Japanese manufacturers falling behind with BEV vehicles

Barry14UK · March 23, 2021

Interesting thoughts on delayed development of BEV vehicles by Japanese with particular reference to Toyota. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/why-japans-carmaking-heavyweights-could-be-facing-an-electric-shock/ar-BB1eGH3B?ocid=mailsignout

royoftherovers · March 23, 2021

Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV)

Las Palmas · March 23, 2021

Japan is not getting speed up about fully electric cars, so it could be suspected that they are having something else in mind. Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, Suzuki, Toyota are not stupid and sleeping on their laurels.

Japan is still making excellent electric engines and gearing systems and they could be thinking out a smarter way of powering cars (and ships and airplanes and…) than from the stored power in a Battery. Battery production is polluting and ingredients for batteries are getting more difficult to find and digging the ingredients for batteries out of the ground is getting more expensive, what worries the most unfortunately.

As long as producing electricity is polluting (maybe not quite as much as oil driven cars) the Japanese car makers might be thinking of another kind of fuel that possibly could be made less polluting than the existing today. Electricity has the problem that it is not easily stored where it is produced. The longer the wires from place where it is produced to place where it shall be used the greater the loss.

Looking forward to seeing the next kind of fuel and expecting it to come in cars from Japan.

royoftherovers · March 23, 2021

Perhaps a re-run of the Tortoise and the Hare John ?

Kevin Williams · March 23, 2021

My thoughts John, are similar to yours… Your salient points in your post, make a lot of sense… I think Japan’s car manufacturers will surprise us all, sometime soon… I have a Honda e, and it's great. I don’t need any range, because I drive very little. I have a home charger fitted outside, and I can charge it, quickly and easily…

Honda do make most things…! It will be interesting to hear about their next car models…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Aircraft_Company

Can you elaborate on your post…? Your post reads like you have a background involved with cars…?

What do you think the car magazines, and the internet, will be possibly mentioning…?

Barry14UK · March 23, 2021

Toyota are as we know developing Hydrogen cars and it may be this will be a viable alternative. However, the impetus is with BEV with much money being spent on charging infrastructure, much more in some other countries than in the UK. It is possible that a similar situation could arise as happened with VHS and Betamax. The general feeling was that Betamax was better but VHS had a greater take up and killed it.

It will be interesting to see how future developments and take up pan out. Also, as the ICE is phased out by manufactures with carrot and stick from Governments how is this likely to affect depreciation on fairly late ICE vehicles. My feeling is that depreciation will be very steep except on some classic and specialist low volume cars, especially if Government measures are adopted to get these off the road.

serbarry · March 23, 2021

Toyota Teases New Battery-Electric SUV

The unveiling is scheduled for the forthcoming 2021 Shanghai Motor Show in April.

Toyota released today a teaser of its upcoming all-new, battery-electric, mid-sized SUV, which will be unveiled within several weeks at the 2021 Shanghai Motor Show (public days: April 21 to 28.

https://insideevs.com/news/494436/toyota...ctric-suv/

dutchie01 · March 24, 2021

Maybe " delayed development" is the wrong wording. Toyota has built their empire on top notch product quality over decades and they will definitely not throw this away by releasing cars that are " underdeveloped". If a Toyota BEV will be released you can be sure everything works and will keep working. This is called product development and testing testing testing before the product is released for sales.

Some companies have a different strategy like Tesla ( sell it and worry about the rest later) or others feel they have no choice then to start selling cars that are not fully developed yet like the VAG group with the software issues in the Etrons and ID range.

An article about why car companies are releasing " under developed " cars in the market would be more interesting.

Linas.P · March 24, 2021

There is another reason, which is quite a lot simpler. BEVs are at best 10% of sales and as most 1% of all cars on the roads.... meaning that 90% of sales and 99% of of cars on the road are not BEVs. Even very optimistic estimates puts BEVs at most of 25% of sales by 2030... again meaning that 75% will still be non-BEVs.

Market size translates into sales and into profits... what I am saying is that need for developing and selling BEVs is blown far out of proportions, in reality they are still very vey niche market and majority of sales are still various ICE. Further that means developing faster, better and cleaner ICE should still be priority.

Barry14UK · March 24, 2021

11 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

There is another reason, which is quite a lot simpler. BEVs are at best 10% of sales and as most 1% of all cars on the roads.... meaning that 90% of sales and 99% of of cars on the road are not BEVs. Even very optimistic estimates puts BEVs at most of 25% of sales by 2030... again meaning that 75% will still be non-BEVs.

Market size translates into sales and into profits... what I am saying is that need for developing and selling BEVs is blown far out of proportions, in reality they are still very vey niche market and majority of sales are still various ICE. Further that means developing faster, better and cleaner ICE should still be priority.

