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

hmmm...

 

Interesting, Toyota is a "car' company and "Tesla' is a stock company, things change.

 

Not that much of a surprise, except to those that want to blow it out of proportion.

Tesla currently is supply constrained with regard to battery packs. In a few years as suppliers continue to ramp up their production, or once Tesla's Gigafactory starts ramping up, Tesla will have plenty of batteries to allow it to start supplying Toyota, or others with battery packs again.

 

^^^...right and the RAV4 EV seems to be a good concept so I could see that possibly coming back under Tesla possibly.

 

Not really a reach.

Bob Carter thinks Fuel cells will do great in north america and large batteries plug-ins will fail
Musk thinks large battery plug-ins will keep growing fast, gigafactory will lower battery costs, and fuel cells will fail in North America and China.

If Carter is right, well, I'll be suprised, but toyota will sell its tesla stock.
If Musk is right, toyota would be stupid not to use tesla as a battery supplier. We also know that tesla can develop plug-ins much faster than toyota, so toyota may again contract design work to tesla. Toyota should be further along on inverters and motors, so those would likely be sourced outside the tesla relationship. If toyota at that point has a 100+ mile ev, then I would thnk they would consider partnering in teslas super chargers.

Wall Street is betting that musk's vision is the correct one.

 

I would bet on Musk over Carter any day. Toyota has been playing down electric cars for a couple years now and I have lost faith in their vision. FCV's are a pipe dream (in America) at this point. Musk has a better track record of seeing into the future. I'll add that he (Musk) just might be from the future. His products and stock values reflect that vision.

To remove any doubt, just watch the video of SpaceX's reveal of the Dragon2 space capsule and see how far reaching his vision is. Tesla cars are just a hobby compared to that.

 

Why not combine the best of both world. Have a plug in battery range of 100 miles with FC of 300-600 mile range. You plug it in for every day drive and fuel up with hydrogen for long trips. Even if you forget to plug in or if there's nowhere to plugin, FC can recharge the battery.

 

I saw a BMW i3 at a local dealer Sunday. Neat car and I liked the possibilities. Two versions, one, all electric with about 85 miles range, and the other, about 75 mile EV range with the range extender that adds for a total of about 150 miles. For the cost, 85 miles is not enough. The range extender is a $3850 add on, but adds additional weight and reduces EV mileage. The version with range extender and most of the options that I have on my Prius Plug In advance is about $54,000. Still a neat car, but I really like my Prius. What I really want is my current Prius Plug In with greater EV range. Twenty additional EV miles would do it.

 

hey yeah !!! and with the Model S's huge battery, you just might have enough range to get 1/2 way to the next multi million dollar hydrogen station. Fortunately, Musk will have the super charger network built out WAY before that, so you'll only need to stop for maybe a 20 minute charge to keep traveling to get your hydrogen fix.

.

 

Fuel cells could be an excellent range extender, but right now the FCEV pushers seem to be against a plug.

I think we'll see aluminum-air batteries as a range extender long before a fuel cell one. Phinergy has a demostration EV, and Tesla patented the concept. The goal is for the Al-air battery to provide 1000 miles of extended range. It will need refilling with distilled or di water every 200 miles. When used up, the aluminum anodes need to be replaced, and the slurry of aluminum hydroxide 'waste' product removed. Depending on the rechargable battery and Al-air one's range, this will probably be as often as an oil change for most users. The waste product is only such for use in the battery. It has various uses on its own (its a common antacid), and can be resmelted back into metal.

The infrastructure for an Al-air battery seems to be closer to transportation use. For fuel cells, even as range extenders, require hydrogen refueling infrastructure or a break through in methanol ones.

 

VW Says Fuel-Cell Cars Doomed to Struggle Beyond Japan - Bloomberg

 

Gotta laugh . . . . Reuters writes 56 words here . . . . that Elen Musk speculates. Stand by . . . . for what he will speculates for dinner. Then . . . . how long will he be in the bathroom.

I miss the point sometimes, but I think most may interpret Musk's guess as pointing to AG's linked article below;
VW Says Fuel-Cell Cars Doomed to Struggle Beyond Japan - Bloomberg

IOW, after the FC lobby sucks the California taxpayers' coffers dry of money - and hydrogen cars again get relegated back to the "in just 10 more years" loop, along with flying cars & jet packs - Toyota will need to catch back up to the competition with EV's. While the speculations are flying ... I'll speculate after Toyota comes to their senses - the next glider that Tesla Mod's for Toyota will be super charger enabled.
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VW isn't ruling out fuel cells being viable in only a decade, but thinks its more likely 2 decades or maybe never. In that bloomberg article they say they want to stay within 3 years of toyota, so if toyota did the equivalent of the gen II prius in 2025, vw wants to have a fuel cell competitor in 2028. Ford's ceo in the linked video also seems to be in this opinion. That fuel cells won't sell until gas is expensive and tech gets cheaper. Ford said hybrids today, phevs and bevs tomorrow, fuel cells maybe too after that. The gm/honda partnership may be ahead of toyota (we will see next year), but they don't think these things will sell in any quantities before 2020 in america.

