Toyota’s EV Future?

We've known about the plan for awhile. Sadly, that information was drown out by cries of the "laggard" narrative.

Far too many don't understand the complexity of a massive legacy automaker. So when they don't find the simple answer they seek, it leaves them vulnerable to being misled... which the antagonists have been exploiting lately.

Toyota tends to be very quiet, the opposite extreme of what online venues thrive on. So. It's easy for the vitals to be overlooked, like this. You won't find much, even when you look.

Those who get caught misleading will spin the situation to appear that Toyota has finally woke up and is now scrambling to catch up. Those of us who were paying attention know that's not the case.

 

I can’t immediately recall where, but I saw a report to the effect that Toyota is doing this as an investment for now, and has no specific product plans for them. Hedging their bets, in essence.

 

Bloomberg mentioned Toyota investing 1.5 trillion yen ($13.9 billion) in their battery business.

 

Many folks, especially those in California who are imminently going to purchase a car obviously want Toyota to release compelling options.

I myself hold onto cars a very very long time and since Toyota had nothing in my local market I had to wait then move on to a different brand. This happened long ago with my Honda Insight and 1981 Comutacar (had to fly out to get a Prii back then) and the same happened with the Volt.
All three cars are in my family still.

Many understand Toyota is sitting on technology and wants to extract as much from existing R&D dollars as possible and slowly restructure to avoid rapidly changing tech but in the mean time while they do people buy from what’s available and works for them.

3 years, let alone 9 is a long time for a buyer

As Toyota does what’s right for its bottom line an increasing number of customers move on and may not come back when things change again.

Classic risk reward scenario

 

hey, i resemble that remark

 

This just in. Electrek reports as of January 28, 2019:

Tesla is responsible for half of
Toyota’s owner defection rate
Toyota recently admitted that the Tesla Model 3 is affecting
Prius sales, but we are now learning by just how much:
Toyota says that it has a 9% owner defection rate in North
America and it attributes about half of it to Tesla.​

That's a pretty remarkable achievement for Tesla considering that their competing vehicles are marketed at a higher price point and can be difficult to obtain in one's desired copnfiguration.

 

Hope so!

There’s another possibility though: They could follow in Ford’s footsteps and revert back to all-gas!

That’s not likely, though, I think. I suspect they’ll continue in their current path for a couple more years and only then put out a plausible BEV. Perhaps 2021 model year.

 

Good is not enough. They feel no pressure to rush. Taking their time to do it right... deliver something great.. is why PiP was just a mid-cycle upgrade to a limited market, then halted all together. They waited with Prime, and even then moved slowly... seeing the market had issues.

It should be obvious that the tax-credit dependencies the other automakers were struggling with is what Toyota is trying to avoid. Simply waiting is an easy solution.

Having to wait annoys some and results in rhetoric being stirred. Overall, it's still worth it though ...and that's the way Toyota chooses to operate.

 

Except Ford is now going back to hybrids, and branching out into plug ins, including a BEV pick up.

 

Oh, for sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re evaluating one or two prototypes right now.

 

So what's remarkable about less than 5% of Prius owners upgrading to a Tesla 3? There aren't many eco-choices yet in the $40-$50k area, so that number doesn't really surprise me, nor does it signal any doom-and-gloom shift the Tesla fanboys have harped on against "old, slow moving" Toyota. Funny how Electrek is very impressed with Tesla in this article, but somehow spins the same thing happening to Tesla with Porsche (the last half of the article reads like an insecure Tesla cheerleader): https://electrek.co/2018/12/28/porsche-tesla-owners-taycan-reservation

 

Except that...
I bet less than 9% of Prius owners are getting a new car this year.
Gotta think about context

 

Well, I perceive that it would get Toyota’s attention because:
* Tesla is a really tiny car company compared to Toyota, whereas the Prius is such a well-established and trusted model/brand,
* This, the success of other BEVs, and the gradual deployment of 350-400KW charging infrastructure is pretty strong evidence that Toyota’s long-term strategy — FCEVs — is misguided (400KW charging negates much of the only real advantage FCEVs have over BEVs — fast fueling times — while not being much more efficient well-to-wheel than a good hybrid),
* The current Model 3 is a fair amount more expensive than even the Prius Prime — about $20Kish more,
and because
* Japanese car companies, and especially Toyota, reeeally don’t like anything they can’t predict a couple years in advance, and few analysts a couple years ago would have predicted much better an outcome for Tesla than bankruptcy.

 

some good points made in that forum. price, utility and form factor not least among the reasons