Toyota announces sustainable vehicle ecosystem [video]
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"Information Sharing" - No thanks. I don't want a shared vehicle to be able to watch me go into my house. The more I see the future of increased connectivity, the more I detest it. I want technology to solve hard problems but without butchering people's right to privacy and undeserved pervasive intrusion in people's lives. I don't want a single IOT device in my house. No IOT locks, bulbs, fridges, coffee makers, speakers and... cars. I am almost angry thinking about the future.
The last point almost reads like satire in the video. Also, videos like this are 100% useless. It is fluff but no substance. Give us detailed plans, schedule, specifics on how you'll achieve all this, technology whitepapers. This video is utterly and completely useless.
Also, can anyone explain the "The Future Is Slow" tagline at the end? It was jarring and made me wonder if the whole thing is supposed to be parody.
Battery swapping seems to be an obsolete technology. Battery capacities are now big enough, and charging is fast enough, that it's not worth the hassle.
Their hydrogen fuel cell is clearly not the way the industry is going. So are they going back to batteries, the tech they said would never be commercially viable?
H2EV don't "burn" the hydrogen, because fuel cells are much better than engines that burn stuff in cylinders. So you end up with electormotor and fuel cell.
And since you can recuperate into fuel cell and fuel cells aren't very good at providing big short peaks of power, it makes sense to add a battery to smooth things out and to store energy when braking.
But the battery doesn't need high-capacity, because it's just a temporary store of energy. It's a very different battery technology than what you find in a Tesla or Kia e-Niro or whatever.
In the end, Toyota H2EV (Mirai) is basically 1) electromotor from Lexus hybrid 2) battery from Prius 3) Fuel cell.
https://www.electrive.com/2019/06/05/hyundai-to-sell-their-f...
And Volkswagen is keeping fuel cell cars open as an option:
https://www.audi.com/en/experience-audi/models-and-technolog...
Battery EV is high-capacity battery + engine + thermal management system for the battery.
Hydrogen EV is fuel cell + low-capacity battery (for smoothing out peaks and recuperation) + engine + thermal management system for the fuel cells.
BEV have low price per km (here it's about 1/4 compared to gas cars), but lower range, while H2EV have higher price per km (in Germany where there's actually infrastructure available, its about the same price per km as gas car) but higher range, so it can make sense for some use-cases, like long-range buses or whatever.
You could even build Plug-in Hydrogen EV with medium capacity battery and have BEV-like usage where you charge at home but still get 1000 km range if necessary - it seems needlessly complex, but it just means adding bigger battery and charging port to H2EV, so it can make sense.
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/26050/exclusive-toyota-hydroge...
Before getting back to Hydrogen when the world realize there is not enough Cobalt and Lithium on Earth for every car.
We're not going to run out of lithium any time soon, current supplies are limited only by the fact that it's only been desirable for a few years. There's a LOT of lithium mining capacity coming online now or in the near future.
Hydrogen was a dead end in 2000 and it's only getting deader.
Easy sentence with no content. Dead on which aspect ? In Elon Musk propaganda speech ?
Hydrogen never was a dead end technically. It's only blocker is cost of generation, cost that goes away with scale and cheaper electricity.
2) Hydrogen is the smallest molecule in existence - meaning that it escapes through any container you put it in. A 70kg pure lead bottle only holds about 1L of hydrogen, and all of it will evaporate within couple months naturally. And as it does so, it makes the metal brittle. So "producing loads of hydrogen for storage" is not a great idea either.
That's kind of the case in a few different places though - e.g. Solar is "free" and the losses don't really matter in many places.
1) generation (very inefficient, or generates tons of carbon)
2) storage, both offline and in vehicles (very expensive, dangerous, heavy, very inefficient, or a combination thereof)
3) transport (same, due mostly to 2)
4) usage efficiency (not bad with a fuel cell but still not great)
5) power density (fuel cells have low power to weight which is why no-one uses the generated power directly)
6) fuel cell lifetime (fuel cells don't last that long)
7) fuel cell cost
I've held this opinion since the best EVs were using Optima Yellowtop PbA batteries and Mr. Musk over there was working at Paypal.
I think the idea is to save you time at charging station if you can do a swap and go. + increase the performance life of your car by making it cheap to replace the battery.
Unless making ultra fast rechargeable batteries is sustainable, safe, and environment-friendly, Battery swapping is a good option.
https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-battery-swapping-plan...
> Plugged into a Supercharger, a Model S battery can be charged to 80% capacity in just 40 minutes, free of charge. On the other hand, a battery swap is by appointment only and could cost the driver between $60 and $80.
There's also the question of "where can I swap my battery?". Charging stations are now common enough[0] that it's not a worry for people who would consider an Electric Car.
[0] Within reason...
Can I just charge my car before going to work in the morning in 5 minutes, like I do with petrol?
https://www.drivingelectric.com/porsche/469/new-porsche-tayc...
Better answer: it depends on how charged your battery pack is at the time. New Tesla superchargers have been able to charge Model 3s up to 420 mph. That is if the charging continued at that rate for one hour, that battery pack would give you 420 miles of range.
But as you charge a battery, the rate at which you charge slows down. Think of it as stuffing a pillow, the more stuffing you have in your pillow, the harder you have to push to cram that stuffing in. In this case voltage is pushing electrical current into your battery. Recently, Tesla has been upgrading their charging stations to have higher voltage which means faster charging. In the attached article you'll see that they say in optimal conditions you'll be able to add 75 miles of range to your battery pack in 5 minutes.
