Japan is holding back as the world rushes toward electric cars
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This is the real reason i think, Japan is scared of the reduced complexity of electric cars meaning that their engineering and supply chain advantages are diminished. Also having a large existing ecosystem built for fossil cars means it is harder for them to change. China is the big winner from that (and consumers from cheaper electric cars hopefully).
This is also a reason I am not that fond of hybrids. It's a nice idea, but I would rather just have the electric engine that is less likely to have mechanical issues.
The dirty power plants are not the real problem, because when when coal/gas power generation is eventually taken offline this immediately benefits all the electric cars that use that power. Getting people to switch to electric should be be main focus, and mandating that fossil engines will not be sold in the future is the best way to do this.
It seems the car is much more complex, but it's not really. The electrical motor makes it possible to have a way less complex ICE engine, for many reasons. It's still an ICE car, but pollution & consumption is halfed.
There is a reason why Toyota Priuses (started building them 20yrs ago) and now Corollas are so reliable and cheap to maintain that you can find them in any cab.
Considering how constrained we are by battery supply I suspect we would have got much more bang for our buck by using plugins as a stepping stone to full EV's.
People point to Lithium as a limitation, but the price recently crashes in 2019 due to over investment demonstrating much faster EV adoption would and is possible.
I'll add that hybrids are more profitable for any manufacturer because it means that you can't take it to your family mechanic for service (You need special training and equipment to work on them because it's high voltage). Because the dealers are making a lot on service, the manufacturer can cut their bonus on sales.
Parallel hybrids ICEs are just as complex as normal ICEs.
The big mechanical advantage in simplicity is the transmission. While they’re called “eCVTs” in some cases, the transmission is better described as “almost no transmission”. They do not use the same belt and cone system that gasoline CVT vehicles use.
In Toyota systems they use a simple fixed planetary gearset and can vary the output speed simply by varying the ratios of speed of the two electric motors and the gasoline engine, rather than mechanically changing the ratio of the gears like a traditional transmission.
The Honda hybrid system is even more simple. They just directly drive the wheels with an electric motor and use the gasoline engine as a generator. (With the exception of a single lockup clutch that allows the engine to drive the wheels at a fixed ratio at highway speeds)
Hyundai is a weird exception. Their hybrids have traditional transmissions attached to them.
Except for some computerized parts of the system, the majority of them can be worked on by any mechanic, or even shade tree mechanics. The high voltage system requires care, but there are simple procedures to work on it safely. You can find many YouTube videos with instructions on tasks like rebuilding a battery pack, that dealers won’t even do. Most parts on a car aren’t the high voltage system anyway.
The amazing thing about them is that they have no parts that need friction to work like belts, CVT axles or even the clutch. Nor do they have any moving parts like a regular transmission which shift into place.
It's 2 electric motors connected via a planetary gearset to the ICE. Nothing can get out of alignment or get loose.
This is a great video on eCVT.
OTOH this is their reason. Japan needs to retool ASAP. They’re the most technologically advanced country in the world though and they have the best process management, so they can do it.
Whoever is saying electric vehicles has reduced complexity has no idea what they are taking about. Literally none. It’s complete fantasy.
The THEORY you could make an EV less complex is probably true, but the REALITY is not.
There isn’t a single EV in the world today that is less complex than it’s non-EV relative.
Chrysler and GM EV and HEV specially I’ve worked on both have entirely separate bus systems just for the power train, this is on top of the already existing PT bus that the ICE vehicles all have. The battery heater, the battery pump/cooler, the multiple charging systems, the additions to the transmissions systems, the ABS systems with ICE that handle stability control were already complex, now more so because they are entirely new devices that bring in regenerative braking and efficiency. All the software has changed around target torques/rpm/target gear for mileage. There is no other brand that defies my assertion.
Literally everything in an EV is more complex. Didn’t have to be, but is.
Edit: lol first hand knowledge of complex systems, physical layout, mounting, diagnostics, wiring, their signals and data patterns… nope, wrong! Classic HN
I imagine you’re getting down votes because your comment seems to only consider complexity in EV’s and doesn’t talk about the complexity found in ICE vehicles.
If you take an existing ICE platform and adapt it for EV’s of course it’s going to end up more complex from a control perspective. You’ve taken the existing complexity of the ICE platform and just strapped all the EV stuff onto the side.
Perhaps if you could talk about the mechanical complexity found in the ICE powertrain and compare the to an EV you might get a better response.
The number of high load mechanical components found in an ICE powertrain is huge. Components that are forced to operate under an extremely wide range of temperatures and loads, which just don’t exist in EVs.
When ICE cars fail it’s almost certainly a mechanical failure. Software based control systems generally don’t fail, they either work or they don’t. You don’t get “wear” in software.
Now control systems mistakes can result unnecessary wear in mechanical parts, and premature failure. But having fewer mechanical parts significantly reduces the surface area for control errors.
What part of “There isn’t a single EV in the world today that is less complex than it’s non-EV relative.” doesn’t cover that it’s a relative difference?
I don’t care about complexity of ICE. That’s our baseline.
There isn’t a single system in EVs that is less complex. Period. You won’t break a fuel pump in a full EV, but will in a hybrid or plug in hybrid, and you’ll break the battery pump in a full EV… so where are you better off there?
If you want to change the topic to reliability, we scrap thousands of tons of electric motors. Sometimes because the connection to the battery is bad (source and drain terminals). Sometimes there is nothing wrong with them, but the dealer fails to diagnose issues like they can with ICE components, most of the time we have no idea what is wrong with them.
Having fewer mechanical parts is better, sure, ok, but do you realize how many more parts are added to EV systems?
You are thinking in terms of classic vehicle design practices. What you are failing to understand, being an outsider, is that we used to design things the good/hard way because they had to last for 60,000 miles without major replacements… now… since as you write there is a lot more software, we design rough enough to get it on to the storage lot awaiting shipping, we get it refined enough by the time the dealers get them, and we keep refining software updates over the year. I have a 2021 company vehicle, the Linux-based radio completely resets going down the road probably once every 100 miles. It’s a completely known issue and the supplier will probably push a fix in 6 months. No one cares. This would have been inexcusable years ago.
Right, software doesn’t wear. But it has a lot more bugs and bullshit. You don’t develop new issues years later - oh wait, yes, we do, all the time. Mechanical parts have a lineage and a hundred years of how to make an x or y, i can replace almost any part and we know approximately when they will fail. Software, relatively the Wild West.
This is why they want OTA updates so badly. To finish them in your driveway.
If my life depended on a vehicle, I’d take a 2014 Jeep Wrangler (or similar decontented vehicle) over any 2021 vehicle by any mfg, that’s ICE or not. But double true that I wouldn’t trust my life on an EV in 2021.
I own an EV (plug in hybrid and a often use a full electric) and like them. But I don’t trust them because I’ve seen the sausage being made.
The typical "EV is simpler" HN take, I think, instead is thinking of mechanical system complexity and mostly ignoring the digital domain. We can see how all those valves, cams, counter-balance shafts, lubrication systems, fuel systems, and emission control systems go away, and they were the root of our most expensive car maintenance nightmares so far. It is hard to compare these apples and oranges, taking away a bunch of mechanical systems, which were exquisitely modular, and replacing them with highly integrated electronic components.
That’s a good point. You aren’t going to have an NVLD leak in an EV.
But… what people aren’t realizing is how much is added to EVs that replaces all this.
How many people realize there is a heating and cooling system for the batteries? Pumps, radiators, heating elements, all sorts of modules for each component, the entire generator system. And it’s all brand new.
There is however a staggering difference between companies. Compare cooling in Ford Mustang Mach-E and Tesla Model Y.
Tesla just brutally crashes Ford in how much they are able to reduce number of parts, especially hoses and hose connectors. Tesla has something like 3x less hoses, 3x less parts and half the mass of the coolant in the loop (22kg vs 9 kg).
Maybe part of what you are seeing is inexperience and incompetence of ICE car manufacturers.
There are also other things that legacy car manufacturers are not willing to risk like megacasting. Something like 50 parts reduction in one cast, and good chunk of the factory floor for Tesla. And apparently the idea was out there long before Tesla but nobody tried it. While Musk loves taking financial risks if they can deliver significant engineering benefits.
Not to mention that while Tesla may be not great at software engineering, ICE car companies and their supply chains are just ridiculously bad at it.
Ok, so a person who is designing and testing components of these systems is pessimistic, but people who are just using theories and idealism are cheerleading, what does that tell you?
Also, it’s not pessimism. It’s just the reality. Automotive engineering has never been sloppier. It’s also never been less complex. It’s ALSO only getting more complex with EV. Be upset about that all you like, but it’s how it is.
