Featured Toyota Breaks into Top 10 of Worst Companies on Climate Policy

Wow, that is quite a stretch.
I'd say hybrid to EVs is a poor comparison as the fuel and engine/motor are completely different.
Luckily, in the USA, I don't believe anyone has electricity from 100% coal. Perhaps Toyota should only sell BEVs in countries that don't use 100% coal?

 

Pushing too hard, too fast? How about strong encouragement of start-stop devices, with financial incentives, for starters.

And how about: discourage glitzy, over-the-top styling exercises, superfluous dreck, infotainment. Focus on utilitarian, practical, easy to repair.

And simplest of all: encourage reductions in automobile use.

 

If you're new to the conversation, I specifically said hybrids are better than EVs if electricity is sourced from coal. And that in much of the world, they are comparable in terms of overall emissions. Trollbait decided to link a study comparing EVs to petrol cars (that are not hybrids). Not sure why. I'm in favor of halting non-hybrid petrol car production ASAP. We have enough battery resources to make that happen today and the gas savings alone would pay for the increase in costs of the hybrids. In fact, this was the easiest fruit to pick in the fight against climate change and it should have been done yesterday.

Yes, we should be investing in public transportation and redesigning cities to be public transportation friendly while making cars more efficient. They can be done in parallel.

 

Not new, just amazed you would say hybrids and EVs should be the comparison as they are very different.
Coal is a dead end. Even parts of the world where coal is in use are making plans to move away from it.

As for disallowing the production of non-hybrid ICE vehicles being "low hanging fruit", I disagree.
I can't imagine a more difficult task than not allowing anyone, worldwide, to make non hybrid ICE cars. The loopholes would be enormous.
Better to make a better product that people will want to move to.

 

Hybrids have been available for over 20 years now, and they are still a relatively small part of sales. They aren't what plug ins will be replacing in the coming years.

Then most hybrids aren't of Prius level achievement. The SUVs are under 40mpg, and there are many mild ones available that are under 30mpg.

Hybrids have gained sales in Europe by replacing diesels. In terms of CO2 emissions being discussed, that was more of a sideways shift than improvement.

As for regenerative braking, Mazda has had models with it without even having start-stop, so couldn't even be properly called a mild a hybrid.

More models have start-stop in the US because of credits for it in the CAFE calculations.

The study uses petrol like ICE. In addition to including diesel with petrol, that group within the paper also includes non-plug in hybrids.
Net emission reductions from electric cars and heat pumps in 59 world regions over time | Nature Sustainability

"From a global perspective, given current conversion efficiencies and production processes, we find that in 2015 driving an average EV had a lower life-cycle emission intensity than driving an average new petrol car if the electricity grid’s emission intensity was below 1,100 gCO2e kWh−1 (weighted by regional service demand) (Fig. 2a). For heating, average HPs had a lower life-cycle emission intensity than average new fossil boilers if the grid’s emission intensity did not exceed 1,000 gCO2e kWh−1 (Fig. 2b). This roughly corresponds to the emission intensity of older coal power plants33 and is higher than the estimated life-cycle emission intensity of more than 90% of the global electricity generation in 2015.

On global average, even very inefficient EVs and HPs would be less emission intensive than very efficient new petrol cars and fossil boilers if the grid’s emission intensity was below 700 gCO2e kWh−1 (in the case of EVs) and 500 gCO2e kWh−1 (in the case of HPs), respectively (Fig. 2). These thresholds roughly correspond to the emission intensity of gas power plants33 and are lower than the average emission intensity of the global electricity generation in 2015 (around 740 gCO2e kWh−1; see Supplementary Table 2). The general finding that EVs and HPs have lower life-cycle emissions than most petrol cars and fossil boilers is robust against variations in uncertain production emissions, such as uncertain embodied emissions from producing batteries of EVs9,34 and higher-than-expected leakage of refrigerant liquids during all life-cycle phases of HPs"

a–g, Current (a) and projected (b–g) GHG emission intensities from driving EVs, for the ten countries with the highest passenger car transport demand in 2015 (the shares in global demand are equivalent to the widths of the bars). Projections under the current technological trajectory (b,c), the 2 °C policy scenario (d,e) and the end-use without power policies scenario (f,g) are shown. The heights of the vertical bars show an average EV’s estimated GHG emission intensity, given the power sector’s emission intensity in each country (results from this study). The range of the GHG emission intensities reflects higher and lower use-phase energy requirements of different available EV models and sizes. For comparison, the grey box plots show the distributions of GHG emission intensities of newly sold fossil fuel cars in each country (mean, 50% and 90% ranges)
Fig. 3: GHG emission intensities of passenger cars. | Nature Sustainability

Fuel economy regulations are already pushing fleets towards hybridization. It should have been more aggressive, but it is too late for that now. Better to ban the ICE and put resources into meeting that. If non-hybrids were banned, what would qualify as a hybrid. The Jeep Wrangler is a hybrid after all.

