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Toyota Abandons Plans For All-Electric Vehicle Rollout
Soultest writes "Toyota has given up on plans to sell any significant number of all-electric vehicles. Citing 'many difficulties' with the project, the company says it will only sell about 100 of the battery-powered eQ cars it has been working on for several years. 'By dropping plans for a second electric vehicle in its line-up, Toyota cast more doubt on an alternative to the combustion engine that has been both lauded for its oil-saving potential and criticized for its heavy reliance on government subsidies in key markets like the United States. 'The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society's needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge,' said, Uchiyamada, who spearheaded Toyota's development of the Prius hybrid in the 1990s.'"
There will never be a large market for electric cars until the infrastructure has been upgraded accordingly. Where I have lived (Texas, Michigan), there are no charging stations. You can't expect people to buy the car if the infrastructure doesn't support the car.
We can't make it work with acceptable margins.
Toyota has been an innovator in how production operates, not in building game changing new vehicles.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
The problem with all electric cars is the charging... until an electric vehicle can be charged in the same time that a gasoline based car can be fueled, they will all be unacceptable to vast majority of drivers.
What IS viable in the next few years is the plug in hybrid, like the Volt or the plug in Prius. The major problem here is getting unit costs down to where the cars become acceptable from a pricing POV. The Volt certainly has work to do here, and I'm guessing the Prius plug in faces the same problem. Incremental improvements in costs of the batteries will slowly bring these cars into the mainstream in the next few years. Cars like the Volt are, by all accounts, just like driving existing gasoline cars, and have the advantage of allowing most daily commutes to be done electrically.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
I'd love to have a plug in electric, for the 85+% of short drives people make, +plus+ a trailer with a gas engine and a generator to power this car for longer distances. In my mind I would not even own this trailer, but rent it at a gas station. In addition that trailer could carry some additional luggage (and may be powered by its own motor).
In that case I'd not even care if this trailer generates electricity from gasoline, from waste cooking oil, liquified gas or hydrogen. All I'd care about is if it gives me sufficient juice to drive my size vehicle and what it's range (tank capacity) would be.
And with all electric we could have a drive by wire system that drives the trailer much more comfortable. I could even see steering in the trailer (which is easy if you have one electric motor per wheel, just run them at different speed) to eliminate the skills needed to back up with a trailer.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
hey now, i been riding my bike and using the bus for about a year now. The only time i have wanted to go anywhere out of my area, is to go see the friends up north, then i use the roomies truck. I have saved hundreds of dollars, and survived, it wasn't easy or with out a bit of sweat. My average on the bike is like 10 miles before I need a good rest, its enough to get back and forth to work.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
Toyota has pioneered the hybrid-electric market, selling each one at a net loss.
I guarantee you that Toyota is no longer selling the Prius at a loss. There is absolutely no business case that could be made to sell as many Prius's as they have while making a loss on each one. They probably were losing money at first but not anymore.
gulf countries not too pesky if confined to their own soil, they mostly get enraged and kill each other
oil will never run dry, there are centuries of supply of fossil fuel and any hydrocarbon fuel chain can be changed to any other
We can't make it work with acceptable margins.
If a company cannot sell a product for a profit, there is no point in making the product. Current technology for electric vehicles has one huge showstopper bug in the recharge times. Until this problem is solved there is no mass market for all electric vehicles. There will be room for niche makers like Tesla (maybe) but nothing more. Plug-In-Hybrids are where there is a market and where the car makers can and should focus their efforts.
Toyota has been an innovator in how production operates, not in building game changing new vehicles.
I disagree. The Prius was a game changing vehicle. It is the first genuinely popular hybrid vehicle and it proved that there is a market for hybrid powertrains. While I will concede that Toyota's most important innovations have been in manufacturing processes, they have had some genuinely innovative products.
