I’d love it to be true, but I will believe it when it hits the market
Toyota do have a decade or so unbroken history of promising anything that will slow BEV adoption and then delivering a turd sandwich. Here’s hoping it’s different this time.
I really would love it to be true. My parents are diehard Toyota people. They’d love to get an EV as their next car, but due to boomer brand loyalty, they next car must be a Toyota, and we all know how much the busy forks sucks, so here’s hoping they develop a usable EV next.
While it’s true that Toyota is pretty far behind other car manufacturers in pure battery EVs, they still have the best hybrid drivetrain around by miles and they have great plug-in hybrids. I just got a RAV4 Prime and I love it. It has around 40-50 miles of electric only range and then switches to hybrid mode if you drain the battery before recharging where it gets 60 MPG and can go over 500 miles on a tank. Honestly my commute is way less than 50 miles so I drive electric around 90% of the time. The only time I kick in the gas engine is for longer trips and especially on road trips it’s nice not to have to worry about finding charging stations and waiting an hour or two for a charge.
Ooh yeah; the rav prime is a wonderful car. I inquired about getting one back in 2021 and was told there was a two year wait. :/ ended up dipping my toes into the BEV world by leasing a VW ID.4, hated it, ended up selling it, and then begrudgingly bought a Model 3. Absolutely love my car (21k miles in a year with zero issues), but man I really had to hold my nose to pull the trigger on that purchase. I live in a big truck area and man I get a lot of coal rolling, revving, and middle fingers for my car haha
I wouldn’t even call that “boomer brand loyalty” I’m 24, almost 25 and I will probably not buy anything that isn’t a Toyota/Lexus for the rest of my life.
Toyota/Lexus are hands down the least maintenance heavy vehicles on the road. They know how to make an absolutely bulletproof reliable modern engine.
I’m a Service Writer for a mom and pop auto shop, and the most major thing I’ve had to write for a Toyota is… A Water Pump, Fuel Pump and a full Tuneup with 4 plugs and 4 coils. Which is… Basically peanuts compared to what I have to write for Dodges, Nissans, and Chevys. (Oil Filter Housings for Dodge, Whole Transmissions for Nissan, and a bunch of random shiz for Chevy)
Ehh, I used to share this take but I think it’s a bit over the top now. There are at least certain vehicle models from other brands that I feel are in the sphere with Toyota, notably the Ford F-150. Used, it tends to be similar or cheaper than the Tundra in price and mostly better features and performance and it gets better fuel economy than the vaunted Tacoma, let alone the Tundra, while being significantly bigger/roomier and I dare say, not much less reliable.
The F150 of today has many different major issues that can happen to it. Tacomas and Tundras are bulletproof I’ve never seen a Taco or Tundra in the shop for anything besides maintenance items.
I’ve told many an F150 owner that their truck is basically totalled. I told a guy yesterday that he probably needs to go trade his 2017 F150 in today because the Valve Body in the transmission is about to die.
Ehh, and down the road they go racking up the miles same as the Toyotas. Mine’s at 150k, a 3.5 ecoboost.
And let me get this straight, someone needs to trade in their 2017 truck because of a potentially $1.5k, maybe a fair amount less, repair?
It’s not 1.5k lol. You severely underestimate the cost of a Transmission replacement. That Transmission job is about 5k to 8k depending on if you want to go Reman or New.
@Skiptrace @kiddblur That’s how I feel about Honda. My 10-year old Accord is getting close to 120K miles and runs like new. I put 120K trouble-free miles on my previous Si. My wife is averaging over 40 mpg lifetime in her 2021 CR-V Hybrid, and before that put 280K miles on a 2007 CR-V - that has now been turned over to my son. The last one has cost a bit to keep on the road because after 16 years, some mechanical bits wear out. So be it. That’s just life.
Bro they recalled the fucking frames on Toyota Tacomas at one point lmao. I guess the motors were pretty reliable on my t100s but idk really nothing special compared to any other motor that’s getting regular maintenance.
There’s lot of motors that just fail regardless of maintenance.
