Toyota Led on Clean Cars. Now Critics Say It Works To Delay Them. (nytimes.com) 304
Toyota bet on hydrogen power, but as the world moves toward electric the company is fighting climate regulations in an apparent effort to buy time. From a report: The Toyota Prius hybrid was a milestone in the history of clean cars, attracting millions of buyers worldwide who could do their part for the environment while saving money on gasoline. But in recent months, Toyota, one of the world's largest automakers, has quietly become the industry's strongest voice opposing an all-out transition to electric vehicles -- which proponents say is critical to fighting climate change.
Last month, Chris Reynolds, a senior executive who oversees government affairs for the company, traveled to Washington for closed-door meetings with congressional staff members and outlined Toyota's opposition to an aggressive transition to all-electric cars. He argued that gas-electric hybrids like the Prius and hydrogen-powered cars should play a bigger role, according to four people familiar with the talks. Behind that position is a business quandary: Even as other automakers have embraced electric cars, Toyota bet its future on the development of hydrogen fuel cells -- a costlier technology that has fallen far behind electric batteries -- with greater use of hybrids in the near term. That means a rapid shift from gasoline to electric on the roads could be devastating for the company's market share and bottom line.
Last month, Chris Reynolds, a senior executive who oversees government affairs for the company, traveled to Washington for closed-door meetings with congressional staff members and outlined Toyota's opposition to an aggressive transition to all-electric cars. He argued that gas-electric hybrids like the Prius and hydrogen-powered cars should play a bigger role, according to four people familiar with the talks. Behind that position is a business quandary: Even as other automakers have embraced electric cars, Toyota bet its future on the development of hydrogen fuel cells -- a costlier technology that has fallen far behind electric batteries -- with greater use of hybrids in the near term. That means a rapid shift from gasoline to electric on the roads could be devastating for the company's market share and bottom line.
Market forces. (Score:2)
What does hydrogen give that electric doesn't?
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Re:Market forces. (Score:5, Informative)
Fast refueling and relatively cheap storage.
I don't know what you mean by "relatively cheap storage". Hydrogen is hard to store; it has a terrible figure of merit in terms of energy per unit volume. Hydrogen tanks are either low density, high pressure, cryogenic, or heavy. None of these are good storage options for cars.
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Fast refueling and relatively cheap storage.
I don't know what you mean by "relatively cheap storage". Hydrogen is hard to store; it has a terrible figure of merit in terms of energy per unit volume. Hydrogen tanks are either low density, high pressure, cryogenic, or heavy. None of these are good storage options for cars.
Storage is a challenge. I used to drive a Honda Clarity PHEV, which has a frame that was designed for BEV, PHEV, and hydrogen. As a result, the car was bulkier and heavier than needed for the PHEV.
However, fast refueling addresses the Achilles heel of BEVs. Charging infrastructure is the greatest challenge for 100% adoption of BEVs. If that challenge is overcome via faster charging (has to be on par with gasoline refueling) or universal charging points (will require many trillions of dollars), then univ
Re:Market forces. (Score:5, Insightful)
ah yes, the "I need to fill my gas tank from 0 to 100% every day" argument.
do you use 100% of your gas tank every day?
do you use your car 24/7 year-round so 40 minutes of fast charging is a dealbreaker when comparing to a 5 minute top up?
No. You don't. You don't use 100% of your charge every day. And you don't keep your tank at 100% at all times.
Just like your phone, you use, maybe, 50% of the charge and then let it charge overnight while you, you know, sleep and can't actually drive.
"But for long trips"
do you go on long trips that will require multiple top-ups without a pause for eating, bathroom, and sleeping? and do you do this every single day?
if you answered yes to any of this, then i have news for you:
You're not 99% of drivers.
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do you go on long trips that will require multiple top-ups without a pause for eating, bathroom, and sleeping? and do you do this every single day?
It doesn't need to be long trips with multiple top-ups. It also doesn't even need to be every day. If you regularly make trips that would outdistance the battery, you need to charge it. As an example, my mother lives within the state. A single round-trip to her house would exceed the distance for the majority of electric vehicles on the market right now. Unless she had a fast charger, or there was a truly fast charge station, it would get annoying when done on a semi-regular basis.