By the time an electric vehicle could charge so quickly as to be useful, we'll probably have self-driving cars. When self driving cars become a reality, we can throw the idea of car ownership out the window. As it stands, 99% of cars spend probably close to 99% of their time parked and unused. That is inefficient.
If self-driving cars become a thing, a company could purchase huge fleets of cars. Then, instead of letting your own car sit in the parking lot forever, you could just use an app on your smartphone to send a self-driving car in your direction. Or you could just schedule your car to arrive at your location at some specific time (for instance, schedule to be picked up before and after work at precisely 8:00am and 5:00pm). Who needs car ownership--with costs of insurance, maintenance, gas prices, etc--when you can call for a cheap robotic taxi wherever, whenever you want? Relatively few people, I'd wager. It could start with cities, but eventually there would be so many self-driving cars on the road that you could have a self-driving car pick you up to take you wherever you wanted within minutes. Want to go to a restaurant? Send a request for a robot car to pick you up. Fortunately, there's a car that just dropped somebody else off to go shopping a mile away.
Since these cars are self-driving, they could be electric and manage their power efficiently. If you call for a robotic taxi to take you to another state and it only has 50 miles left on its battery, the car could automatically schedule a car with a fresher battery for you to transfer to 50 miles down the road. The entire system would always make sure to minimize the number of transfers and recharge the cars whenever necessary.
With a system like this, even electric cars with 200 mile range would be reasonable. That is more than enough for 99% of one-way passenger commutes, and for those trips that are long, you just hop in a new car 200 miles down the road. Heck, with this kind of self-driving car system, the system could even have tour guides and whatever else programmed in. The more cars on the road, the better the service. The better the service, the better the adoption rate. The better the adoption rate, the more cars. The possibilities are endless.
So in other words, Toyota is reluctant to switch to these motors.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
There have been advances in the technology for storing and transporting hydrogen that make it fairly viable
Like atomically bonding it to long chains of carbon. It's easy to extract energy back out, relatively safe to contain, and the fact that it's a fairly stable liquid at room temperature makes it simple to handle and exchange in commerce.
This
...of gasoline. Not sure about natural gas, but I'm reasonably sure the energy density is higher than that of a lithium battery. Natural gas vehicles are used widely outside of the USA, and we do have a bit of the stuff. Capitalism, exhibiting its usual bacteria colony behavior, will almost certainly push us in that direction unless there's some sort of breakthrough in battery tech.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I haven't looked back. The Volt is far more agile in traffic and more fun on the twisty roads where I live than even the Camaro - and easier to see out of. It's not an econo box like a prius, it's a lux car. No, it's not as fast as the Camaro, but it's in some senses quicker, and eats ricky rice-racer for lunch on mountain roads.
Despite claims to the contrary by ditto heads, GM is at or near breakeven on this car, by the car, now. Some of the hate on electrics is due to taking all the NRE and billing it to the number of cars sold already - by that metric, the first hamburger sold at a new burger joint franchise is losing a million bucks per. Check the facts. By all means do NOT drive a Volt unless you can afford to take it home - because you'll just be upset if you can't.
You will also find a lot of the hate coming from funds provided by big oil, who get even more subsidies, not even counting the deaths overseas we create to keep oil "cheap". You don't think astroturfing was invented just for slashdot, right? GM's drivetrain is unique here - 2 electric motors and an ICE all connected to a dual input shaft CVT - patents Toyota doesn't want to have to buy, yet it's clearly the best way - and the clutches can be made to drop only at matched revs so they don't wear, and you don't feel it.
I used to chuckle at the fanbois of other product lines. Now I understand. This thing is game-changing.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
If you live close enough to work and a store to commute on a single charge, and have a second vehicle in the household for longer trips it makes sense. I think that this niche is a lot bigger than the current market - electric vehicles are still much more expensive than equivalent compact cars.
Exactly. Whether an electric car is practical or not depends on application.
There are millions of people for whom electric cars perfectly fit their requirements. If you're thinking "replace 100% of the cars in use"-- well, yes, that is impractical. But there are large segments of the market for which electric is practical today.
