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Comment by princevegeta89 | Hacker News Reader

Actually, we should also realize that they've been super wildly successful at getting people to move towards clean energy vehicles.

Prius is the world's highest selling Hybrid car, and it's been that for more than a decade now. This means Toyota has helped cut down emissions from consumer automobiles by a significant degree.

It's not the 1000 EVs out of the 100k vehicles that matter, but rather the 10k hybrid vehicles out of that same 100k pool, which literally produce double the MPG compared to ICE cars. It becomes obvious when we look at the total emissions generated by that pool of 100k cars.

If there's anyone to blame, I'd look at the luxury division - Mercedes, Audi and BMW (and also Genesis/Acura) - all late to the party, and still haven't been successful at meaningfully replacing the vehicles they would sell to their customers yet.

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Up until recently (~2022/23) Toyota had cumulatively sold more hybrids than all EVs sold by all manufacturers combined, globally. They arguably have the best hybrid drivetrain on the market, and it's gotten to the point where even the Camry (2025 onwards) are exclusively offered as hybrids now.

>> Camry (2025 onwards) are exclusively offered as hybrids now.

This is a very dope move. Glad to hear that

That sounds more impressive than it is actual savings from hybrids is vastly less than EV’s and the ramp up has been extremely quick.

Combined mileage from many hybrid power trains is only ~10% better, and the technology inherently adds significant costs/complexity.

They were not getting 45 mpg without hybrid…

There isn’t a non hybrid version of the Prius with all its weight and aerodynamic features.

But there’s ~45 MPG all gas cars that have been built. Currently the best option is 39MPG combined, but that car’s aerodynamics aren’t great because hybrids can push that a little further for people who really want maximum MPG.

Hybrids are a dead end. There’s already EV’s doing 1MW charging. That’s practically gas pump speeds while also being able to charge at home, and the underlying technology keeps improving.

8% of new cars in the US, 14% in the EU, and 27% in China are EV’s. Toyota’s EV sales are anemic by comparison.

Toyota does not want to sell a lot of EVs, because that could mean investing heavily to scale up the manufacturing of a dead-end technology that ends up losing out. Meanwhile they've been iterating on their hybrid tech and are selling 50 MPG vehicles by the millions. When the dust settles, a lot of EV companies will be out of business and their products will be e-waste with 0 spares anywhere. Toyota on the other hand generally uses the same technology for decades to build very predictable appliance-like vehicles. This is why a 3 year old EVs have 40% residuals while used Toyotas are 60%.

Toyota has invested very heavily in hydrogen cars, which is an actual "dead-end technology that ends up losing out".

Sure, numerous EV startups will bite the dust, but the actual tech of putting a battery on wheels and spinning the wheels with motors isn't going anywhere.

Toyota invested heavily into the R&D which is distinct from tooling up to produce 70kwh battery packs by the millions. They've sold maybe 20k hydrogen cars, globally over the course of a decade as a pilot. They also sold 4k RAV4 EVs, are working on EVs with BYD and CATL, which means that they're keeping their finger on the pulse of the industry while also staying out of the lithium/neodymium pissing contest which they simply cannot win. The reason Chinese EVs are such a good deal is because all of the hard-to-source stuff is under the same roof because China doesn't really have a fossil fuel story. Their hope with EVs is that the current approach to making them is simply not sustainable on a global scale and that the emergence of less resource-intensive technologies will saddle all earlier entrants (that aren't subsidized by nations) with debt.

>They also sold 4k RAV4 EVs

Toyota has sold over 33,000 BZ4Xs in the U.S..

https://electrek.co/2025/01/03/toyota-bz4x-sales-finally-pic...

https://insideevs.com/news/755382/bz4x-solterra-sales-increa...

Hybrids are the only choice for the vast majority of the country that doesn't have the needed infrastructure to support EVs. If you never leave your urban enclave, then sure, EVs are great. But hybrids are perfect for _right now_, even if EVs are the future.

The Toyota hybrid engine is also rock solid and has been for more than a decade. They don't have a reason to abandon that right now when the industry is highly unstable and government funding for infrastructure that isn't Tesla's is being cut left and right.

I live in rural VT, 600 person town in national forest. Tons of us have EVs because you don’t have to drive down the mountain for gas and they drive great in the snow and mud.

>It's not the 1000 EVs out of the 100k vehicles that matter, but rather the 10k hybrid vehicles out of that same 100k pool, which literally produce double the MPG compared to ICE cars.

It seems like hybrid sales are pretty comparable to EV sales in the U.S., at least according to this source anyway.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=63904

These metrics are most likely skewed - California has a significant number of EVs in a sample of every 100 cars, but in other states EVs are almost nowhere to be found.

Seems in line with the data here as well:

https://www.bts.gov/content/gasoline-hybrid-and-electric-veh...

...I would think this data is from vehicle registration data, and not sampled from owner surveys (or the like).

yes exactly, that is the kind of success that prevents you from believing that the next big thing is going to worse-is-better you out of the market

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