Another example for the
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Not every day, no....but my most often regular long trip is about 6-7 hours and I take maybe 1 refilling stop in the middle and 1 maybe 2 bathroom breaks.
The 2x bathroom breaks are like 5 min and back on the road.
The refuel stop taks only as long as it takes to fill my gas tank...and I may or may not choke down a burger in the car in the parking lot for 5 min
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Hydrogen can sometimes mean something other than pure hydrogen - such as using natural gas as the hydrogen source. It still needs research for use in automobiles, but fuel cells that use hydrogen are in common use in many areas, including supplying power to satellites.
natural gas is not hydrogen [Re:Market forces] (Score:2)
Hydrogen can sometimes mean something other than pure hydrogen - such as using natural gas as the hydrogen source.
If somebody uses the word "hydrogen" when they are referring to natural gas, they are quite simply wrong.
Re: Market forces. (Score:3)
Re: Market forces. (Score:3)
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Charging at home and using solar rooftops works in suburban settings where people have their own house with a roof, a driveway and/or garage etc.
It doesn't work in cities where people live in apartments. If you're lucky your apartment building has parking and the building owner is willing to install charging points.
The area of roof space relative to the number of apartments will be very small, so the amount of power generated by solar will be minimal.
Also solar only works during the day, when people and th
Re:Market forces. (Score:5, Funny)
If Toyota was smart, they'd start with a drivetrain all electric platform, then offer battery, fuel cell, gasoline generator, diesel generator, alcohol, and thorium nuclear battery reactor options.
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Re: Market forces. (Score:3)
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Kia/Hyundai and BMW already tried it, the hybrid models didn't sell well. People who wanted cheap got a fossil, people who wanted clean got a BEV and the hybrid system proved less than reliable.
Batteries are big enough and cheap enough that it's not worth bothering with what they call a Range Extender now. Charging is very fast too, not that most EV owners really care because it's not something they wait for often.
Re:Market forces. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Market forces. (Score:5, Informative)
But compared to massive amounts of electricity?
Yes. If your primary energy is electricity, then for a fixed amount of primary energy, battery storage gives you back twice the amount that a fuel cell system would.
hydrogen is hard to store [Re:Market forces.] (Score:5, Funny)
Why is hydrogen hard to store.
Because gaseous hydrogen has very low energy density, and any form other than gaseous is complicated, heavy, or both.
The great thing about hydrogen is that you can get almost any physical or chemical property you want out of it in order to facilitate the storage and transportation. Just bind it to a chain of carbon atoms.
If you "bind it to a chain of carbon atoms", what you're storing is not hydrogen any more. That's like saying that water is a great structural material: just use the water in the form of Portland cement. Well, no: Portland cement is not water.
The highest mass fraction of hydrogen in a hydrocarbon is methane, which is 25% hydrogen by weight (roughly the same as the fraction of water in Portland cement). Methane is mostly carbon, not hydrogen.
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Yes, and:
It can be used in current ICEs with only minor modifications.
It burns cleanly, unlike the generation of most electricity.
It won't over-tax the power grid, like the one that shut down in TX this winter or the one that keeps starting fires in CA.
Re:Market forces. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's made out of natural gas, causing more global warming which is exactly what we need
Re:Market forces. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fun fact the grid is heavily under utilized overnight when your EV is sitting on the drive or in the garage charging.
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How heavily under-utilized will it remain at night when everyone and their goat is hanging a car on it to charge overnight every night?
Re:Market forces. (Score:5, Informative)
1. Producing hydrogen takes a lot of energy. If you use electrolysis, it takes 50 kWh to make 1 kg of hydrogen, and another 15 kWh to pressurize that for storage. A BMW Hydrogen 7 (760Li with V12 on hydrogen) has a range of 200 km on a tank that contains 8 kg of hydrogen, so 1 kg is enough for 25 km. If you use that 65 kWh to charge a battery, your range will easily be 10 times that. A Toyota Mirai gets 100 km/kg with its fuel cell, so half the efficiency of a battery.
