Toyota Abandons Plans For All-Electric Vehicle Rollout 490
Soultest writes "Toyota has given up on plans to sell any significant number of all-electric vehicles. Citing 'many difficulties' with the project, the company says it will only sell about 100 of the battery-powered eQ cars it has been working on for several years. 'By dropping plans for a second electric vehicle in its line-up, Toyota cast more doubt on an alternative to the combustion engine that has been both lauded for its oil-saving potential and criticized for its heavy reliance on government subsidies in key markets like the United States. 'The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society's needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge,' said, Uchiyamada, who spearheaded Toyota's development of the Prius hybrid in the 1990s.'"
Re:Largely Demand Driven (Score:2, Informative)
And who is going to lift the battery? You would need an infrastructure and staffing at every gas station for hooking up and lifting out the old batteries, and putting in new ones. Remember, these aren't your normal car batteries we are talking about. Not to mention the battery technology is changing every year, so nobody will have replacements until that rate of change settles down - which may never happen.
Re:Largely Demand Driven (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone who runs cars on industrial levels, i.e. reasonably short trips with high usage times and long total travel times per day but with frequent stops wants these cars. Badly. Once infrastructure is in place, such operators are looking to save tens of percent, in many cases over half of running costs of their entire car fleets.
This includes, for example, delivery trucks, taxis, public transit and many other operators. Many operators in fact already use electric engines with or without batteries for such functions, such as busses that run off electric wires over the streets or electric trams. They even considered tricks like inductive chargers on bus stops in some places that will basically automatically charge a bus that stops over one, essentially eliminating fuelling needs of a bus, but again infrastructure build costs are simply too high in the current economy.
Other advantages of electric engines include far lower maintenance requirements due to sheer simplicity of engines, lack of exhaust fumes to pollute which is very relevant in modern large city centres and much better performance in heavy duty work.
Re:Largely Demand Driven (Score:3, Informative)
Renault uses this model in its Fluence Z.E. electrical car:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Fluence_Z.E.#Better_Place_battery_swap
Volt NOW (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't looked back. The Volt is far more agile in traffic and more fun on the twisty roads where I live than even the Camaro - and easier to see out of. It's not an econo box like a prius, it's a lux car. No, it's not as fast as the Camaro, but it's in some senses quicker, and eats ricky rice-racer for lunch on mountain roads.
Despite claims to the contrary by ditto heads, GM is at or near breakeven on this car, by the car, now. Some of the hate on electrics is due to taking all the NRE and billing it to the number of cars sold already - by that metric, the first hamburger sold at a new burger joint franchise is losing a million bucks per. Check the facts. By all means do NOT drive a Volt unless you can afford to take it home - because you'll just be upset if you can't.
You will also find a lot of the hate coming from funds provided by big oil, who get even more subsidies, not even counting the deaths overseas we create to keep oil "cheap". You don't think astroturfing was invented just for slashdot, right? GM's drivetrain is unique here - 2 electric motors and an ICE all connected to a dual input shaft CVT - patents Toyota doesn't want to have to buy, yet it's clearly the best way - and the clutches can be made to drop only at matched revs so they don't wear, and you don't feel it.
I used to chuckle at the fanbois of other product lines. Now I understand. This thing is game-changing.
Re:Largely Demand Driven (Score:5, Informative)
Renault and Nissan came up with the Quick-Drop battery swapping system that another poster mentions in regard to the Fluence ZE, though Nissan doesn't use it for the LEAF platform; the LEAF battery packs *can* be swapped out fairly easily, but it's not set up for the Quick-Drop method. Tesla originally talked about offering battery swaps at their Supercharger locations, but I think that's fallen by the wayside.
Honestly, with so many different battery capacities — the LEAF has 24kWh worth of batteries, while the highest-end Model S has 80kWh — I think standardization would be hard. I mean, we can't even fully finalize on a quick-charging standard!
In Japan and France, they have a system called CHAdeMO, a large plug capable of delivering up to 62.5kW of charge and thus charging the LEAF from near-empty in about 25 minutes. Japanese EVs and a number of European ones use this as a charging connector.
Meanwhile, the US came up with SAE1772, a replacement for older charging standards, with a smaller plug but which is limited to about 6.6kW of charge at 220V, meaning they can be installed many more places but take hours to recharge. (These are the little stations in many parking lots, for 'charge while you shop' at a mall or whatever.) Given the differing standards, various cars released in the US — the LEAF, the MiEV, etc. — support J1772 for slower charging and CHAdeMO for fast charging. And so CHAdeMO quick chargers have been put in along freeways.
Now SAE has come up with a variant on SAE1772 — a bigger form of the plug with the original plug as a subset of the design — which could allow quick-charging. The idea being that you'd only need one plug; the new SAE1772 variant sockets could use the old plugs, so older charging stations would work, but you'd have to have new sockets for any new plugs. However, no one's committed to supporting that yet that I've heard.
Then Tesla, disgusted with everyone else, designed their own Supercharger system which charges at up to 100kW — heavier duty than CHAdeMO — so that they can charge the 80kW pack of a high-end Model S much faster. They made adapters to allow SAE1772 charging too, for all the little parking lot stations, but there's no easy way to convert CHAdeMO for those quick chargers.
Standardization among EVs is... well, we still have a way to go.