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hark ,
@hark@lemmy.world avatar

“The company has estimated that vehicles boasting solid-state batteries could be available starting in 2027 or 2028.”

Could be available a few years from now? Wake me up if that actually happens.

phoenixz ,

Yeaaahh, I’ll press x to doubt, yet again.

First off, 745 miles range on a battery is a weird thing as batteries don’t drive. Cars, bikes and the such do, batteries use mAH for example.

Second, any “revolutionary batter” is bullshit. Why? Because I’ve seen about 3625 revolutionary new batteries in the past 30 years, and 99.99% of them have been bullshit.

Batteries are pretty much at the upper level of what’s possible with batteries as we currently have them, so either we switch to something revolutionary as antimatter batteries or something else esoteric, or wel’ll be happy to add 5% to what we already got.

ohlaph ,

Cool, do trains next. Mass transit is the answer to transportation needs. We need: Electric bikes with a 250 mile range. Electric busses and trains. Neighborhood charge stations. Shared neighborhood battery packs piwered by solar.

We can build a better future.

psychothumbs ,

Trains are easy enough to electrify with current technology, no need for batteries.

rikonium ,

These “breakthroughs” are Toyota “Full-Self Driving next year!” fluff and I’ll believe it when it’s shipped and performing.

BirdyBoogleBop ,

Excellent make it then makr a cheaper, lighter option with half that range.

SirEDCaLot ,

That’s great. Build it. Until this hits the showroom floor, I don’t care. Electric cars have been consistently 10 years away for the past like 30 or 40 years. For every other automaker, electric cars are now here today. Except Toyota, where they are still 10 years away. And for me, The electric car isn’t 10 years away, it’s parked in my driveway. So as far as I’m concerned, this is all just press bullshit to try and discredit current EVs and buy Toyota time to continue pushing gas and hybrid.

And as for the whole thing of people not buying EVs, that’s twofold. One, people are hurting right now, and people in bad economic condition get really price conscious. The second gas prices go up they’ll all be trading their gas guzzlers for EVs. Second, the simple fact is a lot of EVs on the road kind of suck. And other than Tesla, the public charging infrastructure is awful so if you like road trips you’re going to have a bad time. Given that in another year other automakers will mostly be switching to Tesla charge ports, unless you’re buying a Tesla there’s some logic in waiting.

vaultdweller013 ,

Also most of Tesla’s worth is in stock. If that ever collapses theres a good chance those stations will be little more than scrap.

Buddahriffic ,

Other car makers have adopted that charger, I’m sure they would grab those up.

SirEDCaLot ,

Strong disagree. Let’s say Tesla stock collapses. They are still a very profitable company with a product that sells well. So unless they’re finances are structured in such a way that makes a stock price collapse catastrophic, they would continue to sell cars. They’re charging network is actually one of the most valuable things they have. It’s taken them a decade plus to get that infrastructure installed, there are more stations and stalls than all other charging networks combined in the US. That’s why just about every automaker has pledged to adopt the Tesla charging connector. They recognize that pinning their EV future to Electrify America’s shitty unreliable network is not a success strategy, and part of the reason their EVs aren’t selling is because public charging on road trips is a nightmare.

So no, those stations aren’t scrap. They’re insanely valuable. Even if you assume something horrible happens to Tesla and everybody decides not to adopt that connector, the stations can be easily retrofit to use the CCS connector that other automakers use currently.

ebc ,

I bought a car last summer, and I had my wallet out ready to buy an EV. I had only 2 criteria:

  • Must seat at least 6 (I have 4 kids)
  • Must be under 100k CAD (a bit beyond my budget, but I’m willing to stretch to avoid gas)

Guess how many models were available? 1 - the Tesla Model Y, 7-seater option. And I did order one, but they cancelled my order because they stopped selling that variant in Canada.

So that’s why I didn’t buy an EV. Manufacturers can’t be arsed to build a car that meets my very simple criteria; they prefer making another boring 5-seater crossover or yet another humongous “luxury” SUV. I want a minivan, dammit.

