Japan To Phase Out Gasoline-Powered Cars, Bucking Toyota Chief (wsj.com) 209
Japan said it planned to stop the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by the mid-2030s, bucking criticism by Toyota's chief that a hasty shift to electric vehicles could cripple the car industry. From a report: The plan released Friday followed similar moves by the state of California and major European nations, but it has faced resistance from car executives in a country that still makes millions of cars annually running solely on gasoline engines. Japan would still permit the sale of hybrid gas-electric cars after 2035 under the plan. Many models from Japan's top car makers -- Toyota, Honda Motor and Nissan Motor -- come in both traditional and hybrid versions.
Earlier this month, Toyota President Akio Toyoda said that if Japan was too hasty in banning gasoline-powered cars and moving to electric vehicles, "the current business model of the car industry is going to collapse." He was speaking on behalf of Japanese car makers in his role as head of a local industry association. Mr. Toyoda said the electricity grid couldn't handle extra summer demand and observed that most of Japan's electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Government officials said car makers needed to revise their business models. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pointed to a different portion of Mr. Toyoda's comments in which the Toyota chief said he backed the government's goal of making Japan carbon-neutral by 2050. Reducing carbon emissions "should be tackled as a strategy for growth, not as a limitation on growth," Mr. Suga said.
Earlier this month, Toyota President Akio Toyoda said that if Japan was too hasty in banning gasoline-powered cars and moving to electric vehicles, "the current business model of the car industry is going to collapse." He was speaking on behalf of Japanese car makers in his role as head of a local industry association. Mr. Toyoda said the electricity grid couldn't handle extra summer demand and observed that most of Japan's electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Government officials said car makers needed to revise their business models. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pointed to a different portion of Mr. Toyoda's comments in which the Toyota chief said he backed the government's goal of making Japan carbon-neutral by 2050. Reducing carbon emissions "should be tackled as a strategy for growth, not as a limitation on growth," Mr. Suga said.
Foresight (Score:5, Insightful)
Toyota is taking a page from the American auto industry's book— see an obvious change coming, and instead of trying to innovate and preserve their relevance, they spend all of their energy resisting the change. If they didn't see the electric switch-over coming and consider numerous strategies to smoothly transition into it, it's their own stupid-ass fault. They're a dinosaur and dinosaurs move slowly, but they've got resources and talent that smaller, more nimble companies only dream of. Now they're scrambling and look like they don't know what they're doing. Better luck next time, that is, if you're lucky enough to get a next time.
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Indeed. If Toyota doesn't change their thinking, they are going to get Teslaed.
Complacent incumbents often fail to survive revolutions.
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Obviously, calculating emissions efficiency for an electric car requires knowing the CO2 per kWh that goes into generation of the electricity. Which makes said efficiency dependent on the nature of the power plants that feed it. For Germany, the German Environment Agency estimates 401g CO2 per kWh for the year 2019.
With that, we can calculate a comparison.
On one hand lets say we have a gasoline powered car that needs 5 litres of petrol per 100km. That is a very good value, you might get that from a really s
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Obviously, calculating emissions efficiency for an electric car requires knowing the CO2 per kWh that goes into generation of the electricity. Which makes said efficiency dependent on the nature of the power plants that feed it.
Agreed. Your example in Germany is almost exactly the value for natural gas powered plants. Coal is more than twice as bad. Since the CO2 per kWh for solar, nuclear, wind, and hydro are effectively zero, the more electricity we generate using these methods, the better the EV vehicles will be compared to ICE vehicles.
On one hand lets say we have a gasoline powered car that needs 5 litres of petrol per 100km (47 mpg in the US). That is a very good value, you might get that from a really small car or maybe a non-plugin Prius.
Which leaves the question of how much of an environmental burden building the battery is. EV opponents like to stress that aspect, sadly I don't have solid data on that.
If someone is going to take into account the impact of building the EV battery, then they should also take into account the impact of transporting the crude oil from the source to the refinery
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and not to forget the use "once only" fuel from that filling station that pollutes to propel and they had to pollute to get to the filling station to fill up.
Re: Foresight (Score:4, Interesting)
Translation: "Let's pick one of the more carbon-intense countries in Europe, and then pretend that its emissions will remaining static over the (1 1/2 decade) life of an EV, rather than plunging rapidly [cleanenergywire.org]" (just three years prior it was 523g/kWh [en-former.com])
Translation: "Let's say we have an unusually efficient gasoline car" (for Americans: that's 47mpg)
Translation: "Let's not pick the world's most popular EV, the Model 3, which is 10-15% more efficient than the Kona [fueleconomy.gov]."
