangely aggressive comment.
I'm not advocate of any of those, my personal position is that public transportation is both the present and the future of transportation. Cars are great recreational machines and EVs, petrol cars or other types have different characteristics with different kind of fun(EVs acceleration is amazing but petrol is lightweight and agile, their engines sound is amazing). No, from recreational perspective EVs are not simply better.
The argument is purely technical so you can divorce it from the mouth it is being uttered from and consider it on its own merits.
To me it makes sense, but I had similar thoughts independently before reading this article. The only assumption is that battery manufacturing will remain challenging for the near future.
Ostensibly purely technical arguments can be carefully crafted to present a particular message. It's a tactic that works well for certain audiences.
It does not matter either way, in the EU selling anything but full electric will be illegal as of 2035. If Toyota wants to get out of that lucrative market, it can go ahead.
My take is that Toyota is 100% correct here, but simultaneously too late with this messaging today.
Imagine if the EU and others had taken a reasonable stance 15 years ago, and said "every car sold after 2015 must be an EV or a series hybrid with more than 50 km realistic range on pure electric". The transition towards zero carbon emissions from the road sector would have gone exponentially faster.
I mean, even if you look at the countries with the highest rate of EV adoption, like Norway with 65% of the vehicles sold in 2021 being pure EVs, it's still only making a tiny dent in the amount of gasoline and diesel sold - around 5% decrease when you compare Q4 2021 to Q4 2019, and then it's still a bit unclear how much of that drop is attributed to WFH and covid.
> Imagine if the EU and others had taken a reasonable stance 15 years ago, and said "every car sold after 2015 must be an EV or a series hybrid with more than 50 km realistic range on pure electric". The transition towards zero carbon emissions from the road sector would have gone exponentially faster.
This is basically what they did. Generally laws try to avoid specifying the technology these days, to prevent locking things in, but the EU and other sensibly governed places have been putting tighter emission standards in place for decades. People were free to meet these goals with whatever tech they came up with, better aero, lighter materials and so on.
If PHEVs were the answer, we'd have more of them, but pretty much everyone realised that going straight to BEV made sense as soon as the oil/battery price passed a certain ratio, and that it was only going in one direction in future.
I don't buy this, and I'm very much against the principle of having laws that don't specify how to achieve things. The result has been that for several decades manufacturers have been meeting emissions targets by plain manipulation, whether it's dieselgate or it's creating ECU maps tailored for the test driving cycle.
We have achieved only emissions reductions on paper, when we could have been mandating PHEVs and actually solving problems.
If you look back at when California was actually able to do something about their smog problem, it was through mandating specific technologies - first it was positive crankcase ventilation, then catalytic converters.
Hypothetically, if we banned BEVs today to sacrifice their batteries for PHEVS and only sold PHEVs for next 10 years it would be way better for emissions.
I absolutely would want a PHEV for my next car, assuming that it had a sensible pure-electric mode. I've test driven both a BMW and a Mitsubishi a few years back, and the UX was absolutely horrible.
Still looking forward how we are getting the required infrastructure for recharging the batteries, in a usable time across all legacy gas stations, where the electricity is supposed to be generated from, and into which dump the used batteries will be pulled up, in similar vein to current junkyards.
We already have the infrastructure. Any place that can run air conditioners during the day can charge vehicles over night.
An average family generates 5kg of waste per day. A 400kg battery every 15 years is not going to make a dent in that waste, especially when the 400kg can be profitably recycled.
When temperatures regularly get above 45C or 110F then air conditioning is basic infrastructure for human living conditions.
The link between temperature and human productivity is well established, air conditioning is one of those things that seems frivolous but pays for itself.
And of course transportation of food and other goods is also basic infrastructure for human living conditions. So maybe not electric cars, but electric trains definitely.
I just don't know enough about the subject to be able to 'divorce the subject from the mouth' confidently. Perhaps a bit unfair, but I'd rather dismiss what he says than risk being misled.
It's like the opposite of 'appeal to authority' :)
We had the technical argument about a decade ago. Toyota lost. I'm genuinely surprised to see them still fighting this battle as we're way past plausible deniability and getting into "this is embarrassing" territory.
PHEVs are better than HEVs and both are better than ICE, hydrogen is a non-starter (technically better than ICE but there's no infrastructure so it'll be niche) so the future is BEV for wheeled transport.
