Toyota to spend 1.5T yen on EV battery development

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14436029

by mikhael • 5 years ago

146 238 5 years ago

This is a very interesting change of direction. Considering they and through their lobbying Japanese Govt. were pushing for Hydrogen cars.

smallerfish• 5 years ago

Maybe it's a "bet on both horses" strategy. Hydrogen cells have some advantages over battery cells (e.g. energy density, refueling time) but if there's no infrastructure they won't sell any significant amount of cars on that platform.

ryanisnan• 5 years ago

It does seem like that's the play. Pretty sad that it took them this long to make this investment, but I am excited for what Toyota might bring to the EV market.

aduitsis• 5 years ago

I live in an urban area in a EU country. Some thoughts:

* There is a huge subset of motorized vehicles that are spending a considerable percentage of their daily time on the road. Thinking about taxis, buses, trucks, etc.

* A large percentage of private cars are parked on the streets.

Those two observations alone make the case for electric vehicles slightly problematic.

Of course, a private individual with a garage can get an electric vehicle and use it almost like an ICE one, with a large environmental but also budgetary gain.

But for these other classes of vehicles, hydrogen could provide a better alternative.

Apologies if I'm missing something, but I cannot think what other zero emission technology could give the solution at this point, for these types of vehicle usage.

boringg2• 5 years ago

Agreed - everyone is trying to frame this as a they are no longer betting on Hydrogen. They are betting on both horses - and moving away from O&G. Smart move since they work across different industries/use-cases and different countries (policy drivers).

jqpabc1232• 5 years ago

Really disappointing to see them go down the hydrogen rabbit hole. I was a Toyota fan but this shook my confidence in the company. They had the lead and squandered it. They are really behind the curve now.

6gvONxR4sf7o• 5 years ago

There was an interesting discussion here the other day about what makes a company a tech company. Reading here about R&D investments like this from a company that isn’t considered a ‘tech company,’ I can’t help but think back to that discussion and chuckle.

brianwawok3• 5 years ago

Why? Do you think anything new will come out of this? The market is pretty far past them in battery tech, hard to catch up for the price of 1 tesla battery factory.

echelon2• 5 years ago

The world isn't instantly switching to batteries. There's no infrastructure where I live and I can't charge an electric vehicle at either of my condos.

My mom lives in the suburbs and I see very few Teslas there. Mostly pickup trucks. Cybertruck is not going to appeal to those folks.

There is plenty of time for the incumbents to catch up. Especially when Japan will stand behind their car industry.

EVs are still in the Virtual Reality phase of the adoption curve.

I'm not going to bet against Tesla, but I'd be happy to buy your Toyota shares at a discount.

RobLach• 5 years ago

You don't need to catch up, you need to get 95% of the way there, which Toyota is definitely capable of doing. Then you compete beyond batteries and overcome the differences and then some, which Toyota also very much can.

thomaskcr• 5 years ago

Do you mean panasonic battery factory? Because that's who Tesla buys most of their cells from (some LG and in China CATL). Tesla has no scale battery manufacturing right now.

acchow3• 5 years ago

Toyota's revenue is 27T JPY. This 1.5T figure over 9 years is 0.16T per year or about 0.6% of their annual revenue. That this even makes the news is indeed worth chuckling about.

jeffbee• 5 years ago

As 14 billion US dollars over a decade it sounds less dramatic.

thehappypm4• 5 years ago

That's still quite a lot, but yeah, trillions are more exciting than tens of billions.

foobarian• 5 years ago

Too bad they didn't build it in Vietnam paid in their local currency! <mutters at int32 types used for VND prices>

panick2110• 5 years ago

Its not a lot for a car company of that size. Its less then pretty much every other car company of any size has announced.

Some have announced more then that up to 2025.

jtvjan2• 5 years ago

1.5T JPY ⩯ 11.5G EUR ⩯ 13.6G USD ⩯ 9.9G GBP ⩯ 18.4G AUD

tppiotrowski• 5 years ago

G for Giga (10^9)? This confused me. I was expecting Billions (B)

jtvjan2• 5 years ago

Oh yeah I assumed the T stood for tera.

