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Comment by dehrmann | Hacker News Reader

> they could have announced a 100% electric vehicle

There's something weird about Ford making a mass-market electric F-150 before Toyota has a mass-market car. I know they're betting on hydrogen, but so many other companies are so far ahead with electric cars that it's a little worrying. The irony is this is the company that's most associated with hybrids.

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From a engineering perspective, a purely electric vehicle is very simple, not a challenge and in engineering focused companies thus often considered "unworthy" of time and effort.

Internally you will often hear terms like "golf-cart" and "toy" to describe them. They threaten the careers of whole departments and large established supply chains. This fear/anger often manifests as subtle internal sabotage to pure electric projects.

No engineer that knows anything about batteries would call a battery pack/BMS design that meets automotive requirements simple.

Simple compared to ICE at their stage (NB: one has benefited from many centuries of man-hour work than the other). So, for their current level of efficiency, a BEV is simpler than an ICE also fewer people are able to produce the former for cheaper than the latter.

I work in product development at a major global automaker. I have never heard somebody call a BEV program “simple”, and if somebody is trying to sabotage BEV projects, they’re doing a very, very bad job of it.

I buy this to some extent, but it also reeks of hubris and discounts the value of marketing.

Toyota doesn't need to innovate or push limits. They built an incredibly deep moat of customer loyalty with high end customers. They can coast and just copy what works 5-10yr after the fact and still make money hand over fist (for now).

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