After reading the links you mentioned I do not support your opinion that Toyota is pushing this or a similar story since 2021. On the contrary, they announce huge investments and research breakthroughs for years now, but only now they are starting to announce mass production.
Not to mention that this kind of range isn't helpful, it would be much more useful to make the battery smaller and lighter and stay with a 300 mile range. The vehicle would be cheaper and much more efficient overall. This is the kind of headline a marketing department would write.
This battery breakthrough has been reported many times but commercialisation is always 3 years off which is the typical purchasing/leasing cycle for vehicles. I cannot help but think this is Toyota - widely known for being way behind in EV sales - trying to induce an Osborne Effect to discourage consumers from buying the competing products of the current generation and instead wait for Toyota’s “breakthrough” next gen product … https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect
The funny thing is that Toyota for years have said they had this technology in development, but they ended up purchasing the tech from another company.
In automotive the OEMs almost exclusively purchase from suppliers like this and develop very little actually in house directly. That said, they can be heavily involved in its development, like it sounds in this case. This is partly done for liability reasons (supplier takes the liability if this battery catches on fire, not Toyota)
When people say "Japanese cars are high quality", they usually mean "Toyota and Honda". I agree it's weird. Though Nissan isn't really considered worse than GM or something in that range -- they're just pretty middle of the road.
From my last time shopping they weren't the cheaper at purchase time, but I do agree that they're reliable and I haven't spent a lot of money for repair so far, and when I do the parts aren't very expensive nor difficult to find.
So I'd say the total cost of ownership is likely cheaper than the alternative, and they also hold their value well compared to other brands.
I don't think this includes any of the Chinese brands. They obviously have a cheaper cost base, arguably lower quality, and the government is keen to get more global market penetration so they're going to be a lot more competitive.
Apparently BYD will be releasing one of its models with a sodium ion solid-state battery this year. That is, it's verified and working and ready to ship.
Your link says "may" not "will", and is from December last year.
I shall keep my fingers crossed that it does happen, but with no "They're actively being manufactured right now" news articles, I'm not hopeful that they'll be available to buy in the next two months.
Well, he's also jump-started all of car electrification. I agree FSD is bad, but unless you paid for it, it's a weird thing to focus on given the bigger picture impact Tesla and Musk have had.
> Toyota has lobbied against strict fuel efficiency standards in Australia and worldwide and is one of the top three funders of lobbyists against 100% battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Various Toyota executives have sent mixed messages about the future ascendency of hydrogen-powered cars, the efficacy of mild hybrids vs. BEVs, and a future BEV strategy based on solid-state batteries. None of these technologies have proven their worth yet, and I wonder if these messages are merely a ploy for Toyota to maintain its current hybrid vehicle (HEV) dominance and profit margins.
I've got plenty of gripes with Musk -- not the least of which are Tesla's marketing of assistive driving technologies, which the folks there had to know would be misleading.
I think this is somewhat unfair, though: that $10k is for a software unlock. Battery tech is hardware. Toyota can't charge extra for advanced batteries before said batteries are ready for mass production, for obvious reasons -- so they didn't really have the opportunity to engage in this kind of broken promise.
Below I'll use "Lexus" to mean those cars that get branded that way when marketed is the West and "Toyota" to mean to the ones that get branded "Toyota" in the West. I'll use "the company" when referring to Toyota the company rather than non-Lexus cars the company makes.
I'm curious if there is any difference within the company other than branding.
Are they built at the same factories, or are there separate factories for Lexus?
Are there separate engineering and/or design organizations for Lexus and Toyota that independently hire engineers and/or designers, or are engineers and/or designers hired by the company and work on whatever mix of Lexus and Toyota projects that the company wants to assign them to?
The Lexus brand was created to sell Americans expensive Toyotas, because when they entered the market there was an inherent perception of Japanese cars as cheap.
Internationally a bunch of cars that have a Lexus badge in America have a Toyota badge on them.
Yeah, I'm aware, though I've heard good things about the reliability of Lexus cars too. In all fairness, Lexus feels like the affordable Luxury car when you consider the price of other luxury cars.
Toyota and Lexus are the same company. Much as Infiniti is a division of Nissan and Acura is a division of Honda. In fact, the renowned original Acura NSX is the Honda NSX in much of the rest of the world.
Toyota has been going hard on this story, no surprise since they dug a grave of irrelevance by anchoring themselves to hydrogen for decades. Even when it was clear EVs were the future and interest in hydrogen was barely registering.
Also no surprise that they have nothing to show except a "just wait 5 years!".
A grave of irrelevance so deep that they are the world's largest automaker and their net margins just hit an all-time high. Sometimes I do wonder from which planet these HN remarks are sent.
It would probably make most sense to compare their EV sales to other companies EV sales.
However I am sure that there are at least a few execs at toyota with your line of thinking: "Our ICE cars are selling better than ever, why are we wasting money on EV development?"
The all-time, cumulative amount of batteries sold in Toyota hybrid cars is similar in scale to the amount of batteries ever sold by Tesla. Until about 2 years ago, Toyota was ahead in this metric.
Sure, Tesla has hybrid sales of zero. It doesn't make golf cart battery packs and electric bike motors. Toyota is great at making (buying off the shelf) those things and connecting them to gas motors.
However, toyota is not great at making EVs and only now is releasing their first (very mediocre) EV. Probably because a hybrid and EV are very different under the hood.
And they're spending a chunk of that money on lobbying governments around the world to reduce pollution standards so they will probably keep raking in the profits on ICE vehicles while the planet warms up and they keep making press releases about allegedly imminent battery tech.
Some of us probably have very warped perceptions about what happened to the Big 3, since humans are susceptible to The Narrative®. GM has never lost its market share leader position in America, and the Big 3 had majority market share until 2008. This, despite the fact that they manufactured pure garbage from 1971-present. That is why I try not to call anything too early. If you had looked at the situation in 1965 and said "50 years from now, Japan and US will contend for market leadership" that would have been accurate. If you had said then "GM has buried itself in a grave of irrelevance", you would have been extremely wrong.
Would hydrogen make sense for really heavy vehicles like bus or truck, or even train?
I think for cars it isn’t the most convenient. But at the same time hydrogen would be cool if it works because it’s so abundant. And it’s pretty cool that the hydrogen cars exhaust water.
Hydrogen can only work if the infrastructure is available. If you have a few hubs with a lot of traffic between them, it could make a lot of sense.
Having said this, I have seen quite a few Toyota Mirai taxis in Berlin. I am wondering if they ever have range anxiety or problems finding a fuel station.
>reportedly uses single crystals of lithium cobalt oxide
Would anyone like to guess why this one didn't catch on?
Anyway, practically all modern solid-state batteries are based on a phosphorus sulfide electrolyte system (P2S5, but also related PxSy phases), which was tested in batteries as early as 1988 by Eveready:
That is the opinion of the author, Tony Kane who is the founder of Time and Leisure Magazine.
He has no background in car manufacturing, battery research etc or unique insight into Toyota's roadmap. With all due respect to him I don't think his opinion is worth all that much.
That article is from 2009 about Toyota announcing a 10x lithium ion wonder-battery due in ~2015. That didn't happen. Now, in 2023, Toyota promises a solid-state wonder-battery soon (tm). Since wonder-battery announcements from Toyota have proven unreliable before we shouldn't hold our breath for today's wonder-battery announcement from Toyota.