  ~> units '1.5 teraJPY' gigaEUR
  * 11.511012

bserge2• 5 years ago

Yeah, real helpful. Use (B) for billion not whatever G stands for.

p1mrx• 5 years ago

Tera/giga are globally standardized; trillion/billion are ambiguous.

nathancahill• 5 years ago

Good bot.

sdze2• 5 years ago

What the heck is G ?

the8472• 5 years ago

surely this is taught in various science classes in every country?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix

danw19793• 5 years ago

Gigaquids

Nbox9• 5 years ago

Is it reading 1.5T yen as 1.5 Tera yen instead of 1.5Trillion yen?

froh• 5 years ago

Tera and Trillion gives the same number of digits, 12...

notJim2• 5 years ago

I agree that this is a silly way to state this info, but it's hilarious to me how irritated it makes people.

slownews454• 5 years ago

This is a maybe 1.4B per year thing. That's... not huge.

What IS incredible is that Toyota HAD the absolute lead in EV. Their hybrid power trains had everything needed, they literally had power mgmt, battery, electric motors etc.

Then they went absolutely crazy over hydrogen - which I always hated. The cycle is terrible currently (from production to power on road).

The mind boggles a bit to imagine what might have been for them if they had just moved forward on hybrid, plug in hybrid, full EV path. They could have blended that mix more and more until full EV. They had most of the pieces it seems including production capacity.

bdcravens• 5 years ago

They also produced 2 generations of RAV4 EV's, the second of which they partnered with Tesla on.

rconti4• 5 years ago

Which is insane, if you think about it. Toyota never should have needed the 'help' given their hybrid electric expertise.

fnord77• 5 years ago

Japanese govt pushed hydrogen as one "fuel" to rule them all, including household heating and cookin

reducesuffering4• 5 years ago

I believe this is it too. Honda also has the equivalent hydrogen powered car and lack of EV's. Occam's razor says they didn't both come to that unideal scenario by chance.

varjag5• 5 years ago

How did Nissan dodge it then?

gordon_freeman2• 5 years ago

I own a Corolla Hybrid which gives 57 MPG combined and am pretty happy with it considering I got it under $25K. Now Toyota knew that their Hybrid electric systems are working great as they are a leader in it and selling millions of such vehicles over the years and still they have not trusted the electric batteries enough and went on Hydrogen fuel cell side. Very perplexing to me!

addicted• 5 years ago

My, possibly mistaken, understanding has been that the deep dive into hydrogen was a broader National level push in Japan.

If I’m not mistaken, the idea I believe was that if they settled on and developed hydrogen infrastructure, that would power not just cars, but also heavy machinery, etc that other parts of the Honda/Toyota/Mitsubishi/etc conglomerates could use.

slownews454• 5 years ago

Exactly this.

The prius was AMAZING.

Their other hybrids also great. They had aero down, ev engines down, power management down.

It's so weird to see them fight EV's so hard for so long.

pryelluw3• 5 years ago

My next car is a hybrid Corolla (current is a regular one). I live the damn things. Hopefully the hybrid is offered as a hatchback as well.

yobbo2• 5 years ago

considering I got it under $25K

Doesn't this answer the question? Batteries were and are still too expensive.

AtlasBarfed• 5 years ago

Totally agree

The ideal model, if I had some power/leadership 10 years ago with some foresight would have been:

- add a plug to the Prius for all-electric mode, get the technology to as many carmakers as possible with whatever negotiated means possible.

- push them to increase the all-electric mode to 50 miles

- once tech was doable, impose incentives/requirements/taxation that required all new cars be PHEV. Especially for trucks/SUVs.

- incentivize home charging and start incentivizing gas stations to have plugs as well as a requirement to staying in business

Given the current supply of cobalt, nickel, lithium, etc, the most effective way to electrify consumer transportation is the 50 mile PHEV. It would have electrified 95% of daily trips for those vehicles, and eliminates range anxiety for the longer trips until the infrastructure is done.

With that and Toyota's lead, the plug in hybrid would have provided practical market "EV" leadership probably through 2030. It is mystifying to me why they dragged their feet to add a simple plug to the system. A massive management failure that ceded not only pseudo-EV leadership, but leadership in the hybrid market.

