Featured Toyota to stop selling Traditional Gasoline Vehicles by 2050

I looked at the slides and they aren't nearly as crazy as the reporting.
Toyota expects to sell 30,000 fuel cell vehicles a year by 2020

1) the biggest chunk looks to be phevs, not fuel cells in 2050. That makes a lot more sense, and the colors don't swap between FCV and EV (maybe toyota knows BEVs might be larger than FCV in 2050). Look at the link, I'm not sure why the labels didn't make it. From top to bottom it is Engine, HV, PHV, FCV/EV.

2) Plug-ins are not bashed in the slides as they seemed to be in the article. There is prominance to both phevs and bevs in the plan. There is an old slide (pre 2010) that seems out of place here with bevs for short range, and phev only for smaller vehicles, but hey, glad they didn't put the bashing in.

3) Fuel cells are plugged but not nearly as much as the anouncement. More detail, they say around 2020 for the 30,000 not by 2020. IMHO given the slips in the prius phv and gen IV prius, having a whole redesign and mass production ready in 2019, four short years away, to make that goal is unlikely but possible. They had 1000/mo for japan which seems reasonable. I can't see the ROW buying the other 1500/mo though so this is an ambitious goal.

 

Yes, I agree. The slide deck looks aggressive but plausible with much of the FCV emphasis on buses and trucks.

This is actually very consistent with my own mantra of getting rid of conventional gas passenger cars and replacing them with a triad of HV, PHEV, and BEV. They are including all vehicles and therefore show FCV for heavy vehicles with some amount of crossover into passenger cars. I can agree with that although, as you noted, they incorrectly imply that BEVs will only be for local short-distance runabouts in 2050....

 

too many isis volunteers looking for their 40 virgins to bother with self driving vehicles.

 

They are a bunch of Top Gear watching guys. Hence the Hilux love.

 

It will be interesting to see how well agressive drivers in non-self driving cars interact with self driving cars. I see some road rage happening in heavy traffic. Many drivers don't have much patience during the morning commute with law abiding cars that aren't speeding and tailgating. Until almost all cars are self driving I see conflicts.

I have an hour commute and it's very challenging. Nobody wants to let other drivers change lanes. In my old truck I just moved over. Pick the most expensive car, and they will back off. But, in my nice Prius I'm a bid more careful but I've had to just start moving over and hope the other car is paying attention.

I can't see a self driving car getting to lane change in heavy traffic, too many rude drivers.

 

72, where did 40 come from, that isn't enough for paradise. Then again suicide should keep you from paradise, consult your local islamic cleric on whether murdering with a self driving truck, or sucide mass murder is your ticket to heaven. My guess is if he doesn't support terrorism, he will say both are bad .... but go to gaza and they may tell you stabbing is best way to murder.
Gaza cleric calls on Palestinians to stab Jews, 'cut them into body parts' | The Times of Israel

I borrowed an old tacoma, with nice dents, and let my girl friend drive the prius when her car was stolen. Everybody let me in. No one cut me off.

OK back on topic .... well the off topic self driving ... tesla's autopilot went beta live. Cool videos out there. It steers, it checks that its clear before changing lanes, it follows the car in front at a safe distance. They probably have a good decade to go before you completely trust it, but looks like a good safety aid today.

 

they'll just stop and wait. humans will learn to accommodate to their benefit.

 

at least they'll drive safe until they reach their destination
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They're going to have to step it up 'range-wise' then, because 10-15 ev miles will still mean gas is definitely going to be involved.
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Oct 17, Mercurynews.com/cars

"... trade in values of some electric and plug in hybrid vehicles are dropping like rocks with some returning only 20% original retail after 3 years"

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Woohoo, I think I'll give up on gas and buy a new plugin!!

A bright spot: Model S holding 53% of original retail after 3 years.

