Toyota and Lexus Still Hating on Plug-Ins and EVs

5% of the country has a long commute; split into three groups.
There are the long distance commuters with distances of 50 miles or more. The extreme commutes of 90 minutes or more. Then the mega ones that or both long distance and extreme.

 

in the metro boston area, there are a ton of commuters from western mass, rhode island, new hampshire and cape cod. i have no idea if there are numbers anywhere. are most cities like that?

 

Hill you are battling small numbers. In 2014 there are 253M cars averaging 11.4 years. In 2009 about 208M-213M drivers, averaging 1.88/household.

I would ignore the over an hour statistic it was from smaller samples. I would look at the 2.2 M stat of commuters that had distances over 50 miles, and look at the stat that of the commuters over 60 minutes 23% took public transportation, and 12.8% carpooled. Give it a 1% of drivers commute over 50 miles in one direction in their own car as a high estimate. That means less than 1% of households have as a reason long commute to not get a 200+ mile range EV for one of their cars.

 

agreed .... which means the minority of that minority who might consider long distance commutes in a plugin should hardly cause this Toyota engineer to start ringing his hands with concerns of pulling down the grid. It's almost as though he's trying to cause fear for no reason.

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The Leaf I test drove today had sticker price over $31k but it was an S with plastic wheelcovers which I don't like. I wouldn't be able to take advantage of the tax credit to my knowledge.

 

not having a dog in the hunt is a pretty good reason.

 

I think those are referred to as super commutes. Not time or distance attached to the definition. Just the crossing of county lines to commute into a metro area.

Many metro areas are like that, and there are reports with the numbers. The San Francisco area has the highest number of mega commuters at 2% of its commuting public.

 

One of the only times I would consider a lease is with EVs.
New technology which is growing fast.
And by leasing, you still get the benefit of the rebate even if you don't qualify.
I know a few Leaf owners that are paying less or the same for the lease as they used to pay for gas.

 

the problem is the price and lack of real estate for the amount of people working in the city. a fairly poor mass transit system, and water on one side.

 

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Chief Toyota engineer for fuel cells and Lexus marketing guy that is losing sales to plug-ins both have dogs in the hunt. They both look better if they can make plug-ins look worse, without looking like they are being totally false and lying. THe lexus guys have already apologized twice.

The ct200h versus i3-rex or tesla - road trip LA to vegas, definitely a likely scenario. What is unlikely is removing the gas filer door of the i3 which is what the ad approved by lexus did to try to explain why the bmw driver didn't simply fill up with gas. Unlikely also is a group of 4 guys deciding to go in the borrowed plug-in when they and their wives all have ice vehicles, or that they would get leant an i3-bev for the trip. Tesla going on the trip pretty easy.

The toyota engineer's assumption of superchargers that can charge at 500 kw in the future is fine. Pretending that it will happen fast, and break the grid is simply wrong. Its a simple engineering problem that just costs money. Until then tesla's 135kw superchargers that work fine with the grid are fast enough for most plug-in drivers. The problem is most people don't have cars that can charge on the supercharger network because its expensive. Fuel cell guys don't like to talk costs because it's much less expensive per likely car than hydrogen fueling stations.

 

agreed. i meant they don't have a dog in the ev hunt.

 

The commute numbers in time and distance also cover people using mass transit. It isn't just single person cars.
But those are the basic problems for many metro commutes.
The fact that they are a small part of the commuter population does make the likelyhood of someone having to fast charge their BEV for everyday driving extremely unlikely.

 

Still confused about why the Toyota engineer made that statement of filling a 500km EV in 12 minutes is equivalent to what 1,000 houses use.

Was he trying to make me feel guilty because in the 80 minutes it took to fill my PiP I could have ran my refrigerator for over a day? Or when 2 Liebert 181 kWh chillers are fired up just to cool a data center they use enough electricity for 200 houses? Does he think the utility donated this electricity and that we shouldn't waste it? Last time I looked I had to pay for it and the utility company was more than happy to take the money.


FYI: It currently takes 51 kWh to electrolyze (Hydrogen Basics - Solar Production) 1 kg of hydrogen that will produce 34 kWh of potential electromotive force. The difference is almost the amount of electricity my house used for a day in March of this year or my PiP used for daily travel in two weeks.

 

he was trying to get you to stick with a hybrid for the foreseeable future, and not buy a plug in. he really doesn't care whether you buy a pip or not.

 

Or get you to buy a Volt . . . we play chess and they play GO.

Bob Wilson

 

Same guy was "father of the prius phv" ;-) I'm sure he knows that you are more likely to buy a pip than a mirai if they are side by side.
Toyota Global Site | PHV magazine Vol2

But yes he has been moved (promoted, demoted?) to the mirai ;-(
Electric cars won't spread even with rapid chargers: Toyota engineer| Reuters

That was in the spot about the need for these quick chargers. But you have to ask, if you can charge a small battery overnight, why not a large one. Then you only need quick chargers for say 10% of the miles. Say that one 500 kw spot operates 1/3 of the time. That is enough for 40 cars in a day, 280 in a week. If only 10% need to charge it is good for 2800 cars. One single 500 kw fast charger. They will take 28 mwh during the week.

OK they found a dump that can refuel 70/day, or 490/week. They need to find 5.7 sewage stations to power as many car as that single fast charger. The numbers look pretty bad to co-locate the hydrogen pumps with the sewage. Logistical nightmare. Luckily hydrogen can come from electricity, but it will take a lot more than to charge those cars.

 

European Buyers To Skip Over Hybrids, Go Straight To Plug-Ins

 

China To Force Toyota To Build Electric Cars It Loathes

 

That's got to make Toyota's FC promoters $h¦t bricks ... their ad men go to to such great lengths to market bs - only to discover Toyota isn't really pulling the wool over anyone's eyes. Bummer for them. But I'm sure that the anti-plugin ad campaigns are already paid up for at least another year or so. So stand by for another bs barage.
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The nuclear power generation safety has been debunked. Accidents will always happen. There is no way you can revert the bad effects of nuclear pollution. You can only move the bad thing somewhere away from you.

A message to you and all the EV propaganda agents : I will accept your claim that I am a meltdown myself , when you will take your bath in the damaged fukushima core reactor pool. I hope you really have fun and provide some photos from the pool.