Translation: "Let's not only take an extremely efficient gasoline fuel efficiency rating at face value, but let's non-correspondingly downrate the EV - not based on a drivecycle, but just some article I found.".
Could this comparison get any more ridiculous?
Minimal these days. [sciencedirect.com] You'll still find the occasional study stating otherwise, but when you look up the data source, it's always way obsolete; battery manufacture energy consumption has been plunging like a rock, and looks to keep plunging. US is at 43kg/kWh for NCA, 37–58 kg/kWh for NMC. China is 82 kg/kWh for NCA, 105–111 kg/kWh for NMC. Pack production from cells adds 2-5kg/kWh. All of this should be significantly lower for the new Roadrunner packs. But if we go with a pessimistic-even-for-non-Roadrunner 65kg/kWh for US manufacture (5 tonnes in a long-range Model 3), and say 300k mi / 500k km, that's 1kg/100 km. Note that this isn't on top of the 8-10t / 2kg/100km to build an ICE car; it's instead of part of it (engines and transmissions, too, are unusually high energy consumption per unit mass relative to structural components). And with Roadrunner packs you're probably looking at more like 2,5t CO2 for pack manufacture.
This is, of course, all tiny compared to the kg/100km emitted during operation.
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Actually, looking over things, 2,5t CO2 for a 78kWh Roadrunner pack is probably overly pessimistic.
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Translation: "Let's not only take an extremely efficient gasoline fuel efficiency rating at face value, but let's non-correspondingly downrate the EV - not based on a drivecycle, but just some article I found."
You got a point there, and I'll admit some sloppiness in my comparison. But I have some points of my own. A EV driver is usually someone who is willing to make concessions to go easy on the environment. I assume the petrol car driver is as well, but not quite ready to go all electric. (S)he will also get a 2021 model for comparison.
So I'll look for numbers on an unusually efficient gasoline car. I'm taking the 2021 Toyota Prius (non-plugin) and the Tesla Model 3 Standard range into the comparison.
For compar
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Numbers for the Tesla are 24 kWh/100 mi or the equivalent of 58grams of CO2 per km.
I strongly suspect that with EV charging, if smart charging is implemented, you'd need to account for marginal CO2 intensities instead of the average ones. If new renewable generation is installed and the power consumption of future EVs prioritizes these new sources, which makes perfect sense from the grid balancing perspective, your emissions will fall from tens of grams of CO2 per km to mere single-digit grams.
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Tesla is surviving because guys like me who buy cheap and midrange gasoline-powered cars for 18k to 30k subsidize them twice
As a Tesla owner, I appreciate your subsidies.
Without your contribution, I might not have been able to afford the tinted windows or premium trim.
Thanks.
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Meanwhile in the US, the US government actually pays EV buyers $7500 to not buy from Tesla.
Also: the average EV buyer is not wealthy***. They're middle class. TCO on EV ownership is quite low; it's just sticker shock that scares some people off. Try comparing long-term lease rates plus maintenance plus fuel-or-home-charging between ICEs and EVs.
Top non-Tesla tradeins for the Model 3 are: BMW 3-series (one of their lower-end cars); Toyota Prius; Nissan Leaf; Honda Accord; Honda Civic. Does that sound like a
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(And this is accounting for the fact that Tesla chooses a lease structure designed to discourage leases while most automakers try to encourage them)
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TCO on EV ownership is quite low; it's just sticker shock that scares some people off. Try comparing long-term lease rates plus maintenance plus fuel-or-home-charging between ICEs and EVs.
I did do that. It's really hard to beat a used ICEV in TCO. I thought about buying a new electric car, that is until I did the TCO calculations and realized that gasoline prices would have to make a near order of magnitude jump in price to make it cheaper than a used ICEV. Buying a used EV may be an option now, it wasn't when I made that decision.
Top non-Tesla tradeins for the Model 3 are: BMW 3-series (one of their lower-end cars); Toyota Prius; Nissan Leaf; Honda Accord; Honda Civic. Does that sound like a profile of "wealthy people's cars" to you?
It doesn't sound like the buying habits of the poor either.
The government should not be paying people to buy new cars. If they are buying a new car then they a
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I think I've found your problem.
