VW in talks to adopt Tesla’s EV charging plug, but Toyota is staying silent | Hacker News Reader

VW in talks to adopt Tesla’s EV charging plug, but Toyota is staying silent

theverge.com

9 pointsmfiguiere12 comments

Toyota staying silent has been the status quo for the automaker when it comes to EVs. Toyota makes highly reliable cars and has a great reputation in the US for doing so. But they've flubbed the EV revolution so hard it's difficult to see them doing well in the years to come. Meanwhile, other legacy automakers like Hyundai have used this opportunity to drive real development in the area and make a new name for themselves. Even Ford is doing better than Toyota in this area. It's pretty sad really, I was a big fan of Toyotas for a long time but now it just seems they're getting left in the dust.

May I remind you that Toyota is heavily invested into hydrogen engines and are about to start selling them commercially. I believe they simply don’t see 100% EVs as viable. It’s an interesting strategy and upon reading on it, I don’t see them being wrong.

They’ve said as much that they don’t think fully BEVs are viable and have lobbied to that effect.

Hydrogen is a dead end though. They’re the only one that believes in it, there’s only two states with pumps in the USA and they routinely ignore the downside of shipping and storing the hydrogen.

Toyota are the only major car brand sticking to their guns against EVs, and they frankly sound like they’re just being stubborn about it.

Toyota's patent on "shifting gears" (manual-transmission-style) is why I'm waiting on their big move before I buy a new EV.

Toyota has dragged its feet with regard to EVs, betting on hydrogen fuel cells instead. That bet appears to have been a bad one. Since they're such a small part of the EV market, their decision certainly isn't critical for NACS adoption.

Great. USA and Europe using different standards ... Type 2 will not go nowhere in Europe and USA will choose the Tesla Connector.

Oh. Just into the rabbit hole, Japan and China also use different Standards.

This is already the case. CSS1 (NA) is incompatible with CCS2 (Europe). NA is just swapping out CCS1 for the Tesla physical plug. China also has its own standard. I don't see it as a huge issue. Cars are infrequently moved between continents anyway, and manufacturers have far bigger regional differences they already deal with.

Different standards in the EU and US won't matter that much. It's $100 hardware that they will swap during manufacturing.

I'd be interested to see the kind of discourse that goes into EV charging standards, but applied to wall outlets, purely for entertainment mind you.

Really glad most if not all of these standards are electrically compatible, and can be cheaply adapted.

Universal Plug won't be a thing. All vehicle manufacturers will just adopt NACS for NA, but other plugs for the rest of market.

What EVs does Toyota even have? The widely panned bZ4X? All their other stuff are PHEV which don't need (or support) fast charging.

> All their other stuff are PHEV which don't need (or support) fast charging.

The NACS plug supports L1, L2, and L3 charging, and there definitely are NACS L2 chargers in the wild.

A minority compared to J1772, sure, but all the EVSE manufacturers have said future chargers will at least optionally have NACS.

We're in a time of transition where more and more chargers - including L2 - will have NACS instead of J1772.

Toyota's PHEVs having J1772 won't be a problem now, or in 2 years, or in 4... But as time marches on there will be a point where finding a J1772 L2 charger is harder than finding an NACS L2 chargers.

Yes yes, you can adapt NACS to J1772 the same way you can adapt J1772 to NACS... But Tesla owners are moving from a world where they always need their adapters to where they won't need one... And I'm not sure people who have never needed an adapter will be thrilled to start needing one.

Considering the used car market of ~8 years from now is being determined by new cars today, the longer Toyota drags their feet here, the larger their continued reputation hit will be in the long run.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com