If some other manufacturers stop producing ICE cars as Volvo intend relatively soon, buyers are going to have less choice so more likely to go BEV. Sales of BEV may only be 25% of new vehicles in 2030 (who can say with Government support for them and the penalizing of ICE cars plus with the advantages of large scale production and possibly less cost differential between BEV and ICE cars.) Also, car production is a Global business and switch to BEV has been quicker in some other countries than others as detailed in the original report I linked to. World sales are likely to have an effect on what manufacturers sell both within and without the UK. It seems from the link above that Toyota have one BEV model but other manufacturers have already have some on the road with an expanded range in development. So however you cut it, Toyota and some other Japanese manufacturers are late to the party.

dutchie01 · March 24, 2021

Not even that Linas. worldwide some 1 million full EV last year. It depends on the region however and the trend is clearly visible. Regional differences also explain why some companies show more urgency than others. Toyota Global shifts almost 10 million cars per year but not even 10% in Europe. and the vast majority of those are hybrids. VAG does almost 10 million but sells over 50% in Europe. The European Union as we know imposes strict rules on Co2 unattainable without also producing full EV. Therefore the push from the VAG group to go full EV whilst Toyota simply has more time. Having said that the largest car-market China with over 25 million sales each year, and growing, is quickly moving towards full EV aggressively pushed by legislation. The number of home producers is big and most of them are quite successful. Finance is available and it will be a matter of time before some of those will try to get a share of the global market. Geely and BYD have already announced plans. Coming back to Toyota i am 100% sure the technology is there the various models have already been developed but they simply decide where and when they will introduce them. No more no less.

johnbiker7 · March 24, 2021

Electric vehicles seem, on the face of it, to very good for co2 reduction, but it all depends on how the electricity to charge all those batteries is generated. At the present time if we have a really bad winter, they have to bring online mothballed coal powered capacity. The question is if at some unknown future date, if all those BEV's connect up to the national grid , hopefully they will have better contingency plans. Or there will be so many off shore windfarms we won't have room to paddle our feet in the sea!! or we will all have our own back garden wind generator. Also what about the people who cannot charge at home, because they live in inner city areas with the usual car parking problems, you would need an awfully long cable!!So until the infrastructure is put in place, properly, not piecemeal. I think BEV's are a long way from replacing ICE power for the vast majority of the motoring public.

Linas.P · March 24, 2021

The growth of BEVs is clear and I know that market almost doubles every year. However, currently it can double because it is a question of being able to afford BEV and them being actually good, and government initiatives. So at least at this moment there is realistic competition between companies of who is going to make best BEV and there is actual market for cars.

However, there is hard cap on BEV market, legislations literally does not matter when that hard cap is reached, and that hard cap is infrastructure. One thing is to have legislation encouraging people to get BEVs, the other thing is when majority of population lives in flats, apartments and areas where installing suitable infrastructure to charge BEVs is going to be challenging. They simply can't have BEV no matter if they want it or not.

For example I was considering PHEV (e.g. i8) because with my driving pattern before COVID this would be ideal - I could charge it for ~25miles of range and almost never refuel it. Problem is I live in apartment and there is no way for my to charge the car, not only that there are only 30 parking spaces per 100 flats... meaning that 70 people do no even have allocated space. In my case government can legislate that freeholder and building management company must allow me to install the charging point, or even install it at their expense... but what other 70 household will do if they don't even have space where to park?

That is why I am calling 25% target by 2030 optimistic... it only consider capacity to make the cars and buyers interest in buying, but it ignores the fact that for many buyers by 2030 it won't be matter of affording the car or wanting it, it will be matter of simply lacking infrastructure. And you you think that in 9 years we can improve infrastructure, then I would call it even more optimistic... especially knowing that our government is literally incapable of solving most basic things, I have no reason to believe they will get such a massive and complex thing like charging infrastructure right.

If they really going to keep their goal of no ICEs sales by 2030, that sadly I can assure you this will mean the only thing - 70% of people won't have cars. That may be their goal (I would not be surprised) and car will again become status symbol only for the right to have. However, there is another alternative - whole this BEV thing may suddenly end like DERV. I can see clear similarities, like journalists and government ministries pushing for half-baked solution, exactly like they pushed diesel in late 90's and early 00's. Then studently it became apparent that by producing little bit less CO2 DERV makes 10 times of all sorts of other crap. Same with BEVs - they great on CO2, but results in a lot of other types of pollution due to how lithium batteries are made etc. So this BEV fad may go out of fashion by 2030s and we will be moving onto something else.

