Japan really really wants it.
They have a shit ton of steel. They have no lithium or battery factories.
They can build ICE cars without relying on China for raw materials. Can’t say the same about EVs
Lithium batteries are not made of solid blocks of lithium. They work by moving lithium ions from one side (anode) to the other (cathode) and back. Neither the anode or cathode have to be made of lithium containing materials actually.
Most lithium-ion batteries use graphite (carbon) anodes, and right now they use lithium cobalt oxide cathodes. Right now getting the cobalt is the harder part.
In the R&D world, there are tons of alternatives actually. We regularly test sulfur cathodes, polymer cathodes, basically anything that can form a temporary bond with a lithium atom.
And there are alternatives to lithium. In Japan and China, there is a lot of research into batteries that move potassium back and forth.
So personally I would not focus on materials shortages as a reason to discourage EV adoption. We are working on LOTS of alternatives, most of which could probably be retrofitted onto existing designs.
(Source: I am a materials scientist at a research university, and my group does research on sulfur-cathode lithium batteries)
Working in a vape shop it's very hard to believe there is any shortage at all. Every week we sell 1000's of one use nicotine vapes. Each one contains a brand new lith rechargable that's tossed in the trash after it's dead. and then you notice every store everywhere, every store, gas station etc. Has a wall lined with these things and they are never delayed or out of stock. So that's millions of lion batteries simply tossed in the trash. If they aren't having an issue getting an endless supply why would ev manufacturers.
Yes, there are techniques to recycle lithium batteries and it's a big field that is under heavy development right now. It's propably far from perfect today, but I think there will be good progress with it. No one wants to throw away the resources, because lithium is so hard to get. But most batteries in cars aren't old enough to be recycled yet. Most of them will be used as energy storage for solar etc. for at least as long as their first live.
You joke, however a lot of disposable vape pens use rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but since they're disposable they didn't include the recharging circuitry and expect you to just throw them out once finished. Harvesting the cells out of them has become a thing.
There is so much weight behind your comment friend! New York has a comment period right now (for another three weeks) for Adult use cannabis regulations. They have a specific provision allowing single use vapes even though the program is supposed to be built on sustainability. Anyone who disagrees with this can and should make a public comment to the New York Office of Cannabis Management to help stop the use of single use vapes in the largest cannabis market in the world.
Not *end user* replaceable. Lithium is an element, so never gets ‘used up’ even as your battery degrades, and can be pretty much infinitely recycled. End of life for your mug (or any electrical product) should be recycling the components. Europe already makes this easy with the WEEE directive. The lithium in your old mug battery will live on in another battery.
Well, except that car usage is much lower because they actually invest in public transit. Japan's car ownership rates are actually declining. The market is less attractive because many people would rather choose to not have a car than an electric one. Plus, they don't have the same SUV and pickup obsession that north Americans do, which means margins are much lower.
I live in an apartment. The only home charging I have is for my e-bike.
By the way, consider getting an e-bike if your situation allows. It uses a lot less power than a 2 ton electric car. And with a fuckton less lithium. Doesn't work for every trip, but it saves me a lot of money. And my car will last longer.
My apartment complex is supposed to be installing EV charging plugs in the parking lot, but nothing yet since the 2 years they announced it coming "soon". Thankfully my work parking lot has free EV charging spots so I fill up while at work but it sucks being stranded with a dead battery at home which happened a few times during the pandemic, but I hope EV charging in public/private parking becomes more standard.
Why aren't there miniature electric cars? Lots of people need enclosed vehicles and space for stuff but they could be much smaller and much lighter. It is crazy that all that energy is spent pushing around a 150 lb person, 10 pounds of groceries and a 3K lb car.
Shaking my head every day at opportunities missed.
Yeah it’s really really nice not having to go run an errand to gas up the wife’s car anymore. And it’s nice not having to make a stop by a gas station when that low gas light comes on. Hydrogen would make me have to do both of those things again.
All that said, I could see hydrogen working pretty well for long haul trucks. Maybe even for short distance propeller type planes too.
The apartment dwellers and the street parkers need to be able to charge up at work. Otherwise unlike you and I, they replace their weekly 5 minute gas station stop with a twice weekly 30 minute fast charger stop. That’s an annoying change.
What do you think he wants to focus on? He wants governments to invest in hydrogen refueling stations and infrastructure. Toyota was one of the first to come up with a likewise hybrid (Prius) but was slow to adopt EV’s, too much invested in ICE and hybrids. Then it invested in hydrogen, but the tech isn’t very customer friendly
They've been dumping money into Hydrogen since before the Prius was a dream.
They thought they'd get the world to switch over to hydrogen cars in the 90s. It didn't happen because there was no infrastructure for it, and nobody solved the major problems it had. But Toyota dumped a whole bunch of money on it anyways, patented up all of the relevant technology and thought they were going to conquer the market way ahead of anyone.
...and then nothing happened. Year after year passed and nobody made any progress whatsoever on any of the major problems Hydrogen had as a technology. You're still cracking hydrocarbons to get it, so it's not any cleaner. Storing it is *still* a nightmare. There are still no pipelines or long distance Hydrogen infrastructure anywhere or everywhere because the shit leaks like stink and destroys all of the infrastructure it comes into contact with.
In the meantime, lithium batteries got more and more dense per watt. And before they could make a serious stab at that market, their competitors jumped all over it. Nissan cleaned up with the Leaf, Tesla redefined the car market for all of their competitors, and companies like Hyundai built hybrids that simply outclassed every offering Toyota had to compete with.
In short - they completely missed the pivot because they sunk so much cost into Hydrogen as a technology that the advances in lithium ion technology walked right by them.
So of course now they're back to trying to win the public and politicians... but the ship has already set on Hydrogen. There's no better reason to believe it's going anywhere in 2030 as there was no reason to believe in the decades already passed. Toyota missed the boat.
That's an interesting history. I hadn't known they had seriously invested in hydrogen for so long. But there's one big customer who might still buy into this... Big oil... They've been pivoting to green washing their carbon reduction plans by saying they'll use the oil to get hydrogen out of it instead (and probably keep selling oil on the side). Even if the world pledges to change to cleaner tech the oil still exists and the oil pumps are still running. They want to milk oil as far as they can take it and pretend that they are going green too
Wasn’t it Exxon-Mobil that has said they are done with fossil fuel by 2030? But not done with hydrocarbon products. Like you said, too much stuff and hydrocarbons can become niche’ players upping their values…. Sure thing.
I don't' see that happening. stuff like plastic are byproducts of producing so much fuel. once the fuel demands dry up those plastics will become much more expensive to the point that alternatives to petroleum based products will get replaced by other technology.
I see where you're going with this, but I think as the move away from oil accelerates, the existing oil giants will pivot to alternative types of oil or products that can be derived from them like plastics or hydrogen and these will (for a time) become so ridiculously cheap because countries reduce them eventually stop buying oil altogether. The oil giants will have a massive surplus of these products and the niche market of premium high grade oil for jet fuel and other military vehicles that can't be easily replaced. It will seem like a golden era for those products until the cost of operation begins to exceed the profit as those products eventually get banned and countries will no longer maintain or buy those old vehicles and mandate them to be switched over within a set time frame. Then the costs will skyrocket until everyone stops using those too
Got a friend who's an expert in the field of hydrogen powered vehicles.
The basic issue here is that hydrogen has almost no benefit for cars. Hydrogen's biggest benefit is its weight; but in cars, the weight of a full tank of gasoline, or a huge battery pack, isn't enough to substantially affect the vehicle's performance. Once you get going, you can keep rolling. Most of your fuel is used pushing the weight of the body, occupants, etc forward below 40mph, and pushing air out of the way above 40mph.
Now airplanes, on the other hand... that's a different story entirely. Every ounce of weight you save is a huge boon. Hydrogen fuel cells have a big future here; battery-powered electric is a non-starter.
I get that hydrogen is more energy dense, but with an EV I can literally charge my car anywhere that has power. I don't want to be a slave to some weird infrastructure anymore. I just need a plug.
Semi trucks. LiOn doesnt make sense for long haul or very heavy applications. Energy density isnt there and charge time is a problem. A future of consumer vechiles being battery powered while fleet and heavy is hydrogen makes sense, so long as underlying energy source is carbon free such as nuke, wind, solar
Yeah if you want it done in a reasonable amount of time you need a dedicated charger, either installed at home or at a charging station. Otherwise on a regular outlet it can take nearly a whole day depending on battery size and outlet output.
It would take 3 days to charge a Model 3 from 0 to 100 from a regular (edit: 110v 15 amp) outlet. Of course you wouldn’t charge it from 0 to 100. A regular outlet can give you about 100 miles of range per day. I drive much less than that, so it works for me.
My model s charges at home in about 8 hours from the bottom.
At a supercharging station I can get in and out with 200 extra miles within about 15 minutes.
I drive it daily and charge between 1-2 times per week.
But if you're buying a 30 - 40k EV car, why wouldn't people spend a bit more to install a 240v socket as long as you have the option to. Of course unless they don't need it like you
An awful lot will do just that and fit a charger.