This article of this post announces that they, after a published "breakthrough" earlier this year, is closing in on mass production capability with 2028 being Toyota's suggested target.
That article shared in this comment thread announces the start of development of a new battery technology, with the author sharing their opinion on the possible delivery date - not Toyota.
But regardless of whether Toyota succeeds according to their schedule, holding your breath for 5 years or more is not recommended.
If a Model 3 LR is 75kwh, and this is roughly 3x the range, and that takes roughly 20 minutes to go 10-80% at a supercharger then can anyone tell me what kind of hardware would be required to charge a 225kwh battery in the same time? Is it remotely feasible to build at least 100,000 of those chargers all over the world?
Sounds like each one would need a gigantic capacitor or flywheel on site.
Those chargers already exist. Tesla vehicles are limited by their 400v electrical system. Porsche already charges faster for longer via an 800v electrical system.
You also have to remember even 10-80 throttles SIGNIFICANTLY over that window as the battery fills. The higher speeds will run for longer on a larger battery assuming it is designed with sufficient cooling - one of the features of solid state batteries is supposed to be the ability to charge at higher rates for longer duration.
That’s a good point. So an hour long charge vs 30 minute charge with a SS battery could mean a 200 mile difference vs with a current battery it could be like 50 miles or less difference.
Supposedly, V4 chargers are still currently capped at 250kW output (same as current L3 chargers), but are capable of upwards of 615 amps once more cars are capable of charging at 800 volts.
I don't know what building 100,000 of them will take, but it'll be a lot of metal for sure.
Never, but I’m trying to understand what the experience would be like.
If you charge at home then you are looking at like 2 days to fully charge at 240v.
What I’m wondering is if these ranges are necessary or realistic for electric cars even if the storage tech is there. Maybe 4-500 miles is the max anyone would want regardless of how long charging could theoretically take if you were connected directly to a nuclear generator or something.
Only couple of times per year I drive those kind of distances myself, but I’d say the main benefit comes for “derating”. In other words, you can buy a 900 mile range car, and can travel 400 miles in Lapland winter (batteries don’t like cold, and self heating uses battery capacity). So you can drive to a place ~150miles away and back without thinking about destination charging, plus some reserve. This system would also last longer since you’re not forced a full charge cycle every day -> less aging.
Surely not an issue if you can have multiple cars. One can just have a diesel car for longer trips and have a small electric city car for everyday trips.
OK but then why have the battery capacity? It isn’t free in dollars or grams. Probably more likely we get smaller and smaller batteries and the range stays roughly constant.
Will be amazing for trucks and aircraft though. Truck stations on highways could potentially each have massive hookups or even their own solar and battery plants.
Because it covers trips long enough to reasonably do in a day. And if on average you are charging more than using, the battery will be at near full capacity most of the time. It eliminates range anxiety.
Truly autonomous cars could drive you cross country while you work, eat, sleep and consume entertainment all within the car. With those kinds of efficiencies it's pretty attractive regardless, but very short charging breaks would be even more attractive.
Sounds great. Sort of like a train, except with more traffic, no bathroom, more sudden acceleration and motion sickness, and no space to stand up and walk around.
70% of 225 kWh is 158 kWh. To transfer that much in 20 minutes would require 473 kW. The latest supercharger is rated at 250 kW, which is the limit for a 400 volt battery. So I'm going to say it would require a 800 volt battery and 500 kW charger.
As with all news about battery technology, I will believe it when I can go out and buy it. Until then it is vapourware. Does anyone know why battery technology in particular is so rife with these "A battery that NEVER needs charging is just 3 years away!!!" Type press releases?
It's a combination of different factors. First of all there's a great demand for fast charging, high capacity, long lasting batteries. Especially in Cars but also in just about everything else. Second, the Battery Industry is on an exponential curve in terms of capacity [0]. Lastly, we can make all kinds of "better" batteries in the lab. Faster charging, higher density, longer lasting, ... The Main Issue is that any battery advancement needs to be better in all aspects and you need to build mass manufacturing infrastructure to keep the price down. Thus, we get these massive underestimations of the timeframes. However, Batteries do improve all the time. For example, look at the LG Chem INR21700 M50. Compare it to the best cells that were available before it (adjusting for 18650 form factor) and you'll see a noticeable, albeit incremental upgrade that is mass market available and cheap. Those were likely the fabled 21700 Tesla Cells that Musk was gushing over a few years ago.
Yes, just. Using a very rough 14kWh/100km from Tesla as a benchmark, 1200km would be 12x14=168kWh. That much energy in 10 minutes comes out as 1005988W.
Assume 5 miles per kWH of power, that's a little better than the average EV, but as others have noted, this battery will decrease the vehicle's overall weight and thus improve efficiency.
Then the calculation you're looking for looks something like this:
300 miles range * 1/5 kWH/mile = 60 kWH of power
We need to deliver that power in 10 mins, so:
60 kWH * 6 = 360 kW.
You need a 360 kW power feed in order to charge this battery in 10 minutes. Keep in mind the average modern household in the US has a 24kW feed, so it would take all the power available to 15 modern US households to charge this car. But it's only need for 10 minutes. Put another way, if people were continually using this commercial charging point all day long - let's say 16 hours for the day - then for the peak power consumption of 15 US households you could charge 96 cars using this fast charge.
That is an avalanche of current and you've hit on the reason the whole EV thing isn't going to work out the way some boosters think. The amount of infrastructure necessary to charge these things is ridiculous. A step-down transformer that can accomplish this feat costs a quarter million dollars, net of the pad and the wires and installation. It might be more globally efficient to re-do the entire grid as HVDC, but that might cost a few dollars as well. Far, far better systemic solutions exist, such as walking and buses and electric rail for humans, and reserving ultra-high-power EVs for cases where the payload actually needed to be moved, such as deliveries.
The thing is that if the market has already determined that Tesla's range and charge time is OK, then building a car with the same range with the shiny new tech just makes the whole vehicle lighter, by an unsubtle amount. It's hard to tell from the press release, but the implication is that they've doubled the energy density. Right now if you assume 500kg of battery and you replace that with 250kg of battery in otherwise the same 2000kg car (which is now 1750kg), that's a 12% weight saving. That's going to show up as a measurably longer range all on its own.
Nobody has ever said you’d put a fast charger in your house or at work.
Getting 1MW to a commercial fast charging station is not crazy. Plenty of fast charging stations have that kind of connection. But distributed over multiple chargers of course.
What you see these days is, say, 150kW shared with t who cables. If you’re the only one charging you get 150kW. If there’s another car you get 75kW. If we ever get to 1MW I think that’ll be the model. Should still be quite beneficial since if people finish their charging faster you’ll also have more instances where you’re not sharing capacity with others.
As batteries get cheaper we’ll also see more stations with battery packs to provide peak power to those super fast charging cars.
With current electricity infrastructure, won't that completely saturate the grid and/or be problematic for people wanting to actually put the chargers somewhere?
We're talking megawatts here, and (at least over here) getting a grid connection of more than a couple of hundred kilowatts means serious talks with the grid operators. Because larger max loads mean larger potential impact on the grid when your load suddenly switches on, there is a progressive fee where a 0.1 MW versus a 1 MW rated connection is not simply 10x cheaper.
