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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

#221

Post by clouddrover »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #105
Yaggo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your experience reflects more your choise of car than EVs as technology. I have been driving Tesla happily for 3.5 years. I regularly make long distance trips to remote areas of Finland. No problems whatsoever. I pay 25 snt/kWh for on-the-road charging with Elli membership, about 12 snt at home.

The moment when you will get off the supercharger network with your tesla you are in the same crap as the rest of the BEV owners. >on-the-road charging with Elli membership Why should I buy some stupid membership so I can pay monthly fee + charging fee? I am not buying memberships for taking gas either.

> The moment when you will get off the supercharger network with your tesla

There are 21 Tesla charging sites in Finland and 14 of them are now open to all EVs. So you could be making use of two thirds of Tesla's Finnish charging sites with your Skoda Enyaq right now.

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

#222

Post by genocidicbunny »

lmm wrote: post #219
genocidicbunny wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

How would having to use a route planner be less effort than not having to use one at all? With my ICE car, I very rarely have to concern myself with being able to find a gas station in range. I also very rarely would need to use any sort of route planning software to find a gas station in range.

> Ways to mitigate the downsides are a good thing.

Yes, but the problem arises when you're mitigating downsides you added yourself. For a _lot_ of people, EVs have many downsides that they currently do not need to suffer from with ICE or hybrid cars. Yes, route planning software might mitigate the issue; I can imagine having a mode in Google or Apple maps that lets you route plan around charging stations could work quite well. But you're still stacking having to do that on top of the other downsides EVs currently have. Gas stations on the other hand are widely available, and on longer routes (in the US at least) often marked on roadside signage that makes them very accessible. If you're planning around charging stations you may also not have opportunities to take more interesting or faster routes, which could be a downside depending on the purpose of your trip.

> Sure, but there are significant downsides to ICE.

No disagreement from me there. But these downsides are largely well known, and either very diffuse or tend to have well-known mitigations at this point. When you change that set of downsides, there will be an adjustment period.

> Would you call it naive [...]

No, absolutely not. Those are real problems too. What I was referring to was the way you seemed to offer a dismissive solution to the problem that the GP described. A lot of EV proponents I've found are very dismissive of the real-world issues of EVs that currently exist, and the additional challenges many people would face if they were to switch to an EV right now. Dismissing these things makes it harder to address and improve them.

To be clear, a century ago we might have been having the same discussion about ICE cars, and how the infrastructure is not ready yet; In a way, this reminds me of refactoring core components of a large intertwined codebase. Often you can't just flip a switch and just change everything, it has to be gradual, building up it's own support over time and effort -- but many an inexperienced (and dare I say naive) engineer would still try to change it all at once.

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

#223

Post by clouddrover »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #222
lmm wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The whole point of suggesting a route planner is to reduce the effort on their part. How would having to use a route planner be less effort than not having to use one at all? With my ICE car, I very rarely have to concern myself with being able to find a gas station in range. I also very rarely would need to use any sort of route planning software to find a gas station in range. > Ways to mitigate the downsides are…

I don't know what you're talking about anymore.

If you're too scared to own an EV, if the EV chargers frighten you, if you find the leading edge too edgy, if the adoption is too early for you, then the solution in your case is simple: don't buy an EV.

In the meantime, EV owners can use A Better Routeplanner and configure it to prioritise their preferred charging networks (via Settings -> Charging Networks -> Network Preferences) to find charging sites from charging providers they like to use.

So, in TheLoafOfBread's case, if he prefers to use let's say Ionity, Tesla, BP, and FastNed with his Skoda Enyaq he can add them to the network preferences in ABRP.

Then when TheLoafOfBread plans his next road trip, A Better Routeplanner will plan a route which uses those charging sites in preference to other charging sites. TheLoafOfBread will find that most of the time he'll be charging at one of his preferred charging providers and he'll be much happier.

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

#224

Post by lmm »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #222
lmm wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The whole point of suggesting a route planner is to reduce the effort on their part. How would having to use a route planner be less effort than not having to use one at all? With my ICE car, I very rarely have to concern myself with being able to find a gas station in range. I also very rarely would need to use any sort of route planning software to find a gas station in range. > Ways to mitigate the downsides are…

> How would having to use a route planner be less effort than not having to use one at all?

It's not, it's less effort than whatever they were doing to find charging stations before.

> What I was referring to was the way you seemed to offer a dismissive solution to the problem that the GP described.

I didn't offer it, but I don't see anything dismissive about it. It looked like a genuine effort to help someone mitigate one of the downsides of an EV (which was clearly something that had some upsides for them, otherwise why would they have bought one in the first place).

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

#225

Post by gavanm »

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.

Toyota had identified the strategic risk of chip supply some years earlier, and made sure they had access to large buffers of them, reducing the impact.

