Toyota set to sell long-range, fast-charging electric cars in 2022: paper
Only one local (but closest to Toyota) released this news in Japan today.
Only one local (but closest to Toyota) released this news in Japan today.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Beginning sales in Japan but not China nor California in "2022" means they think limited trial run is within sight. With mass production several years later.
The over/under for mass production is 2027. The optimistic scenario battery scientist give senior management never pans out.
.... with possible exception for the Musk Reality Distortion Field
When a traditional automaker says "a competitive EV in five years", it's like they don't even understand what's happening. That they don't realize how fast of a moving target they're talking about. Look at the situation GM finds itself in with the Bolt. They're actually trying, and yet more people are putting their money down on the Model 3, an EV that hasn't even had a full reveal yet, than are buying theirs. If GM was "late to the game" on this one, how on Earth can a company like Toyota think that they'll just be able to just jump into the game in 2022?
In addition to eliminating most to all risk of electrolyte flammability, solid electrolytes (generally ion-selective glasses) can strongly resist dendrite puncture. They're particularly appealing for moving in the direction of lithium-air batteries, which have the potential to exceed gasoline in terms of energy density. Another possibility for such solid electrolytes is various forms of sodium ion / sodium air batteries (not as energy dense as lithium-air, but sodium-air would still be much more energy dense than traditional lithium ion cells, and more importantly, could be produced for dirt cheap since sodium metal only costs a couple dollars per kilogram)
Lithium-sulfur is another interesting one. It could 2-3x the energy of today's li-ion, although it's not as extreme in potential as lithium air. It doesn't have lithium-air's problems, but it has its own challenges. Still, it's been making promising progress.
Tesla knows what they're doing, and I'm sure they're staying on top of all current research as well as doing their own. The numbers will keep edging up, whether through incremental improvements or leaps to new chemistries
Better - and worse. Like most things in life, there are tradeoffs.
From my limited research on the subject, the main challenges with solid state cells so far seem to be cost related, beyond the technical aspects of making a viable electrolyte.
Here's a nice article on the various types:
https://www.androidauthority.com/lithium-ion-vs-solid-state-battery-726142/amp/
.... with possible exception for the Musk Reality Distortion Field
When a traditional automaker says "a competitive EV in five years", it's like they don't even understand what's happening. That they don't realize how fast of a moving target they're talking about. Look at the situation GM finds itself in with the Bolt. They're actually trying, and yet more people are putting their money down on the Model 3, an EV that hasn't even had a full reveal yet, than are buying theirs. If GM was "late to the game" on this one, how on Earth can a company like Toyota think that they'll just be able to just jump into the game in 2022?
Because Toyota is the worlds number one volume auto maker. Obviously if they choose to bring their cash and manufacturing capabilities to bear on building a long range BEV I've no doubt they could do so perhaps sooner than that. People NOT buying the Bolt but holding out for the Model 3 is more a marketing problem for GM than the fact that the Bolt is a crappy car. The Bolt is getting good reviews. I see the Bolt's main problem "marketing not withstanding" that it is "still a compact car" and can still go north of $40K (before any incentives are applied). It is NOT advertised, and it is still a little funky "dorky" looking and it has no "swag".
Don't forget the lack of a charging network which would enable long distance travel.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
They could bring a compelling long range BEV within a year if price was no object. Even buying Lucid Motors.
Equally obvious, all the money on earth isn't going to force scientific breakthroughs on a schedule. They can't chose to make solid state automotive battery packs long range,safe,cost effective and reliable on their schedule.
More money means you buy more lottery tickets. Increasing your chances of hitting the jackpot.
BTW Don't know what metric you are using for number one but VW is top automaker by volume.
Shhhh... most of the plug-in cars in the USA and Canada are Chevrolets. Not Teslas, not Toyotas, not Nissans. Don't let anybody know. They are disguised as pickups I'm told to hide them.
mtndrew1
Active Member
Toyota sure seems to be scrambling to catch up with competitors these days. Their arrogance really got them into thinking they could buy off regulators with the dead-end FCV nonsense while pushing conventional hybrids.
