Toyota anti-ev?

[HotdogThud]

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22594235/toyota-lobbying-dc-ev-congress-biden-donation

An interesting article I ran across regarding Toyota's lack of innovation, specifically on the EV front. I know a huge complaint people have (myself included) regarding Toyotas isn't their reliability, but utter disregard for changing anything power train related. Hell, I'd have a Tacoma right now if it weren't for the circa 2005 anemic v6 in the thing.

Tl;Dr Toyota: "we refused to innovate, please help us?"

Mods, if this devolves into a V8 vs EV shit show, feel free to whack it

Sponsored

 

[rdass623]

sounds like your opening statement is slightly errant... ever hear of the prius? toyota has quite a bit of hybrids.

 

[HotdogThud]

sounds like your opening statement is slightly errant... ever hear of the prius? toyota has quite a bit of hybrids.

Pure EV's, not hybrids.

 

[ReimundKrohn]

Toyota has (in my opinion, rightly) decided to invest in Hydrogen powered vehicles over EVs. EVs are great if they remain rare. Make them common and suddenly we aren’t able to charge them without collapsing the grid. The solution is to build more power plants, with greater reliability - and that means not wind or solar but nuclear or hydro electric or coal/natural gas. Suddenly the “green” solution ain’t so green at all. Add to that charge times, government mandated allowances for charging (to keep power available to the public), and the higher cost of building an EV both in terms of cash as well as CO2 investment, and I don’t see a future for all-electric. The Japanese don’t either.

 

[DaBronCo33]

Who cares about Toyotas?

 

[MorgansRun]

They missed the boat on battery EVs and now they're pouting. If hydrogen ever works, it's not for another 20-30 years. Just my opinion.

 

[FJ 432]

Yeah, they're doing nothing.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/M...g-solid-state-battery-en-route-for-2021-debut

 

[BrentC]

Toyota has (in my opinion, rightly) decided to invest in Hydrogen powered vehicles over EVs. EVs are great if they remain rare. Make them common and suddenly we aren’t able to charge them without collapsing the grid. The solution is to build more power plants, with greater reliability - and that means not wind or solar but nuclear or hydro electric or coal/natural gas. Suddenly the “green” solution ain’t so green at all. Add to that charge times, government mandated allowances for charging (to keep power available to the public), and the higher cost of building an EV both in terms of cash as well as CO2 investment, and I don’t see a future for all-electric. The Japanese don’t either.

You forgot the amount of mining required to supply the minerals and elements needed to achieve full electrification. You will quite literally need to turn the earth upside down to find the quantities needed…and then in 10 years you’d have to do it all over again. This will not fit in with the greenies’ vision, and eventually they will realize the impossibility of actually creating an all-intermittent, battery-backed power grid and an all BEV vehicle fleet for all reasons stated plus dozens more.

Hydrogen has its own issues and I don’t see that ever being a replacement for fossil fuels. You cannot use the existing pipeline networks and natural gas storage vessels due to unique issues related to hydrogen such as embrittlement and leakage. Hydrogen molecules are so small they pass through most metals and plastics quite easily. The economics associated with replacing the millions of kilometres of underground pipelines with Hastelloy or 9-Cr steels just to handle a gas that has 1/3 of the calorific heating value as methane (natural gas) alone will kill the hydrogen distribution idea before it starts.

There are a great many good ideas which work well in the lab or in small-scale applications that do not pass muster when done large scale.

I think any work with hydrogen by large corporations is done for several reasons: public relations, investor demand, tax credits, and government-issued subsidies and grants. It’s a distraction that keeps companies in business and focused on making their core products.

My .02

Sponsored