They're probably starting this campaign to try to prevent the phase out being brought forward again, and/or spreading to other countries as it's been going so well.
It says it's a problem carrying around more battery than you need most days. And implicitly argues it's better to carry around a combustion engine (and gearbox) you don't need most days. I guess that means less rare metals, but then wouldn't pure BEVs with a small battery be ideal by his logic?
It really can't understated how little Toyota can be trusted here. They've been sending corporate propaganda to schools in what amounts to grooming children:
That reads as an article from a person who congests propaganda from the other side. Not everything is about not does everyone care about being carbon neutral. BEVs may have just been left out because they are unpopular. It makes sense to teach about common types of cars.
Yeah, I'm sure it's a total coincidence that Toyota is sending information pamphlets clearly targeting children, to schools, that mention every type of vehicle except BEVs, which Toyota is known to have lobbied against, in Japan, the US, and EU.
>which Toyota is known to have lobbied against, in Japan, the US, and EU.
That doesn't seem to be the case. It seems they want to be able to continue selling iterations of their current products rather than preventing others from selling electric only vehicles.
> So do you think the UK’s plan to end ICE sales in 2030 is too soon?
> “I’m not sure. Of course, Toyota will comply with the law. But is the proposal the best way to reduce carbon?
> I don’t know. Maybe in 15 and certainly in 20 years’ time, it could make sense. But in eight? I’m not so sure.
Oh spare me.
Yes, wouldn't it be nice if this could be someone else's problem in 20 years instead of my problem in 5.
I get it, it's hard. Things are hard. Drastic action is hard. Doing mostly nothing for a long time while we slowly embrace change is very modest, thoughtful and relatively cheap and unrisky.
Of course that's what he wants. It's his job to want that, and advocate for it. Let's wait.
> the truth is that we don’t know what technologies are going to get us to the best way to rid ourselves of that CO2.
Maybe someone will come up with technology to solve it. It's not impossible... and, it saves doing hard, risky work now.
The question we should be asking isn't 'is it too soon?', it should be:
Given that climate change seems to be rather catastrophic, what do you propose to do about it?
Wait for someone else to solve the problem? No, I don't think that's an acceptable answer from the Toyota Research Institute CEO.
EV's aren't a silver bullet... but I tell you what does not the fix the problem: making it someone else's problem. Suck it up. You work for Toyota ffs; ICE vehicles are what, 25% of emissions?
It's not going to completely fix things, but hey, it'll help right?
I'm a Brit and I think it's too soon. This won't affect Toyota that much - some countries may ban ICEs and some not. But it'll be an expensive pain for us Brits if it happens. If you really want less emissions you should tax emissions and let the market figure the best way to achieve that rather than enforcing iffy tech choices.
I think I share support for this argument and might have even posted it on HN previously.
Basically, BEVs need to have huge batteries to sell well. Not because the consumer is actually using this huge battery to its full extent, but because otherwise the consumer will not buy the car due to range anxiety. This huge battery, of which maybe 1/4 or 1/3 is used throughout a day, is a huge inefficiency to manufacture and adds significantly to the CO2 footprint of BEVs.
For a lot of people it might therefore make more sense to have a PHEV with a battery big enough for one day of driving, and a range extender, which ideally would not be used in day to day driving. The range extender is an ICE engine or gas turbine, which is made of more common materials. In the future it might even make sense to combine PHEV with synthetic fuels.
The argument I heard against this is that people with PHEVs ignore the plug-in functionality and drive it on gas the whole time. But while this might be true, it does not counter the technical argument above. It is a completely other problem.
> This huge battery, of which maybe 1/4 or 1/3 is used throughout a day, is a huge inefficiency to manufacture and adds significantly to the CO2 footprint of BEVs.
No, it doesn't. This myth has been repeated over and over for twenty-plus years, as long as the Prius has been around. The CO2 footprint of the battery is dwarfed by the footprint of the car as a whole, and the in the case of a gasoline vehicle, its manufacturing footprint is dwarfed by its CO2 emissions:
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/comparative-l...
A BEV is better for the environment after barely a year of usage:
There are other reasons for having a larger battery. For one, the larger the pack, the less wear on the pack; a smaller pack would be cycled more, and degrade sooner.
Charge/discharge rates are a function of battery capacity. The higher the rate relative to the pack's capacity, the higher the wear on the battery.