So my original point is that anyone who says EVs are less complex is completely dealing with fantasy.
I'm glad to read that. I've been feeling a bit backwards by holding on to my Jeep in a world slowly being filled by EVs, but you just made me feel better about it.
I like the JL interior and feel but holy hell I just don’t trust the whole thing yet.
Tesla's EVs are overly complex, overly sophisticated. That doesn't need to be the case. Tesla adds enormous amounts of system and software complexity to try to be on the bleeding edge of supposed innovation. Tesla is selling that premise, that brand/image. If you remove it, people won't desire their cars as much, and certainly not at Tesla's price point.
You can make a far less complex, lower cost, 'dumb' EV. China is doing it right now and selling a lot of them.
What'll you'll see out of places like China over the next few decades, are hyper mass produced, high reliability, low cost, low complexity EVs that don't chase the cutting edge. China isn't yet great on reliability in auto manufacturing, they will be however if you iterate them forward in time.
I think it's important not to conflate Tesla and electric vehicles. They are building luxury vehicles that have the added complexity and added unreliability that implies.
Disclaimer: living in Japan for three years.
> https://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/energy_environment/glo...
> https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.htm...
Switching dozens of millions cars to battery-electric drive trains is not a viable strategy, especially for the logistics sector.
Germany produces 1.6 TWh of electricity per day. Charging 50 million electric cars with a 50-kWh-battery would require 2.5 TWh of electricity. Even if you just charge 1/4 of those cars, you’d still 0,625 TWh, so almost 50% of what Germany produces in a single day.
Germany has around 47 million passenger cars according to the national vehicle agency (KBA).
Battery-electric cars are simply no viable solution to get dozens of million cars have emission-free.
Let alone the ridiculous ranges of these BEVs. A regular Opel Astra Diesel achieves with 1000 km range with a single tank-fill while even the best BEVs will only achieve 400 km on average.
A Diesel can be refilled in 5 minutes, a BEV takes at least 30 to 60 minutes, in many cases even longer due to the lack of sufficient high-current power chargers.
BEVs are simply a step backwards in both comfort abd usability. That’s why they’re no serious alternative and Japan’s hydrogen approach is much more promising. Especially with passenger trains already running on hydrogen and German company Deutz just having introduced a high-power hydrogen engine.
The biggest comfort advantage of BEV for the common user is, to rarely have to recharge on the road. If you plug in your BEV into a plain wall socket even every night, you start with a full charge every morning, removing the need to do on the road so in most cases.
The Ioniq 5 already advertises recharge times in 18 minutes, so choose that one, if recharging on the road is common for you, or just buy a Tesla, which are pretty close to that and have the best charging network.
If you want to have "green" hydrogen, you have to use 2-3x as much electricity and for the average consumer, hydrogen cars are clearly a step backwards towards BEV.
Could you explain this part? I'm surprised the production of hydrocarbon would use electrical energy.
I can't name precise numbers - my calculation was really only the worst case szenario. Some calculations claim, going fully electric with cars would only add about 10% to the electricity consumption for all the electricity saved in the fuel supply.
If you use real usage numbers you get only an 8 percent increase over current energy demand.
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natur...
> Especially with passenger trains already running on hydrogen
Passenger trains, trucks and ships are a different story.
In some countries, sure. But most rail in Japan is already electrified - 70% of the system [1]. The remainder would be low ridership routes, many of which the rail companies want to close - but if they don't, perhaps partially battery operated trains would be feasible - charge at every stop and at intermediate locations as needed.
Additionally, trucking routes in Japan are much shorter and slower than North America, making BEV trucks more feasible.
Ships I agree with you, hydrogen is likely best way forward
UHhhhhhh what? Have you never done a 10 hour drive split up with your spouse before? Just FYI, its not particularly unsafe and it happens all the time.
Comfort? Really? Quiet inside and out, no vibrations, no exhaust fumes, no transmission tunnels for extra leg room, pre-heating or cooling when plugged in at home…
I find much to disagree with in your comment, but this is the most clearly wrong part. Nobody fills up their gas tank every single day, and with a 50 kWh battery nobody is charging it fully everyday.
My wife and I are planning a road trip though, from Boston to Bar Harbor, Maine. After looking up the route on PlugShare I need to make one stop at a fast charger (about 30 minutes) somewhere along I-95. Hardly a big deal.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-2030-power-use-f...
Electric vehicles can be charged at home and at the office, thus eliminating most refueling stops.
IMO this is a fantastic feature. I don’t own a car currently, but in my previous (gas) car, I always dreaded that refueling stop and would typically put it off until the car was running on empty. The ability to fuel my car while it is parked is a significant benefit in my book, and certainly outweighs the road trip hassle of slower charges.
- At least 9 of the top 50 Germany companies are directly associated with the auto industry
- The top 5 global automobile suppliers is composed of 4 European companies and 1 Japanese
- there's a lot of auto industry lobbying for status quo in the EU, just see the generalized state of diesel engines cheating on tests and the level of actions taken afterwards to just treat it as a no problem
Electric still has the issue that you have to charge for like 40 minutes on a long road trip, which personally seems more frequent than I would like. It takes a 6 hr drive from LA to SF and makes it a 7 hr drive, that's quite material when you're trying to get from one place to another.
The new Rav 4 Toyota Plug-in Hybrid is really amazing. 42 miles on electric, gas for the long road trips. It also is the fastest production Toyota (I think?).
42 miles is really a lot of miles for most daily commutes. In the near future we'll have electric chargers at most commuter destinations so that's really a 84 mile round trip which is hopefully enough for most daily commutes. I suspect as electric improves in general, PHEVs can also squeeze out more from their pure electric side.
With all that being said, I'm still drawn to the Tesla as my next vehicle only to support Elon and his manic missions to improve humanity. But all things being equal, it's hard to ignore the superior build quality and convenience of the new Japanese PHEVs.
I have heard stories and seen pictures of people waiting to charge in California, but I have never personally waited for a supercharger on my many road trips. The infrastructure needs to be built out to keep pace with EV adoption, but my understanding is the california problem is more about how long it takes to get building permits in the state than any lack of desire to add chargers.
As for poor routing, the fastest chargers are rarely more than a few hundred meters from major routes. A couple times they have been more convenient than gas stations. The only charger I've been to that was more than 2-3 lights away from the highway is Owen Sound, Ontario, but that city is known as a travel black hole and doesn't have a ring road or fast way through.
I know my routes are niche (which is why the traffic is on the other road), but for me it just didn’t make sense yet.
Your use case is quite interesting. Got an example?
The lack of waypoints in the Tesla navigation is their biggest missing piece of software currently. The navigation is extremely good about recalculating both the directions and charge plan as as you go even if you deviate from the suggested route. I sometimes cheat a little by navigating to a midway point. For example, I set Orangeville as the destination leaving Kitchener-Waterloo for Sudbury since I didn’t feel like going through Toronto.
The worst detour I've experienced in recent years was a serious accident in the middle-of-nowhere Utah, which closed the highway in both directions for almost 24 hours. The shortest paved detour around the accident added 150km of nothingness to the trip.
People also conflate 5 minutes of refueling with 5 minute stops. EVs charge while you go the bathroom, stretch your legs, eat, and anything else you and you passengers might do while stopped. I find in practice if you're roadtripping with more then 1 other person it's basically impossible to go longer than 3 hour legs and stop for less than 15-20 minutes. That's puts you right in range where you spend less than 10 minutes waiting for the car for every 3 hours travelled.
https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=80f2be62-b42e-4b5...
This is definitely something to emphasize. Because of the difference in the refueling too, gas refueling is by necessity a "serial" task: you need to watch the vehicle every minute of that refueling because it is a dangerous substance with bad edge case behaviors, including but not limited to accidental over-fills that at the very least are obnoxious for over-charging you (if not the immense physical danger it might put you and your vehicle in).
EV charging is an easy parallel task: just like you don't have to watch your phone for every minute that you plug it in. You aren't wasting 15-20 minutes staring at a gallon counter and checking your car for leaks of explosive liquids.
Obviously there are lots of unsafe drivers out there (and lots of us on our worst days where we feel such unsafety a calculated risk) that will risk it anyway and try to parallelize tasks while refueling with gasoline, but I know I have at least one story where that went wrong (a fuel line bust while buying snacks). Electricity is so much tamer in comparison.
When we were looking at plug-in hybrid options nothing else even came close in terms of mileage, which I found really surprising. It was our top criteria when selecting a vehicle.