At the moment, 95% of hydrogen production is by steam reforming or partial oxydation of methane because that's cheaper than using electrolysis. You could use solar/wind to drive an electrolysis plant, but again, storing that energy in batteries is more efficient than storing the energy in hydrogen.
2. Hydrogen takes up a lot of space. About 4-7 times the space a diesel tank takes up.
3. Hydrogen tanks leak. Hydrogen atoms are so small they permeate right through a solid tank wall, so after about 10 days your tank will be empty. This is an issue especially for high-pressure gaseous H2 tanks. LH2 has its own issues: you get boiloff, and you have to vent hydrogen to keep the tank pressure reasonable, so the end result is the same: tank goes empty while the vehicle is parked. This means H2 is suitable for applications where the vehicle is used daily (the higher the duty cycle the better, so trucks, construction machinery and taxis), not so much for cars.
4. That hydrogen permeation damages materials (especially steel): the material goes brittle. Which brings reliability and safety issues.
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https://www.toyota.com/mirai/ [toyota.com]
Re:Market forces. (Score:4, Informative)
However BEV you can charge at your home overnight, so you can leave for your normal commute every day with a full charge. Vs Hydrogen even with a better range, were you may get a week - week 1/2 of your commute, then you will need to fill up again, like with Gas cars.
Being that is a procedure we are use to, and grown up with the idea that every week or so you will need to fill up your car tank. With Battery you can charge up at home, and not have anxiety say on a Friday when you driving on home with the needle on E.
The longer charge time and lower range for charge only becomes a disadvantage with two key scenarios.
1. You live in an area with street parking or a parking lot not owned by you where you cannot get power to charge overnight.
2. When you are driving over 200 miles to a destination (long road trip) where having to wait 20-30 minutes at a public charger.
For issue 1, it is just a matter of time where popularity of BEV will probably create more places to charge your car overnight. Apartment and Parkinglot Landlords may install power to your car. Public municipality may put charging on the parking areas along the street.
For issue 2, being that you have been driving for 3-4 hours anyways. having to stop for a little while longer isn't a big issue, as you can get food, go to the bathroom, as well sit back and relax your eyes for a little bit.
I am not saying everyone would be happy if they went and got an EV Right now in 2021, they won't. They are a lot of people who still need ICE to get where they need. But over time the advantages of EV is going to become more apparent and infrastructure will be created to work with EV vs ICE in the Next couple decades.
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What I don't see - not even on the horizon - is an EV that can replace the family SUV for going on road trips / camping trips, which are often intentionally 'off the grid' and involve pulling a trailer for a long ways.
This is only an occasional need, so perhaps a portable generator turning the EV into a hybrid will meet it, although this defeats the purpose of being an EV for the occasions when it is used.
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Why not? EV Trucks are proposed with 300+ mile range. You have a large trailer at worse that may cut it in half get 150 mile range (3 hours of driving) if the public chargers are created every 50 miles you should not have an issue.
I live in a rural area, where there are a lot of vacationers. Based on their license plates, most of them are only less than a hundred miles away from me. As taking your kids more than a few hours on a car is just torture. They also may do such a trip 2 or 3 times a year.
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You pretty much nail it.
We are looking at a vehicle replacement. I originally looked at the natural gas powered Honda Civic 20 years ago, but a lack of response/interest from the local gas company about putting in a refueling device in the house or (a card to access the nearby refueling station) instilled doubt in it and killed that idea for us.
Now we are again looking at a new vehicle. Our needs are simple:
1. Comparable (within reason) range to a gas powered car: 200-300 miles/charge. We foresee a possi
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Being that you need to Public Charge normally only with a long distance travel. You tend to not get the same volume as you will at your gas station.
Re:Market forces. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hydrogen helps keep the entrenched fossil fuel industry in charge be keeping the means of fuel production and distribution centralized and under their control. The biggest proponents of Hydrogen have been the oil & gas companies, because the cheapest and easiest way to make hydrogen in large quantities is to start with natural gas. If the "Hydrogen Economy" came to pass then it would have been a boon for gas well operators.
Sure, technically you can produce hydrogen with renewable energy, but nobody with the resources to do that at scale are *actually* going to do that beyond what's needed for some good headlines. Status quot and profits maintained for another few decades...