In that IEA page picture the battery emissions for the BEV are 2.6 tons and the rest of the manufacturing is 5.4 tons. Electricity over the lifetime is counted as 11.7 more tons. I'd count the 2.6 tons as adding significantly to the footprint.
>people with PHEVs ignore the plug-in functionality and drive it on gas the whole time.
even in that case PHEV gets much better mileage than pure ICE and thus is a significant improvement.
I think the problem with Toyota is that Japan seems to be targeting hydrogen (in particular there were plans for large wind farms on Kuril islands with production of hydrogen and transporting it to Japan), and Toyota probably has bought into that strategy, and thus considers PHEV/BEV as temporary solution, and thus even not investing much in BEV. Hydrogen in a bunch of aspects is better than BEV, and its main issue - infrastructure - is what Japan is perfectly capable of doing. Other countries are very different from Japan, and this is i think where Toyota's miscalculation comes in - the other countries are transitioning to BEV much faster and doing it as as main approach and without any plans for hydrogen totally disregarding that supposedly, under some conditions, better approach. Hydrogen is the Betamax so to speak.
Sorry I have owned PHEVs and EVs. For someone who has access to a charging point (either at home or nearby) EVs are just all around better. PHEVs were great 15-20 years ago. But time has moved on, and EVs are considerably better on maintenance, acceleration/deceleration (ie, more fun) as well as environment as the emit zero local CO2 and with solar, zero completely.
I saw a lot of EVs being rented on my recent vacation.
You can complain about the myth that batteries are somehow more polluting that the entire supply chain of petroleum (extraction->refining->transport->storage->burning in your car) but the tens of thousands of superfund sites that are gas stations are evidence that's not the case.
I guess I have similar idea. Yep, for sure electrify would simply lots of things, but is it really necessary to carry a such gigantic battery? Carrying a much lighter ICE and fuels might be more economical, or even better fuel cells. If we can get hydrogen fuel cells working, it would be even better.
Unfortunately, it's not uncommon that inferior but cheaper solutions won the competitions. Let's wait and see.
The economicals of a running car are not difficult: how many $ are I spending to travel 100 km? Turns out that EV is currently the cheapest one. Also PHEV are not that efficient, at around 50 MPG. Compare that with more than 100-110 MPG equivalent for a Tesla or a Nissan Leaf. Or compare that with an efficient ICE like the Mazda 2, 35 MPG.
Guys from Toyota PR could talk about how expensive are the batteries or the cars themselves. But in terms of moving "giantic" batteries they seem pretty OK in terms of efficiency.
The anti-BEV folks seem to be stuck on old arguments that either weren't true in the first place or were true a few years ago but not anymore due to rapid change. The batteries are a small part of the CO2 footprint of a car as a whole, even a large battery. And they take much less energy to produce today than 10 years ago, this is reflected in the plummeting cost of battery production.
Your argument is like criticizing the increase in compute power 20 years ago, asking why do people need such fast, power heavy CPUs to do email and spreadsheets, but that led to far more efficient computers today that also enable us to do really cool things. With everyone having huge batteries, you can do things like virtual power plants where the power direction is reversed and consumers can send power back to the grid when necessary instead of a power plant having to dispatch its on-demand carbon heavy production. I think this is already being tested out on a small scale.
Prius isn't light either (1500 kg) vs Tesla 3 (1800). Funny how for the last 10 years the main problem for EV was low range, and now the problem is... too much range?
Toyota is free to make PHEVs, people is free to buy PHEVs or EVs. We'll see who ends up being the Beta (claimed superior by fans but zero sells) and the VHS.
It is hard to expect a different answer from a person who works for a company heavily invested into hybrid cars.
What he does not mention and what the war in Ukraine has shown again is that dependence on foreign oil is just bad. Any engine that consumes petrol or natural gas products prolongs that. A purely electrical car can use electricity from coal that is abundant and much more evenly distributed on the planet than oil and gas. Moreover, when an electrical car use electricity from the modern coal power plant, the end result is less CO2 per distance driven than the corresponding petrol car.
This is important. It's weird that there are very few discussion here in Japan that relying on oil producing country is bad. We import almost all oil from mid east countries. It's fragile.
Or we will have to travel less or more slowly using solar zeppelins.
Or battery powered plains with in the air charging using microwaved renewable battery.