Absent huge investments in the grid, I think the only thing you could do is put these on prem with power production, or put up a big battery near the charger that you fill up at a lower rate?
Not an expert, but I wrote simulation code for "virtual power plants" so industrial sites with electricity producers, consumers and storage could simulate their loads to help spec the grid connections to their sites... this is what I vaguely remember from the business end of things.
Yes and no, 1200km charged in 10 mins is somewhere around 1MW of peak load. that's manageable and readily available using off the shelf distribution equipment, but it is a lot. The equipment is by no means cheap and large charging sites would almost always require upstream distribution and transmission upgrades, but this is something utilities are planning for. I suspect we'll also start to see on site energy storage to help offset the demand charges that these sites could see.
Does anyone know the energy density of these batteries? I wonder about the applications for flying. Also, I wonder about the military implications - the logistics of energy are a major limitation, as far as I understand.
This reads the same as "Oh, is climate change really real? Maybe we should just wait and see", only with buying electric cars now instead of Toyota's maybe someday super battery car.
One catch would be the massive strain on the AC grid; with an EV consuming some 200Wh or so/km, 1200km equals a capacity of approx. 240kWh.
240kWh in 10 minutes translates into 1,44MW - for charging one car! (Assuming 100% efficiency.)
The bottleneck when installing EV charging stations in many parts of Norway at the moment is simply getting the AC oomph needed to the right place. Our electrical ferries (much bigger load than an EV) sidestep this issue by having huge battery banks shoreside, which are being charged at a uniform rate, then once the ferry connects to the shore terminal, it charges off the batteries shoreside rather than the grid as such. Presumably something similar will have to be thought out to take full advantage of solid state batteries.
This is likely how most charging stations with this power requirement will work too. They will have on-site batteries that are charged at a slower rate to help increase the overall charge speed. Charging stations aren't used 24/7 and this additional battery capacity can absorb day time solar power as needed.
Sounds like a win for the battery manufacturer if there has to be a close to matching static capacity of batteries or maybe self driving to somewhere overnight for a quick 10 min charge would be the answer.
EV buyers may want to consider a used EV until new tech comes out
I'm not basing my purchase decisions on pie-in-the-sky press releases from Toyota and wild-ass guesses from some random person on the Internet. Build a car, Toyota, then we'll talk. Or maybe I'll just buy a Tesla instead, I've heard that their "Full Self-Driving" is just a few months away.
It's why my recommendation is to actually go look at Toyota's tech. It's not hypothetical or in development. Their solid state batteries are known to exist and be ready to go.
Older teslas driving features are more reliable than the current ones. It sounds like training the AI driving systems with synthetic data is helping speed up progress. Another fn area to read.
> EV buyers may want to consider a used EV until new tech comes out, since old or current tech is not always worth paying new prices for.
Sounds like exactly what Toyota is hoping for with regular press releases like this. Shutting down competitors electric sales while consumers wait for this someday-tech would be fantastic for Toyota.
I think Toyota will be successful with the production of solid state batteries but the article does not appear to offer new information. Only that there are delays, but progress is still continuing.
The headline does not match the content of the article:
"At a news conference last week, Toyota president Koji Sato also admitted that production volumes of solid-state batteries were likely to be small when the company rolls them out in electric vehicles as early as 2027."
and in fact Toyota may actually be late to the game:
"Other companies have also made progress recently. Chinese battery maker CATL revealed it was preparing to mass-produce its semi-solid batteries before the year’s end, while South Korea’s Samsung SDI has completed a fully automated pilot line for solid-state batteries."
For passenger BEVs, maybe. For many reasons, none of them related to batteries.
For batteries? No way. Demand far exceeds supply. Every battery made for the next 10 years will be bought by some one.
Battery technology is mapped out for 10-15 years. Every battery startup (cathodes, anodes, minerals, process, etc, etc) has a general plan to "skate to where the puck will be", and hopefully get there before competitors. Any one starting a gigafactory today knows what kind of batteries they'll be making (at scale) in 5 years and what their market share will be.
The trick is being profitable. And Toyota has a pretty good chance. Mostly because they have access to (cheaper) capital. And maybe because they can lean on their long relationships with Panasonic and the like.
I'm suspicious for many reasons. If they can't build their prime hybrids — or even supply gas Siennas in Canada — I'm not very confident about their manufacturing in the mid-term.
It reminds me of the old story about the inventor in the late 1890s, who claimed to have invented a car that could cross the United States running on just a gallon of water. After failing to deliver a tangible product for years, investors pushed him to either produce his vehicle or return their money. The inventor refused, saying that he'd now come up with an even better version that could cross the United States on just a single thimble of water, and it would be beneath his professional pride to release an inferior product, so he had no choice but to continue his research.
Not feasible on even 240 Volt AC at all, would have to be high voltage all the way to the charger as the cabling is unworkable. Its completely impractical otherwise and its going to require big changes to the grid.
Presumably that would be at charging stations, not at home. Those would be located in commercial areas where they could get the kind of power feed that medium to large buildings get, which is typically 3 phase 13800 V, and can be thousands of kW.
Toyota is one of the top innovators in the world when it comes to manufacturing. The reason Tesla is able to produce millions of Model 3 is partly because they are applying the lessons learned from the Toyota production system (TPS). Toyota have a lot of experience of electrification, they just have not produced a lot of vehicles with a charging plug. Toyota will deliver EVs that good enough to compete with all other manufacturers and their EVs will come with the hallmark Toyota reliability. The reason that their current EVs have so low range is pure conservatism from their side. The batteries are over provisioned and the current iterations of EVs are more of a Prime without the gas engine than a pure EV platform. They are the tortoise. Be wary of betting against them.
Nobody is saying they don’t have a good history or tons of resources but company leadership is not a constant. They blew a multi-decade lead and do not appear to be reacting well enough to catch up – likely because their senior people need to admit that their hydrogen gamble failed, which is hard enough even when it doesn’t involve multi-billion dollar write-offs. This is especially so because hydrogen worked out exactly how basically everyone else predicted it would when they made that bet, so they can’t claim nobody could have foreseen this outcome.
This is BEV propaganda. Toyota's hydrogen bet has yet to be even tested. There is a very good chance that batteries get disrupted by hydrogen. In that scenario, almost everyone is decades behind Toyota.
Something you can just look at being used in the real world can’t be propaganda. I know people who have been driving BEVs for over a decade and while they’d be the first to tell you there are real problems (e.g. long road trips) but it’s a commodity technology they’ve been using, so clearly it works for many people. Since people have been using them all over the world at scale, you can get reliable data on how it’s working for any particular question.
Contrast that with hydrogen, which is only barely out of prototype stage with extremely limited availability. The Toyota Mirai is the most successful with around 21k units sold total since 2014 - 3 full orders of magnitude lower than Toyota’s annual sales count, or the total BEV sales.
Now, it’s possible that things will pick up if there are some big improvements in cost and availability but that’s a huge if since it requires major advances in multiple areas just to become competitive with BEVs: it’s not just price but especially fueling - batteries are slower to charge but electricity is available almost everywhere so your plan B is a lot better than needing a tow if anything goes wrong with the one station you were planning to refuel at in the few regions which have any stations at all. Again, that’s not intractable but it’s a much harder chicken-and-egg problem, especially as long as it relies on customers choosing to lock in higher costs and significant restrictions. Environmentalists care about the result, not the technology, so they’re just going to buy an BEV if they aren’t riding an e-bike.
