Toyota to Debut Three New Electrified Vehicles for U.S. Market | Hacker News Reader

Toyota to Debut Three New Electrified Vehicles for U.S. Market

pressroom.toyota.com

35 pointsgamblor95627 comments

In my opinion hybrids are the worst of both worlds, resulting in excess expense and maintenance in the long run. We've had two Toyota Priuses in our family over the last 10 years, both of which had to have their battery packs replaced somewhere over 100k miles. The number of places around that refurbish hybrid battery packs or sells completely new ones tells me this is a common issue, an entire industry has built up around this problem. It cost us over $2,000 for each car which completely negated any money we might have saved on gas over the lifetime of the vehicle. On top of that another dirty little secret about Toyota's hybrid system is their Atkinson cycle engines like to burn oil as they get older, there are literally hundreds of threads on various Prius forums and sub-Reddits about the problem. I see it all the time when I'm behind Priuses at a stop light now: there's that little puff of smoke coming out of the tailpipe when the engine restarts. It is literally Toyota's dirty little secret. How can you have an environmentally friendly car that burns oil? Here's just one example of such a thread:

https://priuschat.com/threads/excessive-oil-consumption-expl...

My wife drives a 2 year old Tesla Model 3 now and it's been completely maintenance free for 32k miles so far, we've barely even seen any degradation in the battery pack capacity. I will never buy another hybrid vehicle from Toyota and I can't recommend them to anyone else either. Toyota would do well to accelerate their transition to full BEV vehicles like VW and others are doing if they want to be able to still claim to be an environmentally responsible car company.

Hybrids may be the worst of both worlds, but a plugin hybrid is so much more flexible than a battery only car. You don't need to commit to having access to charging infrastructure for as long as you own your car. But if you do have access to charging that's less expensive than gas, you can use it. I've seen kits that probably void you warranty to use plug-in priuses as a backup for your house that can run off the battery and charge from the engine as needed.

Yes, you have to bring the engine and its dependencies wherever you go, and that adds weight, but you'd need a lot more batteries to get a decent range otherwise.

If you can charge at home or work for your usual stuff, and only use the engine for longer distance driving, you'll tend to use the majority of your liquid fuel at the top of the efficiency range, which isn't too bad for the envitonment.

My PHEV has a two year regular maintenance window, and maintenance so far has been pretty simple. Toyota's oil burning isn't limited to Priuses, my spouse's 2000ish Camry had a warranty extension for oil burning issues.

The tesla range + charging network eliminates most "what if" situations.

Not it you buy a toyota. Or if you want to drive around when there's a regional power outage. (If you live in an area with common power outages due to storms and such, some of the gas stations will have generators)

Maintenance is a bitch for sure, but within our budget the cheapest PHEV on the market (the Prius Prime) was our only option for an electric car. We took the plunge, knowing that this car is a middle step, and we don’t intend to keep it past its rental period. In our price range, the only other electric options were a golf cart or a bike ;)

At the civilization view/level of "holy crap we have to get off of ICE", PHEVs are critically important to migrating the transportation system off of carbon in the very near term.

Basically, consider that battery supply is going to be functionally limited compared to the number of cars that there are on the road.

If a decent range (40 miles+) PHEV can make all-electric 90% of daily trips and mileage, then that is basically the most optimal design/allocation of limited resources.

I'm not saying we don't work on all-BEVs. But PHEVs shouldn't just be incentivized, they should practically be required for all non-specialized consumer car purchases, or you suffer a very rapidly phasing in car and registration tax.

The atkinson cycle engine is likely a bit new in terms of engineering and maturity, and while your "puff of smoke" will be significant, again, a good PHEV will handle 90% of trips all-electric.

In particular, if we can get a good PHEV design using LFP chemistry (cheap, plentiful, wide temperature range, safe, and very very deep recharge cycle limits), that will help enormously.

And I have a very dim view of Toyota. They could have PHEV'd a decade ago or earlier (Prius and Insight were on the road in 2001 remember) and have mystifyingly dragged their feet in adopting them.

Not to defend the Prius too much, I wouldn't buy one, but it seems like you are being a little tough on them. The thread you linked to about the oil burning problem starts with a post containing... the solution to the oil burning problem?

> It cost us over $2,000 for each car which completely negated any money we might have saved on gas over the lifetime of the vehicle.

Really? I haven't done the math and I imagine it's heavily dependent on what vehicle you're comparing it to, but... $2k is not an expensive repair for a $30k, 10 year old car.

> The key point is that a BEV and PHEV can provide similar environmental benefits. Each has a unique profile and can be an optimal solution in different circumstances. By having a diversified product portfolio with multiple forms of vehicle electrification, Toyota can let consumers choose the model that best suits their usage needs and cost profile while maximizing the total contribution to GHG reduction.

What? No you are just confusing customers by offering them technology alternatives that they won’t have the time to understand. Very few people are going to make a table of 5-year TCO comparing a PHEV to a BEV.