Toyota may be able to coattail the nascent OEM market for EV components and leverage their status as current #1 to keep afloat, but so many companies are far ahead in the vertical integration for the EV. An OEM component EV will be inferior to vertically integrated manufacturers (Tesla currently, VW and probably GM soon).

I'd guess that the OEM model of ICE drivetrains is basically an extreme optimization of a long-running design. Early ICE companies were probably vertically integrated intheir parts/components manufacturing until specific market competition for components between dedicated OEM manufacturers could eventually beat the in-house teams.

But EVs are a MASSIVE revolution in terms of the core components, and designs are innovating/evolving so rapidly that you can't tie yourself to components. Look at Tesla, they are building their own motors, batteries/chemistries, and even minerals extraction pipelines per battery investor day.

OEM ecosystems only exist once a sufficient number of cars are using a component. So an automotive OEM EV motor won't be competitive with Tesla until several generations of EVs go through the market, and a generation for a car is at least 5 years traditionally?

Almost all the car companies annoucing EV programs/funding aside from VW and maybe GM are just doing the OEM model: we'll get some OEM motors and OEM batteries, slap them onto a traditional OEM ICE platform. And boom, the CEO gets to tell major activist shareholders that he isn't being left behind: please don't fire me like you canned the BMW CEO.

Toyota is likely still stuck in OEM mode. They can't maintain leadership with that mentality, the vertical integration model will win for the next two decades at least, even if solid state closes some of the tech gap with Tesla for the main auto people (which is what they are basically all gambling on)

minhazm2• 5 years ago

I agree with the 50 mile PHEV. Before my fully electric car I had a Chevrolet Volt (not the crappy Bolt). It had a ~50 mile electric range (40-60 depending on weather), and then it just turned into a normal hybrid. It was a great car and I almost never had to use the gas on the car. I had to do a few longer distance drives a year and the > 300 mile gas range covered that easily. It's unfortunate that Chevy killed off the Volt. It was a great car and was an excellent transition car for people to go electric but without the range anxiety issues. It got me used to having to charge my car, but without the risk of getting stranded if I wasn't able to for some reason.

N1H1L• 5 years ago

Upvoted you. Don't know why you have been downvoted, as I agree with your comment 100%

fomine35• 5 years ago

Totally agreed. I don't know why they don't offer PHEV aggressively in 2010s. Possibly shortage of battery is a reason to stick HEV but they should invest for battery at the time.

danans• 5 years ago

Their hybrid power trains had everything needed, they literally had power mgmt, battery, electric motors etc.

They don't have what they would need in the battery dept - and the battery is the most important part of an EV. The Prius has a NiMH battery, which has lower energy density than Li-ion and other newer chemistries.

The (non-plugin) Prius can get by with the NiMH battery because the battery is only used for regen braking energy capture and acceleration at low speeds, not for high amounts of energy storage or power output. For those it uses gasoline and the ICE engine.

oflannabhra• 5 years ago

Yep. Interesting that a 3rd party has developed and released a LiFePO4 battery pack for the Prius [0]. It is cheaper than the OEM NiMH pack. I'm on some Prius forums and it has been interesting to see the amount of detail owners get into, from replacing cells in their OEM packs, to upgrades, to eeking out every bit of performance. Toyota had a huge advantage with their brand and some fanatical customers that they totally blew by not going full EV.

[0] https://projectlithium.com/products/prius-lithium-replacemen...

JonathonW• 5 years ago

The Prius had a NiMH battery. Current production Priuses (Prii?) almost all* use lithium-ion batteries, from the 2016 model year (fourth-generation/XW50) on.

* A subset of fourth-gen Priuses, those equipped with all-wheel drive, went back to NiMH for better cold-weather performance.

fomine35• 5 years ago

Latest Toyota's Ni-MH density is 1000Wh/L that outperform latest Li-ion. Maybe Wh/kg isn't good for BEV but maybe fine for HEV and possibly PHEV. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27890676

danw19793• 5 years ago

The toyota I desperately want them to sell is a plug in prius - pre-2018’s fugly makeover - with a decent LIon pack, let’s say 30kWh, with the more recent PiP’s max EV speed of 80mph.

