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Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

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Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#211

Post by genocidicbunny »

clouddrover wrote: post #183
genocidicbunny wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the parent you're replying to, but this comment is very indicative of the problem being addressed. With an ICE car, or even a hybrid, this is just not a consideration. I don't need to plan my route around fuel stops unless I'm going somewhere well away from 'civilization'. The issues described are not insolvable, but dismissing that they aren't currently solved is a little bit like sticking your head in the sand.…

What a bizarre thing to say. EV charging infrastructure is still being built out. It's still the case that there aren't EV chargers absolutely everywhere. Until there are many more EV chargers in more locations such that you don't have to think about it, you use a route planner to easily find the charger locations that exist now.

I retort that I find it bizarre that you somehow think that for most people, offering them a solution that strictly requires more effort on their part is preferable.

> Until there are many more EV chargers in more locations such that you don't have to think about it, you use a route planner to easily find the charger locations that exist now.

Or I use an ICE car and not have to deal with this, like at all.

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#212

Post by mgfist »

starkd wrote: post #117
mgfist wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of EVs are now sold per year. It's still a small percent of total car but increasing rapidly and while all other manufacturers are spending time and money building up expertise and infrastructure Toyota is ignoring it. Switching from ICE to EV is not easy and takes years to do so and the later Toyota delays it the more painful it will be.

There is no reason it all EV. There are legitimate use cases for both EV and ICE.

In the not too distant future EV will be better than ICE for 99.9% of use-cases. And for passenger vehicles that'll be more like 99.999%.

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#213

Post by pjscott »

jlg23 wrote: post #190
bischofs wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Toyota, and they credit him on day one of training on the Toyota philosophy. Toyota's success is just a function of them listening to western consultants after the war when western companies would not.

Or maybe it is the result of filling hollow, generic advice with some meaning. I'd really love to hear the original advice given by western consultants.

Deming had some genuinely counterintuitive stuff to say. The focus on reducing variance was obvious in retrospect, once you do the math, but important at the time.

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#214

Post by starkd »

mgfist wrote: post #212
starkd wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason it all EV. There are legitimate use cases for both EV and ICE.

In the not too distant future EV will be better than ICE for 99.9% of use-cases. And for passenger vehicles that'll be more like 99.999%.

That was not my point. The consumer should be able to decide when/if that happens. Not some arbitrarily imposed timeline. Advances in technology should be tested in the consumer marketplace.

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#215

Post by rawgabbit »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #192
rawgabbit wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JIT made sense for Toyota and they took steps to ensure their suppliers were beholden to them (that is they shipped whenever Toyota needed it). JIT doesn't make sense for global supply chains when the suppliers i.e. China or Russia government can impose embargoes at will with little warning.

> JIT made sense for Toyota and they took steps to ensure their suppliers were beholden to them (that is they shipped whenever Toyota needed it). Did that still hold true during the pandemic? I mean if you can't get stuff on the ships (huge part of the chain) they can't go out. It's not always a choice for suppliers as we saw.

Sorry I don’t follow your question. The pandemic resulted in both closed factories and ships not leaving port. A double whammy for JIT.

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#216

Post by rodgerd »

losvedir wrote: post #19

I had a Toyota. It was a great car, and a real testament to the engineering prowess Toyoda established. I see very clear, very interesting Innovator's Dilemma vibes, though, in how widely they've missed the boat on EVs. I wouldn't be surprised if we see Toyota lose its dominance in the coming decade. It's sad, since the Prius was such a gamechanger. Maybe the passing of the torch here will let them start to catch up.

> in how widely they've missed the boat on EVs.

They delivered a well-liked pure EV in the 90s that had a queue of people who wanted one. Chevron bought up a company with key battery patents, sued the RAV4 out of existence, wrote licensing arrangements such that no vehicle battery could be more than a couple of kWh in capacity, and went to court to have the results of their legal action kept quiet.

Toyota's hybrids have had the maximum battery allowed by that Chevron lawsuit. I am not surprised that they would be reluctant to get involved in being on any kind of electric leading edge again given that the evidence is that their entire product line could be destroyed on a whim.

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#217

Post by lmm »

RigelKentaurus wrote: post #133

RIP Mr. Toyoda. 2 random thoughts- 1. I owned a 1987 Corolla FX GTS coupe hatchback. Manual transmission, brilliant red, with fantastic sporty design and handling. Will never love a car like I did that one. 2. The JIT revolution that Toyota did so well in the 70s took a long time to spread to the US. I worked on a GM project in 2002-03 where I saw some crazy problems. The same part would be called different names in…

That era's Corolla is legendary even now (though people tend to focus on the JDM version that had 2HP more). The GT86 was meant to be a tribute to it, although how well it succeeds is up for discussion.

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#218

Post by lmm »

LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #150
nixass wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This will slowly change as more EVs are sold and the charging infrastructure improves. Yeah.. no. Especially not in old big towns around Europe where hundreds of thousands (even millions) of people live without underground garage and there's literally no place to install street side chargers on every corner.

But I thought the advantage of European towns was that you didn't need a vehicle because you could walk to everything you need?

It is. Electric cars are a sideshow, the real disruption is e-bikes, e-scooters and golf carts.

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#219

Post by lmm »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #211
clouddrover wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bizarre thing to say. EV charging infrastructure is still being built out. It's still the case that there aren't EV chargers absolutely everywhere. Until there are many more EV chargers in more locations such that you don't have to think about it, you use a route planner to easily find the charger locations that exist now.

I retort that I find it bizarre that you somehow think that for most people, offering them a solution that strictly requires more effort on their part is preferable. > Until there are many more EV chargers in more locations such that you don't have to think about it, you use a route planner to easily find the charger locations that exist now. Or I use an ICE car and not have to deal with this, like at all.

> offering them a solution that strictly requires more effort on their part is preferable

The whole point of suggesting a route planner is to reduce the effort on their part.

Any change of vehicle is a tradeoff - maybe it's faster but has worse fuel economy. Maybe it's got more passenger space but the navigation is worse. Ways to mitigate the downsides are a good thing.

> Or I use an ICE car and not have to deal with this, like at all.

Sure, but there are significant downsides to ICE. The tradeoffs may be worth it or they may not. Would you call it naive to talk about e.g. catalytic converters on ICEs to reduce their emissions (which then end up getting stolen - whereas I can use an electric car and not have to deal with that, like at all)

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#220

Post by faeriechangling »

baybal2 wrote: post #131
ughitsaaron wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm told that many agile techniques also had their genesis in his work The “kanban” interfaces definitely originate from Toyota. Scrum was influenced by Toyota’s management techniques, among others. I believe other familiar concepts, e.g. “kaizen” or continuous improvement, also originate from Toyota.

Toyota wasn't first. But it was them learning a lot from working on looms, and other stuff at textile mills taught them how to max productivity. Textiles making was already a very competitive industry in late 19th century, and the only way to push forward in productivity after looms were optimized to the max was to cut slack in between machines — management techniques. There the manufacturers were stealing each other…

>There the manufacturers were stealing each other's ideas "within months" as Japan had no enforceable Western style patent system yet. The electric andon was for example copied from Suzuki looms, where it prevented looms from dethreading when the machine runs out of thread, and requiring hours to manually rethread it again.

How horrible! I’m glad the patent system saved us from this backwardness!

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