Tesla CEO: wouldn't be surprised if future deal with Toyota

Bob - I don't see this as avoiding 90% of the problem. Maybe 10% ?? . . . 20% . . .
If the electricity needed in distilling hydrogen is 4x higher than the same amount of kWh's necessary to get an EV down the road 'X' amount of miles . . . . . then isn't that a huge energy waste? The conversion waste using natural gas is much less (or should I say much better).
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I don't think tesla is hedging their bets at all. Musk is all in. Either he suceeds spectacularly, or tesla runs out of cash, and gets bought by a white knight or a dark evil. One thing tesla is doing is leveraging their investment. This isn't the apple play, where you are forced to buy apple hardware to get its software. Tesla for its success needs lower priced batteries, and if it gets lower priced batteries it will happily sell them to the car competition. That way tesla and its customers both benefit. I am sure the plan is, if there is higher demand for batteries to build anouther gigafactory. Tesla is enertering the battery business, but will operate it like a separate but strategic business unit. CHeaper batteries, more electric cars, more electric cars more money for tesla.

Akido Toyoda did hedge Toyota's hydrogen bet by partnering with tesla. He knows that if the mirai falls miserably in the US that they can pay tesla for parts and enegineering to rather quickly get bev or large battery phev out the door. Toyota internally has gotten slower, which is a problem with big companies. My bet is most of the engineering is already done for a new toyota bev using tesla's future battery packs.

VW, GM, and Ford all have made it pretty clear that fuel cell costs are too high to be viable today in the US. The best estimates are that the $220 m in taxes in california will only subsidize 100 stations which might bring 20 thousand cars. That means $10K per car just for refueling infrastructure. Toyota really is playing politics with carb, trying to delay bevs, and push it for rules that give it credit and money for what it wants to produce for japan. The carb politics is all about replacing requirements for plug-ins with a lot fewer fuel cell cars.

Lexus is attacking plug-ins because 1) they don't have one, 2) sales are down and more of those customer are going to plug-ins, 3) they are trying to get even more out of carb by lobbying for new rules favoring fuel cells after this current phase.

 

Could the deal with Toyota have something to do with the recent announcements that Toyota was going to invest heavily into Lithium Ion type battery production?

I often get the impression that Toyota has a split personality, or is run like a bunch of different companies with different visions within the group. On one hand we have announcements securing their strategy for hybrids and perhaps even EVs (with Li-ion battery production). On the other, a major announcement on their strategy for hydrogen fuel cell powered cars.

At the same time, let's not forget that the oil industry's worst nightmare is the electric car (or even PIH cars). Something that you can charge anywhere (at home, work, etc.) and almost never have to set foot in a gas station. On the other hand, hydrogen fuel cell powered cars will have to fill up at gas stations (maintaining old habits) and of course the bulk of that hydrogen will be produced by natural gas (keeping the oil industry in business as usual!)

I think Toyota are hedging their bets, frankly. But let's hope we head in the right direction. With more research in automotive batteries (e.g. nanowire or even Li-air one day perhaps) and no more worries about range, the EV will naturally prevail.

 

There's another aspect in hydrogen cars EU government will love. It's too expensive to produce at home, so people will have to buy it. A perfect hook to attach taxes to.

Authorities use colour to control people using heavily-taxed diesel oil in cars over a less-taxed but otherwise practicaly identical heating oil.
They can't colour electrons to distinguish different tax rates for home or transportation electricity use, do they?

As far as I know, some U.S. states already have a flat annual tax, to nail EV owners "avoiding" taxes.

 

FCEVs also require a battery like a hybrid.

 

I don't think Akio Toyoda, the president of the corporation has his people under control yet. Mr. Toyoda took over in the middle of the crisis. He did a brilliant thing, partnering with tesla to light a fire under the engineering staff and making the corporation over $700M richer in assets with appreciation of tesla stock. At the same time the partnership removed the PR headache of no jobs at NUMMI and a blatant failure that the EQ would be.

Lined up against Mr. Toyoda are the old guard, and leading this at corporate is Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada.

DailyTech - Toyota Passing Over EVs for More Hybrids, Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles

He is 69 years old, and been working on the fuel cell project for over a decade, while saying plug-ins with any range will be a failure that whole time. Now even with all of tesla's sucess at doing things Uchiyamada used to say were impossible, that old dog isn't about to learn any new tricks. Toyota is big enough and rich enough to work on Uchiyamada's toy and plug-ins. Joining in the hate against the plug, are a great number of US dealers, and they are represented by bob carter and Jim Lentz, both also of the old guard. Jim Lentz in a fortune interview said he would sell toyota's interest in tesla (which would have cost toyota at least $100M if they had sold the last time he wanted to), carter has in speeches gone after Mr. Musk. This should not surprise anyone, as these guys were also the ones that botched the unintended acceleration PR, which cost Toyota billions.

Toyota is not in the service station business so I doubt that has anything to do with it. On the otherhand toyota dealers do make a great deal of money servicing cars, and plug-ins likely will decrease dealership maintenance revenue, as well as require new training.

I don't think battery R&D is a hedged bet. Rumors are that Nissan is getting out of the battery business, and taking a big paper loss. They will, if rumor is correct, go with lg. Toyota can also go with lg, or tesla, or whatever else panasonic is working on, for battery breakthroughs. They are releasing PR about batteries, because engineers are working on it, and Mr. Toyoda wants to reward those engineers, and try to keep some of the internal fuel cell hawks a little more honest.

It certainly looks like Panasonic is selling ford lithium batteries for their hybrids for less than $1000. Similar batteries are also in the toyota hybrid alpha, but are more powerful than the battery rumored to be in the toyota fuel cell mirai. I doubt toyota's r&d is about replacing that tiny battery, as they hardly could be thinking of selling 200,000 in the next decade, and could just purchase similar batteries for all those cars for at most $200M. If it were for a small batteried fuel cell and things like the aqua, next gen prius, next gen camry hybrid, I think R&D would be to work with lithium polymer, that could pay off in 3 or 4 years instead of 20.

 

I'm not sure what flat annual tax you are thinking about. There have been a couple of state proposals floated to put special taxes on EVs, but right now EVs are getting a lot more subsidies than extra charges.

However, your point about government wanting to control behavior as well as maximizing revenue is very much in play. I would expect that a triparty effort between utilities, governments, and oil companies will consider fueling an EV entirely from a homeowners PV array to be anti-social behavior requiring some creative tax schemes to discourage.

 

yes eu governments may like that, but vw is out right against fcv, and bmw and mercedes like plug-ins better. That means the majority of fcv would be imported, and EU politicians don't really want to lose more jobs to japan and korea, so I doubt they will really give the kind of support those two countries are pumping into sales.

This is left pocket right pocket stuff. Plug-ins are subsidized, but some states take back some of the federal subsidies. California and Georgia are number 1 and 2 in terms of bev volume, and 2 and 1 in terms of per capita bev purchases. California adds $2500 & hov sticker to bevs, $1500 and a few more hov stickers to phevs, Georgia adds $5000 to bevs. This is on top of $7500 federal money for a 16kwh or larger battery. A few states charge higher taxes but this is small compared to the federal subsidies.