To help optimize your battery, a software update 'warms up' your battery pack before you get to the charger as long as you put it in your vehicles map. I'm not sure what warming up means exactly or how heat would help but I'm sure someone else could explain that better than me.
So yeah, if you work less than 75 miles away, you could get a quick 5 min boost. But it would be advisable for long term health of your battery pack to charge it up to ~%80 each time. Again, I'm not the guy to explain why that is. So you'd want to plan ahead a bit.
If I'm imagining being in that situation where I'm late for work and I don't have enough juice to get there I would put the nearest supercharger in the navigation, fuel up for 5min, and then charge at work probably from a slow charger, and on my way home I'd stop at that supercharger again and top it off for 30min while I got a coffee or groceries (or browsed hacker news). And I'd try not to let that happen again because it could wear out that battery.
Sorry for the long reply but I hope this gives you a glimpse of the reality of EV ownership. I'm a prospective owner and have been doing some reading up on what to expect, if anyone has some input I would love to read it.
What does that have anything to do with a vision based on battery sharing?
Though, I can also see this happening: "None of the old standards are good enough, let's create a new standard", and now there are N+1 standards.
Sharing batteries doesn’t work. That’s why Tesla dropped it even though the cars are designed to have batteries swapped in minutes. The only way for battery swaps to work is if truly nobody owns their own car. Which brings me to the next point.
Nobody wants to share their fucking car in America. Your car is your best friend in 90 percent of the country. Nobody wants dirty strangers fucking up their cars. Nobody wants the bed bugs, scabies, dandruff flakes and all the rest. Not to mention crumbs and garbage. It’s bullshit. There will never be widespread car sharing. People have been stroking themselves to this idea for a Fucking decade.
And when they started showing images of the car CATCHING INTRUDERS and opening your door for you, my bullshit alarm rang so loud it fucking exploded. We already depend on a pile of broken bullshit taped together with scotch tape. Taking the disaster that is the IOT and using it to open your door WITH YOUR CAR is a stupid and bad idea and everyone knows it except the idiots at Toyota PR.
Toyota has been making the wrong moves for decades. They INSISTED on making the murai even when it was clear that hydrogen wasn’t going to cut it. The EV revolution is here and all Toyota has is their pathetic failed hydrogen vehicle and the rav4 that they have cancelled and hamstrung multiple times. Meanwhile all the other big players have been busy getting pure EVs on the lot.
This is solar roadways levels of bullshit!
Have they? Then why are they among the top three car companies in the world and why is Toyota the top selling car brand? The Toyota Corolla was the second best selling car model in the world in 2018:
https://www.jato.com/global-car-market-remains-stable-during...
I don't think these things would be true if Toyota had really been "making the wrong moves for decades".
I think a much more likely scenario is that Toyota knows more about the car business than you do.
By the way, my only criticism against Toyota would be that their cars don't always seem to keep up with the style and aesthetics trends. However, their newer Yaris for example reminds me of a samurai helmet, which to me looks good. On that front I think there is room for improvement to challenge how we think a toyota should "look".
Apart from that, I think they are performing very well.
EDIT: The same holds for when they release EVs. The Prius is an unattractive car, but it did sell well despite (or because of) that.
Even in that case, wouldn't the higher-efficiency EV still be cheaper?
As a general rule, if the feasibility of any demand-side cleantech depends on power "too cheap to meter" (or something close to it), you're going to have a bad time.
Is it that hard to imagine a future with vastly lower car ownership?
> Toyota has been making the wrong moves for decades. They INSISTED on making the murai even when it was clear that hydrogen wasn’t going to cut it. The EV revolution is here (...)
You are forgetting that for Toyota, they need to deliver a solution that works for their domestic market. For Japan, cutting emissions while shutting down their nuclear power while increasing electricity demand due to EVs is a complete non-starter. They can't produce enough through renewables, and they most certainly won't build up a system that depends on import of electricity from China or Russia. So large scale hydrogen import from Australia, Europe or the US is the only geopolitically feasible option. In that context, it's hydrogen vehicles or nothing.
Some good info here on the transportation problem: https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/features/japan-taking-a-...
It seems that _liquid_ hydrogen escapes from small containers fairly quickly (weeks) and requires temperatures close to 0K, so cars use pressurized hydrogen _gas_ (700 bar for the Mirai) which doesn't escape.
_Mass_ storage of liquid hydrogen is no problem (months).
Secondly, while Japan can't currently produce enough through renewables, you would be surprised at the pace at which renewables are increasing. I pay something close to 30 cents per KWh right now. At that price household solar is basically a no-brainer. I haven't seen a single new house in my area built without solar panels for at least 3 years now. You can buy solar panels in any normal hardware store now (and it's the absolute first thing when you go through the doors). Sun and wind are abundant in Japan (especially the latter, given the amount of coastline we have).
Hydrogen vehicles are going absolutely nowhere in Japan. It ain't going to happen. EV charging points are absolutely everywhere. I live in the countryside in an apartment (my town has a single main street to give you an idea of the size). We don't have charging access at the apartment, so I charge my Leaf at charging points exclusively. We've gone on road trips up into the mountains. There are charging points everywhere. There is literally nowhere that I can't go as far as I can tell. Japan is gearing up for EV.
There's a narrative presented, including by Tesla in some of their statements, that the pilot showed there was low interest in battery swaps. But the battery swap pilot was the complete opposite of what was presented in the announcement and what would have been a compelling offering. The original announcement was that it would be faster than supercharging and more convenient. The pilot program required you to schedule an appointment days in advance. So, the choice became convenient, free supercharging with a "fill up" right when I need it, or paying money to get a "fill up" that I schedule days in advance. Of course supercharging won that experiment...