Re: Foresight (Score:5, Insightful)
However, in the bigger picture you're wrong. First. the petrochemical industry gets subsidies that dwarf anything that Tesla or the renewable industry gets.
Second, while they aren't quite there yet, electric cars are approaching the point where they are cheaper than IC cars, safer than IC cars, more powerful and more reliable than IC cars, faster than IC cars, and better for the environment than IC cars. And, to repeat, this is happening with a level of government subsidies that are WAY less than what helped kick off the oil and gas industry. This is no longer being driven by tree-hugging hippies. There are solid technological roadmaps, produced by hard-eyed businessmen, finance people, accountants and engineers, that predict to the end of most IC cars in 2-3 decades.
The same thing is happening to solar. Not quite there yet, but it's starting to be competitive with conventional power, even with zero subsidies. Conservative businessmen are starting to install solar and wind power, because it's SIMPLY CHEAPER THAN COAL, GAS, OR OIL. Walmart has solar on on a lot of it's rooftops. That's not green fantasy - Walmart does NOTHING unless it makes them $$.
Technology is moving forward and changing, with our without you. It's uncomfortable, I know. While there is some flim-flam in the renewable sector, most of it is real - not a trick pulled off by the librul media and George Soros. Get your info from someone other than Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh. They simply aren't qualified. You sound hostile to anything that challenges your worldview. I respect your right to be like that. I also have the freedom of speech to tell you that you're fairly ignorant on this topic.
Re: Foresight (Score:2)
I've seen detailed technical studies about how to use solar energy to deliver all-weather, all-day power in favorable climates. I've never seen one where the power budget closed. These analyses were presented at and by credible hardnosed people at well-regarded institutions.
I have, however, seen a lot of the audience, management, and other hangers-on at these places who are not technical and who are big on grand pronouncements, and who look at a budget that
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"Tucker Carlson or Rush Limbaugh" if you listen to any of those dinosaurs then it ruins the credibility of any argument you may try to put forward.
Re: Foresight (Score:2)
I am reminded of the small R republican objections to the Briti
Re: Foresight (Score:2)
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Nope, one tired old has been CEO and board no drive, no vision, more dishonest then honest, gripping onto their position, bad decision after bad decision. They are going no where.
They're problem they are stuck with Toyota four wheel drive utilities, the favourites for terrorist heavy machine gun mounts. Go electric and they lose one of their biggest markets, the terrorist market.
What's their current preferred product, robot arms hanging from rails running around you ceiling, to not take up floor space, but
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There is also the "gripping hand" argument. Companies may fight over EV, but let them be the first to market with those.
The next evolution of cars will be EVs... but not pure EVs. It will be serial hybrids, where the car has a range extender on it, where an IC engine is run to keep the battery bank charged. BMW has had this for years. Ford has a patent on a toolbox design for their EV F-150. Mazda is working on a rotary engine based range extender.
Doing a series hybrid makes engineering the IC engine a
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Poster has a good point. US car quality has mostly caught up with Japan. Not quite, but pretty close. It's true that US cars were absolutely awful for a few decades, but Ford and GM learned their
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"the vast multitudes of the unwashed masses have no appetite for an automobile that costs twice as much and does half as much."
In much of the world this is going to be a regulatory change, not a market change.
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Hydrocarbons have some important advantages, but they are not overwhelmingly important, and the disadvantages go well beyond carbon intensity: noise, smell, costs, limited lifetime, vibration, non-linear responsiveness when accelerating, complexity... the list goes on and on.
You sound like an LP manufacturer talking about CDs, or a CRT manufacturer talking about LEDs.
Re: Foresight (Score:4, Insightful)
Without hydrocarbons all passenger carrying aircraft will no longer fly.
True for now, although a viable short-hop electric passenger plane has recently been demonstrated, so not for long!
Without hydrocarbons transoceanic shipping and travel will come to a near stop.
It can literally be done with wind power if you're willing to multiply the travel times. You'd need to increase the number of container ships substantially, and they would move a lot slower. This would be a problem for some industries, but wouldn't affect others much at all because what they need is regularity and not on-demand shipping.
Over the road trucking stops.
No, that's nonsense. There's plenty of electric demonstrators with useful range which have been shown off already. And even though system efficiency is less than with batteries, there's always hydrogen. It may make sense for some OTR trucking for a time.
If noise, smell, vibration, and performance of the internal combustion engine concerns you then you need to get your car in for repair.
