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> Many of them won't make the ev transition.

What exactly makes u come to this conclusion?

I think that's a little hyperbolic, but the Japanese are way behind. There was a decent analysis (as always) in the Economist recently.

https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/04/16/how-japan-is-losin...

No one needs to bother with that race. It is just a ploy by China to gain marketshare in the car industry. It won't work because it ultimately creates a massive new resource dependency. One that just happens to shift everyone's supply chain to China or Chinese controlled companies. I believe Western companies will eventually walk away from pursuing battery cars, at least in the sense of them being the only solution. it just has too many obvious problem.

What are these obvious problems?

Expensive, limited range, slow recharge times, huge dependency on a battery supply chain, etc. Right now, people are obsessed about them but I think this is just temporary phenomenon. Once people realize that there are cheaper forms of green transportation that avoid those above issues, the obsession with battery EVs will end.

Battery EVs probably won't go away, there would be too much backlash against politicians saying "Actually, let's not bother," even if/when the US finally understands and embraces sane intra- and inter-urban transportation modes.

Toyota in particular has wasted a ridiculous amount of time and money on consumer-level hydrogen tech. As a result competitors that focused on battery EVs over the last few years have a decent head start.

The other companies are wasting their time. Battery EVs are a dead end and they will all have to move to hydrogen tech eventually. It is the other companies that are way behind.

In EE terms, betting against batteries is like betting against CMOS. Progress will go where the industry's money goes, not where any one company's money goes. If I could say just one thing to Toyota's management, it would be, "Stop trying to make hydrogen happen. It's not going to happen. There are just too many technical and economic drawbacks."

But any of their engineers could tell them the same thing, so what'd be the point?

The most prominent alternative (fuel cell EV) are also EVs. There are no fundamental downsides in comparison either. To continue your EE analogy, you're betting against another kind of CMOS which also happens to be made of far cheaper materials. Like your CMOS is made of germanium but the competition is made of silicon.

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