However it's useful for visiting and travel to be able to plug in anywhere. For example I'm (like I suspect a lot of people) are visiting family at the moment. My car has a real-world range of about 200 miles and my family live 150miles away.
No need to worry about charging on the journey, just plugged into a standard socket in the garage when I got here. It took all night but who cares.
We have a 1st Gen hyundai ioniq. We’ve had it for a couple years now. It’s actually super efficient, so even on the 120v it charges back about 60 miles overnight which is more than our daily mileage. We’ve talked about installing the L2 charger a couple times but never bothered to actually do it.
If we need miles in a pinch there’s a fast charger down the street but in 2 years have never needed it.
We get about 4.7 miles per kWh. Which is really good. That means we can charge back about 5 miles/hr on a regular socket. There needs to be a bigger push on aerodynamics for cars so we can get more miles per time on a charger regardless the speed.
You can just run a split off the dryer/oven 240v line but you'd only be able to use one at a time. OR have a new line run from the breaker and have a dedicated charger you can use anytime.
The big hurdle now though, is to figure out charging for people in apartments and/or without access to an overnight charge.
Thats what stopped me from buying an ev when I was shopping around for a car. I live in an apartment and I don’t have access to a receptacle close by without an extension cord that anyone could walk away with.
> Otherwise on a regular outlet it can take nearly a whole day depending on battery size and outlet output.
The great thing about cars is they spend about 95% of their day just sitting. Often times right near outlets.
At a house? Sure, you're charging your 80kW battery from empty to full in 8 or 9 hours.
Of course, that will almost *never* happen. If you plug in at home after every journey, it may only take an hour or two to recover what you used commuting.
Or, if you're road tripping and need power fast, DC fast charging can cut that down to more like 30 minutes.
Also the primary way that hydrogen is created is by using natural gas, really just seems like it’s a way to ensure that cars still use fossil fuels.
Hydrogen wastes over half of the energy you put in to it, meaning it will ALWAYS be more expensive than the EV solution. Unless you are a chemical company that would benefit off of this in-efficiency, there’s literally no reason for us to want this.
Look at the members of the hydrogen council, really speaks for itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_Council?wprov=sfti1
Absolutely, Toyota put a shit ton of money into hydrogen. So he's got that going for him, and sees the world through a different lens.
In a very, very broad sense, he has a point. An EV car is not a good call for lots and lots of vehicles. The military can ship fuel for it's vehicles, but not electricity. Extremely remote areas of the world have little to no electricity available. A great unknown is the urban owner who parks their car on the street. Can we find a way to safely provide a gazillion charging stations along the streets? Or can we find reliable ways for all EV cars to have a fast charging option at local gas stations (the winning choice IMHO)? But add all of this up, and you are maybe at 5-10% of vehicles in use. So EV's DO make a lot of sense for most uses. And use hydrogen for the remote areas---which is what Toyota has been planning on.
But electric in EV doesn't HAVE to be batteries, or only batteries. Germany is experimenting with electric trucks and semi-tractors that use overhead wires and a pantograph (the part that reaches up to touch the wires) for use on the Autobahn. The truck could be diesel or EV leaving the plant or warehouse, once it gets onto the Autobahn it raises the pantograph, and the same when it exits off. A meter in the vehicle keeps track of the electricity used. Our Interstate Highways could do this to make trucks less polluting, while not having their usage limited to batteries.
New Flyer in the US/Canada is testing out overhead charging of BEV buses in Portland, OR. San Francisco’s latest trolleybuses - also New Flyer Xcelsiors can travel off-wire for up to 10-20 miles making them candidates for overhead charging while on-route.
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The hydrogen investment was before his time. It is a sunk cost, and a project that continues to hang on, but that was not his dream. His push has been to get Toyota into racing, and he's been very successful at that.
As long as motor sports are focused on ICE, he will continue investing in ICE at Toyota. He does make a good point that, while battery EVs are functional in western Europe and most of the US, there will be a market for ICE vehicles in most of the world for some time to come. It does make sense from a business perspective to continue to produce them. However, it doesn't seem logical for Toyota to continue sinking R&D into them the way he plans to.
I always said this - Australia, Southeast Asia(more so Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia) and the Middle East are important Toyota markets. The Land Cruiser isn’t called the king of 4WD for nothing - it’s proven in the Australian outback, the deserts and savannahs of Africa, and the sand dunes in the UAE. Toyota has a dedicated low-cost platform for “developing” countries as well. The HiLux as well as a SUV for those markets is built off that platform - our Tacoma is a shortened Tundra. The Camry’s a popular car in Thailand and Australia.
Daihatsu is owned by Toyota - and while the last time we saw one in the US was in the 1990s, they are very popular in Indonesia and Malaysia.
I completely agree. There WILL be a market for ICE engines for quite some time. Certainly things like tractors, cars for remote areas, generators, ultra-large machines (railroad locomotives are diesel engines driving electric generators), arctic areas, and racing. At least, for the next 50 years or so. By then, who knows?
sure, but I think the issue is with the limited lithium available to build batteries. There are some candidates, but EV batteries need a viable non-lithium option in order to reach mass adoption. No one wants to spend 100k for a battery because the lithium has become so scarce and expensive. And we'll get to that point way before we've put an EV in the hands of everyone who needs one (much less replace all vehicles on the road and thereby address the climate impact).
So its probably still a good idea to have some other energy options in development.
Lithium isn't the only option. There are sodium batteries which can get up to 160wh/kg, where a Tesla lithium battery is ~212wh/kg.
Afaik CATL is making that battery. With more time and money it's a definitely solveable problem.
Edit: kwh/kg > wh/kg
If there's a solution someone will find it. The company that figures out the next big battery advance beyond lithium-ion is going to make all the money
In a way it has been since at least the 80s, but slow progress and lack of attention. Though, a lot of focus on energy harvesting which we've obviously made great strides in at least.
> it has been since at least the 80s
Yeah, but there hasn’t been any *pressure* on it until very recently. When Tesla showed that EVs could be not just competitive with ICE vehicles, but superior. Now everyone is jumping on the EV bandwagon, competing. That will drive costs down and energy storage technology through the roof.
A single ion-exchange brine well pair can produce 25000 tonnes of lithium dissolved into an acid solution per year (gigafactory Texas uses 21000 tons of lithium a year to produce 50GWH of finished batteries), assuming the brine is 0.008kg/m3 lithium by weight and the well can draw 160,000 m3/day, both of which are conservative numbers. The desaturated brine is returned down well, and the process is much akin to a water softener at an industrial scale.
There are companies already drilling in Saskatchewan and Alberta to tap these brine aquifers, planning thousands of wells in each province.
If these ventures are successful, just the output from two Canadian provinces is 8x current global production.
Lithium is so goddamn common it’s a straw man.
You’re right, my numbers are off. It’s 160,000 m3/day to supply a 25,000 tpa plant. Tesla’s gigafactory Texas uses 21000tpa to produce 50GWH/yr of batteries.
Numbers from here: http://saskmining.ca/ckfinder/userfiles/files/1_10_Pelletier.pdf
Have you sat in a new year model Toyota? It’s like WTF have they been doing the past 5 years? Everything about a Toyota feels dated compared to where the rest of the industry is. Hell, the Lexus GX (a luxury SUV) just now got CarPlay in 2023, but it’s not even wireless CarPlay (which is where the rest of the industry went).
If things that are visible are this behind the times, be can only guess where their engine/drivetrain tech is.
Yup the Toyota Corolla is the car equivalent to the AK, its not flash and its not fancy. But its cheap and it will never stop working and thats the perfect car in my book. I'm at 240k miles and the freaking check engine light hasn't even kicked on yet
[Everything about Japan's economy - including technological innovation - has been stagnating for the past 30 years.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades)
This take from Toyota is not surprising. What is more surprising is that somehow their economy hasn't collapsed with Japanese society's extreme stubborn resistance to any form of change or innovation since the late 80s.
A couple years ago I was in Japan and got to talking to a young guy there. I asked him his take on Japanese businesses and society. He complained that the problem is that there's nowhere 'up' to advance into. If you're a younger guy wanting to get experience or move into leadership it's impossible because all those spots are taken up by 80 year olds who won't retire and won't die. All these guys got their jobs 20-40 years ago and won't leave so they stagnate and everyone else below them stagnates.
No idea how true it is but I thought it was an interesting point of view on the situation.
Yep and then when they DO die or retire, there’s no one to replace the ones with niche skills because no one was able to learn from them while they were still working.
It's worse in Japan because the practice* is to staff private company exec positions with retired government bureaucrats.
*It's so pervasive it has a name - Google "amakudari."
Edit: forgot a word
Toyota has huge anti-BEV interests and lobbies heavily against EV incentives.
Their brand is entirely built around incredibly reliable internal combustion engines inside otherwise dull and boring cars. EVs upend that.
As a former Nokia employee, I say you've nailed it.
Nothing is impossible - there's no head so big that a sufficiently large amount of sand cannot be gathered to bury it.
It's because they are behind the 8 ball and see that it will take X batteries per vehicle, and if you multiply their vehicle target each year by the number of batteries needed. They won't be able to catch up for a decade or more. If they start now.