PHEVs do that all in the same car. Since much of the charging stations have been monopolized by Tesla in the US, I think PHEVs are the solution to infrastructure growing pains.
I don’t have this issue with any gasoline stations.
It would be great if they could be altruistic to let anyone use them, but altruism isn't really a good path to profits in our society
Good on Tesla for building a solution, but their stations are monopolized, and this isn’t good for EV adoption overall. It’s good for Tesla.
No one's preventing anyone from building a better solution and making it available to consumers. Not a monopoly
Are any of these what you meant? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly
None of those seem to apply to Tesla's charging stations to me. Could you explain more about what you're trying to say here?
https://www.wordnik.com/words/monopolize
Tesla's network of fast charging stations are owned by the manufacturer of the car, and they exclude others from using their network.
IIRC, the EU forced all EVs to adopt an industry standard charger interface. So, yes, it's a stupid US thing.
https://electrek.co/2021/08/18/tesla-prepping-giant-supercha...
Recently did an eight hour drive in a model 3. We stopped more frequently than the Tesla strictly required - once for a bathroom break and a quick coffee, once for food, and once for a more substantive charge.
The nice thing was that by timing the shorter stops to also be at a supercharger, we did the electric equivalent of a ‘splash and dash’ - we got ~2 x 15minutes of charging time ‘free’ - as we’d stopped anyway, and the additional time spent to plug in is about 30 seconds.
I suspect people who think that a Tesla would be substantively worse than an ICE car for long trips are either far edge-case car users… or are seriously underestimating them time they spend not driving during a long trip, and then compare that unrealistic best-case situation with the likely case for an EV.
Even if you can shorten the stop times by changing drivers, it is a big relief to get out of the car for at least a few minutes, literally stretch your legs, visit a bathroom and perhaps get a coffee or a snack.
BTW: Did you know you can bring snacks and even coffee with you in your car? Those don't have to be purchased on route. You'll even get lower prices and a wider selection.
I would assume, as the number of electric cars rises, more and more restaurants see this as a business opportunity to offer charging while eating.
Did you know you can bring snacks and even coffee with you in your car?
As a German, I find the pure thought of doing so, horrend.
In the US, the infrastructure costs to get fast chargers next to most good restaurants is prohibitive. Especially good restaurants that are between major cities.
> As a German...
No wonder you are so opposed to the idea of a 6 hour journey without taking a break. In the US, a road trip usually involves planning to minimize total stops. It's not uncommon to bring snacks/drinks/coffee with you in thermoses/coolers.
(Also, nitpick, the word you want to use is "horrible" not "horrend" if you want to sound correct to the widest group of English speakers)
(Also, nitpick, the word you want to use is "horrible" not "horrend" if you want to sound correct to the widest group of English speakers)
That was intentional, to create an exaggerated phrasing of the statement. Beyond stating a truth, that many Germans would consider it offensive to eat and drink in their cars, I also wanted to make some fun out of how protective some of them are, as well as making some fun of those, like Americans, who think their car is a great place to eat and drink :)
I am very aware of the differences in driving habits between Germany and the US, having driven in both (though not taken longer road trips in the US). There is certainly a significant size difference between the US and Germany, but considering how large the EU is and crossing borders inside the EU usually isn't any different from crossing state borders in the US, there would be large distances to drive in the EU too.
Still, I think road tripping is larger in the US. Might be interesting to consider the reasons for this. To a large part probably, because the open borders in the EU are a more recent thing. Also, because passenger trains are still a very important means of transportation. And in general, population density seems to be higher, it is very easy to find something interesting much more nearby. For Germany specifically, you also have to consider driving speeds. If traffic isn't too heavy, there are still many sections of the Autobahn without limits, so travelling at 100-120mph is quite common. Which on the one side makes for quicker progress but also, you don't want to try to eat or drink at those speeds :)
a break or breaks totalling at least 45 minutes after no more than 4 hours 30 minutes driving
They are professional drivers.
To speed up EV adoption, improve road safety and make an attainable mileage goal for EVs we could use legislation to require a 30 minutes break after three hours of car driving.
This would be unpopular and initially hard to enforce, but if you were in an accident after driving without a break for six hours then you would not do it again as the law would make you the dangerous driver and your insurance would not help.
Trucks have a tachograph, this could be mandated for cars too.
You want to force everyone to take a 30min break automatically? How about i want to drive somewhere that takes 3h50 ? Or whst if there are more drivers in the car and we can stop for a quick change of drivers? Or.. whatever. I agree that driving without pausing and resting is bad but your solution is worse. It is my car, i should be able to stop whenever i want to, not when some system tells me to.
OT: I have a question about PHEVs that I haven't been able to find a clear answer too. Maybe someone here knows.
It is generally considered bad for an ICE car if you go too long without driving it [1]. That article says you should drive it for at least 10 minutes at highway speeds every two to three weeks.
If I had a PHEV, I could easily go for months where I drive a few times a week, but always entirely for trips that can be done without using the ICE engine. That would prevent the problems mentioned in that article that aren't specific to the ICE engine, but the fuel and fluid problems could still be an issue.
My question is do the PHEVs handle that automatically, such as by keeping track of ICE usage and automatically running the ICE engine occasionally on trips that could normally be done without it? Or is this something I'd be expected to keep track of, and say, skip plugging it in every now and then to force it to use the ICE engine?
[1] https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/how-long-can-a-...
Tesla charging options are so plentiful…
I say this to people and they say “but Teslas are so expensive.” And then they end up buying an Audi or BMW, and when they later test drive a Tesla, they regret their decision.
You misspelled "California". In major US cities, you are lucky to have one super-charger per million people. If you live in an apartment (as many people do) and cannot charge your car in the parking lot (which, due to power load requirements, most people cannot), you don't have a great way to keep your Tesla filled up.
And about apartments… you’re replying to someone who managed very well with two Teslas in an apartment for two years with no at home charging options. We rarely used the local supercharger, although it helped when fast charging was needed. J1772 chargers are plentiful and cheap (sometimes free).
Nowadays we found a way to make a 110 cord reach, and while slow, it easily keeps two cars well charged.
This is real life experience for me. It’s worked great.
And where do you live that that's the case? Because they're probably far more common in California (or the PNW) than elsewhere in America.
There is a chicken and egg problem here. In parts of the country that rely on sparse networks of gas stations for their cars, few people would buy a BEV unless all of those gas stations simultaneously added chargers in the complete absence of local demand.
I believe it last happened on Friday when I started the car and it was on for roughly 10 minutes. Have to say I was really wondering "what's wrong with the car" :)
Another thing that car is having is pressurized gasoline tank to avoid degradation of the fuel. If I'm correct this is reason behind it https://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/238063...
I think you are correct - you just missed that the 10-15 years was 2010-2025. It has already happened.
We are on the verge of a hockey stick of adoption of purely electric cars.
The frustrating recalcitrance of incumbents (like Volvo and BMW) was their attempt to recoup billions in investments in the last 1-2 generations of vehicles - costs that had already been sunk.
That is why after 10 years of concept cars and "e-initiatives" and weird tron-cars we finally have actual electric cars coming out of Audi/BMW/Volvo.
They were just stalling...
(Anecdotally, as a buyer that invested in a Volt in 2011, I feel the exact same way. The Volt was a wonderful choice for 2011 but in 2022 I see a lot fewer reasons you wouldn't just buy a full EV.)
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36302930/tesla-model-s-lo...
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a33824052/adjustment-f...
Many others have lane keep systems that are designed to kill -- if you accidentally fall asleep at the wheel or become incapacitated, it will shut the lane keep system off and crash, instead of attempting to coming to a clean stop and putting on emergency flashers, which is what Tesla does.
Less than 5% of daily trips are over 30mi [1]. One study found 70+ mi trips are barely 1% of journeys [2].
Also your example of LA-SF as an example of it being a real drag on time is instead perhaps the canonical best route, for Teslas at least. That’s the corridor between where they are manufactured and their largest market, SoCal. SuperChargers are plentiful, including the super fast 250 kW version that can do 1000mi/hr (when you are at low state of charge.) It also has in the PCH a beautiful view that you’ll want to stop and take in.
So there’s no way you’ll actually spend an hour out of your way, but if you do, why would that single hour actually be material, when the trip is less than 1% of your journeys? Why pick a PHEV for your edge cases?
Rent another car for that trip. Or take a flight (SF-LA fact: that’s also the busiest airline route in the country [3] by aircraft flown; second busiest by passengers moved)
I get the whole “I probably won’t, but I like knowing I could” sense of spontaneity but it just seems a waste to have two separate propulsion systems and the associated complexity just for that.
