Japan EV Sales Plummet 33% in 2024, First Decline in Four Years (nikkei.com) 44
Sales of electric vehicles in Japan fell 33% year-on-year to 59,736 cars in 2024, the first decline in four years, according to data from car dealers and importers compiled by Nikkei on Thursday. From the report: EVs' share of all vehicle sales fell below 2% in Japan, the lowest among major advanced economies. While global EV sales are still growing, albeit more slowly, Japan's reluctance to adopt EVs is becoming increasingly apparent.
That's OK (Score:3, Funny)
Re:That's OK (Score:5, Insightful)
Hydrogen may well take off or not, but PHEVs seem to have taken off nicely already. Most of the new cars in my neighborhood are PHEVs now. Excellent choice if you ask me - it covers about 80% of my driving on electricity and I can still go on a longer trip and not worry about chargers and batteries.
Plus, it is a nice car, and not one of these ugly musk abominations.
Re:That's OK (Score:5, Informative)
If Hydrogen takes off, it won't do it on its own merits, except of course if you use "takes off" to mean "leaves the surface of the planet" which it does readily every time there's a leak. Making it is expensive, storing it is expensive, transporting it is expensive, filling stations are expensive and dangerous, fueling takes longer than petroleum-based liquid fuels and can actually take longer than charging an EV when the weather is just wrong, the vehicles are more expensive than BEVs or gasoline hybrids... It has literally not a single thing to recommend it.
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The point: PHEVs are quite hot in Japan
You: missed it.
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I am not obligated to discuss the part of your comment that you find interesting. If this bothers you, you can go write in your secret diary instead and avoid all the unpleasantness of interacting with other humans.
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Then don't reply to me, you cheap karma whore.
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Then don't reply to me, you cheap karma whore.
If you don't want replies, don't post. Problem solved.
If you don't want people to reply to things you write, don't write them. Problem solved.
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Your statement was quite rude.
Which part of my response to his comment was rude? Explain why. Is it because of your noted aversion to facts?
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What I don't like with PHEV is that you get a small battery, yes sure enough for daily commutes, but you have to recharge it every day.
While for the same price you can usually get a real EV with 400 km of range that you could only plug once a week.
When doing under 50 km, both EVs and PHEV work fine as you can usually do it on the battery alone.
Everytime you do between 50 and 400 km, you are much better off with an EV. PHEV starts to become usefull when you go over 400 km. So I guess it depends how often you
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What I don't like with PHEV is that you get a small battery, yes sure enough for daily commutes, but you have to recharge it every day.
So.... you plug it in when you get home?
I don't see that as too difficult.
And you won't be stranded if you forget to do it, it just costs you extra so you're more likely to remember to do it next time.
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Yes. Not that it is difficult, but a real EV is more convenient for daily commuting since you can be a couple days without having to plug or worry about it.
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ICE cars work great as long as others, not you, pay for the cost of your pollution.
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And from a maintenance perspective, PHEV is hell (all the components from an EV and an ICE car).
If you believe a PHEV is "hell" to maintain then I'm thinking you are looking at some very narrow segment of PHEV options, this also goes for your comments on "range anxiety".
One variation on the PHEV I saw would be considered a "range extended EV", that is it's in nearly every respect a BEV but has a tiny little gasoline generator on board that can give about 100 miles of added range. For people that rarely drive beyond the 250 mile all battery range (or something in that ballpark, maybe more like 150 mil
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I expect the PHEV to make the "pure" ICEV obsolete. Clearly you see otherwise. We shall see which proves more popular.
Oh, I never said that people made rational choices. Especially on cars. Most people buy cars based on emotions (looks, feeling, identity, etc.)
the maintenance required for the ICE would be minimal, perhaps not needing an oil change until the brakes, tires, or some other maintenance is called for
Most manufacturers mandate an oil change every X months no matter if you use the car or not. On my Mazda CX5 it was a very low 4 months. Also it required 0w20 oil which is only available as synthetic and therefore cost much more than $30. Fortunately, on my new car it's only every 12 months. I doubt on PHEVs they say you can do an oil change only once every 5 years e
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According to Toyota Canada, the Prius PHEV shall have an oil change every 12 months. The exact same schedule as for their ICE cars (using expensive synthetic oil).
https://www.toyota.ca/toyota/e... [toyota.ca]
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Oil changes are just the most obvious example that came to my mind, exhaust is the next. Especially in places favoring rust (close to the ocean or where they put salt on roads in the winter). It appears oil changes have to be performed just as often on PHEV as on ICE cars. I would say exhaust also fail just as fast.
