Featured Lexus exploring PHEV, full EV and fuel cell versions of LS flagship

How will the needed significant growth be achieved?

Some obviously don't like the Toyota/Lexus approach.

 

I think it's more your approach than Toyota's. You are honestly doing Toyota a disservice by your odd/uncomfortable obsession with their brand and everything they do. I consider myself a huge Tesla fanboy, but can tell you all sorts of things I think they've done wrong. It doesn't seem you have that capability with Toyota. Kind of sad to be honest. What other brands in your life do you bow down and worship?

 

Believing in a phased & diverse approach with a heavy emphasis on affordability is not a disservice.

 

Nah...Toyota is about as outdated as that Galaxy S6 you are still rockin

 

The true colors have come out. That explains why my support for the other automakers doing same thing was omitted.

It's understandable how some see leadership as pushing the envelope, rather than delivering something for the masses. But that's no reason to knock that effort.

Consider how much more difficult it is to appeal to ordinary consumers. They are a far different audience than early-adopters.

 

Same way that hybrid market share has kept up in light of low fuel prices, expansion of available choices. Part of the reason the plug in segment has grown faster than the hybrid one is that there have been multiple choices from the beginning. Honda and Hyundai are showing you don't need to make big sacrifices to passenger and cargo capacity in a PHEV. We just need affordable SUV/crossover choices to the current market demand; the Rav hybrid helped Toyota's hybrid sales here. But that is changing with the Outlander's arrival.

Which is the opposite of significant growth. They needed to be forced into making plug ins, and they still would rather sell hydrogen FCEVs instead.

You can if you remember Toyota can do no wrong.

 

Like I said, short-sighted.

Batteries aren't quite ready yet and fuel-cells are still evolving.

Those 2 technologies will co-exist.

 

delusional

 

The batteries would not have come as far as they have without Tesla, Nissan, and GM bringing cars to market. As I said, Toyota is not a pioneering company, and if everyone waited for batteries to be ready, you wouldn't have two Primes now.

Never said fuel cells couldn't exist without batteries; a FCEV needs one after all. I just think at their development rate, they'll end up as range extenders for plug ins, and they will use some liquid fuel. Toyota's FCEV efforts have been focused on hydrogen for fuel though.

How will significant growth occur for hydrogen powered cars without the refueling infrastructure? Toyota's long term plan for that has been to get others to pay for it.

 

What does "far" actually mean?

Toyota has been pushing the development of affordable air-cooled battery technology all along.

You can't just pretend the chemistry, packaging, and production efforts they pioneered & pursued.

Sounds like the "more range" argument verses the effort to reach affordable markets.

Going out of your way to avoid addressing the COMMERCIAL and SERVICE markets for fuel-cell use is rather blatant cherry-picking.

Focus hasn't ever been and should never be only personal vehicles.

 

Name one thing you think Toyota could improve on.

 

Unless this is intended to be a double-standard, you know all too well I have pointed out quite a number of times the expectation for a battery-pack upgrade mid-cycle.

 

I don't follow. Please explain.

Do you mean for the regular hatchback or for the PHEV? If you mean the PHEV I don't think 4 years for the original PiP was enough time to upgrade mid-cycle.

 

For what purpose? The narrative of me never saying Toyota could ever improve upon something has been broken.

Toyota's platform is a progressive-improvement approach, rather than an end-game approach... bottom-up, rather than top-down... cost/price focused...

Don't post without detail. Since this wasn't included in the previous post, you got a different response.

As for the original PiP... it was a mid-cycle update!

Remember the model that came before it? Only a small number were ever in the hands of ordinary consumers, but on the road used for everyday driving most definitely counts.

 

You are really hard to communicate with. Not sure if it's intentional or not. Could be a little bit of politics in what you say or could be lack of those skills, but either way trying to have an intelligent conversation with you is cumbersome. I'm thinking I should just follow through with my earlier threat of ignoring you. Giving you less of a voice here is probably the best thing for everyone.

 

How many economic, accounting, and advertising classes have you taken? That lack of a strong business background makes communication extremely difficult, if not impossible.

I often find engineers beating their heads up against the wall trying to get their message across but failing to understand when management expects an entirely different means of expressing purpose & process. The reverse is true as well.

For a rude awakening about related issues, I suggest a course in Six-Sigma. This is why I kept repeating "Know your audience" over and over again.

 

Ignore is officially on. My days will now be a little more sane on PriusChat. I encourage others to do the same. If we continue to argue with this troll we give him a bigger voice than he deserves.

 

Huh? A Lexus LS 500:

	model	city MPG	highway MPG	combined MPG
1	2018 Lexus LS 500 AWD	18	27	21
2	2018 Lexus LS 500h AWD	23	31	26
3	2018 Lexus LS 500	19	30	23
4	2018 Lexus LS 500h	25	33	28

I haven't seen mileage like that since our old Voyager minivan or the Plymouth Fury 400. I don't fault nor envy them.

Bob Wilson

 

I am speaking of the cost reductions to batteries through increased production scale. Without Nissan, Tesla, and GM offering plug ins outside of a few compliance markets, and making a demand for lower cost batteries, the battery producers had no reason to invest in increased production, and improving cost.

Without those steady cost reductions since the arrival of the Leaf and Volt, the Prime would not be priced as low as it is. Assuming Toyota brought it to market.

Toyota's main push has been personal car FCEVs. Remember, Toyota's "they don't care for awards and bragging rights" Mirai was the first FCEV available for sale.

Starting larger scale testing in the commercial and service would have made more sense, and even cost less. The building of hydrogen refueling infrastructure would have been more manageable. Where they are targetting within those sectors, local routes, might already be better served by BEVs though. Possibly even short haul truck routes will be claimed by BEVs first.

A long haul FCEV truck has a future, but that is less likely when using hydrogen for the fuel.

The hybrid starts at $80k. This is a belated response to Tesla and the European luxury makes.