Article: Toyota stubbornly sticks with hybrids

i wouldn't say toyota is stubborn, i'd say they want to maximize their hybrid investment.

when bev's are viable, they'll likely be ready to rumble. i'm sure they are watching the market closely.

short of a major geopolitical storm, we'll be in trucks and sun's for quite awhile.

 

When they build abundant supercharger (or DC fast or whatever the manufacturers can agree on a unified standard) stations within the range from my home, I will consider BEV. By then Toyota BEV maybe a reality.

 

Toyota is looking to Japan where they need to sip fossil fuels, but they still need to use fossil fuels wisely because electricty is not any easier for them to make. If USA EV advocates want to say that is unacceptable logic, fine with Toyota.

 

In Japan electricity is mostly domestic nuclear and oil is ALL imported. I would say in this scenario electricity is much better than oil.

Toyota is a favorite target for BEV early adopters for accusations of not working on a BEV (which is not true, BTW. Toyota is introducing a BEV in China next year), but I think all those accusations and mud slinging is not warranted. I believe Toyota knows what they are doing in auto manufacturing business. Hybrid tech is currently the best thing going for the time being. It is mature, high quality, well developed technology that nearly doubles fuel economy of a pure ICE vehicle. For those that can not do on pure electric (for whatever reasons) this is the best case scenario. Now we need to reduce the "hybrid premium" to zero and then most consumer cars will become twice as efficient overnight. Same goes for BEVs. If their cost became similar to "regular" vehicles, their acceptance would increase (as there are more people for whom they will work than currently are using them). For all this to happen battery technology needs to undergo a developmental leap. Like going from vacuum tubes to solid state transistors. Night and day in terms of efficiency and cost. Once that happens electric cars will replace gas burners, but not before. As long as there is disparity between the time it takes to "recharge" a vehicle for a given range, BEVs will be in early adopter or niche stage. For them to actually replace ICE vehicles they need to be better in every way than ICE. And I am talking better in a way that an average consumer cares. Cheaper, more efficient, more reliable, faster, easier to operate. I hate to say this, but very few consumers will care about environmental effects of their vehicle purchase (as proof I give you the current popularity of gas guzzling models). Ideology will not sell cars. Cars better and/or cheaper than current crop of cars will sell cars. Toyota knows this very well and they are doing what needs to be done to keep them on top of today's car makers. I really doubt that they are stagnating. I am sure they are going to come out with a model that sells when and if that opportunity presents itself.

Toyota haters/doubters, please do not worry about Toyota. Toyota will be okay without your advice, I reckon.

 

I am in no way a Toyota hater. Loved our family's Prii when we owned them.
While hybrids are better than 90% of the vehicles out there, they apparently aren't the way forward, at least in the USA.
The hybrid market topped out around 4%, and is currently under 3%. Even if it were the best solution, it isn't all that great if you can't get people buying the cars.

 

Hmmm... I'm sure the article is not at all biased, even though it appears on the Evennex (Tesla aftermarket accessories) website.

 

I would agree USA/Ca Is incentivizing in fact mandating plug-ins and in some places taxing folks extra who buy hybrids.

 

*checks watch...*

Only like 3 more years until a nice used Model 3 shows up in my price range.

 

Interesting. "Toyota stubbornly sticks with hybrids"

Meanwhile, car maker after car maker continues to add hybrid models to their stables.

 

That article is a load of crap in my opinion - starting with "seem to be no limits to the sophistry, lame excuses and misinformation they employ to justify their reluctance to get serious about selling electric vehicles." and including " ... This corporate behavior is not only mean-spirited and counter-productive."

Teslas (and other EVs) are big sellers where they get big tax rebates, favorable HOV lane and other similar treatment, and a suitable driving environment. For me, an EV would have to be a second car, since I can't easily go cross-country or out in the boonies where I can take my PHEV.

Toyota is a global company producing many kinds of vehicles. If they saw an EV market where they could make money, they'd be in it in a heartbeat.

 

Seems a sophomoric rant.

A few quotes, before I lost interest:

stubborn

dragged kicking and screaming

lame excuses and misinformation

wildly successful Prius hybrid

publicly scorned and ridiculed

mean-spirited and counter-productive

self-destructive

running scared

plummeting

no one has been able to explain

 

If Toyota hadn’t been publishing adds spreading FUD about plugins, I might agree.
As for the EV market, as of 2020, it is larger than the hybrid market. Likely in 2019, but to be conservative, let’s say 2020.
Although, they are making an EV for China, mainly because they have no choice in that market.

 

Agree and agree.

Haven't heard much about fuel cells lately either.

 

i think 'el crucero' wrote the article

 

but let's not lose sight of the fact that prime is only selling where you get 10k off, or hov access

 

After Fukushima, nuclear became persona non grata in Japan, and before that, residential electric supply was low power in about half the country. So home charging a BEV isn't viable for many. In addition to that, their public experiment into BEVs during the EV1 era came to the conclusion that only short range BEVs will be excepted. Which isn't a wrong one to draw when many of the BEVs offered at the time used lead-acid, and cutting edge battery tech was NiMH.

That is no longer the case, except Japan's institutions are mostly stuck thinking past results still apply, and thus why hydrogen FCEVs are being supported there.

The hybrid premium can never be reduced to zero, for the same reasons that the bigger car premium can't be. Fuel costs to the consumer need to be high enough that they can justify paying for the premium, or hybrid systems need to be mandated.

This year, a BEV's total ownership costs, in Europe, could equal that of a traditional car.

They are also adding PHEVs at the same time. In some cases, the car maker, like Volvo, doesn't have a non-plug hybrid available.

We might be reaching the end of the line for power-split hybrids. The majority of new hybrids coming to market use parallel systems; they may have a cost advantage. Power-splits may have the advantage for a PHEV, in providing a full EV experience without shifting, but only if hybrid efficiency is top priority. Otherwise, a series hybrid system is cheaper.

 

I thought of that, too, after I posted. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

Saw the article, a real shame, a company as large as Toyota refusing to look forward and insisting on looking backward. In a weird way, reminds me of Sony for years steadfastly standing only by Betamax while the majority of the world went VHS.

The Prime is a gateway car to full EV. It's a gentle push for those who can't, or don't want to yet, get a full EV car.

I don't know about any of you, but the longer I use my Prime, the more I'd like a full EV car, especially over the last few months, when my driving habits were abnormal (only short local occasional drives that could be all on EV). Let alone filling the tank, I only had the ICE COME ON ONCE over the last half year. Of course that will soon change, and I'll be back to driving a more typical SoCal commute (25% EV, 75% gas if it's 100 miles round trip)... but the last few months spoiled me to EV.

I can tell you that after I keep my Prime for 12 years or so (my average) I'm not going to want to go backwards to a gas car or regular hybrid. I'd wager that 10 years from now EV will be much more the norm. Maybe like Sony eventually had to do, Toyota will finally be forced to throw in the towel when everyone starts buying EV Hyundais, Kias, VWs, Chevys, BMWs, instead.