Pofski ,

Honest question, what about the buzz-e?

ebc ,

You mean the VW ID.Buzz? It’s not out yet, and I needed a car in June.

toofpic ,

Are you talking about the US? They are here, in Copenhagen, and they look awesome!

ebc ,

I’m in Canada, we’re supposed to get the US model which is longer and not out yet. The European model is only a 5-seater so it’s not for me.

Pirky ,
@Pirky@lemmy.world avatar

Alternatively, you could go the hybrid route as those are arguably better for most people. Plus their batteries are often large enough you can get 20-40 miles of all electric driving. That alone covers over 95% of all people’s trips.
There are a few options in that category. I believe Toyota’s Highlander is a 3 row hybrid. I think Hyundai’s new Santa Fe also has a hybrid power train with 3 rows. The Mazda CX-90 is another viable hybrid. Though Idk if that officially released yet.

But yeah, in terms of pure 3 row EV’s, we’re lacking.

ebc ,

My previous vehicle was a Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid (which I sold in 2022 when I left for a long trip), and I actually bought another one after Tesla cancelled my order. It is a good option, but my main gripe with it is that it doesn’t have enough electric range and it only charges on AC. I was ready to go full electric, but apparently the market isn’t.

Joelk111 ,

Plugin hybrids are killer. EV around town and good MPG on road trips.

Sparlock ,

The Volvo EX90 is a 7 seat EV.

Volvo makes quite a few EV and hybrids now. The “Overseas Delivery Tourist Experience” is also a nice touch if you ever wanted to go to sweden.

AlternateRoute ,

Wait list for the EV9 is already over a year and it just became “available” in Canada.

JTskulk ,

“Simple criteria.” Dude, you live in the north pole and have enough kids to field a MOBA team, you need Santa to make you clown car.

antik ,
@antik@lemmy.world avatar

Who is the the clown though, you brought absolutely nothing to this conversation - just trying to be funny and failing.

SirEDCaLot ,

You’re not wrong. A model X would also fit your bill, but last summer they were stupid expensive. Prices have come down a bit. I would suggest buying any car consider the total cost of ownership, not just ‘stretch a bit to avoid gas’. Gas cars need oil changes, tune-ups, belt replacements, and various other maintenance. EVs require very little. Also, if you need more than 5 seats, don’t shun the ‘humongous’ SUV. You’re literally in that market.

But for someone in the market last year, you were pretty fucked even I will admit.

I do wish somebody was making an electric minivan. Closest I’m aware of is Chrysler has a Pacifica plug in hybrid. And now there’s the ID.Buzz coming out soon.

ebc , (edited )

The Pacifica is actually what I ended up buying.

EDIT: And yeah, looks like Model X has come down in price, but it’s still 110k$ CAD (was 140+). Somebody else mentioned the Kia EV9 which actually has a price now, and it’s very interesting. I’ve talked to my local dealer and they’ll call me back when they have one available for test drives.

Also, if you need more than 5 seats, don’t shun the ‘humongous’ SUV. You’re literally in that market.

Humongous, perhaps. Luxury, not really. I’m just not the type of guy who needs a special type of car to feel manly; minivans actually feel more useful to me.

Sparlock ,

I’ve been looking at the EV9 and people who have driven it seem to love a lot about it, except for one thing. The incessant beeping. It has safety features that beep about everything and often you don’t know why it’s even doing it. You can turn it off but they only stay disabled till you turn off the vehicle. next time you get in bEep BEep beEp.

My wife would end up lighting it on fire and pushing off a cliff she would be so annoyed. If there is no way to permanently disable it then hard pass.

SirEDCaLot ,

Oh yeah I hear ya. You’d like a big SUV like a Tahoe or Suburban, you don’t need fancy leather seats and big touchscreen and a little motor that massages your butt while you drive (and you don’t want to pay for that stuff).

Not much in that regard available these days…

ebc ,

Actually, no. I’d like a Dodge Caravan or Odyssey. The Tahoe and Suburban are way too big on the outside, but they’re actually very small on the inside.

