[HN Gopher] Toyota has stepped up lobbying to preserve its inves...
___________________________________________________________________
Toyota has stepped up lobbying to preserve its investments in
hybrids, hydrogen
Author : guerby
Score : 258 points
Date : 2021-07-28 14:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| NoblePublius wrote:
| This is about distribution. Toyotas are sold through dealers.
| Dealers make little money on selling cars and lots of money
| fixing them. The Prius appeals to eco concious drivers (who don't
| mind that their car drives like a dishwasher) but also appeals to
| dealers because it needs oil changes, radiator flushed, and
| frequent brake changes. Full EVs require almost no maintenance so
| Toyota dealers lack any incentive to market them. Hydrogen has
| always been a fake out; never remotely close to a viable
| alternative yet marketed as something amazing coming soon (so
| don't buy a Tesla!).
| tmotwu wrote:
| As someone who spends their time maintaining every aspect of my
| cars (oil, brakes, bearings, everything), Toyotas were by far
| the easiest, simplest, cheapest, most reliable and longest
| lasting. What a weak point to make about Tesla over Toyota.
| tharne wrote:
| Articles like this misunderstand both innovation and capitalism.
| Progress isn't typically made by some unusually smart person or
| enterprise gazing into the future and creating the perfect thing.
| It happens by lots of individuals and companies making bets and
| guesses, most of which are wrong, but some turn out the be right.
| That way the overall system can be brilliant regardless of
| whether or not the individual actors are brilliant. Or, more
| precisely, you can have a brilliant system without brilliant
| actors.
|
| Articles like this one look back with the benefit of hindsight
| and are written from the perspective, "Company X missed obvious
| trend Y and now they're in trouble". In reality, a bunch of
| companies made guesses about what could work in an unknown and
| uncertain future and some turned out to be right and others
| turned out to be wrong.
| MattRix wrote:
| Is this always true? The iPhone seems like a pretty clear
| argument to the contrary. As far as cars go, Tesla is a clear
| outlier pushing innovation. I mean sure you can argue that
| eventually the rest of the field will catch up, but there are
| many advantages to being a first mover.
| bluGill wrote:
| There were smart phones before the iphone. They were badly
| done giving Apple opportunity to make them useful. (and the
| first iPhone was bad in a lot of ways that we only know from
| hindsight)
| dahfizz wrote:
| The point of the article isn't "Toyota bet wrong on BEVs, haha
| they are dumb". The point is "Toyota bet wrong on BEVs, and are
| now lobbying the government to hinder electric vehicles instead
| of getting on board".
| delusional wrote:
| Or more cynically: "Toyota bet wrong on BEV's, so now they're
| trying to flip the table before it becomes obvious that they
| lost".
|
| The system that's supposedly smarter than the actors are
| under attack by those same actors because they didn't win.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| Why wouldn't companies pay the price for being wrong for far
| too long? Why don't they suck it up and let the government make
| decisions that would ease the transition to the future of EV?
| rantwasp wrote:
| what does "being wrong" even mean. Everyone has an opinion
| and everyone has their own interests (including people in the
| gov). Assuming they are "wrong", why would they suck it up?
| Why would anyone do something that goes directly against
| their self-interest?
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| > what does "being wrong" even mean.
|
| Developing products that are uncompetitive in the market.
| rantwasp wrote:
| are the products not competitive? last time I bought a
| car it was a Toyota. My next car will probably be a
| Toyota - probably a hybrid. As much as we like to pretend
| that the EV are the future and are happening right now,
| IMHO we're not there quite yet.
| modeless wrote:
| Hydrogen for cars was an obvious boondoggle for a decade or
| more. There's making guesses and then there's ignoring obvious
| trends. Toyota did the latter.
|
| Edit: And to prove that I thought it was obvious a decade ago,
| here's my opinion from a decade ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3070004
| bluGill wrote:
| To engineers it was, but to politics things are more complex.
| If the politics of the world demand hydrogen it doesn't
| matter how stupid the idea is you have to do it. Politics can
| shut your company down completely overnight, bad engineering
| can do it, but only after decades of bad decisions.
|
| Politically the powers were pushing hydrogen not long ago and
| nobody should be surprised if they do again.
| modeless wrote:
| Nobody was going to shut down Toyota for stopping hydrogen
| car development 10 years ago.
| bluGill wrote:
| Don't bet on that. Countries do such things all the time.
| Japan probably wouldn't, but the US has plenty of
| manufactures that would love to shut down a competitor,
| or maybe Germany decides to shut one down. Even
| California could decide hydrogen is the only way to meet
| their emissions.
|
| Such things have happened, though it is rare.
| Hypx_ wrote:
| The problem is that hydrogen has radically improved in the
| last decade, but batteries have not overcome it's fundamental
| weaknesses. For instance, we are now see hydrogen drop to
| below $2/kg even with entirely green hydrogen. Fuel cells
| have also gotten cheaper and more reliable.
|
| The efficiency argument might end up being the same argument
| made against ray-tracing in the 3D rendering world. In that
| instance, the upside of have correct lighting with a simple
| algorithm eliminated whatever upside you could get out of a
| faster but more complex rasterization system. Hydrogen could
| easily be the way to have a single simple technology that
| works in all transportation cases.
| XorNot wrote:
| I'm not sold that this has been established yet: technology
| moves in mysterious ways.
|
| For example EVs don't have an answer to long distance
| transportation yet (it _should_ be trains, that are easily
| automated, but I 'm not god emperor). You could imagine a
| future where greening that industry necessitates a storable,
| pumpable fuel and suddenly hydrogen infrastructure is a thing
| that personal vehicles could be built against.
| modeless wrote:
| EV range will continue to increase and so will charging
| speeds and number of stations. Cybertruck and Tesla Semi
| may have 600+ miles of range. Combined with faster
| charging, human fatigue will start to become the bigger
| limiting factor. Driving more than 12 hours per day is a
| very niche activity. Even truckers are forbidden from doing
| that by law.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Even in the cases where it absolutely makes sense to
| distance/time shift some of the grid's output to hydrogen
| to ship it physically somewhere (such as a festival in the
| woods, perhaps, that today would rely on diesel generators
| for power), it's still going to be way more efficient to
| use a bank of larger than would fit in a car fuel cells in
| a shipping container creating a "mini-grid" of electricity
| that things like battery electric cars and other appliances
| could plug into than to have cars carry around fuel cells
| "just in case" of events like that.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| EVs are dumber than liquid or gaseous fuels outside of niche
| uses. We had EVs 120 years ago too. The fundamental problem has
| not changed. Batteries and motors are less efficient at
| converting chemical energy into motion than heat engines,
| especially when energy density per weight and space are
| considered.
| guerby wrote:
| Also here:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22594235/toyota-lobbying-...
| fsflover wrote:
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27961606.
| nojito wrote:
| They didn't bet wrong. Hydrogen will likely win out within the
| next 15 years.
|
| The issue that Toyota has is with government forcing them to
| build cars they don't want to.
|
| They already build hybrids but for whatever reason hybrids don't
| qualify under congress.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I think they bet perfectly fine, if you ignore the silly hydrogen
| efforts. Toyota has never been a technological front runner. They
| take the Apple approach; wait for something to be truly ready for
| prime time, then execute it better than anyone else. EV's are
| still 2% of the US market. And it will be a decade more until a
| 60+kwH EV is being sold for <$30k total upfront price out the
| door, which is where they need to be for mass adoption. That
| gives them time to keep perfecting the solid state batteries that
| will be crucial to getting Toyota levels of reliability, safety,
| and longevity from an EV.
| NickM wrote:
| _And it will be a decade more until a 60+kwH EV is being sold
| for <$30k total upfront price out the door, which is where they
| need to be for mass adoption._
|
| "A decade more" seems way too pessimistic given current EV
| prices and battery capacities. The 2022 Bolt will have a
| starting price of $32k with a 65kWh battery, for example.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >The 2022 Bolt will have a starting price of $32k with a
| 65kWh battery, for example.
|
| That's still a totally different class of car buyers. A
| "starting price" of $32k means no one is walking out the door
| with one under $40k total upfront cost. When I can walk into
| a dealership and finance something like that at $25k total
| loan amount, that changes everything.
| chipsa wrote:
| I literally bought a new Chevy Bolt in April for $22k total
| ($20k financed).
| jrsj wrote:
| Is this including some kind of tax credit or subsidy or
| did you actually manage to get them to come down like $8k
| below MSRP??
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >Is this including some kind of tax credit or subsidy or
| did you actually manage to get them to come down like $8k
| below MSRP??
|
| Chevy is doing an $8k consumer cash program right now to
| clear the lots because they literally cannot sell the
| things >$30k.
| jrsj wrote:
| Damn if I'd known about that I would have bought one
| instead of getting a Camry last month
| greendave wrote:
| Even back in 2019, without federal incentives, people were
| walking out the door with new Bolts under $30k (including
| tax and registration). It's more than possible - it's
| already happened. The problem is that most Americans buying
| new vehicles don't want an EV hatchback - they want either
| a Tesla or a non-EV SUV.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| When I leased my 2020 Bolt, I could have walked out the
| door with it on a 24K loan instead. Given that GM chose to
| stick with the same basic drivetrain on the latest update,
| I don't expect that to change for the next few years.
| Excepting the current weird car market that has been
| momentarily turned upside down by the pandemic-related
| supply problems.
| rantwasp wrote:
| haha. as far as new car tech goes Toyota is okay on adoption.
| You should see the tech from the past that VW has in its cars.
| wil421 wrote:
| Disagree.
|
| 2016 VW:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-eoEKrjAtM
|
| 2016 4runner:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcm1nz_Zwn8
|
| The VW looks similar to my FCA uConnect system. The 4runner
| looks like an Alpine head unit I put in my 2002 4 runner in
| the 2008/9 timeframe. Pretty sure Toyota killed the CD player
| in the last 3-4 years.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Yeah Toyota literally did not offer Apple CarPlay on any
| trim level of any vehicle until the 2020 model year, it was
| insane.
| ianai wrote:
| How hard is it to concentrate hydrogen down post-production to
| where the Mirai/another FCV could use it? I ask, because I at
| least understand it's possible to separate hydrogen out of water
| relatively easily once you've got the water.
|
| (More and more, the ocean seems like a huge resource we're not
| tapping: the most lithium reserves on earth, pulling carbon out
| of it (for sequestration), and potential hydrogen source just off
| the top.)
| trixie_ wrote:
| You lose efficiency when using electricity for electrolysis,
| compression and transportation of hydrogen. And then through
| the fuel cell itself which is used to charge a battery.
|
| That entire roundabout process results in a pretty low
| efficiency for hydrogen. Why not skip all those steps and put
| the electricity right into a battery with little efficiency
| loss.
|
| https://insideevs.com/news/406676/battery-electric-hydrogen-...
| ianai wrote:
| Your comment is OT, but here's a comment I made previously to
| it ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27872908 ) :
|
| Even the term "fossil fuels" is an inappropriate framing of
| the chemicals involved since it restricts their use to
| burning. Consider the processes involved in their formations:
| organic material grew for eons millions of years ago. It then
| had to be buried in just the right conditions and later
| embedded into even further beneficial conditions. It took
| millions of years, high temperatures, and high pressures to
| go from plant material to these complex molecular forms. Then
| we dig them up or seep them out with fracking and further
| refine them. Then we burn them. Huge losses of energy all
| along the way. Using oil as fossil fuel is a huge waste of
| the energy it took to create those molecules.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Your esoteric definition of efficiency isn't very useful.
|
| If you have solar power, the comparison between storing it
| in hydrogen using electrolysis or a battery is pretty
| direct and useful and has fuck all to do with hydrocarbons.
| Hypx_ wrote:
| The simplest counter argument is that it's just cheaper to go
| with hydrogen. People have created this narrative where
| "efficiency = cost" when in reality it's more expensive to go
| that far in efficiency.
| olivermarks wrote:
| 'According to the US Department of Energy, less than 5 per cent
| of lithium-ion batteries -- demand for which is set to boom as
| carmakers such as Mercedes lay out goals to go "all-electric" --
| are currently recycled.'
