Toyota engineer: BEVs won't spread even with rapid chargers

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dgpcolorado

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No surprise to those of us who have been paying attention to Toyota's strategy:

Electric cars won't spread even with rapid chargers: Toyota engineer

(Reuters) - Battery-powered electric vehicles don't have a practical future as a long-range alternative to conventional cars even if technological breakthroughs allow them to be charged quickly, a top engineer at Toyota Motor Corp said on Thursday.

Electric vehicle (EV) supporters have touted developing high-speed charging technology as the way forward for cars like Nissan Motor Co's Leaf. But Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief engineer of Toyota's hydrogen fuel-cell car Mirai, said that would guzzle so much energy at once as to defeat the purpose of the EV as an ecologically sound form of transportation.

"If you were to charge a car in 12 minutes for a range of 500 km (310 miles), for example, you're probably using up electricity required to power 1,000 houses," Tanaka told a small group of reporters at the first test-drive event for the production version of the Mirai, the world's only mass-market fuel-cell car.

"That totally goes against the need to stabilize electricity use on the grid."
Of course, this comes from the engineer in charge of the hydrogen fuel cell car boondoggle.
 
dgpcolorado said:
No surprise to those of us who have been paying attention to Toyota's strategy:

Electric cars won't spread even with rapid chargers: Toyota engineer

(Reuters) - Battery-powered electric vehicles don't have a practical future as a long-range alternative to conventional cars even if technological breakthroughs allow them to be charged quickly, a top engineer at Toyota Motor Corp said on Thursday.

Electric vehicle (EV) supporters have touted developing high-speed charging technology as the way forward for cars like Nissan Motor Co's Leaf. But Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief engineer of Toyota's hydrogen fuel-cell car Mirai, said that would guzzle so much energy at once as to defeat the purpose of the EV as an ecologically sound form of transportation.

"If you were to charge a car in 12 minutes for a range of 500 km (310 miles), for example, you're probably using up electricity required to power 1,000 houses," Tanaka told a small group of reporters at the first test-drive event for the production version of the Mirai, the world's only mass-market fuel-cell car.

"That totally goes against the need to stabilize electricity use on the grid."
Of course, this comes from the engineer in charge of the hydrogen fuel cell car boondoggle.


Yep, you ultimately need some form of storage and buffering at the delivery point. I wonder who might be working on that.

9TeFLFm.jpg
 
EdmondLeaf said:
What happened to Toyota?


I think they are up to a disinformation strategy to act like they will never build an EV when they are likely only planning to build one later. I don't think it is effective and there is NO WAY Toyota is going to sit back and not build EVs once they are more popular and battery tech evolves, in fact I would expect some dumb excuse like, "We first viewed EVs as not being market viable in the past but now that we have developed this new high density, solid state (blah, blah, ) battery tech it makes sense for to suddenly drop several Prius EV models on the market" Some nonsense will come unless there is no significant EV growth in the next 5 years.
 
He's not much of an engineer if his answer to a problem is to throw up his hands and declare it "unsolvable". Yet at the same time, he conveniently ignores all of the problems to be solved for a hydrogen economy?

Yeah, this reeks of a misinformation campaign.
 
dgpcolorado said:
Of course, this comes from the engineer in charge of the hydrogen fuel cell car boondoggle.
He has to believe in what he's doing in order to keep going to work each day, just as Tony Williams needs to believe in his DCQC work to keep his business moving forward. I'm not surprised by either's message or behavior.

What does concern me is how easily so many people can get spun out of control over a fake battle between two types of zero emission electric vehicles in their infancy when there is a freaking fire-breathing dragon torching the planet.

While this year's El Nino is too late to bring winter rain to CA, it's bringing cool and rain to TX. But that's balanced by the start of new drought in South America and another heavy fire year in the Amazon basin. Separately, Siberia's burning already.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r94gooSsCc[/youtube]


Perspective is really important. If we don't keep focusing on fixing the problem, there won't be a Third Industrial Revolution. Or a Hydrogen Economy. Or enough people with enough money to keep buying Teslas.
 
AndyH said:
What does concern me is how easily so many people can get spun out of control over a fake battle between two types of zero emission electric vehicles in their infancy when there is a freaking fire-breathing dragon torching the planet.
So you're concerned about the concern of others on issues that they feel are concerning to them..

Hmmm..

That concerns me.... :D

desiv
 
desiv said:
AndyH said:
What does concern me is how easily so many people can get spun out of control over a fake battle between two types of zero emission electric vehicles in their infancy when there is a freaking fire-breathing dragon torching the planet.
So you're concerned about the concern of others on issues that they feel are concerning to them..