You’re on point about the fanciness, though. I got TVs in my current car (Pacifica Pinnacle, it’s the only model they had), and they’re awful. For the cost of that option, I would’ve been much better off buying a bunch of iPads.

RememberTheApollo_ ,

The only thing that will sell that car is if it actually gets those charge and range numbers, it’s affordable - and I mean affordable relative to current average ICE cars, not EVs; and it actually does car things that people want. Not built like a tin can, decent interior and seating, etc.

Current EVs price most people out of the market right away. Range and charge times eliminate a lot more people because there may not be charging convenient to where they leave the car for work, shopping, etc and they don’t want to sit for “x” time to allow the car to charge. Towing reducing range rapidly in EV trucks seems to keep people away because it’s not doing what a ICE truck can do despite all the power the motor has.

Yes, we’re still in the relatively early stages of EV development, so I’m not trying to bash EV. I’m very much for them. Just got a PHEV and love it, going for weeks and only burning 1/8 tank of gas is f’n awesome. But straight EV has a lot of work to do to become viable for the masses.

ferralcat ,

LoL. There’s a Google tech talk where the guys doing the autonomous driving DARPA challenge talk about how slow and awful military contractors are. Then they say “we just took off the shelf gps systems (you know, the ones the military contractors spent decades designing and building) and built something that works! Look how much faster the private sector is!”

That talk is 15 years old now.

SirEDCaLot ,

Oh for sure. There’s a whole industry of them, and they all milk Uncle Sam for everything the taxpayers worth with little need to produce real result. Look at SpaceX versus SLS. Well it’s true that SLS design was handicapped by Congress requirement to use old shuttle parts, the result is still a giant boondoggle that is very late, tens of billions over budget, and best case is going to cost $2 billion for each launch (which can only happen once every year or so). Meanwhile, all SpaceX expenditures to date including development of Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Starship, Super Heavy, Merlin, Raptor, and construction of an entire spaceport in Texas, have cost them by most estimates less than Boeing took to design one rocket. SpaceX is launching Falcon 9 twice a week. And to compete with SLS, once Starship is online it could theoretically launch once a day for $20 million rather than once a year for $2 billion.

Private sector can be efficient, but only when their own bottom line depends on efficiency. When there’s cost plus contracts involved, it really doesn’t.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Here’s how eating corn may make your shit turn purple and smell like rainbow sherbet:

MaxHardwood ,

Where can I find the rest of this article?

Colorcodedresistor ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Xavier ,

    Gosh, 🤣 … the image of having carbonized and/or partially vaporized humans quickly switched my awe in the technology into repugnance.

    Darn, why does amaizing technology often end up with horrifying set backs and adverse effects?

    DeathsEmbrace ,

    Do you know what a gigawatt of electron flow does to a human body?

    vaultdweller013 , (edited )

    Its because the flesh is weak. We must replace it with the strength and certainty of steal, praise the Omnisiah!

    Alpha71 ,

    YOU. WILL. BE. UPGRADED.

    Kbobabob ,

    Because the current charging stations don’t have enough to kill someone? This seems really overblown, like they’re just going to have live wires you have to connect to your car or something. There will probably be no real difference in charging for the user.

    Colorcodedresistor ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    toofpic ,

    Same goes with an open tank of a combustible liquid, right? And filling it with a combustible liquid gun. Sooo safe!

    Colorcodedresistor ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    toofpic ,

    How do they jump out?

    CmdrShepard ,

    And yet millions of drivers pump flammable liquids into their car every day. I fail to see why you’re lumping lithium battery instability in with this new solid state battery tech.

    jordanlund ,
    @jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

    Really feeling like “new battery technology” is the vehicular equivalent of “holographic storage” for computers.

    People have been talking about it for decades, there have been promising demos and absolutely no commercial application. :(

    Meanwhile:

    …yahoo.com/…/americans-aren-t-buying-evs-12280968…

    “among those respondents who did purchase a car or truck in the last 12 months, only 3.71% bought a new fully electric model, compared to 27.32% who got a gas combustion vehicle and 13.53% who opted for a new hybrid.