People who have actually driven FCEVs will tell you they work basically identical to BEVs. They make it a point to mention that there are no problems with the cars themselves.
In reality, the moment hydrogen becomes comparably as cheap and available as gasoline or diesel, it is likely the end of the BEV. It is the availability of fuel that is the fundamental problem right now.
The availability will be the biggest problem for the next decade, unless governments force it with huge subsidies.
The EU has mandated that every "major highway" must have a H2 depot every 2-300km, can't remember exactly.
But still you need to get it made somewhere, preferably not from natural gas, because that's just stupid. It needs to be transported to a station, by truck, on a regular schedule or it'll stop working.
Compared to EV chargers which are, in essence, glorified power outlets.
Pipelines are likely the cheapest option, with trucks for last mile deliveries.
The problem with "power outlets" is that they're heavily dependent on fossil fuel power plants. Since it is an unpredictable variable load, even more so than you think. Which is why it is really a transitional solution. From the beginning, it was about replacing distributed emissions with centralized ones, usually far away from cities. At some point, it became this green fantasy that could seriously replace fossil fuels. It is highly unlikely to do so in reality. Even BEVs will need hydrogen power plants to solve variable grid load problems. Eventually, you'll realize that hydrogen is a mandatory part of the problem, and the battery becomes redundant if not a negative.
Hydrogen doesn't work with pipelines, the molecule size is too small. The losses would be uneconomical and possibly dangerous.
Currently the grid over here is producing 17g of CO2/kWh, pretty much 90-95% is either nuclear or renewables. We're also exporting a portion of our excess to neighbouring countries.
The fact that Americans can't modernise their grid doesn't apply to the whole world, you see.
In reality, hydrogen is much cheaper than expanding the grid. You are basically dismissing basic physics with nationalism. Whichever country you're from, it too will find out that is cheaper to build a hydrogen network rather than massive grid expansion.
Our grid already feeds 2-3kW to pretty much every parking spot because of block heaters needed to get ICE vehicles running in the winter. The grid needs exactly zero changes for an EV future. A few last-mile upgrades maybe, but nothing major. This is according to the government organisation that handles the grid infrastructure.
As for "hydrogen network", we have pretty much zero infrastructure bringing natural gas or any kind of gas to residential homes. I think the capital city used to have a gas pipeline, but it got dismantled and people just use portable CNG tanks.
Toyota does not live by the timeline of Tesla. It reminds me of the time the Germans became obsessed with diesel whereas Toyota focused on longer term projects. It did not end well for the German car companies. There's a good chance that Tesla's short-term strategy ends up not mattering.
If the mass adoption of BEV passenger vehicles makes hydrogen fueling stations economically infeasible, then Toyota does live by the timeline of Tesla.
Hydrogen in the US feels destined for trucking and heavy industry if it sees success anywhere, but hydrogen filling stations at truck stops aren't going to sell a lot of Mirais.
Diesel cars at one point made up the majority of European car sales before collapsing. This is still short-sighted thinking.
People really need to stop thinking about current market position and start thinking about the conclusion of each technology. Just like how diesel ultimately led to another fossil fuel burning ICE car, BEVs only lead to heavy and expensive vehicles that are highly dependent on exotic metals. What is the solution to that last problem? It has to be a vehicle that is both zero emissions and doesn’t have weight and resource dependency problems. If you think in that way, you pretty much always end up with a hydrogen powered car of some sort.
In the interest of disclosure, do you have some kind of connection to Toyota or the hydrogen industry? You keep saying things about BEVs which aren’t true and downplaying legitimate problems even the people trying to make hydrogen work acknowledge, which is disappointing to see because you’re not only failing to persuade anyone but also not helping the thing you love. Nobody is going to buy a FCEV because some internet stranger trash-talked the alternatives but because it’s better in some way. If you really want hydrogen to succeed, acknowledge real problems and spend your effort fixing them.
No, I have no such connection. A better question is why there are so many people here who "know" the future of cars, despite having zero experience in the automotive industry? This comes off as one of those cultural fad, since people with minimal knowledge feel the need to lecture others.
My position is mostly from the direction of fact checking. People are blatantly BSing about BEVs, and talk about it with zero understanding of real automotive issues. The facts in favor of FCEVs speak for themselves. It is mainly awareness that is the problem.
Does hydrogen really have much weight advantage? The Mirai is 700 lbs heavier than an Avalon, much closer to a Model S. And the hydrogen fueled Hyundai Nexo is closer in weight to a larger Model Y than the similarly sized Tucson.
The Mirai is a converted Toyota Crown, and is basically a large luxury car. The Nexo is something like 500 lbs lighter than the Y. Also, at the ranges they provide (350-400 miles), BEVs will need to weigh closer to 5000 lbs to match that.
My post above included a gas car (the Sienna) which is backordered for years in my country (Canada). There is obviously some kind of breakdown in the way their company is run; how else can you leave that many customers waiting for that period of time? The pandemic is not an excuse anymore.
I have no confidence they will successfully produce an EV with the classic Toyota reliability because of the software piece.
It's completely wrong to call them the tortise, they are the hare. They took their nap, and now have a very different field to race on; one in which Hyundai is suddenly a strong competitor with years of practical experience - without domestic politics restricting them to daydreaming about Hydrogen.
I hope they surprise me, because I still love my 2016 Sienna.
On a related note, before I bought my Model 3, I went for a test drive at the Subaru dealership. The dealer specifically told me that, if I really wanted an electric car, I should go with Tesla because "Toyota will never get an equivalent charging network going here".
You're just being brainwashed by BEV propaganda. It is not a sustainable solution and does not work for the majority of car buyers. There will come a day when we will laugh at your decision in the same way we laugh at the diesel car. Ethanol/flexfuel cars in the US too. Eventually, everyone will be forced to scale back or outright abandon BEVs, and adopt the next wave of technology such as FCEVs or some other type of hydrogen car.
OK, let's take the fact that I'm brainwashed while you are a free thinking sovereign citizen who just understands reality better than everyone else for granted.
The fact remains that they can't sell me a new car and deliveries are years out - so I'm a brainwashed person who tried to buy a gas minivan and was told that it wasn't available. Or did I just imagine that?
First of all, I'm sure the shortage of minivans is related to Covid-19 and probably due to lack of parts. There's no helping that.
The problem with BEVs is that they are a very limited solution that does not work for everyone. Toyota is likely aware that it is going to be a transitional technology, and is making the decision to not waste too much resources pursuing this market. All of the cars companies that have will likely go through bitter process where they scale back or abandon their BEV investments. We've seen this happen with diesel. And if/when it happens again with batteries, it will just represent another example of Toyota being ahead of the curve rather than being stuck in short-term thinking.
Conservatism and playing it safe resulting in overbuilding and longevity? Yes.
Management? Disaster!
Here is one of their more recent ~$1B blunders "How Japan's Greatest Supercar Flourished and Failed" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdVWKpqZaXg LFA was delayed by at least 5 years and released just as Toyota announced pulling out of F1 in December 2009 after spending $1.6B there with no wins. Probably the reason they stopped developing sports cars altogether and resigned to reselling repackaged Subarus and BMW.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Near breakthrough means nothing, “near commercialization” maybe but it seems like they haven’t even discovered the breakthrough yet.