The hydrogen distraction is baffling.

blacksmith_tb2• 5 years ago

Hmm, perfect is the enemy of the good and all? I have that... er, 'made-over' Prius, the Prime PHEV, and while its puny 8.8kWh LiIon battery could certainly be bigger, it's enough that 75% of all my driving is electric-only.

philistine• 5 years ago

One tiny detail about Toyota. They didn’t chronologically move to hydrogen after their initial forays into electric. They always explored both, with most of their efforts on hydrogen.

So imagine if instead of concurrently trying to make hydrogen happen while their side-gig of hybrids managed to completely corner the market, they went all in on electric. It would be a very different car market.

ksec• 5 years ago

This. Not sure why OP think they went all in to hydrogen at all.

Just like every other car manufacture they couldn't quite put the numbers together on how Battery EV will work without a ridiculous amount of investment or bet. It is worth remembering they are primarily a car manufacture, not battery manufacture. Now things have changed not only because the path is clearer, and numbers are easier to do with less risk, ( big enterprise are risk averse ), but more importantly Investors loves EV. It doesn't matter if you have no concrete plan to make profit out of EV, your stock price will rise, and this has an effect on management, board, banks, cash flow, all sort of things.

Although I am skeptical of Solid State Battery, I would have thought a conservative company like Toyota would have went with conventional Li Battery with Silicon Anode type.

pryelluw3• 5 years ago

A lot of their current models are available as hybrids with great efficiency. I drove a new venza hybrid last week and it got low 40s mpg!

They aren’t as behind as you’d think given that a hybrid still makes more sense than an ev to a lot of people. A reliable hybrid that just works is what people need. More so with their adaptive cruise control.

Could they have done better? Sure. It’s hard to say different given their size and culture.

Also, GM had the EV1 years before …

rasz2• 5 years ago

40 mpg is what you got 15 years ago in Ford Focus 2 Wagon 1.4 tcdi.

marcod• 5 years ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/climate/toyota-electric-h...

AUSNA-ZI2• 5 years ago

Then they went absolutely crazy over hydrogen - which I always hated

I always loved hydrogen, especially if someone comes up with a better way to generate it. The refueling issue and the chemical disaster with batteries would be solved.

rootusrootus5• 5 years ago

It seems more likely that in the time we could get a viable hydrogen infrastructure in place (I imagine decades) that both the refueling and 'chemical disaster' aspect of batteries will have been solved. We're getting fairly close on both counts, I believe.

trhway• 5 years ago

The mind boggles a bit to imagine what might have been for them if they had just moved forward on hybrid, plug in hybrid, full EV path. They could have blended that mix more and more until full EV.

i think there is a speadsheet somewhere inside Toyota where your "nightmarish" - because it cannibalizes significant share of the current revenue from hybrids - scenario is precisely described. The fear of cannibalization of current cash cow (and related internal uphill battle with the top management milking the cow) is frequently the reason behind seemingly obvious blunders by BigCo-s.

taneq• 5 years ago

Hydrogen was a cynical distraction to give legislators something to push 'in the future' while allowing car manufacturers to continue with business as usual.

(Of course, governments the world over leapt at hydrogen and clung on for dear life because it was the only renewable vehicle tech that preserved the current fuel distribution model and so allowed them to keep supporting road infrastructure with fuel taxes. They saw the legislative advantage, physical efficiency was nothing to do with it.)

Toyota had something special back in the 80s and early 90s and it seems like they lost it. Was there some key innovator high up in the company who retired some time around then?

fomine35• 5 years ago

Additionally, now China companies dominating massive Li-ion manufacturing for EV, like solar panels (despite their energy still heavily use coals). It's natural that other governments don't want core industry to rely on them, but still climate change is a thing so they discovering alternatives.

jdkee• 5 years ago

No, that is ~$14 Billion per year.

lamnk• 5 years ago

I wonder what make Toyota changes their tone, because Toyota is known to be very reluctant against BEVs as they want to keep their inverstment in hybrids and continue to bet on hydrogen fuel cells.

jqpabc1232• 5 years ago

Unless they know something that the rest of the world doesn't, hydrogen fuels cells is a bad bet.