[1] https://nhts.ornl.gov/vehicle-trips [2] https://www.solarjourneyusa.com/EVdistanceAnalysis.php [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_ai...
You can disagree, but it's a reasonable point
Let's subdivide trips into A <42 mi, 42 mi < B < 150 mi and 150 mi < C. (These numbers assume no charging at the other end. We can tweak the actual numbers up by assuming charging at the other end.)
We can ignore, for our analysis A. Those are 100% plug in. By your sources, 95-99% of trips are in the "A" column, depending on charging on the other side.
So, you then ask "why is it material to stop for a supercharge on 1% of the trips". In this case, you kinda seem to have lost the thread. Why worry about your gas emissions if it's only 1% of the trips? Why advocate renting a second ICE car for a long trip instead of just having a single car where the switchover point to burning gas is just 250 miles shorter a trip?
But really, it's how do you estimate B vs. C. If B is 99% of the combination, a pure EV may be best. If you think C is 99%, then a PHEV is best. In between, you have to make your choices. And those numbers can be highly personal. If you live 400 miles from the grandparents and (the other way) the city you like to visit for a weekend every month, it's clear you want a PHEV. If you those numbers are 100 miles, you probably don't.
The long range model S can drive from SF to LA on a single charge.
Even taking into account a supercharge stop, it takes <10 minutes to charge enough to extend your range to make it to grandma's house. In practice, that's faster than a stop at a gas station.
Obviously grandma will need charging at their house to do this^, but if you're driving 400+ miles you're usually going to stay the night which means you can plug into a normal outlet and charge over night.
As for speed of filing up, that's insane. One undisputed benefit of ICE cars or PHEVs is that gasoline refill is (a) everywhere and (b) significantly faster per mile.
Going from an empty tank to a full tank often takes less than 5 minutes, counting time getting on/off the highway.
For comparison, the Nissan Leaf E+ is quoted[1] at a full-charge mileage range of 239 miles.
> Electric still has the issue that you have to charge for like 40 minutes on a long road trip, which personally seems more frequent than I would like.
Agreed, stopping often to charge can be a hassle, but if you only have to stop once from SF-LA (perhaps taking a break and having a bite to eat while away from the wheel), that'd seem fairly reasonable.
Worth also noting apparent conflicting reports about the emissions claims made by PHEV manufacturers; see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54170207 ("Plug-in hybrids are a 'wolf in sheep's clothing'") for two different points of view.
[1] - https://www.nissan.co.uk/vehicles/new-vehicles/leaf/range-ch...
In the short run (5 years), I agree that PHEVs are the best use of the available battery materials supply if we want to get to low hanging fruit of 90% consumer trips are EV.
Teslas are great and they absolutely should pursue the research on full-EV vehicles because that is the 10 year future. But how many PHEVs could be made out of a P-100's battery? 10?
... that is assuming the mainline autos hadn't been dragging their feet for 20 years putting a goddamn electric plug on their hybrids, and not pushing the technology.
That Toyota so stringently resists even a plug in for their platforms in 2021 (for example, the new Toyota minivan is a hybrid with no option for a plug) is so mindboggling it must be intentional.
Electrical charging stations will be everywhere, very soon ,very fast. All restaurants, gas stations and kiosks will have plenty. To attract customers and to earn an extra buck. It's very cheap to install compared to tanks and pumps for flammable and hazardous liquid fuels.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LcZCb06SsxI
Their ebikes are swell too: https://www.yamahabicycles.com/bikes/
It's true there's a huge industry for white label car parts manufacturing in Japan. These companies are extremely agile. They will adapt. Taking contracts for novel new parts is their daily DNA. They already work extensively with foreign car companies, so they're not anchored to the foibles of Toyota and Nissan.
Furthermore, electric cars still need complex parts! Sensors of all types, electric windows and door locks, key fobs, air conditioners, steering wheels, windshield wiper motors, etc. The list is so very long.
I have one wild guess as counterpoint. Today's Japan would never mandate a shift to all-electric vehicles. Why? It would destroy their domestic car sales industry. In Japan, many people only keep their cars for a few years, then sell them back. Used Japanese domestic cars are worth a lot of money. These cars are exported to other countries around the world, where they're resold. I imagine Japan could no longer resell their domestic cars abroad, at such huge volume, if all their cars were electric. Many countries do not have the conditions or infrastructure to support large-scale deployment of EVs. Batteries would probably need to be replaced, lowering the profit on the resale. And so on.
LOL, that's not even wrong.
Hanko: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(East_Asia)#Japanese_usag...
Japan's GDP growth is actually good for an advanced economy, when you index it to the size of the working-age population.[1]
Japan's working-age population has been shrinking for quite a while now.
(China's is peaking about now, so it can expect total growth to slow down. Hence the measures taken by the CCP to try to increase fertility: lifting the one-child policy to three children, introducing tax breaks, limiting for-profit tutoring, and most recently cracking down on alternatives to making babies: video games and on-line shopping and social media.)
1. Japan's working age population peaked in 1997: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTJPM647S
Basically, if you for whatever reason become/are somewhat disabled, cognitively impaired, lose your family, are simply getting quite old and losing the ability to do what you used to, etc, there will always be some sort of job, often falling under the bloat of what you've listed after "on the other hand", that you'll be able to do if you want to, that will give you a stable income (even if small) and get you out of the house or whatever else and somewhere that you'll have a routine form of socialization amongst your co-workers and such.
I imagine Toyota, the largest US car maker and probably globally the largest, is in deep trouble and is in total denial about it. Hitching your future to hydrogen which at it's best is probably about equal to EVs in cost, and which is so far behind practical use as a fuel that by the time (10? 20? years) a generation, transport, and fuelling infrastructure was built out, EVs probably will be 1/2 the cost they are now.
This is absolutely baffling to me, given, as you noted, generation, transport, and fueling issues.
Stevie Wonder would have no problem seeing the problem with hydrogen, and yet Toyota still can't see it?
I'm guessing Nissan, GM, and Tesla have fairly robust patent portfolios related to recent EV tech.
Toyota probably has some stuff to offer related to the electrical side of the hybrid drive, but it's probably a far weaker portfolio-- some of their stuff is near the end of the patent lifecycle, and some is only useful in the context of range extended or hybrid-electric designs.
That means they can't offer a compelling cross-license agreement. It might cost them hundreds or thousands of dollars per vehicle to license the patents at "market rates", particularly of other players see it as a way to hobble a huge competitor.
OTOH, if they can make hydrogen work, they probably hold a lot more cards to deal with other manufacturers.
I'm surprised there wasn't more two-pronged thinking though. The selling point of hydrogen fuel-cell was that it was less subject to range anxiety, but we knew there are clearly identifiable markets where that message was a non-starter. No point selling a 500km range to a city dweller whose longest journey is 25km, but you could sell them a vehicle with Ni-MH batteries left over from 1990s laptops and it would cover their needs.
This would have allowed them to focus on the markets where liquid/gaseous fuel would make its last stands. I'd think freight would be the big one-- even if there's a charging station every 100km along the interstate, business wants to minimize fueling stops, so being able to say "800km+ range-- a full shift of driving on one tank of hydrogen" would set the bar high for electric competition.
1) the companies may be agile, but there is a very big difference between competency in mechanical device/metal working/plastic moulds etc and ramping up electrical / battery / material science / control systems. I see similar challenges in the global 3rd party parts suppliers being valid too. The % of value add of an electric vehicle that the existing infra can support is significantly less than a vehicle with an ICE engine / transmission.
2) Batteries, with the right thermal and charge management systems can last the life of the vehicle itself, with the whole set of components reaching 1 mil km in distance with 1.5 mil km (1 mil miles) in reasonable approach.
3) charging infrastructure can scale with the number of vehicles - other countries have power grids too!
[1] https://www.mitsuba.co.jp/en/
Re: 2 and 3. I'm sure you're correct. But we're talking about salesmanship here. Logic and facts don't always have a buyer. They would need to find ways to sell those used cars to potentially skeptical markets abroad, in huge volume, where they've already got a great racket with ICE cars.
1. Tesla uses Panasonic batteries. Japan already has quite a lot of domestic industry manufacturing those parts and the quality is also top notch.
2. Dunno about batteries, probably with proper management they can last long, but if you maximize performance they'll degrade just like horsepower pumped low capacity engines.
3. Remember Japan had the Fukushima nuclear accident and it has turned off nuclear powerplants and replaced the capacity with coal for almost 10 years. I don't know if the nuclear capacity they have left is even 100% back online.