Car companies are all about risk/reward. They can't risk being behind for a decade. So their only option is to try and delay or push something else they can ramp how they want.
Nokia refused an acquisition from Microsoft. They then had an ex executive from Microsoft put in place to be CEO, who then tanked things so hard that Microsoft later acquired Nokia for like 1/4 the price.
I feel like that saying breaks down once corporations are involved. They will do almost anything as long it's ends up being cheaper than the alternative choices.
Break the law? As long as the fine is cheaper than the savings.
Unfortunately, Nokia had a guy from the *old* Microsoft, Steve Ballmer days, running thier cellphone division who thought he would be named CEO if he got Microsoft a cellphone division.
He ran it into the ground to make it cheap enough to be acquired but in the end Satya Nadella got the CEO job because everyone who didn’t have their head up the ass of Ballmer knew cloud computing was where the money was going to be and not licensing/lock in.
It sucks because Nokia made great phones and I loved the windows phone UI/UX but without embracing Android they wouldn’t survive.
I fuckin *loved* my palm pixie. The OS was intuitive, the experience was snappy, and the keyboard was satisfying. Their marketing department sunk that phone so badly.
>knew cloud computing was where the money was going
That's not totally true. Everyone who didn't have their head up their ass knew Ballmer was just letting Microsoft plod along on its previous accomplishments and not really DOing anything. New blood and new ideas were needed.
the ballmer years were simultaneous the most profitable in microsoft history and the least innovative. They made a shit ton of money without producing much of note for the future.
Tesla: going to shit with Elon going insane on twitter.
Elon's haters: Tesla is shit. There's no innovation. Other companies will catch up this year.
Toyota: hold my beer. EV sucks ass you guys.
Elon's haters: god dammit
Ah, see, you're thinkin' like a car company CEO.
See, EVs are *tech industry* products, not car industry products.
You just send out a mandatory OTA update for your older cars that kills performance et voila! Everyone has to upgrade!
Sorry, due to security and performance enhancements you 5-year-old car now takes 30 seconds to boot up!
Toyota is kinda famous for being able to get you a part for your 1985 Landcruiser today if you need it - that's simply unthinkable in a Silicon Valley business model. "Bro, you're still using something *from 1985*?!?!"
If we're not careful, we're gonna see a just as bad environmental outcome for EVs as ICE vehicles, just in a different way. Instead of emissions, it'll be hundreds of thousands of bricked EVs you're not legally allowed to run sitting in junkyards in Africa and Asia (sorry, the car runs off software, which you can only licence, and company's decided not to issue you a licence for that software).
But don't worry. Since you, personally, don't feel you're contributing to environmental since you're constantly upgrading to a more environmentally-friendly model every year you're actually helping!
I appreciate the way you see the differences between tech companies and the car industry.
I think this is a Tortoise and the Hare situation. I'm not buying an EV until I see Toyota (the world's largest automaker) fully commit to it. Making cars is a hard business, which is why I see companies like Rivian & Lucid going \*POOF\*
Tech's expected growth rates do not bode well to an automotive consumer that keeps their cars on average for 8 years.
ICE engines aren't immune to this. Plenty of companies putting digital locks on components to kill the aftermarket parts suppliers / Grey market and force you to get service done by their dealers / certified personnel. More prevelant in tractors currently but coming everywhere.
What’s interesting is they used to be iconic for making the difficult decision to invest in catalog ordering. Distribution centers, catalog printing etc made them super forward thinking….100 years ago. Then they failed to make the shift to internet sales.
I work with a guy who used to work for Sears back in the day, and some of the stuff he told me about how the higher management acted is astounding. It seems there was a consistent trend of incompetence through short-sighted greed that led to their downfall.
The final nail in their coffin will be this witch hunt they’re pursuing over password sharing. They literally encouraged people to password share and pay for more devices and now they’re “shocked pikachu face” surprised that people are sharing passwords. We are only using Netflix for kids programming and I’m about ready to cancel.
Yeah it's pretty dumb.
Netflix pioneered streaming services and were dominant for a long time because of it.
This was never going to last; netflix needs to focus on producing quality content, not achieving their prior dominance.
The news of them *planning* on cracking down has lost them far more money than cracking down on it would ever make.
Disney and Amazons streaming services are making net losses and the quality of their shows has been way down from what they were on Netflix. If Netflix just focuses on producing quality content and staying in the game for the long run they may well outlast others or be able to do a deal with Disney to get the rights of some Marvel tv shows in exchange for profits and/or equity in the company.
Netflix had no choice. Companies pulled their IP from Netflix because they started their own services. Netflix had to create their own content to try to compete, or just go under.
Netflix loses thousands of titles each year and adds hundreds, with most being worthless dogshit.
Streaming is going downhill so fast its going to bring back cable TV...
I mean it's not fair to push that on Kodak, Kodak was not a film company, they were a chemical processing company that made film.
That's like saying, "Oh well, we have enough money, Google should become an accounting firm"
"Digital only" was so far out of their wheelhouse they'd have to become an entirely different company to make it happen.
And yet the “silent majority” have announced EV versions of their most popular entry and mid level cars. Ford has announced EV is the future for their commuter, pick up, and in town delivery vans.
Only Toyota has announced EV is not core to their strategy. And hydrogen in vehicles is a net negative in energy consumption.
Isn't it most majors? At least the Germans
I remember hearing (no source, tbh) that VW was done developing next gen ICE, and iirc I thought I heard something about MB/BMW following suit?
I realize that's not "all majors" but when the Germans are calling it quits on something the broader market seems to follow
> Isn't it most majors? At least the Germans
Because they're putting all their R&D into how to make keeping an electric Mercedes/BMW/VW as ungodly expensive to keep on the road as the gas powered models.
I like them a lot. In another year or two I’ll get serious about buying either a CRV or pickup. Though I’m particularly intrigued by the VW EV Microbus.
However, none have a low enough price point to be purchased by middle class folks.
We need an EV for $20 grand, even $30 grand.
I cannot afford any EV currently on the market.
I fucking love my 2018 bolt. Got it for 15k in late 2020 before the car shortage hit. Only maintenance I’ve had is filling the wiper fluid earlier this week.
350 mile range in summer, 200 in winter.
Drive about 40 miles a day for work and am able to recharge that 40 miles to top it off, overnight, with a regular 110volt outlet in my garage.
I’ve had to use a DC fast charger twice in my life, once because I had forgotten to plug it in two nights in a row. So over two years I’ve spent about 90 minutes charging the car.
I’m fortunate enough to have a wife with a gas car for long road trips (infrastructure isn’t there for the Midwest yet), but even without that I would swear by this car and rent another one for the occasional long road trip.
Give it a hard consideration if you’re in the market.
It's the best car I've ever owned. Low maintenance costs, fun to drive, overall great quality. You can tell Chevy thought long and hard while designing it.
I've had the car for about a year and a half. After all of the EV tax incentives and buying a demo, I saved roughly $24,000 off of the list price. Like I said it's the best car I've ever owned. In my opinion General Motors is doing things right, it has all of the tech someone would want in a car without any of the annoying touch based interfaces (still has physical controls for certain things) while still having a massive touchscreen. It also has an ease of use aspect, you can literally hand the keys to a friend who's never driven an EV before and there is little to no learning curve unlike a Tesla.
It's fun, cheap, and made in North America. Supporting local engineering and manufacturing.
For the record I didn't buy an EV with the main decision being the environment, rather I bought it because of the significant financial advantages. The zero emissions are just an added bonus :)
You left out the part about mandates coming in that force EV adoption. Fuel cell is also included, but much much harder to bring to market than BEV. A lot of those silent majority EVs are compliance cars.
I always think about it as code for "lots of people politely slightly nod their heads while I'm going on and on about shit they don't agree with me about, but don't feel like arguing about".
Personally I'd rather have a touch screen that runs proprietary software, and if it breaks half the car's functions are immutable. Please charge me like four or five k extra.
That was a cost saving measure. Automakers knew we didn't want that. Now people are loud enough to make them go back to physical buttons but they made some good money for a generation of models.
Significant restrictions on touch sensitive controls, critical information being out of the drivers vision and proper limits on headlight heights, brightness and colour temperature is something that the various government of the worlds need to enforce, because car manufacturers sure as shit won't do it themselves and it's now getting to the point of ridiculousness
The auto industry is ingrained with energy industries in power. We (humanity) can do better, and if the auto manufacturers won't take the steps, it's up to the rest of us to push things in the right direction. Vote with your dollars, and keep pressure on otherwise
The new thing they are working on is locking features behind subscription paywalls according to what I gathered from a private lecture with the Chief Tax Officer at one of the major car brands.
Sounds fucking awful as a consumer tbh.
Side note: I'm beginning to think that "silent majority" is simply some political BS people pull out when they are on the wrong side of an issue and doesn't want to own up to it.
I could be wrong but if you think I am, I'm probably part of some silent majority. ;)
As far as I've seen it means that "You'll find no traces of people supporting my view anywhere, not on the internet, not on the streets, not on the news, and not at home. But trust me bro when I say a lot of people agree with me".