=Smidge=
Re:Market forces. (Score:5, Insightful)
On top of that, the production of hydrogen using electricity is not free and not without losses. It is far more efficient to just store the electricity in batteries than it is to use it to extract hydrogen from hydrocarbons or water, then compress and store it, and then run it through a fuel cell to generate electricity. Hydrogen only makes sense if we don't have to extract it from other elements. Otherwise it is a dead end for ground transportation.
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Re:Market forces. (Score:5, Insightful)
In the case of Toyota though it's not fossil fuels, it's hybrid technology.
Toyota pioneered hybrids and have some of the best technology, as well as a lot of the patents on it. They have a lead, but are way behind on EVs. They don't even have a full BEV on the market.
It's a problem for their suppliers too. Toyota don't make all the parts themselves, they have hundreds of suppliers for all the parts of the drivetrain that are unnecessary in an EV. So if they want to put out an EV they either have to wait for all those companies to catch up, or go to Chinese and European companies that have developed the technology.
So naturally Toyota really really really wants hydrogen to take off so they can keep being market leaders, and really really really want BEVs to be 10-20 years away from the mainstream. Things are getting really bad for them now with many countries looking at 2030-2040 to phase out sales of fossil vehicles, and little in the way of hydrogen infrastructure or interest in hydrogen cars.
Re: Market forces. (Score:5, Insightful)
Battery tech is not only competitive but continuing to improve in density. There is little that can be done to improve the efficiency of ICE. Hybrids used to have merit, but now, at least for the American market are niche plays whereas the needs of most American people can be satisfied with EVs. Hybrids and FCVs can still play a role in regions that lack investment today and where none is planned for tomorrow.
In the case for Toyota, they are trying to dissuade public investment because they made a bad bet. More broadly, we need the hydrocarbon industry to mobilize its vast resources and footprint to sequester carbon with the aim of being carbon-negative, not just be a net-neutral intermediary.
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Hybrid does work, for an ICE-based platform.
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I was going to question that too, then did a search for Prius sales numbers, and was surprised by how low they are.
https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/... [goodcarbadcar.net]
The Prius is way down when compared to the previous numbers. I am not sure if that is part of the larger current trend of low car sales due to manufacturing issues, or if the same people who would get a Prius are now getting electric cars. I bought a Prius in 2017, mostly because it was half the cost at the time of the full electric Tesla. If I was buying a c
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Toyota isn't the only one who made that (H2) bet. From what I read, China is aggressively subsidizing the H2 economy too (call it backing two horses, maybe). With an H2 delivery infrastructure you can run both fuel cell electric vehicles _and_ H2-burning ICEs. (before you bring it up - yes I know H2 ICEs don't emit nice clean water, there's nitrogen compounds to deal with because we don't live in a pure O2 atmosphere).
I just don't see the charge time issue ever being surmounted. And again, a pure electric e
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Getting gasoline to cars was a massive infrastructural problem too
YES and why not LEVERAGE that investment with an incremental change to deliver H2 (or C-neutral biofuels) rather than spend yet more resources on another huge investment? You don't reinvent the road wheel every time you design a new kind of gearbox. The reason too many people are too focused on "electric as savior of the world" is that there are subsidies and lobby groups and various other activist interests focused on that as being the "only solution".
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Close, but not quite. Electrics are great... if you own your home and have a garage, so you can have the Tesla wall charger installed. If you rent, or own a condo with either an outside parking lot or a shared internal garage without provision for individual metered power hookups at the spaces; not so much. Tesla has solved the "road trip" problem with the supercharger network, sure. But without the ability to let your car charge overnight at home or a network of in-city charging stations equivalent to
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> Those renters and condo owners are where hybrids still have a place... until gas stations are replaced by charging stations in decent numbers, that is.
Or until we require apartment and condo owners to provide EV charging infrastructure for their tenants.
=Smidge=
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You say that as if landlords and housing developers give a shit. Having worked as an engineering consultant for a few apartment/condo complex builds, I can confidently place them into one of two categories:
1) Asshole slumlords who want to build the cheapest buildings they can and charge as much money for them as possible (and will only include "low cost" housing in the project if they are legally required to do so - and even then, only the minimal number of units necessary to satisfy the law). By that same
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Yep and we've seen throughout US history how GREAT "the projects" have always turned out after being built and run by our governments....
the very model of safe, efficient and wholesome communities.