I get range anxiety is a thing. But no one needs that kind of range in a car.
Why not make it 400mi/650km and save a ton of weight? The battery here gives double the range of an Accord. Who needs that?
Less battery is less weight. That’s better for tires, roads, charge times, brakes, accidents, acceleration, drivability, cost, and probably more.
250mi is plenty. For most even less. But there’s a psychological factor, I get that. Outside something like a truck that’s going to get a very low mi/kwh when towing no one needs that much battery.
I drove across the country for the holidays a couple years ago because I planned to spend a few weeks there and didn’t want to rent a car the whole time at the destination. Plus we had our dog to tow around with us.
If I only drove 400 miles a day, it’d have taken me 2 weeks to drive there and back. I have better things to do with my time and paid vacation than spend two weeks driving. No, this is not an every day/week/month journey for most people. I get that 250 miles is plenty for most people, but failing to account for all use cases is poor planning and inconsiderate to those left out.
The correct thing to do is segment the market for all use cases, not just the ones that are convenient for MBCook. Don’t forget that HN is a bubble just like every other social network. People need more than 250 miles.
However, also you should try to broaden your horizon. Not everyone lives in the US or Australia or Canada. Especially in Europe there‘s other countries and big cities that won‘t require thousands of kilometers to drive to. And of course, there‘s convenient public transport for long distances.
>Not everyone lives in the US or Australia or Canada
Hence, segment the market.
>there‘s convenient public transport for long distances.
Public transportation has good use cases, but also terrible use cases. It is good if you don't have stuff and are going to an urban center,which covers a lot of needs.
If you want to clean out your mom's house, or go camping with friends,it sucks
It's a paradox. Everyone thinking about buying an EV worries about range, but nobody who has an EV worries about range.
You charge your car at night, just like your phone. So it effectively takes zero time to charge, and you always get a full day out of it. It's different from gas cars, the same way smartphones required new charging habits compared to a Nokia 3310 with its two-week battery life.
(And yes, if you live in an apartment or don't have a parking space, this sucks and it doesn't work for you. Same as if you used to charge your 3310 only at your girlfriend's house on weekends because you lost your charger a year before, and then you switched to a smartphone and needed to figure something else out. Conceded.)
If you do not have another vehicle available except the EV, you have to think: will driving from SF to LA be a nightmare? It is less the case than it used to be, but coinciding the recharge with a lunch stop is probably wise.
Likely because it alleviates the need to always be charging, whenever you're not on the road. Not having to make special arrangements for a charging station at work. Or for example, sharing a charging station at home instead of requiring your own, because you only need to charge every other day, etc.
How is 250 enough. On roadtrips I can easily go 500 miles in a day. With 900 miles you could go on trip and return home before you need to charge your battery again.
With this sort of range it might actually make EV pickups useful. You can now probably tow an RV 400-500 miles in cold weather with this. If this is legit, it’s going to revolutionize everything.
Or could you add extra capacity like drop tanks for fighters in WWII. Use built in 259 mile range normally. Rent a 900 mile range extender pack for your cross country trips.
Aren't batteries kept in best condition under 80% and above 20-30%? That high capacity number might be for a taxi and they'd have a lower more standard one for normal commuters.
It would have terrible range with the same footprint. Hydrogen has great energy density by mass but terrible energy density by volume. The tank needs to be huge (but it would be light).
Hydrogen is a gas, which expands or compresses to fill all available space, so its density varies. People really need to check their understanding of physics here.
I would assume, but perhaps be wrong, that it would be liquid Hydrogen pumped into a vehicle's tank, and much like a tank of propane, the liquid expands back into a gas as pressure decreases (due to consumption).
Hydrogen vehicles have the advantage of being refillable in minutes, much like petrol based vehicles - yet the only byproduct is water vapor, making them completely environmentally friendly.
Hydrogen is also hugely abundant, and renewable in the sense that the water vapor could theoretically be split again via some other process.
I would really like to know more about why Hydrogen vehicles did not take off as much as electric. They seem superior in many ways.
My guess would be the chicken and egg problem - few Hydrogen refilling stations nation-wide vs. you can plug in at home and charge for 18 hours or whatever.
Toyota does sell the Mirai[1] in California, it has pressurized tanks[2] I think keeping the hydrogen liquefied would take low temps as well, which would use a lot of energy for refrigeration (and or a lot of volume for insulation).
Thanks for the links. I had thought the Mirai was discontinued, but it looks like it's still in production.
Regarding the tanks - they appear to be high pressure, but non-refrigerated and non-insulated. It would seem pressure alone keeps the Hydrogen in liquid state - if that's how it works.
For a direct answer, this[1] is a good starting point discussing the difficulties with hydrogen (as a medium generally).
Hydrogen fuel cell vs combustion isn’t a settled issue. Combustion is more familiar but Carnot Efficiency is going to reduce range (even further). Fuel cells are more efficient but more expensive. Anything with hydrogen needs to worry about embrittlement. It’s also very difficult to contain so the GWP of 11.6 shouldn’t be overlooked; methane is much easier to manage and still our natural gas infrastructure leaks all over the place.
The electrification of industrial processes have allowed for increasingly-cheaper electric motors to operate efficiently at any size, from toy RC cars to massive (diesel) electric trains.
Even barring any energy density breakthroughs, electrification with batteries for light duty applications seems inevitable. Having a gigantic battery (compared to residential electrical use) as backup is quite useful. Virtual power plants [2] and stationary deployment of secondhand battery cells should lessen the substantial cost of vehicle batteries — we’re at least a decade away from EV trade-ins being common outside of Norway (and maybe China).
For heavy duty applications, we have an existing solution that works fairly well. We’re just going to end up reinventing catenaries for this era [2]. The operational challenges of maintaining catenary wire systems (especially with shared electric right of ways) is just easier than overcoming the chemistry. That is of course, unless we get in our own way [4].
This is outdated crap from 20 years ago. Virtually all of the problems of dealing with hydrogen have been solved. Even GWP has been known for decades (note: It is all about indirect methane emissions, so it is not particularly real).
The main point is that hydrogen is vastly cheaper and less resource demanding than batteries. You can expect hydrogen cars to be as cheap as ICE cars. Something BEVs can never hope to achieve outside of short-ranged vehicles.
A very plausible scenario is that efficiency of fuel cells and electrolyzers improve to the point where BEVs become obsolete. It's arguable we've already reached that point, and this conversation is just the "solar/wind power is impossible" phase of the conversation.
There are a few posters here who’ve reported first hand experience. It definitely sounds like a chicken-and-egg problem compounded by the impracticality of storing and pressurizing hydrogen - every part of the process costs a lot more than gasoline:
Can you locate a source specifically for a vehicle like the Toyota Mirai or one of the newer big rig trucks using hydrogen?
Everything I come across seems to imply they are using high pressure (10,000 PSI) but no talk about insulation or refrigerant. I could be missing it somewhere...
> I would really like to know more about why Hydrogen vehicles did not take off as much as electric.
Lots of reasons. So, here's some off the top of my head.