In 2009, the average length of a car trip was 10.1 miles; the average length of a commute to work was 12.6 miles. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2010_fotw615.html
My commute to work is considerably shorter. Most usage of cars could be done easily with electric vehicles, with recharge overnight at home. Not all-- however, for a second vehicle (and most households in the US have two or more vehicles), electric is completely practical.
The point is to make electric cars for the uses for which they are well adapted. If you want a vehicle to take a family of four on a camping trip from New York to Yellowstone, an EV is not the right choice. If your application is a seven mile commute for one person in Atlanta, along with occasional trips to the grocery story, it may be exactly what you need. It may be a "niche" market by some definitions, but there are a 443 makes and models of cars sold in America-- there's room for many niche vehicles to sell perfectly well.
(Another interesting point is that electric vehicles are more practical in regions south of the snow belt, unless you have plug-in stations at the destination that can keep the batteries warm. A practical EV for Alaska is a harder technology than making EVs for Los Angeles!)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"apartment complex" , "gas station"? These are not terms the average Brit uses. Unless you're an american ex-pat of course.
Indeed, I believe the equivalent British words would be "wide/tall flat stack" and "unpotable fire water dispensatorium"
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I am NOT tied to a utility, I've been off grid since '79 and my PV system charges the car. What's not to like? Built in America by Americans, fuelled off the sun (panels largely made by BP solar(!) - and a little bit of gasoline. I may own this car for much more than a year before I can change the oil at this rate - it's not broken in yet.
Did I mention fun to drive?
Yeah, fossil fuels are great till they get scarce and you have to kill (and be killed) people to keep them flowing, like now - and subsidize the companies more than the car companies on top of that. You don't have to carry the oxidizer is the reason.
Buy American, the job you save might be your own. My car is American, as are the solar panels that charge it (yes, it takes lots but then you get no power bill either - for anything else). Quit paying rent to the man, own your own infrastructure. It makes you rich in more than one way. Freedom, dude.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
I'm posting on a website with a largely US audience. I know what the US terminology is and it does no harm to use it - and helps to eliminate the occasional misunderstanding.
You make some good points, ones that I was thinking about myself, though the way you phrase them make them seem a bigger problem. First step, my assumption: People tend to buy a car to cover 90-95% of their needs/wants, not 50%(average). Especially those outside of the cities. Once you buy a more capable vehicle, it's extremely difficult to justify a smaller vehicle economically. Have a truck because you tow every weekend or have a sideline construction business? Unless your truck is unusually inefficient or you drive way more than average, you can't justify the cost of a commuter car during the week off of saved gasoline.
Anyways, that's why they're making EVs with a range of 100-300 miles, or 'plug in hybrids' with a 30-50 mile battery. Because then you can do the 15 mile commute and still have enough miles left for the store.
Still, we're back to my old saying: There's nothing wrong with EVs that a battery that lasts twice as long at half the cost wouldn't fix.
I don't read AC A human right
Well, I'm in Alaska and I've given a serious look at the electric motorcycles precisesly because of the sockets all over. While 110V@12A is a 'cripple charge' for most electric cars, it's often less than an hour to 'top off' an electric motorcycle...
(resistor around the engine block or something)
Step 1: Heater into the engine block to heat up the coolant (South/North Dakota area)
Step 2: Heater onto the oil pan/heated dip stick.
Step 3: "Battery Blanket" style heater on the battery, or a trickle charger(I use a trickle charger; first it makes sure the battery is topped off, then when it gets really cold and the battery voltage dips it thinks it needs charging; while the battery is fully charged it acts like a resister - the energy goes to warming the core of the battery, much more efficient than a battery warmer on the outside).
I don't read AC A human right
I've actually done some work on this, and still think it's an interesting option.
On the upsides:
1. Higher efficiency for the most common use(tooling around town) - without the gasoline motor, you enjoy higher efficiencies, plus you either get a smaller vehicle or more trunk space.