    Used vehicle buyers chose to buy gas-fueled cars, per the study. According to response rates, 41.91% preferred to buy a car or truck with an internal combustion engine, whereas 4.51% and 9.02% went for used fully electric and hybrid varieties, respectively.”

    Cavemanfreak ,

    “among those respondents who did purchase a car or truck in the last 12 months, only 3.71% bought a new fully electric model, compared to 27.32% who got a gas combustion vehicle and 13.53% who opted for a new hybrid.”

    Where are the missing 55%? And only 27.32% went for an ICE?? Something doesn’t add up.

    “Used vehicle buyers chose to buy gas-fueled cars, per the study. According to response rates, 41.91% preferred to buy a car or truck with an internal combustion engine, whereas 4.51% and 9.02% went for used fully electric and hybrid varieties, respectively.”

    Does this take into account how the market for used cars looks like? It seems like there would be tons of more ICE cars than electric varieties, since they’ve been even more popular in the past.

    Edit: At least the EU is stepping up reuters.com/…/eu-october-car-sales-up-146-ev-sale…

    Almost 50% of new passenger car registrations Jan-Oct were fullt electric or hybrid.

    jordanlund ,
    @jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

    “Where are the missing 55%?”

    Diesel? Stat specifically says gas combustion. But that doesn’t make ANY sense unless they ran the poll somewhere outside the US.

    Oho… I think I have it figured out…

    Follow the logic:

    “Among those who purchased a car or truck in the last 12 months…”

    3.71% - New Electric
    27.32% - Gas Combustion
    13.53% - New Hybrid

    So of the people buying a car or truck in the past 12 months, 44.56% bought NEW vehicles. The remaining 55.44% bought USED.

    The failing is excluding the word “new” from the gas purchases while it’s included in the other two.

    Then they relay the used statistics.

    41.91% - Used ICE
    9.02% - Used Hybrid
    4.51% - Used Electric

    55.44%

    Cavemanfreak ,

    Aaah, nice catch! I also thought of diesel first, but came to the same conclusion as you.

    Jode ,

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for this but I remember reading a comment on here a while back saying that to get that kind of energy jammed into a battery that quickly you’d need a cable as thick as a telephone pole to keep it from glowing like a toaster coil.

    abhibeckert , (edited )

    Nah that’s bullshit.

    Interstate powerlines are like half an inch and they carry several orders of magnitude more power than you’d ever need to quickly charge a car battery.

    EV charge cables are thick because a lot of them contain several wires which all need to be electrically shielded from each other (which is generally done by maintaining a physical gap between the actual wires). Part of that is just because we have multiple generations of EV charge technology and the new standards are backwards compatible with the old standards… so a lot of the wires in the cable are not even used when you charge your EV.

    Jode ,

    Yes but that’s 10s of thousand volts AC power at a reasonable current. We’re talking DC at a couple hundred volts and an extremely high current.

    abhibeckert , (edited )

    Yes - cables do get thicker as you increase the capacity… but you’re never going to see a cable as “thick as a telephone pole”. Any vehicle that needs that much power will use hydrogen instead (Airbus plans to have hydrogen powered commercial passenger aircraft operational within two years).

    The other thing that needs to be considered is distance. Those interstate highway lines need to carry power over extreme distances. An EV charge cable can be very short (and they could be a lot shorter than they typically are, if thickness were to become an issue).

    There are already 350kW DC fast charge systems in deployment right now and the entire bundle of cables (several wires) is about as thick as the cable we’re all used to for pumping gas.

    At 350kW you could charge a small EV battery in something like two minutes. In reality, it takes longer… because current battery tech can’t take that much power on a small battery - it can on very large batteries such as commercial heavy vehicles, but hopefully that will change soon.

    Pretzilla ,

    Nah, just use higher voltage to push more juice over the same size wires

    Ejh3k ,

    I will never buy an ev until it has at least a 500 mile drive in it and less than an hour full recharge…

    Yes I drive less than 10 miles on average daily. More typically, half that. But my immediate family is 250 miles away, extended is more than 500. And I have a lot of Boomer funerals coming up.

    rebelsimile ,

    You know you can stop to charge right? People make cross country trips in EVs with 200 miles of range daily.

