Question about self charging hybrids

Shedman

daveyjp said:

ididgetwhereiamtoday said:

Imagine if Toyota had of put full EV tech into their Prius's many years ago. Those EVs would be all over the place now. A Prius EV would be as efficient as a Tesla Model 3 and the company would be in much better shape, probably as big as Tesla. Kia and Hyundai where successful in making EVs along side Hybrids so it could have been done.
Toyota have seriosly got it wrong. Their Hybrids are good but their EV Prius would have blown the market away, they would easily achieve 5 MPKW with this aerodynamics. Instead they have their over priced BZX4 about 5 years too late, its almost as if they don't want to make EVs.

Maybe Toyota are ahead of the curve and don't see pure EV as a long term global solution for their business.

Judging by the amount that Ford are losing on each EV (circa $35,000) from a report of their latest financials I read recently whereas Toyota by sticking with Hybrids and only dabbling a bit in EV have just reported record profits (as well as their share price being up 40+% in a year with Fords down 10%) I think I know who had the right strategy.  Ford are now really only wanting to sell EVs  (EV division lost nearly $5 billion last year) as they are required to sell 1 EV for each 12 ICE they sell. They are also delaying investing in Gen2 EVs until they start to show a profit in the E division and are concentrating on Hybrids and Petrol vehicles.

ididgetwhereiamtoday

daveyjp said:

ididgetwhereiamtoday said:

Imagine if Toyota had of put full EV tech into their Prius's many years ago. Those EVs would be all over the place now. A Prius EV would be as efficient as a Tesla Model 3 and the company would be in much better shape, probably as big as Tesla. Kia and Hyundai where successful in making EVs along side Hybrids so it could have been done.
Toyota have seriosly got it wrong. Their Hybrids are good but their EV Prius would have blown the market away, they would easily achieve 5 MPKW with this aerodynamics. Instead they have their over priced BZX4 about 5 years too late, its almost as if they don't want to make EVs.

Maybe Toyota are ahead of the curve and don't see pure EV as a long term global solution for their business.

Possibly. I saw an article about Toyota doing quite well financially in the last 12 months so who knows. 

I still think a full EV Prius introduced 5 or 6 years ago would have done wonders for the company. 

Goudy

Yes, Toyota took a calculated risk and a lot of flack for sticking with Hybrids but it seems to have paid off recently.

They realised the EV market would initially be early adopters that generally had the money to pay for them after which they thought the market would tail off.

Also, they are a truly globally company and realised nearly a third of the worlds population haven't access to electricity, even more haven't the sort of reliable access to charge a BEV, so their strategy wasn't crazy. 
Seems they were justified, so far.

The EV market last year dropped a small fraction but the hybrid sales actually went up.
Even the Chinese, who have a massive BEV market are now opening their wallets wider for hybrids and buying more and more of them.

To be fair Toyota and other car companies can't continue to spend billions developing technology, whatever that technology is, if they aren't profitable and hybrids seem more than profitable to Toyota at the moment than BEV's.

I would find it hard to bet against Toyota cracking some game changing technology in the near future and by edging their bets, they seem to have put themselves in a better position to do that.

Martyn1981

daveyjp said:

ididgetwhereiamtoday said:

Imagine if Toyota had of put full EV tech into their Prius's many years ago. Those EVs would be all over the place now. A Prius EV would be as efficient as a Tesla Model 3 and the company would be in much better shape, probably as big as Tesla. Kia and Hyundai where successful in making EVs along side Hybrids so it could have been done.
Toyota have seriosly got it wrong. Their Hybrids are good but their EV Prius would have blown the market away, they would easily achieve 5 MPKW with this aerodynamics. Instead they have their over priced BZX4 about 5 years too late, its almost as if they don't want to make EVs.

Maybe Toyota are ahead of the curve and don't see pure EV as a long term global solution for their business.

Maybe, but PHEV sales are stalling, whilst BEV sales keep rising, and HFCV sales continue to fall, from what is a negligible amount anyway. HFCV's global (not just Toyota), peaked at ~17k in 2021, 2023 was ~12k, with BEV sales at ~10m.

Toyota is the most indebted company in the World (not just car manufacturers). Shifting to BEV sales requires huge investment, and Toyota with higher sales, will need to invest more.

Companies that have already shifted, are struggling against others, like Tesla and BYD, who can cut prices, as they have already made the shift, and OPEX are coming down.

With Europe now introducing minimum ZEV (zero-emission vehicles) sales requirements this year, that will be hard, as Toyota sells almost no BEV's. So reaching the 22% figure (for the UK) this year, will be impossible, and the fines are £15k for each car over. So they will have to take the loss, cut sales, or buy credits from those with an excess.

Toyota (or Mr Toyoda) did claim that they would maintain sales by shifting to parts of the World that can't afford expensive BEV's (parts of Asia, Africa and S. America). But these areas have already seen a massive shift to BEV 2 and 3 wheelers, with huge adoption. In fact, about twice as much oil consumption avoidance was achieved last year by BEV 2/3 wheelers than BEV cars. So the markets have already been adopting BEV's very well.

Also, China has been building extremely cheap (~$5k) and basic BEV's for years. These countries may also be concerned about balance of payments, with the cost of buying in oil/petrol/diesel, so like Ethiopia, who are now launching a ban on ICEV's [edit - should have clarified, a ban on ICEV imports], they may want to encourage BEV's, especially now that the cost of solar generation is so, so cheap, and still tumbling. This would work well, in line with the role out of micro-grids (using PV and batts), in remote or poor areas, where grids don't currently reach.