There is not enough time/space to explain all the reasons why; it is a very long list of factors working against hydrogen --- and it starts with the fundamental laws of thermodynamics.

stcredzero• 5 years ago

If there's a context where power density is way more important than efficiency, then hydrogen starts looking pretty good. As batteries get better, the number of those shrinks, however.

ncmncm5• 5 years ago

Hydrogen -- liquified hydrogen -- makes sense for large aircraft, rockets, and eventually bulk storage, and not much else.

The reason hydrogen makes sense for aircraft is the huge advantage of carrying enormously less weight of fuel up to the stratosphere. Add to that, that it will be produced and stored directly at airports from surplus peak electric power, thus obviating need for a great deal of other storage capacity, and of expense extracting, refining, and transporting petroleum.

Its downside is it needs much more space on board, thus new airframes with aerogel-insulated tankage somewhere other than in skinny wings.

We need a government-led initiative to get major airports outfitted with LH2 production and storage systems, to solve the inherent chicken-and-egg problem and get those new airframes into the pipeline. Any extra storage capacity an airport builds out substitutes for storage elsewhere. Airports could afford to get into the load-balancing business in a big way.

r00fus4• 5 years ago

Perhaps it's the US states like CA that have basically shown that they can't support H2 fuel supply lines.

Take a look at the current status of stations in CA [1]. Mostly offline, and who knows for how long. A symptom of the entire fuel-cell economy.

[1] https://m.cafcp.org

labster• 5 years ago

That’s worse than the McFlurry machines. There was a big push for hydrogen when Schwarzenegger was governator, but the infrastructure for hydrogen hasn’t expanded beyond that. Fuel cell technology for cars, like its emissions, are vaporware.

thehappypm4• 5 years ago

I don't think adding new infrastructure is even necessary anymore. In fact, in many places, we're seeing natural gas lines intentionally not being built for new homes. Why? Electric is enough. Heat pumps for your home, modern electric appliances are arguably better than natural gas, no need to maintain electric lines AND gas lines. Adding hydrogen into the mix means a whole parallel set of infrastructure. Look into what happened in Lawrence Massachusetts (hardly the sticks) when the gas company made a mistake -- the town quite literally burst into flames.

danny_taco• 5 years ago

Because Japan for some reason went all out on hydrogen, so Toyota being Japanese followed suit. What makes me wonder is why didn't they just look outside of Japan to realize this was not a good bet.

boringg2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure I would take this bet as them betting against hydrogen that everyone seems hellbent on making the narrative. I would take it as there is clearly a rise in EV that they can capitalize on. We will have both hydrogen and EV. Different use cases.

panick2110• 5 years ago

Nothing. They are doing the exact minimum needed not to complete fall behind.

bryanlarsen2• 5 years ago

According to Ars, they're aiming for 180-200 GWh annual capacity by 2030. By 2030 Tesla is aiming for 3 TWh and VW is aiming for 2 TWh. It's only about twice what Tesla consumed last year.

They're still not serious about EV's.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/09/toyota-finally-gets-ser...

beambot• 5 years ago

From March 17th, 2021: "Toyota lobbies US government in its increasingly delusional effort to slow down electric vehicles"

https://electrek.co/2021/03/17/toyota-lobbies-us-government-...

Seems like they're late to the party & know it.

cronix• 5 years ago

It kind of reminds me of Intel's dismissive attitude throughout the tail end of the '90's and early 2000's about ARM and mobile processing. They completely misjudged it, got dethroned as the best chip manufacturer as a result and are still playing catch-up while paying out the nose trying to do so.

martythemaniak• 5 years ago

These are the numbers that matter, and they're not good. They're proudly declaring that they will be producing a bit over 2 million EVs per year by 2030. Tesla is currently shipping at a rate of 1m per year.

I'm afraid they're going to use their brand power and customer loyalty to drag everyone else down.

Retric6• 5 years ago

We are still talking 8 years at this point. Toyota is going to respond to actual sales not just what they think sales are going to be. Assuming they produce a desirable EV they could still ramp up production well past that by 2030.

It’s one thing not to be the company on a new technology, it’s another not to ramp up production when your selling out month after month.

meragrin_2• 5 years ago

It's only about twice what Tesla consumed last year.

