Toyota's hybrid ride back to profitability
Will also start selling fuel cell hybrids in 2015At a shareholder meeting yesterday Toyota vice president Masatami Takimoto told attendees that Toyota would increase its line of hybrid cars, in addition to cost-cutting, to return the company back to profitability.
Likewise, when asked about zero emission vehicles, Takimoto stated that Toyota would begin selling new fuel cell cars in 2015 as part of its plan to stay ahead of the green vehicle pack.
Labels: Hybrid Vehicles, toyota
posted by Dahcredyns at
8:02 AM
4 Comments:
Interesting, Toyota will mainstream hybrids and then jump to Fuel Cells by 2015. It sounds like it is trying to leap frog series hybrids like the Volt. Or maybe it thinks series hybrids will never work. Either way, it is interesting that GM might not have to worry about direct competition form Toyota, just the Koreans and Chinese plugin hybrids.
My guess is this has everything to do with Large format Li battery packs, Japan's lack of dominance in that wide open market, and the massive moves being made in Li by China, Korea, and potentially the US.
Honda, Hyundai, etc. have also made very strong fuel cell statements recently and over the last few years. Nonetheless, I don't think that Toyota is bypassing either lithium or plug-ins.
I'd bet Toyota's plug-ins will easily outsell GM's Volt and other plug-ins.
Also, Toyota has already claimed it could already switch to lithium for its conventional hybrids, but it would have to increase pricing on vehicles like the Prius. That would, obviously, be counter-productive today.
Likewise, not only has Toyota claimed its current lithium technology is ready, but that they are close to finalizing their next gen lithium battery technology.
Ultimately, fuel cell vehicles are just a piece of the mix, and since Toyota's HSD is a significant piece of Toyota's fuel cell vehicles, it makes sense to move forward.
Both Ford and Toyota have played around with the idea of plug-in fuel cell hybrid vehicles. Such vehicles might need very little hydrogen, or maybe methanol will displace has hydrogen.
Inevitably, I think at this point in time calling the future of the automobile is a fool's game. Batteries appear to be an integral part of the mix, but fuel cells, biofuels, etc. might still have a significant role to play.
Indigo Incarnates
A plea to Toyota: for pity's sake, forget about fuel cell vehicles. They cost a million dollars each, aren't as efficient as EV or regular hybrids, and the stacks got bad after 25k-50k miles.
Given the choice of a $24k Prius that will easily last 150k miles and a million dollar FCV that is lucky to last 50k miles, it's a no-brainer.
The latest fuel cells are far more reliable than that. The upside potential of fuel cells is just too juicy to ignore. And it isn't just Toyota, every major European and Asian automaker is still strongly pushing fuel cell R&D.
Ultimately, from the research I've seen, if automakers made a million fuel cell cars, the cars would be cost-competitive to gasoline cars. Since those reports there has been a lot of research indicating that a lot of the expensive materials in fuel cells could soon be replaced far more cost-effective materials.
The real nut isn't the vehicle, it's hydrogen. I don't believe that natural gas reformation is competitively sustainable. However, if someone cracks the hydrogen nut, or cheap methanol production, then fuel cells are very viable, especially if you're thinking long term - at least 10 years, possibly 20.
Still, even if hydrogen production itself isn't cracked, massive solar farms might make hydrogen the vehicle of choice for storage and transport despite the energy used to create hydrogen. It might just turn out to be cheaper to use excess solar power that would have to be dumped, etc - in some way lost because of lack of storage - into hydrogen.
In my opinion, if hydrogen moves forward, it will be the result of some systemic approach, not just related to transportation.
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