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.'"
Largely Demand Driven (Score:5, Insightful)
There will never be a large market for electric cars until the infrastructure has been upgraded accordingly. Where I have lived (Texas, Michigan), there are no charging stations. You can't expect people to buy the car if the infrastructure doesn't support the car.
Corporate Speak For (Score:5, Insightful)
We can't make it work with acceptable margins.
Toyota has been an innovator in how production operates, not in building game changing new vehicles.
All Electric Cars Years Away (Score:5, Insightful)
What IS viable in the next few years is the plug in hybrid, like the Volt or the plug in Prius. The major problem here is getting unit costs down to where the cars become acceptable from a pricing POV. The Volt certainly has work to do here, and I'm guessing the Prius plug in faces the same problem. Incremental improvements in costs of the batteries will slowly bring these cars into the mainstream in the next few years. Cars like the Volt are, by all accounts, just like driving existing gasoline cars, and have the advantage of allowing most daily commutes to be done electrically.
Re:Largely Demand Driven (Score:5, Insightful)
There will never be a large market for electric cars until the infrastructure has been upgraded accordingly. Where I have lived (Texas, Michigan), there are no charging stations. You can't expect people to buy the car if the infrastructure doesn't support the car.
True, at the moment it is a niche market. If you live close enough to work and a store to commute on a single charge, and have a second vehicle in the household for longer trips it makes sense. I think that this niche is a lot bigger than the current market - electric vehicles are still much more expensive than equivalent compact cars.
Re:Largely Demand Driven (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Corporate Speak For (Score:5, Insightful)
... selling each one at a net loss.
False. [greencarcongress.com]
Practical in some, but not all, applications. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you live close enough to work and a store to commute on a single charge, and have a second vehicle in the household for longer trips it makes sense. I think that this niche is a lot bigger than the current market - electric vehicles are still much more expensive than equivalent compact cars.
Exactly. Whether an electric car is practical or not depends on application.
There are millions of people for whom electric cars perfectly fit their requirements. If you're thinking "replace 100% of the cars in use"-- well, yes, that is impractical. But there are large segments of the market for which electric is practical today.
In 2009, the average length of a car trip was 10.1 miles; the average length of a commute to work was 12.6 miles. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2010_fotw615.html [energy.gov]
My commute to work is considerably shorter. Most usage of cars could be done easily with electric vehicles, with recharge overnight at home. Not all-- however, for a second vehicle (and most households in the US have two or more vehicles), electric is completely practical.
The point is to make electric cars for the uses for which they are well adapted. If you want a vehicle to take a family of four on a camping trip from New York to Yellowstone, an EV is not the right choice. If your application is a seven mile commute for one person in Atlanta, along with occasional trips to the grocery story, it may be exactly what you need. It may be a "niche" market by some definitions, but there are a 443 makes and models of cars sold in America-- there's room for many niche vehicles to sell perfectly well.
(Another interesting point is that electric vehicles are more practical in regions south of the snow belt, unless you have plug-in stations at the destination that can keep the batteries warm. A practical EV for Alaska is a harder technology than making EVs for Los Angeles!)
Re:Self-driving cars will come before all-electric (Score:3, Insightful)
electric vehicle ... charge so quickly as to be useful
You mean, overnight in my garage? During the 8 hours I'm at work?
when you can call for a cheap robotic taxi wherever, whenever you want?
How is this ANY different from a regular taxi? (other than paying an engineer to upkeep all the automated system rather then 5 immigrants driving the cars). And don't get me wrong, in some places taxis make sense. But they don't make sense everywhere. Indeed, other than big cities where owning a car is a pain, taxi services just don't cut it.
Also, no, electric cars with 200 mile range would be horrible for taxis. They have to run ALL DAY. No, hybrids seem like a good idea for taxis. Electric for stop'n'go, and a regular engine for going all day long.
As it stands, 99% of cars spend probably close to 99% of their time parked and unused. That is inefficient.
And my home spends half it's time just plain empty (except for the cats). That too, is pretty inefficient. But you can't have a timeshare to my house. It's mine, back off.
Re:Largely Demand Driven (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no catch as regards charging stations. The technology of now and the immediate future is plug-in hybrids. They have no range issues because you can always fuel them with petrol (gas). But you charge them whenever you can because that's cheaper. That will provide enough incentive for a cjharging infrastructure to grow up. And as it does so, the opportunities for electric only vehicles expands.
Battery swapping stations is a harder nut to crack though.
Some applications [Re: ...but not all] (Score:5, Insightful)
Er... what good are those stats? Is your commute to work to only driving you do? Do you ownly make one trip in the car each day?
Here is what I stated: "...for a second vehicle (and most households in the US have two or more vehicles), electric is completely practical."
So: if I make a longer trip, I'd use my wife's car. I suppose that there could be days in which we both, separately, need to make long trips; but I can't think of it having happened offhand.
If 25% of the time I am going to be driving well beyond the electric range the car is worthless, even if my 'average' trip is within that range.
What I'd written was: "Whether an electric car is practical or not depends on application." If your application is one in which 25% of the time you're driving beyond the electric car range, well, for your application an electric car is not practical.
Electric is practical for some applications, not all applications. For your quoted requirement of extended range 25% of the time, a plug-in hybrid instead of an all-electric might be the right choice. Or maybe not; depends on what exactly you need. Some applications.