[rolls eyes]
Of course track records till now is no reason not to assume it would magically change for the better on the next try.
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Six figures? Maybe for an entire apartment block. The charger and installation come to around $2k. If you get a vendor to install a pay by use charger, it would even cost little to nothing.
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So?
You realize it's possible to build electric motors that don't use rare earth magnets, right?
You realize that EV manufacturers are aware of potential supply chain bottlenecks, and that there is a push to reduce or eliminate "problematic" materials like rare earth minerals [reuters.com] and cobalt [energy.gov] from their products?
(Aside fun fact: The petroleum industry is the world's largest single consumer of cobalt, as it's required to remove the sulfur from the increasingly sulfur-laden crude oil they're forced to extract)
You rea
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At this point mainly a quicker refuel time. The figure I've heard is 300 miles of range can be added in five minutes.
One of the more successful markets for fuel cell technology is forklifts. An electric forklift has many advantages over a gas powered one, like the ability to work in confined spaces without air quality issues, but in high utilization environments where the forklift is running all day you have to change the battery mid-shift because it's not possible to top up the battery fast enough. A fu
Batteries Opportunities for Forklifts (Score:2)
I thought that electric forklifts were currently powered by lead-acid batteries, not Lithium ones.
Just doing a quick check and there are a lot of companies offering retrofits which provide longer battery life, significantly shorter recharge times as well as reduced battery maintenance. FYI: https://www.linde-mh.com/en/Ab... [linde-mh.com]
So it would seem that fuel cells need to be more efficient that more modern battery systems than the existing lead-acid ones.
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Forklift power sources is one of those "it depends" things. Lithium ion probably is a good choice for many use-cases, but not all. The worst case for lithium might be a large refrigerated meatpacking warehouse that runs three shifts around the clock and uses its forklifts pretty much continuously.
Really only huge warehouses would even consider putting in the infrastructure for a fuel cell forklifts. Those kinds of operations like that have their costs analyzed to a fare-thee-well, so when they choose hyd
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Easier supply chain on the manufacturing side. That is it.
Toyota was so amazingly dumb with their strategy going back nearly 10 years; natural evolution of their hybrid design would have led to a larger battery and smaller engine approaching (but not) a range extender. Instead they invested stupid amounts of money on fuel cells without ever being able to make a serious push for it in any market anywhere.
Smart money would have put the fuel cells in the Hino trucks first and made a serous fleet push with the
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Plusses:
Faster refuel time than EVs.
Possibly greater range.
Familiar process for consumers.
Drawbacks:
Switching to hydrogen fueling leads to a significant net loss in energy expenditure. (It takes more energy to break hydrogen out of its original substance than you get back from "burning" it, not to mention the costs of storing and transporting it.)
It's less efficient than gasoline on a hydrogen/volume measurement. Gasoline (and other hydrocarbons) are a more dense meth
Infrastructure (Score:2)
One of Toyotas main claims is the lack of electrical infrastructure, aswell as the lack of ability to produce "green" electricity.
At least the second argument should be well known.
However, as for the infrastructure, You have to consider that not the entire world has the ability to supply 200KW charging everywhere. Thus, hydrogen (or really any FCV technology), offers the same benefit as gasoine does - You only have to have sufficient infrastructure during the manufacturing process. Then decentralized distri
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What does hydrogen give that electric doesn't?
1. It takes about the same amount of time to refuel using hydrogen as it does fossil fuel.
2. Hydrogen can be transported via pipeline and truck.
3. Can use the same businesses to sell hydrogen as are being used now to sell fossil fuels (replace gas stations with H-stations)
What does BEV have that HFC doesn't?
1. Can charge at home if you have the appropriate facilities.
2. Multiple available vehicle models today.
3. More refueling options when away from home.
What d
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>> What does hydrogen give that electric doesn't?
Extremely expensive drives.
