Featured It turns out that Akio Toyoda was right

It’s all experimental for Toyota. They’ll have a fine longer range bev when they feel the time is right.
By then, we might be driving shorter range vehicles with many more charging stations and faster charging

 

Maybe even the ever elusive solid state traction pack

 

Toyota is not the only one working on solid-state batteries, but they are still a long way from being practical and economically viable.

 

Toyota seemed to use to keep their cards close to their vest. There may be others that are doing better in that philosophy.
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Yup, just a hype machine like gm et al

 

Not completely hype. The solid-state battery technology proved much harder to realize than people thought. The problem is that the since the cell is solid, the layers tend to separate when you cycle, which results in premature cell failure. They squeeze the cells with metal plates to keep them under high pressure and things in contact, but that is also problematic and adds considerable amount of extra weight to the battery. They have a long way to achieve cells that cycle for a long time under high current densities. Moreover, the technology is a lot more expensive than the conventional lithium-ion technology. To make matters worse, conventional lithium-ion technology is now performing almost as good as the solid-state battery technology was touted, and it keeps improving—at a much lower cost.

 

Not according Toyota's boastfulness what, a year ago or so?

 

Akio Toyota may be smarter than the average bear :

"(Akio )Toyoda completed his undergraduate degree in law at Keio University and was awarded his Masters of Finance at Babson College, Massachusetts.[5][6][7] He would join the family business in 1984."

2021_World_Car_Person_of_the_Year.pdf

Akio Toyoda Honored as Newsweek’s ‘World’s Greatest Auto Disruptors’ Executive of the Year - Toyota USA Newsroom

Toyota President Akio Toyoda Honoured with Prestigious 'Issigonis Trophy' by Autocar Magazine - Toyota Media Site

 

This explains his technical leadership at Toyota. Simply declare something to be 'the solution', like hydrogen fuel cells, and problem solved. No need for chemistry or physics,

The same happened at my former employers, General Electric and Boeing, and to a greater or lessor degree, SAIC. Four function accountants took over the company, chased off their engineers who'd invented the products they sold, and the companies, stockholders, and employees paid the price. It is why when Elon got distracted, I decided to sell my TSLA stock.

Bob Wilson

 

Excellent-
Let's use stock value and performance as a measure.
Comparing Boeing, GE and Toyota Stock =.........?

I was an employee at Toyota for 30 years.
I worked under his leadership during some of that time as all Toyota employees did.
I also own Toyota stock as well as many other automotive companies stock under index funds.
Toyota ADR fund was one of our choices in the 401k and the individuals who chose to invest there did outstandingly well.

I also got to hear him speak and look directly into his eyes when he visited TMMK.

He is a good man.

No complaints from a former employee and Invester here.

Toyota president addresses Kentucky plant workers

 

Distracted? Perhaps.
Perhaps not. One can visualize connecting the dots between all of the companies he's developing / nurturing. If you make EVs, you need electricity. If you need electricity you can use PV solar. If you need infrastructure, you ought to create fast charging locations. If it's more economical to update & diagnose cars wirelessly, you could have greater success with a worldwide satellite system. If you had your own Rockets, you could promote / populate your satellite system. Your satellite system could be used to talk to your cars.
Seeing the regularity of connecting the dots makes it possible to see a nexus with Twitter X.
Even liberal Zuckerberg has spoken how his social platform was pressured by leftist FBI Biden Administration to peomote/cancel speech. Is it a stretch to think the same thing wasn't going on during Jack dorsey's reign?
If viewpoint is scuttled, when you're running / juggling /creating lots of businesses, Do You Really want your ideas squashed by one political side, regardless of which side one is on? The SEC, right or wrong, went after musk for thoughts & words, as well as other political entities. Gavin newsom's environmenral policy were retarding SpaceX development just as those similar environmental policies certainly promulgated fires in SoCal. Theory ? Worth discussing? Worth squashing? On the one hand we seem to acknowledge that the best way to defeat bad speech is with more speech ..... rather than validating / promulgating cancel culture. Perhaps Twitter X fits nicely into the development of other projects? Assuring he can speak without getting canceled?
So, Musk sided with someone he finds less creepy then the opponent. Time will tell.
Disclaimer; all Tesla stock sold last year.

 

And the ability to control what dissenters say

 

or at least rebut

 

Twitter is also about his original goal of an everything app. The first company that merged with Thiel's to form Paypal. It was called x,com.

 

Not only that but he has now ultimately proved to be an idiot instead of the once-perceived inventor—not smarter than the average guy.

Are you going to follow Sheryl Crow’s footsteps?

 

And, @bwilson4web, it looks like your city is facing a bleak future under the new administration (not that I think this is not the case for any part of the US).

As Trump slashes federal jobs, Alabama’s ‘Rocket City’ braces for impact—The New York Times

 

Thank you for the gloom and doom that has nothing to do with the Ops topic

 

I'm so glad I moved my automotive stock into a roof top solar project.

Bob Wilson

 

I’m glad I chose the bolt over the tesla, I had no idea

 

I've rotated wheels on Tesla 3 (that was a learning experience...), and managed to also "turn it on", and back it in/out of garage. My take: most everything on that car feels like it was handed down from on high, by some alien presence. I'm sure the designers were told the expression "clean slate" more than once, and it shows.