Featured Toyota Says Public Charging Not Ready For Pure EVs

Fair enough, Toyota is not ready for me as a customer.

Bob Wilson

 

First.. the 40k number is just GMs efforts with FLO.

Second, many people charge at home. We rarely use public charging.

Third, I'll ask again.. what's Toyotas contribution to the infrastructure rollout?

 

Who? That's the opposite of what happens here. It's all about diving into detail, not taking or dismissing at face value... hence wanting to know what legislation.

 

Exactly... the fact everyone can also charge at home on top of the currently available 130K charging stations makes Toyota argument baseless.

 

Fair point on the 40k number.

I thought we were already talking about the subset who hasn't got access to home charging.

I don't feel like I'm actually defending Toyota here- I wish they made more electric cars too! But their actions appear to me (as a casual observer on the internet) to be rational and consistent with that of a mass-producer of (mostly) economically-priced automobiles.

 

Currently the GOP compromise that made McCarthy speaker of the house means all legislation last year that provided massive subsidies to jump start alternative energy now has to be shut down or the debt ceiling won't be voted for and the US will default on their financing and the world economy could take a hit big enough to throw global economy into a recession. Toyota's business plan will greatly benefit from this more than EV makers. Meanwhile all the world's automakers are now building factories in the US to take advantage of these subsidies for EV and all that goes away if Toyota's fossil fool supporting GOP minions in congress are successful.

 

I don’t get it, what importance this Toyota being sends a note to dealers is about. Tomorrow maybe they send a different note.

 

But Toyota isn't an energy company.

Japan was supporting hydrogen because research and programs showed that the people didn't want BEVs...powered by lead-acid batteries. The government has come around to the idea that they backed the wrong technology with the advances in battery technology, but the major car companies there still haven't.

Yeah, like the one in the EU that supported sales of PHEVs,, but didn't encourage plugging them in. The resulting PHEVs purchased lead to increased CO2 emissions vs. the cars that would have been purchased without the subsidy in place.

Toyota could take advantage of the lease loophole in the IRA tax credit to sell any plug in in the US. Lack of subsidies is not the reason why Toyota isn't making enough to meet demand now.

Higher CAFE targets would support hybrid, and plug in, sales. It wasn't long ago that Toyota sided against higher ones.

Is the Prius still a luxury model in Brasil?

Good news, we need less than 500 chargers installed a day to meet projected demand.
US needs to build 478 EV charging ports EVERY DAY for eight years at a cost of $35BN to meet demand | Daily Mail Online
Numbers from here, America’s electric-vehicle charging infrastructure | McKinsey

The meet project EVs on the road in 2025, we need 700k Level 2 and 70k fast DC chargers. End of 2022 there were 126k Level 2 and 20k DC, plus 16k from Tesla. The number added in 2022 was greater than was added in 2019 through 2021. Like EV sales, public charger installs will likely also increase in rate.
EV Chargers: How many do we need? - Jan 9, 2023

Toyota has been saying the same thing in different venues for a bit now. There won't be a different note until they have a dedicated BEV platform, and a larger supply of batteries.

 

In USA, electric means full-BEV, "down with hybrids" as fossil fuel users (unethical).
Not sure if that is global politically-correct priority.

 

Finding operational public chargers has also become increasingly difficult nowadays. I no longer want to be duped into parking in an unoccupied charging spot, as it is more likely that the charger is broken.

 

That is good news. I'm actually pretty happy about only being off by a factor of 2.

Now looking at another of @FalconSeven's points:

Why does Toyota need to build any of these chargers? What kind of energy company are they supposed to be?

I mean, I could see them potentially gaining some benefit from vertical integration as it has worked out for Tesla and others, but at the same time it seems wrong to assume that they would go for it.

They've built gas and diesel cars for decades without ever going big on petroleum extraction or refining, after all.

I don't see what's wrong with only providing the cars themselves, and letting energy delivery experts continue to take care of energy replenishment.

 

What kind of software company is toyota? Answer: they're not a software company, but they're investing heavily in software. They're also investing very heavily in subscription services, yet I thought they were an automobile manufacturer, not a services provider.

The landscape is changing, and companies need to adapt. At some point if you go to a chargepoint charger which Mercedes has installed, or flow charger which GM has sponsored, they're going to know that a competitor's EV has rolled up. They're going to give you targeted ads for that EV. They're going to do things I can't even begin to fathom.

Meanwhile, Toyota is going to try to charge you for remote starts. They're very slow to the integration game, and just like their EV, it's a half-assed effort.

 

I can't disagree with that principle.

I don't like the idea of subscriptions for car features but at least I've had a decade of practice ignoring satellite radio to prepare me.

That said, I think Toyota is doing a reasonable job of managing the rate and depth of their own adaptation.

From my reading, they're building higher quality vehicles than GM and they're doing it at a fraction of the price of Mercedes-Benz.

That's still kind of a big deal in my book.

 

Maybe... how's the Bolt stacking up to the bx4z? How's the Lyriq stacking up to the Lexus version of the bx4z?

When you look at just those two comparisons, Toyota is really behind.

 

When I make these comparisons:

BZ4X vs. Bolt: BZ4X is the one that hasn't been discontinued.

Lyriq vs. Lexus: I don't think there's much point in discussing a car that has barely shipped 1,000 units (Lyriq) and is constantly in the press for "quality holds" and software drama. I'll admit that I've never cared for GMs but here even I must show restraint. That platform needs a lot of work before it is fair to compare it to anything.

 

Why not? The Lexus has barely shipped 300 units. Seems fair to me!

 

I'll grant you that it's technically, numerically fair, but I don't see much point in calling a race based on how the competitors looked while rolling across the starting line, not even a lap in.

Besides, they're both luxury cars. Neither is going to amount to real volume. Hopefully they inspire more ordinary EVs that can be produced in the vast volumes the market needs- something I've been saying about almost every EV that has hit the market thus far.

EDIT: adding:

What I'm pushing here is that this isn't a battle of ideas; it's not a meme fight or a proxy situation.

It's about cold hard numbers.

Toyota sells about 1.9 million cars per year in the USA, according to recent history. That's about 5,200 units per day x 365.

A 700-unit deficit vs. Cadillac in a comparison between two fledgling models? That's a minor rounding error. Nobody should care about a piffling little thing like that.

When (if) either Lyriq or Lexus start cracking out 10k units per month, that'll be worth crowing about.

 

That depends on the manufacturer of the charging station.
In 10 years of charging I only ran into trouble charging once. And that one time all I had to do was move to an adjacent charger.

 

Build them and it will come. Toyota doesn't want to sell many plug-ins or they would be.
Build enough rav4 primes and see how it does against the model Y, mach E, EV5, etc.

Toyota's old excuse was there weren't enough batteries so we won't make many plug-ins, hydrogen and hybrids. That is not working out well for them, but have changed CEOs and gotten the big pro hydrogen chairman retired off the board. My hope is they will change. PHEV sales are not growing as fast as BEV sales or the charging networks. THis can easily be lack of availability, but until toyota drastically increases the number of plug-ins we won't know. BMW and VW groups offer phevs and BEVs. I would love to see a phev tundra out there.