Featured 2 New Toyota Hybrids To Be Revealed May 18

Seeing Toyota's roll out rate of hybrids globally, I don't think their lack in Europe can be wholely blamed on the diesel scandal. Their diesels weren't as popular as others, is that VW's fault too?

 

Toyota's special sauce has been its hybrids. They have always been better than hybrids from other companies, particularly the European makers. Toyota did sell diesels. It had to because customers, deceived by VW, demanded them. Toyota's diesels were not best of class, while its hybrids were. Its diesels also had excessive emissions, like those from other makers. The diesel lies eliminated the sales benefit of Toyota's superior low-emissions, low carbon tax hybrids. Once those lies were exposed, Toyota/Lexus hybrid sales grew quickly in Europe, jumping 42% in 2016 to surpass North America as their best market region outside of Japan. That sales bump should have come 6 or more years earlier.

 

IIRC, Toyota's diesels in Europe were BMW's. In Japan, one of the most thermally efficient(higher than the engine in the Camry hybrid) diesel in a car is made by Toyota, and is available in a SUV.

European policy focused on carbon emissions for years; they've been concerned with global warming since the '80s. It was a concern and regulated before the Prius existed. Diesels were the only option for lower carbon emissions, and in a limited battery scenario, mild hybrid diesels beat out full hybrid petrols on that front. While Europe had concerns about other diesel emissions, and they went to ULSD way before the US, regulators weren't willing to push for the advanced emission controls sooner.

They have separate emission limits for diesel and petrol. Then their old emission test was at low speeds and engine loads. It was farther removed from how cars are actually driven on road s than the EPA. Petrol cars exceeded the NOx limits when tested with on board instruments. Diesels did worse, but VW may have been among the cleaner diesels in Europe.

But that has nothing to do with this simple point. While there were many victims to VW's diesel cheating, it was not the sole reason Toyota's hybrids weren't selling well in Europe. That market got less hybrid choices than the US. Where hybrids do outsell diesel cars, and did so at a time before stricter diesel emissions and diesel fuel was cheaper. that's because the only diesel options in the US that wasn't a high priced luxury model were one or two VW's.

Yes, Toyota had more hybrid models available in Japan, but they never exported them. You can say it was because of cheating diesels in Europe, but can you provide evidence that it wasn't hybrid incentives outside of Japan weren't as generous as in the home country. Toyota has been moving slowly to having all their models be a hybrid. They've expanded the number of hybrid models in the US despite our fuel prices being cheap before the oil crash. If VW hadn't been caught, do you truly believe Toyota would not have increased the number of hybrid models in Europe too?

 

Euro6 allows higher NOx for diesels (80 vs 60 mg/km) and higher CO for petrol. Petrol cars almost never exceed their lower NOx limit in the many ADAC ecotest results I have looked at. Diesels, even after 2016, almost always vastly exceeded their higher limit until Euro6d came in. VW diesels, prior to 2015, were very high in real-world NOx emissions and so were many other diesels. Only after the fraud was exposed did VW diesels become among the cleaner diesels.

Toyota has always been a minor brand in Europe. The European makes are well entrenched. Toyota's hybrids were a chance to grow market share. It was hard to grow share when they had to compete with diesels cheating on the rules.

European countries may not have had hybrid incentives but they did (and still do) have significant CO2-based vehicle taxes to encourage people to buy fuel-efficient cars. Diesels, hybrids and conventional petrol cars qualified for low taxes if their CO2 test results were good. In practice, the low-tax vehicles were diesels and hybrids, usually in the popular small hatchback style. The diesels were cheating, both in NOx levels and CO2 levels. The hybrids should have had the low-tax category to themselves.

Dieselmakers lied to regulators and lobbied for lax test cycles. They gamed the tests and some, such as VW group, cheated by recognizing test conditions and adjusting emissions to pass. Then they lied to customers, convincing them that diesels were environmentally friendly and spreading misinformation about hybrids. The immense success of diesels in Europe was based on falsehoods while the only truly conformant, low-emission mass-market cars were hybrids. By the time the fraud had fully unwound, plug-ins were common in the low-tax category. Even that was a cheat since people often didn't plug-in their PHEVs and therefore emitted more CO2 than expected for their tax category.

Direct-injection petrol cars also often failed to properly meet Euro6 tailpipe particle count limits in real world driving. Toyota's hybrids had to compete with both TDI and GDI cars that flouted the rules. Toyota's hybrids did properly conform to all emissions limits while having lower average CO2 than comparable diesels in real-world user reports on spritmonitor.de. But the cheaters prospered until they were caught (and for years after that).

 

IT's not the cheating itself, but it's more strict emsission controlling with RDE, the question is would Europe have the same regulation or not, probably not that strict as it's today, but still diesels couldn't be just the old simple engines that run 500k km problem free.