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/771498b8-9457-462f-aee0-e32db14ee...
|
| Unless battery reuse is made viable there is no path forward for
| any future mass market in EV's.
| https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-World-Will-Ru...
|
| Given that gasoline continues to easily provide the most bang for
| the buck/weight/volume IMO hybrids are the logical way forward
| until grids are recreated to cater to Small Nuclear Reactors and
| rewired to handle volume electrical delivery.
|
| https://youtu.be/Hatav_Rdnno
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/ (founded by JB Straubel [1],
| previously CTO of Tesla)
|
| Hybrids are the worst of both electric and combustion
| powertrains, their time has passed. Small nuclear reactors
| aren't ever going to happen (can't compete economically with
| solar/wind backed by batteries).
|
| [1] https://energy.stanford.edu/people/jb-straubel
| olivermarks wrote:
| The FT article I linked is about redwoodmaterials massive
| infusion of backing. Solar/wind has serious shortcomings and
| are not at this point able to store energy 'in batteries' in
| any volume. Hawaii is making progress here
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Don't have a FT subscription currently, my apologies for
| not reviewing it prior to commenting!
| bushbaba wrote:
| To be fair. A Chevy volt can be more environmentally friendly
| than a Tesla.
|
| Most people don't drive more than 50 miles per day. Pushing for
| hybrids with 50-75 mile range might do more for emissions than
| pushing everyone to EV convert.
|
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/are-chevy-...
| [deleted]
| js2 wrote:
| We love our Volt, but GM has discontinued Volt production. My
| spouse's driving is typical around-town errands with occasional
| road-trip. From the most recent monthly report:
|
| Fuel Economy: 205 mpg
|
| Electric Consumption: 31 kW-hr/100 miles
|
| Electric Miles: 341
|
| Gas Miles: 81
|
| Total Miles: 422 mi
|
| Percentage on Electric: 81%
| [deleted]
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| A new Prius is basically as expensive as a Model 3. It was great
| tech 10 years ago but today outside of Ubers I don't see the
| reason to get it as opposed to a full EV.
| CivBase wrote:
| > "If we are to make dramatic progress in electrification, it
| will require overcoming tremendous challenges, including
| refueling infrastructure, battery availability, consumer
| acceptance, and affordability," Robert Wimmer, director of energy
| and environmental research at Toyota Motor North America, told
| the Senate in March.
|
| _That 's_ the supposed FUD? What about that was wrong? Are we
| just supposed to _ignore_ the challenges ahead of us? I had to
| read through most of that article to even get there and that was
| the big controversy. This article is trash.
| tabtab wrote:
| It's sick how the US system allows companies to rent politicians.
| specialist wrote:
| Toyota should pull an Intel, and become the TSMC of automobiles.
| I've waggishly said I'd buy a Tesla made by Toyota. Surely there
| are other EV efforts that would benefit from Toyota's
| manufacturing prowess and capacity.
|
| --
|
| Solid hydrogen fuels will be the next wave. Specifically non-
| gaseous, before anyone has a spaz attack. We know! Storage,
| transportation, distribution of H2 is not practical.
|
| Plasma Kinetics' has a light activated fuel cell.
| https://plasmakinetics.com There are many other nanomaterial
| research efforts. Like consumable silicas and reusable graphenes.
| Am less than noob, so can't guess which notions have most
| potential.
|
| Pay attention to the technology maturation lifecycle. Solid
| hydrogen today is maybe comparable to Li-ion in 2005.
|
| Imagine we hit "peak" Li-ion around 2030, producing 75 tWh
| annually. (Amazing, right?)
|
| That'd buy us some time to develop solid hydrogen, which will
| hopefully be shipping in actual products by then. And hopefully
| address use cases and applications poorly served by Li-ion. Like
| trucking, rail, maritime, whatever.
|
| Remove any remaining excuses for the die-hard fossil fuel hold
| outs.
|
| --
|
| Toyota just got the timing wrong. And maybe they were too
| optimistic about H2.
|
| Trying to hold back EV is a dick move. Pisses me off.
|
| Not having a portfolio of technology platforms, something to span
| the gap from hybrids to hydrogen, was just incompetent.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > Toyota should pull an Intel, and become the TSMC of
| automobiles. I've waggishly said I'd buy a Tesla made by
| Toyota. Surely there are other EV efforts that would benefit
| from Toyota's manufacturing prowess and capacity.
|
| Arguably Tesla already bought that in spirit if not fact by
| acquiring the NUMMI plant from Toyota. (The NUMMI plant was the
| co-venture Toyota built in Fremont, CA in the 80s with General
| Motors that built Geo brand vehicles and taught 90s GM some of
| Toyota's agility in manufacturing. Tesla likely didn't get as
| much direct experience from Toyota in buying the several years
| shut-down plant at that point, but symbolically it feels
| related.)
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Plasma Kinetics is a company I only hear about in the presence
| of one Sandy Munro. Is there anything more than just some
| renders and hypothetical spec sheets?
|
| >Toyota should pull an Intel, and become the TSMC of
| automobiles. I've waggishly said I'd buy a Tesla made by
| Toyota. Surely there are other EV efforts that would benefit
| from Toyota's manufacturing prowess and capacity.
|
| We already have that. Magna Steyr builds custom runs for many
| auto companies big and small.
| nickik wrote:
| > Surely there are other EV efforts that would benefit from
| Toyota's manufacturing prowess and capacity.
|
| They are not actually that exceptional anymore. At best they
| are marginally better.
|
| Tesla new architecture of structural cells in a pack connected
| to massive castings is far better then Toyota EV have.
|
| > Solid hydrogen fuels will be the next wave.
|
| I really don't think that will be the cast.
|
| > Imagine we hit "peak" Li-ion around 2030, producing 75 tWh
| annually. (Amazing, right?)
|
| > From their website: Storage is 30% lighter, 7% smaller, and
| 17% less expensive than Lithium-ion battery per kWh.
|
| By the time this technology is even remotely feasible. Li-Air,
| Li-Sulfer batteries and a whole bunch of other potential
| chemistries could be ready. All these more advanced chemistries
| can beat these advantages without issue.
|
| Li-Sulfer battery could be 2-4x as dense ad current LiIon far
| smaller and far cheaper.
|
| Even current High Nickel Cathode-Silicon Anode that will roll
| into the market will beat the numbers advertised by the
| company.
|
| Why would anybody go refuel with solid hydrogen when you can
| have better range then Tesla Model S with a battery small
| battery pack you can put in your trunk and a tiny powerful EV
| motor?
|
| A car based on the technology is simply worst along every
| single dimension.
| specialist wrote:
| I agree with you that betting against lithium is dumb. The
| ceiling is probably a lot higher yet.
|
| I forget the rationale for why Toyota (and by extension
| Japan) bet on hydrogen. Probably something to do with access
| to resources. Constraints that apply to many economies.
|
| We simply have to get off fossil fuels. Zero carbon will
| involve hydrogen. Maybe not personal transportation. But
| definitely agriculture. And maybe manufacturing, heavy
| transportation.
|
| At some point we'll have excess electricity. Using that to
| produce methane (carbon capture) and ammonia (replace fossil
| fuels) has to happen. Then we'll have abundant cheap
| hydrogen.
|
| Maybe not solid hydrogen fuel cells. Maybe ammonia is
| practical enough. Optimistic me knows someone(s) will do
| something useful.
| sokoloff wrote:
| How much of Toyota's very good outcomes are a matter of Toyota
| manufacturing versus Toyota design (to including continual
| improvement based on experience in the field)?
|
| Many of Tesla's teething pains are self-inflicted at the design
| stage rather than being solely a manufacturing problem.
| specialist wrote:
| As a huge fan, I'm very keen to hear the story of Toyota.
| How'd they lose their edge? Is decline inevitable once you
| peak? Is death-by-bureaucracy just what happens once you have
| entrenched stakeholders?
|
| I now feel that Tesla is more Toyota than Toyota (continuous
| improvement). And becoming more Apple than Apple (monopsony).
| Plus a dash of Samsung (vertical integration).
|
| [h/t Sandy Munro's teardowns, The Limiting Factor, both on
| youtube.]
|
| --
|
| Tesla somehow champions Wright's Law better than any one
| else. (Coupled with financial acumen bordering on fraud.)
| They're maniacal about efficiency, ramping up production,
| above all else. They eschew model years and just roll out
| improvements as fast as possible.
|
| I've never worked at place that both scaled up and focused
| cost reduction; it was always either-or. Even with the human
| cost, it's kind of exciting. (I worked in hypergrowth orgs in
| my 20s, at great personal cost. If I was 20 again, I'd be at
| Tesla (or SpaceX).)
|
| --
|
| Tesla has also embraced Apple's monopsony strategy.
|
| For iPod, Apple bought out all mini HDDs. For unibody
| laptops, Apple bought every milling machine. You couldn't
| compete even if you wanted to. Why did Apple pursue thinness,
| past the point of reason? Because they could and no one else
| could copy them.
|
| In the same way, Tesla has embraced casting giant parts, by
| using the giant gigapresses. Acknowledging the obvious
| benefits like reduced part counts, improved quality... The
| deeper genius is any one who wants to copy them has to wait
| years to even buy their own gigapress.
|
| I'm sure there are other steps in their production pipeline
| which competitors cannot easily copy. Because the tools,
| materials, skills simply are not available at any cost.
|
| --
|
| Tesla will be mining their own lithium. That's insane! Who
| else in the world will own the entire lifecycle of their
| products?
|
| And because Tesla is so vertically integrated, they'll be
| able to optimize globally. They'll have manufacturing steps
| done on site at the mines. Reducing shipping and handling
| costs.
|
| And since Tesla makes their own solar panels, they'll provide
| their own power.
|
| Such audacity!
|
| --
|
| Plus some kind of crazy. Their misadventures with automation
| and robots should have killed the company. And yet they
| pivoted, compressing 40 years of manufacturing experience
| into 5 years.
|
| How the hell did Tesla pull it off? They've had so many near
| death experiences. And at every critical juncture, they
| double down.
|
| I feel like there's a lesson here, but I have no clue what it
| might be.
| xyzelement wrote:
| CivBase had a good comment below about why this article may not
| be properly balanced, and I wanted to add this:
|
| I see two things that can stall EV growth:
|
| (1) Grid capacity. The US has been taking down nuclear power
| plants and replacing them with renewables has caused problems in
| both availability, cost _and_ carbon impact. Ideally we would be
| able to build clean nuclear power as our grid demands growth from
| EVs, but it 's questionable whether we can. Playing this forward,
| if the nation starts to have brown-outs or the cost of
| electricity goes up for this reason, people will not buy EVs
| obviously.
|
| (2) There's a risk factor that we need to think about as a
| country. We rely on our vehicles for a lot of really important
| things - eg emergency services, commuting, business, etc. We have
| developed fairly robust gasoline supply infrastructure, and it's
| pretty good to know that even if my house/town loses electricity,
| I can still get fuel for my car, get around, travel elsewhere,
| etc. If we get into a place where our transportation is tightly
| dependent on our power grid, just as our grid is
| aging/overloading/etc, that could be a risk on the personal and
| national level.