Easily replaceable batteries is probably a better bet for preserving the retail value of electric cars. Purchases are probably going to be made assuming that the battery pack is worn, and can be replaced with a new battery pack which ideally makes use of more recent battery tech.
Reduced range is far more a "PR problem" than a "real problem". For the most part, people extrapolate from the problems they have with battery life in smartphones, which are constrained by size and thermal management in ways a car isn't, and assuming it is a problem where it isn't one in practice.
Very few countries have made sustained investment in lots of charging stations, particularly not the ones that Japan normally exports to. According to Wikipedia:
> The most popular destinations for used cars from Japan are Australia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bolivia, Brunei, Canada, Congo, Dominican Republic, Eswatini, Georgia, Guyana, Hong Kong, Ireland,Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lesotho, Malaysia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Myanmar, New Zealand, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, United Kingdom, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
In the case of some of those countries like Kenya, Uganda, Congo, and Myanmar, not all households are electrified, so you can't reasonably expect them to have national charging grids.
Will electric motors be more reliable than internal combustion engines? Probably. But it's a difference that's not going to be noticable by most people.
How many miles do you have on your focus? My edge started degrading fast after about 100,000 miles.
Tesla Model 3 apparently has a 6 year service interval.
Electric cars are still greatly more efficient on energy usage compared to gasoline cars. You'd have to grossly overcharge for electricity to make the comparison anywhere close.
Use this calculator to see the difference in fuel vs. electric costs:
Gas cost per mile at 30mpg @ $3.00/gal is $0.10.
In most cases, yes, it's going to save money. You'd need a high MPG car in an expensive electricity state that has somewhat cheap gas to really flip that.
Also you lucked out with a particularly reliable model. I can guarantee you there are plenty of 20-year-old cars that are riddled with engine and tranny problems.
Surprised me given their reputation. I will not be buying any more of them.
The drive train is enormously different. And that's the part that breaks the most.
Here are a few differences, off the top of my head (I'm not an auto engineer):
Much simpler cooling. Extracting heat from batteries is easier than from an IC engine.
No need for high temperature moving parts like pistons and valves. No need for oil under high pressure to cool and lubricate those parts. No need for a turbocharger, spinning at 100,000 plus RPM.
No need for a complicated system of storing and delivering gasoline (tanks, pumps, injectors).
No need for pollution mitigation such as EGR and Urea injection.
No need for expensive catalytic converters. Around here, those are routinely stolen for the metals, in daylight, right off parked cars.
No need for a transmission. Except for exotics such as a Porsche Taycan.
No need for a transfer case. If there's a motor for each wheel then there's not even a need for a differential.
I think the totality of differences in the drive train is profound. The change isn't minor. To riff on something that Jules Winnfield said: ain't the same fuckin' ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport
By contrast, under normal operating conditions, most of the wear parts of the engine and driveline are running in a sealed environment, bathed in the appropriate lubricant, and, in the case of the engine, actively cooled to maintain optional running conditions.
Al the parts that make up an ICE are incredibly mature technology. The engineering work to get the tolerances and everything else worked out that has been done over the last hundred years is unreal. And it's happened in concert with work by chemists in the lubrication industry, and every other ancillary industry. The level of reliability under normal use with regular maintenance defies belief. Like, when was the last time you gave your spark plugs even a moment's thought? The progress in metallurgy, fueling and ignition systems has made them an all but lifetime part on modern cars.
I would actually wager that for most people, the least reliable and most aggravating part of their car is now the infotainment system.
I carry a portable jumpstarter because you just dont know when your car will refuse to turn on.
At this point long-term real-world data is available for Tesla Model S, and it loses about 4-5% per 100,000 miles.
But they are not cheaper, yet. Vehicles available in both IC and electric consistently cost much more for the electric model. The base model Chevy Spark is $13,600. The base model Chevy Bolt (which GM says is the successor to the electric version of the Spark) is $36,500. The base model Ford F-150 is $29,290. The base model electric Ford F-150 is about $40,000.
2022 is going to be interesting for electric vehicles. That's the year electric trucks, from Ford to Freightliner to Volvo, ship in volume. Possibly Tesla, too. Suddenly, electric vehicles will be very mainstream, doing routine jobs.
I think electric vehicles are mainstream there, already. It wouldn’t surprise me if all further winning bids were fully electric.
For example, googling “public transport bus tenders electric” gives me
- https://www.sustainable-bus.com/news/de-lijn-tender-350-elec... (Belgium, 350 buses)
- https://www.sustainable-bus.com/news/tm-barcelona-tender-ele... (Barcelona, 210 buses)
- https://www.electrive.com/2020/11/23/amsterdams-gvb-to-procu... (Amsterdam, 142 buses)
Meanwhile Ford is definitely playing catch up and the Electric F-150 seems like it's charging for all of the above ("luxury base package", R&D costs from too many years in the hydrogen wilderness, "new and innovative" model retooling costs, etc). (Ford's an interesting dark horse in the 2022/2023 statements crowd. I think they are hedging too many bets right now, and playing way to conservatively. Current estimates are that if they got their head in the game and cut the Electric F-150 base price in half they'd dominate the US market very quickly, and there's some sentiment that if they weren't playing dumb amortization games with themselves and very easily created a less luxury package base model they are possibly in a position to do exactly that. Based on current estimates of true marginal costs.)
The part that I find most interesting is that Chinese manufacturers with no ICE legacy are building cheaper cars than everyone else right now and it is amazing to watch. There are sub-$1000 cars on Alibaba today! Those sub-$1000 cars might not be strongly interesting to US market preferences right now (where "big" and "truck-like" dominate perhaps way too much), but if it is an early warning sign that the margin wars in EVs are about to get started then it is a really exciting and encouraging one.
Almost never. EV motors and their gears don't have the problem of injected pollutants in the oil. This is why most are expected to last a million miles or more.
The lack of a transmission also eliminates a major point of failure (gear shifting)
> But batteries have thousands of parts and electrical connections.
Those aren't mechanical parts, that's the big difference. When people talk about EVs having fewer parts, they are referring to the moving parts. The parts that most commonly fail in ICE.
Define "many" and give a citation.
Tesla warranty for the drive unit is 8 years/120,000 miles. I doubt they'd set it that high if the expectation was that these drive units are going to fail all over the place.
Compare that to both ford and toyota which have a 5 years/60,000 miles powertrain warranty
> And batteries do also fail
They can due to manufacturing faults. However, both batteries and engines follow more of a washtub curve.
> Not sure why you would say otherwise.
You are overstating the failures of both.
Traditional cars already have all of those things. For a given volume of cars, the quantity you need doesn't increase for an electric car. They're the status quo, not a way to make up for the loss of some other production.
And electric cars don't have cam shafts, exhaust pipes, fuel pumps, transmissions, emissions control systems, alternators, oil pans, spark plugs. That list is so very long too, and all of that is going away and not being replaced with anything.
This would be a good place to mention that even Tesla has long partnered with Panasonic to help with their supply of batteries.
Denso (34% of revenue in traditional thermal control, i.e. radiators, water pumps, etc., also famous for spark plugs) will take a hit.
The thousands of much smaller companies that specialise in precisely fabricating minor parts (say, exhaust pipe mounts or engine mounts), less so. The expertise is not so transferable.
There will be change, and everybody hates that.
"For a given volume of cars" still holds. If the world is buying more cars, the manufacturer of piston rings is losing the opportunity to expand their business instead of shutting it down, and is inclined to resist.
> What they may lose in cam shaft sales, they may gain in EV part sales anyway.
The whole point is that EVs have significantly fewer parts, and especially fewer moving parts that wear out.
> Battery sales.
The local supplier of bespoke transmission linkages for specific models of Toyota then has to enter into a global commodity market in competition with multi-billion dollar international companies like LG and Tesla and other commodity suppliers in China, South Korea, Germany or Texas.
> This would be a good place to mention that even Tesla has long partnered with Panasonic to help with their supply of batteries.
They did this when they were a tiny upstart with no internal production capacity. They're now constructing their own battery factories on three continents. Anyone converting their whole lineup to electric is likely to do the same because it's the single most expensive part of the car.
Do JAPANESE customers want it enough to pay for it?
If the answer is "no", nothing in existence can change the strategy, design or plans they have. That goes for industrial equipment, customer goods, and certainly for cars.
It doesn't matter who else does the alternative, or who else tries to shame them into something - it won't work. Gaijin opinions count for infinitely less than Nihongo opinions.
Anyone who's not Japanese and has done business with a Japanese business quickly finds this out. If you work for a US subsidiary, you quickly learn NOTHING you suggest will ever be adopted unless major Japanese markets says the same thing or think it's a good idea. And then it will only be implementing with a peculiar Japanese form.
