I’d love it to be true, but I will believe it when it hits the market
Toyota do have a decade or so unbroken history of promising anything that will slow BEV adoption and then delivering a turd sandwich. Here’s hoping it’s different this time.
I really would love it to be true. My parents are diehard Toyota people. They’d love to get an EV as their next car, but due to boomer brand loyalty, they next car must be a Toyota, and we all know how much the busy forks sucks, so here’s hoping they develop a usable EV next.
While it’s true that Toyota is pretty far behind other car manufacturers in pure battery EVs, they still have the best hybrid drivetrain around by miles and they have great plug-in hybrids. I just got a RAV4 Prime and I love it. It has around 40-50 miles of electric only range and then switches to hybrid mode if you drain the battery before recharging where it gets 60 MPG and can go over 500 miles on a tank. Honestly my commute is way less than 50 miles so I drive electric around 90% of the time. The only time I kick in the gas engine is for longer trips and especially on road trips it’s nice not to have to worry about finding charging stations and waiting an hour or two for a charge.
I wouldn’t even call that “boomer brand loyalty” I’m 24, almost 25 and I will probably not buy anything that isn’t a Toyota/Lexus for the rest of my life.
Toyota/Lexus are hands down the least maintenance heavy vehicles on the road. They know how to make an absolutely bulletproof reliable modern engine.
I’m a Service Writer for a mom and pop auto shop, and the most major thing I’ve had to write for a Toyota is… A Water Pump, Fuel Pump and a full Tuneup with 4 plugs and 4 coils. Which is… Basically peanuts compared to what I have to write for Dodges, Nissans, and Chevys. (Oil Filter Housings for Dodge, Whole Transmissions for Nissan, and a bunch of random shiz for Chevy)
Hey I mean credit where credit’s due. If they can somehow cram a 200kWh battery with megawatt charging to get 700 miles and 10 minute charges into a Toyota priced car, so be it. Can’t imagine that’d be possible since that would be like 20-30k in battery cost alone, and there aren’t any chargers who can deliver that kind of power right now anyway.
At 350kW peak, I wonder what the miles per kwh would need to be to charge 700 miles of range in 10 minutes. That’s 58.3kWh delivered. So uhhhh they’d need to get 12 miles per kwh which would be uhhhh nuts
10 minutes at 350kw (assuming you hold peak the whole time) would provide
If we correct for toyota falseadvertising range estimates (-10%), assume they mean 90km/h at similar consumption as a model 3 in ideal coditios (around 120Wh/km), and take “a charge” as 10-80% then it needs 90kWh or about half a megawatt.
So still not within current chargers, but well within what a megawatt charger would provide (and there are four standards basically ready to roll out).
It’s 2009, 2014, 2017 and 2020 all over again.
They keep promising great new battery tech just around the corner and never delivering.
If I was a cynic, I might think they’re simply doing it to put people off buying current EVs so they’re not saddled with ‘old tech’.
While you wait for our amazing new battery, pick yourself up a great new hybrid…
I am not currently buying but I looked at the Hyundai Ioniq? Iconic? Whatever numbers yesterday and from what I saw you could get an AWD ~50k on the road with over 300 miles range and a cost of ~$8-$10 to fill the battery going off prices in the U.S. for electricity.
That is better than what I need for sure and 1/3 the cost of gas, so I have to say the doubts and againsts are getting pretty small here. I think 0-60 was 5.1 seconds (SUV crossover) that’s as quick as I want an SUV to accelerate haha
Also depends on where you live. I can charge my Model S from 0% to 100% for about $5-$6 and get 350-400 miles.
But my friend in California would have to pay something like ~$40, which makes it a much harder sell.
Much harder sell? They’d probably be paying close to $80 for gas for the same range.
Yeah, I call bullshit, until proven without a doubt.
is this the same Toyota that’s actually lobbying the US government against the switch to EVs? Is this the same Toyota who had the clear advantage in EV technology but squandered it all just to keep on manufacturing thermal engines?
This is another shitty tactic, don’t believe them.
Akio Toyoda, the CEO responsible for their Anti-EV stance, was replaced on April 1st.
He was the president & CEO, now he is the chairman.
Also the grandson of the founder of Toyota.
I want to know how they are getting that much energy safely delivered to the battery. That’s probably 200+ kWh of energy getting dumped into the battery in 10 min. That’s going to cause a lot of heat and require a massive delivery system. Maybe a local capacitor that slow charged and then dumps all at once, but I didn’t see any details on the article.
Possibly capacitors, but most likely there will be battery storage for charging systems. The Tesla V4 superchargers can deliver 1 MW of total power spread across 4 individual cars, but can only draw 350kW from the grid. To get the additional power, they have batteries connected to the system that charge up when the supercharger is delivering less than 350kW.