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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.