Featured Best answer I've seen yet from Toyota about going full EV

EU is also the first place where cities are planning to soon ban ICE entirely within city limits... Maybe Toyota & Trump will work together to fight them on those plans already in the pipe for that too?

 

Where Tesla can charge direct for electricity, the national average is 28 cents/kWh. It's 26 cents/min where they can't, IIRC. It seems to only way to get the current price for an individual station is through the ap on the car. Some locations cut the price in half if the charge rate drops below 60kW, but there are idling fees if you leave a charged car parked too long.

 

Knee-Jerk reactions from those with limited focus (in this case EV enthusiasts) will give that impression. Many have demonstrated a genuine disinterest toward the needs of ordinary consumers, obsessing with range & power instead of actually addressing their purchases priorities. Appealing to the mainstream market means attention to the showroom experience is vital. Dealers must be on board, which means sales without any type of subsidy. A boycott will not achieve that.

 

Car and Driver survey
"Are Toyota's EV efforts too little too late, or is it striking while the iron's hot?"
A recent Car and Driver survey says 64% believe the cautious approach
is in keeping with Toyota

ref Toyota Details Six New EV Models Launching for 2020–2025
Toyota Details 6 New EV Models Launching for 2020–2025

-Battery shortage!
-Toyoda is always cautious!

 

For most people, they will charge at home (or work) most of the time and pay much less. Only on long trips will they use the Superchargers (unless they have free Supercharging).
But even 28 cents is as cheap as gas in most places. Roughly 6-7 cents per mile.
Compared to $2.50/gal and 25 mpg car which is 10 cents per mile.

Note that gas prices on Interstates where people go on longer trips is usually more expensive than home gas prices as well.

Mike

 

I love Toyota in the past and present., I think they are arguably the best and the most environmentally conscious of all manufacturers. Look into Toyoda's history. Leading the pack in EV only cars is not Toyota's goal. Creating the best over time is.

 

Isn't Car and Driver primarily focused on non hybrid, non plug-in owners?
Know your audience
Meanwhile - as some manufacturers make excuses for their shortages, others are building more and more battery factories;
Tesla (TSLA) Elon Musk Picks Berlin for European Gigafactory - Bloomberg
Some make excuses, some make cars, that buck the trend of shrinking markets.

.

 

my wife noticed

 

i don't know what i'd be driving if it weren't for toyota

 

your wife up a tree?

.

 

nah, thats still ongoing

 

There's also social and environmental responsibility, which the capitalist hordes think doesn't matter.

But look at what happened to VW for faking emissions requirements? Over night when the scandal was first revealed it destroyed their sales, their inventory, their legal indemnity on every level and ultimately cost them tens of billions of dollars and fines and an entire patch of desert landscape littered with tens of thousand of cars that they had to buy back...

So if you want to talk about knee jerk reactions with people of limited focus, you might want to ask how VW's seemingly minor risk of faking compliance with emissions laws blew up in their face and put them on a trajetory to entirely abandon ICE and retool for an all EV product line as their last chance for survival as a profitable company?

Also, your own personal view that EV enthusiasts are nothing more than a fringe groups with limited focus speaks not only to your own limited focus, but also to your social and environmental offensiveness. Seems like you and Toyota and Trump are circling the same drain.

 

Lol... What a load of garbage fanboy hyperbole... The fact is Toyota wants to squeeze every last dollar of investments out of ICE engines no matter how environmentally irresponsible and behind the times that notion really is. They're as greedy and stupid as VW thinking they could get away with faking compliance with emissions requirements.

 

If we could just get Southeast Toyota to read and understand this.

Bob Wilson

 

Who? I was one of those fighting the fight to draw attention to what VW was up to. Things just didn't add up. I helped collect & present evidence to reveal why claims being made were not true. At the same time, I was also battling GM with its facade from supposed efforts to reach mainstream consumers with their plug-in efforts.

Choosing to follow the narrative to support a boycott won't change the wisdom of the bottom-up approach. Toyota is pushing for change across a wide array of choices. That's something enthusiasts object to, since they believe only a top-down approach will succeed... despite the reality that it was a momentous failure GM has had attempting that.

In other words, I have 20 years of history helping to confirm the perception unfolding now isn't really what's taking place. Toyota has carefully planned out a means of deploying green options their dealers will embrace and consumers will seek out. It's good business, something enthusiasts show no interest in... and I have hundreds of pages of blogs to prove it... very, very in depth market research.

Take a look around. What have the other automakers actually delivered in terms of change not dependent upon tax-credits? Toyota is setting the stage by deploying PHEV models of Prius, Corolla, and RAV4, along with an EV model of C-HR. Each is targeted at ordinary consumers and is expected to be appealing to dealers. Remember, stocking them as regular inventory is vital.

In other words, what merit is there for stating "environmentally irresponsible" and "behind the times" when we can see obvious work at play to disrupt the status quo?