|
| These are solvable problems but we need to be solving them.
| Otherwise, EVs will plateau as more people start to recognize
| these factors.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Grid capacity will keep up with steady growth in demand over
| the next decades. It's not a problem now it won't likely become
| a problem. There won't be an overnight spike in growth, just an
| steadily increasing pace in the roll out of charging
| infrastructure. Which is typically powered by renewables
| indeed. Because that's just the cheapest and fastest way to do
| it. Some grid companies will fail due to years of mismanagement
| and lack of investment. Some states like Texas might have to
| swallow their pride and actually connect their grid to the rest
| of the country (which BTW. would also enable them to export
| renewable power, of which they have plenty).
|
| Generally, the grid will need to grow a little bit in capacity
| long term but actually not that much. We're talking 1.x not 2 x
| or more. And more like 1.2 x than 1.8x. The biggest issues are
| with the last mile rather than the amount of power. All
| solvable; just means a lot of work that people will pay for to
| get done. E.g. solar panels and EVs are a popular combo you see
| a lot in many suburbs. It makes economic sense to do it. Those
| EVs are not a burden on the grid and those households are
| probably net electricity suppliers even.
|
| Having a few tens of GWH of driving batteries on the road could
| actually help soak up a lot of excess renewable power off peak.
| In many places this is already something that grid suppliers
| incentivize and a great easy way to balance the grid. In some
| cases there are even negative tariffs (i.e. you earn money by
| charging your car). A virtual power plant based on millions of
| EVs would dwarf any nuclear plant in terms of instantly
| available GW and would actually be able to provide power to the
| grid in case of spikes. One of Tesla's little side businesses
| that might actually work out. E.g. 1 KW times a million cars
| would be a about a GW of power. Realistically, you'd probably
| provide power at the same rate you charge. So something like 5
| to 10 KW at home. Millions of cars plugged in when they are not
| driving (i.e. most of the time) would actually be a pretty
| awesome virtual power plant. The only snag might be that demand
| for that power might not be there most of the time because as
| argued capacity won't need to grow that much. Mostly it's just
| about stabilizing the grid.
|
| Regarding your second point, recent hurricanes and other
| natural disasters have quite convincingly shown that gasoline
| infrastructure is actually not that robust and typically starts
| failing when these events happen. The added demand for things
| like generators typically does not help. Basically fuel
| stations need electricity and when the power goes, they also
| stop working even when they haven't run out yet. And that's
| aside from supply issues which typically also become a thing.
|
| EVs are pretty easy to charge. You don't even need the grid for
| that. E.g. Solar panels on people's houses work fine when the
| grid fails for example. Many charging stations have solar
| panels or wind nearby (and batteries). Other EVs can be used
| for charging as well if the need arises. In emergencies you can
| even put up mobile charging points powered using batteries or
| fuel cells. And you can run your house off them as well during
| a power outage. As EVs become more popular, petrol
| infrastructure will go in decline and become less reliable.
| Some petrol stations will close, the remaining ones will sell
| less fuel. Etc. Especially, remote areas will likely to have
| more supply issues as that happens.
| lsllc wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27961606
| ryanisnan wrote:
| I really wonder how Toyota missed the mark here so widely. I'm an
| idiot, and I saw their lack of entrance into EV as a huge
| failure.
|
| I recall them a couple of years ago being boastful about how they
| were not interested in playing in the EV space, it just seemed
| very personal.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The reality is that hydrogen cars are terrible for consumers.
| Typical price per kg of hydrogen (roughly the same energy as a
| gallon of gasoline) in California is like $15/kg (although you do
| get like 50-60 miles of range per kg). There are very few fueling
| stations, they are specialized (need special permits due to
| explosive nature of the fuel, like gasoline... plus you need a
| cryogenic cooler) and expensive (like $1-2million dollars
| apiece), rely on truck delivered fuel (on-site electrolysis is
| rare and generally much more expensive), and you're limited to
| basically one state in the US. Industrial hydrogen is cheaper,
| but that's partly because it's OVERWHELMINGLY made by steam
| reforming of fossil fuels.
|
| Hybrids are super easily coopted to just reinforce the status quo
| fossil fuel centric energy system. They're somewhat more
| efficient, sure, but it's an almost insultingly small improvement
| compared to BEVs and what we need to actually achieve. It would
| keep the same dynamic we have today where politicians are
| hesitant to include a carbon tax or increase fuel taxes.
|
| So how about a compromise: every new vehicle sold must have a
| plug, be capable of traveling at highway speeds in pure electric,
| and a 40-50 mile electric range. Including hydrogen cars (which,
| after all, already are hybrid electric vehicles incorporating a
| significant lithium ion battery to provide peak power).
|
| This would provide a natural consumer pull for electric vehicle
| charging infrastructure to be standard in places like apartments
| and houses and on street parking without hurting anyone's current
| use case. It's enough electric range so that vast majority of
| people could do it good 80% of the driving on pure electric. Even
| if you think everyone will have hydrogen cars, this reduces the
| number of hydrogen fueling stations needed by about a factor of
| 10. Major car manufacturers have been able to produce decent
| plug-in hybrids like this for a decade now. And it's enough range
| that you could run the car purely electric if you had some reason
| that you had to do so, like in tunnels or city centers (although
| some mechanism to enforce this would be needed).
|
| It also reduces the total amount of lithium batteries needed by a
| good factor of five compared to all-battery, which is important
| in the near term as we ramp up. And the extra 10-15kWh or so of
| battery is fairly trivial if you already have an electric
| powertrain (which HEVs and Hydrogen fuel cell cars do). At
| automotive volumes, that's only an extra $1000-2000 or so of
| lithium ion cells and a vast reduction (>$10,000-20,000) in
| operating costs over the entire vehicle's lifespan. (And
| actually, fuel cells have a limited lifespan, worse than large
| battery EVs, so making them plug in hybrids would stretch that
| significantly.)
|
| I just don't trust Toyota on this. Non-plug in hybrids and
| hydrogen cars just aren't sufficient or low cost enough to
| operate.
| martin_henk wrote:
| Very good from Toyota. They take a diplomatic approach for the
| global society.
|
| As they don't enforce a complete structural upheaval in a short
| period, but rather promise they will support old eco systems
| until we are really sure what works best in the post gasoline
| world.
| MelvinButtsESQ wrote:
| Production of batteries is the constraint ... previously,
| currently, and in foreseeable future (<5-8 years). Simply don't
| have the capacity to make 100% EVs.
|
| Further, given this capacity, the numbers work out such that we
| are, on the macro level, DRASTICALLY more fuel efficient and
| environmentally friendly by putting more hybrids and Plug-in
| Hybrids (which have fewer batteries) on the road than we are by
| reserving said batteries for fewer pure EVs.
|
| 2.5 Priuses are better than 1 EV.
|
| When battery technology and production capacity are NOT the
| constraint, then pure EV will make sense.
|
| All cars should be mandated hybrid soon (or all manufactures must
| meet a minimum hybridization level across their line ... sort of
| like fuel efficiency standards are measured today). All cars
| should be mandated Plugin Hybrid at some point after that. Maybe
| someday, we can mandate Pure EV.
| harles wrote:
| On the flip side, going all EV puts 2.5x more pressure on the
| supply chain to remove battery production and capacity as a
| constraint, which might be optimal long term.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Why mandate how emissions are cut, instead of heavily taxing
| carbon emissions and having the market find the best solution?
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > heavily taxing carbon emissions and having the market find
| the best solution?
|
| Public perception may be one reason. If a carbon emissions
| tax directly leads to big increases in fuel costs, it can
| cause problems for drivers / vehicle users for whom fuel cost
| is a significant concern. The 2018 Gilet Jaune protests [0]
| in France were partly due to public dissatisfaction with fuel
| price rises. Regulatory instruments (such as fuel efficiency
| standards) are more opaque and may obfuscate the connection
| between between political decisions and the inevitable price
| rises.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests
| jedberg wrote:
| There's an easy solution to that though. You redistribute
| all the money from a carbon tax back to the people, either
| equally to everyone, or better, based on income.
|
| We already know that wealthy people generate the most
| carbon. If that activity was taxed and then the money was
| given to poorer people who can't afford to transition to
| clean energy, it would still be a net win, because it will
| reduce emissions while making sure it doesn't unfairly
| affect the poor.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That's what they do in Canada. It's awesome but a lot of
| people hate it because they're being told they should by
| the usual suspects.
| [deleted]
| Clubber wrote:
| The US would most likely invest the money, either
| partially or fully into the war machine.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| If societies answer to climate change is "Don't
| punish/impact poor people who negatively effect the
| environment" Then we might as well just pack our bags for
| Mars now.
|
| Over the next 100-200 years, every (poor) 3rd world country
| is going to continue to get more and more industrialized
| and impact the environment more and more. Maybe I'm 100%
| off here but i'd be surprised if we (rich countries) can
| lower our emissions enough to offset the increases
| elsewhere in the world. And limiting the increases of
| "their" impact will directly effect "their" quality of life
| improvements unless "we" step in and aid them with more
| complex (expensive?) solutions. Likely at the expense of
| any domestic improvements that could be done without added
| cost of that aid.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > If societies answer to climate change is "Don't
| punish/impact poor people who negatively effect the
| environment" Then we might as well just pack our bags for
| Mars now.
|
| Dealing with climate change will include costs and
| sacrifices that affect individuals and societies.
| Politicians unwilling to deal with these costs, for
| ideological and / or electability reasons, will not in my
| opinion be likely to advocate for the measures necessary
| to address climate change.
|
| (Also, I'm assuming that when the billionaires go to Mars
| they won't make the mistake that is common in Stephen
| Baxter's Scifi novels, where the colonisers always seem
| to include a subpopulation of disaffected criminals /
| lowlifes / etc who inevitably mutiny.)
| jeromegv wrote:
| Voila.
| eloff wrote:
| In general I agree with you. Simply taxing things with
| negative externalities enough to cover the true cost would
| simply and conclusively fix a lot of things we struggle with,
| faster and without relying on politicians.
|
| I think it's politically very unpopular, but the economic
| theory behind it is extremely sound.
| seph-reed wrote:
| I really hope liquid democracy can someday become a thing.
|
| The fact that an idea can be both good and unpopular is --
| IMO -- the linchpin of almost every other problem we face.
| chii wrote:
| > an idea can be both good and unpopular
|
| communism is a good idea, but it's unpopular, for a
| reason i say.
|
| The reason for the idea of taxing externalities being
| unpopular isn't really proven yet - after all, it hasn't
| been instated, but just spoken about, and the silent
| majority don't have an opinion!
| seph-reed wrote:
| I should note, that I don't think massive political
| shifts should be tested in production.
|
| So whether communism is a good idea or not remains to be
| seen. We need to run a solid pilot, get the as many kinks
| out as possible, and then assess.
|
| Similar with taxing damages to Earth.
| eloff wrote:
| > So whether communism is a good idea or not remains to
| be seen.
|
| You are being too charitable. There is no shortage of
| data on communism after the last century. The results are
| so unequivocally bad across the board, you have to be
| ignorant of history or just ignorant in general to still
| think it's a good idea. As soon as someone tells me
| communism is a good thing, I realize I'm taking to
| someone who is not very intelligent and look for a way
| out of the conversation.
|
| Edit: You can downvote, but you can't change history.
| There are levels of being wrong, but thinking communism
| is a good idea is just an extremely wrong opinion
| completely contradicted by history in over 40 countries
| (I counted) over a period of 100 years - with not a
| single example in favor.
