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Comment by johnea | Hacker News Reader

It's great news to see Japanese auto makers coming onboard with EVs in a serious way.

The capabilities of solid state batteries are just one example of the wide open opportunities for EVs that internal combustion can just never have.

While storage, and generation, of electricity has a huge ability to evolve and advance, gasoline and other petro products have an inherent amount of chemical energy per volume that can never be changed.

An EV with 1000 mile range is in the mid-term future, while here in the US we'll be focused on delivering the world's largest coal fired pickup truck 8-/

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I have no idea what a 1000 mile radius is good for. I would rather have 400 miles and a lighter car. There are some commercial applications maybe but nothing else?

It's still all about charging in general. If it takes a 8 hours to deliver 50 and you drive 80 miles a day, you'll want a buffer of miles to prevent, having an extra buffer might get you through to a period where you aren't driving as much. Or you can make longer trips without refill. Or you can worry less about inefficiencies at lower temps.

Trucks. Inter-city Buses. Extremely lightweight EVs (think Mazda Miata EV).

Also EV motor homes, but that's basically just a bus.

About EV motor homes: battery capacity for domestic use is plenty in any EV. Powerwalls have much less capacity. So I'd buy a EV motor home with minimal range, like 100 miles. When stationary the capacity is only limited by the solar panels on top (~1.5kW peak). Then again, maybe my use isn't typical.

I'd wish for solar panels mounts as standard for EV vans, with potentially full roof coverage.

For a variety of reasons it is interesting.

Max charge rate is frequently dependent on battery size. A larger battery can absorb more power per unit of time. If you get 50% range in an hour of fast charging, the 1000 mile range car is much better for long distance travel.

Having to only charge your car every 1k miles opens up a lot of use cases. People living in places where they have to street park, and can't charge at night, might feel a lot better about electric cars if they only have to charge once a month.

Towing range is a major issue with the current generation of electric vehicles.

Auxiliary power uses are also appealing to a lot of people. 1000 miles of range can also translate to 500 miles of range and 100kw of power. Think about ambulances, cop cars and other service vehicles that just run their engines for an entire shift to keep the electricity flowing. Plenty of people travel with generators for personal and professional reasons. No need if your car has power to spare.

Lots of good examples in the replies, but also quoted range tends to be best-case scenarios. Ideal temperature, not running the cabin heat, etc. In the real world, I want to be comfortable that on a -5F winter morning that I can defrost the windows and heat up the cabin and with cold-soaked batteries still get through my day of driving.

It will be a luxury item. Unless batteries become incredibly cheap and lightweight, economics will strongly favor a car that has just the right amount of range and no more.

However, some people have extra money to spend, and range is a meaningful upgrade. With gas vehicles, there are already people who get a much bigger vehicle than they really need and are willing to pay way more for the vehicle and for fuel. I don't see any reason not to expect the same with electric cars.

Really disappointing replies 8-/

The main point: electric storage and generation has a huge capacity for innovation and improvement, versus petro combustion's fixed chemical energy.

The 1000 mile range is just one example of that capacity for improvement, and somehow that's the only thing anyone could comment on?

Promises of something 'in 3 years' is not in any way serious while selling mediocre overpriced EV right now. This is Toyota standard stalling while hoping their beloved Hydrogen somehow happens in the mean time.

I do not get why Toyota is so wedded to hydrogen. There's no infrastructure for it. It would require a far bigger revamp than the switch to BEVs. There's no existing hydrogen source, and the stuff is tricky to transport and store.

If they had a hydrogen source for cheap, it would have been so much easier to just transform it into hydrocarbons. They're easier to store, easier to transport, and all of the existing structure is already built around it. Just keep on making the same engines you always have.

They already had a lead in battery-powered hybrids. It would have made so much more sense to lean into that, first into plugin hybrids and then plugin-only.

Hydrogen is such an obvious dead end, and everybody sees it but them -- the ones who should have been the first to figure it out. I just don't get it.

> I do not get why Toyota is so wedded to hydrogen. There's no infrastructure for it. It would require a far bigger revamp than the switch to BEVs. There's no existing hydrogen source, and the stuff is tricky to transport and store.

I think the answer is really simple and basically the same as for where this headline comes from: FUD about EVs so people instead buy a Toyota gas car while pretending to be eco.

> They already had a lead in battery-powered hybrids. It would have made so much more sense to lean into that, first into plugin hybrids and then plugin-only.

That was twenty years ago though.

Just like twenty years ago "hydrogen cars" sounded like a possible solution.

Because they are a JP company, over there they have no way of cheaply producing the electricity needed, already relying on natural gas imports, hydrogen needs only a few more steps on top of it to make.

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