Featured It turns out that Akio Toyoda was right

That's a perfectly fine viewpoint and strategy. My point was that if economics were your only concern, BEVs and PHEVs aren't the cheapest on average, yet. I didn't buy Avalon purely on whether it was economic or not.

 

you DO realize, don't you? That it's repeated tongue & cheek? In other words it's brought up because Toyota failed to see their plug in audience until many many others had already led the way. Heck, instead of working on a battery Factory now, they could have already had TWO factories up & operational had they spent their hydrogen full cell car R&D money towards that much better endeavor.

Beware my friend, that early version couldn't talk to the mothership. Maybe find one that's 2016 (face-lift version). Even the 2017 were offered with lifetime charging before change of ownership limits were contractually evoked.

#1) China forces manufacturers to have a certain percentage of electrics in their country, unlike in a free world. Otherwise Toyota wouldn't even be allowed to sell there. Thus offers electric micro cars for that market.
#2) 2024 EV sales were led by tesla, allbeit not by much. Sales being -b IIRC, something like 1.71 million versus BYDs 1.6
Sad part is, Tesla could have been farther behind had Toyota been a world leader in the tech, rather than paying Millions for advertising that beds don't work.

Entry level for Tesla mint getting good amounts of profits. You don't do that with teeny cars. That's why they made big cars first. The Tesla 3 falls in the cheaper car price range now. Model 2 will even beat that.
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While I agree, there's been so many crossovers and new designs that blur the boundaries between different vehicle types that I suspect that it is less of a concern than it used to be...

 

The fix is in... To ensure electric cars are never going to be affordable to the common folk they've banned the affordable ones made by BYD for "national security" reasons. So much corruption!

 

Were all of those seatbelts the product of a strategic adversary? That might be a significant difference one can notice as part of a smart and friendly view.

 

Musk declared the Model 2 to be "pointless" (his word) and said that it won't be built. That was in October 2024.

I speculate that he just doesn't want to participate in the entry-level market at all.

To me, Tesla appears to have a history of design decisions which came with some significant bonus expenses in the form of warranty repairs and recalls. Higher unit prices (and emissions credits) have allowed them to profit despite these high costs.

I believe that this leaves Tesla poorly positioned to build any car on competitive margins.

 

I would have bought the New Tesla Roadster over my ZR1...but got tired of waiting. On the flip...I looked at buying the Honda FIT EV back in the day, but was told by Corporate I could only Lease...and had to be the resident of the West Coast.

Hell, I won't even buy a Hybrid unless it's a Toyota...and I did the research.

 

I'll be 82 next month and we have applied for a place at a continuing care community nearer our son and grands' schools. Plan now while we are still able to clean out the house and 50 years of accumulations.

Once there, an electric car with 300 mile range would be more than enough for us. Alas, no chargers in the garage are available or planned and not even 115v circuitry to support them. And none in the parking lot. Could that change in the time it takes for enough people to die and free up an available place (sounds brutal but that the the reality at many such places, our first choice had an expected 15 year wait list!)? So even a PHEV once there is not an option, a hybrid is the best I can do given that I don't want to spend a half day a week at a public charger.

People in apartments and townhouses without garages may be in the same sort of situation. Lack of trivial at the door charging limits the number of both original EV purchasers and used market purchasers to consider EVs. For right now it seems there is a ceiling on EV adoption. It is plugs, not wants or needs.

(I inspect new houses being built in my NC community for my HOA. Not a single one has had a built-in 240 outlet in the garage. No code requirement. Buyer demand could change either the code or builder interest in differentiating his offerings. Haven't seen any houses for sale in the neighborhood advertising charging. Not that there aren't a few EVs, just in this only single family houses community charging hasn't achieved the demand for services that would make high power charging either a requirement or a differentiator. 115s are there on most houses. About 1% solar penetration.)

 

Well, even the affordable gasoline cars are disappearing in the USA. And that and other factors have made used cars expensive here too. So no Chinese cars, no affordable cars, and no EVs means more choices???

 

More choices for rest of the world, US citizens no longer eligible.

 

I have heard Elon has great ideas, but poor execution.

 

The market of those that can charge at home is far from filled.

 

More like he lost his focus and thought being part of a wannabe global dictatorship was more useful. Truth is he executed on electric cars so successfully that he destroyed his competition and created the most massive market value any car maker has ever created. Then he p issed it all away because he couldn't manage his own ego in a sustainable way and other car makers finally started to catch up.

 

He did it or he recognized who to hire to execute his ideas? In the government, ideas on cutting spending is vastly different than actually doing it.

 

I bought a 200k 2006 Gen 2 Prius for cheap. It has ended up needing so much work and money (needs engine, needs HV battery, needs...) that I've given up on it and it has just been sitting in the driveway the past 3 years.

I've bought lots of cheap cars before that didn't need too much work and would keep running. Looking at current options, a 10-year-old Nissan Versa with the stick shift transmission (so as to avoid the infamous CVT) would be cheaper and have fewer problems.

If you know of a mechanic that could swap the engine and battery for cheap in Western Colorado, let me know. Otherwise, I think I need to just dump this Prius and forget owning a second car in the family.

 

Quite a bit happened in the last five years. It's awfully hard for manufacturers to feel the competitive pressure for a good, low cost car when they just had a couple of years of people lining up to buy whatever they could put onto a delivery queue.

 

This is above/beyond the regular strata fee? And you're still paying your electric bill?

 

At one time when I owned a 2017 Prius Prime, I thought about ripping out the ICE, radiator, exhaust, and fuel tank and making it a BEV. Then I got into the details:

• Spare tire conformal battery - would have to make and worse, inside cabin, a risky place to be.
• Custom battery packs - engine compartment, exhaust, and fuel tank
• Fast DC charging - at least 150 kW peak rate
• Whole new set of transaxle control laws

A fun project, a lot of time and money into a Prius body and performance. Efficiency should be Tesla-like BUT no Full Self Driving so I lost interest.

Bob Wilson