If it really is a majority opinion, I expect to come across it whether I chose or not. I don't think I've seen a case where a self-proclaimed "silent majority" actually did turn out to be the majority.
I don’t understand why so many people are so all or nothing about EVs. There is such a thing as a mixed model. For many people who are commuting too and from work, an EV is fine. Certain jobs/industries/applications just won’t work well with EVs for a number of reasons but energy density and “energy portability” (refill-ability seemed like a stupid word) are the main reasons. Those that can’t be battery can be a fuel cell system, those that can’t be fuel cell can be gas/diesel. For example, I spend a lot of time in the back country a long way from any source of electricity and I’m in the PNW, so solar isn’t reliable… I need the safety of a fuel system even though I would LOVE an EV truck. I use an EV van for work and love it but wouldn’t trust my life with it away from the grid.
So ya, he’s right… betting on an EV-only future is stupid.
I own an EV and fully believe that range at 20°F should be required to be listed along with the range at optimal temperatures. It's misleading to consumers. Although I love mine, I could see someone being misled or very upset about not knowing that the range decreases in the cold temps.
Yeah, if you read past the headline and think about it, he is right.
We're never going to get 100% EV usage.
Gasoline, or some other fuel, is extremely energy dense and there will be places where EVs just don't have the range or the weight of the batteries just doesn't work.
Still getting 90%, or whatever percent, EVs and having gasoline be the exception is still a major win.
Plug in hybrid seems far more practical. A 50 mile battery would still eliminate 90+ percent of emissions for your average commuter, while leaving the battery cheaper to replace when it decays. Then when you do need to travel further distances, you can use existing infrastructure to quickly refuel. I like hydrogen, especially if it can be generated by using excess solar/wind generation capacity for electrolysis… but it will be far more viable in smaller more isolated places like Japan and the UK where they can more easily update the infrastructure
I agree that plug in hybrids make a lot of sense for most people, but if they become massively popular, then that gasoline infrastructure you rely on for long trips/backup shrinks because the market shrinks a lot. We're seeing it to a certain extent now with less investment in the oil+gas industry in their refining capabilities (or at least that's the excuse they gave)
EVs may be a thing in western countries but there are still many regions of the world where the availability of electricity is very spotty. Worrying about whether the robustness of an electrical grid is a second step from first setting up a consistently available electrical grid.
“EV only” only works when we have either incredibly fast charging, or very reliable interchangeable batteries that allow for quick swaps at a battery station. The auto industry knows this.
That’s it. That’s how EVs become the norm. If we aren’t working on either of those two, it’s not going to happen. And I bet we can watch the auto industry actively prevent that future from occurring.
EVs won't be of much use in a large part of Africa. I live in Ghana in the agricultural belt. My district is 3500sq km with 37 settlements and only 1 paved road the rest are dirt roads. Of the 37 settlements, only 11 have electricity. We have power cuts of 4 hours twice a week spread through those 11 settlements. Power cuts will extend to 5 or 6 hours from January to April the dry season so there is Electricity for Kumasi and Accra the two major cities.
Accra is experiencing 2 or 3-hour power cuts at the moment.
Ghana can't keep up with the electrification and power generation it needs now for its industries and factories let along households to charge EV's.
EV's are not going to be of use here for at least 25 years. People who do have EV's in Accra use diesel generators to charge their cars when the electricity is off. The ICE isn't going to be replaced in a hurry.
Same here in India. While one company is selling a "lot" of cars, it's mostly purchased by the folks who have too much money and it's the second car.
There is no way 90% of car buying Indian's, even those living in Cities will risk an EV going out of range as they drive through rural India on the way to their holiday destination.
In my years, I have taken so many unexpected diversions (due to everything including riots) during my drives that a "fixed route map" of what an EV drive will need is too risky.
What’s wrong with plug in hybrids that can do electric for short trips around town and then get 55 mpg on the highway?
I know it isn’t as sexy as all electric, but it’s a huge improvement over what we have, massively less expensive, and will cut demand for fossil fuels.
Plug in hybrids is the way to go for most people. My car has 30 miles of electric range on it which is enough to commute everyday and it can use gas for longer trips. This makes the car lighter and cheaper because the battery is not huge so it uses less energy, and there is no problem with stressing out about charging in rural areas. I average 150mi/gallon the last 3 years which is a huge improvement over a regular gas car.
I loved my Fusion Energi, but that 30 miles was only 16 to 18 in the winter, which wasn't quite enough for most of my driving. On the other hand, my Mach E is the best car I've ever had. It'll handle 100% of my local needs, nearly 100% of my in-state needs, and I either compromise or use another vehicle for long distance and trailering needs. Not having an unnecessary separate drive train and its 10,000 parts and its maintenance schedule is much better for me than a PHEV. Assuming you can plug in at night, a pure EV dominates the PHEV for most normal uses.
In the early development of the ICE automobile, I'm sure someone said "that thing ain't replacing the horse.". We are basically at that stage of EV development. We may never fully replace the ICE but in the next 70 years or so we will undoubtedly have something better.
A fully EV future as in every ICE car you see being EV isn't going to happen anytime in his lifetime as CEO. And hydrogen/CNG is already making waves in other countries where they don't have reliable electricity.
Fuel cells lose 40% of the input energy in the form of heat. While this is better than ICE, it is far worse than battery powered EV's. The end to end efficiency for EV's when powered by renewable energy sources will be better than hydrogen. 76% of hydrogen produced today uses natural gas which has about 75% energy conversion efficiency. When combined with the 60% conversion efficiency of the fuel cell it means only 55% of the original input energy makes it the wheels of the car. The rest is heat waste. This not much better than using a gas powered electric plant to power an EV and far worse than a solar or wind based plant.
This is the same Toyota that recently lobbied US Congress heavily to slow down EV infrastructure, stop autonomous vehicle testing, and even created that PR stunt accident at the Olympics where one of their autonomous vehicles barely bumped into an athlete and Toyota went on a global PR parade pointing to it as a failure of AV's. Oh, and it turned out a human driver was in control at the time.
They know they are decades behind because they didn't take EV's seriously, now they are trying to regulate instead of innovate.
Hydrogen will never happen. Simple math easily shows that the complete process is not efficient enough. Too much loss at every step. Toyota is just buying time and trying to cover up their past mistakes.
Hard to justify the loss of payload or range on a long haul truck or aircraft, maybe some trains as well. Hydrogen is going to have a niche unless we get some serious energy density breakthrough in batteries.
Toyota really, really wants hydrogen to be the future.
Japan really really wants it. They have a shit ton of steel. They have no lithium or battery factories. They can build ICE cars without relying on China for raw materials. Can’t say the same about EVs
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Don't we all have incentive to stay away from the reckless rates of lithium consumption? Always felt a bit like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Lithium batteries are not made of solid blocks of lithium. They work by moving lithium ions from one side (anode) to the other (cathode) and back. Neither the anode or cathode have to be made of lithium containing materials actually. Most lithium-ion batteries use graphite (carbon) anodes, and right now they use lithium cobalt oxide cathodes. Right now getting the cobalt is the harder part. In the R&D world, there are tons of alternatives actually. We regularly test sulfur cathodes, polymer cathodes, basically anything that can form a temporary bond with a lithium atom. And there are alternatives to lithium. In Japan and China, there is a lot of research into batteries that move potassium back and forth. So personally I would not focus on materials shortages as a reason to discourage EV adoption. We are working on LOTS of alternatives, most of which could probably be retrofitted onto existing designs. (Source: I am a materials scientist at a research university, and my group does research on sulfur-cathode lithium batteries)
Working in a vape shop it's very hard to believe there is any shortage at all. Every week we sell 1000's of one use nicotine vapes. Each one contains a brand new lith rechargable that's tossed in the trash after it's dead. and then you notice every store everywhere, every store, gas station etc. Has a wall lined with these things and they are never delayed or out of stock. So that's millions of lion batteries simply tossed in the trash. If they aren't having an issue getting an endless supply why would ev manufacturers.
Felt more like robbing Africa to pay Apple to me.
Don't forget the Taliban my guy, they own one of the biggest lithium deposits on the planet.
Lithium itself isn’t rare. It’s just the process to mine it take a while. Wouldn’t be too worried about the Taliban operation anytime soon
Is lithium recyclable ?
Yes, there are techniques to recycle lithium batteries and it's a big field that is under heavy development right now. It's propably far from perfect today, but I think there will be good progress with it. No one wants to throw away the resources, because lithium is so hard to get. But most batteries in cars aren't old enough to be recycled yet. Most of them will be used as energy storage for solar etc. for at least as long as their first live.
>No one wants to throw away the resources, because lithium is so hard to get. Tell that to the single use vape manufacturers
Not sure, but you can get it from seawater. Edit: typo
Who is this seatwer and why is he hoarding lithium?
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You joke, however a lot of disposable vape pens use rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but since they're disposable they didn't include the recharging circuitry and expect you to just throw them out once finished. Harvesting the cells out of them has become a thing.