* Infrastructure - There's no hydrogen distribution system in place. Further, hydrogen is trickier to distribute/store. It's not like gas where you can just have a big empty metal drum that you fill and discharge. Consider, for example, that as gases expand they cool down and as they compress they heat up (Boyle's law). Now consider the danger of refilling, go too fast (with any sort of oxygen present) and you run the real risk of explosion. Without oxygen, you still have to deal with the heat generated. On the flip side, pulling hydrogen out of a tanker will cause the tanker and the stored hydrogen to freeze, forcing you to wait for a defrost if you go too fast.
* Hydrogen is not green. I know everyone THINKS that hydrogen production would primarily come from electrolysis, but that's not how commercial hydrogen is produced [1]. Instead, hydrogen primarily comes from fossil fuels (methane, natural gas).
* Related to the first point, charging a hydrogen vehicle would require all the same headaches the current EV connectors have gone through. You can't just specify a diameter and go from there. You must create a seal to prevent hydrogen from leaking from the pump. It's doable, but also dangerous if you get it wrong. Hydrogen is far more flammable than gas which is really super risky if someone is smoking while recharging.
* Electricity is already distributed. The fact that you are writing here on hacker news means you have a source of electricity that could potentially power your car. The EV charge station distribution is largely just a factor of setting up stations. Further, for relatively little money existing gas stations can easily be converted to support EVs. That's not so with Hydrogen. Another reason for the popularity of EVs is home charging is really fantastic. If you own a home and install a charger you'll almost never need any public fueling infrastructure. (also, with an EV charger refueling at home from 0 to 100 takes about 7 hours. Refueling for daily road trips generally takes more along the lines of 1 hour. Most cars are idle for more than an hour).
> You can't just specify a diameter and go from there. You must create a seal to prevent hydrogen from leaking from the pump. It's doable, but also dangerous if you get it wrong.
Imagine the amount of people who mess up refueling an ICE vehicle. Now extrapolate that to H2 refuelling where we're dealing with a highly flammable gas in extremely high pressures.
> Electricity is already distributed. The fact that you are writing here on hacker news means you have a source of electricity that could potentially power your car.
Exactly. The BEV doubters seem to think that everyone in the world drives 600 miles without stopping for over 30 seconds every single day.
When in fact the average person could charge from a normal power outlet overnight all they need for the next day and ever a little surplus. Effectively keeping the battery full at all times, making that weekend road trip a breeze.
Thousands of people refuel with hydrogen regularly. There is no evidence of real danger.
The problem isn't that you can't live with a BEV, it's that you don't have to. People are "fighting the last war." There is a way of making an EV that has zero compromises compared to ICE cars. BEVs in that context are coming obsolete or perhaps niche cars.
Methane will ignite when in concentrations of 4% - 17% in air, but with hydrogen the range is 4% to 75%. Hydrogen also has a higher flame speed than methane. (Boom!, not Whoosh!)
Given hydrogen's propensity to escape from containers these properties make it unsuitable for domestic uses.
Toyota has absolutely nothing for the EV age having bet the house on hydrogen and failing that just ICE. Now they are scrambling and making promises on research when they have nothing remotely to suggest they can do what they are promising, not even a prototype.
Judging from the fact their EV was losing its wheels, there's also the problem of handling the extra torque, although I can't imagine that would take long to fix if they care at all.
Yes, and it takes no effort to make a rocket. Just put fuel in and ignite it. 100-year-old tech.
Making affordable EVs with a good range and fast charging is hard. Toyota' EVs are relatively expensive, and their batteries and drivetrain are mediocre.
what is it about hacker news where only the worst marketing fluff about batteries is ever upvoted onto the front page?
every time the comments section decends into a combination of bitter laments about the state of journalism, random topic-adjacent bloviating, meta-commentary about the industry/market context (american's chattin about cars!), tangential speculation about other battery tech.
its so purely content free. you never learn something. why does HN work this way?
> There seems to be a lot of noise, confusion and FUD coming from Toyota lately.
Not really? The old CEO with his irrational hate of all-electric cars left, and Toyota is now free to catch up with the rest of the industry. And the best way to catch up has always been to leapfrog a tech generation ahead, rather than trying to copy what the competition designed last year.
> The old CEO with his irrational hate of all-electric cars
What? It seems to be there is a lot of irrational hate on Toyota for its pragmatic approach. There's going to be a need for ICE vehicles for decades to come. As far as I'm aware, the people most likely unable to switch to EVs are likely already Toyota customers. It's not like they've relying on gas guzzling monsters like Ford/GM/etc. They've had hybrids and plug-in hybrids for how long? And in case you did not know, they do have an EV which is available to purchase. I guess they snuck that under the old bat's nose.
> Toyota is now free to catch up with the rest of the industry.
Toyota has been out in front with their hybrids. It's the rest of the industry that's catching up with Toyota. Whom do you think is actually ahead of Toyota?
You think the problem is just the CEO and not the corporate culture or its complacency and arrogance and now confusion now that it's no longer the darling of Wall Street/The Nikkei? It's yet another Japanese zombie corporation that's lost its way.
This seems like an e-washing argument to me. Just a couple of months ago (well after the new CEO joined) they were touting their ammonia engine as the 'death of EVs'.
To be fair, the ammonia engine is an obvious holdover from their hydrogen attempts (which make sense in the specific context of Japan*). If they have the tech and they're not outright scrapping it, they might as well spruik it in case it works out.
*So, Japan imports most of the energy their electrical grid comes from, largely in the form of LNG. If Japan wants to move away from fossil fuels, then that new energy source needs to come in some form; importing liquid hydrogen has seemed an obvious prospect for years now.
This is important because if Japan's future electrical grid will run on hydrogen anyway, then a BEV's energy chain will be (imported hydrogen)->electricity->battery->car, whereas a hydrogen FCEV will just be (imported hydrogen)->electricity->car. Thus, hydrogen stands to be more efficient than BEVs in the specific context of future Japanese logistics.
But where does ammonia come into this? Simple: Ammonia, being NH4, has been considered as a better method of transporting hydrogen instead of liquid hydrogen (hydrogen has great specific energy (energy-per-weight) but literally the worst energy density (energy-per-volume), and ammonia could fix that. If so, then a car engine that uses ammonia directly could be more efficient than a hydrogen engine that's fed from ammonia anyway.
Yeah, as an American these things are always surreal - I grew up in the 80s when vehicles were getting heavily optimized for air resistance and weight so it’s weird seeing it as an improvement for vehicles to get … lower MPG than the car my dad bought when I was in elementary school and the most popular models are basically “what if we took a brick and added macho decorations along with a 40% markup?”
It's interesting that HN discussions overwhelmingly use Imperial/English/American/whatever - to the point where people sometimes don't consider that metric is common in the real world. There's a fairly international and highly technical population here.
That's just very misleading though: the 980 miles battery in a light, compact EV, eg, M3, isn't going to deliver the same range in a pick-up truck, eg, the Hummer EV.
It's just an open invitation for abuse (and has already been abused by battery makers like CATL who recently announced a new improved LFP with 4C charging and 750 miles range??).
If they understood significant figures, it would be less suspicious. Besides, when a vendor uses their own special metric, instead of a well known standard, I lose respect for them.
I see way too many Toyota battery articles for a company that can barely put out an EV. They're all promises... in the future, they swear they'll beat everyone, but they just released a Lexus EV at $60k with 196mi range and 5sec 0-60.
