Featured Long-Range EVs Are The Antithesis Of Efficiency And Sustainability

We’ll have to agree to disagree on this:

• Salt oceans - have everything needed. A little expensive to mine but huge quantities.
• Increase prices and there are clever people who will find and supply.

Bob Wilson

 

maybe 1½ decades ago, it was Art spinella who was commissioned to "prove" that a Hummer was more clean than a Prius from Cradle to grave
Prius Versus HUMMER: Exploding the Myth - The Car Connection
........ deja vu
all we ever learn from history is that we never learn anything from history.
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If you are retired and still want the freedom to go where you want to go and afford, you want a car with Tesla+SuperCharger performance.

Bob Wilson

 

What was the wrong lithium chemistry they backed?

 

if hybrids were selling, i'd agree they might be a faster way to co2 reduction. but even then, the article is wrong, he starts with a false premise

 

That would explain Toyota's comments about them not feeling Li-ion was safe. Of course, everybody else using a Li-ion traction pack were using stabler chemistries, at the time.

 

except boeing...

 

Maybe they would do better making cars.

 

yes, i'm often very parochial. hybrids not selling here, ev's are selling here. demand is more important than supply.
toyota once said, 'no one is knocking on our door, asking us to build a bev'. i think if they looked at sales, they might overcome their deafness.

cue john1701 to tell us that dealers create demand, and dealers don't want to sell bev's. well, that's a problem. another check for tesla. i guess they knew it before anyone else.

worldwide, that's good news

will rav4h change the dynamic? i hope so, but i'm concerned it will only make up for more lost prius sales.

meanwhile, tesla is crushing it. and i think other bev's would do better with more models and availability

 

that link was from a decade ago. Iirc, at that time, Toyota was using nickel metal hydride, a much more costly (per Lb of kWh's & weight) than modern day lithium.
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Part of the demise of diesel is that Toyota stopped offering them in Europe.

 

I agree with your characterization of Seeking Alpha writers.
However, it is also true that highly paid analysts also make some of the same "mistakes" or try to manipulate the market with the same "facts."

Mike

 

Well again we should not appeal to the authority of peterson, he has been incorrect a lot in the past and it is with this same idea, that battery capacity can not be greatly increased without battery costs shooting up a great deal. Or even a stupider idea that we can't ever make enough batteries. He was making this argument in 2012 as you can see from my previously linked article. Again going to likely battery usage in the next decade Bloomberg estimates that we will use less than 1% of raw materials like lithium in battery production as battery costs will continue to shrink. Now toyota is in a little of a bind 3 years ago they were telling everyone plug-ins wouldn't sell so they did not invest in either partnering for battery production or building their own. It takes about 3 years to get battery production up. They have changed there tune. Car design takes about 5 years so it will take about 5 years from whenever they started to get there act together and sell a lot of plug-ins. Until then they need to push what they have production for which is hybrids with plenty of nimh production, as they are selling many fewer hybrids than they were in 2013.
Toyota Concedes Defeat On Battery Cars, But Will Hedge With Hybrids, Fuel Cells

Absolutely solid state batteries may be the next step. Panasonic toyota's partner said last year it would take a decade to commercialize. That means around 2028 at the earliest. I am glad toyota is pushing ahead with some of today's technology to build 1M plug-ins a year by 2025. I say plug-ins even though toyota says plug-ins and fuel cells because we all know toyota will be producing less than 100,000 fcv in 2025, and it may be in the few thousands a year that they are doing today. This is a big speed up, and means they are not waiting for solid state to join others in the plug-in market place in a big way. In the mean time tesla is planning on using maxwell technology to increase energy density of their cells to 300 wh/kg. A european battery company has a demo battery with inorganic electrolyte that they claim won't need fire protection and will get to 1000 wh/kg in a bev. That wouldn't be in a car until the 2025 timeframe. We don't know what is coming but we do know battery prices will fall and they will become lighter for similar energy levels. Its a trend that has been happening for over 100 years.

Innolith Battery Strikes at 'Flammable' Lithium-Ion: Q&A | BloombergNEF

 

The pollutant of concern with the recent cheating was NOx. It is bad, but not a carcinogen. The particulates are, but DPFs have gotten levels from diesel cars down below that of gas cars. If the EPA limits for particulates were applied to gasoline vehicles, many would need exhaust filters too.They've delayed implementation, but Europe will be requiring them. Toyota's complicated, port and direct injection system on their new engines is an attempt to avoid needing an exhaust filter.

Diesel had an easy ride in Europe. Emission regulations for it and gasoline are less strict than in the US, who penalizes diesels more. Europe also had lower taxes on diesel. They did switch to ULSD years before we did in the US, which lowered particulates and other emissions in the existing fleet. If their regulators hadn't been beholden to their auto industry, diesel emission control technology would be farther along.

But that didn't happen, and much of the car companies there cheated to some degree. VWs may have been the lowest offenders there. that created a public backlash, but diesels still sell. The backlash is only part of the reason why Toyota hybrid sales are growing. The other is that Toyota selling them, so past diesel customers' choice was gas, hybrid, or go to someone else.

Note that research group saying hybrids are the best way of lowering carbon emissions also say switching non-hybrid gas cars to diesels is another good tactic.

Personally, I think diesels have better options from switching to renewable fuel.

Or it moves Japan's carbon emissions to Australia.

A kilogram of hydrogen is currently under $10 in Japan. The amount that is renewable or used carbon sequestering for that price is unknown, nor what subsidies. So the question is how much will this sequestered CO2, dirty coal source increase the price.
[Hydrogen Korea] Japan paves way for hydrogen future, but public unconvinced

Japan's original plan of running electrolyzers with nuclear power was much better. The plants could have been run at peak efficiency for longer periods, and there would be less pollution and damage from mining and transportation of materials.

 

That plus super-capacitor technology would really help in the super cold winters, it gets to -20C and a few meters of snow and ice each season. Imagine 500 mile recharge in 15 minutes while heating your car and it’s snowing... and your car has a built-in mocha dispenser... well that depends on the subscription