Fuel cell cars have little chance to sell even as well as plug-ins did in 2012 until 2025 outside of japan. If CARB actually notices this and lets extra fuel cell benefits expire in 2018 as current law has it, then Toyota will have to do better plug-ins to remain competitive.

Toyota itself said the same thing musk just did, that they may go back. Its just hard to hear over the din of lexus anti-plug-in ads, and bob carter hype. Akido Toyoda, the CEO did the partnership for a good reason. If he actually agreed with bob carter, toyota would sell its tesla stock. IMHO with panasonic not supplying tesla with enough cells, and the fuel cell boys inside toyota crying that they could make it work this time, toyota simply didn't want to pay the price tesla asked for parts (probably around $400/kwh or $17K for a Rav4 ev battery pack. Once the gigafactory looks like it will drop tesla's cost to under $200, they can offer toyota a much cheaper price.

From a stocks point of view, I think the hydrogen hype is hurting. Toyota is down percentage wise as much as gm in the last year (over 8%), and toyota didn't have the ignition scandal. The pressure down on toyota is because of its loss of technical leadership. TSLA is up 64% in the same period. volkswagon is up but much less than the market, only 3% in the last year.

 

I was thinking about it this morning and in theory, a home-based, H{2} generation system might make it practical. Using electrolysis to convert water into H{2} and vent the O{2} might be a practical solution. Compression of the H{2} would be from the electrolysis so only a fairly small, high-pressure water pump would be needed.

This would avoid 90% of the problem of a 'hydrogen highway' by letting the FCV be in effect, a home area car. If the home H{2} generator could fill a small, portable tank, it could handle the cases of overestimating the range.

Still, H{2} is terrible stuff to deal with and high-pressure doesn't make it any nicer.

Bob Wilson

 

Let's say a phev (could be plug-in hydrogen) gets 100 mpge (i3 117, volt 98, prius 95) and a fcev gets 65 (honda 60, hyundai 49). Now say you had your home electrolyzer that was 75% efficient (likely worse) to partially fill the tank, we mucltiply the 65x75% and get 49 mpge it will go about half as far as making that fuel cell car a plug-in. Say batteries cost $500/kwh (teslas says less than $100/kwh in the next decade), a 15 kwh battery would cost $7500. That home electrolyser would probably cost at least $5000. It doesn't make much sense. Drop in that big battery and the fuel cell stack can be half the size. If today the stack costs $30,000, adding that bigger battery would drop the cost to $15000 (use a 50 kw stack with a 100 kw battery instead of a 100 kw stack with a 30 kw battery).

That is why ford and gm both think if fuel cells make it, they will have a plug. Its likely their partners - Honda, Mercedes, Nissan, along with toyota's partner bmw also think you want a plug. If hydrogen is to be sucessful in this country, I would assume that it will include a plug, or some really major breakthroughs.

 

Home refueling units for CNG cars have been around for over decade, and the cars are a tiny nich still.

Honda did do a demo electrolysis unit for the home that was solar powered. It was a nice display on the advantages BEVs. A home unit for CNG or hydrogen will be a slow fill one. The Phil took overnight to fill a Civic CNG to its 180 or so mile range. So you'll be 'plugging a FCEV into the unit about as often as an equivalent priced BEV.
Then electrolysis is lossy on the conversion side. Better to have the PV wired into house where it can fuel both the house and a plug in. The plug in will get more miles per kW generated than a FCEV.

 

One big battery breakthrough (just in price!) and FCEV cars are toast(ier). Tesla has shown present battery technology is sufficient for >200 miles. The sun has shown itself to be a very cost effective power distribution infrastructure. The really horrible snag is finding a way for this not to let the two be joined. Otherwise the established corporate revenue streams will suffer causing worrisome job losses in the energy sector, vehicle repair sector, gas tax, and every other vested party in the status quo.

(P.S. I wonder how much planning of the Gigafactory factors incorporates changing battery technologies. Telsa has a habit of thinking ahead. Between the partnership between Tesla and Panasonic, I can see where Panasonic has more reason to worry than Tesla.)

 

Musk is hedging his bets. Toyota doesn't have nor do they want a huge Lithium battery capacity, but Tesla (and one of Toyota's favorite suppliers, Panasonic) may have a ready customer in case of over-supply. Now Toyota can produce a plug-in rather inexpensively with or without Tesla's help while someone develops a stomach for >$1M dollar gas stations.

But seriously everybody here and Toyota shouldn't assume an all or none when it comes to FCEV or BEV. They'll share a lot of the same components. Both will thrive, OK maybe after I'm dead or no longer driving, but BEVs will coexist right alongside the FCEV. Why? BEVs exist and are growing in an almost inhospitable world now with almost every car and truck (not to mention every lawn mower, ATV, tractor, boat, snowmobile,etc.) sucking some kind of petroleum product that takes about 5 minutes to refuel and isn't that expensive. Well at least on this side of the pond. I've always thought of the FCEV as replacing ICE powered cars not BEVs. Lexus is attacking BEVs because the current cost of BEVs happens to occupy their price positions.