It was these factors:
- When you count in emission treatment in diesel engine then you have higher cost, Toyota hybrid becomes cost effective alternative
- Styling and driveability. Toyota made great comeback in desirable car styling and dynamics of the drivetrain.
- Electrification press, all the manufacturers are one way or another promoting electrification, it's all over the place. And a buyer is seriously looking into it, no matter the brand. But in the end there are not many products to choose from and when you factor in reliability fears then Toyota sticks out even more.

 

Toyota is (2nd place after the winner Tesla) the company with less emissions in Europe. It may not be fined for exceeding emissions, all others will.

The CO2 timebomb: how manufacturers are failing to meet 2021's 95g/km target | CAR Magazine


It has low volume sports cars, LandCruisers and Hiluxes but the hybrid passenger cars - more than half the sales - offset easily.

 

It doesn't make sense to put Tesla in the same category as legacy automakers. In fact, that does a disservice to those trying to be objective about approach. Tesla doesn't have to address change. All the others do.

That lack of constructive perspective is why Toyota didn't join the push to adopt CA rules. They are well aware of the litigation waste which comes about from each state trying to do that on their own, one at a time. It simply makes no sense not to do it on the national level... an approach that should be obvious now that the pandemic responses are also suffering from resource waste caused by divided efforts. Toyota also knew this administration was too selfish and too stupid to be able to actually pull off an EPA deregulation effort. And sure enough, there are court fights already emerging from the haphazard method and blatantly false claims.

By Toyota getting overlooked and labeled as second, it really isn't all that bad. They are doing exactly what they set out to do... phaseout traditional vehicles. The challenge comes from avoiding the Osborne Effect. You don't want to shot your dealers by offering something so amazing, it creates a supply/demand problem. This is why we have been getting a series of new rollouts all within the same year... each a notable, but somewhat modest with regard to technology impression (though what's hidden is quite amazing). In fact, this is the very reason for settling on 8 kWh for Prius Prime. Something too amazing would have had a negative impact on the rest of the fleet.

Getting back to Tesla, total worldwide sales last year were very close to Camry in just the United States. Not having tax-credits to subsize Tesla sales anymore and the reality of how much dramatically larger Toyota is, there is nothing constructive about comparing approaches. They are far too different. Fortunately, they do share the same overall objective. Both are striving to reduce emissions.

 

tl;dr I'm not defending the cheating, but blaming it solely for Toyota past sales in Europe simplistic.

Europe set standards to fit the technology, not a one size fits all approach. Many petrol cars would struggle to meet the diesel's CO limits. The real issue is with the regulators being too cozy with the diesel industry, but then Ford got off lighter than Hyundai here.

ICCT, the organization the funded the test that caught VW, research showed petrols exceeding their NOx limits. Not as greatly as diesels, but I already said that.

The Toyota Europe site lists about 15 named models. In the '90s, the number was about the same, but with 4 hybrid choices versus today's 9, and only two of those 4 where made in the EU, so didn't have tariffs inflating their price against the competition. The hybrids were selling well enough that Toyota has continued offering them while their counter part in the US was cancelled, and one in Canada. A third was replaced by the Corolla in hybrid and ICE forms, and the fourth is the Prius.

You are saying Toyota wanted to grow market share in Europe with hybrids, but they just gave up because of the entrenched diesel market. Instead of expanding their hybrid choices, Toyota opted to just go along and sell diesels. Did they just go along with the cheating too? Was Toyota just waiting for diesel to stumble before introducing more hybrids? Yeah, the cheating made their job harder, but don't act like the lack of choice and lower public education on hybrids didn't have a part too play.

Prius sales have taken a nosedive the US with the lower fuel prices over the past few years. the only reason the hybrid segment hasn't followed is because there is a lot more hybrid choices on the market.

You know you was direct victim of VW's cheating; affordable diesel cars in North America. How long has it been between Mazda announcing a diesel option for the US and finally offering one? Six, seven years? the Mazda6 was going to have a diesel option when SkyActiv came out. One even raced in stock classes. Mazda couldn't figure out how VW was passing emissions while maintaining performance and efficiency though. The same thing happen years before that with the Accord, but Honda just cancelled the entire US diesel plans. At the time their small diesels were some of the best in the world. Diesels can be clean and efficient. The BMW tested alongside the VW's during their capture showed that.

That would be government picking the winner.

If low CO2 emissions per mile is the goal, why does it matter how it is done? There are diesel cars that are clean and efficient, and there petrol cars that are too. Then not all hybrids are efficient, and many aren't clean as the Prius. The old LS was only rated 20mpg EPA. The Ram 1500 is now a hybrid, and Ford cheated on their hybrid numbers.

