this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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The Prius was the first mass market car in the entire world that could drive on battery power. Sure, the range sucked, and they dropped the ball after that by failing to shift focus to hydrogen, but the fact is Toyota does have a history of strong innovation in this space and I could totally see them being the first to ship a car with a solid state battery.
What have they done in this space since then?
The fact that they have some history doesn't mean they're even close to being a leader at the moment, which I think was the original point. Having done very little since the Prius leaves them towards the bottom.
Considering a lot of other claims and all the feet dragging and other things people have mentioned I also will believe it when I see it and not before.
But I'm with you that it could happen, and I hope it does.
Firstly, no it wasn't. There were many attempts at pure BEV in the twentieth century, including several "mass market" models in the 90s. None were particularly successful, but that doesn't make Prius the first.
Secondly, that was more than quarter of a century ago. The first Prius came out as many years before today as the Apollo 15 moon landing was before the Prius. The market has moved on. Toyota can't dine out on Prius forever.
Arguably their biggest cockup was betting the house on hydrogen while the rest of the market realised battery-electric was the way to go. Hydrogen is a dead end technology for private cars, and Toyota was pretty much alone in not realising this.
Battery electric cars predate internal combustion. It is emphatically not the way to go. In fact, it is just a fad driven by subsidies and desire to appear green. It will die off once the subsidies go away and people realize that paying vastly more for an inferior type of car is not a smart decision.
ICE cars are being banned entirely in lots of jurisdictions; they're not going to be coming back into fashion again. And hydrogen is a completely unworkable dead-end technology.
So what technology is going to power the cars of the future?
In my view, it'll be battery-electric all the way, but with the battery cell technology changing over time as replacements for li-ion are gradually developed.
Hopefully, the answer is also "fewer cars". We don't need to replace all of them, but getting city commuters from 5% bikes to 20% bikes would be transformative. Especially if we can also keep the current levels of working from home.
For starters, ICE cars have not been banned nearly anywhere. For seconds, hydrogen is not unworkable. That is pure BEV propaganda.
The future will almost certainly be hydrogen cars. They are also EVs BTW. BEV fanatics are just bullshitting about this fact here. In reality, BEVs are not a sustainable idea and are doomed.
Battery cell technology will change over time. Into fuel cells.