I see some criticism of Toyota slowness to move to EVs.
Duh former head, Akio Toyoda, believed the adoption of EVs will be slower than many think . I imagine he kept EV development on the back burner. He had to be tossed under the bus and new blood brought in to acceleration Toyota EV development. Current, CEO, Koji Sato, seems to be moving full speed ahead but it will take some time. Toyota is a supertanker automaker. Course correction does not occur immediately.
Personally I’ve been shunned at battery development and the rapid increase of range. 18 months ago, like Akio Toyoda, I believed EVs adoption would be slow. A 10 year process.
Methinks the final piece of the puzzle is for some reliable charging stations in the hinterlands. And speeding/reducing up the amount of time to recharge a battery for those on a long trip.
There have been some news articles about broken/malfunctioning charging stations. It is hard to say how prevalent these occurrences are. If the problem is significant I expect engineers will come up with a refined design that solves the problem.
With technological improvements and new competitors & models (especially pickups) entry into the market space methinks it possible that in 5 years EVs will be the majority of new vehicles sold.[1]
EVs accounted for 5.8 percent of all new cars sold in the US, an increase from 3.1 percent the year before.
[1]Of course I won’t be buying one. A car is a depreciating asset. I view a vehicle as an appliance. I care nothing about styling. And there is a decent possibility that when my IC vehicle dies I can find a low cost used IC toyota/lexus in the marketplace that won’t require an installation of $2 grand charging port. At age 72, I doubt I drive 8k miles a year today and it will decline as time passes.
I drive about 8k miles a year. In my previous 4-door sedan, that used about $2,000 of gasoline a year (it was a nice, fully equipped, 4-door sedan, but got low mileage). But that sedan was getting old and needed to be replaced.I replaced it with a 4-door EV of similar cost (nearly identical) to a new model of my previous car. But, a big difference is that my EV uses only about $280* of electricity for 8k miles each year (271 Wh/mi and about $0.13/kWh). So even if the 240V outlet in the garage costs $2k, the fuel savings will easily pay for that in less than 2 years.
* This is without considering that some of my charging is free at various places like the grocery store, the movie theater, etc. This would make the comparison even better. And I have a family member with an EV that charges only at work (free). They save nearly $3000 a year on fuel!
OMG, what were you driving? $2,000 per year translates into about 600-650 gallons of gas - which over 8K miles, would be around 12-13 mpg. I think those numbers might be a bit off.
tjscott0 should easily be able to find a used Lexus or Toyota four door sedan that gets at least 25 mpg, or about $1K per year in gas costs for 8K miles (even at current prices).
It was a 2015 Genesis Ultimate which got 15-16 mi/gal average out of its very powerful engine. At about $4/gal, 8000 miles, or about 500 gallons, comes to nearly $2k. I kept a spreadsheet with every fillup noted in it and calculated mileage for each tankful.
Wow! And with that gas price, I guess you live on the West Coast - most of the rest of the country has never had sustained gas prices that high.
Certainly switching to an EV from a car like that will save you a ton on gas. But then again, switching to almost any other ICE sedan would also save you a ton on gas.
I’m not sure how many driving years I have left. So I will buy used. I suspect I will find a cheaper used IC than a used EV. And I have the capability to determine whether an IC engine is good or not. I zero capability on determining a battery pack fitness.
And in my burg there would be difficulty in finding an independent shop technician that has the ability to work on a hybrid let alone an EV. So any work would be at a dealer-most double an independent shop.
And in my burg there are very few charging stations.
My current vehicle is a Pontiac vibe-a toyota clone. 33 MPG.
I would seek an used Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic. I might have to go to El Paso to find one.
You’re lucky you get the EPA MPG, and the highway EPA to boot! I haven’t gotten anywhere near EPA MPG since my '82 Honda Civic Hatchback … I regularly got 50 MPG out of that car! And it’s not that I drive with a heavy right foot, it’s more that I do a lot of short stop and go trips locally, and very few long highway trips.
The other thing I loved about the '82 Civic was that I was able to do most maintenance myself. I saved a $750+tax mechanic bill by changing the timing belt myself. Only issue was that my 350 ft-lb impact wrench wasn’t strong enough to release the crankshaft pulley bolt, so a mechanic friend lent me his 1200 ft-lb impact wrench one weekend. Worked like a charm. I also used plenty of bondo on that car as it was very prone to rust everywhere. And I even repaired the muffler with one of those steel mesh things they used to sell at the parts shops.
The little I know from a friend out of Stuttgart parts of the autobahn through the towns does slowdown. It is not all our romantic notion of speed. Also anytime the highway is overcrowded it can slowdown.
The point is logging the miles of actually driving. By using the lower speed limits on straighter less complicated roads Mercedes is building the software into doing more and more later in development.
Really they are all possibly following this strategy but Mercedes is doing it with FSD. Not sure the others can with US laws.
C’mon albaby, you can do better than this. The reason the ICE car market is so fragmented is because it is a mature technology. There is very little that is technologically different between a Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, VW and a half dozen other brands so it becomes difficult for one model to dominate. The Corolla, Civic, Jetta, Elantra, Sentra are all very similar cars so it is not surprising that sales get split. The only way to differentiate is by styling, and since in an ICE there are only a limited number of ways to configure a car interior, all that styling differentiation is focused on the exterior.
In contrast, the iPhone dominates because there is a perception that it is better technology. It is why Tesla dominates BEVs. It is not because people think it looks better than a Chevy Bolt. It is because they believe it is a qualitatively better car. Tesla will continue to dominate the market, like the iPhone, as long as that perception persists.
That is my prediction, but it is targeted for when the EV market begins to mature in its technology. When autonomous driving becomes more than wishful thinking. That’s not today.