Early in the era of regulating car emissions, Honda had cars that passed the tests of the time without a catalytic converter. The law dictated to use of a cat. So Honda had to install one. Raising the car's price, and wasting precious metals.

Toyota lobbied Congress to have the minimum battery pack size for the plug in credit lowered to include the PiP. They likely sent a lot behind the scenes for 'cash for clunkers'. They blamed customers for oil sludging issues in engines with a design defect. they call their hybrids 'self-charging' while spreading misinformation about BEVs. They lobbied California to give hydrogen FCEVs more ZEV credits so that they could sell fewer clean,zero emission cars to meet requirements. Meanwhile, many PiP and Prime buyers got the cars just for the HOV sticker, with no intention of charging.

Some port injected cars have exceeded the particle limits imposed on diesels. Europe at least acknowledges that all cars emit particulate pollution with a law on the books(don't know if it is in effect yet). These damaging particles from gas cars get deeper into the lungs than diesel ones, because of their smaller size. The US just turns a blind eye to it. Diesels with a working DPF emit fewer particles than even hybrids; just compare the tailpipes.

The preliminary research surveys the EPA did for the changes to the test in 2008 showed that the test under reported the MPG for diesel cars. they did not correct that with the changes. We all have our biases. The US was concerned with smog, Europe with carbon, and their policies show that. Being resource poor with dense cities, japan is concerned with smog and efficiency, but their annula car inspectes encourages a higher turn over rate for new cars in order to support their car companies.

Europe has a growing smog problem, and the public wants it fixed. Paris shutting down to cars was global news before the cheating was caught, and I see that it happened last year too. With car bans going up in other cities, the diesel makers and regulators were going to have to address NOx, or watch the public turn to hybrids.

Air quality stations in London were detecting benzene. that comes from gasoline, so worsening air pollution wasn't just a diesel issue. The emission regulations for both are lax in comparison to those in the US. Euro6 is close, but still a tad worse than EPA Tier 2, be sure to convert units. The neither test is truly representative of how cars are driven. Adjusting test results for window sticker fuel economy is easy math versus doing the same for what came out the tail pipe.

 

You mean Direct Injected?

Remember benzene is also present in gas phase and the soot from diesel exhaust, not solely from gasoline component evaporation or unburnt HC.

 

Hopefully my statement was taken more as a question..........as it was intended, and not knowledge of what Toyota is thinking or doing. Not rhetoric for me, but a statement as a question as to Toyota's intentions.

 

The chart shows Toyota doing well but the text never even mentions them. It says "...politicians have exacerbated the situation with some blanket criticism of diesel particulate and nitrogen dioxide emissions, failing to point out the marked improvement in the latest engine tech." Clearly the author is a diesel fan, blaming the increase in CO2 emissions partly on governments discouraging diesel and never mentioning the serious health problems diesel emissions continue to cause throughout Europe. He quotes a Kia exec: ‘But HEV will not fix the problem – you need to get into plug-in vehicles as well,’ warns Martins." Well Toyota is doing very well with almost no plug-ins. If carmakers had focused on hybrids instead of diesels over the last 20 years they could have easily met the CO2 regulations. Now carmakers are scrambling to bring out plug-in hybrids to meet the regulations. Customers will buy them but many will fail to plug them in. Companies will add PHEVs to their fleets to reduce CO2 taxes but the drivers won't bother to charge them. The much-vaunted plug-in hybrids, when not charged, will achieve mileage comparable to conventional petrol cars. Toyota hybrids get great mileage all the time with no need for cooperation from the driver.

He also does not understand what a "mild hybrid" is. For him, any non-plug-in hybrid is called a "mild hybrid". Toyota's highly engineered full hybrids are conflated with the simple 48V fan belt assist systems. (Mild hybrids can be a good simple solution but Toyota's full hybrids are in a different category in my opinion).

The author also states "...the more efficient diesel emits around 15-20% less CO2 than a petrol engine". This continues the lie that diesel is best and fails to mention that a petrol-powered, Toyota full hybrid emits less CO2 on average than a comparable diesel. (According to spritmonitor, a post-2018 Corolla Hybrid averages 5.25 l/100km vs 5.83 for a diesel Golf. Non-plug-in Prius averages 4.47). Even looking at spritmonitor results for "Corolla Hybrid" illustrates the confusion customers have. Sixteen of the respondents thought they owned a "plug-in hybrid gasoline" car, even though there is no such thing now as a plug-in Corolla.

In Europe, auto industry writers continue to stack the deck against Toyota hybrids and, based on some of the comments, readers follow their guidance. Don't get me started on the SMMT!

 

Of course. There are always many factors and product selection is definitely one. But Toyota had the best low-emission technology and was hurt by the various frauds carried out by European carmakers.