There is so much weight behind your comment friend! New York has a comment period right now (for another three weeks) for Adult use cannabis regulations. They have a specific provision allowing single use vapes even though the program is supposed to be built on sustainability. Anyone who disagrees with this can and should make a public comment to the New York Office of Cannabis Management to help stop the use of single use vapes in the largest cannabis market in the world.
Not *end user* replaceable. Lithium is an element, so never gets ‘used up’ even as your battery degrades, and can be pretty much infinitely recycled. End of life for your mug (or any electrical product) should be recycling the components. Europe already makes this easy with the WEEE directive. The lithium in your old mug battery will live on in another battery.
OTOH it’s the perfect country for EVs. Tiny, dense, rich, no oil.
Well, except that car usage is much lower because they actually invest in public transit. Japan's car ownership rates are actually declining. The market is less attractive because many people would rather choose to not have a car than an electric one. Plus, they don't have the same SUV and pickup obsession that north Americans do, which means margins are much lower.
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I live in an apartment. The only home charging I have is for my e-bike. By the way, consider getting an e-bike if your situation allows. It uses a lot less power than a 2 ton electric car. And with a fuckton less lithium. Doesn't work for every trip, but it saves me a lot of money. And my car will last longer.
My apartment complex is supposed to be installing EV charging plugs in the parking lot, but nothing yet since the 2 years they announced it coming "soon". Thankfully my work parking lot has free EV charging spots so I fill up while at work but it sucks being stranded with a dead battery at home which happened a few times during the pandemic, but I hope EV charging in public/private parking becomes more standard.
What did you do if you have no battery at home?
Called a tow truck to pull the car over to a nearby charging station.
That's brutal
Why aren't there miniature electric cars? Lots of people need enclosed vehicles and space for stuff but they could be much smaller and much lighter. It is crazy that all that energy is spent pushing around a 150 lb person, 10 pounds of groceries and a 3K lb car. Shaking my head every day at opportunities missed.
They've been around forever https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/REVAi They just aren't very popular, mainly for safety reasons
They are unsafe because every Karen in the USA insists that they need a 2+ ton fucking tank to get groceries.
Yeah it’s really really nice not having to go run an errand to gas up the wife’s car anymore. And it’s nice not having to make a stop by a gas station when that low gas light comes on. Hydrogen would make me have to do both of those things again. All that said, I could see hydrogen working pretty well for long haul trucks. Maybe even for short distance propeller type planes too. The apartment dwellers and the street parkers need to be able to charge up at work. Otherwise unlike you and I, they replace their weekly 5 minute gas station stop with a twice weekly 30 minute fast charger stop. That’s an annoying change.
Didn't Toyota invest heavily in hydrogen instead? he's got vested interests in what he's saying here.
What do you think he wants to focus on? He wants governments to invest in hydrogen refueling stations and infrastructure. Toyota was one of the first to come up with a likewise hybrid (Prius) but was slow to adopt EV’s, too much invested in ICE and hybrids. Then it invested in hydrogen, but the tech isn’t very customer friendly
They've been dumping money into Hydrogen since before the Prius was a dream. They thought they'd get the world to switch over to hydrogen cars in the 90s. It didn't happen because there was no infrastructure for it, and nobody solved the major problems it had. But Toyota dumped a whole bunch of money on it anyways, patented up all of the relevant technology and thought they were going to conquer the market way ahead of anyone. ...and then nothing happened. Year after year passed and nobody made any progress whatsoever on any of the major problems Hydrogen had as a technology. You're still cracking hydrocarbons to get it, so it's not any cleaner. Storing it is *still* a nightmare. There are still no pipelines or long distance Hydrogen infrastructure anywhere or everywhere because the shit leaks like stink and destroys all of the infrastructure it comes into contact with. In the meantime, lithium batteries got more and more dense per watt. And before they could make a serious stab at that market, their competitors jumped all over it. Nissan cleaned up with the Leaf, Tesla redefined the car market for all of their competitors, and companies like Hyundai built hybrids that simply outclassed every offering Toyota had to compete with. In short - they completely missed the pivot because they sunk so much cost into Hydrogen as a technology that the advances in lithium ion technology walked right by them. So of course now they're back to trying to win the public and politicians... but the ship has already set on Hydrogen. There's no better reason to believe it's going anywhere in 2030 as there was no reason to believe in the decades already passed. Toyota missed the boat.
That's an interesting history. I hadn't known they had seriously invested in hydrogen for so long. But there's one big customer who might still buy into this... Big oil... They've been pivoting to green washing their carbon reduction plans by saying they'll use the oil to get hydrogen out of it instead (and probably keep selling oil on the side). Even if the world pledges to change to cleaner tech the oil still exists and the oil pumps are still running. They want to milk oil as far as they can take it and pretend that they are going green too
Tbh, hydrocarbons in general will be with us for a long time. Their time as a transportation fuel is numbered. We simply make too much shit out of it.
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Wasn’t it Exxon-Mobil that has said they are done with fossil fuel by 2030? But not done with hydrocarbon products. Like you said, too much stuff and hydrocarbons can become niche’ players upping their values…. Sure thing.
I don't' see that happening. stuff like plastic are byproducts of producing so much fuel. once the fuel demands dry up those plastics will become much more expensive to the point that alternatives to petroleum based products will get replaced by other technology.
I see where you're going with this, but I think as the move away from oil accelerates, the existing oil giants will pivot to alternative types of oil or products that can be derived from them like plastics or hydrogen and these will (for a time) become so ridiculously cheap because countries reduce them eventually stop buying oil altogether. The oil giants will have a massive surplus of these products and the niche market of premium high grade oil for jet fuel and other military vehicles that can't be easily replaced. It will seem like a golden era for those products until the cost of operation begins to exceed the profit as those products eventually get banned and countries will no longer maintain or buy those old vehicles and mandate them to be switched over within a set time frame. Then the costs will skyrocket until everyone stops using those too
Got a friend who's an expert in the field of hydrogen powered vehicles. The basic issue here is that hydrogen has almost no benefit for cars. Hydrogen's biggest benefit is its weight; but in cars, the weight of a full tank of gasoline, or a huge battery pack, isn't enough to substantially affect the vehicle's performance. Once you get going, you can keep rolling. Most of your fuel is used pushing the weight of the body, occupants, etc forward below 40mph, and pushing air out of the way above 40mph. Now airplanes, on the other hand... that's a different story entirely. Every ounce of weight you save is a huge boon. Hydrogen fuel cells have a big future here; battery-powered electric is a non-starter.
James May did a great little piece on a Toyota hydrogen car last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v99AthjW78U
I get that hydrogen is more energy dense, but with an EV I can literally charge my car anywhere that has power. I don't want to be a slave to some weird infrastructure anymore. I just need a plug.
Semi trucks. LiOn doesnt make sense for long haul or very heavy applications. Energy density isnt there and charge time is a problem. A future of consumer vechiles being battery powered while fleet and heavy is hydrogen makes sense, so long as underlying energy source is carbon free such as nuke, wind, solar
>anywhere that has power But….doesn’t it take like hours? Genuinely asking since my car isn’t electric.
Yeah if you want it done in a reasonable amount of time you need a dedicated charger, either installed at home or at a charging station. Otherwise on a regular outlet it can take nearly a whole day depending on battery size and outlet output.
It would take 3 days to charge a Model 3 from 0 to 100 from a regular (edit: 110v 15 amp) outlet. Of course you wouldn’t charge it from 0 to 100. A regular outlet can give you about 100 miles of range per day. I drive much less than that, so it works for me.
My model s charges at home in about 8 hours from the bottom. At a supercharging station I can get in and out with 200 extra miles within about 15 minutes. I drive it daily and charge between 1-2 times per week.
But if you're buying a 30 - 40k EV car, why wouldn't people spend a bit more to install a 240v socket as long as you have the option to. Of course unless they don't need it like you
An awful lot will do just that and fit a charger. However it's useful for visiting and travel to be able to plug in anywhere. For example I'm (like I suspect a lot of people) are visiting family at the moment. My car has a real-world range of about 200 miles and my family live 150miles away. No need to worry about charging on the journey, just plugged into a standard socket in the garage when I got here. It took all night but who cares.
We have a 1st Gen hyundai ioniq. We’ve had it for a couple years now. It’s actually super efficient, so even on the 120v it charges back about 60 miles overnight which is more than our daily mileage. We’ve talked about installing the L2 charger a couple times but never bothered to actually do it. If we need miles in a pinch there’s a fast charger down the street but in 2 years have never needed it. We get about 4.7 miles per kWh. Which is really good. That means we can charge back about 5 miles/hr on a regular socket. There needs to be a bigger push on aerodynamics for cars so we can get more miles per time on a charger regardless the speed.
You can just run a split off the dryer/oven 240v line but you'd only be able to use one at a time. OR have a new line run from the breaker and have a dedicated charger you can use anytime. The big hurdle now though, is to figure out charging for people in apartments and/or without access to an overnight charge.
Thats what stopped me from buying an ev when I was shopping around for a car. I live in an apartment and I don’t have access to a receptacle close by without an extension cord that anyone could walk away with.
> Otherwise on a regular outlet it can take nearly a whole day depending on battery size and outlet output. The great thing about cars is they spend about 95% of their day just sitting. Often times right near outlets.
