This is totally fair; I'm glad Toyota is making this case. Hybrids like the Prius should be part of our solution to curb co2.
Unlike Teslas, Priuses are actually affordable to a large number of Americans.
There was an article on HN recently on how the energy losses in the generation and distribution of hydrogen are much high than for electricity in LI batteries. For all intents and purposes it just seems like hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles is a totally dead end technology, and Toyota bet wrong.
The government should focus specifically on outcomes. For example: CO2 reduction, energy independence -- those sorts of things.
I honestly find no reason to invest in an ice/hybrid when i can get way better warranty on a korean hyundai at similar price or get a tesla for 9k more if i want something very shiny.
Personally i use car sharing here and use couple times a month for electric renault zoe here, which is still way less than what it would cost me to lease or buy any of the cars i mentioned above.
Which is part of why they fell out of favor so hard with the white collar demographics.
Sure they start at 24k but around here the cheapest Im seeing is 32.
A Model 3 SR+ is 48k + a 2k€ government subsidy -> 46k€
So yeah, not that affordable. One has two power trains that need to be taken care of + oil changes etc. Other has 0€/year maintenance costs.
Plus in the states there's also subsidies available for plug-in hybrids, not sure about finland.
So non-zero cost. But that's being a bit pedantic.
If they believe that fuel cell vehicles are the future, they ought to hybridize every gasoline vehicle they sell right now, because fuel cell vehicles will only require more batteries and more electric motor capacity than hybrids.
If they hypothetically believed that electric cars were the future but still want to wait to release full-electrics, they ought to hybridize every individual vehicle sold while they build up production capacity for batteries and motors.
For reference, normal hybrids have only about 2 kWh of battery, about 1/30 the capacity and anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 the motor power compared to a pure EV.
23% isn't that bad, but that's 23% hybrid: it's still only baby steps towards either pure electric or fuel cell. This leads me to only one conclusion: they're not serious about pushing production of either fuel cells or electric vehicles.
I would look at how many models total that Toyota group offers, which I believe is one of the highest in the industry. Couple this with the fact that they are the biggest car industry in the world, means that they are doing more for the reduction of gasoline burning than most other companies, including EV only companies.
Total USA EV market share is somewhere around 2%, and at best that means 2% of those people replaced their non-hybrid with EVs.
I believe they are planning a mass hybridization of their line-up with each new model that comes out now. The Sienna only comes in hybrid now, and that was released a year ago.
See my other comment in this thread. If all 300k EVs sold in North America were used as the battery source for Hybrids, then there could be an estimated 7900% more reduction in full usage due to the fact that you can make 14 million hybrids with those vehicles.
But the sad truth is that Q1 2021 they only sold 140,000 hybrids in the US (23% of 600k), less even than the number of Teslas (180k).
At least in the US, they are clearly not doing more than Tesla, even if they are going about it with significantly less battery usage.
The Prius came out 20 years ago, and the Highlander Hybrid 15.
I expected them to keep their first-mover advantage going and have hybrid-only models other than the Prius at least as early as 2015, but it took until last year to do that.
It's a shame, because their hybrids are so nice—I have a Prius, and my parents just replaced their Highlander Hybrid with a RAV4 Prime.
and of course misses used cars. your average person making 50k isn’t buying a 37k car