|
| On top of that, the evils perpetuated by communist
| countries upon their own citizens were not surpassed by
| any regime of the 20th century, not even the genocidal
| ones like Rwanda, or Nazi Germany. And yet some clueless
| class of people, largely located in academic institutions
| still somehow thinks it's a good idea. They are not only
| wrong, they are so wrong as to be stupid, and while I
| don't condone ad-hominen attacks generally, I feel it
| fits accurately here.
| nemothekid wrote:
| Nazi Germany and Rwanda weren't communist. What are you
| saying? It would help to have a grounding on what
| communism is before repeating tired talking points.
|
| > _with not a single example in favor._
|
| Soviet Russia went from a couple of potato farmers to a
| global super power in the span of 30 years under
| communism before transitioning to totalitarian
| dictatorship. Likewise there was nothing inherent to
| communism and more the lack of a strong republic.
| eloff wrote:
| > Nazi Germany and Rwanda weren't communist. What are you
| saying?
|
| I didn't say they were. Go back and read it again.
|
| > Soviet Russia went from a couple of potato farmers to a
| global super power in the span of 30 years under
| communism before transitioning to totalitarian
| dictatorship.
|
| No, it already was a totalitarian government from the
| start. Also Soviet Russia is an excellent example of the
| failures of communism, citing it in support is not
| helping your argument.
| simion314 wrote:
| I down-voted your comment because of your superiority
| complex, the terms like communism are too generic and the
| reality is that most communist countries were "kicked" in
| the balls by the capitalist.
|
| I seen a comment by a "intelligent dude" like you, in his
| intelligence he compared North and South Korea, ignored
| that sanctions for the North and the tons of money US
| dropped on south and he got the conclusion he wanted.
|
| The truth is that there is not enough good data, I would
| like to see some examples of countries that were not
| under sanctions or under a cold war or had some insane
| dictator leading them.
| eloff wrote:
| There is plenty of good data. 40 counties make up around
| 20 independent failures out of as many attempts at
| implementing communism.
|
| > I seen a comment by a "intelligent dude" like you, in
| his intelligence he compared North and South Korea,
| ignored that sanctions for the North and the tons of
| money US dropped on south and he got the conclusion he
| wanted.
|
| Don't even get me started on the story of the two Koreas.
| Everything you need to build an open and shut case
| against communism can be found in the recent and well
| recorded history of those two countries.
|
| You can object to my "superiority complex" but at the end
| of the day I'm still right and your still wrong. It's
| deserved.
| simion314 wrote:
| If you can explain how comparing North and South Korea is
| fair I would be impressed , previous dudes seemed to have
| no idea about history or their mind was missing the logic
| skill, maybe you can do a semi decent attempt.
|
| Btw China is a big economy and many of HNers tell me that
| their are communists and the party dictates everything
| etc, so you need some other skillful argument to
| attribute all the good in China to US and capitalism and
| of-course blame all the bad on communism.
|
| Also I personally believe that most of us understand by
| communism is not superior to the systems we see in
| Western Europe, my objection was to your bad argument
| that there are good clean data where you can extract
| clear conclusions.
| eloff wrote:
| > communism is a good idea
|
| Is that a troll? See my comment below.
| paholg wrote:
| Even worse, some ideas are both good and popular, and
| politicians still don't get behind them.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| That sounds nice in theory, but it'll be years until it could
| pass through actual legislative channels in the US federal
| government. Neither side wants it, the GOP hates new taxes
| and loves fossil fuel companies; the Dems hate anything that
| looks regressive, which a gas tax would at first before the
| pay-back checks come (if it's a neutral scheme, who's to say
| how the carbon tax would be used).
| BoorishBears wrote:
| The 2nd Gen Chevy Volt was the Model 3 we deserved, but
| couldn't appreciate.
|
| 40-50 miles EV range meant that most people would have an EV
| most of the time, and use gas only on one off trips.
|
| And while people 10 years behind on ICE advancements would
| immediately start yelling about dragging around a dead weight
| ICE all day, modern ICEs are _incredibly_ light, efficient, and
| reliable in the type of application the Volt had them in, where
| they only need to run run at their optimal power band.
|
| It didn't even look bad, and it had the same sensor suite AP1
| did (of course GM used Mobileye's sensors as designed, so you
| weren't tempted to take your hands off to play mobile games,
| and they didn't end up in the back of firetrucks)
| nickik wrote:
| If you look at actual data you will see that people simply
| don't charge these cars as often and end up driving lots of
| miles with inefficient gas engines.
|
| Your analysis basically assumes that people perfectly
| optimize their consumption, but actual usage data shows that
| they don't.
|
| Also these cars driving experience simply can't compare to
| actual EV. Because of the high cost you simple and up with a
| cheap EV motor and a cheap gas motor.
|
| There is a reason why GM didn't want to sell a million of
| them.
| theluketaylor wrote:
| Volt was a great car and 5 years ago it was a great solution.
| Now that long distance road trip charging is good enough I
| think the value of a PHEV is greatly diminished. They are an
| especially poor solution to the largest charging hurdle still
| remaining of apartment and street parkers since PHEVs must be
| plugged in nightly for carbon reduction ROI.
|
| The issue isn't so much weight as volume and packaging.
| Having 2 powertrains really eats a lot of interior space.
| Pure BEVs can have some impressive packaging with a truly
| impressive amount of leg room and spaces to shove tons of
| stuff. My parents love their Volt, but there is no denying
| it's a very tight squeeze and even with the hatch there is
| not a lot of space in there not taken up by batteries and
| engine.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I also agree with this. I bought a Volt in 2011 because it
| was the best solution for 2011. In 2021, that gas generator
| that I hardly ever use unless the car tells me I have to
| because the fuel is getting stale feels like a huge weight
| and maintenance liability to carry around. The Volt seems a
| lot less like a great solution for 2021, especially as I've
| watched the rise in better cross-country charging networks
| and my friends are starting to buy Teslas after years of me
| as the early adopter telling them EVs were the present, not
| just the future. I'm convinced that my next car will be a
| full BEV and don't see any reason to look at any "hybrid"
| in today's present. (I'm just not yet sure which one yet,
| my Volt is doing great as the car I already have, and with
| the number of models expected to be announced in 2023-2025
| am in something of an "I can afford to wait and see what
| happens next" mood.)
| ariwilson wrote:
| The RAV4 Prime solves the interior issue by being a CUV and
| also putting the battery pack below the vehicle.
| theluketaylor wrote:
| There is a price to be paid in space for the prime still.
| Rav4 ICE and hybrid have 37.5 cu ft / 1060 L behind the
| rear seats. Prime has 33.5 cu ft / 950 L.
| cycomanic wrote:
| That's actually not true, you significantly underestimate
| the weight and space requirements of batteries necessary
| for long range EVs. There was just a comparison by heise.de
| of the Mercedes Eqa and GlA [1] and in comparison of space
| they write that the more EV the less space, i.e.
| ICE>PHEV>EV
| theluketaylor wrote:
| For extreme range the extra weight starts to cost
| efficiency and you get diminishing returns, but I think
| my model 3 sr+ is close to the optimal balance. 50 kWh
| battery gets me 400 km range and weighs right in line
| with other compact and midsized sedans at 1600 kg.
| Charging speed is fast enough that long road trips are
| not a big deal. There isn't a single ICE car in the same
| footprint with that much storage space or forward
| visibility.
|
| Tesla happens to be one of the most efficient EV
| drivetrains out there, but the hyundai/kia twins are
| right there with them, so it isn't out of reach.
|
| EQA isn't a dedicated EV platform, so of course packaging
| isn't optimized to take advantage of the space savings
| available in a BEV.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Yeah people go based on their guts drawing conclusions
| with this stuff, but the Volt has a 1.5L engine.
|
| Imagine a 2L coke bottle. It's contents would overflow if
| you could pour it into the engine.
|
| The Voltec system wasn't anywhere near larger than an
| equivalently practical BEV drivetrain.
|
| Just like BEVs are coming out without frunks, the Volt
| simply didn't prioritize interior space at the time.
|
| It was still a plenty practical vehicle, and if it had
| sold well it was going to get the CUV treatment
| theluketaylor wrote:
| 1.5L engines are still pretty sizeable once you take into
| account the head, valve cover, oilpan. Then all the
| external parts needed to support combustion like water
| pump, radiator, coils and their wires and engine mounts.
| The total volume is a lot more than the 1.5L cylinders.
| Add in the fact Volt can directly power the wheels with
| the engine and now you are forced to put certain
| components in very specific, highly valuable places.
|
| BMW managed to hide their rex engine really well in i3
| since it isn't connected to the wheels. That comes with
| it's own downsides as well, since you can slowly lose
| battery charge with the engine running while climbing
| steep hills in a rex i3.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think volt is one of the best cars
| ever made and at the time it came out it was the most
| cost effective way to cut your transportation carbon
| footprint while retaining a private car.
|
| PHEVs are the best and worst of both worlds at the same
| time. The worst now outweighs (in this case literally as
| well as figuratively) the best. The downsides of pure EV
| are now at a point where they only truly impact edge case
| needs (apart from cost that needs to come way down, but
| PHEVs are very expensive too).
| Umofomia wrote:
| > they write that the more EV the less space
|
| That's because the EQA is built on the same platform that
| GLA uses, which was designed for ICE vehicles.[1] The
| newer crop of electric vehicles that are built on
| dedicated platforms designed for EVs end up providing
| much more space than ICEs, mostly due to the ability to
| have the battery in a flat skateboard layout that is not
| possible with an ICE platform.[2]
|
| PHEVs end up making the same compromises by shoving a
| larger battery into an ICE platform, which is why, for
| instance, the RAV4 Prime ends up having less cargo space
| than the regular RAV4 hybrid.
|
| [1] https://insideevs.com/news/467187/mercedes-benz-eqa-
| repeats-...
|
| [2]
| https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a36877554/electric-
| veh...
| chipsa wrote:
| There's no particular reason why PHEVs have to be worse
| than ICE for cargo space. The new Ford Maverick is
| designed as a hybrid first, for example. I know they
| don't have a PHEV version yet, but it's expected to come
| as one in a future model year.
| [deleted]
| Umofomia wrote:
| The platform that the RAV4 uses (TNGA-K) was also
| designed with hybrid in mind, yet the compromises still
| had to be made for the larger battery that the PHEV
| version requires. The larger battery has to go somewhere,
| so I suspect the situation for the Ford Maverick won't be
| so different if they do come out with a PHEV version.
| theluketaylor wrote:
| There isn't a PHEV version of Maverick yet, but I'm sure
| there will be since the platform is shared with Ford
| Escape which has a PHEV. Notably, the PHEV Escape loses
| storage space compared to its hybrid and pure combustion
| siblings. PHEVs need batteries an order of magnitude
| bigger in size and capacity compared to regular hybrids
| and they need to go somewhere.
|
| Using skateboard batteries for PHEV would help mitigate
| the packaging issues for PHEVs, but then you're still
| stuck hauling around a combustion engine and all the
| design compromises that entails like long, tall hoods
| filled with components.
|
| Skateboard batteries mean deep, expensive changes to
| platforms, the kind automakers only do every decode or
| so. With the cost of batteries plummeting and emissions
| rules like EU7 coming, most companies have chosen to
| focus their development dollars on pure EVs and cheaply
| retrofit their PHEVs on to existing ICE platforms.
| chipsa wrote:
| The mechanics are related with the Escape, but AFAIK,
| it's an entirely different body. The claim I've seen is
| that the regular hybrid version doesn't take up all of
| the battery space available, and that area is designated
| for the PHEV version when available.
| tsudounym wrote:
| The Nissan e-power series is better - the gas engine only
| powers the electric motor which gives you a full-EV
| experience when driving.
|
| Hybrids need to start distancing themselves from the Prius
| and promote the insane 0-60 times that EVs are capable of
| now.
| thinkling wrote:
| That is what the Voltec drive train does. The gas engine
| only directly powers the wheels in some narrow range of
| conditions, and I challenge you to tell when. It feels 99%
| like a BEV driving experience.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| How is that better?
|
| The Volt was able to use the ICE to improve peak output
| directly, with fewer drivetrain losses.
|
| e-power is a cost saving measure, not an advancement
| chipsa wrote:
| A problem with most approaches to having the ICE drive
| the wheels to is that you don't run the ICE at it's most
| efficient setting. You gain in the drivetrain, but lose
| in the actual combustion. Whether you lose more in one
| than you gain in the other is an issue.