 

Ok, valid points... But specifically what Toyota has done that's wrong compared to the other auto makers is that when Tesla Model 3 destroyed the highest priced mass produced car sales number projections industry wide in coming years, the other auto makers shifted gears and started heavily investing in catching up, whereas Toyota pulled an Ostrich and buried it's head in the ground and embraced #trumptoyota as if that wasn't going to blow up in their face in a court of law.

 

You actually believe that narrative? It's the same old greenwash we've been hearing for years. Some have worked hard to convince us that Toyota is ignoring the market, despite the fact that evidence to the contrary is hidden in plain view. All you have to do is look around. The components for a great EV are being refined right before our eyes.

Start with what should be the most obvious. A vehicle's battery-pack is nothing but a series of cells assembled into a stack. The more stacks you include, the more capacity (range) the vehicle offers. It's not rocket-science. It's just packaging. The chemistry is being tested heavily in real-world conditions by Prius Prime. That data will go a long way toward making the next-generation something to truly contend with. No EV is necessary for that.

But if you want an EV already, look no further than Mirai. It utilizes a 151 horsepower (113 kW) electric motor. Again, Toyota is already real-world testing it. To give the technology intended for mainstream use such a heavy shake out in public with most people never noticing is genius. They are taking their refined design for electric motors and pushing it to continuous and heavy use. It's proof of worth without ever having to deal with audience challenges.

Then there's the heat-pump in Prius Prime, an industry leading approach... most definitely not catch up. Their vapor-injected approach sets it above the rest in terms of electricity consumption. It's the top for efficiency, something essential for being competitive. That is why we also see the use of carbon-fiber in Prius Prime. For added strength and weight-reduction, that's a nice advantage to have too.

In addition to all that, Toyota is working hard to change the culture at dealership. Their push for change with RAV4 is proving extremely effective. The hybrid version is selling exceptionally well... and that's before next week's reveal of the upcoming PHV model. Combine that with the build up of Prius Prime (mid-cycle update along with production ramp-up) and the introduction what should become paradigm-shift from the Corolla hybrid delivering 52 MPG and starting at just $23,100.

Put another way, what does "catch up" actually require? Think about everything that much change to achieve sustainable high-volume sales. Don't listen to those only paying attention to low-hanging fruit. They're in for quite a reality shock when the early-adopter market becomes saturated and subsidies expire.

 

A more effective means of getting the message across is purchasing your Prius Prime from a different region and making sure their lost sale is well known. And to really drive the point home, establish an easy means of allowing others to make out-of-state purchases too.

Finding a trusted salesperson somewhere else with inventory isn't easy, but it sure can be nice. I got my Prius PHV from Diane in California and made sure the local dealers here in Minnesota knew it.

 

btw, it is quite fascinating to witness this history play out. It is like when I had collected a wealth of information to confirm gen-2 of Volt was doomed to fail. The evidence was obvious; yet, enthusiasts worked extremely hard to deny it. In that case, GM was studying feedback from gen-1 owners. That set them up for innovator's dilemma. And sure enough, the next generation made what started as a niche even more of a niche. I could see all along they were asking the wrong audience for suggestions. You want mainstream acceptance, you must carefully consider every bit of info that fickle audience is willing to share... not what early-adopters state praise for... then push for what they are unlikely to even be aware of. It's all quite important... and clues to success are very easily overlooked.

Put another way, this reminds me of that scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when they came to realize the Nazis were digging in the wrong place.

 

First off, I've admired and still do @john1701a advocacy for over a decade. We found ourselves in the same gutter many, many times. I have complete agreement with this advice:

I purchased mine in RI and drove it 1,200 miles home. But I realized there is a comprehension problem with Southeast Toyota and elements seen in my local dealers (Huntsville and Decatur.) I traded the Prime in on a Standard Range Plus Model 3. I still get junk mail asking about trading in my former Prime on some gasser.

I work from a requirements analysis through source selection and these are my lessons learned:

1. Fast DC Charging - critical for cross country, EV travel. Our 50 kW BMW i3-REx is too slow which destroys block-to-block time. Worse, at 50 kW, EV charging at EVgo and Electrify America, it is ~4 times more expensive than range extender, premium gas. The Prime had no fast DC charging. Our 100 kW Model 3 charges fast enough for 60 mph block-to-block speed and costs less per mile, 141 MPGe, than even the Prime 133 MPGe.
2. PHEV efficiency - the Prime is king, 54 MPG, but EPA numbers suggest the Hyundai is a close second, 52 MPG (if you can stand the dual-clutch, stepped transmission.)
3. EV efficiency - Model 3, 24 kWh/100 mi for 250 miles versus Prime, 25 kWh/100 mi for 25 miles. Our 2014 BMW i3-REx, 29 kWh/100 mi for 72 miles.

I fully believe Toyota Corporate engineering could provide a serious peer to our Tesla Model 3 BUT they have to commit:

• No 'milk toast' street performance. Their EVs need to exceed their fastest gassers.
• Serious battery management with emphasis on thermal control.
• Packaging, stop suspending a rectangular battery over a round, spare tire hole (simple solution is make the spare tire hole rectangular.)

Bob Wilson