I'm concerned about the poor efficiency, and the emissions. Gasoline vehicles still emit soot, and in quantities similar to diesels. But it's PM2.5, which is why it is so hard to detect, and which also makes it the most dangerous.
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I meant the *advantages* of hydrocarbon fuels vs other fuels are not overwhelmingly important, not hydrocarbons themselves! This was perfectly clear from what I wrote.
All ICE vehicles have problems with noise, smell, vibration and performance. They're inherent to the propulsion method. And I didn't even mention the biggest of them all, pollution from particulates and SOx, NOx, etc.
Re: Foresight (Score:3, Informative)
Toyota is the only major car mfg focusing on hydrogen fuel cells. That is their trajectory to get off of gasoline. It's an interesting play, if they succeed, they are the default market leader; if they fail, they have a number of players to license battery-electric from.
Their target also reuses much of the current fuel distribution apparatus. Note that the Chief is basically against charging off the grid; ie: battery-electric. He is more worried about fighting a Japanese lock-in to EV because his horse ma
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I don't see this. Other than the tractors used to tow fuel trailers, nothing can be re-purposed from gasoline to hydrogen.
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why not aim for zero CO2 emissions?
Because zero CO2 emissions is impossible. The lowest CO2 emitters are hydro, nuclear fission, onshore wind, geothermal, with solar coming in at a distant fifth. Because solar is so often backed up with natural gas turbines we'd often produce less CO2 per kWh f if we got rid of the unreliable solar and burned the natural gas in more efficient combined cycle power plants instead. Batteries are not the answer because there is CO2 emitted in making batteries which if combined with solar power only makes sola
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Because solar is so often backed up with natural gas turbines we'd often produce less CO2 per kWh f if we got rid of the unreliable solar and burned the natural gas in more efficient combined cycle power plants instead.
We'd also produce less CO2 per kWh if we got rid of the polluting natural gas and just used the solar, and transitioned towards doing more of the work when the power is available instead of demanding that it all be done on a regular schedule. This is how civilization used to be organized in the past, and there's no reason it cannot be organized that way in the future.
I actually just disagree with some of your other premises, I think that batteries will continue to become more viable as they have continued t
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Toyota is taking a page from the American auto industry's book— see an obvious change coming, and instead of trying to innovate and preserve their relevance, they spend all of their energy resisting the change.
It's hard to say Toyota is anti-innovation, given they came out with the Prius and now has full electric cars out. At worst you could say they bet too hard on fuel-cells, when they should have built better batteries. And now they are trying to catch up.
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The Prius came out nearly a quarter century ago. GM had the EV-1 in 1996. Nissan was selling the LEAF in 2010.
In 2020, Toyota is playing catch-up.
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Just to correct your facts: 1828 was a model electric car. The "car" in 1834 drove on an electrified track, aka, a train. The car in 1835 was powered by primary cells, e.g. not rechargeable. The first production-worthy rechargeable electric car wasn't until 1884 at the earliest, although others don't consider it until 1888.
The first cars were steam cars. Toy-scale, 1672. For people, 1770, with more practical designs starting around 1801, and commercially viable in the early 1870s.
The first ICE engine was in
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Toyota's got lots of electric vehicles. I expect they'd rather not have electric mandates because they're pretty much the go-to vehicle for places like middle of nowhere Africa, and that's going to stay gasoline for a while.
If you're already offering a broad product line, it's a competitive edge if you can offer it everywhere.
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Sure man. Let me know when you replace a diesel land cruiser with jerry cans strapped all over it mud bogging over something that's only technically a road.
Electric vehicles are heavy and their range is not easily extendable by low tech means.
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Meanwhile, a Model 3 is roughly the same weight as its performance-and-class equivalents from BMW with a full tank of gas:
Model 3 SR+: 0-100=5,6s, 1645kg
BMW 330i auto: 0-100=6,3s, 1635+45 = 1680kg
Model 3 LR or P: 0-100=4,6 or 3,5s, 1847kg
BMW 340i xDrive auto: 0-100=5s, 1750+45 = 1795 kg
But don't let facts get in the way of a good "EVs are too heavy!" story.
A vehicle is not simply "a fuel tank" vs. "a battery pack". It's a whole system of interconnected components. Yes, EVs add a battery pack. But not only
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If you have to spin the tires to make progress then the ICE is still going to win because you're pouring fuel into it.