 

We're talking about one of the biggest mass extinctions in this planet's history. I think that's a reasonable ask.

 

Oh I agree completely. But reasonable to ask, and actually accomplishing it are two different things.

In the USA, I think it would be reasonable to ask that election day be a national holiday. Hasn't happened yet.
And as mentioned previously, what qualifies as a hybrid?
Far simpler, yet not easy, to outlaw all ICE vehicles.

I also agree with engineering cities to reduce the amount of individually owned cars/trucks. That would be a great step forward.

 

It is just that their feet seem to have gotten bigger and heavier in the last decade.

Mike

 

West Virginia produces about 88% of their electricity from coal.
Next, I think is Wyoming, who produces much more electricity from coal than WVA (40% of all US coal) and exports most of it...they export 13x as much as they consume. So it is hard to say what goes to where. But they have lots of wind as well.

Mike

 

The average CO2 equivalent MPG for the plug ins on road for WV is 60. The eastern side of Wyoming is 52, and the rest is 90. The worst in the US is part of Hawaii at 36. On the mainland its41 and 43.

Plug In or Gas Up? Why Driving on Electricity is Better than Gasoline - Union of Concerned Scientists


The EV trucks coming to market will bring these numbers down, but the ICE trucks, including hybrids, they are replacing are below the US car fleet MPG average.

 

I think differently.

Car-centic sites: PriusChat, R&T, C&D, fueleconomy.gov, Jalopnik, Cars.com, Toyotanation, GM-Volt, etc

Electrek site: Anything Elon does outside of cars, stock articles, toys, battery banks, bicycles, solar industry, tunnels, boats, crypto, etc.

If that doesn't convince, how about this? Nearly 12 hours in as of this posting (an eternity in internet time), Teslatrek is ignoring on of the most important vehicle announcements of 2022: the Gen5 Prius. Even InsideEV's (better known to me as InsideElectrek+8hrs) covered it.

Fred L. knows it's all about the clicks and has found a new whipping boy to stir the "masses". I keep going back because of those non-car centric articles listed above (and many others) but the new format is, umm, challenging.

 

I am not a fan of Electrek. That said, your statement seems inaccurate.
Electrek has front page stories about VinFast, Lucid Motors, Ford, Volvo Group, and many others.

What I don’t see are any stories about hybrids, so I am not surprised about not seeing the Japanese Prius reveal.

 

Sirloin Stockade carries hamburgers but that doesn't necessarily make it a hamburger joint. No one said they didn't carry car stories it's just not car-centric but BEV (and thus Tesla) centric.

I am. Obviously there's WAY more to that event than just a HEV. Ignoring a new state of the art HEV and 50 mile PHEV from the worlds largest automaker would be, frankly, laughable for a "car-centric" site which Electrek is not. Their latest story as of this posting: electric chainsaws (they're awesome BTW, I have an 80v Kobalt).

My 2cents.

 

Might be useful to look at their ABOUT page, where it says:

Electrek is a news and commentary site that is tracking, analyzing, and breaking news on the transition from fossil-fuel transport to electric transport.

Further, Electrek also covers the electric vehicle movement within the wider transition into green energy, and the impact of green energy and fossil fuels on the climate.​

Mike

 

And would the G5 news fit this description?

 

I only read an article when it shows in me feed or here.

For an article on a report about corporate lobbying over several industries, they are car-centric. I wouldn't expect them to cover the entire thing, just like I wouldn't expect Oil Price to say much about Toyota in their hypothetical coverage of the same report. Electrek did cover the issues you claimed lacking.

Depends on how they feel about hybrids.

 

Yeah, they're on my feed too but w/o the comments section.

BTW, they just published the G5 story so I guess they (finally) saw the light even if it's "old news" by now.

"We can never knock the Prius for what it helped start for electric vehicles, but its time in the sun sure appears to be fleeting, so forgive me if I’m not as eager to put Toyota up on my shoulders as a champion for delivering yet another hybrid, even if it is a plug-in."

The pot stirring and divisiveness continues.

 

Toyota has, in the USA, only had limited availability of their PHEVs. Getting excited about a product without full specs is not the case for everyone.
As for “finally” posting a story on it. They posted it within 24 hours. Seems it is pretty easy to offend you??

 

and now we've come back to my OP about news sites (car-centric) and so many folks thinking Electrek is some sort of "bonafide" news site following journalistic guidelines, independent news and sales divisions, etc. The guy running that place has a HUGE interest in Tesla and the stock doing well. Folks should know that up front.

Yes, in the news world, 12+hrs is VERY late for an on line blog about a story that's literally one of their bread and butter subjects concerning the worlds largest auto manufacturer. On a personal level, it didn't matter to me as I had better and multiple sources from car-centric sites.

 

I don’t think anyone would consider it either a bonafide News site, nor a car-centric site.
As quoted above, the About Us page is very straight forward, and a simple scan of the front page shows many non-car articles.
I agree the owner has a personal bias, but I don’t see that as impacting the stories to any great effect.