As the car industry’s largest hybrid pusher, Toyota says it is better positioned to just buy credits to close the EPA gap rather than “waste” money on BEVs, its CEO said.
Toyota already admits that they are behind on their battery technology, despite having decades of opportunities to improve and innovate with their hybrid models.
Now they want to double down on their atrophy by effectively throwing their money away instead of investing in the future?
On the surface, this does not sound like a good plan for long term growth and profitability.
"Well, we've proven to ourselves that we're incapable of investing without it being a sunk cost that we are too petty to let go and will fight tooth and nail to make profitable... So let's just skip investing in much of anything new ever because we're nincompoops. If there's no guaranteed profit, why invest?"
Japan has no lithium to mine. So hydrogen is the best option for them. While I understand this for Japan, there’s a big world out there where Toyota is a market leader… for now.
You are also missing the fact the Japan's power grid is in a desperate need of repairs and improvements. Hydrogen won't fix however it introduces some lower cost temporary fixes that can be quickly implemented. In the long term the correct solution would be to fix the grid but we both know if there's a cheaper and easier solution what they'll go with...
Yes, steam methane reforming is the most cost effective. But there are other ways to make it. The most eco friendly was is electrolysis that uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. There are some microorganisms, such as algae and bacteria, that can produce hydrogen through biological reactions—but those aren’t able to scale today.
Someone will be along in a moment to tell us all about how you can't store hydrogen. Meanwhile there are eyewatering amounts being invested into water cracking facilities right now.
Saying that a company convinced a politician that something was a good idea doesn't make it true. A lot of money has been invested in really stupid things in the past.
Politicians aren't pouring many billions of taxpayer dollars into these facilities.
Large companies, global consortium size companies, are doing research which is leading them in this direction.
It's not Toyota execs sitting in a board meeting saying "what can we do to be edgy", it's well resourced think-tanks being asked for potential solutions to our energy problems.
Large companies, global consortium size companies, are doing research which is leading them in this direction.
Again, a lot of money is invested in really stupid things. If you've worked in a big company you know that, if you haven't watch a Thunderf00t video then. I personally was in a meeting several months ago where $500,000+ was spent on a new machine, rather then just extend the meeting for a couple hours and plan the process for how it could be avoided.