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| This is true in theory, but in practice I think hybrids are the
| worst of both worlds. I've had two Toyota Priuses and a Honda
| Civic Hybrid all of which we drove to around 150,000 miles
| each. One of our Priuses and the Civic Hybrid needed their
| hybrid batteries replaced during their lifetime. Not only was
| this a significant cost but I've got to believe that it negates
| a lot of the environmental benefits of the vehicle. It's not an
| uncommon problem either, there are plenty of 3rd parties
| selling refurbished hybrid battery packs, it's a common enough
| problem that a whole industry has built up around it. In
| addition both of our Priuses started burning oil at some point
| over 100,000 miles. This is a notorious problem with the Prius
| and there are lots of discussions about the problem in online
| forums. It certainly ruins any illusion I had about clean
| emissions from the cars over the course of it's life. I never
| fail to notice the little puff of grey smoke when behind
| Priuses at stop lights when the engine starts up again, so much
| for being the clean air poster child.
|
| We have a Tesla Model 3 now with about 50,000 miles on it,
| we've only seen about a 2-3% decrease in range so far, if even
| that. The only maintenance so far has been refilling the washer
| fluid and we've replaced the tires once. I see no reason why it
| won't easily go to 150,000+ miles. The difference with the
| hybrids we have had is night and day, it's not even close.
| Toyota does not have a winning hand to play here and they know
| it. They bet on the wrong tech and they are tied down by a
| dealer network that is dependent on maintenance costs to
| support them.
| hokkos wrote:
| The latest ICCT report shows that in the european market fossil
| car are around 250gCO2eq/km in life cycle analysis, hybrid at
| 180 and EV at 80, so I don't agree at all that more hydrid are
| better and less EV, and even it seems quite a wrong reasoning,
| more EV will bring more money to lithium mining just look at
| Rio Tinto entering the lithium carbonate market with a 2.4B$
| investing.
|
| https://theicct.org/publications/global-LCA-passenger-cars-j...
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| The Japanese car companies have done pretty poorly in the 2010's
| in supporting the energy transition. Toyota has been extremely
| slow to adapt after the Prius, which makes sense because of their
| ridiculously large volume of sales of basic, gas-efficient
| passenger vehicles.
|
| I give Toyota big props for the Prius, which was the original
| Green Vehicle 15-20 years ago, and still is a HUGE player in the
| efficiency space. IIRC, The number one vehicle trade-in for TSLA
| has been Priuses. Was there even a car before the Prius that used
| regenerative braking? In many ways, Prius "primed" the market for
| greener vehicles.
|
| And yet, Toyota had no great BEV follow-up. In a high-tech
| educated country like Japan, an island nation with extremely
| large amounts of coastline, I'd assume Toyota and Honda would
| wise up to climate change earlier.
| huge87 wrote:
| > I give Toyota big props for the Prius, which was the original
| Green Vehicle 15-20 years ago, and still is a HUGE player in
| the efficiency space. IIRC, The number one vehicle trade-in for
| TSLA has been Priuses. Was there even a car before the Prius
| that used regenerative braking? In many ways, Prius "primed"
| the market for greener vehicles.
|
| > And yet, Toyota had no great BEV follow-up
|
| Prius sales trends since debut in 1997 reflect this sentiment
| in that they were first, executed well, and thus had most of
| the market. Current Prius sales are dropping off very steadily
| by year, though.
|
| But to your point on the trade ins, current Tesla Model 3 sales
| are getting close to Prius' best all time sales of +200K
| units/year.
|
| https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/total-toyota-prius-sales-figur...
|
| https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/tesla-model-3-sales-figures-us...
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| I know Americans like to hate Nissan but outside the US the
| Leaf was a pretty reasonable first stab at an electric car,
| before Tesla and is into its second rev now. It's by no means
| the best one but given they were early to the market it's a
| little unfair to blame all Japanese car makers.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Agreed that the Nissan Leaf was not a bad introduction to
| EVs. It sucks that they took so long to get to 200-250 mile
| EPA range, though, which really ought to be the minimum
| (along with 100kW DC charging) for a pure electric vehicle.
| But at least they were doing something.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Carlos Ghosn is an interesting character, and maybe not the
| best person, but some of the things he said to Nissan's board
| at the time about EVs were prophetic. He did give Nissan a
| leg up versus other Japanese brands. It is interesting to
| wonder if his original plan for Nissan America might have
| been the best call and Americans would have a very different
| view of Nissan had it happened. (Nissan America makes
| entirely different cars from every other division of the
| company. Ghosn's plan at one point was to rebrand the gas
| guzzler-focused Nissan America as [back to] Datsun,
| reintroduce Nissan in America as an EV brand and plan to
| eventually jettison New Datsun as soon as its profits dropped
| below a threshold that the board would allow it.)
|
| It's unfair to blame all Japanese car makers, but it is
| definitely fair to blame all American brands of Japanese car
| makers (as the weird, highly profitable step-children that
| they are).
| trixie_ wrote:
| They've got some weird obsession with hydrogen.. even recently
| I've seen a lot of online advertising for their hydrogen
| vehicle the Mirai which is wildly impractical in the US and
| probably anywhere else.
| jrsj wrote:
| It's partly bc it would be much easier for Japan to become
| fully independent w/ hydrogen whereas with batteries they
| would be reliant on other countries to produce them. So the
| Japanese government prefers hydrogen.
| nickik wrote:
| I disagree. Hydrogen makes is it not easier to be fully
| independent. I would argue the opposite is more true.
| bbarnett wrote:
| It's extremely practical, they just need a refueling network.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| The Mirai is 196 inches long (same as a Model S or BMW 5
| series) yet has less than 10 cu ft of trunk space. The
| volume required to fit all the hydrogen fuel cell
| components is _massive_. It 's not especially practical as
| a result. Even if there was a refueling network, it's not
| like you're going to take it camping or road trip with such
| a small trunk, and for an around town grocery runner it's
| on the large side.
|
| It's not like there's a good source of hydrogen that
| doesn't come from electricity generation anyway. It's
| "just" a different take on the battery, one that appears to
| be mostly worse other than charge times.
| chipsa wrote:
| Most hydrogen isn't from electrolysis of water. It's
| mostly made commercially from natural gas.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Right, yes, sorry I meant no potential green sources of
| hydrogen that don't come from electrolysis.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Toyota, Hyundai and Honda have all bet on H2. That's just as
| green, and electric as a Tesla.
|
| The tech works, refuels 10x faster than any battery based car,
| but so far no adoption outside of europe and asian countries.
|
| That's a phenomenal achievement. They chose wrong maybe, but
| they chose, and chose a path they though most viable.
|
| To claim they aren't in the game is beyond unfair.
| eyesee wrote:
| H2 does not, and cannot offer the end-to-end efficiency of
| battery electric vehicles. The distribution infrastructure
| for H2 is inherently less efficient than electricity
| distribution alone, making BEVs 3x more efficient:
|
| https://electrek.co/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/3/2016/04/hybri...
|
| The primary advantage is faster refueling. The price is no
| in-home refueling -- a big win for BEVs, as most trips will
| not require refueling on the road. There are also real safety
| concerns about storing and transporting H2 at very high
| pressure.
| nickik wrote:
| > That's just as green
|
| Complete nonsense. Most Hydrogen is produced with natural
| gas. And the conversion makes and end to end efficiency makes
| it actually far worse both economically and environmentally.
|
| Maybe in some imaginary future that will not actually happen
| it is as green.
|
| > refuels 10x faster than any battery based car
|
| Waste overestimation and in reality even if that was true,
| you are gone spend 100x more times refueling then in an EV.
| Because EV you simply charge at home and 99% you not gone use
| any fuel-station.
|
| And Hydrogen charging station still have many problems if you
| actually attempted to have a high volume of cars using them.
|
| > They chose wrong maybe, but they chose, and chose a path
| they though most viable.
|
| The path that would give them the most government subsidies
| and allow them to delay EVs as long as possible.
|
| > To claim they aren't in the game is beyond unfair.
|
| Go look at how many actually FCV have been sold.
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| Tesla invested a significant amount of money into building
| out a charging network for their cars. Toyota has been
| selling fuel cell vehicles for longer than Tesla has been in
| existence and they've made no such effort to create a network
| of hydrogen fueling stations. Even now with the threat of
| battery electric vehicles becoming the next platform for
| personal transportation Toyota continues to sit on it's hands
| when it comes to supporting it's own technology. Even their
| lobbying efforts aren't around trying to push hydrogen, it's
| around protecting their hybrid and gasoline vehicle business.
| Their actual efforts around hydrogen vehicles tells you
| everything you need to know: it's not viable and they know
| it. Toyota could be selling as many Mirais as Tesla sells
| vehicles, the demand is clearly there and people would pay a
| hefty price to get them like they do for Teslas. So why don't
| they?
| ricw wrote:
| Toyota in particular has been quite dirty and backwards facing.
| They strongly opposed the tightening of vehicle emissions
| standards in the USA as one of three companies (fiat-Chrysler
| and GM being the others). They are constantly lobbying against
| EV tech, whilst pushing hydrogen as a technology which is no
| viable alternative in the medium or near term future (this can
| be seen as a big oil ploy as hydrogen is and will be made using
| "natural gas" / methane). Plug-in electric only became a thing
| with Toyota very recently, despite them having had hybrids for
| decades.
|
| All quite a sorry state for one of the largest car companies
| out there.
|
| At this point, they're doing more harm then good and I'd call
| them a dirty company and would avoid buying any of their
| products. They are wasting all their good will that they gained
| due to them pushing hybrids.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yes, I am done with Toyota as well. They can now join
| Volkswagen....
| bildung wrote:
| The FUD accusations seem a bit hasty here. The linked Senate
| hearing doesn't seem to contain negative things about BEVs (it
| only criticizes the "narrow focus" on them), but instead opts for
| including hybrid and hydrogen, with the argument being that
| "recent data shows that plug-in hybrids can achieve nearly the
| same or better GHG reductions than BEVs depending on your daily
| driving patterns, the carbon in the electric grid, the carbon
| resulting from battery production, and other factors."
| https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/E2EA0E4F-BAD9-4...
|
| That may be wrong, but the ars article didn't have any counter
| arguments.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There's a long pattern of behavior with Toyota lobbying and
| arguing against battery EVs and basically spreading FUD about
| the whole concept. Their marketing for "self charging hybrids"
| is something they were peddling recently. Sounds awesome until
| you realize that they did not invent a perpetuum mobile and
| that instead this means "we burn petrol/diesel to run the
| engine to charge the battery". That's right, Toyota still makes
| hybrids that you can't plugin. The 20 year old Prius is a nice
| example of this "future". Every single mile these things drive
| are powered by a combustion engine. They have some proper
| plugin hybrids as well obviously but the marketing here is just
| awesomely cynical and obviously aimed at drivers who are a bit
| on the fence about wanting to buy a BEV.
