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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/
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.
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
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'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