    NotMyOldRedditName ,

    Some people prefer to piss in a bottle and drink 2 day old coffee kept in thermos.

    rebelsimile ,

    Well we should definitely base our entire energy policy on the edge cases of people who piss in bottles and drink old coffee to endanger everyone else on the road.

    NotMyOldRedditName ,

    Just think of how far we could go as society this way!

    macstainless ,

    It still blows my mind that Toyota single-handedly made hybrids a very successful thing and yet squandered that position to Elon effing Musk. Toyota could’ve been THE market-leader for EVs while still making a killing with the Prius and ICE cars. They’d have a solid lock in all markets.

    Toyota has one of the best reliability reputations of any automaker and yet anyone in the EV market (like I was recently) passes them over because they have zero models to sell. Instead of parlaying the Prius’ R&D into a viable EV too, they’ve left money on the table. Hyundai has gone all in and is selling a ton of EVs. I see more of theirs / Kia’s on the road than anything else (besides teslas).

    random_character_a ,
    @random_character_a@lemmy.world avatar

    I was in the impression that Toyota didn’t see full EVs as viable products in long term. Sticking with hybrids was the safe option.

    Squizzy ,

    I see a couple of Tesla’s a week, everything else is Hyundai or Kia…even the RAV4 is less popular than it was 2 years ago.

    LemmyIsFantastic ,

    You will see the market move to phevs. Having a 400 Mike battery is stupid for most people nearly every day.

    20, 40, 80 mile phevs are going to be what 95% of people need and is going to reduce battery needs.

    AA5B ,

    I doubt it: BEV technology is already past phev for most people. Some of the advantages of BEV are based on simplifying, never needing the thousands of parts and hundreds of pounds that is an engine and transmission. Never needing the maintenance or fluids to support all that. They’ll eventually be cheaper by having a shorter supply chain and faster manufacturing. They don’t need the complexity.

    Ok, currently rural areas need the complexity of phev. But even the most rural house already has electricity that can support a charger, and supercharging networks are rapidly expanding, so even this is only true for the next few years

    AA5B ,

    Hyundai has gone all in and is selling a ton of EVs. I see more of theirs / Kia’s on the road than anything else (besides teslas).

    That’s what really strikes me, even more than Teslas. I see legacy manufacturers complain about no one wanting EVs or they can’t build EVs for sufficient profit, and backsliding on their transition plans.

    I have relatives working for legacy manufacturers and asked them: doesn’t this strike you as similar to the 1970s? Legacy manufacturers sticking to what they know and trying to convince themselves the world isn’t changing. That led to the rise of Toyota, Honda, etc, as world leaders. this time you have Hyundai/Kia quickly climbing the ladder from their start as a low cost alternative, to a market leader, maybe soon a volume leader. Will the legacy manufacturers suffer the same losses as they did in the 1970s?

    toofpic ,

    And I was sitting/driving only the cheap Hyindais, but even a mid-range Kia looks cool and solid inside, I enjoyed using carsharing Souls, sat in an expensive bus-of-a-car minivan, and I see no difference in comfort with Mercedes c or e class respectively. (Sorry Mercedes fans, I’m not against you, it’s just kias are nice)
    The only reason why the Koreans are not leaders yet is because it’s “yet”

    Bye ,

    Makes me even more optimistic about future EV retrofitting. I have an FJ Cruiser that has an incredible amount of room for batteries between the frame rails; I’d love to have it be retrofitted one day.

    lettruthout ,

    I’m hoping to retrofit my plugin Prius.

    You999 ,

    There are companies that EV motors that fit LS mounts however you still have to fab the battery mounts yourself.

    AlternateRoute ,

    2010 investigating solid state

    2013 mentions working on solid state

    2017 ETA commercialize by Early 2020s

    2019 Will establish a joint venture with Panasonic by 2020 no ETA on batteries

    2023 June commercialization in 2027-2028

    2023 Oct ETA still 2027-28

    Note that further interviews state: limited production starts in 2027 The 745 and 10 min charging are worded as “could enable” IE will NOT be in the 2027-28 initial release.