I don't think it is a fair comparison. How many of those batteries made it into their vehicles vs their other products?

adventured• 5 years ago

What's relevant is the scale of production, that's what it helps shed light on. Toyota is a behemoth in terms of industrial size and output, and extraordinarily profitable for an automaker (meaning they have ridiculous financial resources to push toward battery production). And over there is little 'ol Tesla's rapidly expanding battery output; a company that as recently as 2017 had 5% the sales of Toyota. It reveals that Toyota clearly still isn't serious about EVs, or they'd be a lot more serious about battery production.

jseliger• 5 years ago

Better late than never, it would seem: Toyota pioneering hybrid systems and then ignoring electrification seems strange. Even the "Prius Prime" today only has what appears to be an 8.8 kWh battery in it, for about $30K (Toyota says it gets about 25 electric miles), and the regular Prius only has a .8 kWh battery. The first-generation Chevy Volt had a 16 kWh battery back in 2011—ten years ago!—and the second generation 18.4 kWh. Battery costs have fallen by 90% or more over the last ten years. Where's the higher range and/or lower cost Prius? The $30K Prius Prime is in the same price range as a new Chevy Bolt, which gets 259 miles of range.

jazzyjackson2• 5 years ago

I drive a prius prime: problem is where to put the battery. The 8.8kwH takes up considerable space in the rear cargo area (no room for a spare tire, you are left with a fix a flat kit)

Throwing out the gasoline motor in a full redesign will be great to see (ev mode almost feels sporty already), but in the meantime I’m enjoying my 550mi range on a 10 gallon tank + never using gas on days I don’t leave town.

rconti4• 5 years ago

To be fair, I have 3 cars, none of which have spare tires. Teslas don't have spares, either.

reportingsjr2• 5 years ago

I was curious about how much more Toyota could fit in that same volume if using state of the art batteries.

The 2021 Tesla Model 3 LR has a pack volumetric energy density of roughly 240Wh/l.

The 2017 Prius Prime has a pack volumetric energy density of roughly 150Wh/l.

So ignoring Toyota's poor battery placement, you could fit ~14kWh in that same space in the Prime using a better pack design with more modern batteries.

If Toyota pulled their heads out of their asses and actually designed a car to be an EV, they could match Tesla's battery pack sizes and still have reasonable trunk space.

I say this as someone who owns two Priuses and do not understand why they didn't capitalize on their advantage to design a decent EV years ago.

The number of Priuses sold per year in the US tells a story of Toyota absolutely failing to capitalize on new technology when they had the lead: https://motorandwheels.com/10-toyota-prius-statistics-facts/

nomoreplease• 5 years ago

Are other auto companies pursuing in-home batteries like Tesla? I’m hoping for more competition in the Powerwall space

davedx• 5 years ago

Generac and Enphase are in that space, I’m pretty sure there are more too

la_oveja• 5 years ago

I'm really hyped to see their hydrogen "combustion" engines <3

thehappypm4• 5 years ago

Why? I'm way more excited to get an EV -- no oil changes, transmission problems, way better acceleration, quieter, etc. Combustion is going to be obsolete soon.

panick2110• 5 years ago

Why? Hydrogen combustion engines are about the worst combination of fuel and engine.

Convert the hydrogen to methanol and just use that if you really want to use ICE.

clipradiowallet• 5 years ago

FYI, 1.5 trillion yen equates to 13,607,664,000.00 USD.

jhgb• 5 years ago

I thought it was just one yen, but one that was highly magnetic.

genericone• 5 years ago

Was there a new innovation or discovery that triggered this direction change, information the public at large is not yet aware of? I hate to see this move as subject to the whims of the leadership, a decision that could change 5 years from now... If this change has, as a foundation, a scientific / engineering basis, I would feel a lot more assured in Toyota's EV aspirations.

ncmncm5• 5 years ago

It's not a direction change. They are just hedging.

ffggvv2• 5 years ago

weird how everyone is an "expert" about hydrogen vs EV and knows more than the biggest car company in the world.

reducesuffering4• 5 years ago

The results speak for themselves. For years Toyota and Honda have been playing around with Hydrogen cars in tiny production numbers, lease-only, and with little progress, while Tesla is increasingly shipping more and more cars, 400x the Toyota Mirai numbers, to almost limitless demand.