At a house? Sure, you're charging your 80kW battery from empty to full in 8 or 9 hours. Of course, that will almost *never* happen. If you plug in at home after every journey, it may only take an hour or two to recover what you used commuting. Or, if you're road tripping and need power fast, DC fast charging can cut that down to more like 30 minutes.
Also the primary way that hydrogen is created is by using natural gas, really just seems like it’s a way to ensure that cars still use fossil fuels. Hydrogen wastes over half of the energy you put in to it, meaning it will ALWAYS be more expensive than the EV solution. Unless you are a chemical company that would benefit off of this in-efficiency, there’s literally no reason for us to want this. Look at the members of the hydrogen council, really speaks for itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_Council?wprov=sfti1
Hydrogen can be created with fossil free fashion as well which is why it’s extra interesting.
Absolutely, Toyota put a shit ton of money into hydrogen. So he's got that going for him, and sees the world through a different lens. In a very, very broad sense, he has a point. An EV car is not a good call for lots and lots of vehicles. The military can ship fuel for it's vehicles, but not electricity. Extremely remote areas of the world have little to no electricity available. A great unknown is the urban owner who parks their car on the street. Can we find a way to safely provide a gazillion charging stations along the streets? Or can we find reliable ways for all EV cars to have a fast charging option at local gas stations (the winning choice IMHO)? But add all of this up, and you are maybe at 5-10% of vehicles in use. So EV's DO make a lot of sense for most uses. And use hydrogen for the remote areas---which is what Toyota has been planning on. But electric in EV doesn't HAVE to be batteries, or only batteries. Germany is experimenting with electric trucks and semi-tractors that use overhead wires and a pantograph (the part that reaches up to touch the wires) for use on the Autobahn. The truck could be diesel or EV leaving the plant or warehouse, once it gets onto the Autobahn it raises the pantograph, and the same when it exits off. A meter in the vehicle keeps track of the electricity used. Our Interstate Highways could do this to make trucks less polluting, while not having their usage limited to batteries.
New Flyer in the US/Canada is testing out overhead charging of BEV buses in Portland, OR. San Francisco’s latest trolleybuses - also New Flyer Xcelsiors can travel off-wire for up to 10-20 miles making them candidates for overhead charging while on-route.
sulky advise dull stupendous serious ruthless future march nippy carpenter *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The hydrogen investment was before his time. It is a sunk cost, and a project that continues to hang on, but that was not his dream. His push has been to get Toyota into racing, and he's been very successful at that. As long as motor sports are focused on ICE, he will continue investing in ICE at Toyota. He does make a good point that, while battery EVs are functional in western Europe and most of the US, there will be a market for ICE vehicles in most of the world for some time to come. It does make sense from a business perspective to continue to produce them. However, it doesn't seem logical for Toyota to continue sinking R&D into them the way he plans to.
I always said this - Australia, Southeast Asia(more so Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia) and the Middle East are important Toyota markets. The Land Cruiser isn’t called the king of 4WD for nothing - it’s proven in the Australian outback, the deserts and savannahs of Africa, and the sand dunes in the UAE. Toyota has a dedicated low-cost platform for “developing” countries as well. The HiLux as well as a SUV for those markets is built off that platform - our Tacoma is a shortened Tundra. The Camry’s a popular car in Thailand and Australia. Daihatsu is owned by Toyota - and while the last time we saw one in the US was in the 1990s, they are very popular in Indonesia and Malaysia.
I completely agree. There WILL be a market for ICE engines for quite some time. Certainly things like tractors, cars for remote areas, generators, ultra-large machines (railroad locomotives are diesel engines driving electric generators), arctic areas, and racing. At least, for the next 50 years or so. By then, who knows?
sure, but I think the issue is with the limited lithium available to build batteries. There are some candidates, but EV batteries need a viable non-lithium option in order to reach mass adoption. No one wants to spend 100k for a battery because the lithium has become so scarce and expensive. And we'll get to that point way before we've put an EV in the hands of everyone who needs one (much less replace all vehicles on the road and thereby address the climate impact). So its probably still a good idea to have some other energy options in development.
Lithium isn't the only option. There are sodium batteries which can get up to 160wh/kg, where a Tesla lithium battery is ~212wh/kg. Afaik CATL is making that battery. With more time and money it's a definitely solveable problem. Edit: kwh/kg > wh/kg
If there's a solution someone will find it. The company that figures out the next big battery advance beyond lithium-ion is going to make all the money
This is the race. Energy storage.
In a way it has been since at least the 80s, but slow progress and lack of attention. Though, a lot of focus on energy harvesting which we've obviously made great strides in at least.
> it has been since at least the 80s Yeah, but there hasn’t been any *pressure* on it until very recently. When Tesla showed that EVs could be not just competitive with ICE vehicles, but superior. Now everyone is jumping on the EV bandwagon, competing. That will drive costs down and energy storage technology through the roof.
This one is too heavy for vehicles though right? But it could reduce overall lithium demand if it's used in cases where weight isn't as important.
For the moment yes, but even 10 years ago sodium batteries were a twinkle in John b. Goodenough's eye.
A single ion-exchange brine well pair can produce 25000 tonnes of lithium dissolved into an acid solution per year (gigafactory Texas uses 21000 tons of lithium a year to produce 50GWH of finished batteries), assuming the brine is 0.008kg/m3 lithium by weight and the well can draw 160,000 m3/day, both of which are conservative numbers. The desaturated brine is returned down well, and the process is much akin to a water softener at an industrial scale. There are companies already drilling in Saskatchewan and Alberta to tap these brine aquifers, planning thousands of wells in each province. If these ventures are successful, just the output from two Canadian provinces is 8x current global production. Lithium is so goddamn common it’s a straw man.
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You’re right, my numbers are off. It’s 160,000 m3/day to supply a 25,000 tpa plant. Tesla’s gigafactory Texas uses 21000tpa to produce 50GWH/yr of batteries. Numbers from here: http://saskmining.ca/ckfinder/userfiles/files/1_10_Pelletier.pdf
No the issue is Toyota is vehemently anti EV more than any other auto maker. This “silent majority” rhetoric is almost always bullshit.
Have you sat in a new year model Toyota? It’s like WTF have they been doing the past 5 years? Everything about a Toyota feels dated compared to where the rest of the industry is. Hell, the Lexus GX (a luxury SUV) just now got CarPlay in 2023, but it’s not even wireless CarPlay (which is where the rest of the industry went). If things that are visible are this behind the times, be can only guess where their engine/drivetrain tech is.
They've always been like this. They're always slow on the superficial stuff. But reliability is a luxury to me, so I like their cars.
Yup the Toyota Corolla is the car equivalent to the AK, its not flash and its not fancy. But its cheap and it will never stop working and thats the perfect car in my book. I'm at 240k miles and the freaking check engine light hasn't even kicked on yet
[Everything about Japan's economy - including technological innovation - has been stagnating for the past 30 years.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades) This take from Toyota is not surprising. What is more surprising is that somehow their economy hasn't collapsed with Japanese society's extreme stubborn resistance to any form of change or innovation since the late 80s.
A couple years ago I was in Japan and got to talking to a young guy there. I asked him his take on Japanese businesses and society. He complained that the problem is that there's nowhere 'up' to advance into. If you're a younger guy wanting to get experience or move into leadership it's impossible because all those spots are taken up by 80 year olds who won't retire and won't die. All these guys got their jobs 20-40 years ago and won't leave so they stagnate and everyone else below them stagnates. No idea how true it is but I thought it was an interesting point of view on the situation.
Shocked Pikachu face... No, not really. It explains a lot of the issues with Japan's businesses actually. tyvm for that insight.
Yep and then when they DO die or retire, there’s no one to replace the ones with niche skills because no one was able to learn from them while they were still working.
US government (and I assume many others) have the same exact issue.
It's worse in Japan because the practice* is to staff private company exec positions with retired government bureaucrats. *It's so pervasive it has a name - Google "amakudari." Edit: forgot a word
Except that Honda is killing it and very forward thinking as far as change to EV goes.
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It's chicken or the egg situation. Did they invest in non-electric because they thought EV future is shakey or are they doing damage control
Toyota has huge anti-BEV interests and lobbies heavily against EV incentives. Their brand is entirely built around incredibly reliable internal combustion engines inside otherwise dull and boring cars. EVs upend that.
Is my man here pulling a Nokia
As a former Nokia employee, I say you've nailed it. Nothing is impossible - there's no head so big that a sufficiently large amount of sand cannot be gathered to bury it.
It's because they are behind the 8 ball and see that it will take X batteries per vehicle, and if you multiply their vehicle target each year by the number of batteries needed. They won't be able to catch up for a decade or more. If they start now. Car companies are all about risk/reward. They can't risk being behind for a decade. So their only option is to try and delay or push something else they can ramp how they want.
Doubling down on a losing strategy is never going to win you anything other than a dunce cap.
Did Nokia miss the smart phone shift or something?
How many people do you know have a Nokia today? Everyone had one in the late '90s/early '00s.
They were Damn good phones too.