    They also plan to introduce it in hybrids first.

    Cheesus ,

    And that’s assuming they put in a battery that large and not a marginally bigger battery than the competitors.

    Earthwormjim91 ,

    I mean, nobody actually needs that big of a battery. The vast majority drive less than what EV batteries provide.

    If they can introduce a car that weighs 2,000lbs less and have a battery replacement half that of the competitors, while providing the same range, that’s a huge win.

    ShittyBeatlesFCPres ,

    I think it’s still reasonable to focus on the 250ish mile range. I have a semi-old 2018 PHEV that gets 15-20 miles on electric plus 350 miles on gas and I fill up a few times a year. I live relatively close to work but 100 miles of electric range would be enough for 99% of people.

    But when I leave the beaten path, I still use a good chunk of the gas engine. Going on a normal road trip on interstates is fine but rural gas stations aren’t converting yet. It still takes planning to go off the beaten path even if it’s obvious we’ll get there.

    Viper_NZ ,

    Fool me once, shame on you.

    Fool me eight times, I’m an absolute moron for believing Toyota’s bullshit once again.

    SCB ,

    How is it fooling you to set a timeline, post updated that adhere to that timeline, then state your breakthrough 4 years before that timeline ends?

    Viper_NZ ,

    That’s not was happened. They’ve been releasing this nonsense as ‘a few years away’ annually since 2009. Often accompanied by the implication not to buy an EV now, it’s about to be made obsolete by solid state batteries.

    SCB ,

    I’m just going by home boys links.

    NotMyOldRedditName ,

    Pretty sure I saw something recently where they said they’d only have the batteries to make 10k SSB cars a year by 2030

    zurohki ,

    The impact they’re hoping it’ll have is people will think this isn’t the right time to buy an EV so they’ll keep buying Toyota gas cars. That’s why Toyota is constantly in the news regarding battery tech - it’s to support their fossil fuel business.

    gregorum ,

    More likely that they’re trying to hedge their bet on their hydrogen fuel cell technology that they’ve heavily invested in. It’s actually fairly impressive.

    zurohki ,

    It’s cool tech but it’s expensive. Per mile, it can’t compete on price with gas let alone battery EVs.

    Hydrogen isn’t working out for them so now they’re just delaying as much as possible.

    JeffKerman1999 ,

    And how do you produce hydrogen? Either with methane (producing tons of co2) or by wasting tons of electricity with hydrolysis. BEV is the superior technology in all aspects but one: recharge time.

    Twentytwodividedby7 ,

    Hydrogen is not going to happen. It’s wildly impractical and there is no infrastructure for it. EV is the way of the future, but Toyota’s strategy is to bring customers along with hybrids first. Most of their lineup has a hybrid powertrain, and in most cases it is the same 2.5L HEV engine, just retuned for more HP on larger vehicles. The Camry up to the Grand Highlander and their Lexus counterparts use it. Meanwhile, if they are successful with solid state battery technology, it’ll make the rest of the market obsolete. Their strategy is to make incremental steps toward EV vs trying to force the market into an EV.

    AA5B ,

    The problem is it hasn’t been their strategy.

    They had a fantastic start with the Prius technology, and have been improving over time. The current models are better than ever, and solid state batteries a great evolution at low cost. They had all the pieces, even if moving slower than we need.

    However, all their talk was about hydrogen as the future, and pushing hydrogen technology, and that’s just not going to happen for personal vehicles. I know part of it was government support, part sunk cost fallacy, but they were heading down the wrong path, were the last manufacturer to realize that, and got defensive about it. BEV technology reached a critical point where the rest of the industry made a choice, but Toyota was stubborn about saying they were all wrong

    Twentytwodividedby7 ,

    I wonder if hydrogen is a better solution for commercial vehicles or semis that need to haul. I’m not aware of how they would perform, but EVs are not very practical for medium and heavy duty use

    AA5B ,

    Yeah, we’re going to need hydrogen in places where batteries won’t scale. I don’t think we know where that is, but I have a hard time picturing batteries for construction or farming equipment … ever.