I’m not sure about the impact of shipping though.

See: https://www.autoblog.com/2021/03/09/toyota-how-it-avoided-se...

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

#226

Post by jillesvangurp »

starkd wrote: post #114
jillesvangurp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that if Toyota wants to be a leader in this space, they should not wait for this to happen but be making it happen. The reality is that they have not been doing that. And others have. If they wanted to be a leader in this space, five years ago would have been late to start putting in place the strategy, infrastructure, supply chains, etc. you need to build EVs. They did not do much five years ago other t…

Going all in on EV's is also a very big gamble. Sure, there is probably a profitable segment in the market, but with so many other car companies going all-in, Toyota could be in a good position by having a wider line-up of products. There is something very strange about the herd mentality around EV's. As if we are going to fix the environment if only everybody gets an EV for ALL use cases.

I think the misguided gamble at this point is hoping/expecting the EV market to implode and stop rapidly overtaking and outgrowing everything else. That clearly is not happening or going to happen.

This is not about herd mentality but about not ignoring very real and tangible trends in the market that are starting to affect Toyota's core business in very real ways. Mumbling about hydrogen and vaguely asserting there might be some EVs in the distant future is no longer good enough as a plan. And as a stop gap solution, hybrids are not growing as fast as EVs and mostly at the cost of ICE vehicles. Which means an overall decline for Toyota. Hybrids are no longer good enough and might be banned from key markets entirely along with ICE vehicles on a time line that is getting uncomfortably close for Toyota.

That's the reason for the change of leadership at Toyota. This stuff is starting to make share holders very nervous.

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

#227

Post by jillesvangurp »

rr808 wrote: post #197
jillesvangurp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that if Toyota wants to be a leader in this space, they should not wait for this to happen but be making it happen. The reality is that they have not been doing that. And others have. If they wanted to be a leader in this space, five years ago would have been late to start putting in place the strategy, infrastructure, supply chains, etc. you need to build EVs. They did not do much five years ago other t…

Toyota has a lot of PHEVs now. The RAV4 Prime is awesome if you can get one. It isn't very difficult to change a PHEV to an BEV.

Sure, but a good BEV is designed very differently than a PHEV and designing them properly has cost benefits and is an overall better product for customers as well (better range, more space inside, etc.). There are plenty of existing manufacturers who have gone down that path and are now shifting attention to getting rid of ICE/PHEV entirely. Also, you need access to battery supply.

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

#228

Post by tpm »

haspok wrote: post #155
TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am coming from an Eastern Block. It was quite common during communism to drive 20-30 years old cars. I think that Eastern Europe will teach the western part how to properly stagnate.

It was not. Cars of that era didn't last, as a matter of fact, they would last much less (and require far more maintenance) than the cars of today. It is true that certain cars (Trabi comes to mind) could be fixed roadside with a screwdriver and a hammer usually, but >100k kilometers life was still rare - people simply used their cars less and for shorter trips those days.

It was quite common. You are right the cars didn't last long and required more maintenance. But also they were much simpler, with lower tolerance parts, so it was easier for lower-skilled mechanics to repair them. Many people around me did that. Another thing is most people used cars much less as you correctly write, so the lower endurance and reliability mattered less.

This is not a sentimental view of good old times, the cars were really bad, killed many people etc, but the fact is because people didn't have a choice they hanged on to them as long as they could. Once modern cars became available, everyone ditched the old ones as fast as they could afford it.

What is currently happenning with cars is not that they last shorter, but after the first life mostly in western/central Europe they are sold to the east and south where they continue to work for many more years, but out of our sight.

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

#229

Post by epolanski »

clouddrover wrote: post #186
epolanski wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota isn't just "one of the worlds biggest car makers" it is THE biggest car maker on the planet. They sell 25% more cars than the Volkswagen group (second biggest car maker on the planet) which includes Volkswagen, SEAT, Skoda, Porsche, Bentley and Audi and 50% more than Stellantins (which includes Fiat, Citroen, Peaugeot, Jeep, Ram, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Opel and another 6 manufacturers). It's just impressive how…

> They sell 25% more cars than the Volkswagen group (second biggest car maker on the planet) No. Volkswagen and Toyota are pretty even. They swap positions as the biggest car maker. Volkswagen became the biggest in 2017 but Toyota became the biggest again in 2021: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/28/business/toyota-volkswage...

I was referring to 2022 sales, not historical data. In 2022 Toyota sold 2.5M cars more which means a 30% bump over VW group.

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

#230

Post by machinawhite »

neoromantique wrote: post #203
insane_dreamer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, Lexus is on par with Merc/BMW/Audi

There is a reason why Toyota separated their luxury segment into a different brand.

Yeah, marketing. They're top trim models sure but a Lexus IS300 in Japan is still just a Toyota Altezza with leather seats and a 2JZ
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