The fuel source is not their only (Score:2)
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Mexico? Where the assembly is a lower quality than the USA, Canada and Japan?
All Tacoma pickup trucks are made/assembled in Mexico, for instance.
USA?
Canada? Japan? All hybrids (at least, the drive trains) are made in Japan.
The country of manufacturing greatly affects the quality of parts, assembly and longevity.
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You've had a bad streak of bad luck with Toyotas. I've got a 2000 Tundra, made in the USA, that is the most reliable vehicle I have ever owned by a wide margin. Have you spoken to the dealership about it? Back in the day they would fix things like that for free. They took pride in their products. Maybe that has changed.
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You've had a bad streak of bad luck with Toyotas. I've got a 2000 Tundra, made in the USA, that is the most reliable vehicle I have ever owned by a wide margin. Have you spoken to the dealership about it? Back in the day they would fix things like that for free. They took pride in their products. Maybe that has changed.
I have a 1999 RX300 with 321,000 miles and counting.
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I put 11 years and 200k miles on my Highlander before trading it in (basically the same as the RX series of the time - just not as nice on the inside). Didn't have any issues the whole time. Was running like a champ when I got something new.
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Mine has a "paltry" 256,000 :-)
All original drive train. Never had a single problem with any electrical components. The transmission shifts flawlessly. No rust and original paint. Even the weatherstripping is original and not a single leak. No squeaks or rattles - not a single one. It has the 4.7 V8, a legendary workhorse, and I believe it is the same block that is in the Lexus LS430. Another legendary workhorse.
If you take care of your RX300 I would expect you can get 500,000 miles out of it.
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Have you owned anything other than a Toyota? Because all cars rust and dealing with the seized fasteners is by far the biggest pain in the ass.
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Word of advice (Score:2)
Word of advice. Next new car you buy, first thing you do is remove the license plate bolts, throw them away, and replace with nylon hardware [amazon.ca].
Electric grid (Score:3, Insightful)
How about we focus on upgrading the electric grid in the US before pushing all of these electric cars? Our electric grid is barely able to provide enough power as it is without having potentially millions of people plugging in cars. I love the idea of electric cars and want to see more of them. That will bring the price down and make them more affordable for ordinary folks.
But I don't think we want to be legislating gas powered cars out of existence. And I don't think we should be discounting hydrogen or other fuel sources just yet.
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Well, sure, but actually with off-peak charging and rates the problems electric cars present to the grid is somewhat less than people imagine. In fact one of the proposals that people are looking at is allowing car owners to sell back their unused range to the grid in the early evening hours then top up in the early morning when demand is low.
Of course we need much more fundamental change to the grid to address both climate change and reliability, but the political will is not there to tackle it.
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Yes, I have heard about the plan to sell back unused juice to the grid and it's a good idea. What I haven't heard yet is a plan for people that live in apartments or multi-family homes. For those people, charging at home is not an option. And if we try to force landlords to retrofit properties with charging stations that cost will only get passed along in the form on higher rent. Is it fair to ask non-electric car owners to foot that bill? Or people in places like NY city that don't even own a car?
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Right now the only mandate I know of is in California, where the law allows *tenants* to install charging stations if they pay for installation costs themselves.
Charging stations per se aren't expensive at all; if you have a 220V outlet a basic level 2 charger costs less than $500. Of course a permanent, public charging station would cost more, but it's still cheap enough that places like supermarkets and shopping plazas are putting them in as amenities for shoppers. When I got my plug-in hybrid, I was su
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Grid impact is a non-issue beyond the service lateral for utilities. The service lateral issue can easily be resolved with tariff optimization to push low-rate home charging.
(Most homes have the service lateral sized at ~30-35% of nominal size rating, so a 200A service only has a 60-70A rated service lateral. If you charge two cars at home for the same 1-hour period each night, you could reasonably hit the capacity of your service lateral, especially during your peak consumption period. All of this is easi
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Great if you live in a single family home. How does that address the needs of people living in apartments or condos?
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* Cars are charged at night, during off peak hours.
* Being the average person commutes 15-30 miles every day, there will only be less then 2 hours of charging every day (with a 220 charging)
* The extra cost to your power bill, will make Solar with battery backup an economic viable solution to lower your charging costs (still paying your power bill without solar backup is still cheaper than Gas (even when it was cheap)) So your home will aiding the grid as well.