Or we need better batteries the necessary energy densities are hypothetically possible with a theoretical limit of 2,700 Wh/kg of Li-S https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenergylett.9b02574 . Chnages to mission profile with Aerotowing for take-off might also help a lot.
The olden zeppelins hardly “pootled” though. They were doing 120kmh at cruise speed. Im sure with modern technology you could up those numbers to 200kmh+. Considering how bad flying is for the environment, I would gladly make the trade to arrive a bit later for a more comfortable, environmentally friendly ride.
This coming from someone who flies 20+ times a year.
It's not quite so simple though is it? Electic cars require a lot more resource intensive mining to make, and I believe you are looking at around 50,000 miles before a Tesla is better for C02 ouput than a prius? And an electic Hummer is going to be worse for the environment than a Prius no matter how many miles it's driven?
Despite how hard it is to get the lithium and how easy it is to get the gasoline, replacing 50 tons of gasoline with 15 kg of lithium is almost guaranteed to be less resource intensive.
The 50,000 mile number is based on calculations based on when batteries cost > $300/kWh to make. A large part of the reduction to the current cost of $100/kWh is reducing the amount of energy needed to make the batteries. Current estimates are under 10,000 miles. But they compare like-for-like, and a Model 3 is bigger than a Prius, so it'd be over 10,000 miles.
Your last statement stands alone. Yes, if we convinced every pickup truck driver to drive plug in Prius's...
Not to be trumping anyone's horn here, but resource dependence seems like a very uninformed argument in favour of batteries. Check out where the resources for those come from.
Finally (the end goal), EVs powered by solar are completely CO2 free. If own a house and have a solar installation that covers EV charging, you are CO2 free.
Only if the solar covers all your energy usage, the real issue is when the sun is shining, generally people are out and about and their EVs are not charging during that time.
Also cars, do not have to be today's cars. Like, the market fucked us all over with this SUV craze. It should be first priority to reverse this madness. Nobody needs to drive around in a 5ton tank. Second, inner city driving should be done in even smaller cars. You do not need a full sized car, designed for seating 5, just for commuting or to go shopping.
Inner city driving should be restricted to service vehicles only. The inner city should be dense enough that shopping is easily done by foot or by bike, and things further away are covered by a tram or bus line within walking distance
Shopping would optimally happen by foot or by bike. Somewhat impossible with US zoning laws, but in a decent mixed use neighborhood a grocery store would be a <5 minutes walk from home, with actual sidewalks and no highways in between.
And overcrowded buses happen in underfunded bus systems with not enough capacity or on peak times. Consider increasing the frequency or upgrading to a tram line if your buses are always full
Yes, visiting France, it's amazing to me how local laws have resulted in shopping that's accessible by most via bike/walk/tram (ie, car not needed). I saw dozens of these folks doing that as an activity with their kids on the weekend (of course, French have lots more vacation too so they can afford to combine exercise + commerce).
The captured regulatory system in the US benefits corporations first, and people last.
Yeah in rural areas it's hard to justify building public transport. Villages can still have grocery stores though. But we were talking about cities here
As a non-driving cyclist, the size of cars is one of my biggest complaints about them and almost certainly is a major contributor to queues of slow moving traffic belching out fumes.
The solution has always been electric trains. Make transport public, add more public transportation. That's the pill nobody wants to swallow.
It's not a technology problem, it's a political one. American auto lobbies destroyed public transport, it's not a secret.
Here is france a lot of busses use a LNG/fuel mix. Regional trains have room where you can put a bike.
Take a quarter of what is being spent on domestics cars, and allocate it on public transport, instead of subsidizing oil. Unfortunately, making something for the community so it can be collective, is immediately seen as a socialist or communist measure in the US, so it will probably take a revolution.
Americans will continue to be one the largest emitter per capita, and will lose the fight on the environment, while countries like china are already building a lot of nuclear power plants.
Public transport is already more efficient from the get go [1], so less work has to be done to meet emmission targets. It is also probably easier to electrify a countries rail/bus network as opposed to a full population's personal vehicles. Steel on steel also releases less dangerous pollutants like car tyres. [2]
Public transport also comes with many other benefits over cars (quieter cities, less deaths from collisions, fitter population).
For super low population density locations cars will probably remain the only possible solution, but for most of the population we really need to implement a movement away from car dependence.