Toyota’s lack of commitment to developing long-range BEVs is frustrating. They really seem to believe that they can’t bring down battery costs enough to make a fully electric Camry at the cost of the ICE vehicle.

> The key point is that a BEV and PHEV can provide similar environmental benefits.

Yeah, this is dangerously bordering on falsehoods.

Not going to back that up? Look I prefer a BEV too but if you only drive a few miles every day it doesn’t make sense ecologically or financially to be lugging around a huge battery. Additionally a person might opt for a PHEV instead of BEV+ICE to meet all of their needs.

The fuel for the PHEV still needs to be extracted, processed and burnt. It's not non-existent.

Secondly, the weight and complexity of a PHEV is comparable if not more than a pure BEV. So when it comes to lugging around stuff, PHEVs are absolutely not the answer too. The answer probably is a BEV with a smaller battery.

Not sure what is so startling in this.

In a city, a PHEV with a smaller and cheaper battery (say 80km range) can be equivalent, or very close to a BEV: enough range for daily commute, nightly charging, etc.

You may think customers are not smart enough to judge different powertrain options, but they are smart enough to know their preferences and that's why PHEV makes sense in this moment.

If you're a one-car household it's not necessarily enticing to go fully electric on your next car, especially if the charging infrastructure isn't very fleshed out in your area or you have occasional power outages that last longer than a couple of days. It's not a question of total cost of ownership, and it's not a question of battery cost either. It's about owner lifestyle.

I am happy to jump headlong into technologies that I love, and I presume many others on HN do as well, but not every consumer has the same preferences as people on HN. Look around you next time you're driving.

Isn’t Toyota the biggest automaker by number of cars? If so, that means they’re selling cars in every small corner of the world. They can’t move fast, there’s probably not enough lithium being mined right now to support a complete switch. So they’re taking it slowly.

What’s more galling is that they’re still trying to make hydrogen cars happen, and that probably explains a lot of why they’re not going as fast as they should on electrifying their offerings.

Anyone else skeptical of their claim that the benefits of the plug in and the hybrid are the same? It assumes that electricity production remains the same as it is right now, whereas in reality it will likely become much more green (and electric car charging is a candidate to be even more green than general production since you can charge at peak solar hours very easily).

They say they can be the same, which is technically correct I suppose. I don't think anyone is suggesting that PHEV is functionally equivalent to BEV, nor that the environmental impact is always the same.

The GHG impact depends on where you live, how you use the car, and how you get your energy.

I don't expect a global automaker to make decisions about imminent models based on 10yr+ transition forecasts for US energy infrastructure.

If you have home charging and mostly commute within the range of the plug-in hybrid, it’s the same as a full electric car with the added advantage of an ICE for the rare longer drives.

And the added maintenance and complexity. I think the Volt has shown that there is not a market here.

That’s one event. Things GM can’t pull off cannot be construed for market trends.

Maybe. The Volt was a good car. Positive reviews. People just didn’t want it. You could chalk that up to a failure by GM.

But I think it’s a market indicator. An in between product with too much drivetrain complexity, too high of a price, and the downsides of a combustion engine.

The RAV4 Prime has got to be the most appealing current model, and it starts at $38k. The normal RAV4 is $26k.

The volt is a great car. Almost every brand has a PHEV now.

The main reason a PHEV makes sense is for people who want do do road trips or regularly travel beyond a typical battery range.

PHEV vehicles should be designed with this in mind. Otherwise they should just be a full EV.

RAV4 Primes seem to be selling pretty well (supply constrained for now).

The added maintenance is minor in practice. The ICE in a PHEV like the Volt is only used for non-routine trips, the rest are done on battery. When the ICE is engaged it is buffered by the battery and runs at a low stress cycle operating mainly as a serial hybrid. In a given year, the number of miles put on the ICE are surprisingly low. It keeps track of that on reminds you of oil changes based on the miles used. For me that is around once every 2 years.

I have a 2021 RAV4 Prime PHEV. It's fantastic - consistently gets over the 42mi of expected range, build quality is excellent, car is almost silent, etc, there are real buttons and screens (and a HUD!) in front of the driver. It also has a 1500w inverter/plug in the back so you can tailgate a microwave / refrigerator / TV :).

The two downsides are:

It's kind of rare (although getting better) & dealerships suck

The infotainment/driver assists, while decent (and including Android Auto!) feel mid-2010s.

I'm fine with this except I do wish the lane-keeping assist was better at staying engaged on the freeway.

If they (and their customers) are serious about reducing climate change at least one BEV should be really tiny and cheap (i.e., less materials and simpler to manufacture with less emissions during manufacture and requires fewer resources to run). Except for special purposes big cars need to be obsolete. This seems obvious, yet automotive manufacturers (and other industries) still seem to be making plans like we're living in the 1970's. For example product packaging has become _more_ complex and wastes more resources instead of _less_ (thanks Apple).

The market seems to reject cars seen as too small. That is one of the reasons people give for passing on the Bolt (even though the interior is surprisingly large due to good space utilization)

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