89
submitted 7 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/evs@lemmy.world

Akio Toyoda, Toyota Motor’s chairman, has never been a huge fan of battery electric vehicles. Last October, as global sales of EVs started to slow down amid macroeconomic uncertainty, Toyoda crowed that people are “finally seeing reality” on EVs. Now, the auto executive is doubling down on his bearish forecast, boldly predicting that just three in 10 cars on the road will be powered by a battery.

“The enemy is CO2,” Toyoda said, proposing a “multi-pathway approach” that doesn’t rely on any one type of vehicle. “Customers, not regulations or politics” should make the decision on what path to rely on, he said.

The auto executive estimated that around a billion people still live in areas without electricity, which limits the appeal of a battery electric vehicle. Toyoda estimated that fully electric cars will only capture 30% of the market, with the remainder taken up by hybrids or vehicles that use hydrogen technology.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 68 points 7 months ago

At this point the dude is just grasping for anything that will to justify the stupid business decisions that he’s made. 30% is a shit load, and something a sane business person would be excited about trying to capture.

Before nepotism appointed him to CEO, the company launched the Prius. That thing was exciting and innovative when it came out.

Under his leadership the Prius brand became a synonym for boredom, he relinquished Toyota’s electric powertrain lead to other manufacturers, and the brand produced a lot of uninspired vehicles in general.

This guy was at the helm during the years of Toyota’s decline. Forgive me if I don’t pay any attention to him.

[-] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Prius is still rocking all over the place and it says once again in his statement right here the guy likes hybrids. There's currently lots of hybrids out and about, and I agree with the guy. At least until battery tech changes. A hybrid battery is a few grand to replace and there's no range anxiety or worrying about plugging in anywhere. An EV with a decent range is $10,000 to $25,000 to replace an 1,100 lb battery in and it's expensive and troublesome if you don't live at a place where you can plug in at home in your garage.

As to prius being boring....I don't even know what you're talking about. What do you want it to do? They're still really popular and have been going for over 20 years with several different models and some that can be plugged in. How is it supposed to be exciting?

Also, toyota achieved a couple years ago something it had never done before. Top GM in sales in the US to get the number one spot. So with their "boring cars and their crappy ceo" they seem to be doing great.

load more comments (25 replies)
[-] fubarx@lemmy.ml 34 points 7 months ago
[-] adj16@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago
[-] Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works 23 points 7 months ago

What data is being used to make this statement?

[-] sanpo@sopuli.xyz 53 points 7 months ago

I guess the data that says they spent too much money on hydrogen tech that is now unlikely to pay off.

[-] hansl@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

Even if there’s no data to back it, isn’t 30% a lot?? I know plenty of markets where if you tell one of the leaders they could capture 30% of they’d be more than happy to spend billions in R&D. So just at face value the man is smoking some copium hard.

[-] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

There’s no way one company would be able to capture the entirety of that market, at best it would be like 20 brands splitting the 30% and that’s not an appealing prospect.

Really though the Toyota clan is saying this because they spent a shit ton on hydrogen vehicle tech that they want to catch on rather than electric battery tech that they neglected

[-] HAL_9_TRILLION@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 7 months ago

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills - wasn't Toyota all up in the news recently about its new battery technology that was going to revolutionize EVs? Why yes, yes it was.

[-] jballs@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 months ago

I think they're just putting out shit trying to create FUD so people are less likely to buy EVs.

[-] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

He's clearly aware of the "magic gas" cheat that allows infinite additional fossil fuel to be harvested from the map.

Edit: Or he's confident that Hydrogen will pick up the slack.

Hindenburg in flames

[-] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

He's still pissed their early collaboration with Tesla yielded nothing but a new competitor.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Tesla-20-years-on-EV-leader-s-rise-sparked-by-Toyota-partnership

[-] SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 6 points 7 months ago

I haven't bought an EV (or any other car) because I'm waiting for a car manufacturer to make the car I want in a plug in variant of some kind (also less telematics). Who doesn't want to be their own gas station--self sufficient with Solar, anyone?

Get your shit together, car industry. Especially you Toyota.

[-] ramble81@lemm.ee 4 points 7 months ago

You’re gonna be waiting a looong time.

[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

Booooooooooooooooooooo

[-] Diplomjodler@feddit.de 3 points 7 months ago

But don't worry, they're "too big to fail". They'll get bailout after bailout until they can stand on their own again after a transition made far more painful by their foot dragging. So in the end it's the Japanese tax payer that will foot the bill.

IDK why hydrogen just hasn't captured any mind share. Seems like a great technology.

Someone will be along in a moment to tell me all about embrittlement and blue hydrogen, yet conglomerates are pouring many billions into water cracking infrastructure right now.

[-] mirtuevagnet@lemmy.world 30 points 7 months ago

Huge energy losses in the conversion of electricity to hydrogen. Also for passenger cars there are no clear benefits. 350kW chargers provide hundreds of kilometers of range in under 20 minutes.

In some places (like Western Australia), solar electricity is very cheap, making the inefficiencies of conversion economically viable.

