Akio Toyoda, Toyota Motor’s chairman, has never been a huge fan of battery electric vehicles. Last October, as global sales of EVs started to slow down amid macroeconomic uncertainty, Toyoda crowed that people are “finally seeing reality” on EVs. Now, the auto executive is doubling down on his bearish forecast, boldly predicting that just three in 10 cars on the road will be powered by a battery.
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“The enemy is CO2,” Toyoda said, proposing a “multi-pathway approach” that doesn’t rely on any one type of vehicle. “Customers, not regulations or politics” should make the decision on what path to rely on, he said.
The auto executive estimated that around a billion people still live in areas without electricity, which limits the appeal of a battery electric vehicle. Toyoda estimated that fully electric cars will only capture 30% of the market, with the remainder taken up by hybrids or vehicles that use hydrogen technology.
If you’re broke you aren’t going to have the equipment or the safeguards to remove and repair a 1,000+ pound battery yourself, and you won’t find a shop to do it for less than a couple grand. You’re “just do that” is completely unrealistic. Not to mention that a 1.5 to 2% capacity loss every year means your 15 year old car that started off being able to go 250 miles can now only go around 150 miles on a fall charge, and closer to 100 miles in very cold temps.
People make do, luckily at least some of us are creative 🙄
Average commute in the US is about 30 miles each way.
I don’t know how else to spell this out, you just never seem to get this: when the battery wears out, you replace it, not for free, but you get an effectively new drivetrain on your car. Your door dents and scratches will still be there, brakes still squeal and maybe you need to replace the shocks. But you can again accelerate hard, go long distances, all quietly and far more reliably than an ice car can. You can do this probably a few times before the body and subframe is worn/corroded too much to be worth it.
Get it?
When a powertrain wears out, a replacement ice will cost a person $2000 for an engine and $1600 labor. That 300 lb engine could sit on a shelf in a warehouse for 5 years or 30 years and still be an engine that works well. You want to spend a few grand more and you can make that old engine that’s in working condition, essentially brand new.
You leave a 1000 lb battery pack stored for 5 years and left alone it’s ruined. 30 years it’s ruined no matter what. Can’t just be pulled from a junkyard and taken home. It’s too large and heavy. Cost an arm and a leg to get delivered to an independent shop. Not to mention the equipment needed to manipulate around 1000 lb battery packs, so no one can self replace these things. The packs can’t be made new. They degrade with age, used or not. They cost more and they lose more value and only people with a house and garage can conveniently charge them.