Don’t think there is an ounce of principle in this either way.
Toyota bet the farm on hybrids and hydrogen. Turns out EVs are the future, the one thing they bet would never happen.
As a result they are now 10+ years behind everybody else in battery technology.
If they pivoted and went 100% EV today, it would still be years before the models they start designing today make it to dealer showrooms. And here’s more before they made any kind of the per unit profit that current gas and hybrids do.
So they see laws like 100% EV by 2035 and they panic, because they aren’t ready to do that and probably aren’t going to be.
Thus, they try and stop EV mandates. And that gives them some unlikely allies, namely climate deniers.
It’s too bad that the company that made hybrids popular is now on the wrong side of history.
A lot of their hydrogen tech is very cool. Simple fact is though, in the United States we do not have and “are not going to have” a major hydrogen infrastructure.
There was at one point a thought that we would, before battery tech improved and it looked to everybody like hydrogen was the future. Now basically the entire world minus Toyota knows better.
We already have an electric infrastructure. In most cases it can support a large transition to electric vehicles with few or no upgrades, because electric vehicles charge at night when demand is low.
A hydrogen infrastructure, to create, transport, distribute, and dispense hydrogen to the population at large would cost hundreds of billions. Trillions perhaps. And so you have a chicken and the egg problem, nobody will buy a hydrogen car if there aren’t hydrogen fueling stations and nobody will build hydrogen fueling stations and the required infrastructure if people don’t have cars.
Electricity is everywhere though. Buy an electric car and worst case scenario you plug it into a 120 volt wall outlet and it will charge slowly but charge it will.
Don’t think there is an ounce of principle in this either way. Toyota bet the farm on hybrids and hydrogen. Turns out EVs are the future, the one thing they bet would never happen. As a result they are now 10+ years behind everybody else in battery technology. If they pivoted and went 100% EV today, it would still be years before the models they start designing today make it to dealer showrooms. And here’s more before they made any kind of the per unit profit that current gas and hybrids do.
So they see laws like 100% EV by 2035 and they panic, because they aren’t ready to do that and probably aren’t going to be.
Thus, they try and stop EV mandates. And that gives them some unlikely allies, namely climate deniers.
It’s too bad that the company that made hybrids popular is now on the wrong side of history.
I love how developing hydrogen ice motors is the wrong side of history.
A lot of their hydrogen tech is very cool. Simple fact is though, in the United States we do not have and “are not going to have” a major hydrogen infrastructure. There was at one point a thought that we would, before battery tech improved and it looked to everybody like hydrogen was the future. Now basically the entire world minus Toyota knows better.
We already have an electric infrastructure. In most cases it can support a large transition to electric vehicles with few or no upgrades, because electric vehicles charge at night when demand is low. A hydrogen infrastructure, to create, transport, distribute, and dispense hydrogen to the population at large would cost hundreds of billions. Trillions perhaps. And so you have a chicken and the egg problem, nobody will buy a hydrogen car if there aren’t hydrogen fueling stations and nobody will build hydrogen fueling stations and the required infrastructure if people don’t have cars.
Electricity is everywhere though. Buy an electric car and worst case scenario you plug it into a 120 volt wall outlet and it will charge slowly but charge it will.