ffggvv2• 5 years ago

didn't know the competition was over. We're still at less than 1% adoption. Thats like saying that the results speak for themselves about AOL winning the ISP wars in the 90s.

asdff2• 5 years ago

Who knew there were so many polymaths on hackernews

thehappypm4• 5 years ago

Just yesterday there was a conversation about college degrees. Why is it that so many people here feel like they're an expert in absolutely everything? Condescending people who are vaccine skeptical, for one, as if they themselves were literal vaccine experts. There's so much hubris in the top tier of society it's almost sickening.

kipchak2• 5 years ago

I wonder if there's a bit of a late mover advantage here. If Company A spends $10B on from 2010 to 2020, and $10B from 2020 to 2030 and Company B spends 0B from 2010 to 2020 and 20B from 2020 to 2030, how much can company B copy company A's homework?

One potential advantage Toyota might have is their use of modular platforms - TNGA-K is used for a sedan, minivan, suv and luxury car, e-TNGA will likely be a similar story.

bluGill4• 5 years ago

how much can company B copy company A's homework?

Patent lifespan is 14-20 years, depending on the type of patent, and which country issued it (there are probably outliers that have longer/shorter time-spans, though most countries now are unified). The question is there anything useful in patents that are expire, but if so there is copying about it.

Most car companies have weird cross licensing agreements (weird in part because there are anti-monopoly laws in place to work around) so to some extent they can.

panick2110• 5 years ago

One potential advantage Toyota might have is their use of modular platforms

Literally everybody does that.

kipchak2• 5 years ago

Yes, though my understanding is Toyota has been one of several mfgs particularly aggressive in going to modular with TNGA/going towards a modular and global architectures.

https://europe.autonews.com/article/20141103/ANE/141109996/v...

yobbo2• 5 years ago

how much can company B copy company A's homework?

Not only this, but company B is buying fresh new machines that manufacturers have been competing to optimize for at least one tech-generation. They can build new factories optimized for 10x volume, which took the market years to reach and would have been insane ten years earlier.

They can skip compromises in products that were necessary due to immature tech.

Earlier-mover gave tesla brand recognition, but no other lock-in.

micah63• 5 years ago

I think it's too little too late. It's so much more than EV now, it's about FSD, AI, data collection, charging networks, owning mass battery production, automation of manufacturing, remote software updates, the center screen interface, service to the home networks, direct to customer sales infrastructure, solar panels on your home to charge your car, etc... I believe every car company is 10 years late responding and Tesla will destroy them like Apple iPhone destroyed Blackberry, Nokia, etc... If Ford can mass produce the electric F-150 before cybertruck hits, they may stand a chance (#1 selling vehicle in NA), but again, they are behind on so many of the other factors. I think Tesla will do it in a more streamlined way, more profitability and are ultimately heading towards a robo taxi network which isn't even in the competitors' visions.

specialist• 5 years ago

Yes and:

Tesla is integrating vertically, like mining lithium. Both as hedge against supply disruptions and to squeeze efficiency.

...like Apple iPhone destroyed...

Also copying Apple's monopsony playbook. Tesla bought booked the production of "gigacasting" gear. Just like Apple bought all the CNC machines (for making unibody cases) and miniature harddrives (for iPod) and... So competitors can't emulate, even if they wanted to and had the capital.

emkoemko2• 5 years ago

you seem to be a little too biased towards Tesla? are you invested? some of your points make no sense and "robo taxi network which isn't even in the competitors' visions." and yet Waymo has already done exactly this... Tesla can't even navigate in a closed loop tunnel...

bluGill4• 5 years ago

Vertical integration like that sounds good, but often ends up a distraction. Toyota tends to be more of we do the Engine and frame, and outsource the rest.

tsjq• 5 years ago

How many million USD is that?

boboche3• 5 years ago

Ex Corrola and Celica owner, and ex Toyota fanboy. I was on the market and considering a Supra once the car craze would settle. After seeing all the lobby money against right to repair, trying slowing down Tesla with congress and all, I decided I would not contribute to a brand that used to be a leader in quality and innovation, but now acts as a desperate trainwreck and instead of focussing on improving seriously, they are playing games with numbers (and not being any better than Bezos with SpaceX on the political side) Shame.

