Toyota CEO Says “Silent Majority” of Auto Industry Is Doubting EV-Only Future

That's true.

But EVs have a massive infrastructure problem in developing countries which won't be fixed anytime soon or even ever, and somebody has to make cars for them as well.

Uh, okay.

That Toyota has no foresight or the belief that they haven't invested billions in the future of the auto industry - hydrogen and EV - sounds like an "unpopular desire" of your own.

A quick back-of-the-envelope makes clear that a pure EV future that's structured similarly to what exists today isn't viable. There's ~1.44B cars world wide. Replace them all with EVs, and you and up using something around 130MT of copper just for the cars. Currently commercially viable copper reserves are around ~900MT.

Given that you also need a charger infrastructure, and that humanity has a few other uses for copper, that's problematic.

Thinking about alternatives besides copper-based cars is simply hedging their bets. And while not all car manufacturers have a hydrogen hedge at hand, they all employ plenty of people who can do the basic math above.

EV only is not going to happen without significant shifts either reducing total number of cars by a large number, or reducing the amount of copper needed by a large number. Clearly, car makers don't care about option 1, and there are not that many option 2 alternatives.

From the perspective of the USA, the fact remains that we are right on the line of consuming more power than we generate, yet we've made building and operating new power generation facilities unfeasible for mercurial reasons. It takes just one winter storm to trigger rolling blackouts. That should not happen in a modern civilization.

I fail to see the reasoning behind the EV push, not only from a supply standpoint, but an environmental one, as well. How can we expect the grid to go from handling around 2,000,000 EV to 250,000,000 just in under 10 years? And how much strip mining will nations (mostly China) need to do to create (non-recyclable) EV batteries?

When the Gov of CA tells you that you can't buy a ICE vehicle, that only EVs will be allowed to be sold, but then in the next breath, tells you not to charge your EVs, you have to ask yourself if what you're advocating for falls within the realm of sanity or lunacy.

Akio Toyoda recognizes this. It is physically impossible without a complete rework of the grid, new power stations, and a network of charging stations that rival the network of gas stations, untold reserves of rare earth minerals, and a host of other concerns managed ...all in under 10 years.

The infrastructure isn't there. The money isn't there. The generation isn't there. The rare earth minerals aren't there and we'd have to destroy large parts of earth's surface to find them with no guarantee of success, PLUS use incredible amounts of electricity and diesel fuel to mine, transport, and process those minerals.

Terrible priorities and terrible long-term leadership got us here. We're careening head-long into a man-made disaster on a civilization scale.

Regarding, HEVs and PHEVs, I agree. Until battery components are more plentiful, HEVs can reduce fuel usage by almost half and PHEVs by up to 90% and require a fraction of the batteries to do it.

PHEVs typically have 1/10th the range of an EV and thus use about 1/10th the batteries and require 1/10th the electricity to charge. This means instead of building an EV that reduces gasoline use by 100%, we could build 10 PHEVs that reduce gasoline use by 90%, because 90% of daily usage is less than the 30 mile range of the PHEV battery. Those 10 PHEVs together, reduce gasoline use by 900% compared to 100% with an EV with 10x the batteries. Also, PHEVs don't have range anxiety.

We have one vehicle. It's an HEV but we're planning to upgrade to a PHEV. If we got a second vehicle, it'd be an inexpensive EV for short trips when the PHEV is already being used, but we'd still keep the PHEV for those longer trips and road trip vacations.

At COP26, leading automotive companies, businesses, governments, and investors agreed to work towards all new cars and vans being zero emission vehicles by 2035 in leading markets and by 2040 globally.

New Polling Shows U.S. Voters Support Full Transition to Electric Cars by 2030

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-polling-shows-u...

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/08/25/california-enacts-world-le...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/business/gm-zero-emission...

As a result the Japanese carmakers have shied from investing in EVs since the soft edict from top was to build hydrogen instead.

It’s not a coincidence that the first Japanese car company that jumped right into EVs was Nissan when it was being headed by Ghosn, who isn’t Japanese himself. (The Prius doesn’t count…that was Toyota’s answer to CA’s requirements, and was wildly successful beyond what they expected. The fact that Toyota hardly built on the Prius brand for 2 decades tells one all they need to know about how the Japanese automakers staying away from EVs isn’t just a business decision, but is being driven by other considerations).

True, GM only cancels and gives up on EV programs that cost single digit billions. ;)

    > In just ten years we’ve gone from the first Model S leaving the assembly line to electric F-150 and Mustang. That’s as mainstream as it gets. 

Let's just get out of the way and say if you have to use the term "silent majority" you better make sure you're not falling victim to confirmation bias (aka, "other automotive CEOs who are similarly viewed as 'behind' in the EV space feel the same").

But the bigger point is "the point at which the benefits of an EV exceed the trade-offs for most people in developed countries." I think we're there, or we're getting there once the initial cost of the vehicle comes down[0].

There's no question it's "mainstream" and I'm having a really hard time these days seeing any downside -- for my specific vehicle needs -- to owning an EV and several upsides without taking the cost of fuel into account[1]. Being that Volkswagen had let slip they were designing an electric version of the classic VW Bus, I figured I'd wait for that to be out a couple of years and purchased a used Dodge Caravan for the time being.