When did this become a metric that mattered to any normal person? Do you even know the 0-60 of your car? Do you realize how quick 5 second is to 60mph? Most sports cars of a generation ago couldn't touch that. Why do you feel it needs to be faster? It's plain dangerous to inexperienced drivers.
Idk what the 0-60 of my leaf is but I beat every one off the line when I want to. It makes me far more comfortable on the freeway to get all the power I want on demand to quickly and safely make a maneuver. I would never have considered it before owning an EV, but now that I have one, I'll definitely be considerate of it in my next EV purchase.
Previously I had only had crappy used ICE vehicles, and the acceleration was so bad it had never occurred to me how much better driving could be with good acceleration. I probably wouldn't include it in my calculus for an ICE vehicle, but I'll probably never purchase another ICE vehicle either.
My Tesla’s 0-60 makes a huge difference in normal driving, because the acceleration profile at low speeds is a lot more “do the right thing now”. Driving my minivan or other ICE cars feels laggy to me now.
I drive a Jetta GLI, it’s 6.1 (edit - 6.4?) seconds - fairly fast but not a fancy sports car, no obnoxious reviving required. It’s a four cylinder, too!
All EVs have crazy fast 0-20mph or 0-30mph speeds because you can just floor it and get instant torque without resorting to launch control modes.
Even my older model Ioniq is fast enough off the lights to trigger people with German ICE cars into thinking I'm trying to "beat" them somehow. Even though I just pressed down the accelerator to get up to speed in a prompt manner.
The amount of torque you get and how fast you get it is what you care about then, not 0-60 times.
They're not really related. There are cars with good 0-60 times that have terrible fast-secondary/highway acceleration; cars with big turbos, for example, and overly aggressive throttle-input smoothing (for mileage.)
I do know the 0-60 of my car... but that's not the point. I just want to make sure the reader doesn't think the range is low because it's some high performance car. It's just a normal Lexus suv that's not up to par in the EV category.
The more important questions (for me) are how well it handles on curves, how efficient it is and what the range is.
The energy efficiency and weight (in American metrics) are 5.32 mi/kwh (extremely good), and a bit over 4000 lbs (pretty heavy; makes me wonder about handling), with well under 300 miles of range, depending on conditions.
So... It looks like it'd appeal to the people I know that buy Lexus cars. That's not me, but I hope they sell a lot of them.
It matters when your competitor sells cheaper product accelerating almost twice as fast and offering almost twice the range. It makes you look like a huge scammer.
There's a saying in car manufacturers that Americans buy horsepower but drive torque.
Torque is generally what you need when you need that. Beat the person off the line because you didn't merge into the right turn lane early enough acceleration onto the highway and two lane highway passing.
Horsepower is largely a metric for top speed of the vehicle, and if we're talking about in a relative statistic for road cars, top speed is far more useless than 0-60
I have seen car commercials my entire life stating the car's 0-60.
EV's I think are especially good for this though because it's fun to accelerate in an EV. Fun does sell cars, see the Miata, S2000, every convertible, etc
There are tons of examples.
I, personally, as an average Joe, definitely would consider acceleration when buying a brand new car, I think it can be a good differentiator.
Are we gatekeeping liking fast, expensive cars now? Cars are an absolute fixture of American society, and even a blind person can feel the difference between a 5-second 0-60 and a 15-second 0-60.
It's fair to point out that, eg, a Corvette from 1960 was slower than 5 seconds for 0-60, but you don't have to be a total gearhead to want to be the fastest off the light.
> When did this become a metric that mattered to any normal person?
Are you seriously going to try gaslight us that nobody cares about 0-60 times?
I'll be charitable and assume you're confusing max speed with 0-60. Most people care about 0-60 performance as it's what they experience after.every.single.stop. They may not know the documented 0-60 time, but they generally know and appreciate better acceleration.
But I do doubt most people know the actual top speed of their vehicles, and relatively few have ever operated their vehicles near or at vmax.
They were supposed to have solid state battery cars and vehicles for the Tokyo Olympics. It was obvious that wasn't going to happen and it didn't.
Toyota has been completely asleep at the switch for EVs which is baffling since they pioneered the hybrid electric vehicle.
What's really strange is after having such a huge lead and hybrid electric vehicle, they have really crawled behind other manufacturers and producing plug-in hybrid electric vehicles which are really just a plug adder onto the vehicle.
It really is mystifying
Keep in mind they're basically isn't a single car manufacturer outside of China and maybe Tesla that are actually doing original battery research. They are all partnering with actual battery manufacturers like Panasonic, Samsung, etc
It takes zero effort to make an EV. They are incredibly simple vehicles.
People really need to let go of their EV fanboyism (and likely that includes Tesla fanboyism). In reality, if EVs were the future, Toyota would start making vast numbers of them in just a few years.
The real issue is that BEVs are not cost effective right now, and show no sign of that happening anytime soon. Until then, PHEVs and hybrids make a lot of sense.
PS: A lot of these Chinese EV makers are scam companies propped up by the Chinese government. They have no ability beyond shoving giant batteries into generic chassis.
> The real issue is that BEVs are not cost effective right now, and show no sign of that happening anytime soon.
That must come as quite a surprise to all of the people who’ve already found them to be cost effective. Did you mean something like “gargantuan e-SUVs and trucks”?
That either involve subsidies or significant sacrifices. The problem is that right now, a hybrid cost around $25k. It takes something like a decade of driving before you can reach cost parity, and that is assuming you have access to cheap electricity. e-SUVs and trucks are even more non-competitive.
I'm finding it really hard to justify even the best hybrid.
Gas over here is currently 2€/litre. Looking at my current market rate electricity price, it's 1.15c/kWh.
Let's pretend your $25k hybrid uses 3l/100km. That's 6€/100km.
And let's take the most power hungry hunk of metal they attached an EV drivetrain into and it needs 25kWh/100km. That's about 0.30€/100km.
The electricity price would have to go up 25-30x permanently for an hybrid to be cost effective per driven km.
I didn't even take into account the fact that for many EV brands the required maintenance to keep the manufacturer warranty is "swap air filter, update software, maybe fill up the window washing fluid if it's low"
This very much depends on how low your gas prices are subsidized to, and as you admitted the lower maintenance costs are quite helpful. One catalytic concert theft will add a couple of years to that schedule, too.
Gas is usually heavily taxed. Maintenance costs are absurdly exaggerated (especially when compared to the long-term cost of battery replacement) and catalytic convertor theft is covered by insurance.
Gas taxes are about half of what they’re supposed to be to find road maintenance. The rest is subsidized out of general fund revenues.
Re: maintenance costs every reputable analyst says that EVs are significantly cheaper throughout the entire lifetime of the vehicle, even when you factor in the higher tire wear and tear. That doesn’t factor in the disruption cost of having to get service, either, which adds up with every extra visit unless you live next to the repair shop.
Finally, yes, insurance covers some costs but you’re paying money into that pool. Everyone I know has been complaining about premiums going up due to thefts disproportionately affecting ICE vehicles and a lot of people have been paying money out of pocket trying to harden popular targets like Priuses because parts were in short supply.
That's a lot of wishful thinking. Certainly, in places like California and Europe, they're much higher than they can be justified. Gas taxes feed into the general fund instead.
Maintenance costs are just marketing. The moment you factor in battery replacement costs, the advantage collapses. BEV companies just pretend this never happens.
Catalytic convertor theft is not that common. This is more wishful thinking.