    Several companies have BEV semis under test so we should soon have better real world data on where batteries currently work for trucks, and batteries get better every year

    TheGrandNagus ,

    Hydrogen cannot compete with BEVs for passenger cars. This will never ever change, because the problem isn’t even current technology, the problem is physics.

    Even putting that aside for a moment, there’s a reason why VW and Mercedes cancelled hydrogen R&D the second batteries became dense enough for usable car range.

    There’s a reason BMW, once extremely anti-EV and pro-hydrogen has now switched. There’s a reason why Toyota’s new CEO is distancing the company from the absolute failures their hydrogen projects have been and have said they’re getting into EVs.

    BMW and Toyota were the two big pro-hydrogen carmakers, and they’re abandoning it.

    I don’t want my reply to be a massive wall of text, so my issues with the physics of hydrogen cars will be in another comment.

    TheGrandNagus ,

    Hydrogen cars cannot be better than battery electric cars, because the laws of physics doesn’t allow them to be.

    A HFCEV is just a BEV with extra steps and efficiency losses. Reverse hydrolysis is used to generate electricity (with losses) that in turn charges a small battery that drives the car.

    Smaller batteries can’t provide the same amount of power as larger batteries (that’s why the fastest EVs always have large batteries and why performance drops as the battery gets close to empty).

    Already it’s a loss for HFCEVs, but the bad news doesn’t end there - that ultra-pressurised hydrogen doesn’t just magically appear in your tank. So we need to look into that. In fact, let’s look at the whole process.

    I’m going to be very generous here and assume that all hydrogen is produced with green energy - this obviously isn’t the case. Hydrogen production is far more carbon-intensive than almost all national electricity grids are.

    BEV:

    Electricity is generated, and sent over power lines until it makes its way to a charger. This charger directly charges the battery of the car (whole process, typically over 90% efficient). The battery drives the electric motor. The car moves (electric motors, 90-97% efficient).

    HFCEV:

    First water must be collected and purified. I don’t know how energy intensive that is, but it could be a lot. Then it needs to undergo hydrolysis, which is extremely energy intensive. The hydrogen needs to be pumped out and compressed, which requires yet more energy. From there, the hydrogen needs to be loaded onto transport, be it shipping tankers, trucks, trains. It needs to be physically transported, which is more energy. Then if it was on a tanker or train it needs to be put into smaller distribution vehicles. Then transported to a fueling station. The pumps and station needs a lot of energy to run. People fill their cars up. The car runs an (again quite energy intensive) reverse hydrolysis, which charges the battery and powers the electric motor.

    There’s a lot more “work” being done than sending electrons down wires.

    And this is before we even get into things like infrastructure or safety. A typical hydrogen fueling station costs over $5m to build, in part due to the safety regs of pressurised hydrogen being a very explosive substance (and fueling stations have blow up before, despite them virtually not existing).

    Chargers range from $600 to $10k each. Say a location has 20 of them. That’s still pennies compared to a hydrogen fueling station. Petrol stations cannot be used for hydrogen. They look the same but they are not the same, even ignoring all the additional safety requirements.

    Electricity on the other hand has infrastructure everywhere, even wired directly to our homes. Electricians exist everywhere, it’s a widely understood technology and pretty much any electrician is capable of installing at least a home charger.

    Sorry for the rant, but no, HFCEVs will not take off. They’re vastly more complex. More expensive. Less safe. Less performant. Nowhere near as energy efficient. There’s not really any angle you can look at where they make sense even if we assume battery tech completely stagnates.

    Corkyskog ,

    So TLDR “Toyota, Stop trying to make hydrogen happen! It’s not going to happen”

    nova_ad_vitum ,

    I pretty much agree. To prove this theory wrong they have to produce a working prototype with those capabilities.

    AA5B ,

    Those capabilities don’t even make sense.

