Toyota caving in to electric. Bye-bye hydrogen pie

[BarkingGhostar]

Just in case everyone missed it, Toyota is now investing in billions of dollars in electric car batteries, which I presume is to power upcoming products. Good? Bad? Ugly?

 

[Thump553]

They sell consumer products-success means selling what consumers want. Toyota's venture into hydrogen powered cars was an expensive mistake.

Once they get acceptable range and good charging abilities, I'd love to kiss oil changes and ICE repairs and maintenance goodbye forever.

BTW did you know that early on Toyota owned about 15% of Tesla's stock?

 

[Heartbreaker]

Not so much quitting hydrogen as bowing to the reality of EVs, though it is a small investment in batteries compared to many competitors.

Here is link covering the info:

Toyota to Invest $14.3B in development of a Next Generation Liquid and Solid-State Batteries

In a livestreamed briefing on batteries and carbon neutrality, Toyota Chief Technology Officer Masahiko Maeda said that the company will invest ¥1.5 trillion...

www.nxtmine.com

 

[Murloc]

1. hydrogen cars are electric cars, they use electric motors. This part is not affected by their previous strategy at least.
2. they are late compared to the other companies due to their strategic mistake of thinking H2 > chemical batteries for cars. Let's see if they can catch up.
3. maybe the hydrogen-related IP they own can still be recycled for applications where capillary distribution is not needed but long distance haul is. E.g. 40 ton trucks moving between ports and inland hubs.

 

[Ajay]

1. hydrogen cars are electric cars, they use electric motors. This part is not affected by their previous strategy at least.
2. they are late compared to the other companies due to their strategic mistake of thinking H2 > chemical batteries for cars. Let's see if they can catch up.
3. maybe the hydrogen-related IP they own can still be recycled for applications where capillary distribution is not needed but long distance haul is. E.g. 40 ton trucks moving between ports and inland hubs.

Yeah, I thought Hydrogen cars were a good idea, until somebody did that math for me on YouTube a few years ago. For long haul trucking (maybe), trains, planes and ships - it might be more successful. And these, so long as it's Green Hydrogen; none of this Blue Hydrogen BS (methane steam reforming w/carbon capture).

Large aircraft (passenger, cargo) will need chemical batteries with much higher watt/kg output to be feasible, IMHO.

 

[Torn Mind]

GM and Ford be like "not them again".

They'll bust out the golden labby puppy eyes and head to Washington, "Bailout, pretty plz"

 

[RLGL]

For the short term..........possibly too far into the future.
Long term they may be back.........

 

[darkswordsman17]

Yeah this isn't changing Toyota's hydrogen plans. From what I've gathered one of the reasons Toyota is big on hydrogen is there's natural reserves of it under the seafloor around Japan. And yeah, hyrdrogen for passenger cars is silly. As is hydrogen from methane, and other methods that require a lot of electricity to produce (unless its by using large sea based wind or tide turbines processing sea water).

And yeah, as others pointed out, this is also quite low compared to many other companies' battery investments. It might be the lowest in the industry for a major player. I think VW and Ford alone are each spending like 3-5x the amount over that same time span.

Its a shame that Toyota started dragging their ass so much. They should have had all their cars having hybrid powertrains by default, which would have enabled them to easily meet emissions standards. Plug-in hybrid powertrains should have been mandated by 2020, which would have greatly eased the transition to fully electric. For every full electric car, they could produce about 3-4 plug-in hybrids. And for quite a lot of people, plug-in hybrids offer enough electric range for their daily commute (especially if they could plug-in once they get to work), while mitigating the range anxiety issues while better battery technology is developed to make full electric more feasible and cost effective.

GM and Ford be like "not them again".

They'll bust out the golden labby puppy eyes and head to Washington, "Bailout, pretty plz"

For starters, it was GM and Chrysler, not Ford.

Also, you know Toyota (and Ford) begged the government to bail out GM and Chrysler, right? Because if they went under it would have taken suppliers that Ford and Toyota depend on as well, which would have then led to them going under.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

So how long before we see an EV Tundra ... me drooling.

 

[Torn Mind]

For starters, it was GM and Chrysler, not Ford.

Also, you know Toyota (and Ford) begged the government to bail out GM and Chrysler, right? Because if they went under it would have taken suppliers that Ford and Toyota depend on as well, which would have then led to them going under.

The 2008 bailout was not the only one.

The voluntary export restraint of the 80s was something Ford was in on. Meaning that the unhindered marketplace was crushing them too. Wound up fucking over Japan's economy. It was an indirect bailout.

 

[Heartbreaker]

Yeah this isn't changing Toyota's hydrogen plans. From what I've gathered one of the reasons Toyota is big on hydrogen is there's natural reserves of it under the seafloor around Japan. And yeah, hyrdrogen for passenger cars is silly. As is hydrogen from methane, and other methods that require a lot of electricity to produce (unless its by using large sea based wind or tide turbines processing sea water).

