EV Discussion thread

thevilla

"It seems Toyota is reading the market better than its competitors"

Or are they running at full speed blindfolded into a brick wall? Many other manufacturers are absorbing the cost of switching to low emission cars.  Toyota appear to spend their money on either dissing electric or running vapour wear press releases.

1961Nick

thevilla said:

"It seems Toyota is reading the market better than its competitors"

Or are they running at full speed blindfolded into a brick wall? Many other manufacturers are absorbing the cost of switching to low emission cars.  Toyota appear to spend their money on either dissing electric or running vapour wear press releases.

As we get closer to ICEV quotas, penalties & outright bans, a timely start to BEV production will be seen as having been the obvious strategy. Not having much of a foothold in the battery supply chain might turn out to be a huge mistake

skutter2k

Might be a silly question this. Away using not the best of sockets with a granny charger so I've had to dial charging down to 8A. Doesn't bother me that it takes longer but does it use more if you charge it slowly? I.e. is there an optimal charging current? 

Grumpy_chap

skutter2k said:

Might be a silly question this. Away using not the best of sockets with a granny charger so I've had to dial charging down to 8A. Doesn't bother me that it takes longer but does it use more if you charge it slowly? I.e. is there an optimal charging current? 

No such thing as a silly question.

It has been mentioned variously that the charging losses are greater from a granny charger than wall box.  I cannot give a definitive answer yet as I am a new EVer.  I was on the granny charger and logged the losses (around 15%) and now on a wall box so will soon be able to give a calculated loss for using that.  In fact, I am at the month end, so this might be a good prompt for me to read that meter.  I will try to update shortly.

skutter2k

Thanks. While staying in a lodge they charge 21p a unit so makes sense to keep the car topped up so long as it doesn't use 3 times as much when charging at 8A!

JKenH

1961Nick said:

thevilla said:

"It seems Toyota is reading the market better than its competitors"

Or are they running at full speed blindfolded into a brick wall? Many other manufacturers are absorbing the cost of switching to low emission cars.  Toyota appear to spend their money on either dissing electric or running vapour wear press releases.

As we get closer to ICEV quotas, penalties & outright bans, a timely start to BEV production will be seen as having been the obvious strategy. Not having much of a foothold in the battery supply chain might turn out to be a huge mistake

Toyota are investing heavily in battery manufacture. Here are just 2 announcements in the last month. We shouldn’t forget that Toyota have been sourcing batteries for years for the many millions of hybrids they have sold. 

Toyota to invest a further $8bn in North Carolina battery plant

Investment is the largest by a foreign carmaker in a US factory since Inflation Reduction Act was passed

https://www.ft.com/content/f853edac-d7bb-4fcc-bcee-4cba1c256b9e

LGES to supply Toyota with batteries, invest $3 billion in US plant

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota-lg-energy-sign-battery-supply-agreement-power-evs-2023-10-04/

ABrass

30GWh a year by 2030 isn't bad. It's where Tesla were a few years ago. Tesla is planning another 100GWh capacity, plus what they buy in from partners, although there isn't a date on that.

Martyn1981

ABrass said:

30GWh a year by 2030 isn't bad. It's where Tesla were a few years ago. Tesla is planning another 100GWh capacity, plus what they buy in from partners, although there isn't a date on that.

Yeah, they're gonna need to ramp that up, as it's about 0.5m BEV's pa, and I think Toyota were aiming for ~1.7m BEV's by 2030 (around 17%), but they are changing plans constantly now, so who knows.

The drop in value of the Yen has helped them this year, by increasing profits from foreign sales, and also by avoiding the massive investment that most companies have started to make, as they shift into BEV's.

I'm no expert on debt, but I keep hearing that much of the huge debt carried by Ford, GM and VWG (second most indebted company in the World) is 'good debt', as much of it relates to car financing. But Toyota's debt (the largest of any company (not just car company)) is apparently not as 'good' as the others. Having close to $200bn in debt, must make it a tad more tricky to spend/invest in the transition to BEV's, especially if they honestly believe that the future is PHEV's and HFCV's.

JKenH

Toyota’s BZ4X is doing relatively well in the mature Norwegian EV market being the second best selling car last month at 522 units behind the Tesla Model Y at 647 units. While I accept one can’t read too much into one month’s statistics the Toyota is still the third best selling car over the last 3 months, outpacing each of VW’s ID models among others. 

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/02/evs-at-91-3-share-in-norway-shrinking-auto-market/

Obviously a company can only sell as many cars as it can deliver and at the moment it is reasonable to assume that Toyota’s poor showing on the EV world stage is because it just doesn’t manufacture enough cars to feature strongly. Perhaps Toyota having insufficient production to make an impact in larger markets has targeted Norway. It may be that die-hard Norwegian Toyota enthusiasts have held off buying EVs until the BZ4X was available. Whatever the reason, in Norway, it is selling very well. It is impossible to extrapolate that performance to say it will become the second best selling EV in other markets but the signs in the market are encouraging and once Toyota starts churning out the BZ4X (and the BZ3) in volume it may surprise us all.

Grumpy_chap

JKenH said:

Toyota’s BZ4X is doing relatively well in the mature Norwegian EV market being the second best selling car last month at 522 units behind the Tesla Model Y at 647 units. While I accept one can’t read too much into one month’s statistics the Toyota is still the third best selling car over the last 3 months, outpacing each of VW’s ID models among others. 

Having been in the market for an EV earlier in the year, plus my Brother got the BZ4X, I have to say that the quality positioning of the Toyota is leaps and bounds above the VW iDs that I looked at when making a choice.