 

Yes as much as the predictors on this site thought that chevy needed to drop the volt to 20 miles, and maybe tesla would not sell many if they had more than 150 miles, the expected decrease in battery price will have toyota add miles. Remember the caragie study toyota funded that had them assume $1200/kwh batteries in 2012, and gm said their batteries were much lower in price even before the volt was released? Toyota is going to up grade the batteries, and it will cost them less than the small battereid phevs they wanted to make (4.4kwh). There still is the packaaging issue limiting size, but toyota will put in bigger batteries or lose market share.

One thing they keep doing is pretending original value didn't include the tax credits. Leafs did drop like a rock. volts, energis, teslas not so much.

 

Really need an Aorta valve grown from my own tissue.

 

2030 is only 15 years out, only 15% of toyota's vehicle sales are hybrids. The Lexus GSh, LSh, RXh, Toyota Highlander hybrid all have pretty weak hybrid systems that offer a poor trade off of gas savings versus price. They need to figure that stuff out. VW's group is looking for phevs for these classes of cars, Tesla BEV, but toyota doesn't yet want to put in a big battery, but ... you need at least a big battery in these high power vehicles to make the fuel economy increase with today's tech. That thirsty v8 probably needs to be downsized to a turbo 4 or small V6 (maybe turbo) with a powerful battery and electric motor to provide the same power.
Compare Side-by-Side

Then we have the venza, land cruiser, Tacoma, Tundra, etc where a lot of North american profits come from. Toyota still hasn't even developed a hybrid or phev system for these cars.

2050 is quite agressive, 35 years for 100%, when you see that it has taken toyota 18 years to get to 15%.

 

In Europe, TME 23% from Jan 2015 sales were hybrid. Lexus had 64% hybrids...
http://newsroom.toyota.eu/pressrelease/4704//toyota-motor-europe-hybrid-sales-keep-rising-up
Diesel should drop a bit due to the wake of VW criminal actions, so in the mean future, hybrid rate will probably rise.

 

Why wait until 2050? Toyota could convert all their cars to hybrids right now.

300 miles and 0 minutes recharge time (while you sleep) is tedious? C'mon. You spend more time detouring to a gasoline station & waiting by the pump

 

I'm not even close to understanding the technology and limitations as you guys are. But even after reading everything I can on all of these energy variants, I am still baffled by Toyota's direction here. Having the premier hybrid vehicle, and a solid plug-in model, in addition to the Camry hybrid etc.., one would think they would double-down on this. Even I can see that with proper pricing and the same availability of charging stations as gasoline, the plug-in hybrids would be enormous sellers as they rolled out in volume.

If car makers feel constrained that they can't meet emissions targets even with hybrids and others, perhaps it's the emissions targets that need to be changed, perhaps they are so unrealistic as to be harmful. The problems with hydrogen and the FCV's are readily apparent, especially so when it comes to the refueling stations themselves, and the energy required to make the fuel.

This is why I think Tesla just went on their own and said FU, we'll show you how wrong you are. Just think of the difference in resources when comparing Toyota and Tesla, not to mention the economies of scale. Even now, when I see the obvious advantages of the PIP, especially when looking at the flexible range of the vehicle if charging became an issue, I just shake my head. The baby steps theory would indicate that you follow up the Prius and Camry hybrids with PIPs. As more storage becomes available, they sell better. Eventually the economies of scale allow for better pricing, and the mix of vehicle scales would tend to favor the PIPs. Next step is the same, but with BEV's.

Seems to me that there's several steps that Toyota is missing. But even with the rollout of the new Gen 4 Prius, I also hold out the thought that maybe, just maybe, Toyota has reached the outer edge of their capability. ie:hitting a wall of their intellectual limits.

Just musing while drinking coffee, and none of their strategy makes any sense to me.

 

So I'm drinking my morning coffee:

The first Prius plug-ins were owner built, not Toyota. Sure they were often an attempt to get the true goal, a reasonable EV. However, I've thought of a slightly different approach.