It's just how reality is.
Government policy has a number of levers to pull that determine what customers "want" (see Federal Tax Credit for Electric Cars, or Norway's vehicle tax regime). Governments can also limit the customers choices by declaring no new ICE will sold by the year 20X0, even if the customers want it.
three major reasons for this, fairly separate from car-electrification.
1) mandatory (paid, around 900usd) motor-vehicle inspections at 3 years
2) cost of mechanical maintenance in Japan (few car shops, huge prices)
3) no tax reduction on older/vintage/used/low-cost vehicles (like the US value-based registration costs)
I don't disagree that the auto industry of Japan is likely also protecting their own interests -- but driving in Japan has always been a pretty big personal burden on people; I see no reason why electric cars are going to get a pass from the three things I listed, they require maintenance, have a high value, and fail inspections, too.
unless laws change those failed inspection cars are either getting exported , fixed, or destroyed. there is still an export element available there.
I have a hybrid car and I am not sure it makes sense ecologically. My main reason is the driving experience (especially when starting, it is much better than traditional engine).
If I drive to the mountains (500+ km), I would like to be able to recharge on the way. It takes 20 min per car, so if a full tank is 4 min, we need 5 times more chargers than gas distributors. Good luck bringing that power to a highway stop area.
A rest stop on the main highway between Melbourne to Sydney - a popular route without covid lockdowns... - will often have 4 chargers.
At Easter, wait times would be measured in hours if a significant number of vehicles were EV.
Unlike America these days.
They've done the calculations based on physics, chemistry and economics and the numbers REALLY do not work.
It's also people who do not have degrees in EE, ME or ChemE who argue this but they also don't know that they are talking about.
90% in-city, now fully electric 10% road trips which may be hundreds of miles beyond BEV range
For us the added complexity is the price of not being SOL if we want to go more than 250 miles in one go.
For those long road trips we're getting exceedingly good hybrid mileage. In town, it's indeed proving all-electric.
If the battery range were 100 miles instead of 40-50 it'd probably be 95% - 5%...
Most of South Asia, and Africa drives Suzuki Altos, and Suzuki SX4s are considered there as big cars.
It's definitely, definitely possible to make small, cheap cars on batteries. In fact, easier than bigger ones as power to weight, and driving range scale non-linearly with the car size.
Big, heavy cars pay big premiums for not being able to use stamped parts in suspension for example. Small cars use stamped parts for almost everything.
Heavier cars almost invariably have to use more sophisticated suspension designs, with more parts to provide an equal level of comfort to lighter cars of the same class.
The amount of energy you lose in rolling resistance also varies non-linearly. You often can get an increase in driving efficiency if you have softer tires when you drive on less than idea roads. Etc, etc, etc
I saw an F150 once. The thing was a monstrosity that took a lane and a half on a suburban road.
Why is a car that big?
Because it's a light truck. Useful for towing and moving material. Unfortunately used by many as a commuting vehicle.
This is quite untrue about Africa. I doubt whether you've been to any country in Africa if you think that a Suzuki SX4 is considered a big car there. You'd get mocked for driving a "baby car" if you have an Alto.
Most kei cars are FWD and have very compact engine/transmissions - like I would say at max 2 milk crates side by side. 3 cylinder engines are common.
Smart EQ, Renault Twingo, the Citroën Ami is smaller still.
Maybe this is a pedantic argument like whether a Dyson cleaners qualify as “a typical handy vacuum” but those aren’t bland Walmart specials.
They do tend to go much slower & the acceleration is awfully clunky, but their range & efficiency is amazing.
People don't want to buy two cars, one used 90% for everyday trips and the other 10% (i.e in holiday etc).
Having a rich daddy with too many cars, it was honestly quite the realization that I could just rent a car and not buy one (or, up till that point, borrow it from dad). The year before the pandemic is when that hit me and so I did that with some friends to go to a conference. Was quite happy with the experience: luxury car for 5 days for iirc 250 euros plus petrol, divided by four people.
I think there are several issues:
1. The renting process is quite involved, it's still expensive and the variety of cars is limited.
Something like Uber for renting cars with heavy marketing + some city regulation might make people consider owning a city car and renting a "specialized" vehicle for long trips or just renting both the city and the long range one.
2. There is a social aspect to this issue as small cars are seen as "cheap"/worse cars and for some reasons many people seem to like big off-road trucks even if they never go off-road and even if they are over their budget.
Like it or not the car you drive matters to many/most of the people just like the clothes you wear and the mobile phone you use.
I believe a "simple" and single solution to fix all these ills would be to be full self driving capabilities. That way we could hail the car we want when we want it perhaps directly from automakers or from a tech company such Apple/Amazon. I guess the "pride" being driven in a big truck would decrease as well so we would see less of them on the roads.
I mean, shouldn’t that be obvious?
There’s a bunch of fixed costs to owning a car (space to store it, registration, insurance/vehicle duty, servicing and maintenance) that vary directly with the number of cars owned (yeah, I know maintenance/insurance gets more expensive if you’re doing above-average mileage but that’s on top of a mostly fixed base) and not the number of miles you drive.
I guess the Renault Zoe, with its battery rental model, is a nod to the direction the automakers really want. Instead of buying more than one car, you can buy none and rent the one you want!
And that range is measured when they're new- battery degradation is much more significant when your range barely covers your commute; add cold weather taking off another 20% of that range and now you can't make it to work and back without needing to stop at a charger.
Battery energy density just isn't enough in this application for it to make sense for this type of vehicle.
As the video says, the car can be so cheap in part because of many safety features it lacks. I assume therefore that such a car would have to be more expensive in the Japanese market. But the space seems perfect for electric vehicles.
https://insideevs.com/news/525542/china-wuling-hongguang-sal...
I think that explains why much gasoline "kei" cars (i.e. cars with less than 0.66 liter engine) are popular. They are much cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain, etc.
New cars have risen in price slower than overall inflation for decades (at least in the US). In real terms (comparing against flat real incomes), cars have gotten cheaper, not more expensive.
https://images.app.goo.gl/evJLcuDezo1scu8e9
In case that Google image link dies soon, here’s another, slightly different one that’s likely more durable: http://dvschroeder.blogspot.com/2013/08/college-tuition-has-...
If today's car costs 50% more than a car from a decade ago, but it lasts more than twice is long, isn't it actually cheaper?
In fact, car price movement is different in Japan, steadily rising since the 90s. [0] (Written in Japanese; The second chart is CPI-adjusted car prices)
Also PPP against US has been declining. [1]
[0] https://news.yahoo.co.jp/byline/fuwaraizo/20200519-00178444 [1] https://knoema.com/atlas/Japan/topics/Economy/Inflation-and-...
Not sure what to think of it. Obviously reversing cameras, working A/C and better fuel economy are important and real improvements worth real money.
> Electric cars, Mr. Toyoda pointed out, are only as clean as the electricity that powers them and the factories where they are built. Japan, Toyota’s second-biggest market, plans to go carbon neutral by 2050, but as long as it continues to rely on fossil fuels to generate electricity, he said, the vehicles’ environmental benefits will remain a mirage.
It should be noted that no country are planning to ban fossil fuel-burning power plants. The "carbon neutral" plans seems to be all plans by a few countries to export more renewable energy to surrounding countries than their own consumption of fossil fuels. The intention is still to continue rely on fossil fuels to generate electricity.
For countries like my own that have a set date for both banning the sale of new gasoline-burning vehicles and a date for "carbon neutral", we need to set a date where no new fossil fueled power plants may be built. Preferable the same date. If there are no sales of new ones then the old ones will die off after a while.
As an percentage of the full energy grid, I suspect the electric car is better than nothing in this country. If someone is interested in number crunching it would make for an interesting read to see how much the actual difference is for a new electric car compared to a new IC car, especially in other countries like Germany that have close to 100% wind capacity in optimal conditions but on average still burn a lot of fossil fuel.
https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/evs-are-they-reall...
Added to this is the fact it is certainly easier to clean up a small number of dirty power plants, than millions of portable ones.
IC car = 15-30%
Fossil fuel power plant = 50%
Electric car = output of power plant * 0.77
Taking the average we get: 22.5 for IC car, 38% for the electric car. A 15.5% more energy.
I have no idea if those numbers are correct because the website you linked does not straight up comparison between the oil being burned in a power plant and the oil being burned in a car, in order to travel a certain distance.
As a strategy for combating global warming, IC to EV has several numbers to consider. The benefit in the power grid which depend on the country in question. The growth rate of cars. One should also make a comparison to do a similar transition with the power grid itself. And finally the required reduction in emissions to prevent global warming.
My own conclusion is that we need to do both. Doing just IC to EV without removing fossil fuels from the power grid won't be enough. EV will make the car more efficient and allow for more cars on the same amount of emissions, but its an incremental improvement rather than a full stop in terms of emissions.
You make it sound that transporting energy incurs no loss.
I suspect, though I don't know for sure, that the losses are significantly less than what is incurred in refining and transporting gasoline/petrol.
Transport costs are going to vary depending on the mode and distance — pipelines are cheap, ships less so but work long distance, and rail is more expensive, and trucking/flying it is even more.
Refinery costs are going to vary depending on the quality of the input, what’s the output mix, how much cracking is required, and the amount of impurities like sulphur.
So, huge variation all across the board. Best places to get real numbers would be to look at the numbers for publicly traded oil Companies that do the full stack.
Looks to be on the order of a few percent on national scale.
Gasoline also has to be transported to fuel stations.
• The power plant doesn't have to move. You can attach all kinds of stuff to it to capture its emissions and do something with them other than discharge them into the atmosphere.
You are much more limited when it comes to doing that for a car engine. You have weight, volume, size, and power constraints on car attachments that you do not have on power plant attachments.
• You can build power plants far away from high population areas. This doesn't help with emissions like CO2 that are harmful no matter where they are emitted, but for various noxious emissions that harm people who breath them it matters.
Car engines emit their noxious emissions in the cities in the midst of large populations.
Considering the much higher costs of gas and oil in comparison (and compared to renewable) this might just be enough to get out of using fossil energy for most power production. (Except maybe to cover peaks.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_phase-out
PS: For anyone able to read German, the German article has more in-depth information in some points:
The reason why I don't think that is the case is several. electricitymap.org is one, which goes brown when the wind is calm and green during gales. As much capacity that renewables has, when they don't produce we see the same demand being fulfilled with fossil fueled power.
A second reason is subsidize numbers in EU. The amount of tax money being spent on fossil fuels are one of the more depressing aspects of the energy sector, and seemingly counter-productive to the political message. There also seems to be a strategy that when there is an increase in the capacity of renewable energy, the amount of tax money being spent on grid stability get increased. That money then goes directly to keep fossil fueled power plants operational between dips in the availability of renewable energy. That subsidy is also a reason why the higher costs of gas and oil does not result in stations being phased out.
If there was a date where new construction of fossil fueled power plants was to be banned, the energy sector would have a finite period to find a solution to the grid stability problem that does not include fossil fuels. The only incentive without it is government interest to pay less subsidies, and companies desire to undercut the current suppliers for grid stability. I doubt however either is very good at creating the change we need at the speed that global warming require.
There are EU-wide plans of phasing out coal powerplants by 2030, and it's ahead of schedule so far. "Half of Europe’s 324 coal-fuelled power plants have either closed or announced a retirement date before 2030" [1]
EU is doing this mostly by financial incentives not by outright ban on coal, but the effect is the same. Recently a new block of coal-fired powerplant in Ostrołęka, Poland was cancelled and demolished, because it makes no economical sense to build new coal powerplants.
Of course coal isn't the only fossil fuel, but it's by far the most important when it comes to powerplants. Some gas powerplants will probably remain as a way to balance electrical networks during peaks (because they can be throttled faster than other types of powerplants), but it's relatively minor percentage.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/climate-environment/news/eu...
The total disregard for the impact of ICE on their direct surroundings, people who breathe in the exhaust fumes in nearly undiluted form, is very problematic in my opinion. But it's very common these days to focus entirely on carbon emissions.
We need a bit more nuance than this. Ontario, Canada hasn’t strictly banned fuel-burning plants, but they’ve come damn near close to it. Their electric grid is 96% emissions free.
EDIT:
TIL - next Miata generation to be electrified, sadly "by 2030"
https://www.motor1.com/news/515992/next-gen-miata-hybrid-ele...
My car is rated for 18/25, I barely get 16mpg and I am still on the freeway quite a bit. I’m less aggressive than I used to be when I was getting 11-12mpg.
It seems to me that the transition is inevitable. Slowly but surely electric cars are becoming cheaper and more capable. It is really hard to imagine that they will not soon be cheaper than ICE cars.
But they just seem so much more convenient and nicer to be around that diesel and petrol cars. No more breathing in exhaust fumes! No more petrol stations! Less servicing!
For a site that supposedly caters to forward thinking technologists, there sure are a lot of people refusing to see the obvious conclusion to the current trend.
If your grid sucks, consider installing solar panels and charging your car yourself.
Lithium batteries are already used to aid power grids. Mass adoption of EVs and smart grid could actually help by providing storage for wind and solar.
They were so concerned about businesses whose job it is to make the tapes that they literally built a new business to migrate these workers into new jobs.
It's a little reductive. I'd rather say Japan is typically happy with local maximas instead of aiming at better, newer systems. Sometimes this means that Japan is stuck with obsolete technologies for what seems no good reason, some other times Japan is actually advanced in other ways that seem alien to the rest of the world (the rest of the World not using washlets to clean their butts seems old-fashioned to anyone living in Japan).
There's only a few people I know, one is an aunt who is over 70 years old and the other is a stripper.
Everyone else I know just uses a credit or debit card. Even buying drugs people will just opt to use venmo or cashapp rather than going to an ATM.
I will say my family lives near large metro areas. Maybe in more rural cities people are more likely to use cash?
> https://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/energy_environment/glo...
> https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.htm...
Doing it with PV and grid-scale batteries, now...
(Note: large amounts of electrolysed hydrogen are definitely needed in order to replace methane in fertilizer production and coal in steelmaking. No argument about the need to make hydrogen!)
Heck, it's already fragmented - I just looked at the new car inventory for an LA-area Chevy dealer. They have 65 ICE pickups, 11 ICE SUVs, 7 ICE sports cars and 29 EVs, so about 25% EVs, well above the national average. Then I looked at a rural South Dakota Chevy dealer's inventory - 11 ICE pickups, 7 ICE SUVs and that's it. Zero EVs on offer there.
It might not be fractured in a regulatory sense, just that manufacturers typically sell their EVs in one sort of place and their gas-powered vehicles in another, and dealers only stock what they know they'll sell.
It's just a matter of who gets the government subsidies/favorable tax treatment, cynically.
When batteries get cheap enough and PV arrays have been sufficiently tropicalized, there will be some switching in the rest of the world. It'd happen faster without fossil fuel interests being able to get the subsidies, though.
There are examples of this in Japan - they are still trying hard to break away from using paper faxes.
> https://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/energy_environment/glo...
> https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.htm...
For that matter, Japan brought its HTGR back online.
> https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Japanese-gas-coo...
My overall feeling is that BEVs and FCEVs will _both_ be used in the future. BEVs have some compelling advantages for short-distance travel like intercity commuting (like being able to charge them at home) while FCEVs have compelling advantages for long-distance travel, like higher range and efficiency and faster refueling.
One interesting point from that report is that it addresses the widely-quoted point ([1] for example) that generator -> wheel efficiency for FCEVs is lower. While this is true, it stops just short of the metric we really care about: generator -> miles driven efficiency.
A BEV has to spend a lot of its stored energy just moving its batteries around, while an FCEV uses a relatively light cylinder, so when you look at efficiency in terms of W/miles driven, the reduced weight of an FCEV can render it overall more efficient than a BEV.
FCEVs are also a relatively young technology compared to batteries, so there's likely to be some substantial efficiency improvements still on the table.
[0]: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2014/03/f9/thomas...
[1]: https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/08/hydroge...
I'd expect the business part of FCEV to be lighter. The tanks, fuel cell stacks, converter, etc vs a big ass Li-ion battery.
My first guess is the Mirai frame's safety features were double sized. Being the first product to market, Toyota was probably extremely risk adverse.
I haven't found any Mirai teardowns (a la Munro & Assoc, AvE).
I also couldn't find any weight comparisons of Tesla and Toyota electric motors.
What would a Model 3 with FCEV look like? Replace BEV with FCEV, keeping Tesla's motors.
We've seen that Tesla is obsessed with weight reduction and simplification. Like the Toyota of yesteryear. I'd love for Toyota to do it again for FCEV.
And FCEVs are still in their infancy. There are only 6 production FCEVs so far [2] with very few charging stations built yet. They haven't reached anywhere near the same level of maturity as BEVs. Just compare the first list [2] to the second list [3]. What was the available range when BEVs only had 6 production vehicles on the market?
So I think it's more accurate to say the theoretical advantage hasn't _yet_ been realized in practice.
[0]: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/fcv_sbs.shtml
[1]: https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/2021-tesla-model-3-long-ran...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fuel_cell_vehicles#Pro...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_production_battery_ele...
I have quickly glance through it, but some of the assumptions seem to be pretty wrong. If I look in Fig. 4, at a range of 300 miles, this is what the Tesla Model 3 offers. The Model 3 is about 1800-1900kg, so much less than shown in the graphic, and the only FCEV in that range, the Mirai, is even heavier than the Tesla at the same range. So the weight for the FCEV is just plain wrong. And yes, the pure hydrogen tank is much lighter than a battery, but you have to add the weight of the fuel cell and the buffer battery as well as a lot of piping towards it. While hydrogen certainly has the edge in for much larger storage capacities, I can't see an advantage for car sized tanks. Said Mirai also has the same range as a Model 3. Not mentioned is the space requirement: a Mirai has less interior space than a Model 3, because the Tanks have quite a volume and have to by cylindrical shaped. A battery can basically have any shape desired.
My overall feeling is that BEVs and FCEVs will _both_ be used in the future. BEVs have some compelling advantages for short-distance travel like intercity commuting (like being able to charge them at home) while FCEVs have compelling advantages for long-distance travel, like higher range and efficiency and faster refueling.
With the current state of technology, I don't see any disadvantage for BEV. Recharging on the road is much less frequent than refueling of a FCEV, because you can charge a BEV at any outlet. Especially when parking over night. Considering that, the recharge time at a fast charge is only mildly slower, Hyundai ist at 18 minutes already. The quoted fast refuel times assume that the fuel station has full pressure, which might not be the case if another car just refueld there. And why should a FCEV be any more efficient than a BEV? Currently, assuming it would use "green" hydrogen, it takes about 3-4x as much eletricity.
that generator -> wheel efficiency for FCEVs is lower. While this is true, it stops just short of the metric we really care about: generator -> miles driven efficiency.
Sorry, what should be the difference between those terms?
A BEV has to spend a lot of its stored energy just moving its batteries around, while an FCEV uses a relatively light cylinder, so when you look at efficiency in terms of W/miles driven, the reduced weight of an FCEV can render it overall more efficient than a BEV.
No, the weight of the car has only a neglible contribution to the energy used for driving. For driving at constat speed anyway not - at highway speeds the air resistance is the major facter. Only when in a stop-and-go situation, the weight makes a difference, but there the recuperation of the BEV gets back a lot of the energy.
And in practical terms: the Mirai weights more than the Model 3, where is even the possibility for a gain there? And the almost-obese EQS from Mercedes seems to be more efficient than the Model 3 even thanks to a really low air-resistance. Ironically, its larger size does help with air resistance.
FCEVs are also a relatively young technology compared to batteries, so there's likely to be some substantial efficiency improvements still on the table.
Some for sure. But the big problem is for example the energy used to compress the hydrogen. This is plain physics, how much energy you have to spend to compress a gas. And currently, FCEV use about 3x as much energy as comparable electric cars, I don't see where they should catch up with that.
BEVs are a relatively mature technology at this point. Tens of thousands (hundreds? millions?) of BEVs have been sold, there are many production BEV models and they've received decades of research at this point.
FCEVs are still in their infancy. There are only 6 production FCEVs and the technology hasn't received nearly the same level of R&D as BEVs.
Comparing the present-day Mirai to the present-day Model 3 is like comparing the Tesla Roaster to an early Prius. If you'd done that, you'd have concluded that BEVs are too expensive and impractical to ever be viable and that hybrids are the future.
Give the FCEVs some time and they'll get closer to their potential.
But the fundamental question now becomes: considering the performance of the electric cars you can already buy, what is the incentive to invest billions into FCEV development and even more so into fuel stations and distribution? Especially, as there isn't much green hydrogen anytime soon?
There is a pretty good chance you have that backwards, and the reason Japan has a comprehensive hydrogen strategy is due to lobbying of their car companies. Australia seems to have a number of hydrogen initiatives being discussed, and most seem tied to Japanese companies.
Investing in the infrastructure needed for mass adoption of fully electric cars is the true national-level barrier. And that's going to take a long time.
We've only just scratched the surface in how much charging power it's going to require... for ex: the vast majority of people living in apartment buildings will be left out without massive private investment in their parking lots.
Otherwise I'm pretty confident that Toyota, Honda, Nissan, etc can figure out how to make entire fleets of fully electric cars when the time is right.
They're terrified. China has all those low-cost electric city cars.
Since our garage is not big enough for two cars, that means whatever I have, will be parked in our driveway. And thus vulnerable.
This means I can’t have a Tesla or Lexus, or any other kind of more expensive vehicle, even if I could afford it. The best I can hope for is a nice Toyota or Subaru. Don’t ask about Nissan — you don’t want to get me started on that rant.
Since Toyota and Subaru don’t make any decent BEVs and they don’t appear to be likely to do so anytime within the next decade, the next best thing I can hope for is a good PHEV.
There are numerous areas of the economy where the national government could focus on fostering a disruptive domestic industry, and many with just as much of a potential positive impact on the environment and humanity as electric cars. So why instead of choosing one of those other areas, it would choose electric cars, and help accelerate the development of the one technology that would disrupt its most profitable industry?
Battery power cars are not new technology. They are over 100 years old.
Even road trips are low stress in EVs with good range. The car navigation adds stops and you can just blindly follow. I manage the stops more actively, but I find it fun (I also optimized furl economy in my gas cars too, so same thinking really). You could easily do a 1000 km day without thinking about range once, just follow the directions.
In america the question is why invest in carbon based transportation? It is "obsolete technology"! In japan cars are "obsolete"!
In cities in Portugal and Spain the public transport is good as well, but I lived outside those in both countries and you have no chance without a car if you have any urgency to get somewhere. A bus once a day (early morning) to pick up and once (early evening) to drop off; so if you rely on public transport, you lose 1 entire day if you go shopping.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...
(Nobody drove in New York, there was too much traffic)
So why jump in now and fight over 3% of the market, when they can jump in a few years time when it's a bigger market?
If they plan on jumping in in volume in a few years they need to be securing battery supply now, but that wouldn't necessarily be visible to us.
While a car is a car, an full BEV is not pretty much the same as an ICE vehicle. This is the same mistake that Toyota and others seem to be making.
I can't say what's the best business strategy for auto makers but I feel like getting a strong foothold of the electric market early on could prove to be a good long term plan.
And a lot of people, including me, are seriously considering an electric for their next car. My boss just got an electric. To me it seems like now would be a good time to have good products on the market.
I'm looking at the Honda e but for its range & price, it looks more like a .. prototype/halo car than a real product for the consumer market.
There was an article recently where a British scientist declared that to reach just Great Britain 2050 objectives they would need to absorb most (or sometimes many times more) of the world production of rare earth and other metals.
If this is true, and the UE stays dogmatic about it, I suspect that by 2040 driving a car will be reserved to only the most privileged.
I'm not aware of any rare earth elements used in lithium batteries.
My understanding is that lithium itself is quite common and there should be enough for everyone to drive an electric car, but it's still an open question as to what future reserves will be discovered and how steeply the supply curve will rise with more investment and technology. E.g.: https://medium.com/batterybits/is-there-enough-lithium-to-ma...
Perhaps a bigger concern than lithium is cobalt, but there are cobalt-free chemistries so I don't believe it's a blocker.
I have no idea what you mean by cars in 2040 will only be for the most privileged. There are cars rolling off assembly lines today that will still be on the road in 2040.
> I have no idea what you mean by cars in 2040 will only be for the most privileged. There are cars rolling off assembly lines today that will still be on the road in 2040.
Most of the cars sold now in the EU are not electric. If the materials are as rare as claimed in the article, it won't be possible to equip everybody with an EV.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element
(Or perhaps you're thinking about electric motors, which can use rare earths like neodymium.)
Even if we could mandate all-electric tomorrow, it wouldn't make sense or be feasible for quite a while...
At the moment there's neither the capacity (or materials available atm) to make enough batteries, nor the infrastructure in eletry production, delivery, and charging, nor the money lying around to buy them (outside the West), to replace the 1 billion cars all around the world in any short timespan (say 20 years)...
So let me double down: rushing to electric cars without having the capacity/infrastructure (and without the feasibility to have it even for decades) is a fool's errand.
Japan were world leaders in electric drive trains with hybrids like the Prius. A perfect way to gracefully transition from ICE to all electric. This was almost 35 years ago (1997). But they squandered that lead by focussing on the dead end technology of hydrogen.
Why put all your eggs in the one basket?
I don't even see that as inevitable...