Meanwhile all the lucrative early-adopter hybrid buyers moved to BEVs and the Prius fell on its face. Toyota is (at a minimum) five years behind GM, Nissan, and Tesla in the BEV space.
Meanwhile all the lucrative early-adopter hybrid buyers moved to BEVs and the Prius fell on its face. Toyota is (at a minimum) five years behind GM, Nissan, and Tesla in the BEV space.
I am not sure this is the right place to ask this question, but here it goes. Hypothetically lets say solid state batteries become viable and better batteries than lithium ion batteries for electric cars in 5 years. How likely do you think that Tesla would be leapfrogged, in this scenario, by another automotive company who is able to make their first gigafactories solid state and are thus not tied to an older lithium ion battery produced by older gigafactories?
Most? I think not.
According to the assembled tallies of Insideevs' monthly totals, GM has a 21% share of the ~650k EVs sold in the US since 2008. That's certainly not a majority...
It is slightly more than any other single maker - Tesla has a 20% share, Nissan a 17% share.
Of course, 89% of GM's share is Volts...
The only way I think it's even possible Tesla might get leapfrogged is if the new chemistry can't be built using the processes/machines their gigafactories have in them.
What I've read so far suggests that cells will still be thin films wound tightly into cylinders or stacked to pouches - in other words, the same production lines can likely handle most of the manufacturing, with some adjustments where they add the electrolyte layers.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Tesla is planning for lithium ion to be obsolete in 10 years. They are depreciating their equipment in that time.
The buildings themselves and the infrastructure(roads,rail,water, energy feeding factory) will not be obsolete. Neither will the loyal customer base willing to buy BEVs.
No one would be in a better position to mass produce a new type of battery cell. Simply switch some or all of the equipment inside.
Tesla is not married to a technology because of sunk cost. I think Tesla has show that multiple times. Switching away from Mobil Eye. Switching away from Silevo solar cell technology at Gigafactory 2 to Panasonic tech.
The whole "they're giant auto manufacturers, they could take over the EV market with their eyes closed" attitude has demonstrably not played out. The reality is that there is no magic to being a "giant automaker". Any startup can hire away people with decades of experience; if anything, big automakers are saddled with outdated infrastructure and production models. The only thing that they usually have going for them against upstarts is capital. But given that Tesla has a market value on par with a major automaker, they don't even have that.
The biggest problem is that they don't even seem to understand what they're doing wrong. They think that you can make any old EV, put it on the market, and so long as you have some "current industry standard range and performance" and subsidize the price down to some "current industry standard price", you'll have a winner. Which of course it doesn't work that way at all. EV customers want charging infrastructure and rapid charging. EV customers want innovation in multiple aspects of the vehicle. EV customers don't want something that looks like an ordinary ICE budget sedan or a boxfish-on-wheels. They don't want to buy from a company that they don't think is actually dedicated to EVs but is instead doing it for a combination of PR purposes and CAFE standards/EV credits.
Just the way that they design these things shows that they don't understand anything at all. Both the Leaf and the Bolt have a drag coefficient of 0.32, which isn't even good for a regular ICE sedan; for an EV that's an abomination - all because they wanted some particular, ridiculous style and they always let their terrible stylists have first dibs at design, with their aero people only doing tweaks. "No problem," they think, "We'll just put in bigger battery packs and subsidize the vehicle so people buy it." And that right there shows that they don't actually have a belief that the time for EVs is now. They see them as some "maybe some day but now they're just a little PR project that we could kill off if the winds change" side project to their main ICE business. And that's really how they look at everything, not just EVs - it's always "business as usual, even if you have a glaring problem staring you in the face". One of my pet peeves is how massive and expensive they've let wiring harnesses get because for decades they never saw fit to change their design philosophy from "Need a new piece of functionality? Wire in yet another box from yet another OEM and grow your alternator to handle the drain!" to "Centralize, multifuctional hardware, eliminate redundancy and simplify."