|
| They have a single compliance BEV that they are shipping in
| China only. It's a hard requirement to be active in that
| market. They make them in comparatively low volume of just
| slightly over 10K cars, which is of course next to nothing in
| the Chinese market. Also, that's only slightly less than the
| total number of hydrogen cars they have ever produced. Which of
| course they still insist is the future. Except they don't seem
| to be in any particular hurry building that future. A cynical
| person might say that they actually don't believe in that
| enough to put their money where their mouth is. Though they
| certainly seem to waste no opportunity to invest in marketing
| to convince people otherwise.
|
| They are not actually arguing against BEVs because they believe
| BEVs are impossible. Obviously they are and essentially all
| their competitors are proving that by shipping electric buses,
| trucks, vans, cars, sports cars, etc. in increasingly large
| volumes. Toyota is merely trying to stem the loss of market
| share for ICE and hybrid vehicles here while they come up with
| an alternative. They do that by bad mouthing the whole concept
| of BEVs, by using misleading marketing like self charging
| hybrids, arguing that instead we should look at hydrogen, and
| generally just lobbying and arguing that BEVs are a bad thing.
|
| However, at this point it looks more like they are dragging
| their feet simply because they are late with getting battery
| supply secured. They couldn't ship anything worth shipping in
| volumes that matter even if they wanted to and had the
| factories, designs, etc. ready to go. You need batteries for
| that and battery producers are fully booked building batteries
| for their competitors at this point.
|
| To fix that they might prefer addressing this with their own
| solid state batteries. Which is something they've been
| investing in quite a lot. The only problem: they're not ready
| yet. However, they are apparently quite close to announcing a
| proper EV this year which might actually be using this. It will
| be interesting to see how quick they can go from a concept car
| to volume production. It will take a lot of investment and time
| probably.
|
| So, one cynical interpretation is that they are just trying to
| buy some time until they are actually ready to start competing
| on their own terms. Which clearly they just aren't right now.
| They have no hydrogen car worth talking about (beyond the few
| concept cars they shipped). No infrastructure to fuel it. And
| the one EV they ship in China is clearly nothing more than a
| compliance car. So self charging hybrids it is for now. If they
| deliver a BEV with solid state batteries and awesome range
| (both of which might happen soon), my guess is hydrogen stops
| being the future at Toyota and self charging hybrids will be
| phased out as well. But even then, it might be years before
| they catch up.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >depending on your daily driving patterns
|
| This is the key point. Modern highly efficient turbocharged 4
| cylinder ICE vehicles can be equally or more efficient than a
| hybrid in the right circumstances as well. But the vast
| majority of driving is city streets <45mph, where ICE can't
| even come close to BEV.
| cycomanic wrote:
| There's been quite a few studies questioning the current
| focus on EVs with ranges of 400km and more. Largely because
| they are so heavy and are therefore not very energy
| efficient. The argument is that most peoples daily commute is
| less than 50km (in Europe), but they still by an overly heavy
| EV for the 5-10 times a year they go on longer trips. Instead
| a plugin hybrid could be much more efficient, because you can
| use it in EV mode for your commutes, but you can still use
| the car for long trips, without the significant weight (and
| corresponding inefficiency) increases of an EV. I suspect
| this is very much a function of the driving pattern, and I
| suspect in the mid-term future this will change with more
| efficient battery technology.
| forz877 wrote:
| People do not just buy cars for daily commutes, it doesn't
| make sense to solely design around that.
| etempleton wrote:
| The current focus on long ranges is largely because Tesla
| is leading the charge in electric vehicles and Tesla is an
| American automaker. Commutes are often longer and
| conditions vary widely across the country and from season
| to season making predicting the true range difficult.
|
| Plug-in hybrids may make sense, but I would imagine that
| including both a full power ICE and electric motor together
| and having them work together makes a more complex vehicle
| with more potential points of faliure. You also have the
| added weight of the duplicate components. The Chevy Volt,
| for example, weighs more than a base Model 3 and only
| slightly less than the long range configuration of the
| Model 3.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It will also change as the grid gets excess green energy.
| virgilp wrote:
| But... are we pretending here that the ICE and gas & all
| the plumbing etc don't weigh anything? It's not like PHEV
| have zero additional dead weight.
|
| A quick search says "Car engines can weigh up to 1,000
| pounds" and "Tesla S has a massive battery weighing 1,200
| lbs" - so, are your really saving that much weight with
| PHEVs?
| namdnay wrote:
| Car engines _can_ weigh up to 1000 pounds, but the
| standard weight is much lower. the VW group 1.4 turbo
| (probably one of the most common engines around) comes in
| at 230lb
| chipsa wrote:
| You can size the PHEV range extender engine to be much
| closer to the steady state power requirement, and tune it
| towards such as well. The BMW i3 uses a literal scooter
| engine for the range extension.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I feel like at least some of this depends on whether the ICE
| in a hybrid is coupled directly to the wheels or not. I
| believe in all current consumer vehicles it is, but there are
| other applications like hybrid trains and city buses where
| the engine is just running a generator at a constant RPM.
| Surely that kind of configuration would be the absolute best
| case scenario for ICE efficiency, and probably even for
| overall system efficiency (with battery loses accounted for)
| depending on the ratio of city to highway driving.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| There are some consumer BEVs with range extenders which
| work this way too eg the BMW i3. However they tend not to
| be marketed as PHEVs as such.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| In a Chevy Volt, there's a mechanism that mechanically
| attaches the motor to the wheels at speed above 35 mph for
| greater efficiency but below that it is a pure serial
| hybrid, disconnected from the wheel directly. But it rarely
| ever runs the engine. Pretty much only if you run out of
| charge.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Ah, spiffy-- that's neat to know that it can switch modes
| like that. Looks like this has been a matter of evolution
| over time, too:
|
| https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1096942_2016-chevrol
| et-...
|
| I guess if you were only connected at higher speeds, that
| would also greatly simplify the transmission story, since
| you probably no longer need 1-3.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The Chevy Volt actually uses a continuously variable
| transmission for that. Makes it sound really weird as
| there's not a direct correlation between the sound of the
| motor and the speed you're driving.
| osigurdson wrote:
| It seems that most driving in city streets by individuals is
| largely unnecessary: items can be delivered (by EV) instead
| of picked up and commuting can largely be electronic. Long
| term, it seems that the most important use case for the
| personal vehicle could end up being long distance travel.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Personal cars act as like a personal room on wheels. Peopl
| store stuff there and use it as a place to retreat to at
| work. "Personal vehicle as private space" is a super normie
| idea, but it's weird how little play it gets in these
| conversations. It's NOT replaced by rideshare or public
| transit.
| kongolongo wrote:
| Well in the case of urban areas, outside of some select
| locations, the charging infra is just not there for BEVs.
| Even if there were good EV infra in urban areas, a compelling
| case could be made for improving and upgrading public
| transportation instead which is going to be more efficient
| than any personal vehicle - including BEVs.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| A sidenote but unless public transport vehicles are
| electric, they won't be better than battery electric
| vehicles. Typical diesel buses with typical occupancy rates
| have worse emissions per passenger mile then, say, a model
| three with a typical occupancy rate and grid emissions
| factor in US.
|
| BEVs are fantastic, have SOME level of infrastructure
| literally everywhere with electricity (you literally can
| charge from a 120V outlet just fine), and we'll need
| basically all vehicles to be battery electric to get to
| where we need to be.
|
| It also is trivial to add EV charging infrastructure, which
| is another under appreciated aspect. It's easier than
| installing a streetlight.
| Causality1 wrote:
| It would be nice if Toyota actually had any interest in plug in
| hybrids. Their only one, the Prius Prime, is more expensive
| than its competitors and offers less than half their range.
| What's the point of getting a PHEV if I still spend half my
| commute running on gasoline?
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| This year they introduced the RAV4 prime, with 48 miles
| electric.
|
| The Prius prime is still in it's initial design iteration.
| Major updates occur typically every 7 years for auto
| manufacturers, so one would expect a new, improved range
| Prius prime somewhere in the 2023 range.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| But can that 48 miles be _exclusively_ electric or does it
| fall back to turning on the ICE every time you punch the
| accelerator? This is my grief of every PHEV I 've tried
| other than the Volt; they cannot be driven as a true EV
| even when the battery is full because they use the ICE for
| performance boost, etc. The Volt runs _better_ without the
| ICE.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I have the Prius prime, it gets a little over 25 mi EV-
| only and the only time it needs to burn gasoline is if
| you turn on the windshield defroster because the heat
| pump can only do so much I guess.
|
| But the performance feels much sportier in EV mode and it
| has no trouble pulling up to 80mph without any ICE
| reducesuffering wrote:
| RAV4 prime is woefully underproduced. Wait times of 2
| years, and it'll be almost impossible to get in areas
| outside of coastal US. Sounds like they haven't nailed down
| the battery supply chain for it.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| 48 miles is probably good enough for 95%+ of people. Also
| worth noting that that's higher than any other PHEV in its
| class (SUV).
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The rav4 Prime is sufficient at nearly 50 miles of
| electric range, but it sucks that it took 2 decades to
| get there when even GM had the technology basically
| perfected a decade ago with the Volt.
|
| It's literally better than their hydrogen vehicles. Even
| if you had to synthesize the small amount of gasoline
| they might use.
|
| Longer range plug in hybrids plus electrically
| synthesized liquids beat pure hydrogen vehicles in cost,
| refueling ease, and overall emissions.
| winternett wrote:
| 3 major problems none of the EV evangelists are addressing
| about with EVs are
|
| 1. What happens to all the giant lithium batteries on these
| vehicles after they reach end of life?
|
| 2. How will people be able to evacuate a city or state in an
| emergency situation when charging/electric supply is not
| present (which is always likely to happen)?
|
| 3. Coal burning infrastructure is still inextricably involved
| in generating the power to charge these vehicles, that must
| be considered in terms of overall value of EVs in reducing
| environmental impacts of fossil fuel elimination.
|
| We need to realize that the motivation to deploy EVs too
| early is driven by profit rather than by motives in
| environmental protection and conservation of resources, then
| the really productive conversations can occur.
| namdnay wrote:
| > Coal burning infrastructure is still inextricably
| involved in generating the power to charge these vehicles
|
| only in countries which haven't yet decarbonised
| (decarboned?) their energy infrastructure. In france for
| example, 90% of electricity is non carbon, and that rises
| to 100% for several smaller countries
| stuaxo wrote:
| 1. They will be recycled.
|
| 2. Never heard this one, what kind of apocalypse are you
| foreseeing ?
|
| 3. Centralised generation is easier to mitigate, and later
| replace with clean generation.
| robotnikman wrote:
| For #2, I think it might be valid for areas which
| experience hurricanes or other natural disasters.
|
| Though, couldn't you charge your car with a gas generator
| in an emergency if you really needed to?
| relaxing wrote:
| Good point! You could carry the gas generator with you
| when you leave. Maybe some EVs would let you plug in
| while driving! You'd just have to redirect the generator
| exhaust out the back via some sort tail-pipe...
| colordrops wrote:
| And for 3, it's not all or nothing - it can happen
| incrementally. I fully charge my Tesla using the panels
| on my roof, no hydrocarbons were ever involved.
| Retric wrote:
| 3) 36% of global grid power comes from coal down from 41%
| in 2013. It's expected to hit 22% by 2040.
|
| Secondly coal isn't nearly as bad as you might thing
| relative to gasoline. Simply producing gasoline releases
| significant CO2. Refineries alone release approximately 2.5
| lb of CO2 for each gallon of gas, add in exploration,
| extraction, and transportation means gasoline is doing a
| lot of damage before reaching your car. Next gasoline > car
| engines > transmissions is vastly less efficient than EV's
| coal > power plants > electric grid > batteries > EV
| transmission.
|
| Net result while some of the energy comes from hydrogen in
| gasoline it's still actually worse for the environment than
| coal, much worse than natural gas, and vastly worse than
| everything else.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| For #2, I'm not so sure the situation is strictly worse
| than with gas. I lived in NYC during Hurricane Sandy, and
| it took many days for gasoline to become available (a few
| weeks, IIRC). Electricity was plentiful, though.
| relaxing wrote:
| Did you evacuate? Where to?