So compared to a real EV you save on battery cost, but you pretty much need the same motor, plus an ICE motor and all associated components. Now, "range-extender" PHEV are different, but most PHE
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But yeah, EVs should be advantageous for people who can't afford to maintain an ICE car, when they become affordable enough for peop
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What I don't like with PHEV is that you get a small battery, yes sure enough for daily commutes, but you have to recharge it every day.
Why in the world would you think that's a problem? It takes about twenty seconds to plug it in.
You missed today's story. (Score:2)
Literally today Toyota has reversed course, admitting that hydrogen for passenger vehicles is a dead end: https://www.ft.com/content/694... [ft.com]
Hybrids (Score:5, Interesting)
Keep in mind that most (passenger) cars sold in Japan are gas-electric hybrids (see this, for example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-19/hybrid-cars-will-be-the-majority-of-sales-in-japan-next-year).
As such, pure electric is a lot less of a draw for them. Japanese manufacturers have been focused on hybrid production for years, and not really moving to pure EVs. That's not a bad strategy, but only in Japan (where quality of cars AND repair is good, that a complex hybrid does not cause more issues than it solves).
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... that a complex hybrid does not cause more issues than it solves
Not all PHEVs are equal. Having a hybrid vehicle can mean simplified mechanicals, simpler than any pure ICEV.
Most early PHEVs I've seen had overly complex transmissions to allow some mixing of power output between the ICE and electric motor. This created a bad reputation for PHEVs. The kind of PHEV seen today will likely have a very simple transmission connecting the ICE to the wheels, perhaps just one gear ratio available for highway driving, with the electric motor doing most of the work. Maybe there
Probably only a matter of time (Score:2)
Without external financial pressures, I don't see Toyota or Honda changing anything any time soon. A drop in EV adoption only strengthens that.
Perhaps some Japanese slashdotters can chime-in on regarding any cultural distaste, but I feel it's probably only a matter of time (50 years) before China dominates that market. BYD already has a presence in Japan and the current and upcoming battery tech from BYD and CATL, including range, safety, weight, and cost, are starting to make the move to their EVs a no-bra
What did they expect? (Score:3)
The market has saturated. Those who were interested in getting an EV, got one. Most of us are not interested or can't afford one.
People want cheap cars, with long range, running on cheap fuel and cheap to insure. EVs are anything but.
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I live in the Western USA where long range really is important (it's hundreds of miles between cities), but it's a little surprising that long range would be such an big selector in Japan. I guess I had always thought of that country as geographically dense (or at least not anything like North America or Australia).
Including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles? (Score:3)
Is this sales of only BEVs, battery electric vehicles? Or does this include PHEVs, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles?
The fine article is behind a firewall so I sought an alternate source, that didn't shed any light on if this statistic included PHEV.
https://www.just-auto.com/news... [just-auto.com]
Around here BEVs are not that popular. I'm in the Midwest USA where people tend to drive long distances. On top of long distances is the low population density that can make it difficult to make a profit on EV chargers. Something of a chicken-and-egg issue that might need a lot of time to resolve. It's not that there's no EV chargers, only that they'd be clustered in city centers. With few chargers along the highways there's going to be "range anxiety" for most anyone considering a BEV. News articles like this aren't likely to help: https://www.newsweek.com/tesla... [newsweek.com]
I'll hear of plenty of people at least considering a PHEV. With a PHEV there's the option for all electric driving for daily commutes, and running from gasoline on long trips. There's no concern for finding any EV charger in this case, they'd expect to charge nowhere else but at home. I've seen some limited range in some models of PHEV, such as only 100 miles on a tiny fuel tank, but that's plenty to get from one filling station to the next on anything but the longest trips through some barren part of the USA.
A feature that is becoming popular on PHEVs, and EVs in general, is the ability to export power. For a PHEV this means people can run their vehicle like a portable generator. This is handy for people that like to camp out, a popular summer activity around here. Also this is useful for the occasional power outage. There's been some big storms in recent memory where there were lengthy and widespread power outages, prompting people to keep generators or find some other means of providing backup power.
This is about Japan though, not the USA, but I wanted to make some comparisons. Japan might not see snow and wind like we do but they have experienced large power outages before. They may not drive as far as we do in the USA but they have seen rising electricity prices, that can impact total cost of ownership.