* We are not all going to go EV any time soon.
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How about we focus on upgrading the electric grid in the US before pushing all of these electric cars?
No. Businesses will drag their feet as long as possible to avoid having to invest in the grid, claiming it's not needed since there isn't excess demand. The better solution is to use increased demand to force them to upgrade the grid.
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Well....we have already seen strained electric grids. In California and Texas for example. I don't see anyone running to upgrade those grids. Currently the outages are temporary, due to spikes in demand. But if everyone starts plugging in cars the outages will be more prolonged and widespread.
All I'm suggesting is that we get out in front of the problem rather than scramble after the fact.
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Yes and that's why I see hybrid cars as a great bridge solution. Use less gas without completely relying on an electric grid that isn't yet up to the task. When we get there, and it's proven to be reliable, then start retiring ICE cars. In the meantime, continue to make improvements in battery technology and investigate other fuel sources.
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There are some car makers like Ford, that allows a Vehicle to Grid option, so during peak times you can actually sell your cars power back into the grid, and then at night when it is cooler and the grid is no longer being overloaded it will then charge up.
That elephant in the room is mostly just some crazy guy with a long noes attached to his face.
Root Cause (Score:2)
By the accounts I have seen in videos, this reticence is mostly due to the the CEO Toyoda being stubborn. He has gone all-in on the hybrid-to-hydrogen path and seems to believe in it as much as Musk believes in BEVs. No doubt the huge success Toyota had with the Prius convinced them that they could dictate how the market would work.
Re:Root Cause (Score:5, Informative)
Over a decade ago, Fuel Cells seems like the path to go, as it was much more advanced than current battery technology at the time. However there were some notable improvements in Lithium Ion Batteries that improved its general life, safety, as well price. Besides EV, we began to see Cellphones and Laptops with longer battery life and non-user replaceable batteries.
In short choosing to go the Fuel Cell route wasn't a bad choice at the time, however it just happened to turned out to be a poor choice, as power the power needed to collect the hydrogen wasn't affordable or efficient at the scale it needed to have a large fleet of cars.
Toyota big mistake was to keep doubling down with their loosing hand. I drive a 2012 Prius C, I get up to 60mpg which is still good after 9 years, at the time I got it, it was the most fuel efficient car I could get. The Chevy Volt with the Plugin Hybrid didn't quite have enough range to cover my commute so it would have ended up using more fuel than the Prius. The Nissan Lief was also out, however my commute was so close to its stated range that it wasn't worth it at the time.
During that time, Fuel Cells seemed like the next step, Tesla was just a goofy startup with a seemingly vaporware product. However by 2018 or so, Battery EV have proven that they are the way to go, at least with consumer cars. But Toyota just kinda was still playing the It is just a Fad game.
If Toyota doesn't do a lot soon (they still have time, but their timeline is getting short) they may be suffering a lot competition where its traditional build quality advantages may not be enough.
Toyota can go... (Score:3)
f--k themselves. No corporation is "entitled" to make money based on their "strategy". In fact, long term planning is a fool's errand when confronted with technological progress.
Civilization's inordinate production of carbon will eventually destroy the earth's habitable environment. Switching to electric car production is not exactly a huge insurmountable technological change. GM had a functional electric car two decades ago, but threw it away when they realized it was not "marketably" profitable at the time.
Toyota merely needs to have a full electric model in the wings. The Prius Plus sucks compared to the Tesla Model 3 anyway. It's hybrid is not viable anyway, if its competitors will make better electric cars without carbon mandates from federal governments. And individual car ownership will likely go away when cars become level 5 autonomous driving. Its probably more likely to happen within a decade anyway, unlike "hydrogen" powered cars.
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I would rather transition from gas to a few thousand hybrids than from gas to a few hundred electric vehicles. The savings in fuel use is not insignificant, given the limited battery production capabilities at this time.
NYT thinks Toyota is a charity (Score:2)
NYT thinks Toyota is a charity.