Yeah in the ICE era they have made extremely reliable cars. However it remains to be seen who the reliability king is when it comes to EVs. Toyota’s first attempt has had some pretty major issues (such as the wheels falling off). EVs in general need way less maintenance so it stands to reason some other brand who embraced EVs sooner can become the new reliability king
I mean Tesla definitely is not.
The reality is that outside the engine and battery, most of the car is still the same in a BEV. BEVs even have gearboxes. I suspect that car manufacturers who are good at long-term mechanical reliability will continue to be good at it and those who are bad at it will continue to be bad at it regardless of the powerplant.
The Prius Prime is a pretty nice compromise between wanting a Toyota and having an EV for most daily driving.
Probably 6 batteries that require 12 chargers
Hey I mean credit where credit’s due. If they can somehow cram a 200kWh battery with megawatt charging to get 700 miles and 10 minute charges into a Toyota priced car, so be it. Can’t imagine that’d be possible since that would be like 20-30k in battery cost alone, and there aren’t any chargers who can deliver that kind of power right now anyway.
At 350kW peak, I wonder what the miles per kwh would need to be to charge 700 miles of range in 10 minutes. That’s 58.3kWh delivered. So uhhhh they’d need to get 12 miles per kwh which would be uhhhh nuts
10 minutes at 350kw (assuming you hold peak the whole time) would provide
If we correct for toyota falseadvertising range estimates (-10%), assume they mean 90km/h at similar consumption as a model 3 in ideal coditios (around 120Wh/km), and take “a charge” as 10-80% then it needs 90kWh or about half a megawatt.
So still not within current chargers, but well within what a megawatt charger would provide (and there are four standards basically ready to roll out).
It’s 2009, 2014, 2017 and 2020 all over again.
They keep promising great new battery tech just around the corner and never delivering.
If I was a cynic, I might think they’re simply doing it to put people off buying current EVs so they’re not saddled with ‘old tech’.
While you wait for our amazing new battery, pick yourself up a great new hybrid…
I am not currently buying but I looked at the Hyundai Ioniq? Iconic? Whatever numbers yesterday and from what I saw you could get an AWD ~50k on the road with over 300 miles range and a cost of ~$8-$10 to fill the battery going off prices in the U.S. for electricity.
That is better than what I need for sure and 1/3 the cost of gas, so I have to say the doubts and againsts are getting pretty small here. I think 0-60 was 5.1 seconds (SUV crossover) that’s as quick as I want an SUV to accelerate haha
Also depends on where you live. I can charge my Model S from 0% to 100% for about $5-$6 and get 350-400 miles.
But my friend in California would have to pay something like ~$40, which makes it a much harder sell.
Much harder sell? They’d probably be paying close to $80 for gas for the same range.
More like $60. 375 miles of range is ~12.5 gallons @ 30mpg, or ~$62 @ $5/gallon (current average in CA). If you have a hybrid getting 50mpg, it’s <$40 for that range.
An EV will cost you double or more vs an ICE, and hybrids aren’t that much more than ICE if you go on the cheaper end (e.g. a sedan instead of an SUV). Even if gas is expensive and electricity is cheap, the breakeven point is still quite a few years, which may exceed the expected lifetime of the vehicle.
Imo, you don’t get an EV because of fuel prices, you get it for other reasons, such as:
- eco-consciousness
- performance - EVs are pretty much universally faster
- tech features like self-driving - ICE can do it too, so this is mostly product segmentation
- convenience - charge at home instead of going to the gas station
- status
I’m interested because of convenience, as in I’d love to never have to fill up my commuter. But there just isn’t an economical choice, so I stick with my Prius. I need about 150 miles of range because my work is ~25 miles away and we have cold winters (I’m assuming 50% range in winter), and 150 miles should give me enough to not worry about range for 10+ years. However, my choices right now are $30k for a Chevy (battery fire concerns), $50k for pretty much anything else, or <150 miles of range. I don’t need much, I just need a way to get from A -> B with enough range for a 50 mile round trip commute in the winter, with capacity for degradation over 10 years. And I want to spend <$20k. I can get that with used hybrids, I can’t get it with an EV.