But if you're in a situation where you can make traction if only you have superior traction control, then the EV is going to win through efficiency.
The cleverer thing would be to have an EV on balloon tires for those situations where you've got to get across mud with an automobile for some reason.
An EV can also do a whole lot of winching...
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Ever heard of Toyota Prius?
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At least Japan isn't trying to switch over to completely electric vehicles by 2030 like some countries are. The electric grid is going to need a TON of modernization if they want to be able to support electric car charging at every residential garage in an entire country. It's probably going to take more than 10 years to accomplish, even in a fairly dense country like Japan.
We're also living in a world where 97% of all vehicles sold still have gasoline or diesel engines. We're not as far along in the migrat
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Something forgotten here in California with a similar foolish idea, how about every parking space in an apartment building or complex. What happens for the people who need to park on the street, because there are no parking places at their apartment? They will need to add a stop to their day much lengthier than a few minutes at a gas station.
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And global EV sales are growing at over 50% YoY average, with no signs of the trend stalling out (just COVID blips alongside cars in general). Such are S-curves. As far as new car sales go, ICE days are numbered.
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Japan's auto industry is made up of a large number of companies that supply various parts. For example they might make some if the drivetrain... The drivetrain that is going away when manufacturers switch to electric.
Worse still Chinese companies hold a lot of the patents on EV technology so they want to develop ways around them, or simply wait for them to expire.
Thus a fast transition is undesirable, at least for the likes of Toyota.
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Hub motors are not very popular in passenger vehicles. Beyond the well known issues of unsprung weight, they also face big problems with vibration, geometry constraints, cooling, debris, etc. It generally makes much more sense just to have a CV joint separating the "dirty vibrating spinny bits" from the thing(s) that spin them.
But yes, structurally it's far similar. In an optimal design, the drive unit(s) fit directly between the wheels being driven, and gearing is simple, straightforward, and low-drag.
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Toyota is taking a page from the American auto industry's book— see an obvious change coming, and instead of trying to innovate and preserve their relevance, they spend all of their energy resisting the change.
It's not the "American" auto industry. It's very much the *entire* auto industry. No car company is really taking EV seriously. Sure a few have sidegigs. Nissan has the Leaf, Opel the Ampere, the Volt, the Zoe, the ID, but no car company is taking this at all seriously.
Instead it seems like the future may be dominated by names people didn't hear 5-10 years ago. Tesla. BYD. BAIC. Hell even Tata has more EV models on the market than pretty much every traditional auto company.
You can tell how "all in" car comp
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VW has precisely 2 EVs on the market both of which are not pushed or marketed at all, and one of which is a direct result of legal action due to the diesel scandal.
Källenius, the Daimler CEO is well on the record as having no interest in EVs and is very much banking on diesel being here to stay. Hell Daimler's most successful EV venture is the Denza brand which is a joint venture with BYD manufactured by BYD for the Chinese market. They are literally just throwing money at competitors in a greenwashing
Even with fossil generation electric cars do okay (Score:2)
Electric cars do okay emission wise, even with a modern coal plant and transport losses. Turbines are a lot more efficient than ICE. With gas it's not a contest.
Which is not to say scaling up the grid to handle the load, lack of recycling technology for batteries etc don't have to get solved ... perhaps in an impossible timeframe.
Battery recycling (Score:2)
Citation: It’s time to get serious about recycling lithium-ion batteries [acs.org]
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Tesla is on it [tesla.com]. The article you linked to seems to conflate car batteries and cell phone batteries, and they are not equivalent.
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I hope we figure out how to better recycle car batteries by the time mandatory ICE phase out takes effect.
Cars have an average lifetime of 12 years. So large-scale recycling will lag adoption by about a decade.
It is likely that EVs will last even longer on average since there is much less wear than with an ICE.
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Sure, as the transition metals in batteries become a limiting factor, as they will when EVs really take off, "current trends" will definitely "hold."
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Currently EV batteries generally go to secondary use markets, i.e. they get broken up by scrappers who sell the cells off to people who want to use them to build their own battery storage systems, or who want to use them to build their own EVs (although AFAIK most of those people are buying new lifepo4 cells now.) Or in the case of tesla battery packs, they are broken up into modules of cells.