Not only that, for infrastructure reasons public transport outside dense cities is non existent, and paying for taxis for every routes outside the main ones makes it out of budget for many persons.
A single taxi ride can pay for quite a few liters of fuel.
Indeed lets go back to keeping horses and only the wealthy ones being able to go around dry in chariots, and servants to transport goods by whatever means they have.
The article completely fails to mention the issue of air quality in cities. One of the things I'm most looking forward to is walking around the city centre without getting diesel fumes blasted in my face.
EVs aren't completely pollution free either. Their pollution comes from tyre wear and brake dust which is increased (compared to ICE vehicles) due to their increased weight. It might not be as immediately noticeable, but they're still turning the air dangerous.
Edit: I hadn't thought about their use of regenerative braking which certainly reduces the amount of brake dust particulates. Found this literature review (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...) that uses an estimate of zero braking for EVs and yet the increased tyre and road wear still makes the particulate pollution similar to ICE vehicles:
By analysing the existing literature on non-exhaust emissions of different vehicle categories, this review found that there is a positive relationship between weight and non-exhaust PM emission factors. In addition, electric vehicles (EVs) were found to be 24% heavier than equivalent internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). As a result, total PM10 emissions from EVs were found to be equal to those of modern ICEVs. PM2.5 emissions were only 1–3% lower for EVs compared to modern ICEVs. Therefore, it could be concluded that the increased popularity of electric vehicles will likely not have a great effect on PM levels. Non-exhaust emissions already account for over 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5 emissions from traffic. These proportions will continue to increase as exhaust standards improve and average vehicle weight increases. Future policy should consequently focus on setting standards for non-exhaust emissions and encouraging weight reduction of all vehicles to significantly reduce PM emissions from traffic.
I have a 5 year old EV (with 50k miles) that is nowhere close to replacing it's original brake pads based on a recent checkup. Regenerative braking is the real deal.
Also low rolling resistance tires cause less particulate loss and last a lot longer too.
I agree that PHEVs are an important part of the transition away from gasoline, especially in the short term. But it seems if Toyota really believed this, their PHEV Rav4 would be produced in a lot higher numbers. I'm pretty sure they could sell far more of those than they do. Availability is limited to two US states and even within those is quite limited.
And we're still waiting on a hybrid 4Runner or Tacoma.
The PHEV Chrysler Pacifica & PHEV Mitsubishi Outlander came out 5 years ago, and the PHEV Volvo XC90 has been out 7 years. Meanwhile I'm still waiting for Toyota to sell a PHEV 3-row anything (Sienna, Highlander, whatever) in the US.
It is easy to fire on Toyota for defending their PHEV strategy... But that said: they are not fundamentally wrong. BEVs is not the unique magic solution to every transport problem (sorry Elon).
Like usual, the reality is more complex than that.
A French think tank named The shift project, also came to the conclusion that the fastest way to decarbonize and meet emission targets would currently not be BEV currently but switching globally to super-light ICE vehicle with very small engine and optimized consumption (consumption of less than 2.5L/100 km, meaning > 100mpg). A bit like Japanese Kei car. [1]
And when you think about it, this is not crazy. BEV makes perfect sense in country like Norway, France, Switzerland or Canada where electricity is already very low carbon [2].
It does not if you consider most of the world: Poland, Australia, India, most of Africa and Japan has an electricity still running massively on coal, petrol and gas. It will takes several decade to change that and this is more than the lifetime of a car.
Without even considering that many countries, including Japan, country of Toyota, do not have a power grid design to reload EV in individual home (100V, single phase low power network). That would take massive effort and an other few decades to change that. [3]
Like always: There is clean and nice solutions on paper... And there is the reality kicking in the face
Disclaimer: I do own an BEV because I do live in a country where electricity is low carbon.
They've been talking about hydrogen vehicles for ages. I remember stuff from the late 80s early 90s suggesting this is the future.
Yet now I can think of only a single hydrogen fuel station in London (there are likely more but I am only aware of one), yet there are literally countless electric charging points all over the place now, and are starting to appear on on-street lamp posts now (see ubitricity et al), at least in London. It seems like hydrogen has an unassailable infrastructure issue, while EVs are getting increasingly more viable.
I appreciate that lithium batteries are not especially eco friendly, but there is scope for new chemistries in the future so I would be reluctant to say that BEVs are "not the answer" because lithium.