The practicality of a BEV as a primary vehicle has always been questioned, and unless there's some big leap in technology I don't expect this to change. BEVs will likely come in two flavors, the luxury sport vehicles like those from Tesla, and small commuter vehicles (a "neighborhood electric vehicle" as an example) with limited range and at low cost for those needing a second vehicle or have ample access to public transit for most of their travel needs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Will there be some options in between those two flavors? Of course, I just have no expectations of them being all that popular.
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You post an article about range anxiety in the boonies and cite an article about how the Tesla chargers in downtown Chiacgo all shit the bed on a cold day.
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How does this confuse you? Downtown Chicago would be a popular destination for people all across the Midwest. It should not be some surprise that people might drive for hours to get there with the expectation to find operational EV chargers.
Technically the chargers were fine, it's that the cars refused to take a charge with the batteries so cold, that's something of an engineering oversight from Tesla since they didn't account for this condition in their programming. For some it was just that the EV char
Japan is far behind in EV markets (Score:3)
After so many years on top of the global auto industry it is very difficult for Japanese industrial and government officials to acknowledge that their domestic manufacturers are seriously behind on sellable EV vehicles and their domestic EV market is not even close to world standards. Dedicated fans of various Japanese auto brands have an equally difficult time with this also as can been seen on many auto board discussion threads - lots of talk about magic technology that will allow Toyota in particular to storm back to the front of EV design and sales while Tesla, GM, and VW are flooding the market with multiple models, new designs/technology, and sales support.
Japan is Ahead of the Game (Score:2)
As I understand it, almost all vehicles in Japan are electric if you include hybrids.
I think its important to remember that one of the major driving forces for EV's is the idea that eventually they will replace higher emission vehicles. But the emission benefit of an EV replacing a hybrid that only uses less than a couple gallons to go 100 miles is not that great. Its considerably less than the advantage of the hybrid replacing a vehicle that uses 5 gallons to go 100 miles. And that doesn't consider the hi
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Hybrids with no plug-in charge capability can be quite efficient, but they are not in any sense EVs. Toyota took the lead from Honda in regen-only hybrids with the Gen 1 Prius and then... did essentially nothing to develop new technology from that point (admittedly they were being pressured by the Japanese government to work on hydrogen fueled vehicles, but they were a large enough company to do both).
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They are not in any sense EVs.
They use batteries to store electricity and use it to replace fossil fuel. Toyota has been making the case that with limited batteries hybrids will do more to reduce emissions than putting the same amount of batteries in an EV. If you have cars that use 5 gallons to go 100 miles and you replace them with a hybrids that use less than 2 gallons you are reducing emissions further than it you replace the hybrids with BEVs. Japan has replaced most vehicles with hybrids. If they had put those same batteries into
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And Honda also did nothing to develop EV technology, which is why right now they are selling a rebadged GM product which is guaranteed to disappoint Honda customers; its controls are all the usual GM flimsy plastic bullshit so it doesn't feel like a Honda, and it also won't last like one. Then again, Honda reliability has trended downwards of late, so perhaps it will fit in OK.
Only Nissan did anything to push actual EVs forwards in Japan, and now look at them, praying for acquisition. Clearly Japanese peopl
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Well, isn't Japans largest market for the most part, the US?
In the US, we're seeing largely the same thing...the EV market for those that want on, is largely saturated...
So, if Japan's local market isn't pushing for EVs and
Did ICE sales also 'plummet'? (Score:2)
Sale of vehicles go up and down all the time. This is only significant if the sales of other vehicle types didn't have a similar decline, but the visible part of the linked article doesn't state how ICE or hybrids are selling by comparison.
One detail that the summary fails to mention: "Nissan retained top spot"... If your nation's top EV producer is a failing company that's about to be swallowed by another, this may explain the downturn. Nissan hasn't really been near the forefront of EV tech globally since
Too damn expensive (Score:3)
Few Options (Score:2)
Given that the auto market in Japan is mostly Japanese brands, this isn't surprising. I had some difficulty finding the correct number, but I found some indications that it's over 80% Japanese brands. So with the Japanese auto manufacturers not pushing EVs, it's no surprise that they're not popular. Here in the US, there are a number of options from a number of popular brands, including Ford, VW, Honda, Hyundai, and of course GM. (I'm sure I'm forgetting something. :) )