    — Do ICE cars have 750 mile range? No. If you could really charge a battery that quickly, there’s no real reason to have more range than a typical ICE car, and you could follow ICE car habits. The incentive would be to make the car cheaper at that point.

    — will that change charging at home? Also, no. I have a 50a charging circuit, similar to my 50a stove circuit. Many houses have wiring that can support that, or it’s not too big a change to support that. That’s sufficient for a full charge on pretty much any EV (except maybe that horrible excuse for excessive consumption that is the Hummer), but I’m usually just topping off from whatever I used during the day. If anything, EVs should get more efficient, so my overnight charge will support more range. A homeowner will never be able to afford the infrastructure to support that ten minute charge time. Even, say doubling the charge: a 100a charging circuit likely means upgrading your electrical service for most people, so now it’s expensive, and most of the time that’s wasted.

    — will that change supercharging? Also, no. Think of how expensive superchargers already are: you already meet or exceed the cost of fuel for ICE cars. Now imagine the cost of the infrastructure to double or triple that charging rate. Are you really going to pay that premium?

    Personally I’m really liking changing my habits to treat fueling my car like my phone: plug it in at night and it’s just always ready.

    Nollij ,

    When they talk about these fast charge times, it’s always about DC fast chargers. Home chargers (levels 1&2) simply don’t need it, have never been close, and no one really cares. This is fodder for the road trip mentality, or counter-FUD to the FUD that charging is long and slow.

    If it actually pans out, I’m sure we’ll start to see DC fast charges advertising their speed, possibly with a premium price. It’s already a detail being tracked, it just doesn’t usually take a front seat.

    QuikxSpec ,

    If they just made a full platform of turbo hybrids I’m in. Cost for EV premium doesn’t interest me yet.

    CmdrShepard ,

    This is such an absurd take about Toyota, who has been putting some of the most reliable and fuel efficient vehicles on the road for decades. Just because they haven’t jumped all in into an emerging market doesn’t mean they secretly want to build a bunch of gas guzzlers and keep people hooked on gasoline.

    This battery tech has the potential to revolutionize anything containing a battery just like lithium ion batteries did when we were still stuffing D-cell batteries into everything. It’s a worthy endeavor and all these comparisons to failed gimmicks from other industries are BS.

    zurohki ,

    Toyota, who has been putting some of the most reliable and fuel efficient vehicles on the road for decades

    That’s kind of my point - they want to keep doing that and they can see the market rapidly moving away from them, so they’re trying to make it stop.

    Solid state battery tech is indeed a worthy endeavor, I just don’t believe the company to actually deliver it will be Toyota. Judging from the woeful efficiency of their BZ4x they’d need advanced battery tech to get similar range as other EVs.

    CmdrShepard ,

    The market isn’t rapidly moving away from them, though, as they’re some of the most popular vehicles on the road. Currently, EVs only make up a single digit percentage of new cars sold in the US and the infrastructure isn’t there to support mass adoption yet.

    By all accounts, the BZ4x is a piece of crap and I suspect it’s little more than a light test-bed and compliance car similar to the HHR and PT Cruiser in their day. Toyota developed it with Subaru so they could split the cost and have something in the segment even if it’s underwhelming. They’re likely waiting for other manufacturers to iron out all the EV kinks along with further developing their battery tech before committing to any real design. Being conservative in their designs is what they’ve done for decades and has served them well thus far.

    zurohki ,

    The market hasn’t gone far yet, but it is moving. Toyota’s ten year forecasts will all have DOOM written across them in a 48 point red font.

    There’s quite a few places planning on banning internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035, and that’s Toyota’s entire business. And vehicle design and production timelines are long - the amount of time before the wave of bans come in is getting close to the amount of time it takes to get a vehicle from initial idea to mass deliveries.

    CmdrShepard ,

    Yeah, it’s a possibility but I’m incredibly skeptical that the bans will actually be implemented by those dates. It’s real easy to make a claim about the future, but it’s another to actually follow through with it. At the pace charging networks and grid upgrades are rolling out, I don’t think we’ll be ready even 20 or 30 years in the future.

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