Featured Toyota EVs At Tokyo Motor Show

Impressed with Toyota's creativity and imagination in their design department. Entirely not impressed with their willingness to join the rest of the world with real usable electric cars. I have no idea what they're waiting for.

 

I don't think they are just waiting; they are working in several important directions to advance electric propulsion (perfecting batteries, FC, and the hybrid tech).

Looking at the list of Toyota's bestsellers: their money-making strategy is to attract those buyers who want value for money, reliability and low cost of long-term ownership. Do we know about any company that profitably makes affordable, PITA-free EV's for the global market?

 

Join who??

Last year the world produced about 28 million cars. More than 26 million of them were not electric.

We aren’t there yet. Sometimes I get impatient too.

 

just a little correction. China and the US bought 25 million and 17 million light vehicles respectively last year, there were over 100 million light vehicles sold last year. World wide plug-in sales were 2 million vehicles about 2%, china had over 4% of its market go go plug-ins while the US and EU were a little over 2%, other major markets were bellow 2% to get to that average. It is still very small but last year the plug-in market grew 64% world wide. Growth to 5% should be fairly fast, within the next 5 years, and perhaps 15% by 2030. After that it becomes tougher as many places in the world it is difficult to build infrastructure.

Who to join? Tesla, BYD, Renault, BAIC, BMW group, etc.

 

Thanks. It’s not a set of stats I work with on a daily basis, so I appreciate the correction and expansion. I rolled with the first believable figures I got out of the googles.

I don’t think these numbers change the overall truth though: we aren’t there yet.

 

i'm disappointed that toyota has opted to wait for us to 'be there' before jumping in head first, but it is what it is.
for earlier adopters, it has to be another mfg.

 

While switching to EV is inevitable and it doesn't mean they have to reinvent the wheel, it does means they have to reinvent the drivetrain and how the chassis/frame carries the battery packs, which is pretty close to reinventing the wheel. It's going to take 1/2 dozen years to do that an they're only a year or two into it.

 

there's going to be a paradigm shift in motors and transmissions in the next five years

 

A large car company can't "join" Tesla; 16 years into its existence Tesla continues to sell a unique luxury experience to the relatively small cohort of well-heeled buyers. You can't sell this kind of "experience" each year to 10 million people, most of whom need to get from point A to point B in a utilitarian vehicle that they can afford to own, insure and repair - on all 6 inhabited continents.

I also don't know if a global, Japan-based company could "join" the likes of BYD and BAIC. The People's Republic gov't created an artificial market for many Chinese automotive companies to experiment with the EV thing.

I also hope Toyota won't be joining either those who are making overpriced luxury EV's or subsidy-propped borderline useless econoboxes (no company names shall be named here). Instead, I am rather hopeful that Toyota will continue to work on all things electrified and increase the diversity in their hybrid- and PHEV offerings, until such time that the electric powertrain is mature enough to replace the ICE in most automotive applications - which should happen in a few years. In an ideal world BEVs would have a viable non-hydrogen FC range extender option, which would very quickly render the ICE obsolete.

1/2 dozen years why? Isn't it 3-4 years from concept to production?

 

As someone who bought a 2006 Prius new (and still has it), it was viewed of a bit of an expensive purchase then (although to be fair, not luxury). I think Toyota has really let itself fall behind here. 2-4% of a market is not nothing - it's when EVs have enough traction (no pun intended) that Toyota should be driving (no pun intended!) the adoption by bringing an all electric Prius - even if it's a little pricier than it should be, especially at first. What stops me from buying a model 3 is that I don't trust Tesla's quality (and also I want Apple CarPlay). Not Tesla's price. My business partner (who also bought a 2006 Prius with me, and who could afford anything) finally broke down and bought a Model 3

 

i suppose they could join nissan in some type of collaborative venture

 

They’d eat vending machine fugu first

 

they did license them the altima hybrid system for awhile

 

They can't; Nissan fed it all to Carlos

 

I think that was out of desperation, as Nissan didn't have anything for the CARB ZEV program at the time.

Which nearly lead to them being part of FCA.

 

Yeah...we'll be waiting for another 10 or 20 years while someone "perfects" the batteries.
I think that Tesla has proven that current battery technology is good enough. Where you can define good enough however you want for whatever use cases you want to define.
Such as an expensive luxury car with lots of range to a just above mid priced car with good range. To other choices that are a bit more economical.

20 years ago Toyota was "leading" the industry and now they are trailing.
Note that Toyota sells economy cars all the way up to Lexus luxury cars.

Mike

 

No question it’s good enough. But can anyone manufacture them efficiently enough that they can put a usefully sized battery in a car destined to be priced at $16k? And also at $25k? and $30k? I don’t think any EV-maker has proven themselves in the high-volume price range, trophy very much up for grabs.

 

We don't know how long the M3 battery will last, and what it would cost to replace it, or what the resale value of a 3-year old M3 would be in 2021 versus what one paid for it in 2018. With an ICE car these figures are well known and understood.

An average new car buyer globally typically doesn't have $40-50K idling in his/her petty cash jar, so he/she will needs to budget for a car for 5-10 years ahead. The notions I mentioned above will be the main factor in their choice.

Also:

Would the 30-40% winter range loss be acceptable for enough people, who are used for their ICE to drop only maybe 10-15%? Would enough ICE drivers, who are used to spending 5-10 minutes to add 450-500 miles of range, find 3-4 hours over two L3 sessions good enough for a longer road trip? [/QUOTE]

They may be trailing, but they trail with a good dozen electrified vehicles of all kinds of body shapes, sizes and price points.