Toyota is quietly pushing Congress to slow the shift to electric vehicles

[SteveM]

You guys are talking as if this was still debatable when it's not. Europe has already mandated the elimination of ICE vehicles by 2035 as well as half a dozen US states.

I hope Europeans are fine with only being able to drive 200 miles per week, because that is what is going to happen with the current electrical infrastructure in Europe. There will be forced rationing of electricity. I have zero doubt.

And even if we had the infrastructure in place to generate the electricity required, there are 2.6M cars registered in the city of London alone. Where are all of these cars supposed to be charged?

 

[tomorton]

Right now it appears here in the UK that electric vehicles won't become cheaper to buy new than comparable fossil fuel powered vehicles until about 2027. Most of the electrics being bought today here are tiny hatchbacks: the bigger cars are luxury / status marques only and there isn't much in between.

I buy second-hand and the most I'll pay on a second-hand car would be 25-35% of the price new. There is almost no second-hand market in electric vehicles here yet.

At this rate it will be about 2050 before I can find and then afford a like for like replacement of what I have now.

 

[TreeFrogTrader]

The hydrogen compared to electric is not necessarily an either/or debate or should not be anyway.

The electrical grid system in the U.S. is a complete and total disaster so the premise that electrical energy is a given or somehow an area that we have mastered is a very shaky assumption. Look no further than California where the utility has and continues to totally frigging destroy the state and has gone bankrupt from having to payout on all of the liability.

Now we swing over to the opportunity side. Even the utilities and people who just want power -especially business owners- are on board with the idea that micro-grids or microgrids daisy chained together are the way to go to avoid maintaining thousands of miles of out-dated failing power lines or to build even more to meet the growing demand. Aside from not burning towns down and killing people, the segmentation of the power grid into more standalone segments is a system less vulnerable to cyberattacks or having the entire west coast or east shut down because a squirrel dropped a nut onto transformer or something.

And for the powering of microgrids, hydrogen is a lead player and will be for as far as the eye can see. So if the power grid goes down- in California for example- as it often does when they shut down for "prevention." how you gonna charge that Tesla? Not gonna happen. But if your town or section of a town is on a hydrogen powered microgrid then you will still be charging your car, thanks to BOTH hydrogen and electricity. As I said, it is not necessarily an either/or issue.

And, the micro grid versus powerline grid is also not an either/or discussion. Most of them are hooked into the grid with hydrogen powered generaters/plants, and fire up automatically as backup when the main grid goes down, and configuration can allow multiple microgrids to also feed power into the linked system and to a neighboring town too.

Okay, enough of that. Just say no to approaching it as a binary either/or choice.

 

[VicBee]

I hope Europeans are fine with only being able to drive 200 miles per week, because that is what is going to happen with the current electrical infrastructure in Europe. There will be forced rationing of electricity. I have zero doubt.

And even if we had the infrastructure in place to generate the electricity required, there are 2.6M cars registered in the city of London alone. Where are all of these cars supposed to be charged?

No one said it would be easy. But one thing is for sure, 10 years from now ICE vehicles will be the exception in Europe and the consequences will be dramatic.

 

[tango29]

Why not go to hybrids across the board until a real alternative is found? My youngest bought a Corolla hybrid to replace his 17 year old Corolla and is averaging over 53 mpg. That equates to just over a 50% increase in mileage over the old one, and the new non hybrid Corolla.
If we can get roughly a 50% increase across the board for all vehicles with a hybrid it would seem a fair option for now. You are still stuck with a battery and gas, but not a plug in sucking on the grid and quite a bit less fuel being used.

 

[caroy]

I hope Europeans are fine with only being able to drive 200 miles per week, because that is what is going to happen with the current electrical infrastructure in Europe. There will be forced rationing of electricity. I have zero doubt.

And even if we had the infrastructure in place to generate the electricity required, there are 2.6M cars registered in the city of London alone. Where are all of these cars supposed to be charged?

A thought tied to this discussion is the emergence of autonomous vehicles. When the technology is there sooner or rather than later car ownership in general will fall. Why own a car when 95% of the time it is parked? I think we'll need less cars as ordering a driverless uber on your phone will be cheaper and more efficient. No need for endless parking decks. To be fair I own an electric car with full self-driving and I hope in a year or two I can hook it to the uber app and have my robot taxi make me money while I sleep and work.

 

[terr]

A thought tied to this discussion is the emergence of autonomous vehicles. When the technology is there sooner or rather than later car ownership in general will fall. Why own a car when 95% of the time it is parked? I think we'll need less cars as ordering a driverless uber on your phone will be cheaper and more efficient. No need for endless parking decks. To be fair I own an electric car with full self-driving and I hope in a year or two I can hook it to the uber app and have my robot taxi make me money while I sleep and work.

Fully autonomous vehicles are like fusion reactors. They will always be 10 years in the future.

 

[caroy]

Fully autonomous vehicles are like fusion reactors. They will always be 10 years in the future.

Tesla rep promised me within 18 months. After using the self driving I think it will be longer.

 

[terr]

Tesla rep promised me within 18 months. After using the self driving I think it will be longer.

Tesla rep was fantasizing. The problem with fully autonomous vehicles is the "fully" part. It cannot be 90%. Or 95%. Or even 98%. As long as it is not 100%, solidly and fully 100%, it will require you to sit behind a wheel, alert and ready to take over.

And as long as you're behind the wheel and alert, you might as well drive.

 

[Cuddles]

It is moves like this which show the tremendous impact of Tesla. The old automakers were never going to be the ones to push the switch to greener tech themselves. Even the companies that we may have thought were forward looking a decade ago like Toyota are now showing that they had no plans to embrace cleaner vehicles as an overall company strategy. The industry needed an outsider to threaten the incumbents into actually changing.

Toyota was once a leader in electric vehicles, with the release of the Toyota Prius in 1997. However over the last 2 decades Toyota made the incorrect bet on hydrogen powered vehicles, and is now lagging behind the rest of the industry shifting to electric vehicles.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22594235/toyota-lobbying-dc-ev-congress-biden-donation

For those curious, here is the Toyota hydrogen-powered Mirai: https://www.toyota.com/mirai/


Meanwhile, Tesla has just reported Q2 2021 quarterly net income of $1.14 billion!

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Is this different from Tesla lobbying to push electric through climate change bills that affect their ICE competitors?

You guys are talking as if this was still debatable when it's not. Europe has already mandated the elimination of ICE vehicles by 2035 as well as half a dozen US states. That's done and EVs are the standard. Can there be alts like hydrogen power? Sure, like Betamax tapes were used in some specific industries, but VHS became the standard.

Bills can and often are reverted. Sometimes, even international treaties are broken up over them (Brexit).