Sulu

Toyota only recently found a lithium-ion battery chemistry that they are satisfied with and now they are using it on a limited basis -- in only some of their hybrid models. My educated guess is that they have not (yet) scaled up production of LiIon batteries to match the demand of all of their hybrid models.

And perhaps they did not want to scale up production of LiIon batteries, since they see it as merely a stop-gap technology until their solid-state batteries (announced not long after they announced their LiIon battery breakthrough) come into commercial production.

Hybrid vehicles themselves are a stop-gap technology until long-range, quick-charging EVs come along. Toyota has a lot invested in hybrids so will continue selling them until they can bring their EVs to market.

But since the Europeans were never very strong with hybrid vehicles (but they are investing in the cheaper 48-volt mild hybrids), they may as well go straight for EVs.

Toys4RJill

Toyota uses lithium in some Corollas worldwide (none in the US), some US market Camry's, some Prius, all Lexus LS, all Lexus LC.

But Toyota uses them in some applications. They are just saving money and milking profit IMO. More money to be made with the older tech. Never believe everything Toyota has to say. I value the person's opinion who questions them.

spwolf

Dont forget that Panasonic and Toyota tied up ALL of their battery operations into one JV, except for the Tesla business. Lion is actually cheaper for Toyota now, so cheaper vehicles are starting to get lion.

Sulu

I am aware of the Toyota-Panasonic joint venture. I would assume that with increased mass production, lithium ion batteries would become cheaper. But is the production of lithium ion batteries keeping up with demand, and ramping up quickly enough to replace NiMH batteries in Hybrids in the near-term? And is the cost of LiIon batteries cheaper than the old NiMH batteries?

spwolf

Based on what Toyota head engineers have been saying for a while now (a year?), their lion is already cheaper than their nimh and thus used on their cheaper vehicles.
Problem for Toyota is not lion vs nimh, it is amounts of lion batteries needed for EVs and plugin hybrids.

So from their perspective, lion is a win on cost side compared to nimh, and needed to lower the price of hybrids... problem on battery side is that 4.5m hybrids and plug-in hybrids + 1m of BEV and FCV, probably require 30x more battery capacity from what they are doing today, and that is impossible to handle on their own. It is 30x more in next 5 years compare to what world's largest hybrid producer is doing in 2019.

At some point, i assume they will let everyone else concentrate on hybrid batteries and that their JV with Panasonic will end up investing billions into solid-state batteries that they will not share with others and are more interesting in BEV applications.

Putting things into perspective, TMC might reach 2m hybrid sales in 2019 alone... nobody else is anywhere close, whole VW group will likely not sell more than 100k of various different plugin/bev vehicles.

Toys4RJill

Where did you read that they were cheaper? I would be interested to read it. They are not always on their cheaper vehicles. The Lexus LS and LC use them. Some of the more heavily optioned Corollas have the lithium batteries where the US spec Corolla does not.