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _2. How will people be able to evacuate a city or state
| in an emergency situation when charging /electric supply is
| not present (which is always likely to happen)?_
|
| I never understood this scenario. Any situation where there
| is no electricity supply also means you wouldn't be able to
| pump gas. You do realize gas stations run on electricity
| right?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Any situation where there is no electricity supply also
| means you wouldn't be able to pump gas. You do realize
| gas stations run on electricity right?
|
| If you are concerned about emergency readiness, keeping a
| reserve fuel level in a typical gas (incl. hybrid) cars
| tank that provides more range than even the overly
| generous EPA-listed range of any pure electric short of a
| Tesla Model S Long Range Plus is eminently practical. So,
| if there is a recharging/fueling outage and need to
| evacuate, gas wins.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| > _3 major problems none of the EV evangelists are
| addressing about with EVs are_
|
| This is straight up false. These same points are addressed
| again and again and again and again by EV supporters but I
| guess (if I took your claim seriously) no one actually pays
| attention? (See the sibling comments for folks responding
| to them.)
|
| I mean, you might still disagree with what they have to
| say, but you CANNOT claim they don't address those
| extremely common points. Is it okay to just repeat a lie
| like that for rhetorical purposes?
| danpalmer wrote:
| More answers to add to the others already given...
|
| 2. Mass evacuations by car are inherently inefficient, we
| should use public transport.
|
| 2. or... petrol supply requires transportation whereas
| electrical supply does not, the former does not seem
| inherently better than the latter.
|
| 2. or... it's as impractical for everyone to fill up their
| cars in an emergency as it is for everyone to charge their
| cars.
|
| Honestly, I don't think petrol is any better here - we've
| just got more cases of this mostly working with petrol
| cars, and no examples either way yet for electric cars.
|
| 3. Oil refinement for an amount of petrol takes roughly as
| much energy as an electric car takes to go that distance,
| so we aren't just shifting oil -> electricity, we're
| actually doing (oil + electricity) -> electricity. This
| gives us an immediate and significant win on overall fossil
| fuel emissions even if electricity is entirely generated
| with fossil fuels.
|
| 3. Coal burning infrastructure is not in any way
| inextricably linked to the power to charge electric
| vehicles. Coal burning happens to be how much of the
| US/China gets its electricity for powering electric cars
| but the fact that solar power can be fed into the grid with
| no changes to anything else shows that the "inextricably"
| is false.
|
| 3. Coal burning happens to be used in some countries but in
| others, green energy production is far more available and
| there electric cars are much better for the environment.
|
| > We need to realize that the motivation to deploy EVs too
| early is driven by profit rather than by motives in
| environmental protection and conservation of resources,
| then the really productive conversations can occur.
|
| Companies are driven by profit, yes, however there are
| vast, immediate, benefits to the use of electric cars, as
| well as significant future benefits that can be realised as
| we transition off fossil fuels. Saying that EVs cannot be
| motivated by environmental benefits is disingenuous.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Exactly. GM showed with a Volt that a PHEV could be
| effectively a BEV 90% of the time and perform excellently
| even when falling back into ICE mode, but the Prime came out
| _after_ the Volt and its drivetrain is inferior in every way
| to it. I understand the Prime is roomier and so on, but in
| terms of drivetrain it 's woefully inferior.
|
| As a Volt and Mitsu Outlander PHEV owner I obviously have
| nothing against the PHEV concept. But just comparing the two
| I can say that the Volt is more of a BEV with high quality
| range extension, while our Outlander is just a soft hybrid
| that can only _sometimes_ use the battery exclusively. Pretty
| much all the PHEVs (including the Prime) are like that, and
| they gave the whole concept of PHEV a bad name.
|
| EDIT: the Outlander has other attributes that make it
| innovative and good for us, though, such as its AWD system
| which uses dual electric motors, negating the need for a
| longitudinal shaft and differential etc.
| thinkling wrote:
| My impression is that GM had trouble making the Voltec
| drive train work in larger cars. The Volt is a low-slung,
| very aerodynamic car. As soon as you turn that into a
| crossover (as they were rumored to be doing) or a small
| SUV, both range and gas mileage are going to suffer.
|
| It's too bad. We have a Volt and I would have loved the
| same drivetrain in a car with more ground clearance and a
| bit more cargo space.
| Causality1 wrote:
| My ideal vehicle would be a Volt made by Toyota. I have
| several mechanic friends and all have warned me against
| buying any GM vehicle, especially one with as complex a
| drive system as a Volt.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The drivetrain in the Volt is _exceedingly_ reliable.
| Like, 0 problems for most people. There 's almost no
| maintenance required.
|
| Other things in the car are the issue. Stupid things like
| the infamous "shift to park" issue (crappy $2 switch in
| the shifter mechanism so it doesn't recognize that you're
| in park even when you're mechanically in park and
| complains when you turn it off). Or just generally
| typically mediocre Chevy interior, etc.
|
| Still love driving mine, I'd have a hard time giving it
| up. It somehow feels very sporty. I find Toyota's very
| boring to drive.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| More expensive and substantially less specs on paper is
| pretty par for the course for Toyota. But motorcycles only
| really work when the weather is good and people buy those
| too. People rationalize these purchases in other ways.
| nicoburns wrote:
| To be fair Toyota announced their new lineup of BEVs just
| last month, to be released next year. Toyota is late to the
| party, but they are on their way.
| bbarnett wrote:
| To be fairer, they were very early to the party too.
|
| They bet on electric, very early in the game and more than
| one kind too!
| Robotbeat wrote:
| That's what's so frustrating! They had the technology and
| the scale to go nearly all-in on battery electric about 2
| decades ago (maybe with gas backup in the early days) but
| they squandered it.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Toyota bet on Electric _and_ Hydrogen, then proceeded to
| double-down on hydrogen. Then never really went all-in on
| electric and this sadly lost them their early lead.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Their only one, the Prius Prime, is more expensive than its
| competitors and offers less than half their range. What's the
| point of getting a PHEV if I still spend half my commute
| running on gasoline?
|
| The Prime has a 25 mile battery range, which is well over the
| average driven commute distance in the US (its about the
| average daily driven distance for drivers.)
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's about half of what you'd need to comfortably go
| without gas the vast, vast majority of time. The Chevy Volt
| has about the right plug in electric range (50 miles) for a
| future where we have to basically synthesize all fuels.
| nkingsy wrote:
| I wonder if these arguments take into account decreased battery
| life with a smaller battery in a plug in hybrid. From what I
| know about li-ion, the larger battery should expect many more
| charge cycles before degradation than the smaller one, given
| the same power draw.
|
| There would have to be some kind of argument that the bigger
| battery leaves capacity on the table during its life somehow,
| which would mean the battery is still expected to be useful
| when the car is retired?
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I wonder if these arguments take into account decreased
| battery life with a smaller battery in a plug in hybrid._
|
| I would think that it would be primarily a function of how
| much of the battery is treated as a 'reserve'. If you have
| 10-20% set aside that is not "useable", regardless of total
| capacity, then you could get similar cycles.
|
| There's also the possibility for using super-caps taking some
| of the brunt for high discharge (2-4s) events which could
| help with longevity. How expensive are they for these type of
| use case?
| NathanielK wrote:
| It really depends on the battery technology. Lithium-Titanate
| batteries are starting to be used in hybrid vehicle
| powertrains.
|
| It is much lower energy density than typical BEV batteries.
| It is also rated at 20x the cycles and can be charged and
| discharged very quickly with minimal issues.
|
| The technology has come a long way from the NiMH cells that
| die after a decade.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| My laymen understanding is that all EV batteries are composed
| of lots of smaller cells. So a larger Tesla battery is simply
| _more_ cells, not larger ones. That would put EV 's and
| hybrids on the same level.
| chipsa wrote:
| Generally speaking, yes, a larger battery with the same
| technology is more cells, not larger cells. But the larger
| battery will use less of each cell's capacity for a given
| distance driven. So it will cycle each battery less,
| comparatively.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Not to exactly counter your point, but Toyota has been doing
| shady things for a while so I'm not sure if they can be given
| the benefit of doubt. The things include - going against those
| new California emissions standards when Trump rolled back
| emission limits, donating heavily to the politicians who wanted
| to overthrow the 2020 US elections, and having deals with
| Panasonic to block easy public access to batteries (better
| discussion here - https://reddit.com/r/technology/comments/osky
| fm/_/h6p62gq/?c...)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Specific facts don't really matter in this case. What matters
| is that Toyota is engaging in behavior (lobbying against EV
| adoption mandates) that its prime customer demographics (in the
| West at least) consider icky.
|
| Because of how media works these days writing about that is
| worth money. There's a lot of rage clicks and eyeball hours to
| be gleaned by pointing out to these people that yes, Toyota, a
| brand you people have been putting on a pedestal for a decade
| will sociopathically act in its own interest including
| influencing legislators, just like every other bigCo.
| tonmoy wrote:
| This assumes power grid won't keep getting greener or more
| efficient. Unless we go zero carbon we are just delaying the
| inevitable and sometimes easy short term carbon reduction
| actually hampers our efforts to zero emissions.
| hokkos wrote:
| The latest ICCT report shows that in the european market fossil
| car are around 250gCO2eq/km in life cycle analysis, hybrid at
| 180 and EV at 80, so it seems quite wrong.
|
| https://theicct.org/publications/global-LCA-passenger-cars-j...
| nickik wrote:
| Why are we giving them the benefit of the doubt? Toyota has
| been consistently and EV. They consistently lie about emissions
| of their hybrids. Their marketing is always spreading FUD about
| EVs.
|
| Worst of all Toyota has been the leader against all kinds of
| environment laws all over the world.
| dapf wrote:
| May I ask, what business does the Senate have on what car you
| would be buying?
| LanceH wrote:
| The effect of carbon emissions isn't limited to only the
| buyers of a vehicle.
| user_7832 wrote:
| The government is interested in welfare of itself, the state
| and its resources. If vehicular emissions cause a lot of CO2
| emissions and hence climate change, the government will want
| to protect itself, it's resources and its people. As for
| making rules or laws - that's how the government implements
| such goals or objectives. (This is a slightly broad answer.)
| bbarnett wrote:
| Take on action on climate change, that's wrong governing!
| Take action on climate change? Wrong governing!
|
| Just can't win...
| honkycat wrote:
| May I ask, what business does the senate have on where I dump
| my toxic waste?
| drewda wrote:
| This looks like a rewrite/gloss of recent New York Times
| reporting: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/climate/toyota-
| electric-h...
|
| Same thing happened the other day when a gloss by The Verge was
| trending on Hacker News:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27961606 I get that some
| folks may not want to pay to subscribe to The New York Times, but
| it's unfortunate that HN is sending so much traffic to sites that
| are just rewriting others' original reporting (and slapping their
| own advertising on it).
