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Comment by eckesicle | Hacker News Reader

After reading the headline my immediate reaction was that: "this scientist is going to try to make the case that PHEVs are the better choice". And of course, that's what he does.

The fact is that Toyota has made a major misstep in focussing on PHEVs (plugin hybrids) instead of full electric vehicles and they've been spreading FUD about EVs for years now.

I'm hardly an expert on this subject matter but just based on the fact that this man is from Toyota casts massive doubts on anything he says. I put exactly zero value to his claims given his obvious and massive conflict of interest.

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> I'm hardly an expert on this subject

What are your opinions based on? I've seen some some "propaganda science" videos, which were essentially Tesla fanboys defending Tesla's choice for some reason.

IMHO, nothing ever is that one dimensional. Obviously those who invested in PHEV or something else will defend that point and I can't see how one can be correct and the other can be the wrong choice when all come with pros and cons.

Did Intel made the wrong choice x86? Did Apple made the correct choice with ARM? Isn't it possible that at different stages of maturity of the tech and the market the "correct choice" can be different?

Lately I'm very annoyed of the science and tech propaganda on Youtube. One of my favourite YouTubers, Derek Muller of Veritasium, was criticised for filming a propaganda video for Google[0] and I'm afraid that the critics have a point. Company positions in the skin of scientific discussion are not new but with YouTube is seems like we are having hard time to identify them.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0aohBfUTc

Your focus on Tesla ignores that EVs are simply better than PHEVs. Look, it's a Toyota rep talking about PHEVs when they missed the boat on EVs. So its just like your YouTuber.

> EVs are simply better than PHEVs.

Really? hard to argue about that because it's a statement without any backing. "Simply better" , a magical "argument".

My focus on Tesla? My Youtuber? I'm not sure if I should honor this strangely aggressive comment.

I'm not advocate of any of those, my personal position is that public transportation is both the present and the future of transportation. Cars are great recreational machines and EVs, petrol cars or other types have different characteristics with different kind of fun(EVs acceleration is amazing but petrol is lightweight and agile, their engines sound is amazing). No, from recreational perspective EVs are not simply better.

The argument is purely technical so you can divorce it from the mouth it is being uttered from and consider it on its own merits.

To me it makes sense, but I had similar thoughts independently before reading this article. The only assumption is that battery manufacturing will remain challenging for the near future.

Ostensibly purely technical arguments can be carefully crafted to present a particular message. It's a tactic that works well for certain audiences.

It does not matter either way, in the EU selling anything but full electric will be illegal as of 2035. If Toyota wants to get out of that lucrative market, it can go ahead.

> It does not matter either way, in the EU selling anything but full electric will be illegal as of 2035.

That is not accurate. It will not be possible to buy a new non-zero emission car.

Hypothetically, if we banned BEVs today to sacrifice their batteries for PHEVS and only sold PHEVs for next 10 years it would be way better for emissions.

Of course no one really wants a PHEV anymore!

I absolutely would want a PHEV for my next car, assuming that it had a sensible pure-electric mode. I've test driven both a BMW and a Mitsubishi a few years back, and the UX was absolutely horrible.

Your not going to have insane performance with 10x smaller battery.

It's good to avoid insane performance for public road.

My take is that Toyota is 100% correct here, but simultaneously too late with this messaging today.

Imagine if the EU and others had taken a reasonable stance 15 years ago, and said "every car sold after 2015 must be an EV or a series hybrid with more than 50 km realistic range on pure electric". The transition towards zero carbon emissions from the road sector would have gone exponentially faster.

I mean, even if you look at the countries with the highest rate of EV adoption, like Norway with 65% of the vehicles sold in 2021 being pure EVs, it's still only making a tiny dent in the amount of gasoline and diesel sold - around 5% decrease when you compare Q4 2021 to Q4 2019, and then it's still a bit unclear how much of that drop is attributed to WFH and covid.

well its vehicles sold not cars driving. I would expect that to add up quickly over the next decade.

> Imagine if the EU and others had taken a reasonable stance 15 years ago, and said "every car sold after 2015 must be an EV or a series hybrid with more than 50 km realistic range on pure electric". The transition towards zero carbon emissions from the road sector would have gone exponentially faster.

This is basically what they did. Generally laws try to avoid specifying the technology these days, to prevent locking things in, but the EU and other sensibly governed places have been putting tighter emission standards in place for decades. People were free to meet these goals with whatever tech they came up with, better aero, lighter materials and so on.

If PHEVs were the answer, we'd have more of them, but pretty much everyone realised that going straight to BEV made sense as soon as the oil/battery price passed a certain ratio, and that it was only going in one direction in future.