Tesla actually had trouble getting enough packs to spin up their recycling program because they are so aggressively
No surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
And as a consequence Toyota have turned from green evangelists into assholes. They're running ads blurring the lines between hybrid and plugin hybrid. They're promoting bullshit go-nowhere cock-blocking tech like hydrogen. They fudding about solid state batteries and other stuff that doesn't exist. It is all designed to denigrate battery technology, confuse consumers and slow the rate of adoption.
It is good that Japan is finally mandating rules they'll have to abide by but it is clear that even at this stage they're still being dicks about it.
Re: No surprising (Score:2)
As a happy Prius owner I have to say: you are right (unfortunately). If Toyota stays on this course my next car will not be a Toyota
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.
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I see that Kia has now taken a leaf out of Toyota's playbook, describing their mild hybrids as "self-charging".
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If driven correctly (smooth, easy starts and stops) then a mild hybrid can offer a big percentage of the benefit of a full hybrid without having to have a big expensive battery or an overly complex transmission. You get the take-off power, you get the regen, and you get the seamless auto start-stop. It doesn't regen as much obviously so you really do have to brake earlier and easier, but so what? Lots of people could stand to pay more attention to what's coming up.
Making every vehicle a mild hybrid would ha
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These days it is Toyota that looks bad.
They are in good company. The future is looking to be dominated by brands people didn't hear about 5 years ago. Tesla, BIAC, BYD, Tata, SIAC, I'd like to see some more American / European names in there but other than Tesla the rest seem to be pedalling vapourware.
The entire industry is facing a moment of truth. They can either pull their finger out or they may not be around in 15 years.
Mid 2030 is hasty? (Score:3)
If Toyota were smart they would copy Tesla and get into the clean energy production market space as Japan is going to need a major roll out of clean energy options given they are backing away for nuclear power generation and customers are going to start focusing more on BEVs regardless of what Toyota would like them to do.
You can't make that stuff up! (Score:3)
Toyota President: Akio Toyoda.
Honda President: Kaneda Honta.
Nissan President: Tetsuo Nissun.
Re: You can't make that stuff up! (Score:2)
Ever heard of the concept of family businesses and alternate spellings of foreign names?
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Weird! It's like the companies are named after the people that founded them or something!
Not like good American companies like Ford, Chrysler and Disney.
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Or Apple!
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Or Twitter! And Facebook!
You certainly *CAN* make that stuff up! (Score:2)
The Spokesman for the Teeter back stretcher? Roger Teeter
Don't tell me these people found their true calling for a product that is marketed to television viewers. They were named for the product!
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You can't make what up? That family owned businesses have their last name in company name?
If you want to really blow your mind realise that Toyota Motors was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and is currently run by Akio Toyoda, while Toyota Industries a completely different company was founded by Sakichi Toyoda and currently chaired by Tetsuro Toyoda.
Do you realise that Ford motors had Henry Ford as an executive, followed by his son Henry Ford II, followed by his son William Ford who is still chairman to this day
So no chance for synthetic gasoline fuel cells? (Score:2)
You know, with integrated CO2 capture.
Because the dirty secret of electric cars is that batteries use a LOT of minerals extracted in toxic, enviroment-destroying processes that create shittons of CO2.
Apart from their really bad energy density and resistance to regular fire extinguishing.
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Mid-2030s hasty? (Score:2)
> mid-2030s
or
> hasty
Pick one. A dozen years is too long. Even an industry like cars can move faster than that, especially considering the stakes.
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Really short sighted (Score:2)
From the company that started the hybrid revolution, this is incredibly stupid and short sighted thinking. They should simply use what they learned with the Prius and others to change over their entire line immediately and crush everyone else for the next 100 years or until all the gas runs out. They have until then to win on pure electric.
Tesla should acquire Toyota (Score:2)
Tesla should acquire Toyota and then shutdown the factories, sell off the land and robotic equipment and put the proceeds of that sale into a retirement/retraining fund for ex-Toyota workers.
Blindsided (Score:3)
Traditional automakers are being slow-motion blindsided on two fronts:
1. The switch to electric
2. The switch to active accident avoidance via advanced driver-assistance systems
They just don't get it.
So what? This is why: (Score:2)
Nothing of value is lost and the Japanese vehicle market will provide whatever vehicles are necessary. Japanese don't keep cars a long time anyway so no one will be inconvenienced. ICE vehicles need not be built or sold in Japan. If some exception is necessary it can be made. The parts of the world needing ICE will have them (and have other Toyota plants to produce them if deemed profitable).
