[darkteflon]

This is pretty much everything you need to know about Toyota - everything you need to know about corporate Japan - wrapped up neatly in one anecdote. Toyota can’t make a plug-in electric car to save themselves but for white elephants like flying cars and smart cities they are all in.

[ianai]

Uh the Prius Prime and (later this year) RAV4 prime exist or will soon. What’s your point?

[umeshunni]

Not OP, but I'm guessing their point is that Toyota has completely missed the boat on electrification where they had an early lead with the Prius.

They went after shiny unrealistic options like Fuel Cells/Hydrogen and wasted their lead. The world would have looked very different now if they had invested in Electric 10 years ago. Their "plug-in" electrics have 20-40 miles of all electric range. Even Ford has vehicles with 200+ miles range.

Instead, they still have only concept vehicles and their exec VP still says “We haven’t changed our policy towards battery EVs. We are not shifting our focus to prioritise battery EVs, nor are we abandoning our FCV strategy.” source: https://ww.electrek.co/2019/06/07/toyota-electric-car-images...

[the_duke]

I find it very interesting how stubbornly Toyota is sticking to hydrogen/fuel cells. The rest of the market seems to have accepted that the big downsides of hydrogen based solutions (need for extensive transport + storage infrastructure, difficult containment, horrible end to end efficiency, ...) make batteries the better solution.

Tesla seems bound to demonstrate that even semis are already viable with current technology, and battery research is bound to reduce price, weight and longevity further. We may find chemistries that rely less on materials like cobalt, nickel, copper.

Is it pride and inability to accept failure, or are there valid reasons for this and Toyota could still emerge as a big winner?

It seems unlikely to me for personal cars.

Hydrogen seems better suited for energy storage, trains and airplanes.

[bildung]

> Is it pride and inability to accept failure, or are there valid reasons for this and Toyota could still emerge as a big winner?

Japan (and China, Europe and other regions) are investing in hydrogren based mobility. Japan has a bit over 100 fuel cell stations right now, and aims for over 300 stations and 200k vehicles in 5 years. [0] Toyota is one of the companies creating both the stations and also hydrogen based vehicles. They also sold about 3k of their hydrogen-based Mirai cars [2].

German company Bosch only started hydrogen fuel cell production in 2019 [1].

This is all very miniscule compared to the electic cars of today, but a hydrogen economy has a few important advantages, IMO the most important one is that hydrogen production can occur at times when energy is in abundance, which gets more and more important with rewewables based energy networks. Vehicles can also be fueled just as fast as ICE vehicles today, and hydrogen has much higher energy density than current battery technology.

From a strategic POV it makes sense for countries to look at hydrogen.

[0] https://www.airliquide.com/magazine/energy-transition/hydrog...

[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/15/business/corpor...

[2] https://www.hindustantimes.com/autos/toyota-nissan-honda-amo...

[darkteflon]

You’re making it for me: stuffing a (tiny) battery into a legacy ICE or hybrid architecture and calling it a day isn’t competitive with _current_ competition, let alone where the market is going.

Toyota’s failure to convert its early lead in hybrids into a successful EV business will be quoted in business schools and boardrooms for decades as a textbook cautionary tale.

[ianai]

Is there another awd with high ground clearance phev? 39 miles per charge? You’re going to count them out for battery capacity? Something they can change unilaterally at any time?

[aetherspawn]

I want to comment, but like, I can’t. For all the typical reasons.

[swarnie_]

Every other car in my town seems to be a Prius, are you sure?