The benefit is storage and transport of energy.

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 20 points 7 months ago

I've always considered hydrogen cool but ive also assumed it needs huge infrastructure changes so it can be supplied to the general population. Some EVs you can plug in an outlet and putting up charging station is super easy.

I want to get off gas yesterday and EV is simply the quickest way imo.

Sure ok, but we're building infrastructure right now.

[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 19 points 7 months ago

Hydrogen is great on paper until you start looking into the details.

[-] Num10ck@lemmy.world 16 points 7 months ago

hydrogen cars have to store the fuel in 70000 PSI tanks. theres only 2 stations in my major city area that sell it, and they are often unavailable due to maintenance or supply issues. if the car needs service the only place that will touch it is an hour drive away.

It's almost as though you need infrastructure.

[-] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 11 points 7 months ago

Put a 10,000 psi tank of hydrogen in your car, or a tank of heavy, reactive metal hydride. Also, while hydrogen isn't a greenhouse gas, releasing unburned hydrogen into the atmosphere causes more GHG to be formed. Humans are terrible at keeping unburned gasses from leaking.

[-] vzq@lemm.ee 9 points 7 months ago

IDK why hydrogen just hasn't captured any mind share. Seems like a great technology.

It’s great science but it’s hard technology.

It almost requires extremely high pressure or cryogenic storage and it diffuses through everything.

[-] Hypx@kbin.social 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Critics of hydrogen cars are repeating the same criticisms of EVs just before they took off. Same can be said of wind power or solar power. In reality, it's just the same anti-green and anti-progress BS you hear about any new green technology. It's all the same story.

"Hydrogen will never work, there are no hydrogen gas stations in my city"

Lordy.

[-] RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Take it easy, it's a bit more complex than that. Slow as it might be, everyone understands you can charge an EV even with just a regular 15A 120V plug. Stuck at your father in laws out in the country? They've still got a plug.

Generally, people are uncomfortable with high pressure explosive gases. I think overall, hydrogen gas a better shot in industrial/heavy trucking markets than consumer transport.

[-] Hypx@kbin.social 1 points 7 months ago

No it isn’t. In fact, the opposite is true. It’s much harder to wire up millions of charging stations with the necessary amount of power, than to deal with high pressure gas. We’ve just normalized the danger of high-voltage electricity. In reality, this is just as safe if not more so, and a lot easier to pull off.

[-] RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Erm, no buddy. Everyone's entitled to their incorrect opinion, and this one's a doozy.

How much big of a tank of H2 do you need to effectively equal the energy capacity of a lithium ion pack? If the tank needs to be reasonably sized, how high is the pressure? How do you ensure hydrogen embrittlement isn't a problem on both the tanks and the transport pipes/storage tanks? How does pressure correlate with exfiltration?

Flying wires is a walk in the park, especially competitively.

[-] Hypx@kbin.social 1 points 7 months ago

A 700 bar tank will store more than energy than a similarly sized li-ion battery.

As an energy storage system for cars, the problem is already solved. People are just repeating the same anti-progress rhetoric that was used against battery cars.

[-] RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

700 bar?? 10000 pounds/in^2??

No, you've unfortunately lost your grip.

[-] Hypx@kbin.social 1 points 7 months ago

We've been doing it for over a decade now. It is shown to be safe.

[-] RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

No thanks. I'd much prefer electrified mass transit. I'm saying this as a former manufacturing engineer, there's quite a bit that can go wrong with cyclically pressurized vessels in subtle ways that are difficult to non-destructively evaluate.

This is not the path forward for anyone but heavy industry.

[-] Hypx@kbin.social 1 points 7 months ago

Then you are just being old and outdated. It is totally safe.

[-] RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

I understand your point, and disagree. Are you qualified to really understand this issue, or an opinionated enthusiast?

[-] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

You can plug an EV into an outlet in your garage. No way could hydrogen be easier than that.

[-] Hypx@kbin.social 3 points 7 months ago

You have to have a garage to begin with. People have created a distorted grasp of what infrastructure even is.

[-] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Two thirds of Americans have a garage. Roughly zero can refuel hydrogen cells at home.

load more comments (13 replies)
[-] hark@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Meanwhile EVs have taken up a significant share of the market while hydrogen is still niche.

[-] Hypx@kbin.social 2 points 7 months ago

BEVs were a niche for about 100 years.

load more comments (6 replies)

There's not really a ready supply of green hydrogen though?

[-] MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 months ago
load more comments (10 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
89 points (94.1% liked)

Electric Vehicles

3123 readers
914 users here now

A community for the sharing of links, news, and discussion related to Electric Vehicles.

Rules

  1. No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
  2. Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
  3. No self-promotion
  4. No irrelevant content. All posts must be relevant and related to plug-in electric vehicles — BEVs or PHEVs.
  5. No trolling
  6. Policy, not politics. Submissions and comments about effective policymaking are allowed and encouraged in the community, however conversations and submissions about parties, politicians, and those devolving into general tribalism will be removed.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS