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Comment by tenpies | Hacker News Reader

Correct. Toyota's bet is simple: what makes rational economic, environmental, and good-policy sense for most locales is not an EV. It's a hybrid.

And it's a bet that's working well so far: https://fortune.com/asia/2023/12/28/toyota-hybrid-cars-sales...

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yet they refuse to build hybrids in large numbers. RAV4 primes and Prius primes are insanely difficult to get at or near MSRP. Toyota is saying that Hybrids make the most sense, but still use hybrid as an upsell for a higher trim, and thus only makes a fraction of their cars as hybrids. If >50% of their vehicles were hybrids, i'd be ecstatic and would agree with them, but currently it's just whataboutism and misdirection

they don't refuse to build. they fail to match production to demand due to logistical reasons. factory discussed here it's literally solution for production problems that they have.

when i was buying hybrid volvo a few years ago and talked to dealership boss, i was told that volvo got surprised by demand and they simply don't have enough battery packs in order build more.

and things like battery pack for car, it's not something that you can just ramp up capacity from today to tomorrow.

Hybrids combine the costs and maintenance issues of an ICE with the costs and maintenance issues of a BEV. This is a lot of unnecessary complexity and cost for what will ultimately be a short transition, during which China will substantially eat into Japanese automakers’ markets and gain the upper hand in battery supply.

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