Everything about Tesla shows that they actually believe in EVs, believe in radical change to the industry, and are rapidly turning this belief into reality.
Until I see any signs that any of the traditional major automakers "get it", I see no hope for them in the long term. The notion that they're just going to jump in when the water gets warm, without having built up charging infrastructure, without having invested vast sums in their own battery technology (thinking they'll just off-the-shelf it), without having streamlined their manufacturing processes, without having collected reams of consumer data, without having to innovate, without having ever done anything to earn their potential customers' loyalty... their attempts to jump in will go as badly as GM's did with the Bolt.
My view, at least.
The biggest problem is that they don't even seem to understand what they're doing wrong. They think that you can make any old EV, put it on the market, and so long as you have some "current industry standard range and performance" and subsidize the price down to some "current industry standard price", you'll have a winner. Which of course it doesn't work that way at all. EV customers want charging infrastructure and rapid charging. EV customers want innovation in multiple aspects of the vehicle. EV customers don't want something that looks like an ordinary ICE budget sedan or a boxfish-on-wheels. They don't want to buy from a company that they don't think is actually dedicated to EVs but is instead doing it for a combination of PR purposes and CAFE standards/EV credits.
Just the way that they design these things shows that they don't understand anything at all. Both the Leaf and the Bolt have a drag coefficient of 0.32, which isn't even good for a regular ICE sedan; for an EV that's an abomination - all because they wanted some particular, ridiculous style and they always let their terrible stylists have first dibs at design, with their aero people only doing tweaks. "No problem," they think, "We'll just put in bigger battery packs and subsidize the vehicle so people buy it." And that right there shows that they don't actually have a belief that the time for EVs is now. They see them as some "maybe some day but now they're just a little PR project that we could kill off if the winds change" side project to their main ICE business. And that's really how they look at everything, not just EVs - it's always "business as usual, even if you have a glaring problem staring you in the face". One of my pet peeves is how massive and expensive they've let wiring harnesses get because for decades they never saw fit to change their design philosophy from "Need a new piece of functionality? Wire in yet another box from yet another OEM and grow your alternator to handle the drain!" to "Centralize, multifuctional hardware, eliminate redundancy and simplify."
Everything about Tesla shows that they actually believe in EVs, believe in radical change to the industry, and are rapidly turning this belief into reality.
Until I see any signs that any of the traditional major automakers "get it", I see no hope for them in the long term. The notion that they're just going to jump in when the water gets warm, without having built up charging infrastructure, without having invested vast sums in their own battery technology (thinking they'll just off-the-shelf it), without having streamlined their manufacturing processes, without having collected reams of consumer data, without having to innovate, without having ever done anything to earn their potential customers' loyalty... their attempts to jump in will go as badly as GM's did with the Bolt.
My view, at least.
It's simple really, they learned a lot about putting out press released the last several years while promoting the Mirai fuel cell car. Now that they have started to turn their focus to EV's, the same people are starting to put out press releases about the killer EV's they will pull out of their hat. A good Japanese lesson in continuous marketing improvement.
RT
I don't think many if any of the old-school major automakers will go out of business. But I do think they will take some hard licks before they get back on track. A great example would be that of the beating American automakers took from Japanese automakers (ironically, Toyota in particular) decades ago. The Japanese automakers did business differently - because space was at a premium in Japan, they did just-in-time manufacturing, trying to keep part inventories to a minimum, while US automakers stockpiled big warehouses of parts. The side effect of this turned out to be worth far more than minimizing warehousing: the Japanese automakers were nimble, able to quickly handle design fixes and upgrades, while US automakers had to burn through or throw out stock first. Slowly US automakers shifted to JIT, but their failure to see the threat in the 60s and 70s cost them greatly - the attitude was incredulity: "Oh, like people are going to buy Japanese cars over American cars...."
(That wasn't the only thing that totaled the Big Three's market share, but it was a big one)
(That wasn't the only thing that totaled the Big Three's market share, but it was a big one)
Similar threads