Hmmm..

That concerns me.... :D

desiv
No. I'm standing outside the box seeing the dragon flying around and calling for help from people distracted by petty BS - and feeling strongly that by the time enough people wake up the only choice we'll have left is to experience a final 'Ah Ha' moment before all the lights go out. Sorry if I'm not finding humour in that...
 
AndyH said:
No. I'm standing outside the box seeing the dragon flying around and calling for help from people distracted by petty BS - and feeling strongly that by the time enough people wake up the only choice we'll have left is to experience a final 'Ah Ha' moment before all the lights go out. Sorry if I'm not finding humour in that...
We got that...
Humour is a fickle beast tho..

Have a good one.. ;-)

desiv
 
The only other on-topic thought I care to offer is that we could either slam Toyota, or we could work to prove the message wrong. It's the difference between interpreting the message as distress or as eustress. The choice is ours, I guess.
 
In a sense it doesn't matter whether Toyota really believes their hydrogen hype, or whether it's a sham to disguise their true intentions to sell only gas cars. Either way the BEV industry doesn't lose anything by their real or fake hydrogen focus since they wouldn't be working on BEVs in either case. The only way it does matter is if they persuade governments to spend scarce infrastructure dollars on H2 fueling stations in place of orders of magnitude cheaper quick charging, so the infrastructure spending is wasted, so many more people stay in fossil fuel cars. I'm not sure that beyond some feasibility study H2 stations, analogous to the Ecotality feasibility study QC stations, there will be enough government funded infrastructure to make a difference for either type of vehicle.

I'm suspicious of Toyota's motives. I was also suspicious of GM's motives with the Volt, which I thought was meant mainly to deflect pure BEV sales. But then it turned out that the Volt drove more miles on EV power than did the Leaf. That's what matters - displacing fossil powered miles - and Volt doesn't need infrastructure. Maybe something like that will happen with Toyota. Their FCEV may initially catch on despite lack of expensive sustainable infrastructure because an inexpensive unsustainable infrastructure will be built - producing hydrogen from natural gas. That first wave of FCEV's wouldn't save any CO2 emissions, and might even increase them, but might be enough to catalyze development of a sustainable infrastructure for a much larger second wave of vehicles.
 
Electric quick charge vs ice vs hydrogen. I don't think the battle will be decided by cars, it will be decided by long haul trucks. I strongly believe that electrical charge at home for your daily needs (200 miles) will take over for all cars. It's just way too cheap and convenient and there will be no profit in any refueling infrastructure that caters only to cars. The market will be limited to people who can't charge at home everyday (ie condos, renters, street parking, 4+ multi car households etc...) and people who drive more than 200 miles a day. Most of the more than 200 mile a day people will be in a hurry, to them 30 min vs. 5 min will probably matter more than it does to you and I and most of them will probably at one point in every day pass by an area that is frequented by long haul commercial vehicles. As the avg BEV range goes above 200 miles the use of for profit quick chargers for cars only will be so low that without trucks using them they won't make any money.

Toyota may never build another BEV but I bet they will transition the fuel cell cars to get a decent plug in range for commutes. However what Toyota will be doing is building BEV under their Chinese brand partnerships which we might see here one day.
http://www.autoevolution.com/news/t...lectric-vehicle-sub-brand-in-china-87997.html

Just IMHO but I don't think quick charge will catch on quick enough for trucks. If they stay ICE then I think quick charge for cars has a limited future and the only model that will probably work is Teslas since it's there as a support not a primary way of making money. Power companies might get in on a similar model to support the home delivery sales through public quick charging too and give it a leg up on Hydrogen.
 
mjblazin said:
Won't trucks go with natural gas? It is dirt cheap and has few if any negative comparisons to gasoline powered engines.

Just a few fracking related issues to contend with :lol:
 
mjblazin said:
Won't trucks go with natural gas? It is dirt cheap and has few if any negative comparisons to gasoline powered engines.

Natural gas is still an ICE, doesn't matter what ends up fueling it as I bet whatever it is will quickly be adapted as the extra range option for the majority of cars.

Toyota has a lot of business in trucks too so after the smoke starts to settle from the smoke and Mirai show I highly suspect Toyota to start pushing hydrogen in trucks big time.

If governments have been willing to give people $7500+ to get buy cars that might not even get driven that much and are bought instead of a car that avg 20+ mpg then what's it worth to get a truck that gets 6 mpg and drives 51 weeks a year for 10 to 20 hrs a day to be replaced by a zero emissions vehicle?

