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Comment by futevolei | Hacker News Reader

How did Toyota (seemingly) blow this so bad? Arguably the leader in electric vehicles/technology with the Prius which first came out in 1997(!). And then nothing since like 2010. so many opportunities to reset/pivot back to batteries along the way yet they keep doubling down on fuel cells. I hope they crack whatever challenges they are facing but to me it looks like an all-in bet that won’t work out.

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I would say they've doubled down on hybrids more than fuel cells, they sell absolutely tons of them, which ultimately is the name of the game. They're perhaps later than others to the pure EV game which I assume is a conscious strategy. Keeping the fuel cell thing going in the background is pretty small potatoes to Toyota.

They (all of them actually) left open this huge hole which Tesla was able to exploit and become most valuable carmaker by a factor of 3. GM, Ford, vw, Porsche all have electrics on the road right now. I’m not saying Toyota is the next research in motion but it does feel like an iPhone moment.

I unerstand the feeling. But I don't understand the valuation on Tesla shares since they sell about 5% of the cars Toyota do and only make a profit effectively because of government subsidies. Yet many people act like Tesla is showing everyone up. I don't get it. Yes they've used bulk money to pull back this massive slingshot of potential and people are excited about what's going to happen. But I believe the established car co's will just say, thanks for spending billions preparing the market for EV's, we'll be eating our usual share of that pie now thanks Elon. Who knows.

Tesla was definitely an iPhone moment but Toyota (and other established manufacturers) are looking more like Androids to me (lower margins but higher volumes).

Toyota has developed its own EV platform and "intends to globally sell 5.5 million electrified vehicles every year by 2025". https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a34896309/toyota-electric-...

And Tesla intends to sell the same number of EV by then but with 100% batteries so Tesla could be producing multiple times the volume of batteries that Toyota expect to buy or make. Toyota would lose their cost advantage pretty fast (and event prevent them to reach that 2025 goal). If you add the self-driving tech into account, I don't understand how Toyota expect to compete in the next 5 years in their highest margin product lines.

Except Tesla didn't actually stated that goal, or did it? Now that quite a few established companies have EV models on the market Teslas exponential growth phase seems to be over, at least in Europe. Tesla is already down to third place in the ranking of EV cars sold in 2020 in Germany: https://cleantechnica.com/2021/01/08/german-ev-market-reache...

It's the CED all over again. Some automakers will not survive the transition to electric vehicles. Toyota may be one of them.

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

>How did Toyota (seemingly) blow this so bad?

Because contrary to the impression you get from reading comments sections on HN, Reddit and other sites they are fallible. They are run by humans making decisions based on incomplete and imperfect information. Sometimes they get it wrong.

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