I think you mean the 2000's. Time flies.

Obviously Toyota never gave up. They continued to push their hybrids. But everyone wanted a diesel at that time thanks to trickery by other carmakers.

A CO2 tax is fairer than a hybrid incentive. Any technology achieving good CO2 gets the incentive. However a vehicle that does not meet pollution laws should never be brought to market. If cheating diesels had been banned, that would have left hybrids as the only choice for a buyer in Europe wanting an affordable, low-tax, efficient car. Adding better emissions systems to the diesels available in 2009-2015 would have made them less competitive against hybrids. Obviously some hybrids are better than others. Only those that truly perform well in CO2 should get a tax break. Slapping a hybrid badge on it is not good enough. Neither is slapping on a plug that no-one uses. In many of these countries, fleet sales are a major part of total sales. Companies buy the cars and provide them to their employees. The car is chosen based on the company's needs (e.g. lowest possible CO2 tax) and not based on the employee's driving patterns and ability to charge at home.

It is true that DPFs have been very effective in reducing tailpipe particle emissions since they were mandated, although DPFs bring their own problems with reliability and regen. Small particles are more of a problem with direct injection than with port injection. I believe that is one reason Toyota was slow to bring in direct injection, despite its value in reducing CO2. Their newer dual port/direct injection engines solve this and also solve the reliability problems from intake manifold carbon build-up. Particle emissions can be measured in g/km or in particle count. When the particles are small, a car can have low g/km of particles but still have a large number of dangerous small particles. Euro6 has always included a particle count limit and Toyota's port injected engines always met that limit without needing particle filters. Hyundai's Ionic Hybrid using direct injection did not, at least in real-world driving, and many other GDI engines also emitted over the particle count limit.

Europe has had a smog problem since the diesel boom. In Sept 2015 I went on tdiclub.com to see the reaction to the dieselgate fraud. Americans were saying "smog hasn't been much of a problem lately, what's the big deal". Europeans were saying "our air has not been good lately, maybe this is why". Despite the recent improvement in diesel emissions, millions of older diesels continue to spew death and disease on the streets of European cities. Toyota hybrids continue to beat the latest diesels in NOx. But diesel supporters say things like "current diesels are cleaner than ever before". There is still no such thing as a clean diesel. Using those two words together perpetuates a lie.

 

So we had Prius until March 26, 2019, when we traded in our last Prius, a Prime. The operating costs I pay for the Std Rng Plus Model 3 is ~50% of the Prius Prime. Compared to ordinary cars, the Prius Prime was ~60% of what we used to pay for our ICE cars.

Bob Wilson

 

No, port. Some tested have exceeded the limits imposed on diesels that resulted in DPFs. DIs emit more, and i don't know of any pure DI that doesn't exceed that limit.

Your posts here are reading like the cheating was the sole reason Toyota hybrids not exceeding earlier in Europe.

Specially at 3 am. Again.

 

Port injected SI engines fully vaporize the fuel before ignition (concept wise), PM emitted remain very low.
Can you provide us a link?

 

Diesel Maker: When it's cold out, we might have to turn off the emission controls to avoid damaging the engine.
Regulator: We don't want people's cars breaking down. How cold excaltly?
DM: Mmm, 10 degrees Celcius(50F)
R: Brrr, that's chilly without a jacket. Okay, turning off emission controls at that or under is fine.

I love it! But there was also:

Regulator: Aren't diesel fumes dangerous?
Diesel Maker: Don't worry about that, we have it under control. We will pass the tests
Meanwhile Toyota was saying: Cars in the 21st century should have low emissions

There is lots of blame to go around.

I think the time for diesel in cars is past even if it can technically be improved. HEVs still have a few years in the sun to lead us to an EV future.

 

port injectected gasoline (assume that SI means spark ignited gasoline blend engines) definitely produce PM depending on compression and temperature and fuel quality.

I assume the toyota dynamic force engines (di + pi) produce very low pm even though they have high compression (13:1-14:1) since effective compression is much lower with late closing of intake valves. I'm sure they monitor the temperature range to provide cooled egr or lower effective compression or both in operating regions that would produce particulates. These operate as pure port injection at low effective compression because the directionly injected gasoline would not have time to mix. With direct injection cools the charge by evaporation in the cylinder which lowers the temperature of the compressed charge of similar power versus port injection if it has time to mix properely.

 

As I recall, the 2.5 liter Toyota engine that was first installed on the 2016 Toyota Tacoma has both direct and port injection.

 

Yeah, strange, strange strategy, to equip just the lower levels with a spare. In this case the substitute is run-flats; I thought they'd fallen out of favour? Maybe just me, but a total deal-breaker; I want a spare.

2020 Sienna Specifications - Toyota Canada