Another theory on current non full EV Toyotas

his guess is as good as mine! i still believe toyota thinks bev's are a long way off for most of the planet

 

As long as there is oil the human mentality is to use it up.

Truthfully oil should only be reserved for non-fuel products but that won’t happen until the 11th hour.

So as long as it’s in the ground it’s unlikely any significant portion of transport will be BEV save of coarse it becoming cheap as dirt to produce.

 

BEVs are a long way off for the masses, where that becomes a choice made by the majority.

There's simply no way to argue against the harsh reality of lacking infrastructure & support. True, the technology itself is rapidly approaching a point where that is the obvious path, the road to get there is still a very long one.

The business, government, and society changes needed are enormous still.

 

you can be sure that companies claiming to be investing heavily in bev's are still hedging their bets by selling as many gassers as possible.

we don't know what toyota is doing behind the scenes.

we do know that everyone except tesla is having a hard time sourcing batteries and writing software.

 

Several years ago Toyota made a public statement that it was going with hybrids and hydrogen and not electric vehicles. No conspiracies theories needed.

 

The price of EVs right now is one of the factors that keep it from being as widely bought as ICE and hybrid cars, likely many average income people just don't want to (or can't) pay the amount EVs cost now.

We were pretty much pushing the limit of what we wanted to pay for a new car when we ordered a Prius Prime at close to MSRP being in a non-carb state. The Prius Prime with a "relatively" low price for a hybrid combined with the dependability of Toyota made vehicles has likely helped make it a popular choice for people who need to carefully watch their budget.

(price was just one factor for us, even if the price of EVs were lower the range anxiety from lack of infrastructure would still keep us from buying one now)

That is another very strong factor likely causing many potential EV buyers to stick with getting a hybrid for now, the need for many many more widely available charging stations and ones that can recharge very quickly. Many people who rarely take a long trip still want a vehicle and charging infrastructure that is good enough to assuage any range anxiety no matter where they want to travel to, even remote lesser traveled regions. (and people who want to get from point A to point B quickly without any long layovers are not going to want to have to park at a charging station for more than about an hour)

For those who can afford to buy both a hybrid and an EV that is not a problem, they can use the hybrid for the extra long trips and the EV for local driving, but many people are doing good just to buy a hybrid.

 

He makes some unsupported assumptions.

Batteries are not an inflexible resource. If companies decide to make more, and invest in doing so, you can have more batteries to use.
His point about being able to make more hybrids or plugin hybrids than BEVs is true, however you have to be able and willing to sell them to get the overall GHG advantages.

GM and VW are now investing in battery production which will help alleviate the battery supply. I believe Toyota recently has as well.
They can catch up if they want to.

 

I agree completely that PHEVs are a great solution for many people. No question.
I am just saying the lack of batteries is a false narrative as any company that invests in production can have a supply of more batteries.

It is kind of like arguing that we should all drive motorcycles as they take up fewer tires

 

That's an easy statement to take out of context. Just ask when, where, and how. We know hydrogen will be an energy storage/carrier for commercial use. There's much opportunity it both the transport industry and the power industry. So whether or not it also proliferates the personal vehicle market is more of a red-herring than an actual issue.

Since when? Toyota has electric-only propulsion working great. Both Prime & Mirai work just fine, operating so well we hear nothing about the software.

To be a narrative, context must be disregarded. That context was a matter of timing... the best use of the battery production currently available. In 5'ish years, that will be a totally different matter. It's much like what we saw with the supply limitations when large LCD televisions finally became a mainstream product. Ramp up of the production process proven to provide the best yields took awhile.

In other words, that's great timing for the upcoming EV platform Toyota is working on. In the meantime, we'll get a variety of PHEVs to choose from. That's a very real measure in the progress of reducing emissions & consumption right away, directly addressing the current situation.

It is very difficult for those pushing ZEV as the only solution to disregard the very real damage taking place by allowing new guzzlers to be put in service while we wait for a "some day" vehicle to finally get rolled out in decent quantities at decent prices.

 

Exactly! That’s one of my big “hot buttons”:

Sure, massive greenhouse-gas emissions are clearly a bad thing, but what concerns me personally even more, is that future generations will need petroleum for production of fertilizers, plastics, medicines...

The worst thing we could possibly do with this stuff is to burn it!

 

While I don’t like this argument, I do accept that it’s plausible, given that battery cells are a scarce commodity. Still, battery-cell manufacturing capacity is increasing rapidly though.

 

Since Toyota said they only had enough battery supplies to make a lot of hybrids or a few bevs