As the car industry’s largest hybrid pusher, Toyota says it is better positioned to just buy credits to close the EPA gap rather than “waste” money on BEVs, its CEO said.
“Well, we’ve proven to ourselves that we’re incapable of investing without it being a sunk cost that we are too petty to let go and will fight tooth and nail to make profitable… So let’s just skip investing in much of anything new ever because we’re nincompoops. If there’s no guaranteed profit, why invest?”
Japan has no lithium to mine. So hydrogen is the best option for them. While I understand this for Japan, there’s a big world out there where Toyota is a market leader… for now.
Yes, steam methane reforming is the most cost effective. But there are other ways to make it. The most eco friendly was is electrolysis that uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. There are some microorganisms, such as algae and bacteria, that can produce hydrogen through biological reactions—but those aren’t able to scale today.
Important thing is there are multiple ways to produce hydrogen. Cheapest is through methane, but that’s only because methane itself is cheap. There are other methods of producing hydrogen and the more demand there is for it, the cheaper it’ll get. Especially when you consider there won’t OPEC to mess around with prices by rigging production against demand. So it would be smart to focus on fuel source which can be easily produced anywhere and can provide similar performance like current ICEs.
You are also missing the fact the Japan’s power grid is in a desperate need of repairs and improvements. Hydrogen won’t fix however it introduces some lower cost temporary fixes that can be quickly implemented. In the long term the correct solution would be to fix the grid but we both know if there’s a cheaper and easier solution what they’ll go with…
It wasn’t very abundant 10 years ago. More deposits have been found, refining and extracting technology has improved and hopefully we will see the first commercial mass produced sodium-based battery this year (not in 25 years like fusion).
Lithium nickel cobalt batteries are still the best for density per kg, but will be reserved for premium cars in the future.
Yes, biggest car manufacturer, which also manufacturer of the most popular hybrid car in the world, doesn’t know what they are doing when they are making cars. Right. I’ll take your word for it.
Nokia was way more dominant in the phone market than Toyota in the automotive industry. Yet, when it was time to jump on the new technology that everyone else was jumping on (android), they fell into the sunk cost fallacy and stood by their own, outdated tech (symbian). That promptly got them bankrupt. Toyota may still change its course, but if they wait too long, they are going to end up just like Nokia did.
They are giving discounts, not paying people to buy their car. It’s a big difference. Government is also giving subsidies for EVs and corn. Should we say government is paying you to buy corn?
They have just released hydrogen internal combustion engine. This engine can burn gasoline, CNG or hydrogen. So transition with it would be super easy. But world is set on EVs which are not that great and a lot less cleaner than people seem to think. Mining for Lithium is a very chemically dirty process and there’s no abundance of it, especially not enough for everyone to switch to EV. Am thinking they realize this and are jumping over the hurdle early on, but are trying to push hydrogen into spotlight. More production means prices will drop and eventually it would get a lot cleaner to produce it as well.
Someone told me they bought big into hydrogen powered vehicles. Seems they can’t let it go.
Seems like they know first hand about “wasted investment” then.
Which they seem to have turned into a sunk cost fallacy.
“Well, we’ve proven to ourselves that we’re incapable of investing without it being a sunk cost that we are too petty to let go and will fight tooth and nail to make profitable… So let’s just skip investing in much of anything new ever because we’re nincompoops. If there’s no guaranteed profit, why invest?”
Japan has no lithium to mine. So hydrogen is the best option for them. While I understand this for Japan, there’s a big world out there where Toyota is a market leader… for now.
but there is no hydrogen to mine either. Hydrogen is made from fossil fuels too (most of it)
Yes, steam methane reforming is the most cost effective. But there are other ways to make it. The most eco friendly was is electrolysis that uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. There are some microorganisms, such as algae and bacteria, that can produce hydrogen through biological reactions—but those aren’t able to scale today.
Important thing is there are multiple ways to produce hydrogen. Cheapest is through methane, but that’s only because methane itself is cheap. There are other methods of producing hydrogen and the more demand there is for it, the cheaper it’ll get. Especially when you consider there won’t OPEC to mess around with prices by rigging production against demand. So it would be smart to focus on fuel source which can be easily produced anywhere and can provide similar performance like current ICEs.
You are also missing the fact the Japan’s power grid is in a desperate need of repairs and improvements. Hydrogen won’t fix however it introduces some lower cost temporary fixes that can be quickly implemented. In the long term the correct solution would be to fix the grid but we both know if there’s a cheaper and easier solution what they’ll go with…
Lithium to my knowledge is not as abundant and very hard to recycle. There are a lot of chemical waste in all processes.
It wasn’t very abundant 10 years ago. More deposits have been found, refining and extracting technology has improved and hopefully we will see the first commercial mass produced sodium-based battery this year (not in 25 years like fusion).
Lithium nickel cobalt batteries are still the best for density per kg, but will be reserved for premium cars in the future.
Sunk cost fallacy.
Yes, biggest car manufacturer, which also manufacturer of the most popular hybrid car in the world, doesn’t know what they are doing when they are making cars. Right. I’ll take your word for it.
Yes, big companies fall into sunk cost fallacies all the time. Glad you’re keeping up.
Nokia was way more dominant in the phone market than Toyota in the automotive industry. Yet, when it was time to jump on the new technology that everyone else was jumping on (android), they fell into the sunk cost fallacy and stood by their own, outdated tech (symbian). That promptly got them bankrupt. Toyota may still change its course, but if they wait too long, they are going to end up just like Nokia did.
Meanwhile Toyota is giving people $40k to buy their Mirai.
They are giving discounts, not paying people to buy their car. It’s a big difference. Government is also giving subsidies for EVs and corn. Should we say government is paying you to buy corn?
But now hydrogen gas stations in California all closed down. So they sorta need to pivit
They have just released hydrogen internal combustion engine. This engine can burn gasoline, CNG or hydrogen. So transition with it would be super easy. But world is set on EVs which are not that great and a lot less cleaner than people seem to think. Mining for Lithium is a very chemically dirty process and there’s no abundance of it, especially not enough for everyone to switch to EV. Am thinking they realize this and are jumping over the hurdle early on, but are trying to push hydrogen into spotlight. More production means prices will drop and eventually it would get a lot cleaner to produce it as well.