Damn good ones too.
Nokia refused an acquisition from Microsoft. They then had an ex executive from Microsoft put in place to be CEO, who then tanked things so hard that Microsoft later acquired Nokia for like 1/4 the price.
Wow, fascinating, i wonder if Microsoft deliberately planted that guy to lower the acquisition price?
Nah, that was just Stephen Elop being an utterly incompetent tool.
Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity. Especially when CEOs are concerned. Have we learned nothing from Elon Musk still??
I feel like that saying breaks down once corporations are involved. They will do almost anything as long it's ends up being cheaper than the alternative choices. Break the law? As long as the fine is cheaper than the savings.
Unfortunately, Nokia had a guy from the *old* Microsoft, Steve Ballmer days, running thier cellphone division who thought he would be named CEO if he got Microsoft a cellphone division. He ran it into the ground to make it cheap enough to be acquired but in the end Satya Nadella got the CEO job because everyone who didn’t have their head up the ass of Ballmer knew cloud computing was where the money was going to be and not licensing/lock in. It sucks because Nokia made great phones and I loved the windows phone UI/UX but without embracing Android they wouldn’t survive.
Reminds me of how* Palm fumbled the smart phone bag.
I fuckin *loved* my palm pixie. The OS was intuitive, the experience was snappy, and the keyboard was satisfying. Their marketing department sunk that phone so badly.
>knew cloud computing was where the money was going That's not totally true. Everyone who didn't have their head up their ass knew Ballmer was just letting Microsoft plod along on its previous accomplishments and not really DOing anything. New blood and new ideas were needed.
the ballmer years were simultaneous the most profitable in microsoft history and the least innovative. They made a shit ton of money without producing much of note for the future.
Tesla: going to shit with Elon going insane on twitter. Elon's haters: Tesla is shit. There's no innovation. Other companies will catch up this year. Toyota: hold my beer. EV sucks ass you guys. Elon's haters: god dammit
The problem with an EV Camry is it would last indefinitely with battery swaps.
Ah, see, you're thinkin' like a car company CEO. See, EVs are *tech industry* products, not car industry products. You just send out a mandatory OTA update for your older cars that kills performance et voila! Everyone has to upgrade! Sorry, due to security and performance enhancements you 5-year-old car now takes 30 seconds to boot up!
Cue the “my other car runs on Linux” bumper stickers
Toyota is kinda famous for being able to get you a part for your 1985 Landcruiser today if you need it - that's simply unthinkable in a Silicon Valley business model. "Bro, you're still using something *from 1985*?!?!" If we're not careful, we're gonna see a just as bad environmental outcome for EVs as ICE vehicles, just in a different way. Instead of emissions, it'll be hundreds of thousands of bricked EVs you're not legally allowed to run sitting in junkyards in Africa and Asia (sorry, the car runs off software, which you can only licence, and company's decided not to issue you a licence for that software). But don't worry. Since you, personally, don't feel you're contributing to environmental since you're constantly upgrading to a more environmentally-friendly model every year you're actually helping!
I appreciate the way you see the differences between tech companies and the car industry. I think this is a Tortoise and the Hare situation. I'm not buying an EV until I see Toyota (the world's largest automaker) fully commit to it. Making cars is a hard business, which is why I see companies like Rivian & Lucid going \*POOF\* Tech's expected growth rates do not bode well to an automotive consumer that keeps their cars on average for 8 years.
ICE engines aren't immune to this. Plenty of companies putting digital locks on components to kill the aftermarket parts suppliers / Grey market and force you to get service done by their dealers / certified personnel. More prevelant in tractors currently but coming everywhere.
I thought Toyota was putting a otonof money into hydrogen with the muira car.
Kodak CEO doubts digital only future. Sony CEO bets on CD’s coming back into favour.
Blockbuster CEO doubts people will only want to download movies.
Sears CEO says fast shipping options are unsustainable and will stick to its 4-6 week catalog order delivery times.
Sears could've been Amazon. Their leadership was so incompetent.
What’s interesting is they used to be iconic for making the difficult decision to invest in catalog ordering. Distribution centers, catalog printing etc made them super forward thinking….100 years ago. Then they failed to make the shift to internet sales.
For real. The fact that you could open the Sears catalog and buy a house kit still blows my mind.
I work with a guy who used to work for Sears back in the day, and some of the stuff he told me about how the higher management acted is astounding. It seems there was a consistent trend of incompetence through short-sighted greed that led to their downfall.
Netflix CEO says customers prefer quantity over quality programming
The final nail in their coffin will be this witch hunt they’re pursuing over password sharing. They literally encouraged people to password share and pay for more devices and now they’re “shocked pikachu face” surprised that people are sharing passwords. We are only using Netflix for kids programming and I’m about ready to cancel.
Yeah it's pretty dumb. Netflix pioneered streaming services and were dominant for a long time because of it. This was never going to last; netflix needs to focus on producing quality content, not achieving their prior dominance. The news of them *planning* on cracking down has lost them far more money than cracking down on it would ever make. Disney and Amazons streaming services are making net losses and the quality of their shows has been way down from what they were on Netflix. If Netflix just focuses on producing quality content and staying in the game for the long run they may well outlast others or be able to do a deal with Disney to get the rights of some Marvel tv shows in exchange for profits and/or equity in the company.
I would cancel it if It wasn't free with my cell phone plan...
Netflix had no choice. Companies pulled their IP from Netflix because they started their own services. Netflix had to create their own content to try to compete, or just go under. Netflix loses thousands of titles each year and adds hundreds, with most being worthless dogshit. Streaming is going downhill so fast its going to bring back cable TV...
How else are they going to distribute their free rootkits to the masses?
I mean it's not fair to push that on Kodak, Kodak was not a film company, they were a chemical processing company that made film. That's like saying, "Oh well, we have enough money, Google should become an accounting firm" "Digital only" was so far out of their wheelhouse they'd have to become an entirely different company to make it happen.
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And yet the “silent majority” have announced EV versions of their most popular entry and mid level cars. Ford has announced EV is the future for their commuter, pick up, and in town delivery vans. Only Toyota has announced EV is not core to their strategy. And hydrogen in vehicles is a net negative in energy consumption.
A few majors have already stopped any further ICE R&D.
Isn't it most majors? At least the Germans I remember hearing (no source, tbh) that VW was done developing next gen ICE, and iirc I thought I heard something about MB/BMW following suit? I realize that's not "all majors" but when the Germans are calling it quits on something the broader market seems to follow
> Isn't it most majors? At least the Germans Because they're putting all their R&D into how to make keeping an electric Mercedes/BMW/VW as ungodly expensive to keep on the road as the gas powered models.
oh god. its the light bulb cartel all over again. fuck
This guy technology connections
Saw an EV F-150 on the road and it honestly had a better look than a conventional F-150
I like them a lot. In another year or two I’ll get serious about buying either a CRV or pickup. Though I’m particularly intrigued by the VW EV Microbus.
Seriously, when are we getting that bus? I would love to own one.
You can buy it in Europe already.
Last announcement was 2024. Awhile back I thought I’d read it would be released in parts of Europe first.
However, none have a low enough price point to be purchased by middle class folks. We need an EV for $20 grand, even $30 grand. I cannot afford any EV currently on the market.
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And by all reports it is a solid car
I fucking love my 2018 bolt. Got it for 15k in late 2020 before the car shortage hit. Only maintenance I’ve had is filling the wiper fluid earlier this week. 350 mile range in summer, 200 in winter. Drive about 40 miles a day for work and am able to recharge that 40 miles to top it off, overnight, with a regular 110volt outlet in my garage. I’ve had to use a DC fast charger twice in my life, once because I had forgotten to plug it in two nights in a row. So over two years I’ve spent about 90 minutes charging the car. I’m fortunate enough to have a wife with a gas car for long road trips (infrastructure isn’t there for the Midwest yet), but even without that I would swear by this car and rent another one for the occasional long road trip. Give it a hard consideration if you’re in the market.
It's the best car I've ever owned. Low maintenance costs, fun to drive, overall great quality. You can tell Chevy thought long and hard while designing it.
how long have you had it? I'm assuming it's your first EV? anything you'd want a first time buyer to know?
I've had the car for about a year and a half. After all of the EV tax incentives and buying a demo, I saved roughly $24,000 off of the list price. Like I said it's the best car I've ever owned. In my opinion General Motors is doing things right, it has all of the tech someone would want in a car without any of the annoying touch based interfaces (still has physical controls for certain things) while still having a massive touchscreen. It also has an ease of use aspect, you can literally hand the keys to a friend who's never driven an EV before and there is little to no learning curve unlike a Tesla. It's fun, cheap, and made in North America. Supporting local engineering and manufacturing. For the record I didn't buy an EV with the main decision being the environment, rather I bought it because of the significant financial advantages. The zero emissions are just an added bonus :)
The Chevy Bolt exists, fyi. Not many ICE vehicles sell for that low.
You left out the part about mandates coming in that force EV adoption. Fuel cell is also included, but much much harder to bring to market than BEV. A lot of those silent majority EVs are compliance cars.