He is correct. The answer to climate change is not the EV, it is the electric trolley, the electric train, the electric bus, the electric scooter, the electric bicycle.
The EV, despite its many advantages over the ICE is still an incredibly resource, dollar, and space-intensive form of personal transportation.
This guy is knocking EVs because they may draw power from a dirty grid in some parts of the world, therefore we should be selling more PHEVs? What a ridiculous argument. Of course he conveniently leaves out the trajectory we’re heading in, in most places the grid is becoming more green over time. Why not attack the dirty parts of the grid itself and advocate for more green power production there instead of EVs. This guy is just embarrassing himself. Also, Lithium is not rare, it is the first metal in the periodic table. It’s just a matter of scaling up mining/production to meet demand. And you don’t even need cobalt anymore, Tesla’s new 4680s don’t use any. This guy should know all that.
He also talks about range anxiety which was a thing a few years ago but with so many charging stations all over the place and more coming online every day, and cars with higher range and fast charging. it’s not really a concern anymore and will be even less of a concern in the future.
Lithium ion batteries aren’t without consequence. They’re made using rare, mined materials – in contrast, an engine is made using more common materials – and weigh a lot.
This is pure BS. Lithium is extracted from water and it’s extraction process has about the environmental impact of turning topsoil.
The rare earth metals in your catalytic converter alone have orders of magnitude greater impact. They rely on open pit mining in third world countries and directly pollute ground water and have very poor disposal options.
His opinion is built around one assumption --- that battery technology will remain stagnant and not advance much beyond lithium ion for the forseeable future.
Assume otherwise and he starts to look more like an apologist for a company that is trying to recover from some bad marketing decisions.
Toyota, I feel your pain but your place in the future is not a given. You have to earn it.
Yes and just imagine where computing (and Intel) would be today if they had spent the last 50 years trying to slow progress instead of creating it --- because it might not be good for them.
I wish Toyota well but the future doesn't wait for anyone. Either help create it or be crushed by it --- these are your options.
This is why extensive, high stakes research into battery technology is going on all around the world. Whoever comes up with a lighter, cheaper, safer battery will own a big chunk of the future --- and the auto industry in particular.
Apparently, Toyota has decided it won't be them. The fun fact about the future is everyone gets to choose how they want to play it.
Ok, so i was living in the countryside (in europe, so smaller farms and more density than the US), and managed to go without car for a bit more than year. I took the bus or biked to a small train station (45 minute bike ride) when i wanted to go visit friends living in "big cities" or to the beach, and went to the farm cooperative store to buy food (5 to 10 minutes by bike, 30 minutes by foot).
If i get a full remote gig next year, i think i will go back there and invest in a kayak, i know there is no dam between that place and the village's country store.
So yes, EV aren't the only answer. I don't think i need to ever buy a car.
Elsewhere on the internet, BEV vs FCEV arguments descend into typical slanging matches. But it’s not A vs B. The world and market can have A and B and C and D.
Many of us will never be able to plug in at home.
With ICE cars stopping sales By 2030 in my country, options like fuel cells are totally viable. My local hydrogen station is green, using electrolysis from excess grid energy. The Toyota Mirai is a nice car. There are also promising projects into hydrogen combustion engines.
Then you have new tech like Zero Petroleum in early stages.
I’d not discount BEVs being the Betamax of the 2020s.
> Many of us will never be able to plug in at home.
800v infrastructure cars can DC fast charge at over 250KW, which means you get 13 miles of range per minute. Plug in, and let's say it takes you just 5 minutes to get a coffee and donut in the shop on your way into work - you've got almost 70 miles of range added. If someone lives in the city, that's a significant amount of driving, from just 5 minutes of charge time.
But charging at home...I take it you mean people who live in apartments without a driveway? Because "level 1" charging is actually pretty sufficient for many, many people given how few miles they actually drive per day. You plug in when you get home around, say, 7pm and by 8am your car has been charging at, say, 10 amps / 120v. That's 14.4kw/hr. Many evs use around 250-300whr/mile on average, so that's 48 miles of range every night. If you install a level 2 charger, you're looking at being able to fully charge in a couple of hours.
There's no reason apartment buildings can't be set up with charging systems for their parking lots/garages...with deployment scaling as there is demand.