And as far as I’m concerned, EVs won’t work for our family vehicle because we do long road trips to places with really poor charging infrastructure. 500+ miles of range would probably be enough, but 250 definitely isn’t. So we’ll be replacing out crappy ICE (~20 mpg) with a hybrid (~35 mph) for our family car, and I’ll be looking for an EV to replace my commuter (45-50 mpg) once prices start coming down on used.
At peak times maybe. Even then a comparable ICE would be $70-80 to fill up te same range.
Location certainly makes a huge difference, I’ve spent a total of €1016.32 for 10k miles charging at home with my Leaf.
Does anyone remember graphene?
I’ve been looking forward to graphene technology for like 8 years. Still hopeful though.
Yeah, I call bullshit, until proven without a doubt.
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I want to know how they are getting that much energy safely delivered to the battery. That’s probably 200+ kWh of energy getting dumped into the battery in 10 min. That’s going to cause a lot of heat and require a massive delivery system. Maybe a local capacitor that slow charged and then dumps all at once, but I didn’t see any details on the article.
Possibly capacitors, but most likely there will be battery storage for charging systems. The Tesla V4 superchargers can deliver 1 MW of total power spread across 4 individual cars, but can only draw 350kW from the grid. To get the additional power, they have batteries connected to the system that charge up when the supercharger is delivering less than 350kW.
MCS and other standards in consideration are all around the 1-3.5MW range.
Most of the absurd luxury/sports EVs output 500kW-1MW at full acceleration (they can only keep this up for 5 minutes though). It’s not a huge leap from existing production stuff.
is this the same Toyota that’s actually lobbying the US government against the switch to EVs? Is this the same Toyota who had the clear advantage in EV technology but squandered it all just to keep on manufacturing thermal engines?
This is another shitty tactic, don’t believe them.
Akio Toyoda, the CEO responsible for their Anti-EV stance, was replaced on April 1st.
He was the president & CEO, now he is the chairman.
Also the grandson of the founder of Toyota.
I believe they forced him to step down because of his stubborn stance on EVs right?
They know the tech is out there, they just don’t want it and will only use as much of it as they are forced to.
There’s a reason why Tesla, a car company that was openly and explicitly set on building electric cars, was such a big deal.
Press x to doubt.
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Toyota is a really notorious company. They changed the whole small car segment to premium segment by bumping up the price more than 75%.
The price of everything has been bumped up 75%.
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I wonder what the safety is like?
Right now I think Li-FePo4 cells are the safest high capacity ones on the market, you can even drill a hole through them in some cases and they don’t combust
Solid state lithium are generally much safer. Keeping them working for more than a few charges is the problem.
Claims they could.
If you can get a downhill stretch of road that long…
I wonder if they finally perfected that 3D sponge battery. Rather than plates or coiled foil they make some blown copper zinc mixture i think and it causes a crazy amount of surface area for the reaction. Sounded cool years ago and then never heard anything again about it.
in perfect lab* conditions.
** In an artificial 45 degree downward slope, in a vacuum, with an assisted gravity of 1.5G, running in eco++++ mode, using tier 800 mega max pOwattedgenanoblockchainturd battery life technology (price available on consultation only).
TL;DR Need proof.
I just want an electric Tacoma. I’d trade up from my 2014 in a heart beat.
If they actually do this though…
It will come, I just question if the hydrogen market will best them soon after
745 miles. Dayamm.
How is Toyota the only car company still not selling a single BEV vehicle?
They’re not, they’ve had the bZ4X for over around a year now. It’s kinda mediocre but certainly not the worst BEV I’ve seen.
It definitely sucks.
IIRC Toyota bet hard on hydrogen fuel cell technology and have been stubbornly working on making them a thing instead of pivoting to BEVs.
Which I’m not exactly mad about or sure if it is (or isn’t, I genuinely don’t know enough about the technology to make a call) a bad decision. While it’s certainly looking right now like BEVs are the way of the future, maybe Toyota will make some breakthrough and hydrogen really will end up being the next big thing.
