Toyota Shows Distain: Even for their Own RAV4-EV

Uh Oh!

Waiting for the anti-EMI crowd to show up," . . . if you leave your ignition on - you can actually watch your range meter tick upward right in front of you . . ."



Bob Wilson

 

If it could, probably explode at that rate with such a small battery..

 

I don't understand why Toyota, Honda, GM, etc want to kill off the electric car. Tesla has shown it can be done, with a decent range (260 miles), and yet they are ignoring the development as much as they can. Illogical.

 

Would those be the new proposed "full-body-length TIN HATS" (wink,wink)?

 

The "Snowden" style, very popular at the NSA.

Bob Wilson

 

It is not about the technology, but more about the politics. They have deep relationship with dealers, and building EVs means cutting out dealership's service department (their big money maker).

 

If the dealers were smart enough to see the future they would embrace EVs. And establish competent electronic device sales, service, support, training etc. Instead of being clueless about connect phones and tablets via bluetooth, etc., become good at it and charge for it (beyond warranty and initial setup. Instead of a model where you always have to drop off your car and come back hours later; how about you make an appt and a tech walks you through connecting your phone, etc. This is where the tech would have to actually be someone who could talk to a customer, in person. (The tech could have a video conferenced live help from corporate, when needed)

Trying to stop EVs because they need less service is futile.

Mike

 

There will be service for electric vehicles but more for electronic issues, the mechanics now need electronic courses.

 

By the way I read from the beginning and it was really interesting.

 

From My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - Update on Nissan LEAF Battery Replacement, it's actually $5500.

 

Regardless, having a credible, affordable, traction battery replacement solves a lot of problems. Now if they could just make the 150 mile range be an upgrade option . . .

Bob Wilson

 

I am coming into this thread late, but I call your attention to AustinGreen's recent thread-

Morgan stanley says tesla now the most important car company | PriusChat

Take a look at some of the referenced articles in there (Detroit News/MIT professor). Basically there are some people saying the Lithium battery is too expensive to allow "mass adoption" of EV's to the extent some have been hoping. If I got this right, Morgan Stanley is saying the fact that Toyota backed out of the Tesla partnership and other auto companies actions can be taken as evidence that the auto companies feel that the lithium batt is not looking like the path to make EV as numerous as once hoped. Morgan Stanley I think is saying Tesla's edge is making higher-end cars and that is still a valid use of Lithium batts for the moment (which I am a little suspicious Morgan Stanley has wishful thinking there to sell Tesla stock). If you accept all this, plug-in hybrids may be the longer term winners as being less dependent on Li. The MIT professor also says FCV has probs as well.

I do not know who is right about the future, but I simply point out what is being said. Missing in the argument is state and federal government future policies and politics and subsidies/incentives, which probably have a major impact on market direction. Believe here in 2014 YTD we are getting close to 60% of US plug-ins sold in CA alone.

 

Lithium batteries are expensive, but they will drop in price as they become mass-produced for cars. (And I suspect will be a LOT cheaper than the platinum used in fuel cell cars.) This was my first "laptop" and look how much progress has been made. Not just smaller floppies, etc, but also smaller batteries that are much much cheaper.

Commodore 64

 

Based on what actually? (Question for "some people", not you)

I'm thinking this through from a raw material to finished product. I can only see a "too expensive" step being getting all the initial high volume infrastructure in place. That would make ANY change of technology in future cars "too expensive". I cannot begin to figure out how a fuel cell vehicle from its raw materials (more constrained) to new fuel cell infrastructure (for the cars AND the distribution network) makes Lithium batteries the guilty party. I see the opposite. I can actually buy a production EV today that works and all the infrastructure I need is fully matured.

 

Toyota and fiat's marketing department seems to be the ones planting the too expensive media articles.

But if we look at the projections - Nissan's 10% of new vehicles being sold as bevs in 2020, CARB's 16% in 2025, These figures are far too optimistic. 1% BEVs and 6% hybrids (including plug-in hybrids) seems much more managable for the world market. The price of lithium batteries are simply too high for these cheap city cars that toyota and fiat want to make. The battery cost is fine for adopter vehicles. But here is the rub ...

Morgan Stanley seemed to be saying that companies like toyota, for regulatory reasons are pushing fuel cells and keeping down sales of plug-ins. If too many plug-ins get sold, then regulators may force companies like toyota and fiat to either build more or plug-ins or pay money to companies like tesla and nissan that have extra credits.

No one expects fuel cell vehicles to approach 1% of world wide vehicles sold for at least 15 years, as opposed to around 6 for bevs. Key to that bev number is china, which buys 20M cars a year, and is likely to buy more plug-ins than the US in 2019. Currently the US buys 40% of plug-ins.

IHS: Plug-In Vehicle Sales Even Stronger Than They Seem

Europe, Japan, and China are doing much worse than expected, but China and Europe do appear to be looking up for higher bev and phev sales.

 

I'm surprised in all 10 pages the EV1 only came up once. It was successful and owners seemed to have loved it. It's a shame that GM crushed all those cars and ended the program. All this was in favor of fuel cells.

If the PiP was in my area I would have looked into getting one but alas it is not and I don't want to pay that much for a Tesla. Though the infrastructure really isn't here to support electric or fuel cell vehicles. Someone I used to work with got a Tesla about the same time I got my Prius and he loves it. Charges it at work too. Last year they installed some charging stations, I never saw a car use them though.

I found this documentary to be quite interesting:
Who Killed the Electric Car

 

Well, you could have gotten the Ford Energi models instead of hoping for a Plugin-Prius. You could even buy a Ford EV if you wanted too.

 

But the basic assumption there is Moores Law applies to everything, which turns out to be wrong sometimes. Vinod Khosla famously (60 Minutes) tried to apply this idea to KIOR (cellulosic fuels) and looks like the company is going belly up. Right now we are seeing Li batt prices coming down (eg: Leaf replacement batt) but I don't think we have the warm fuzzy feeling that Moores Law (vs. loss leader strategy by Nissan) is causing the nice low price.

In defense of Platinum, it gets the catalyst job done at trace levels and it is recycled to high % recovery so to some extent that mitigates. Not to say FCV is same story, but don't under estimate platinum. It's fun to defend platinum.