Must hurt them bad having sold those TSLA shares when they were worth a fraction of today’s price.

I hope they bounce back, drop the attitude and become competitive again. They made the mistake of being overconfident without acknowledging the competition or (ex) partners, clean competition is always good. Especially in this segment for our planet’s sake.

ArtemZ• 5 years ago

Sorry, but as someone who knows little about U.S politics and lobbying there, I don't understand how you are putting Tesla and "the right to repair" in a single sentence. What will you do if the electronics in Tesla fails? What will you do if the motor fails? Battery? You won't be able to fix that on your own.

Teslas can be only repaired in a professional shop, whereas Toyotas can be fixed by a moderately skilled individual in a private garage. You can order all the parts for Toyota online and do everything from engine rebuild to any kind of maintenance.

boboche3• 5 years ago

Simple, 2 separate issues tickling me.

Not saying Tesla are not terrible at RTR, they are. But they are also accelerating electrification and catching everybody off guard. Including auto repair shops. Some are actually starting to be the Rossman of teslas and I beleive the momentum RTR is getting will naturally creep in and bite them too soon or later.

For now I can just agree and its one of the reasons I won’t buy a Tesla as I like to keep my cars until they completely die (usually rusted beyond repair with 300kkm+) while keeping my repair costs down.

Toyota was pointed as a major lobyist against right to repair and financed FUD ads in the US on ballot initiatives btw, Tesla was not in that group.

kevin_thibedeau2• 5 years ago

considering a Supra

Not a Toyota.

Forbo2• 5 years ago

Am I missing something?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Supra

wazoox• 5 years ago

It's about time. At the current Munich Auto Show, I don't think there's even one single old-style oil burning car presented. In Europe (and China), it's complete game over starting now.

nose• 5 years ago

This also indirectly signals an exit from the consumer hydrogen fuel cell cars.

krosaen• 5 years ago

Anyone wishing to steel-man Toyota's strategy should read their chief scientist's (and former head of DARPA) Gill Pratt's posts:

https://medium.com/toyotaresearch/carbon-is-our-enemy-lets-u...

https://medium.com/toyotaresearch/more-straight-talk-about-t...

Maximizing the benefit of every battery cell produced requires that we distribute them smartly.
This means putting them into a greater number of “right sized” electrified vehicles, including HEVs and PHEVs, instead of placing them all into a fewer number of long-range BEVs, like my model X. This is particularly important because presently it is difficult to recycle the kinds of batteries used in BEVs. If we are to achieve carbon neutrality, we must pay attention to all parts of the “3R” process — Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
For example, we hardly ever put gas into our RAV4 Prime PHEV, which has a battery ⅙ as large as our Model X BEV. For the same investment in batteries as our single Model X, five other RAV4 Prime customers could reduce their carbon footprint too.

LeegleechN• 5 years ago

Thanks for the links. This is a really well written case which relies on an easily swallowed fallacy. The argument is that the main limiter to improvement of batteries is research which needs time, so we shouldn't quickly scale up battery production and end up with suboptimal batteries.

Of course the main way to improve batteries at this point is to make them cheaper, which comes directly from production scale (look at what happened with solar panels). And even if that wasn't the case, while we wait for improved tech before we scale up battery production, we're continuing to dig up and burn fossil fuels.

This reminds me of some of the propaganda spread by fossil fuel companies decades ago. They position themselves as being on the side of environment, and yet the conclusion is always to delay, do more research, and continue with the status quo.

VectorLock2• 5 years ago

Hmm, what about BEVs make them more difficult to recycle?

Tesla batteries are made out of individual cells - pretty much ripe for the Reuse in the 3R process.

rootusrootus5• 5 years ago

With the amount of glue holding the cells together, it's only practical to reuse the entire pack (or maybe individual modules).

reducesuffering4• 5 years ago

I'm surprised a Toyota chief scientist is admitting to driving a Model X...

sdze2• 5 years ago

That is a good message for the Toyota Corp. actually. Their chief scientist looks left and right to find solutions.

Nothing is worse than a blind entourage.

Toyota to spend 1.5T yen on EV battery development

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