Overall, the policy of only focusing on CO2 is very short sighted as we should consider overall pollution over entire life cycle. Besides passenger vehicles only contributes ~2.4% CO2 globally (2.1% diesel and 0.3 petrol and hybrid), so passenger cars are really just scapegoats if we looking to reduce humanity CO2 footprint. Car are only targeted because they are convenient to target and car owners are likewise convenient to tax because they are wealthier.

ColinBarber · March 24, 2021

8 hours ago, Linas.P said:

There is another reason, which is quite a lot simpler. BEVs are at best 10% of sales and as most 1% of all cars on the roads.... meaning that 90% of sales and 99% of of cars on the road are not BEVs. Even very optimistic estimates puts BEVs at most of 25% of sales by 2030... again meaning that 75% will still be non-BEVs.

That's true and one way to look at it. But at the same time Polestar sold more of its single model in the UK than Lexus did across their entire range in February.

Linas.P · March 24, 2021

7 minutes ago, ColinBarber said:

But at the same time Polestar sold more of its single model in the UK than Lexus did across their entire range in February.

It may be right, but the issue here is not only Polestar being BEV. Lexus overall are quite uncompetitive and not advantageous considering taxation in UK.

Secondly, as per my post above - one BEV market is saturated there will be hard cap on how many people can buy BEVs. Sure people will eventually start changing their existing BEVs with new models, so there with be some sales from that, but what we have now is a lot of "first time" BEV buyers, it won't continue forever.

Barry14UK · March 24, 2021

I agree the falling sales point of BEV cars will depend to a large extent on how advanced and numerous the chargers are. Also, Battery development may permit greater range, so not having a charger at a property becomes less important, (most people don't have a petrol station outside their front door). Then, there could be a system at some stage where autonomous vehicles are just prebooked and arrive fully charged but divert to a top up charger if this becomes critical. This would not promote new BEV sales but could result in more ICE ones being taken off the road. Meanwhile, look at the growth of PHEV vehicles which formed the majority but have now been overtaken by BEV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_the_United_Kingdom

Unlikely to be in power for some time but interesting contribution from Ed Miliband https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/labour-to-outline-plan-to-spark-electric-car-revolution-across-uk/ar-BB1eVG2V?li=BBoPRmx&ocid=mailsignout

Las Palmas · March 24, 2021

Never trust a politician any further than you can throw a full grown African elephant uphill.

Linas.P · March 24, 2021

@Barry14UK We do not have petrol stations at home, but that is because petrol car can be fuelled in a matter of seconds, without any alteration plans or delays etc. That is why it is ok not to own your own petrol station, but when charging EV takes 20-30 minutes you must have charging point at home.

For this reason the number of public charging points and the range is actually irrelevant. What would be big thing is charge time reduction e.g. how much one could charge in say 30s or 1 minute. I am not saying car has to be charged in full in 1 minute, but if 100miles of range can be charged in minute or less (and without degrading the batteries) then this would be massive deal maker. If that would happen you would be right - you may not even need to charge EV at home.

Other reason is cost and accessibility. You see electrical charging points don't work like fuel stations where you simply come put whatever amount of fuel and pay. Electricity itself is cheap in comparison (mostly because government doesn't add criminal amount of unjustified and punitive duties on top of the actual cost), but if you want to use public charging points you will need to have specific membership to use it and there are dozens of them. If you don't have specific membership then you simply can't use it and having all of them just not an option because many have different charging structures and monthly fees. I guess more can be done e.g. where government steps in and mandates that all charging schemes must work together and allow other schemes to use their chargers.

As for BEVs overtaking PHEVs that is not surprising and actually logical, people who own PHEH most likely have place where to charge it... as such they have place where to charge EV. As first generation EVs and PHEVs got to 5 years old e.g. Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, BMW 330e just few very popular ones, they are now being replaced by BEVs. Further BEVs have larger government grant and even lower BIK so it just makes sense. I actually know 3 households who did exactly that 2 replaced Outlander PHEV with Tesla Model 3 and Model X and third replaced BMW330e with Golf-E. But what we need to understand here - it is not hybrids being replaced by BEVS, it is just specifically PHEVs which are effectively just inferior version of BEVs which are being replaced.