The longer Toyota avoids shifting to BEV's, the harder it will get. Early and low production will carry big losses, but as they shift, their competition will be able to cut costs, prolonging the pain and losses for Toyota. Legacy auto are leaning on their ICEV sales to remain profitable/minimise losses during the transition to BEV's, but as ICEV sales fall, that income/profit stream will dwindle. ICE car sales peaked in 2017 at just over 80m, and have been in decline ever since, sales for 2022 and 2023, were around 60m. [Edit - PEV sales in 2017 were ~1m, in 2023 they were ~14m.]

WellKnownSid

I understand that the CEO recently stated that EVs are not a practical choice for the one billion people without electricity. I would wager that many of these don’t have roads let alone the money to buy a car, so making these Toyota’s new target market seems not without risk.

MeteredOut

daveyjp said:

ididgetwhereiamtoday said:

Imagine if Toyota had of put full EV tech into their Prius's many years ago. Those EVs would be all over the place now. A Prius EV would be as efficient as a Tesla Model 3 and the company would be in much better shape, probably as big as Tesla. Kia and Hyundai where successful in making EVs along side Hybrids so it could have been done.
Toyota have seriosly got it wrong. Their Hybrids are good but their EV Prius would have blown the market away, they would easily achieve 5 MPKW with this aerodynamics. Instead they have their over priced BZX4 about 5 years too late, its almost as if they don't want to make EVs.

Maybe Toyota are ahead of the curve and don't see pure EV as a long term global solution for their business.

Or maybe they have fallen off the curve. We won't know for a good few years, but an interesting approach compared to other manufacturers.

Herzlos

HEV's have always been a stop-gap for most people; it gives them an ICE motor should they run out of battery. But with battery tech the group of people who need that is gradually decreasing.

In the near future there's always going to be some people who need a range beyond what a battery can do, but eventually there will be a point where the combustion engine is no longer necessary. Take a hypothetical 1000 mile range / 10 minute charge EV - how many people would still be trying to claim they need more range and less charging time?

Goudy

WellKnownSid said:

I understand that the CEO recently stated that EVs are not a practical choice for the one billion people without electricity. I would wager that many of these don’t have roads let alone the money to buy a car, so making these Toyota’s new target market seems not without risk.

Toyota make a range of vehicles that don't really need many roads to markets that don't have a lot of roads.
They aren't new markets either, these markets have been part of Toyota since the 1960's.

We only really see what they sell here in the UK and perhaps Europe.

Think about  Africa, most of middle east, large parts of Asia and most of Australia.
Toyota are pretty much the only vehicle in those markets as nothing else will do and they sell like hot cakes.

They sell around 550,000 HiLux a year in South Africa alone.
Data for the rest of the continent is a bit sketchy but you would guess Toyota are still a massive part of the 1.3 million new car sales a year if you factor in those 550,000 Hilux sales in SA alone.
 
Europe's best selling car, the Tesla Model Y shifted 209,000 in the whole of Europe last year.
Toyota shifted just over a million vehicles in total in the whole of Europe. 
I haven't the figures, but I reckon that million is just a fraction of Hilux sales globally.

Out of 214,000 Toyota sales in Aus, a quarter were Hilux.

In these large Toyota markets, BEV's aren't going to cut it and as written, they probably couldn't afford them anyway.

If truth be told, it's more like Toyota aren't going to risk these massive markets with changing to a technology that's totally lacking the infrastructure.
Why sell a car that requires a petrol or diesel generator to be ran for hours when they can just pour the fuel into a cars tank, stick more tanks of fuel on the roof and keep going for a thousand miles. 

Grumpy_chap

Goudy said:

They sell around 550,000 HiLux a year in South Africa alone.

Without any data, that number seemed intuitively incorrect.

This report suggests that only around 520k Hilux vehicles were sold globally through the whole of 2023:
https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market/
I note that report seems to use data to end of November, so whole year sales will be higher - perhaps around the 550k referenced in your source.

My source is no better than I could turn up from an internet search and I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information provided.
Do you have a source for your 550k Hilux sold in South Africa? 
Could that figure have referenced global sales of the Hilux?

EDIT:
I found the following article which reports 34.5k Hilux sales in SA to end of November 2023.  Extrapolating, that would be around 38k for the full year:
https://www.timeslive.co.za/motoring/features/2023-12-21-toyota-hilux-vs-ford-ranger-how-their-sales-have-compared-in-2023/

Goudy

Sorry, that was meant to read 55,000 made in the Toyota SA factory.

Still over half a million Hilux a year in total.
That's just one model, god knows how many Land Cruisers and Fortuner they built and sold in these markets.
I've been to a couple of African counties and to be fair, Hilux are thin on the ground when you compare the amounts of Hiace mini vans, they appear in swarms in towns!

Tesla won't sell it's Cybertruck outside north America and Mexico. That seems a odd decision when you think the pickup market is so large around the world 

Might it be the market for them is only in those areas because they are BEV?


As written, why pour fuel into a generator to go 200 miles when you can pour it in tanks and go thousands.

If your market are these areas, which Toyota seem pretty confident it is and evidence suggests it is, why invest in technology that won't work in them.

The point is, Toyota's business isn't just hatchbacks, saloons and crossovers in the developed world where electrification has become popular. It's much wider and more complex and it's R&D and products reflects that.