I think if hydrogen lets us get trucks clean before BEV is there even with fracking we are still probably ahead. Now I don't pretend to know much about fracking so I may be off.

That being said the same would be true of natural gas but fracking isn't the only way to get hydrogen. If we use it now to clean up trucks we can phase it out later. If we switch to natural gas now there probably won't be much gov't incentive and it would probably mean lots of fracking to continue.
 
AndyH said:
dgpcolorado said:
Of course, this comes from the engineer in charge of the hydrogen fuel cell car boondoggle.
He has to believe in what he's doing in order to keep going to work each day, just as Tony Williams needs to believe in his DCQC work to keep his business moving forward. I'm not surprised by either's message or behavior.

What does concern me is how easily so many people can get spun out of control over a fake battle between two types of zero emission electric vehicles in their infancy when there is a freaking fire-breathing dragon torching the planet.

While this year's El Nino is too late to bring winter rain to CA, it's bringing cool and rain to TX. But that's balanced by the start of new drought in South America and another heavy fire year in the Amazon basin. Separately, Siberia's burning already.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r94gooSsCc[/youtube]


Perspective is really important. If we don't keep focusing on fixing the problem, there won't be a Third Industrial Revolution. Or a Hydrogen Economy. Or enough people with enough money to keep buying Teslas.

I see nothing that resembles climate issues in the comments.

I read it as a political protest by an arsonist to demonstrate against budget cuts of public services and the atrocities of war brought on by Putin's local cronies.
 
mjblazin said:
Won't trucks go with natural gas? It is dirt cheap and has few if any negative comparisons to gasoline powered engines.
Some trucks are moving to natural gas. Others though, in both CA and in Texas, are using fuel cells. Somewhat apples and oranges, sure, as most of the class 8 FCEV are short haul port vehicles. But they are 'toe in the water' R&D vehicles in exactly the same vein as today's BEVs. We're in a bunch of 'Gen 1' space with 'public beta testing' completed in the 1990s and early 2000s. From here on out, fingers crossed, we start seeing the same sort of zero emission vehicle deployment that we saw for PV and wind generation.

In other words: I look forward to proving the Toyota engineer wrong.
 
smkettner said:
AndyH said:
dgpcolorado said:
Of course, this comes from the engineer in charge of the hydrogen fuel cell car boondoggle.
He has to believe in what he's doing in order to keep going to work each day, just as Tony Williams needs to believe in his DCQC work to keep his business moving forward. I'm not surprised by either's message or behavior.

What does concern me is how easily so many people can get spun out of control over a fake battle between two types of zero emission electric vehicles in their infancy when there is a freaking fire-breathing dragon torching the planet.

While this year's El Nino is too late to bring winter rain to CA, it's bringing cool and rain to TX. But that's balanced by the start of new drought in South America and another heavy fire year in the Amazon basin. Separately, Siberia's burning already.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r94gooSsCc[/youtube]


Perspective is really important. If we don't keep focusing on fixing the problem, there won't be a Third Industrial Revolution. Or a Hydrogen Economy. Or enough people with enough money to keep buying Teslas.

I see nothing that resembles climate issues in the comments.

I read it as a political protest by an arsonist to demonstrate against budget cuts of public services and the atrocities of war brought on by Putin's local cronies.
<facepalm> Might want to have those blinders checked. :evil: Seriously - the youtube comments? Fine - I'll cross-post here what's already on this forum in a 'more appropriate' area:

http://climatecrocks.com/2015/04/16/spring-is-here-siberia-already-in-flames/
NASA-March2015-638x399.jpg

MOSCOW, March 2. The outgoing winter, which ended a couple of days ago according to the calendar, has proved the warmest in the history of weather monitoring in Russia conducted since 1891, the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring said on Monday.

Over the past winter the average air temperatures in almost all Russian regions were two degrees above the norm as a minimum; on some territories it was even warmer. The past winter proved particularly mild in the Central, Northwest, Siberian and the Far Eastern Federal Districts, where seasonal air temperatures were 4-7 degrees above the norm.

The 2014-2015 winter beat a record earlier set by the 1962 winter by 0.5 degrees. The past winter was one of the four warmest winters in Moscow’s history, ranking fourth after almost equally warm winters registered in 1961, 1989 and 2008.
Wind-whipped grassland fires set by Russian farmers preparing for spring planting have killed at least 23 people, injured more than 900 and left 5,000 homeless, authorities said Tuesday.
No, this is not the first year that farmers have burned their fields in preparation for planting....and it's got nothing to do with Putin. I do, however, recommend reading the comments at the Climate Crocks links - including the info from folks in Slovakia, Spain, and other parts of Europe.
 
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