Featured Toyota Falls In Brand Loyalty Rankings After Customers Defect To Tesla

I wonder why Toyota doesn't phase out of pure ICE cars altogether and offer only PEVHs. Sodium ion battery engineering is making strides these days that could void the necessity of lithium ion batteries!

 

Maybe you should shop Tampa Hybrids. Their Prii aren't that expensive. We bought one last February that seems a very solid car.

 

Yuck. I see neighbors doing that all the time. I'd shut the car off to go back inside rather than doing that. Also, i have a pet peeve about people sitting in parking lots in their cars idling. It's usually a big SUV.
Must be climate deniers.

 

profit

 

Last week we drove from the San Francisco east bay suburbs to south San Diego and back. We took the I-5 to LA.

I don't see Tesla reliability as being anything to crow about. I saw 7 cars parked on the shoulder of the road during that (approx) 500 mile drive south. 6 of them were Teslas. Two of them were occupied, 1 had a "tow me" window sticker from the DMV and the rest appeared to be empty.

It was unclear as to why these cars were stopped along the road. At first I though that the heat may be an issue for the Teslas. While the 100 degree weather was oppressive it was not too bad. My Prius Prime lost a couple MPG due to running the climate control (heat pump) non stop for 8 hours so I can't imagine that the Teslas were using much more than a few kW to keep the cars cool.

n the 1960's we'd often have to pull over on that same stretch of road to let the Chevy Nomad station wagon cool down. It was impressive to see the fountain of hot water shooting from the overheated radiator. I'd hate to think that we were going back to the days where cars were not reliable past the first hundred miles of a trip.

 

i've never seen a tesla on the side of the road, and there are a ton of them around here.

in fact, cars on the side of the road are a rare occurence here.

in florida, we see them all the time, usually old beaters

 

This summer in 95 F, I had to call for a tow:

• Phantom battery reserve - reviewers had claimed there were miles of reserve battery even with it indicated 0% SOC. Of course they were testing new press cars, not my 4.5 year old, 114,000 mi Model 3.
• Unknown battery cooling - due to the 95 F weather, it is possible the car had kicked in battery preservation, cooling.

I ran out of juice 1/2 mile, 500 Who, from the Superchargers I was driving toward.

Instead of getting a quick charge when I reached Nashville, I thought I had enough to pickup my papers and then get a charge. Worse, I didn't go directly from the garage to an adjacent L2 charger and put a boost on the battery. Oh well, lesson's learned.

"Tuition in the school of hard knocks."

Bob Wilson

 

Bob you're going to have to carry one of those mini Honda inverter generators or the harbor junk equivalent to pick up those extra couple miles during your depletion testing. It's just not the same thing as when you used to test the Prius with a gallon or 2 of spare gasoline.

Alternatively you could carry the 3X as fast 240v Honda equivalent - but it's ~160Lbs ... at least that's what I recall are 6.5kW version is
.

 

It is enough to know there is no reserve and the existence of other, non-indicated loads. Simply carry more reserve and the problem is solved.

BTW, I have improved, 3d party instrumentation, that promises to also report the battery reserve, if any. Testing will be a challenge.

Bob Wilson

 

Looking forward to seeing how accurate it is
.

 

I ran out of juice once in a Nissan Leaf, but didn't actually try to drive it until it died completely as I was in one of the few places I could get cell service. That, and I was smack dab in the middle between charging stations (35 miles either way, a 70 mile leg in an 85 mile EV).

I do wonder how many would-be-Toyota-buyers are going for cheaper cars, not just Teslas. The Prius Prime is much more expensive. Base models are hard to find. And the inventory is zilch. This is kind of why the used car market is so hot. If my Avalon were to die tomorrow, I'd probably have to go back to some ol' air cooled VW Bug as that would be about all I could afford and find available at the same time. I've seen several for sale for $5,000 or less that run.

I mean, say I pay $15,000 for a Toyota of some sort. After having a bad engine in the Prius I bought, I'm afraid to get a high mileage Toyota again. But low mileage Toyotas for $15,000 don't exist.

If the cylinders as scored in a VW it's $200 for a really good quality set of pistons and cylinders. I used these in my Bug and they came extremely well ballanced from the factory.
https://aapistons.com/collections/vw-piston-liner-kits/products/vw-85-5mm-1600cc-bug-type-1-piston-and-cylinder-kit

 

As frequent readers of this forum probably noted, I drive north and south every month on I-5, racking up about 25,000 miles a year on the freeway. On Sunday I hit 70,000 miles on the odometer of my Prius Prime.

I try not to comment on something as mundane as cars that are out of gas / power. This was my second trip southbound where I noticed a handful of Teslas parked on the shoulder despite having charging facilities every 25 miles or so.

There are more EVs on the interstate than ever before, and fewer being shipped from Fremont to points north and south via car Carrier. Cars stranded on the highway are a rarity here, partially because we have contracts with towing companies to get cars off the road before they can cause an accident during high volume times.

I only recognized TWO 2023 Prius Prime this last week on our southern voyage. There were several RAV4 Primes and a crap-load of Teslas and Hyundai / KIA EVs too.

 

Rather than how many sales Toyota is loosing to Tesla, I’d love to see how many sales Toyota is loosing to BEVs.

To me, that would be far more informative.

 

Seeing how Tesla has something like 75% of the BEV market, I don't think there'd be that much of a difference.

 

This story cracked me up....especially when her minions tried to "reserve" a charging slot by parking their gasoline car at the pump...and folks called the cops on them.

Electric cars have a road trip problem, even for the secretary of energy

Yes, EVs have a small niche of the car market but, right now, the US is just not ready to expand that number by very much, for numerous reasons.

And nobody is talking about the elephant in the room...what we'll be doing with the millions of pounds of toxic, very flammable, non-recyclable old nickel and lithium spent batteries that will be leftover when the EV is dead. Have you all seen the flames when one Tesla catches on fire and how long it takes the firemen to put if out? Now imagine you have, like, 500 of those battery packs all together and the same thing happens.

Gosh, you'd think the car makers would've worked on RECYCLABLE batteries before building EVs, if they really cared about the environment. (But, once again, just follow the money.)

 

Gosh - Try & keep up with current events;

Nissan is reusing the batteries from old Leaf electric vehicles to make portable power sources | AP News.

The Leaf is the 1st mass production electric car. Others haven't started reaching expiration so much ... but they will do the same recycling as expirations approach.
.

 

there are a lot of old priuschat members on the bolt forums

 

I think in everything but the least expensive vehicles that is where we are going - phevs and bevs.

Sodium ion is fairly new so risky to transition fast. They have the advantage of better cold weather performance and low cost, but they are much heavier and not much less expensive than lithium iron phosphate. It seems that costs would not be much higher for a phev than a hybrid at the $100/kwh battery pack we should see in the near future.

The dealerships in most countries want to sell ice vehicles. which is why it is difficult for the large companies to transition away. Manufactures are trying direct to consumer pricing to cut out the FUD and price gouging by dealerships. One problem toyota has is incentives are often based on where a vehicle is manufactured, and toyota is slow to localize phev manufacturing - rav4 prime and prius prime are built in japan, while chinese and US incentives want them built in the home country.

 

just heard an amazing toyota ad on the radio yesterday, expounding the virtues of toyotas electrified fleet.