Oh please, Toyota and the Japanese carmakers started the transition away from fossil fuel decades ago when they made hybrids mainstream, and California's decades-old fuel standards system dragged the remaining automakers into investing in hybrid, natural gas, fuel cell, and EV technologies.
California politicians had the dream of moving automakers from fossil fuel even before Elon moved to the US. At least for this staed goal, they deserve far more credit than Elon, a latecomer to the game.
No. Toyota has a death grip on fossil fuels. While they did pioneer a lot of hybrid technology, they are going kicking and screaming into full electrics.
But agree with you that this is a rare instance where California legislation has had a meaningful and measurable positive impact on the environment and technology innovation.
ya but neither of those 2 things (Toyota's Prius 2, and California's green car incentives) were successful in making car manufacturers wake up and go electric. It was only when Tesla started making money that every car manufacturer is being serious about competing in this space, and even then they are behind.
Curious to see why you think credit goes to Toyota, instead of Tesla?
Toyota was still going on about how EVs were not viable and hydrogen fuel cells were the future while anyone who looked outside their window would see EVs all over the place. Elon's early responses to this remain true (grid already exists, people can charge at home, easier to build EV infrastructure, etc.) - there's been nearly zero progress in hydrogen fuel cells.
Hybrids were a mediocre half-measure and hydrogen was a worse solution to the problem. Tesla proved this model despite constant criticism even after wild success.
It's not a huge surprise Toyota is throwing their weight around to try to cheat out some legislative relevance rather than compete on product. Many companies being disrupted do that (see recent viasat story, US car dealerships, etc.)
The Japanese auto makers are also against EVs in favor of hydrogen because Japan’s economy is driven by conglomerates who make a lot of money building heavy machinery etc which are better served by hydrogen than electricity.
As a result the Japanese carmakers have shied from investing in EVs since the soft edict from top was to build hydrogen instead.
It’s not a coincidence that the first Japanese car company that jumped right into EVs was Nissan when it was being headed by Ghosn, who isn’t Japanese himself. (The Prius doesn’t count…that was Toyota’s answer to CA’s requirements, and was wildly successful beyond what they expected. The fact that Toyota hardly built on the Prius brand for 2 decades tells one all they need to know about how the Japanese automakers staying away from EVs isn’t just a business decision, but is being driven by other considerations).
Both Toyota and Honda ventured into hybrids and battery technology long before Tesla was founded. Nearly a decade before, if you trace back to the Prius program initiation.
Tesla was formed to design hybrids to compete against the Prius and Insight and only later pivoted into pure EV. They were actually the market-follower at inception, not the innovator.
I don't see how those Japanese companies can be accused of sitting on technology.
This article makes it seem as if the Toyota president came out to Elon Musks California home, and after a ride in the Roadster, suddenly saw the light and decided to start producing electric cars.
And just how did he decide to execute his grand electrified vision? By backporting electric propulsion onto an existing SUV platform. Yeah, this is exactly the moment where this particular piece of journalistic spin comes crashing down.
The RAV4 EV was sold only in California precisely because it was a compliance car. Toyota simply decided it was cheaper to leverage their existing investment into Tesla to produce an EV on the cheap that could get them the required environmental credits so they could continue to sell their actual vehicles without having to buy the credits at a (at the time) large cost from other manufacturers. It was a simple localized business decision, not some grand strategy.
Of course Musk doesn't just ridicule fuel cells, he affectionately calls them "fool cells". As someone who builds his businesses by reasoning from first principles, he justifiably doesn't understand the idea of swapping a 20% efficient (if you're very lucky) combustion engine with a 10% efficient, experimental fuel cell when you could instead use a dead simple, clean and 80%+ efficient electric motor.
Didn't Tesla push the boundaries on EV, though, whereas traditional car companies were just fine with continuing production of gas based vehicles? I guess there were hybrids but it felt like Toyota was the only big player there.
The Japanese automakers in particular seem to have been caught flat footed by the shift to EVs. Strange considering they were/are the leaders in hybrid technology.
Honda is partnering with GM to build their cars on their EV platform until they can come up with something on their own, and I am not sure what Toyota’s long-term plans are. And this makes me think they are not sure or are so woefully behind that they have to try and delay change as much has possible.
And Toyota and Honda are interesting because they are Japanese companies who were pushed by the government to ignore EVs in favor of hydrogen vehicles.
The reason was simple. Most of the politically powerful Japanese companies are huge conglomerates who make a lot of money in heavy industry areas where until a few years ago hydrogen was an obviously better choice than electric powered motors, which meant that there was a lot of pressure on the Japanese govt to put pressure on the car industry to align in the same direction.
Toyota ought to be the big threat. But their management made a terrible mistake. They went for a car powered by hydrogen.
This is a real car, the Toyota Mirai.[1] You can buy one right now in California. They've sold about 700 cars. $57,500, including 3 years of hydrogen fill-ups. 312 mile range. 5 minutes to refuel, not including the drive to one of the few hydrogen stations.
Here's the only hydrogen station near San Francisco, on S. Airport Blvd.[2] Hydrogen stations are subsidized by the State of California through 2023, unless somebody stops that. (Remember Arnold and the hydrogen-powered Hummer?)
I should add that a lot of the pushing happens from Toyota's CEO. He really thinks electric cars are a fad, and as a result has directly advocated within Japan's government for hydrogen and hybrids.
The Japanese car companies have done pretty poorly in the 2010's in supporting the energy transition. Toyota has been extremely slow to adapt after the Prius, which makes sense because of their ridiculously large volume of sales of basic, gas-efficient passenger vehicles.
I give Toyota big props for the Prius, which was the original Green Vehicle 15-20 years ago, and still is a HUGE player in the efficiency space. IIRC, The number one vehicle trade-in for TSLA has been Priuses. Was there even a car before the Prius that used regenerative braking? In many ways, Prius "primed" the market for greener vehicles.
And yet, Toyota had no great BEV follow-up. In a high-tech educated country like Japan, an island nation with extremely large amounts of coastline, I'd assume Toyota and Honda would wise up to climate change earlier.
> Toyota has been making some bad business decisions lately. They don't make battery electric cars. (They're fixing that, but won't be shipping until 2022.[1]) Instead, they've been pushing cars that run on hydrogen. Toyota sells the Mirai in California, and has a few hydrogen stations so it can be refueled. They sell about a hundred cars a month.
I can't speak to their autonomous technology, but Toyota has always been a leader in electric vehicles, from the early hybrids, to partnering with Tesla, to impressive long term improvements in fuel cells even after the U.S. Gov. Moved on to batteries.
Arguably Toyota has more electric vehicle prowess than any other company. It is relatively small potatoes to change the source from open system cells to closed cells, especially when many of battery manufactures are also Japanese.
Toyota has tried VERY hard to get hydrogen fuel cell cars to be "the thing" over electric vehicles. Tesla never said they wanted to make green cars a thing, they said they want to "accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy"[1]
California politicians had the dream of moving automakers from fossil fuel even before Elon moved to the US. At least for this staed goal, they deserve far more credit than Elon, a latecomer to the game.
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