Cold-start is the worst 1-2 miles of my daily commute. Fully charging the traction battery either by plug-in or raising the SOC to 70% for the the last miles home would be a great solution. With ~500 Whr of excess charge, the car could move through my neighborhood at minimum fuel burn while the engine idles at minimum fuel burn.

Coffee is good so I'm thinking:

• last miles to home - increase target SOC from 60% to 70%
• first cold-start - decrease target SOC to 50% and increase gradually to 60% once the engine is warm enough and the car at higher speeds

Now there are fuzzy algorithms using trip profiles that could implement this approach without GPS inputs. In effect, using driving profiles and a clock to determine which profile is being driven. Think a 'white hat' version of the VW cheat. In effect, surfing the traction battery SOC.

Bob Wilson

 

Are we talking plug-in or not plugged in hybrid.

For a phev
On a hot day plug power can cool the battery and cabin, making it ready to go. On a cold day the plug can warm the battery and/or the engine block, heat the cabin and seats. All these things are more efficient with electricity than gasoline except heating the cabin, but .... getting into a warm car on a cold day is probably worth that little extra bit of electricity. This is especially true if you opt for a cleaner source or your utility is naturally cleaner than refining and burning oil, but maybe not if you are in one of the coal states, but again its tiny amount.

Your car on everything but a cold day could do all the neighborhood driving electric, going through a warm up routine right before you need the engine for highway motoring, or long slow distance that exceeds capacity. Think 6kwh as the small plug-in battery, not a 2kwh with an extra 500 whr of usable energy compared to gen III prius.

On very cold days the engine would probably run to provide more efficient heating of the cabin, if the battery was not big enough to do the whole trip. 10 years out with gps and a couple of smart buttons, it should be pretty standard. A gps chipset cost less than $100 today which means intellegence to map (software) is the expensive part, but hardware is fairly cheap. I can't imagine a hydrid sold in 2025 without gps and bluetooth or whatever the cell connection is then.

Now if we don't use a plug, things get more complicated. That 2 kwh battery in 2025 likely will cost less than 1.3 kwh in the gen III, and it will weigh about the same, around 50 kg which really is not too bad. Lithium polymer like hyundai is using today would allow it to be packaged better than today's hybrid battery. I'm not sure though you don't go cheap and use a 1kwh battery that could perform like today's nimh, similar usable energy and power. Cost versus efficiency trade offs, and you are trying to hit a market that wants to pay less than a phev. My bet is smaller, lighter, cheaper with similar performance to today for non plug-ins.. If you eyeball the toyota graphs in the slides and ignore the idiots spouting batteries aren't good enough inside the company, they have phevs outselling hybrids without plugs in 2050. That makes sense battery prices will be down and the costs are the motors and psd, that won't fall, or if they do not as fast. Toyota's other slide has hybrid premium price going down, and that may be more important to the market.

I think ford is using some of this logic, but of course the lithium can do a bigger range of SOC than the nimh, so numbers are different. I would be suprised if the gen IV doesn't use some of it, but the question is whether it is just good on the test, or if the algorithms work with many real world driving patterns.

 

I don't get too worried about whether the cold-start usable traction battery energy comes from. If done by clever logic (aka., Ford) or a plug-in option, the end results are what counts. BTW, John1701a clued me about this from his Prius plug-in experience, which strangely was not understood by the Volt advocates.

Personally, I would like to have these options:

• Fuzzy logic - works for people who have no plug available and possibly when parked away from a plug.
• Plug-in - personally, I want bi-directional taking 120 VAC in if available and the option of providing two, 15 A, 120 VAC sine-wave output using the power inverter. If plugged in, the car 'partially' readies the battery controller. It then begins managing the traction battery system for thermal and extra SOC. It might even handle some module balancing.
• solar hood and roof - solar array on top of car to provide plug-in energy to optimize the traction and 12 V battery.

Bob Wilson

 

Guess it depends a lot on your fuel consumption, monthly or whatever. I'm tanking up every 3-4 weeks, typically barely below half full. With current prices, gas is costing me around $30 a month, so I'm fine with a regular Prius.