Actually I was thinking of my local situation in the UK where about a third of the population live in medium density terraced housing. Some streets have minimal charging but with parking hard to find locals often resist their installation.
Hydrogen is not considered a viable fuel alternative for the masses due to the high risk of explosion among many other factors. I wish people would stop mentioning it in these discussions. https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-storage-chall...
The risk of gasoline 'explosion' (neither would be an explosion, it would be a fire) is higher with gasoline because its vapors are heavier than air and tend to pool on the ground and in structures.
there is a very simple physical reason hydrogen for personal transport is not feasible: electrolyzer to fuel cell efficiency is much lower than charging a battery.
we simply don't have enough green energy to afford wasting it on use Cases were batteries are feasible, and this won't change for some time. the article acknowledges that btw, and that is coming from a company that has a vested interest in the contrary due to selling the Mirai.
> Many of us will never be able to plug in at home.
Why is this a major concern? There's no possibility for me to plug in at home and my EV works just fine. Public charging stations are totally sufficient and the long range means I don't have to charge but every few weeks. Of course this is totally location specific (Netherlands).
> Why is this a major concern? There's no possibility for me to plug in at home and my EV works just fine.
It’s not a major concern. It’s just a buying factor. For those who can plug in at home it’s a plus. It’s a weak con for me. I’d rather not have to do two 60 minutes charges a week vs 4 minutes at a fuel station.
It’s light years from a scientific study but I definitely notice a lot more EVs on residential streets with off-street parking than not. In the UK at least it’s easy to spot/count them as the number plates have a green stripe indicating zero emissions.
I can understand how the difference in time spent fueling at a petrol station vs charging station would be a hurtle for a lot of folks. For me I don't even notice. When I'm getting close to 20% I just park a little further down the street at a charger. Total time spent fueling from my perspective is the time to hook up and remove the charger (about 2 minutes) + about 2 minutes walking back and forth. The rest of the time is passive as it's just parked overnight. Ironically on road trips I've found it actually takes less time to charge than to fuel because the gas stations in Europe are so busy this summer. Sometimes there's a 30 - 45 minute wait just to get into the stations :(. Meanwhile I just cruise right into a supercharger, use the restroom, and by the time I'm back it's ready to go.
nobody argues for using batteries for everything. But as cars go they can pretty much hit 90+%(1) of use cases.
As for hydrogen the problem is that you can make a battery car go several times as far on the energy required to produce the hydrogen. That means to fuel it you will have to pay several times as much as the electricity equivalent. Or of course you can relatively cheaply make it from fossil natural gas via steam reformation but that generates lots of CO2 and if you were to just make electricity from the N-gas and use it in battery cars you could again run more of those than you could from the hydrogen you generated.
(1) source my ass. just a guesstimate. does not include things like Medium sized Trucks. Its fine not to solve those right now.
This guy just is just a PR for Toyota PHEV/ICE engines. He talks about lack pf infrastucture and range anxiety like a reason to postpone the transition. Toyota still lives in denial. It's like they don't know Tesla and VW are manufacturing mass market EVs.
I don't understand why Toyota don't understand what it is about: the customers hate Toyota Prius.
Customers and industries worldwide downplay and resist hybridization, and now electrification. Prius being a tangible bad experience explains huge bulk of it. My speculation is that they use negative sentiments associated with products to even out sales figures over generations, but that type of ignorance and arrogance were what led to complete destruction of Japanese flip phone hardware industry.
iPhone don't dominate the current market because of its Unix-derived kernel for the operating system, nor because they integrate advanced linear actuators for haptic feedbacks. The way Toyota is thinking cars is the latter ways; they are gauging interest in parts it uses where customers have been moving away from its products.
This might be a bad analogy but when the majority starts moving towards organic foods over engineered industrial foodstuffs, there must be something going wrong with the class of products at scale.
EVs are the only answer because they are the most convenient ones. For commute with charging at home and at the office or shopping (charging at shopping center), no more trip to the gas station. Convenience always wins.
The fact is that Toyota has made a major misstep in focussing on PHEVs (plugin hybrids) instead of full electric vehicles and they've been spreading FUD about EVs for years now.
I'm hardly an expert on this subject matter but just based on the fact that this man is from Toyota casts massive doubts on anything he says. I put exactly zero value to his claims given his obvious and massive conflict of interest.