It has nothing to do with market forces (Score:2)
It has to do with government regulations and government stipend/tax cuts, etc. The US government has not provided the same benefits to hydrogen. This is why electric has taken off.
Head for the shelter!!! (Score:2)
Incoming war between electric vs hydrogen!!!!
Plug In FCV (Score:2)
The "answer" is a plug in FCV. MB tried this with a few cars and it does work.
* A smaller fuel cell stack.
* A larger regen battery, but no where near the size of a full BEV.
* Plug in range of 15-20 miles.
* Total range of 400+ miles.
While the short plug in range seems useless, it does account for 50%+ of the cars daily usage for many drivers. Unlike a gasoline plug in hybrid, the car is still zero emissions.
The pluses are:
* A much bigger regen battery than current FCVs which improves efficiency and acceler
market (Score:2)
Toyota knows its market, Prius and SUVs. Toyota sells the Prius to their enviro-conscious customer and ginormous SUVs and Trucks to everyone else. Toyota doesn't need an electric. Its really about selling more hulking SUVs and Tacoma's.
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Decades ago, a professor told my class that hydrogen fuel cells were the best choice present at the time.
ok, since then, battery technology has improved significantly, and hydrogen fuel cells are no longer the best choice at the present time.
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The power plants are not as wasteful as the cars themselves and you can manage the problem better centralized to the power plants than trying to deal with millions of cars which can't be forced to upgrade or do maintenance.
My power company is building solar and wind not new coal plants (years in court delay it EACH time) but the coal we have added "scrubbers" years ago... while attempts to make us retrofit our "old" cars with "scrubbers" not only failed and upset people (and mechanics rip off more people) i
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Decades ago, a professor told my class that hydrogen fuel cells were the best choice present at the time.
It's a good thing that there has been absolutely no technological advancement in the last few decades. Otherwise, this statement would be pretty damn silly.
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You are kinda out of date. A lot has happened from the early 1990's.
While Hydrogen is plentiful it is not oven in its pure form, Hydrogen is kinda a sticky atom it likes to stick to other atoms, where it will need to be separated and joined to itself. We can do this but it takes a lot of power to get it out of water, or you can get it out of hydrocarbons (but that is just as bad as burning fuel).
At this point you have much more effective use of energy from the power-plant to your car battery than power-p
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> Cue the people who own EVs and have no problem with the battery lifespan (because they can afford to replace their car far more often than the roughly 12 year average in the USA)
Unless you were an early adopter and jumped on an early generation Nissan LEAF (2009-2012) - or you were dumb enough to buy a compliance car from a company that clearly didn't give a shit - then the battery in your EV is expected to be usable for at least 15+ years. Heck there are still 2009 LEAFs driving around, albeit with re
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At least for Tesla, the battery is designed for 300,000-500,000 miles. My normal commute with my current car (not a Testa or an EV) is about 60 miles a day, so in my 10 year old car I am shy of 150,000 miles. So to reach that 500k miles, that would take me roughly 30+ years of a lot of driving. Not 12.
While the modern EV uses the same type of batteries that your Laptop or your Cell Phone may use, which seems to die rather quickly, the EV from all makers, now have a complex battery management system which
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1. Batteries can be recycled, cutting down on the mining with the recycled battery material.
2. We are spending billions if not trillions of dollars mining for oil to be refined into gasoline in which we burn. The mining of these materials which can be recycled in time isn't that much of a harder challenge, it is just a shift in industry which happens from time to time.
3. Being now that the modern EV from almost all manufactures have a 250 minimum, where most are closer to 300 and over.
4. Who this "lot of
While you're at it Feed the Tuna Mayonnaise (Score:2)
Excellent point! Carbon neutral or carbon free fuels could be manufactured and convert a billion internal combustion engines over night. No roll out of new infrastructure and mining of rare metals.
You're right, I can't believe nobody thought of this before.
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I would say it would be sub-optimal. It is a better solution for Semi-Trucks where they will travel hundreds of miles every day, and use a lot of power that will make take a long time to charge.
However for your normal Pickup Trucks and smaller Battery is probably going to be the best bet. As even for people who do a long commute to work, rarely will average over 250 miles a day. And they can charge at home so they leave the next day with a full charge.