Here's a 2011 (11 years ago), McKinsey slide: https://therationalpessimist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/mck...

This is also where the $100 per KWh target people talked about a lot comes from, if batteries get sufficiently cheap, BEVs win, and they did.

I don't buy this, and I'm very much against the principle of having laws that don't specify how to achieve things. The result has been that for several decades manufacturers have been meeting emissions targets by plain manipulation, whether it's dieselgate or it's creating ECU maps tailored for the test driving cycle.

We have achieved only emissions reductions on paper, when we could have been mandating PHEVs and actually solving problems.

If you look back at when California was actually able to do something about their smog problem, it was through mandating specific technologies - first it was positive crankcase ventilation, then catalytic converters.

So they better start increasing the standard of living if they want people to be able to afford EVs in all EU countries.

TCO for EVs in the EU already crossed over, so they'll actively increase the standard of living by introducing EVs:

https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/new-energies/europe/analysis/...

Still looking forward how we are getting the required infrastructure for recharging the batteries, in a usable time across all legacy gas stations, where the electricity is supposed to be generated from, and into which dump the used batteries will be pulled up, in similar vein to current junkyards.

We already have the infrastructure. Any place that can run air conditioners during the day can charge vehicles over night.

An average family generates 5kg of waste per day. A 400kg battery every 15 years is not going to make a dent in that waste, especially when the 400kg can be profitably recycled.

I guess we are talking about US infrastructure for air conditioning then.

India and Africa are adopting air conditioning very rapidly.

Yeah, when one is rich enough to own them.

Why spend money on basic infrastructure for human living conditions, lets give everyone air conditioning and an electric car.

When temperatures regularly get above 45C or 110F then air conditioning is basic infrastructure for human living conditions.

The link between temperature and human productivity is well established, air conditioning is one of those things that seems frivolous but pays for itself.

And of course transportation of food and other goods is also basic infrastructure for human living conditions. So maybe not electric cars, but electric trains definitely.

Plugged into cartoon houses, really the most pressing issue to deal with.

I just don't know enough about the subject to be able to 'divorce the subject from the mouth' confidently. Perhaps a bit unfair, but I'd rather dismiss what he says than risk being misled.

It's like the opposite of 'appeal to authority' :)

rebel bias ? :)

It says it's a problem carrying around more battery than you need most days. And implicitly argues it's better to carry around a combustion engine (and gearbox) you don't need most days. I guess that means less rare metals, but then wouldn't pure BEVs with a small battery be ideal by his logic?

I assumed from his argument that the engine is lighter than the extra battery for equivalent range.

Back of the envelope: for 20-30 kWhs of capacity less, you put in an ICE that can burn gas for 10kWh/kg.

We had the technical argument about a decade ago. Toyota lost. I'm genuinely surprised to see them still fighting this battle as we're way past plausible deniability and getting into "this is embarrassing" territory.

PHEVs are better than HEVs and both are better than ICE, hydrogen is a non-starter (technically better than ICE but there's no infrastructure so it'll be niche) so the future is BEV for wheeled transport.

In depth numbers:

https://theicct.org/publication/a-global-comparison-of-the-l...

https://theicct.org/publication/ghg-benefits-incentives-ev-m...

They're probably starting this campaign to try to prevent the phase out being brought forward again, and/or spreading to other countries as it's been going so well.

Toyota is even dragging their feet with PHEV’s. Their marketing for Toyota and Lexus still talks about ‘self charging’ hybrids.

It really can't understated how little Toyota can be trusted here. They've been sending corporate propaganda to schools in what amounts to grooming children:

https://electrek.co/2021/11/11/how-toyota-sneakily-spreads-a...

"Self charging hybrid", that's all you need to know

That reads as an article from a person who congests propaganda from the other side. Not everything is about not does everyone care about being carbon neutral. BEVs may have just been left out because they are unpopular. It makes sense to teach about common types of cars.

Yeah, I'm sure it's a total coincidence that Toyota is sending information pamphlets clearly targeting children, to schools, that mention every type of vehicle except BEVs, which Toyota is known to have lobbied against, in Japan, the US, and EU.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/toyota-lobbying-against-ev-ad...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/climate/toyota-electric-h...

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/toyota-bet-wrong-on-evs...

https://electrek.co/2021/03/17/toyota-lobbies-us-government-...

https://www.teslarati.com/toyota-slammed-european-funds-anti...

>which Toyota is known to have lobbied against, in Japan, the US, and EU.

That doesn't seem to be the case. It seems they want to be able to continue selling iterations of their current products rather than preventing others from selling electric only vehicles.

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