2. For a long highway trip, it's only logical to make the trailer a touch larger than it has to be for the engine/generator - bam, instant additional storage space for your luggage. I don't know about you, but I haul more for long trips, and if you're hauling kids... I should note that I'm picturing a still relatively small two wheel trailer.
3. Don't buy; rent. If you only need it twice a year, rent it! If you need it more often than twice, at some point you're probably better off just buying a hybrid in the first place.
4. Efficiency loss shouldn't be much - you only need the thing to be big enough to make up 'most' of the energy cost of going down the highway.
Downsides:
1. Cost - said trailer will likely run $8k or so
2. Training - driving training in the USA sucks as is; most don't know how to haul a trailer(though this one would be simple).
3. Cars might need to be reinforced a bit - many light cars today, even EVs, can only haul 800 pounds of trailer once you put the hitch on. This isn't much, especially if you figure on putting some cargo in the trailer as well. Plus you'll need to put a charge point in a spot suited for the trailer, and program the car to account for incoming power while moving. 'Shouldn't' be hard, but still a fringe case.
I don't read AC A human right
Er... what good are those stats? Is your commute to work to only driving you do? Do you ownly make one trip in the car each day?
Here is what I stated: "...for a second vehicle (and most households in the US have two or more vehicles), electric is completely practical."
So: if I make a longer trip, I'd use my wife's car. I suppose that there could be days in which we both, separately, need to make long trips; but I can't think of it having happened offhand.
If 25% of the time I am going to be driving well beyond the electric range the car is worthless, even if my 'average' trip is within that range.
What I'd written was: "Whether an electric car is practical or not depends on application." If your application is one in which 25% of the time you're driving beyond the electric car range, well, for your application an electric car is not practical.
Electric is practical for some applications, not all applications. For your quoted requirement of extended range 25% of the time, a plug-in hybrid instead of an all-electric might be the right choice. Or maybe not; depends on what exactly you need. Some applications.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
In 2009, the average length of a car trip was 10.1 miles; the average length of a commute to work was 12.6 miles.
Most usage of cars could be done easily with electric vehicles, with recharge overnight at home.
The problem isn't the averages, the problem is the variation. Most of the time you are correct that people could get their business done as the average distance traveled per day is around 35 miles. But long road trips are not unusual in the US. My daily round trip commute is around 40 miles but my daily miles driven is around 92 miles. (I drive around 35,000 miles per year) That means I take frequent longer trips, well beyond the range of any current electric vehicle. I'm not particularly unusual. I'd love an electric car but there is no way I could presently justify it as a primary vehicle - my daily driving needs vary too much. So I have to buy an entire second vehicle which is rather wasteful since I already have a gasoline powered vehicle. A plug-in-hybrid makes a lot of sense for my needs but the range limitation of an all-electric car is just a deal breaker. The problem isn't my average day - the problem is the variation in my average days
for a second vehicle (and most households in the US have two or more vehicles), electric is completely practical.
That's not the same thing as saying most individuals have two or more vehicles - most do not. Many households do have second vehicles because there are multiple drivers. For the reasons above the problem is that you still have to justify the electric vehicle as a primary vehicle for at least one of the household members. That means one household member has to give up going beyond a certain range in a day. That's a harder sell than you seem to think even ignoring the presently higher cost of electric vehicles. Why? People choose vehicles for reasons other than their actual needs.
As an example the Ford F-150 has been the best selling vehicle in the US for decades but only a single digit percentage of people actually utilize its off road capabilities. They buy it for image (both self and projected) as much as for features. Actual horsepower needs are far more modest than what is available and the pickup bed will be empty most of the time. So long a fuel remains relatively cheap, the advantages of electric vehicles are insufficient to overcome the limitations of the charging infrastructure. People do not want to worry about needing to wait somewhere for 8 hours while they charge their car even if that would be a very rare event in reality.