Finally, the "Car as a service (CaaS)" model has been considered for some time, but that adds extra level of complexity to the discussion so I don't even want to predict where it will go. Some short term services works relatively well - where you just grab the car off the street and use it. But more sophisticated models for more Luxurious cars don't work very well. I personally would not use one and several studies shows that this is not viable for Luxury cars i.e. that people who buy Luxury cars generally are quite specific when it comes to their needs and they want particular cars and actually own them (that would be category I am in), this service would be more relevant for people who don't care about cars and who view car as a box to go from A to B... but such people are equally likely to simply use taxi, or public transport and they are very price sensitive (meaning that if train is cheaper they simply use train). So really this CaaS model is quite fundamentally flawed, because people who have money and care about cars won't use it and people who would use it don't have money nor care about cars.

royoftherovers · March 25, 2021

9 hours ago, Las Palmas said:

Never trust a politician any further than you can throw a full grown African elephant uphill.

or his wife and family !

royoftherovers · March 25, 2021

9 hours ago, Barry14UK said:

I agree the falling sales point of BEV cars will depend to a large extent on how advanced and numerous the chargers are. Also, battery development may permit greater range, so not having a charger at a property becomes less important, (most people don't have a petrol station outside their front door). Then, there could be a system at some stage where autonomous vehicles are just prebooked and arrive fully charged but divert to a top up charger if this becomes critical. This would not promote new BEV sales but could result in more ICE ones being taken off the road. Meanwhile, look at the growth of PHEV vehicles which formed the majority but have now been overtaken by BEV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_the_United_Kingdom

Unlikely to be in power for some time but interesting contribution from Ed Miliband https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/labour-to-outline-plan-to-spark-electric-car-revolution-across-uk/ar-BB1eVG2V?li=BBoPRmx&ocid=mailsignout

Remember the huge queues of cars at Petrol Stations Barry when fuel was in short supply ? That will be nothing compared to the anarchy that will prevail when drivers of B.E.V.S. all want to recharge.

As I`ve said several times, the market for quality, reliable Lexus cars will blossom as manufacturers close down their I.C.E. production facilities.

I.C.E. Armageddon is a long long way off !

Las Palmas · March 25, 2021

1 hour ago, royoftherovers said:

or his wife and family !

Female politicians have reliable husbands?

dutchie01 · March 25, 2021

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20190313STO31218/co2-emissions-from-cars-facts-and-figures-infographics

for those with time to spare...

royoftherovers · March 25, 2021

1 hour ago, Las Palmas said:

Female politicians have reliable husbands?

Mr and Mrs Sturgeon ?

There is evidence too amongst English Parliamentarians

Linas.P · March 25, 2021

2 hours ago, dutchie01 said:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20190313STO31218/co2-emissions-from-cars-facts-and-figures-infographics

for those with time to spare...

First of all it is important to note that this is highly selective graph which shows like worst case scenario for BEVs and worst case scenario for transportation itself. Yes these may be correct in EU, but climate change and emissions are global problem so we should look into global figures and not selective countries. They claim claim transportation is 30%, but we need to understand that this is only because we import a lot of manufactured goods from outside of EU and we do not have much of manufacturing ourselves. However, technically that manufacturing exists and pollutes only because Europeans buy and consume the goods... not counting that is quite cheeky really.

Then they conveniently hide the fact that 100% of transportation pollution itself is like ~10% of total carbon emissions (globally) to make it look more important when you realise that 60% of roads cars pollution is actually ~6% of total. Then newspapers quote it saying cars are 60% of pollution and thus key in climate emergency, whereas that cannot be further from the truth. As well this graph only considers CO2 as that is the only type of pollution. What happens to heavy metals mined for lithium production, lithium lifecycle chemical waste, lack of batteries recycling options? That are many many types of pollution besides of just CO2.

It is already well known that overall CO2 emissions are lower from BEVs compared to ICEs, but they are not 0 and even if we go by the facts presented in your link, the difference between clean ICE car and BEV is marginal at best (about ~25% reduction from ~210g to ~160g). Yet again this takes best case scenario, because EU energy production is relatively clean. So if we look again to that figure of 6% it means that replacing ALL ICE cars with ALL BEV we will achieve overall reduction of CO2 emissions of 1.5%. WOW! And that would not even be true globally.

Now consider that manufacturing is like 40-50% of pollution and it quickly becomes clear that focusing on things like planned obsolescence, e-waste, fast fashion, poor quality goods would have much bigger impact, that focusing on 1.5% reduction on cars. It is all politics and looking for scapegoats.

As well I find it highly suspicious that Heavy Trucks pollutes less than cars, not only Truck itself pollutes much more, but as well they have massive mileages. It is not uncommon for truck to do 100k miles a year, there are plenty of trucks 5 years old with 700-800k miles. Obviously would be me disagreeing with facts, but I just struggle to understand how that could be correct.

It could be said that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. It is always possible to take factual statistics and twist it in ways which completely misrepresents the situation. This infographic would be good example of that - focusing on area which is most convenient, highlighting selective facts which supports the point, ignoring total pollution and focusing on singly type etc.