Japan's "Reserves" are just Methane trapped in undersea ice. In the form of methane hydrate. It's no more of a hydrogen natural reserve, than the natural gas in the USA waiting to be fracked out of the ground is a natural Hydrogen reserve.

It's not a solution, it's just another source of fossil fuels to accelerate global warming.

I doubt methane hydrate had anything to do with Toyota's push for Hydrogen Vehicles, it was a bet that they could leapfrog the car industry. A failed bet, that they can't admit.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Japan's "Reserves" are just Methane trapped in undersea ice. In the form of methane hydrate. It's no more of a hydrogen natural reserve, than the natural gas in the USA waiting to be fracked out of the ground is a natural Hydrogen reserve.

It's not a solution, it's just another source of fossil fuels to accelerate global warming.

I doubt methane hydrate had anything to do with Toyota's push for Hydrogen Vehicles, it was a bet that they could leapfrog the car industry. A failed bet, that they can't admit.

That's a bummer. Not sure why you act like Toyota wouldn't find that to be fine. They seem content to stick to gas/diesel ICE, so I'd guess they think of hydrogen as a stop gap til battery tech is good enough for their desires, so it being from fossil fuels won't change that for them.

Honestly I'm not even sure why people are acting like Toyota bet big on hydrogen. They made what, 1 car, and it was basically a Prius. Frankly, they've been dragging their butts in general since the 2nd gen Prius. Even their hybrids until recently were pretty mediocre (the 2nd gen Prius - which came out in what 2003 - was good for fuel economy and they've been coasting on that powertrain in the Prius since). So, I'd say its less that Toyota bet on hydrogen and more that they just languished across the board.

The hybrid powertrain now in most of their products is solid, the Camry is getting almost Prius MPG in a bigger heavier package with a lot more power, and its enough that they can up the power even more and put it in bigger vehicles and still offer pretty solid fuel economy. Plus as we see in the RAV4 Prime, they can make a hybrid that performs well to boot. But the rest of the industry caught most of the way up, and it feels like we should've had that already before now (and all of them plug-in to boot).

 

[Heartbreaker]

That's a bummer. Not sure why you act like Toyota wouldn't find that to be fine. They seem content to stick to gas/diesel ICE, so I'd guess they think of hydrogen as a stop gap til battery tech is good enough for their desires, so it being from fossil fuels won't change that for them.

It's not that they cared about fossil fuel use. But back in the 1990's when Toyota decided to go for Hydrogen cars, I don't think anyone at Toyota was even aware that undersea Methane Hydrate existed. Japans energy future likely looked Nuclear based. Even today, almost 30 years later, no one is commercially extracting natural gas from undersea methane hydrate, though significant deposits exist around the world and multiple countries have done tests. No one has yet figured out how to do it in a commercially viable way.

At this point, I expect these deposits will only look worse over time as renewable energy gets cheaper.

Honestly I'm not even sure why people are acting like Toyota bet big on hydrogen. They made what, 1 car, and it was basically a Prius. Frankly, they've been dragging their butts in general since the 2nd gen Prius.

They have probably wasted tens of billions on R&D for Hydrogen cars, and as you noted, dragged their butts on other fronts during that time. Most notably on EVs, where they are falling way behind major competitors like VW. With their initial big lead on hybrids, they should have been a natural to be a leader in EVs, instead they wasted their efforts on Hydrogen.

The bet was both all the money and resources sunk into hydrogen with almost nothing to show for it, and in losing their focus on technologies that are actually the forward moving option.

 

[Meghan54]

Yeah this isn't changing Toyota's hydrogen plans. From what I've gathered one of the reasons Toyota is big on hydrogen is there's natural reserves of it under the seafloor around Japan. And yeah, hyrdrogen for passenger cars is silly. As is hydrogen from methane, and other methods that require a lot of electricity to produce (unless its by using large sea based wind or tide turbines processing sea water).

And yeah, as others pointed out, this is also quite low compared to many other companies' battery investments. It might be the lowest in the industry for a major player. I think VW and Ford alone are each spending like 3-5x the amount over that same time span.

Its a shame that Toyota started dragging their ass so much. They should have had all their cars having hybrid powertrains by default, which would have enabled them to easily meet emissions standards. Plug-in hybrid powertrains should have been mandated by 2020, which would have greatly eased the transition to fully electric. For every full electric car, they could produce about 3-4 plug-in hybrids. And for quite a lot of people, plug-in hybrids offer enough electric range for their daily commute (especially if they could plug-in once they get to work), while mitigating the range anxiety issues while better battery technology is developed to make full electric more feasible and cost effective.



For starters, it was GM and Chrysler, not Ford.

Also, you know Toyota (and Ford) begged the government to bail out GM and Chrysler, right? Because if they went under it would have taken suppliers that Ford and Toyota depend on as well, which would have then led to them going under.

Ford took out a $6B loan in 2009 from the fed govt which Ford is planning to have finally paid back in 2022.