One other thing that I think you need to pay more attention to is that Elon is not just about the car and the Model 3 Highland program is not just a vehicle hardware update. It is also a radical change in production, in what Musk calls the machine that makes the machine. This includes Giga casting and a significant reduction in parts for the Model 3. All this will substantially reduce costs, which means a continued reduction in sales price. I think Tesla finally has the production infrastructure in place to justify a $35K Model 3 that together with the cyber truck will boost market share until the $25k next generation vehicle is ready.
At the beginning of the auto industry there were over 200 manufacturers. The reason the ICE car market is so fragmented is because people have different tastes and wonts in their vehicle. There are Volkswagen, Honda, Mercedes, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Hyundai, BMW, Kia, Renault, Mitsubishi, Tata, Suzuki, and Tesla, plus probably a dozen other smaller ones.
Most of those offer a range of styles, from sedans to vans to SUVs and coupes, pick-up trucks and more - in an astonishing range of colors, trims, and feature sets.
Even in the days of the great consolidation there were dozens of manufacturers, and you could get everything from a family car to a muscle car to a station wagon again, in hundreds of trims and colors.
Not including power steering, power brakes, disc brakes or drum, tow package, bigger engine, entertainment package, cloth or leather seats, both heated or unseated, Bose speakers, back seat TV screens, and… I’m sorry, you were saying?
Right. Not today. Or tomorrow. Not the day after tomorrow, or within the lifetime of anyone reading this board. Or, frankly, in the lifetime of their children.
That’s entirely possible. According to the body shop people, it will make repair of cars in an accident vastly more expensive, which will probably show up in insurance rates which are, after all, set by both driver characteristics and cost of repair. Statistically, every car made will be in an accident requiring body repair at least once in its lifetime. (Some won’t, obviously, but others will be in multiples.) If, as is being predicted, the giga-casting makes cars cheaper to buy but more expensive to repair we may be entering a time when, like so many consumer products today, it is cheaper to throw it away than try to repair it. That will have downstream effects for car manufacturers and dealers, body shops, and insurance companies. It will likely take several years for that to shake out,
Wow, over 200 manufacturers. There were a lot of car choices back then. Yet the Model T had a market share of about 50% in 1920. That pretty much proves the point that consumers will choose quality and low price over variety and style most any day. It’s why the Corolla became so popular no matter what styles the American automakers threw out there in 1970.
Having the benefit of age doesn’t allow you to rewrite history. A single model, the Model T, dominated the early years of the car industry. After that the vast majority of US cars sold were made by only three companies, GM, Ford, and Chrysler. That lasted until the Japanese and Germans showed up with better cars in the 1990s. Corollas are not much to look at. They sell because they are a good value.
What sells cars are quality and price. Style only becomes significant when there are no major differences in quality and price between manufacturers. That’s when you get a fragmented market.
I’m saying all companies have those components so no company has a competitive advantage. That’s why the auto market today is fragmented.
Are you sure about that? This isn’t the 1960s. Bend a frame in a three year old car and chances are your insurance company will total it regardless of how it was built. And the fact is that Tesla has had a procedure in place since 2020 for repairing a cast unibody frame.
Sure, because it was less than half the price of most. Are you saying Tesla cars are going to have that kind of advantage? Price certainly is a determinant, but on a sliding scale. A ten percent price advantage isn’t going to get you a 50% share advantage, see?
Which, I point out, still came in dozens of varieties. GM made Chevy, Pontiac, Buick, Cadillac, and Oldsmobile - and each of those offered multiple styles, trim lines, and options. Chrysler and Ford also had multiple product lines and variants within each, so the choice for consumers was still quite large.
Sure. Amazing then that the dummies at Toyota are still producing Camrys, Prius, Highlander, Sequoia, RAV4, Highlander, 4Runner, Tundra, Avalon, and more in an astonishing variety of ICE and hybrid options and an even wider selection of trim packages and options.
Why, if they only listened to you they could eliminate them all and make them look like a toaster!
Of course there are competitive advantages. Even if you haveBose speakers, placement and utility are an advantage. They sound better in some cockpits than others. That’s “advantage.” Larger engine, smaller engine, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, tow package, dash layout, those are all style choices that inform consumer decisions. (My Infiniti had a steering wheel down-shifter when I wanted to play race-car driver, for instance. And it had the “S” market behind the G-37. There were also G-37X, and, well, here’s the option package for the Infinitis:
Are you sure about that? This isn’t the 1960s. Bend a frame in a three year old car and chances are your insurance company will total it regardless of how it was built.
My wife had a bent frame on her Infiniti G-37 (yes, we had almost matching cars. Hers was a hardtop convertible , yet another styling option she chose.) The insurance company paid to have it repaired, not totaled.
Musks’ “bolt and replace” option may work, but it will be new to every body shop in the world and may require different tooling. And it’s more likely the fragility of the batteries that will be an issue after a hard crash. That will increase insurance rate, giga-cast or not.
I think we are now in agreement. Price and quality are by far the primary determinants for choosing a car. When there are no differences in price or quality between models, buyers then go to secondary considerations like the number cupholders, tail fins, and sun roofs.
BTW, the future is arriving soon. Mercedes is offering a horsepower increase via subscription using a software update. Soon there will be no need to offer trims or models that differ in power. Customers can buy a base model and choose how powerful a vehicle they want by buying different software. This is only the beginning of the software-defined vehicle.
“Buyers who want to inject more horses into their EV’s driveline can download the Acceleration Increase update from the Mercedes Me Connect store, which is accessible online. They can download the update from anywhere without stopping by a Mercedes-Benz dealership. The list of so-called digital extras available through the platform also includes Beginner Driver and Valet Service driving modes, a dashcam feature, the AMG Track Pace application, and navigation system updates. Additional functions will join the catalog in the coming months.”
