Toyota Chairman Says People Are Finally Seeing the Reality About EVs
wsj.com
wsj.com
As a Tesla owner living in flyover country, I would say aside from politics there's a few things influencing the market.
- People still assume Tesla = $100K+ car. Nobody knows what Model 3 or Model Y or Model S is, and I can't blame them since the cars all look the same
- People still see my car and ask me what the gas mileage is, even when they know it's a Tesla, they just assume Teslas are hybrid cars like a Prius
- People still have no idea where the Supercharging stations are or that they even exist, because there aren't nearly enough of them around here
- People still haven't processed the idea that you can plug in your car and charge it at home
If you have a lot of money it's a great way to go, but electric is going to have trouble competing in the economy market for a while until they start making cars that make the insurance people happy.
True.
Sure, totally reasonable comparison.
So, they're comparing a huge step release of the Prius (which, always generates a lot of sales) vs. nearly the worst EV on the market.
As opposed to the bystanders who are suffering from every ICE vehicle sold? Make better EVs.
I think that if everybody could reduce their ICE usage by 90%, and only use 1/4 of the batteries, that is a win-win for everybody. People driving around in 200-350 mile EVs, that only drive less than a 1/4 of that on a regular basis are just wasting batteries that could have gone into other cars and saved them on the cost of their current car.
Like seriously, how often do you drive more than 100 miles? Once a week, once a month? We all know the stats for people's commutes are far shorter. Most people don't need long range EVs except for once in a while. That's what pro-EV people have been saying for years.
Even a Jeep Wrangler 4xe that only has like 10 miles of range... if your commute is 20 miles round trip, that's still half the gas usage. That guy probably wasn't going to buy an EV anyways. PHEVs are also a way to get skeptics to reduce reliance on gas.
- I have one of the smallest car available on the market (not available anymore in fact, but w/ever) and have no need nor interest in a bigger car. The catch is that I almost exclusively use my car for long day trips on the weekend, typically ranging 3-450km (I commute by train and bike/walk for other daily errands). EVs in the same convenient compact format do not have 3-450km of range. Maybe 250km advertised range at most, which will amount to less than 200km of real-world highway kms. Frankly I will not put up with (potentially multiple) recharging breaks on what is supposed to be a quick daily excursion.
- Related to the previous point. My small car cost less than 20k new. Equivalent EVs (equivalent in usability i.e. sufficient range for my use case which as stated would actually mean a much bigger car) start at ~60k. Even with the lower running cost of an EV, that price difference will never be compensated over the lifetime of the car.
- EVs are extremely convenient if you can always recharge at home, and extremeley inconvenient if you always need to recharge at a public charging station (btw the price at public charging stations is a racket in France and Switzerland, not sure how it is elsewhere). Like many Europeans, I live in an appartment and my car is parked on the street. The possibility to recharge at home does not exist. To mitigate the inconvenience you need more range to recharge less frequently, which mean a more expensive car.
https://www.bmw.de/de/topics/faszination-bmw/bmw-concept-veh...
If they ever manage to produce and sell them, it'll cost you a whole bunch to operate. Hydrogen for refuelling is somewhere around 13-18$/kg, which at a 6kg tank you're looking at 78-108$ to refuel. An electric car by comparison (which also costs less to buy) will set you back ~40$ for 100kWh AND you get to charge at home rather than go out of your way(if you're in California). If you're anywhere else in the world (which is an unfair comparison since you couldn't refuel you hydrogen car in the first place, but that's a different matter) that price can get down to something like 3$ in other places in the world.
A friend in San Diego had a Toyota Mirai, only available to lease, and had to therefore refuel at the station off Del Mar Highlands road. There's just no infrastructure.
"The pilot fleet of the BMW iX5 Hydrogen is not intended for sale. Depending on market requirements and framework conditions, we intend to potentially offer our customers a production vehicle in the second half of this decade. The small series is an important step on the way to this customer offer."
Cool discussion btw.
i guess the infrastructure being almost nonexistent is a huge blocker.