Do you factor in timing belt costs, clutch costs, oil changes and a full engine overhaul cost to the ICE side?
Very very few EV batteries actually need replacing. We have statistics from Nissan and Tesla from over a decade ago and even those ancient batteries have performed better than expected, retaining 80%+ of capacity.
This isn't the 1970s anymore. Very few cars have major repair costs from engine problems. People are just creating an elaborate narrative of cost savings.
Insurance cost data doesn't seem to bore this out. BEVs have pretty decent maintenance costs.
Before switching to hybrids, I literally spend thousands of euros fixing my VW diesel that was worth maybe 10k€.
The dual-mass flywheel broke, that was 1k€. Had to do a clutch repair at the same time, 700€. The turbo started acting up, that was around a grand with all the labour. When the turbo was fixed, it clogged the already close to full diesel particulate filter. That would've been 2000€ to replace, but I knew a guy who just emptied the casing and modded the software on the car to think it was still there.
Finally a tiny hexagonal thing at the bottom of the engine broke, which prevented any oil from circulating in the engine. That would've been a 2000€ operation. Had my guy do a quick patch job with some bonding agent, sold the car.
...and that's on top of the normal wear and tear + yearly oil changes etc.
The car was under 10 years old at the time and 90% of the problems were issues with the overly complex drivetrain with thousands of moving parts, instead of just one like with electric engines.
On the hybrids I owned all the issues were in the combustion engine. On my current EV all the problems are unrelated to the drivetrain - currently the AC can't hold its coolant for more than 6 months, haven't found the leak yet.
That's likely a deficiency of your VW diesel. VW never properly designed them correctly, and that includes not meeting emissions. Other car engines likely won't have that many issues.
Once you deal with the eventuality of a dead battery, it will easily trump all repair costs of ICE cars. People are just pretending it won't happen to them.
Also, an FCEV is an electric car too, and doesn't have that many mechanical parts either. It also lacks a giant battery. Basic engineering suggests it will be the cheapest type of car of all to maintain once they hit critical mass.
In the long-run, this will be very small. They do not have huge resource requirements of batteries. Though at the moment, these things have zero scale so repair costs are exaggerated.
Ford's PHEV Fusion was identical in price for hybrid and non-hybrid drivetrains.
in, what, 2010? So ... no. Hybrids aren't necessarily more expensive, they were really only substantially expensive because Toyota dealers price gouged so much for them. If the US Government (Bush was in power, so not a chance of it happening) or California had mandated Hybrid/PHEV for all consumer cars by 2015 back in year 2000, the world would have been in a much better place today.
If hybrids had been mandated earlier, we would probably see a semi-electric car with 50-100 miles of all electric range and a compact charging rotary motor range extender. BMW was close but they were also too incompetent to close the gap from their whacko i3 to a really useful long range PHEV.
Tesla's per vehicle margin is allegedly the highest in the business, and their cars, while once priced in the "low luxury" segement, are pretty much the same or less than the average cost of a new car, which is at $48,000 right now.
Maintenance costs are theoretically much better, you may be right they aren't practically since Tesla build quality is still suspect.
These figures are all for previous generation battery economics. High density LFP/LMFP and Sodium Ion batteries will place EV drivetrains fundamentally under the cost of an ICE. These cells, already in mass production, will be half to 1/3 the cost of Nickel Cobalt cells, and essentially the same density at pack level since they don't require extensive cooling/safety systems due to inherent safety.
Solid state batteries may be like fusion at this point. The true economic victory for EVs is LFP/Sodium Ion (especially if the roadmap for 250wh/kg LFP and 200 wh/kg sodium ion bears fruit in a couple of years) which are the path to affordable city transportation with no cobalt, nickel, or even lithium. If fusion became "viable" in a sustained manner, it probably couldn't beat nuclear for LCOE cost. Likewise a mass produced solid state battery probably won't be more economical than the new LFP/Sodium Ion batteries for mass market cars. Will be very significant for trucks, short planes, etc though.
Of course why hasn't this trickled down yet? Apparently car manufacturers can't as effortlessly switch over as you suggest.
You seem very pro-Toyota. I would be very concerned about Toyota because they are 10 years behind and have dinosaurs for executive leadership. Kia/Hyundai have loads of fairly competitive EVs available, but still, crickets from Toyota and split mind syndrome over hydrogen. It's sad that the world leader in car manufacturing and the jewel of the Japanese economy is so asleep at the switch. There's still time, Toyota's engineers are no joke, and they can probably just buy / steal some Chinese EV company's tech and designs, or partner with Nissan.
Gas is inherently subsidized. First, nobody pays for the carbon, but I get the impression you aren't a global warming guy. Fine. The IMF says that fossil fuel subsidies were 7 trillion dollars last year. If one was honest, they'd realize that the US Navy and Marines exist as power projection to ensure oil resource access and shipping. Taxation in the US is for road construction, and has nothing to do with any environmental externalities and damage that fossil fuels are causing.
I'm pretty sure the PHEV Fusion was more expensive. They also gave up on it too soon and without informing the customer that they existed. Toyota is currently selling hybrids and PHEVs without any lack of demand.
The rest of your post is just a giant rant. It touches on way too many points for me to address and it is just mostly just wishful thinking. Case in point, you talk about na-ion batteries as if it was real. I remember people from last year talking about how they already exist, and yet they still don't exist. A classic example of "I'll believe it when I see it." The only thing that seems based in reality is the part where you admit Tesla's build quality is suspect.
It might take zero effort to make an EV but it must take some more effort than zero to make a good reliable EV. I agree that it seems like Toyota is definitely putting in zero effort into their EV offerings. The bz4x rollout has been a mess. Its such a shame as my previous ICE car is really on its last legs and i'm bummed at the current offerings.
Im looking at some small crossover so far I found tons of used bz4x marked as lemon/deal buybacks, Hyundai kona has a multitude of issues and also has buybacks. Mustang Mach-E seems the best deal and Tesla is hit/miss.
btw are you the hypx from the /r/Realtesla Tesla skeptics subreddit?
- you need an entirely new software stack (the S-word makes car manufacturers break into sweat)
- you need an entirely new supply chain, or even worse for OEM-integration-addicted carmakers, build your own supply chain
- you need to secure a competitive priced volume battery source
- you can't just slap motors and batteries into an ICE frame. You NEED that last 50-100 miles that total system integration and design gets you in EV range
I don't know what Toyota's future looks like in terms of electrics, but I know that I won't own an electric car until they sell an electric Corolla, or something equivalent.
Just get the new Prius Prime. The battery is large enough to go 44+ miles all electric, plus you can still use gasoline for long road trips. It has more cargo space than a corolla and actually looks kind of cool.
It's telling how ashamed they are at the range when they have an entire screen filled with info about how range is affected by a variety of conditions. And the actual 220mi/196mi range is found in tiny font hidden behind a tab.
It’s Toyota version of the remote work snafu. Buying a futuristic car where you still have to go somewhere else to fill up is backwards compared to charging at home 99% of the time.
This 'news' has been pushed about every month in the last ~6 months, and even before in 2021 there have been similar 'stories'.
But there is no battery. But they are near.
Here is one from 2021 : https://www.motortrend.com/news/toyota-battery-bev-hev-solid...
Enter the rabbit hole : https://hn.algolia.com/?q=toyota+battery