Hacker News Reader

Comment by raydev | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why companies like Toyota and Honda and Hyundai haven't moved on electric. Ford and GM I understand, I don't expect them to do anything anymore, but 10 years ago I thought the Japanese and/or Korean companies would be shipping multiple electric models by now.

Tesla, with so little marketshare and so many fewer dollars in revenue, seems to have made incredible progress.

View on HN

Nissan Leaf introduced ten years ago, over 470000 sold by May 2020 [1], the actual "below $35000 car" from established manufacturer.

The difference? No hype, deliverers promises, no crashes on autopilot - at least widely known [2] vs [3]. Old fashion in this age of attention grabbers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=nissan+leaf+crash+&oq=nissan...

[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=tesla+crash&oq=tesla+crash

Toyota is shipping multiple electric models, though. The RAV4 Prime is quite impressive.

Part of it is culture and general pathologies - the upper management still thinks hydrogen is a workable idea which would be a bit more faie back in the 1990s or 2000s when batteries hadn't caught up.

Another factor is the general innovators dilemma where they have tremendous sunk costs in their old fuel burning ecosystem.

To be fair generally moving from a mature and high scaled to an untested and new approach is expensive and downright reckless looking levels of risk, only vindicated after a success when the unforseen or unbelieved shoe drops.

Hyundai is doing it. They started out with the lackluster Ioniq EV, but the Kona EV has proven to be quite popular, and seems like a very decent, fairly aggressively priced vehicle. It's cheaper than the closest comparable model, the Kia Niro EV, and has a slight edge (e.g. battery warmer except on the cheapest model). Still more expensive than the Bolt, but arguably a better car.

because they bet on natural gas. however, the us politics dictate we must go into batteries, even tho they have their own problems ;-)

I don't think there are batteries that meet Toyota's durability standards.

Toyota wants their cars to be able to last a million miles in extreme environments (-40 degrees Alaska, +120 degrees F deserts). You can't do that with today's off-the-shelf battery technology.

Gas cars can't go a million miles on one engine, either, and need endless maintenance. EVs already get past a few 100k miles with much less work. EVs will be first to 10^6 miles.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com