Featured Toyota Strongly Hints At Plans To Develop All Electric Vehicles

Toyota may beat GM to making a flexible multi platform bev/phev lineup.

GM talks but thus far only 4 cars sharing its tech.

I was hoping Honda would step up but no dice.

 

keep the positive news coming!

 

Developing a car and expanding out new technologies takes time and a lot of money. The first Prius went on sale in 1997, and the first Rav4 hybrid went on sale just this year. There is still no American hybrid minivan. The first PHEV one will come from FCA.

Selling a lot of trucks means GM is under more pressure than Toyota to expand into plugins.

The Honda Clarity will have a PHEV and BEV model, but they have to rebuild their reputation when it comes to hybrids.

 

from the OP's link;

Oh that's right . . . Toyota was only looking out for our safety . . . and THAT's why they liked the gas car for so long ... because it's
.......... safe.
let's see . . . . 100's die yearly in gasoline fires



So the score card reads;
ev fire deaths ZERO
gas fire deaths 100's yearly
ok
can I please get some mustard with that baloney ?

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nothing is fool proof. There is a lot of study and history with gasoline. Yes, it's dangerous, but precautions can be taken. Li-ion is newer, not as well understood, and yes, they are dangerous. one battery in a cell phone is one thing but a hundred or more under my buttocks? Wicked. Until the nuances of purity, charge rates and times, discharge, storage, temperature are better understood and controlled, toyota is correct, safety is important.

 

We know from Tesla that a typical battery fire progresses slower than a gasoline one.

 

or you could shove 63 sticks of dynamite down there ...

Three Sources: Oil Math
More to the truth is that we become acclimated to horrific dangers & then we just accept them. Of couse we DO try to make things safer & safer & we're doing a good job at doing that.
It's just like that posted article says. There is a huge amount of energy & product locked up in oil. So we do a risk analysis & decide what are acceptable injuries/losses so that we can enjoy the benefits with some degree of enlightenment despite the dangers. Sadly we don't do as thorough a job with risk assessment as we ought to. It's not just burns & deaths or cancers from gasoline, it's also respiratory issues ... political issues ... military/encroachment issues ... national security issues ... huge environmental accident issues ... etc. Safety goes far beyond that which is within Toyotas' purview of gasoline versus battery. Primarily, being a "me" society, we will always choose cheap & easy first. Gas is cheap & refueling in 5 or 10 minutes is easy.
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Don't get me wrong, I agree with how dangerous gas is. I'm only pointing out that it's better understood and can be designed for. We don't know as much about batteries yet. they are more complicated than a tank of gas, harder to manufacture and its harder to control what you don't fully understand. We know why gas burns. Tell my why does a battery blow and how can you prevent it? Provide safety measures for 10 years of use and 150,000 miles...

 

- early lithium packs experienced thermal Runaway (ie catch on fire) due to improper charging/thermal management. But alternatively/also catastrophic trauma can cause fires ... Just like shooting a tracer round into a gas container - jamming a trailer hitch (ran over at 75mph) through cells/moduels can effectively short/ignite traction packs. The 'cure'? That's why all Tesla's are now protected with a Titanium/Kevlar ballistic shield underneath.
Imo - safety (significantly increased over the last few years) wasn't Toyota's beef. EV's are way less of a profit center for manufacturers /dealerships. ½ the money made by auto dealerships comes from maintenance / service center operations profit ... oil, belts, tuneups, filters, brakes, etc. An ev has tire & wiper wear as the main wear. Tesla has one test bench pack currently running /simulated over ½million miles on it, with ~20% capacity loss. That'd represent range degradation on a 300 mile pack going down to 240 miles range ... & that's after driving 500,000 miles. And it's still plugging along. I should live so long.
No - it's not that buyers don't necessarily WANT ev's ... it's just that buyers don't want crappy / low range teeny shopping cart sized ev's ... like the one Toyota may try & dump on us.
https://priuschat.com/index.php?threads/172612/
Have you seen that thread? Jeez - Talk about building & planning for failure ... at least here in the usa.
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Batteries have been around longer than we have been using gasoline. The ancient Egyptians had electrochemical cells that were likely used for electroplating jewelry.

Li-ion batteries include protection circuits to prevent overcharging that can lead to thermal runaway. The Tesla fires required a sizeable chunk of steel to pierce the thick belly pan and battery case, and then the car's system sensed there was an issue, and instructed the driver to pull over and get out before the fire was an direct threat. Even then the fire didn't penetrate the passenger cabin.

Those fires were started by an electrical short. Not much different than the shorts in window switches or steering wheel harnesses that started fires in parked cars, nor the ones that start fires in homes.

A static discharge can ignite the gasoline fumes around the pump nozzle while the car is being fueled.

 

I'll believe it when i see it. Talk is cheap. Until they give up H2, and actually have an EV worth crowing about...just a nice press release is not gonna get me back into the Toyota camp.

 

I just hope it has bicycle peddal assist

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apparently, samsung didn't get the message.

 

Neither did NASA...

 

Would you prefer a gasoline powered phone next to your head or in your pocket?

Gasoline fires of a car or home are so common, they are only worthy of national news when they involve someone famous, or cause major problems on a highway.

 

ioniq is the first.

still ioniq hybrid is not as good as prius
ioniq phev is not as good as volt or i3
ioniq bev is not as good as leaf or tesla model III or bolt

I think a blended phev sharing with a hv makes sense (prius/prime, fusion, c-max), or a erev phev and bev sharing a platform bmw i3, but don't think a hybrid and bev really make much sense on the same platform. First doesn't matter if its not a good category.

I'm glad 4 years after the tesla model S proved lithium works for a car, toyota is on board ;-) Probablem with lithium is really simply cost and that seems to be shrinking about 40% every 5 years. In 15 years lithium batteries (not rest of the car) should fall to about 25% of today's costs, if oil goes up as expected, most efficient vehicles may be plug-ins.

 

Just to play devil's advocate, and I do agree and understand what you posted, but, have you checked into the deplorable mining conditions and safety record for cobalt mining?

Cobalt mining for lithium ion batteries has a high human cost - Washington Post