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Toyota chief doesn’t get it

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my article is a couple months older than yours. maybe Toyota has changed their minds on trying to compete in full EV market. they do have that hybrid Rav4 just released though. think it goes 40 miles on EV, then gas. maybe they sticking with that.
 
my article is a couple months older than yours. maybe Toyota has changed their minds on trying to compete in full EV market. they do have that hybrid Rav4 just released though. think it goes 40 miles on EV, then gas. maybe they sticking with that.

Yes, that vehicle is an indication of where they are, actually. I believe the US is receiving < 5,000...not even compliance numbers.
 

To the quote of Mr. Toyoda, "Toyota has yet to launch an all-electric vehicle outside of China." my only comment is that I owned a Toyota RAV4 EV (full BEV) in 2002 and kept it for six years until a person unable to wait for Tesla offered me TWICE what I paid for it. As I could wait, I used his money for my down payment, and have enjoyed Tesla ever since. I feel Electrek did not research far enough back.
 
To the quote of Mr. Toyoda, "Toyota has yet to launch an all-electric vehicle outside of China." my only comment is that I owned a Toyota RAV4 EV (full BEV) in 2002 and kept it for six years until a person unable to wait for Tesla offered me TWICE what I paid for it. As I could wait, I used his money for my down payment, and have enjoyed Tesla ever since. I feel Electrek did not research far enough back.
Exactly. Their statement is totally inaccurate.

Besides your gen 1 Rav4 EV, there was the Tesla-powered gen 2 Rav4 EV. I've test driven the latter at least twice and know some owners (possibly former owners).

(I've had a gen 1 owner point to me the "SERVICE PRUG" (yes, it has that typo) label in the cabin of his car.)

I recall seeing this "COMS" vehicle at EV / Products Line-up / Products / TOYOTA AUTO BODY parked in some car sharing spots in Japan. Will try to find a pic I took and post it.

Lexus UX 300e Enters The European Market and Lexus UX300e electric car revealed for China, Europe, Japan—but not US has been launched in several markets. Lexus UX300e - My Nissan Leaf Forum has pointers to a few more like Israel, Thailand and Indonesia.
 
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It’s just a fact that Toyota’s CEO is anti EV and just this week gave a speech reinforcing that position. Toyota’s product portfolio and pipeline reinforces that position.

Personally I could care less because their cars are boring and I don’t have any financial or other economic need for Toyota to survive or otherwise.
 
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I
Personally I could care less because their cars are boring and I don’t have any financial or other economic need for Toyota to survive or otherwise.

Once I was shopping for an SUV. After driving an Audi Q5, I tried a Lexus RX. First, it resembled my old Camry too much and, second, when I tried to test curves and brakes the saleslady gave me that look "how dare you touched my precious, m..f.er".
Also, I was truly fascinated by the Prius when they started to sell them at volume, but I couldn't afford it at the time. A few years back, I tried to test drive a Prius, which I passed immediately when I noticed its materials are inferior to my old Nissan Versa econobox, and the tech is the exact same as some 15+ years ago.
Toyota stopped inventing after Prius.
 
Something doesn’t smell right. If Toyota has made a breakthrough in solid state battery and coming out with EVs soon, why are they still pushing Hydrogen cars? Japanese gov may be pushing Hydrogen but still no reason.

As Elon rightly emphasized during the battery day presentation, doing something in the lab, and doing something at huge manufacturing scale with the right cost economics are two completely different things. At the rate these old line companies move, it’ll take many years to see that lab breakthrough make it to a car.
 
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Something doesn’t smell right. If Toyota has made a breakthrough in solid state battery and coming out with EVs soon, why are they still pushing Hydrogen cars? Japanese gov may be pushing Hydrogen but still no reason.
The other reason why Toyota has been pushing hydrogen FCEVs is due to CARB Mandate For Zero Emission Vehicles. See Toyota Rav4 EV Forum • View topic - Why did Toyota build Rav4 EV? Why hydrogen after 2014 ?. Previously (not sure about now), California offered far more in CA ZEV credits for hydrogen FCEVs than BEVs.

BTW, I've taken many trips to Japan w/my most recent ones in late 2015, late 2017 and late 2019. Despire them having 7700 CHAdeMO chargers there for a country about ~89% of the size of California, I never saw many BEVs on the road there. There are WAY more that one can spot in the SF Bay Area than in the parts of Japan I went to.

Heck, on my residential street which is about 1/4 of mile long, my Bolt is amongst 1 of 4. There's an i3 down the street and gen 2 Leaf on the other end of the street. There are just the ones I know about who park on the street or their driveway. This doesn't count a couple other PHEVs (I can recall a Plug in Prius, Prime Prime and gen 2 Volt). There's also a Clarity, but I don't recall if it's the BEV or PHEV version.

Another person (former Leaf and then e-Golf driver) who I know from TiVocommunity (who seems to have passed away) also went to Japan one of those same years. We met up briefly at least twice while in Japan and his observations about BEVs in Japan were the same.

As I posted at Japanese EV market - My Nissan Leaf Forum
-- begin quote --
I mentioned in a Tokyo Motor Show 2019 about the Mahle rep I spoke to. IIRC, he said the Japanese weren't willing to buy EVs due to price there. For him, he felt that in the short term (I'm guessing he's talking about next 3 to 5 years), his best bet there is on PHEVs and mild hybrids.

As I think I've mentioned before, it seems parking in Tokyo and big cities in Japan is hard enough to find as it is, let alone parking w/charging. If it's mechanical parking, forget about charging at all there.

I recall on one of my trips there where I went all the way from Nagasaki to Tokyo by train, I recall seeing some of the EVs in more rural/lower population dense areas (e.g. a Leaf in Beppu). I suppose those would be better candidates for an EV since they might have a home and an ability to charge.
-- end quote --

It was related to the very low share of BEVs in terms of sales in the Japanese auto market. In 2019, The Japanese Plug-In Electric Car Market Declined Again says:
Japan surprises with its low rate of plug-in car adoption and disappointing sales results.
The Japanese plug-in electric car market is in a disappointing stage. After a 7% decrease in 2018, in 2019 sales decreased by another 17% year-over-year to 43,867.

The market share was just 0.8% (compared to 1.0% in 2018, and 1.1% in 2017), which is very low compared to many other countries.

With all the CHAdeMO fast-charging and the island-type of country, we would expect that Japan, an oil importer, would be a leading plug-in car market.
I wouldn't be surprised if Toyota's actions are related to observations in their home country + seeing what automakers outside of China, excluding Tesla have invested and their returns on their investments.
Could that headline be any more sensationalist?

The “end of the automaker”, riiiiiiight. Based on what? Pretty sure they sold 2.4 million vehicles last year in the US alone.
Indeed. They're also amongst the world's largest automakers, usually manufacturing and selling about 10 million vehicles per year, worldwide with a full range of automobiles and consistent profits of many billions per year virtually every year.

Tesla has yet to do 500K in a year and it's pretty clear they have problems scaling up certain parts of their operations.
It has mystified me why they haven’t come out with a BEV. Their hybrid technology is superb. They absolutely have the engineering chops to pull it off.
They've come out with some. See post 14. There's also some at 8:48 of
for China. They're mentioned at Toyota Premieres Toyota-brand Battery Electric Vehicles Ahead of 2020 China Launch | Toyota | Global Newsroom | Toyota Motor Corporation Official Global Website.
 
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