|
| Perhaps another dynamic is that as these sites post their
| rewrites, HN posters can submit fresh URLs for the same topic
| over multiple days, rather than just the "canonical" NYT URL?
| dapf wrote:
| Lobbying against the lobbying?
| mobiuscog wrote:
| There are still huge numbers of car owners who do not have off-
| site parking to charge EVs. Unless EV public charging is able to
| 'refuel' completely in a couple of minutes, going 100% electric
| is just not feasible.
|
| There is no way most governments will be able to provide suitable
| infrastructure in the near future.
| chipsa wrote:
| It doesn't need to be in a couple minutes if the chargers are
| where people tend to stay for a while anyways. Stick a fast
| charger at McDonald's and Chipotle and Target and Safeway, then
| people will be able to charge while doing the things they
| already would be. It doesn't even have to be especially fast.
| It just needs to give a reasonable amount of charge for the
| time that people would be at the location. If I'm going to be
| spending an hour at a restaurant, I don't need to have it be
| done charging in 20 minutes.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| You could incentivise employers to provide charging at work,
| that would solve the problem for the majority.
| stevev wrote:
| In addition to not betting on evs, Toyota along with many other
| car makers fail to understand the human desire for safety and
| convenience in their vehicles through the use of current camera
| technologies and computer applications.
|
| A typical Tesla vehicle has 8 cameras thus providing a 360 degree
| vision to help assist the car/driver in a few applications.
| Security, safety and convenience.
|
| A close second in terms of safety systems is Subaru with their
| eyesight features.
|
| My personal experience and testing of my Toyota Sienna van's PCS,
| otherwise known as a pre-collision system to assist in applying
| the brakes and or warn the driver that an object is detected in
| close proximity to the vehicle during moving speed, is almost
| absent. The system is too slow, delayed or late. Sense of safety
| from the pcs is non-existent.
|
| These along with others things pushes me to have a greater
| interest in cars like Tesla despite it's premium price.
|
| At this point, we should point out that now there are such thing
| as smart cars (Tesla) vs dumb cars (toyota) and others and that
| safety should not be a second class feature but should be
| prioritized through the use of current camera technologies. Other
| than focusing on just the safety of a vehicle during a collision,
| although important, systems to prevent collisions should be
| prioritized as well.
| dapf wrote:
| If that is so, just let the market punish Toyota.
|
| If they bet wrong, they will lose, unless the State bails them
| out.
| gpt5 wrote:
| To continue the analogy with smart and dumb phones - the
| traditional car makers are struggling to match against the new
| threat from Tesla (who makes the "iphone"). Makes you wonder
| whether an Android equivalent OS will come out of Google or
| another tech company to compete back.
| ubercore wrote:
| I've driven a new Rav4 (in the US) and a Corolla hybrid (in
| Norway) and they both had what you're describing. If anything,
| the Corolla's system was a little _too_ sensitive.
| bittercynic wrote:
| >Sense of safety from the pcs is non-existent.
|
| This feels like a feature to me. I believe making drivers feel
| safer causes them to drive more dangerously.
| chairmanwow1 wrote:
| Making drivers feel safer requires less focus on the "driving
| task" which IMO is a huge win.
|
| Accidents happen frequently from driver fatigue and
| distraction
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Toyota has radar and ultrasonics and I've been perfectly
| satisfied with the number of bells going off alerting me of
| cross traffic and pedestrians. The PCS has stopped by from rear
| ending someone in traffic but will grant that it waits til the
| last minute, but I chose a car whose automation is based on
| informing me and saving my ass vs taking control of all the
| decisions like a Tesla
|
| edit: also most Toyotas are not in the price bracket of
| 8-camera vehicles but all the safety equipment is standard, so
| I might argue Toyota is doing more for public safety by making
| these systems affordable, whereas tesla is making the public
| less safe by beta testing self driving software on city
| streets.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Apart from the fact that all car makers had drive assist
| systems for years and this is by no means a Tesla invention, if
| safety measures really are the main factor for people to
| choosing a car, we should be seeing Volvos almost exclusively.
|
| But your comment which asserts that only Tesla does proper
| drive assist says everything. Somehow Tesla managed to convince
| everyone that they are the only innovators and everyone else is
| just old. While I appreciate Teslas contribution of pushing EVs
| to the mainstream, I do not believe that they are the most
| technologically advanced of the car manufacturers.
| stevev wrote:
| Interesting. What other car makers has self driving
| capabilities, runs on ev exceeding 250 mi on range, and has
| cameras around the car? Last I checked Volvos doesn't even
| come close.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > What other car makers has self driving capabilities [...]
| and has cameras around the car?
|
| Very nearly every luxury car on the market has that stuff
| and has had it for years.
|
| Mercedes has had speed-adjusting cruise control since 1999,
| complete with auto-stopping since 2005, for example. Before
| Tesla ever even made a vehicle at all. Most other auto
| makers are just vastly more responsible in how they brand
| their self-driving capabilities than Tesla, but they pretty
| much all have them.
|
| Tesla's "industry leading" innovations are really scoped to
| a few key things - the electric powertrain, massive in-car
| displays that replace switchgear (debatable if this is
| actually an innovation or just a cost-cutting measure,
| though), and OTAs.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Sitting in the US EVs seem like the clear winner. I was shocked
| too learn that there are no Toyota EVs because they somehow
| thought hydrogen was the future. I expected more from my most
| trusted car company. A recent visit to Germany made me less
| certain. I saw and drove in quite a few hydrogen-powered Mirais.
| Of course my short experience there isn't representative at all.
| It's hydrogen bigger elsewhere? Might we see a future where the
| US had predominantly EVs and Japan and/or Europe hydrogen cars?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| My pet theory is that Toyota or Honda will be on life support by
| the end of next decade, if not dead. They both had a huge head
| start in batteries with their hybrids (Honda's first hybrid was
| released in 1999), and they squandered it. Hopefully the Korean
| car companies crush them with superior products.
| typon wrote:
| I've pre-ordered an Ioniq 5. Tesla has a real competitor in
| Hyundai. If you don't care about the "self-driving" thing,
| other companies are catching up fast.
| persedes wrote:
| I was close to getting one 2 years ago. Did the safety tests
| improve since then? If I recall the 2019 had issues with the
| roof / pillars, which were not strong enough to support the
| car in case you flipped it.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| The Ioniq 5 has only just been released, it's a completely
| different design from the previous model.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I've gone from bullish to bearish on self driving, all I want
| from that area is radar guided cruise control and highway
| friendly lane keeping.
|
| Sadly the Ioniq 5 won't be on sale in my state. I'm
| considering a model Y because the range is desirable for the
| semi-regular camping we do.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >all I want from that area is radar guided cruise control
|
| For some reason I read that as "all I want from that area
| is radar guided cruise control missiles".
| rpmisms wrote:
| Good news: Tesla's basic Autopilot is fantastic for that.
| Just don't fall asleep.
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| The ioniq 5 is a great vehicle. If their adaptive cruise
| control is anything like the current Sonata (that I have)
| with the new lane changing tech, it'll already go a long way
| in making highway drives and stop and go traffic a breeze.
|
| Not sure how well HDA 2 (their term for cruise control ) does
| but the older version doesn't handle sharper turns well and
| loses the lines briefly. New tech also steers the car out of
| harm's way like Tesla does so they've come a very long way.
| rantwasp wrote:
| that's a bold prediction. i don't think it's going to happen.
|
| building a car is about more than just the engine. It's about
| the supply chain, it's about parts, it's about service. Toyota
| and Honda have a lot more experience in this area than a new-
| ish car manufacturer. They also build reliable, great cars that
| I like owning and driving.
|
| I like how everyone is up in arms about Toyota doing something
| [that serves their interest; in a legal way] to influence the
| government but people pretend Tesla is such a success story,
| ignoring all the money the govn has pumped into it.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| So you're ok with Toyota spreading FUD as long as it's legal.
| Got it.
|
| As for Tesla's government money, ev credits are available to
| all manufacturers, it's not Tesla's fault others can't make
| compelling electric vehicles. All other government loans have
| been paid back in full.
|
| Maybe you should read more than just headlines
| rantwasp wrote:
| is it FUD though?
|
| were do you draw the line between legal and illegal. right
| or wrong?
|
| I think it's absolutely expected for Toyota to attempt to
| protect their financial interests.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It's legal for them to do so, I just think they're bad
| people for doing it.
|
| Attempting to slow down the de-carbonization of our
| transit because your company bet wrong is just evil, no
| way around it.
| dnautics wrote:
| This is unlikely. Toyota, anyways, has really excelled in other
| ways, for example, using supply chains correctly and not taking
| a huge hit during the semiconductor shortage. The car market is
| also relatively slow to shift, I do think that there's plenty
| of time for Toyota to pivot.
| frumper wrote:
| My local Toyota dealer has about 25 new cars on their lot
| instead of 150+, that sounds like a pretty big hit.
| chipsa wrote:
| Is it that they're suffering a car shortage, or everyone
| else is, and they're getting cleaned out because that's
| where people can find cars?
| frumper wrote:
| They told me they were having the same supply issues as
| everyone else right now. I wanted to look at a highlander
| hybrid and they said they were only getting sent 1 every
| few months and usually didn't know when it would arrive
| until it was in transit.
| sithadmin wrote:
| There's zero chance Toyota ends up on 'life support' within a
| decade. They're a top 10 company globally in terms of revenue,
| and even in the worst case where they fail to release
| competitive EV models, the global switchover to hybrid electric
| (plus legacy ICE sales) in less developed markets will hold
| them over for quite a bit of time.
| esalman wrote:
| I just leased a fully loaded Highlander which I intend to buy
| out after 3 years. So Toyota is getting my money for next 9
| years, unless anything disastrous happens. I actually have
| another 7 year old Corolla, on which I have a spent a grand
| total of $140 in maintenance (battery). In fact I plan to
| purchase an 86 or a Supra in next couple of years or so.
|
| Last time I was driving a Hyundai, the engine lost power in the
| middle of evening rush hour traffic at 65mph on I-85, and the
| car had half the mileage of my Corolla.
|
| Toyota is going nowhere.
| dekhn wrote:
| toyota has the best reputation in the entire industry, runs
| their business tight, and has no real pathway to life support
| unless they repeatedly failed on every single major initiative,
| which seems unlikely.
|
| I just bought a RAV4 Prime, it's a plugin hybrid. It looks like
| they are rolling out HV to their most popular models over the
| next few years. That gives them everything they need to make
| EV, HV, or gas vehicles for the forseeable future.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Honda actually seems to "get it" in Europe and Asian markets
| and may be on the path to navigating this transition. Honda of
| America seems the dumb beast too stupid to adapt and there is
| probably going to be a reckoning when it stops being hugely
| profitable to build giant gas guzzlers in America. Honda of
| America seems to have zero foresight or long term plan still.
|
| The Korean car conglomerate is definitely doing well with EVs,
| but if you are expecting someone to crush Toyota and/or Honda
| in Asian car sales especially, I'd keep an eye on Chinese EV
| companies. Some of them are doing wild work, and have got EV
| car costs down below nearly anyone else in the world with their
| economies of scale already. _If_ some of those Chinese EV
| companies come to the American market I 'm even curious if it
| would look _just_ like the Honda /Toyota strategy of the
| 70s/80s with good value for the money cars that will surprise a
| lot of Americans that did not know they were looking for that
| sort of cheap/reliable.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I'd like to see that because it would be a nice big middle
| finger to all the brain dead fanboys who insist Toyota can
| never do anything wrong but being a big national company in
| Japan no matter what they do or don't do they won't be allowed
| to fail for the same reasons VW or Boeing won't.
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