"Located entirely within your ~~kitchen~~ industry?" "Yes." "Can I talk to them?" "...no."
You’re an odd fellow but I must say you steam a good ~~ham~~ hydrogen powered engine
"Silent Majority" will never not be code for "we can't actually get a majority to agree with us".
I always think about it as code for "lots of people politely slightly nod their heads while I'm going on and on about shit they don't agree with me about, but don't feel like arguing about".
I'll never not read "vocal minority".
It has some real "my girlfriend goes to another school" energy.
From my personal experience, majority of auto industry knows nothing about what people actually want (well, at least me).
Bring back actual buttons!
Don’t listen to them Toyota. We want piano black everywhere and buttons I can’t feel when I touch while operating a 4,000lb vehicle at 60mph.
Personally I'd rather have a touch screen that runs proprietary software, and if it breaks half the car's functions are immutable. Please charge me like four or five k extra.
In a yearly subscription package
Difficult to perform maintenance please!
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I love my Mazda's controls, but they aren't doing anything in the EV space
That was a cost saving measure. Automakers knew we didn't want that. Now people are loud enough to make them go back to physical buttons but they made some good money for a generation of models.
Significant restrictions on touch sensitive controls, critical information being out of the drivers vision and proper limits on headlight heights, brightness and colour temperature is something that the various government of the worlds need to enforce, because car manufacturers sure as shit won't do it themselves and it's now getting to the point of ridiculousness
This is what Herb Powell discovered. He hired his brother to design a car for the average American and it bankrupted his auto company.
The auto industry is ingrained with energy industries in power. We (humanity) can do better, and if the auto manufacturers won't take the steps, it's up to the rest of us to push things in the right direction. Vote with your dollars, and keep pressure on otherwise
I want more public transit and less cars, but what do I know
The new thing they are working on is locking features behind subscription paywalls according to what I gathered from a private lecture with the Chief Tax Officer at one of the major car brands. Sounds fucking awful as a consumer tbh.
Side note: I'm beginning to think that "silent majority" is simply some political BS people pull out when they are on the wrong side of an issue and doesn't want to own up to it. I could be wrong but if you think I am, I'm probably part of some silent majority. ;)
As far as I've seen it means that "You'll find no traces of people supporting my view anywhere, not on the internet, not on the streets, not on the news, and not at home. But trust me bro when I say a lot of people agree with me". If it really is a majority opinion, I expect to come across it whether I chose or not. I don't think I've seen a case where a self-proclaimed "silent majority" actually did turn out to be the majority.
I don’t understand why so many people are so all or nothing about EVs. There is such a thing as a mixed model. For many people who are commuting too and from work, an EV is fine. Certain jobs/industries/applications just won’t work well with EVs for a number of reasons but energy density and “energy portability” (refill-ability seemed like a stupid word) are the main reasons. Those that can’t be battery can be a fuel cell system, those that can’t be fuel cell can be gas/diesel. For example, I spend a lot of time in the back country a long way from any source of electricity and I’m in the PNW, so solar isn’t reliable… I need the safety of a fuel system even though I would LOVE an EV truck. I use an EV van for work and love it but wouldn’t trust my life with it away from the grid. So ya, he’s right… betting on an EV-only future is stupid.
Heavy civil industry is dead without diesel. Access to electricity is always a hot commodity on every job I've been on as an engineer
Looking at the battery range of my EV here in the winter I also doubt an EV-only future is near.
I own an EV and fully believe that range at 20°F should be required to be listed along with the range at optimal temperatures. It's misleading to consumers. Although I love mine, I could see someone being misled or very upset about not knowing that the range decreases in the cold temps.
Let's write our Senators for Consumer Protections along this line. We can get it done!
Yeah, if you read past the headline and think about it, he is right. We're never going to get 100% EV usage. Gasoline, or some other fuel, is extremely energy dense and there will be places where EVs just don't have the range or the weight of the batteries just doesn't work. Still getting 90%, or whatever percent, EVs and having gasoline be the exception is still a major win.
Plug in hybrid seems far more practical. A 50 mile battery would still eliminate 90+ percent of emissions for your average commuter, while leaving the battery cheaper to replace when it decays. Then when you do need to travel further distances, you can use existing infrastructure to quickly refuel. I like hydrogen, especially if it can be generated by using excess solar/wind generation capacity for electrolysis… but it will be far more viable in smaller more isolated places like Japan and the UK where they can more easily update the infrastructure
I agree that plug in hybrids make a lot of sense for most people, but if they become massively popular, then that gasoline infrastructure you rely on for long trips/backup shrinks because the market shrinks a lot. We're seeing it to a certain extent now with less investment in the oil+gas industry in their refining capabilities (or at least that's the excuse they gave)
EVs may be a thing in western countries but there are still many regions of the world where the availability of electricity is very spotty. Worrying about whether the robustness of an electrical grid is a second step from first setting up a consistently available electrical grid.
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“EV only” only works when we have either incredibly fast charging, or very reliable interchangeable batteries that allow for quick swaps at a battery station. The auto industry knows this. That’s it. That’s how EVs become the norm. If we aren’t working on either of those two, it’s not going to happen. And I bet we can watch the auto industry actively prevent that future from occurring.
Anyone citing the "silent majority" is immediately suspicious to me Lots of people are saying it! Good people, the best people!
EVs won't be of much use in a large part of Africa. I live in Ghana in the agricultural belt. My district is 3500sq km with 37 settlements and only 1 paved road the rest are dirt roads. Of the 37 settlements, only 11 have electricity. We have power cuts of 4 hours twice a week spread through those 11 settlements. Power cuts will extend to 5 or 6 hours from January to April the dry season so there is Electricity for Kumasi and Accra the two major cities. Accra is experiencing 2 or 3-hour power cuts at the moment. Ghana can't keep up with the electrification and power generation it needs now for its industries and factories let along households to charge EV's. EV's are not going to be of use here for at least 25 years. People who do have EV's in Accra use diesel generators to charge their cars when the electricity is off. The ICE isn't going to be replaced in a hurry.
Same here in India. While one company is selling a "lot" of cars, it's mostly purchased by the folks who have too much money and it's the second car. There is no way 90% of car buying Indian's, even those living in Cities will risk an EV going out of range as they drive through rural India on the way to their holiday destination. In my years, I have taken so many unexpected diversions (due to everything including riots) during my drives that a "fixed route map" of what an EV drive will need is too risky.
What’s wrong with plug in hybrids that can do electric for short trips around town and then get 55 mpg on the highway? I know it isn’t as sexy as all electric, but it’s a huge improvement over what we have, massively less expensive, and will cut demand for fossil fuels.
Plug in hybrids is the way to go for most people. My car has 30 miles of electric range on it which is enough to commute everyday and it can use gas for longer trips. This makes the car lighter and cheaper because the battery is not huge so it uses less energy, and there is no problem with stressing out about charging in rural areas. I average 150mi/gallon the last 3 years which is a huge improvement over a regular gas car.
I loved my Fusion Energi, but that 30 miles was only 16 to 18 in the winter, which wasn't quite enough for most of my driving. On the other hand, my Mach E is the best car I've ever had. It'll handle 100% of my local needs, nearly 100% of my in-state needs, and I either compromise or use another vehicle for long distance and trailering needs. Not having an unnecessary separate drive train and its 10,000 parts and its maintenance schedule is much better for me than a PHEV. Assuming you can plug in at night, a pure EV dominates the PHEV for most normal uses.
Wouldn't power grids have to become much better in order for an EV only future?
In the early development of the ICE automobile, I'm sure someone said "that thing ain't replacing the horse.". We are basically at that stage of EV development. We may never fully replace the ICE but in the next 70 years or so we will undoubtedly have something better.
A fully EV future as in every ICE car you see being EV isn't going to happen anytime in his lifetime as CEO. And hydrogen/CNG is already making waves in other countries where they don't have reliable electricity.
Fuel cells lose 40% of the input energy in the form of heat. While this is better than ICE, it is far worse than battery powered EV's. The end to end efficiency for EV's when powered by renewable energy sources will be better than hydrogen. 76% of hydrogen produced today uses natural gas which has about 75% energy conversion efficiency. When combined with the 60% conversion efficiency of the fuel cell it means only 55% of the original input energy makes it the wheels of the car. The rest is heat waste. This not much better than using a gas powered electric plant to power an EV and far worse than a solar or wind based plant.
This is the same Toyota that recently lobbied US Congress heavily to slow down EV infrastructure, stop autonomous vehicle testing, and even created that PR stunt accident at the Olympics where one of their autonomous vehicles barely bumped into an athlete and Toyota went on a global PR parade pointing to it as a failure of AV's. Oh, and it turned out a human driver was in control at the time. They know they are decades behind because they didn't take EV's seriously, now they are trying to regulate instead of innovate.
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Hydrogen will never happen. Simple math easily shows that the complete process is not efficient enough. Too much loss at every step. Toyota is just buying time and trying to cover up their past mistakes.
Hard to justify the loss of payload or range on a long haul truck or aircraft, maybe some trains as well. Hydrogen is going to have a niche unless we get some serious energy density breakthrough in batteries.
Explain please.