Family circumstances led to me no longer needing a van and because of how little I drive, I'm beginning to wonder if it makes sense for me to own a car at all. That was unthinkable where I live about 15 years ago but I'm driving so infrequently that I'm often finding I'm failing to do maintenance on time (well under miles, but past the date -- sometimes it matters). The car is paid off but I need to sit down and factor in the cost of maintaining insurance, registration, oil/transmission changes, tire rotations (which required new tires due to my failure to realize how past due I was), alignment, brakes (similar to tires, I'm often replacing rotors), fuel, cleaning and repair and just see what that is costing me per month. I own a motorcycle which I drive in the warm months in most weather -- total maintenance/insurance is $250/yr, tires/repairs, it's probably added $20/yr to the cost and I paid cash for it -- new -- in 2012. I'm easily past the point where "Uber/Lyft" would be much less costly than owning a car.

The loss of having a (safer) vehicle "on demand" and the way that might appear to someone I'm dating is a huge factor, though. I don't know what kind of regular maintenance is required for an electric vehicle, but I've read that some manufacturers are considering using drum brakes throughout[2]. There's no equivalent to oil changes, I'd expect there is (or will be at some point) a way to tell the vehicle to keep the charge at an "storage/idle state[3]" Stored in a garage between 40-80 (sorry, Fahrenheit) year round, what kind of other maintenance am I looking at? Could I sock some money away each month to replace the battery and how much would I need to plan to have/when?

I'm not what a lot of people would consider the mainstream EV buyer. External effects excluded, the cost of fuel would start affecting me, probably, at $10/gallon with my driving habits. I don't care abut the impact of my driving on climate change and generally do not make large purchasing decisions based on environmental concerns (character flaw as it is). I don't care how fast it accelerates, or how sexy it looks. For my driving needs (and wants), though, it's looking like an EV is by far the best choice.

Of course, astute observers will notice that this is a pretty non-optimal solution to my problem. The "Uber/Lyft" solution is cheapest, but involves someone driving me around. Because my driving tends to schedule well (mostly Friday-Monday, presently, though that will change), renting a car on the weekend would be a suitable option if it weren't an awful experience. I don't see a way for a company to swoop in and fill this space (without going bankrupt) with current technology/culture. For example, if the "Uber/Lyft" solution were self-driving vehicles, I'd be more apt to drop car ownership. I think a lot of people would. At what point does "getting places" become so generic that you simply "subscribe to transportation" and an array of options is available to you based on where you're headed/the purpose of your trip. At a certain point, that sort of thing changes "why we travel", as well.

[0] People are kind of terrible at factoring in total cost of ownership.

[1] The last time I was in the market for a new car, my driving needs were under 10,000 miles a year but most of those miles involved six passengers.

[2] Not a car guy but my understanding: Drum brakes are not exposed to the elements and otherwise last much longer but are more expensive to repair (they may also not stop the wheel as well but I don't know). With regenerative braking, drum brakes will last substantially longer than disc.

[3] Other EV devices I own recommend 40-60% to keep the battery from premature death.

EVs use the most generic form of power exchange we’ve been able to come up with (electricity), and can be charged from any form of it relatively easily and inexpensively - from low voltage DC to high voltage AC , with various efficiency trade offs - with equipment we know how to design and build, and have been doing so for a long time now.

They’re remarkably flexible, and adaptable.

If one was sufficiently motivated, you could burn sugar refining leftovers in a boiler run a dynamo to charge, or direct charge off a solar panel array, or charge off a generator, or high voltage grid interconnect (relatively directly) that was available infrequently. Or a power outlet in a house.

They’re also remarkably low maintenance mechanically, with much smaller supply chains required, up to the life of the battery.

That potentially means they are the most flexible and best option during high change situations. It’s possible to cobble together working solutions in nearly any type of situation.

For most current users, they don’t need flexibility, they need convenience (in a specific, predictable set of circumstances), and a stable large interconnected grid definitely enables that.

But if the grid is down half the time, gas station pumps won’t work, refineries have issues, etc. too. EVs can still charge just fine when it’s up. It does take time, but in a ‘everything is falling apart’ situation, you either have none or more than you can deal with anyway. So it doesn’t likely change the situation much against it.

Hydrogen however is still not worth anything either way. :s

A typical kitchen water-boiler uses 1.5kW. My EV, when charging at home, charges at 5kW.

If you have to do a fast charge because you’re on a road trip, you might choose to accelerate battery degradation by charging at 50-200kW, but that’s the rare and expensive exception to the rule.

What’s hard about national events is that historically power generation hasn’t been good at load following. If you know you’re going to charge 2 million EVs every night, there’s very little load following needed, it’s a steady load.

It’s still a lot more energy than current grids can supply, so there’s no doubt that more production and transmission is needed, but the engineering to achieve this is not some radical departure from current techniques.

Truly, it's #2 that I love the most. Instead of spending hours of my life every year sitting at a gas pump, my car is always fully charged every morning. #1 is cool, too, of course, it costs me $200/year to fuel my EV, where I was spending almost that every month with my last ICEV. #3 is a minimum requirement, of course.

YMMV, of course, nobody ever promised that every single situation could benefit from the basic economics. Though starting next week if you live in Oregon and you're on a tight budget, a Bolt is a spectacular deal.

- car holds its value longer. You can expect a decent second hand value when you swap it out. So you write off less per mile too.

- easier to drive (no gears, engine fussing, etc.)

- sports car type performance due to high torque and lack of throttle lag. Even cheaper EVs can be quite sporty.

Some of these things might matter more to you than others. But since you mentioned money, that would be the #1 for you.

I'm sure they will figure out easier, cheaper ways to make hydrogen but electricity will always be more efficient and cheaper because it's a fundamental force of the universe. Even hydrogen is made from the fundamental forces of the universe.