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If people keep saying it can't work and the response, if even given, is to "revise your models," then guess what's going to happen:
California can no longer keep the electricity on after betting against the law of conservation of energy. Gilette loses sales after betting that insulting their customer base will net them more business. And so it will be that in California and in Japan and in Europe, come the mid 2030s the physical as well as the metaphorical mobility of the citizenry will be reduced while the rich and the connected will be driving Teslas that, without subsidies from the sales of gasoline powered cars, will be only accessible to the upper ten percent of the income ladder. And this will be called "progressive" and "equalizing."
Meh, Toyota just realized their model for sales will be screwed in 9+ years. Cue sobbing auto executives.
Re: Groupthink steamrolls over honest objections (Score:2)
Do you really think that in 15 years, and especially if large manufacturers actually invest in electric vehicles instead of resisting change, the e-cars will cost at least as much as Teslas currently do?
Not even Teslas will cost as much as Teslas currently do!
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What happens if the subsidies for gasoline and oil go away? Oil would have to be close to $200 a barrel just so the oil companies could afford to clean up after themselves rather then having a subsidy own the mess and go bankrupt after passing on the profits. And that's not even considering the CO2 they spew.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
lol at being upset that a company opposes misogyny, or that the world is switching to more sustainable transportation. what a horrible sack of human garbage you are.
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lol at being upset that a company opposes misogyny
Gillette was not opposing misogyny. They were opposing masculinity.
Yet Gillette has a long history of misogynistic ads and should have been apologizing rather than preaching. Here are some examples of Gillette using female ass to sell razors [shadolsonshow.com].
The Gillette ad blamed men for child abuse. Yet mothers are more than twice as likely to abuse their children as fathers [breakingthescience.org]. Children raised by single mothers are the most likely to be abused. Children raised by single fathers are the least likely to be abused.
They also
what is wrong with "female ass" ? (Score:2)
Here are some examples of Gillette using female ass to sell razors.
I checked out the "toxic masculinity" advertisement, I needed explanations about the implied demographic of characters - but after that I think I understood it.
What exactly is wrong with "using" the female ass to sell razors ? The ass still exists after "using", and seems apparently unharmed. And it might have sold more razors than the whole 2 minute stupid advertisement :).
Glutes are some of the biggest and most important muscles of the human body - checking them out instantly tells us a lot about "fitness
Re: (Score:2)
will be only accessible to the upper ten percent of the income ladder
Fine by me. The plebes can spend their lives commuting on crowded mass transit (coof, coof) between their miserable jobs and commie block apartments. That will leave more space on the roads and at out of the way vacation spots for us 10%.
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We are pretty close to being self sufficient as far as crude oil supply goes. The Iranian-Saudi proxy wars are conducted at the behest of our masters.
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Link [forbesimg.com]. "Hydrocarbon gas liquids (paints, solvents, plastics)" makes up 4% of oil usage. An additional 13% is "Other products (lubes, waxes, asphalt, coke)" - but coke is still mostly burned or otherwise oxidized by industry (and is as cheap as it is because it's a waste product of making fuels). The rest is all liquid fuels - 45% gasoline, 25% diesel, 9% kerosene / jet fuel, 2% residual fuel oil, and 2% heating oil.
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Good luck with that. Those central office buildings were literally designed to stand up to nukes.
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This is why this attack is so enigmatic. A nation-state actor would know that a McVeigh-style bomb wouldn't take out the building. And the building was clearly the target vs. people, because the vehicle with the bomb announced its intentions beforehand.
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Not really unscathed, it took out 911 service for most of middle TN and lack of comms shut down BNA for a while.
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Carbon taxes will not be a path out of this in any place that allows people to vote, because people will not vote themselves into poverty.
I realize this is not germane, but I have to say it. Please realize that American voters have demonstrated that they will vote against their own interests on a regular basis. All that has to happen is for their "team" to be for/against whatever.
Re: (Score:2)
because people will not vote themselves into poverty
Can you demonstrate people voting against their own interests knowingly?
So existence of ignorance in people refutes your hypothesis ? The hypothesis is not worth much when ignorance is highly widespread and notable, is it ?
Re: Diesel fuel is not gasoline, neither is propan (Score:2)
Very funny. You've not seen any social media for 10 years.
Re: (Score:3)
"This includes air quality because gasoline powered cars burn very clean." - ok, lock yourself in your garage at home, turn the engine on and see how long you can stay in there.