lol. rumors of toyota's death are greatly exaggerated.

in recent years though it seems Toyota has focused on winning battles (platforms, ICEs, rewriting their infotainment ) while losing a coming war (EVs).

having said that, no one can deny the success of their mainstream hybrids (rav4, highlander, camry, corolla, venza, sienna, etc). they get to tell an 'electrified' story without being an EV company.

All that aside, i have no doubt that toyota is now flat out internally working on EVs. because it's not just about tesla, it's about VW, Ford, GM, hyundai/kia, etc. now. i would not count toyota out.

also don't count out the potential of domestic (Japanese) partnerships. tesla relies on panasonic, an old japanese company. what if panasonic suddenly decided to support toyota more? Tesla could be in a world of hurt.

 

Apologies if my post sounded like a stock reference.
It was meant purely as a show of Tesla's incredible monetory resources; their incredible resource might.

Some analysts believe the cost to move to the EV platform may bankrupt companies with less resources.
The opportunity cost of money will make CEOs choose where to spend their scarce resources.
Again, apologies if it appeared to be anything else.

 

What does internally working on EVs mean versus just working on EVs.

 

Fair enough, when i wrote 'internally' i meant i suspect there's tons of work going that externally we can't see. It's the proverbial duck that looks like it's calmly going across the water while the legs are going like mad underneath.

 

In effect keeping their looming EVs a secret? Why would they do that as apposed to auto makers like VW, Ford and GM that have been open about their plans.

 

part of it might be cultural (japanese car companies typiically don't pre-announce much). Part of it might still be raging indecision internally or problems, or things they're not quite sure they can pull of yet, so don't want to announce.

unlike tesla which announces trucks, semis, roadsters, roof tiles, etc., happily takes deposits, and has barely delivered any of it in YEARS.

as for being open about plans, i don't recall ford talking much about the mach-e before release, the they're also in a desparate battle for survival so figured they wanted to give the f-150 faithful something to look forward to.

not sure what ev's gm's been open about, maybe the cadillac lyric?

vw is off to the races now having their main vw brand + audi + porsche all with ev's shipping.

 

LOL for some reason this made me think of the old question “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?”

 

Tesla has two factories making cars, Toyota has 10 in the United States alone. Yes there is normal time and Elon time but Tesla does deliver on their promises, eventually. Plaid is late but worth it this car is incredible. Toyota is not capable of making anything to compete with the Plaid

 

Or the tired argument "when the big boys come" Tesla is in trouble? Please. The Plaid is just a reminder that Tesla is an incredibly innovative company and at the forefront of EV Performance. Now let's just sit back and watch it climb Pikes Peak in a couple weeks

 

No one has the motor tech of the Plaid and may never have it.

 

It may be the most advanced electric motor ever built. It eliminates the back emf issue that completely metal electric motors suffer from which makes EVs slower at higher speeds. It also revs at over 20k rpms. Tesla had to invent a machine to be able to wrap the carbon sleeve into the motor as none had existed before. Simply incredible.

 

Feels like SpaceX engineering.

Plaid owners have to intentionally slow down or get kicked off the track. Casual 1/4 mile time is around 10.5.

 

That was his 2nd run against a hellcat which he completely annihilated. He intentionally braked before the stop and still got 10.5 which would be the Taycan's best time in the quarter mile. On his 3rd run, he got kicked out because he didn't brake in time and got 9.7s which broke the rules of the strip. lol. Bonkers.

 

On the contrary, I think this could be the beginning of the end. If you look at Tesla's advantage over other EV manufacturers, it's currently primarily in performance and range, and secondarily in self-driving as more of a brand-building novelty (i.e. not many will pick the Tesla over an e-tron due to self driving). At 2 seconds 0-60, how much farther can you still usefully push it? Going forward, how many people will buy a car because it can get to 60 in 1.8 seconds as opposed to 2? No matter how much they innovate in this aspect, they're already well past the point of diminishing returns. Another manufacturer can offer far inferior performance, say 3 seconds to 60, and still satisfy 99.999% of people's needs.

Similarly for range, going from 200 miles to 300 miles is a massive improvement. Going to 400 miles currently is nice, but again at a point of diminishing returns. In a few years, how many people will find 800 miles of range a worthwhile upgrade over 600 miles?

That's the 2 objectively measurable and the most important advantages Tesla has that will be irrelevant soon. Charging speed they don't have much of an advantage, and charging infrastructure is only an advantage in the US.

This really leaves just self-driving as the last "advantage". But how much of an advantage is it? People seem to think that just because there are many Teslas on the road collecting data, that they'd be king. But what's the quality of their data? In engineering there's a saying, garbage in, garbage out. If people avoid using Autopilot in difficult scenarios, ones that people know Teslas may have trouble with, can the data really allow much improvement?

We're nearing a point, probably within the next 5 years, where Tesla's market position will depend almost entirely on its self-driving tech. This will narrow their margin of error considerably. I'm not sure a quantitative advantage here (e.g. a better level 3 vs. a worse level 3) will be enough, they'll need a qualitative advantage (e.g. level 4 vs. level 3) to cement their market leader status, because their infotainment (rising importance these days, especially when self-driving becomes reality), build quality, and interior design can probably be at best a wash with other manufacturers as people begin to adopt Android for auto OS and Apple planning to enter the fray.

 

So people have to hear what they are doing? The EV market is so small. So all the brands are chasing the small EV market to figure out what is going to be the norm. Billions are being spent on these new models from Ford and Hyundai as well as GM. Let them all spend and figure out and then you deliver exactly what the market wants.

One battery for an EV can make how many hybrids? Toyota is the only brand that can sell hybrids to the masses and I don’t think anyone has plug in demand but Toyota now does. The vast majority of people are not ready to buy a Toyota battery electric. So Toyota focuses on the hybrids as well as the plug ins as that transition for Toyota customers will go this route.

Toyota’s impact in the battery electric segment will be their manufacturing experience and expertise as well as their longevity. You can already see where this advantage is present in the fact that Toyota will be making producing two different models from Toyota and Subaru off one platform. The car company that can produce the cheapest and longest lasting battery electric will be the winner

it definitely will bankrupt some. GM, Ford and Toyota all saw the change in the industry coming a few years ago by cutting the fat out of their companies.