Akio Toyoda–who will step down on March 32st–will be known to many as the gearhead CEO. For reader, engineer, pro racer, and today’s COTD winner Anthony, Toyoda turned around his impressions of Toyota: I mean, Toyoda once brought a one-off Century GRMN to Fuji Speedway! Admittedly, there are some names that brighten my day when I see them in our comments. A lot of you make me smile, including Anthony! I’ve also enjoyed your track reviews. I hope to meet some of you next month at David’s going away bash. As for Toyota, it is pretty awesome that as other automakers remove manual transmissions or take some spice out of their cars, Toyota still makes cars that get you pumped to get behind the wheel. It was amazing to go to the Los Angeles Auto Show and see people of all ages hopping into the manual Supra and pretending to be racing. Seeing teens jumping in it reminded me of when I did the same many years ago at the Chicago Auto Show with sports cars. People remember that stuff, I sure did. Here’s to Toyota keeping fun cars into the future. In case you were wondering, Google says that Katrin Adt is the CEO of Smart. However, when Smart joined forces with Geely in 2019, Adt was moved to another part of the Daimler portfolio. Smart’s CEO is Tong Xiangbei while Smart Europe is run by Dirk Adelmann. Come on, Google! Standard CEO material, billionaire grandson of company founder. I guess any other CEO can be an instant hero if he does some track days 😉 That being said Toyota being anti BEV for cars makes a ton of sense. For every MPH over 35MPH you go the wind resistance you face grows exponentially. Even though ICE engines are usually under 30% efficient their fuel is so energy dense and so quick to refuel it makes a ton of sense for high speed long distance travel. Electric cars on the other hand while more that 3 times efficient than ICE vehicles hold less than the equivalent 5 gallons of gas in energy and they take a while to refill. PHEVs are the worst of both worlds. A heavy battery that has hardly any range when brand new in optimal temperature and weather conditions and a gas engine that has to haul around that battery that only becomes more of a paperweight as time goes on. When PHEVs are forced onto people (like they are in most of western Europe) they’ve found that 80% of the people who buy them don’t plug them in ever. Wouldn’t those 80% be better off with a lighter more efficient non plug in hybrid that doesn’t require a ton more rare earth metals? Because of this BEVs make little sense for long distance high speed travel, which is most car Travel outside of cities. Optimally I think the best setup is low range BEVs in the city, and low range BEVs in town, with non plug in hybrids for high speed long distance travel. Minimalizing pollution is of great importance but at our current rate we’re not building many BEVs and the few we are building are pretty expensive. For example currently Ford is producing a very small amount of F-150 Lightnings for massive amounts of money without markups. Right now 73% of orders for Maverick pickups are for hybrids and and they make up ~20% of production. Hybrids used to be 80% of orders but because of year+ long delays and Ford has allowed people to change their hybrid orders to ecoboost engines which usually results in them getting a month or so instead of a year or longer. With a base model F-150 Lightning it has a 98kwh battery pack and the long range models have a 131kwh battery pack. The Maverick Hybrid 1.1kwh battery pack. That means you could make at minimum 89 battery packs with the same capacity as the Maverick Hybrid battery pack. What do you think has a greater effect on reducing exhaust emissions: 1 wealthy person buying a Full size short bed crew cab electric pickup truck? or 89 people minimum buying pickups that get 42 MPG city and 33 highway, most of them likely replacing much less fuel efficient vehicles with it? With current battery tech and chemistries it’s estimated we’d burn through the necessary materials before we replaced 1/3rd of all the ICE cars on the planet with BEVs. I think right now our goal should be making the biggest dent in exhaust emissions with what we have now. Toyota is doing that and Ford could easily be doing that. I can afford a BEV and I want a BEV, but sadly almost every BEV sold in the US is a oversized, overweight, technophilic, POS rolling on low profile tires. and the few non overweight, non technophilic, BEVs not riding on low profile tires (like the Nissan Leaf) don’t appeal to me for reasons like the horrible blind spots and lack of ground clearance (in my area we got dumped with snow and my 94 Toyota pickup with 4WD and snow tires was struggling with ground clearance in places.) I’d gladly buy a couple Nissan e-NV200s but guess what Nissan won’t sell in the US… So right now I’m stuck with my 1994 Toyota pickup that gets 21 MPG on a good day, and there’s nothing that can replace it currently that is sold new in the US. So I’m just stuck doing my best to make sure my Toyota lasts long enough that something new will come out for sale in the US that I can replace it with. However if I’m unlucky and my Truck dies before then I’ll probably build a custom ICE rig that’ll last long enough to the point I can put a BEV drivetrain in it for cheap. If noone comes out with anything new for sale that I want before 2026 then I’ll start working on the rig. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/toyota-bet-wrong-on-evs-so-now-its-lobbying-to-slow-the-transition/ https://electrek.co/2019/02/12/toyota-anti-electric-vehicle-ad-corolla-hybrid/ That ad wouldn’t be ‘Anti ICE’, but it would make a very good point for why to get a BEV over an ICE vehicle. I’m sure you will find some way to defend this one as well. Apparently just like the Elon stans who defend him with their lives, Toyota also has some cultists. I was not aware of this. I should get out more 🙂 Don’t worry, I got plenty against Toyota. If I was going to buy a new car purely as an appliance I’d probably get a new AWD-e Prius, however since I love driving nothing and a car is more than an appliance for me no current production Toyotas sold in the US appeal to me. One of my main issues with Toyota currently is how they have the perfect tech to make very fuel efficient “mid” sized (more like full sized) and “full” sized (more like plus sized) Trucks via planetary e-CVTs with naturally aspirated engines but instead with the new Tundra Hybrid (and it looks like the new Taco will follow suit) it has turbocharged engines and traditional automatic transmissions, so instead of doubling the MPG while increasing the reliability, durability, longevity, simplicity, etc. they just increased the weight, complexity, cost, etc. while decreasing reliability, durability, longevity, simplicity, etc. all for a few MPG benefit. Planetary e-CVTs > Modern automatic transmissions Second, having some rules and regulations to prevent corporations from owning us as serfs while poisoning our water and air isn’t really tyranny, but quite the opposite. If in doubt you can take a look at western Europe, where the higher standards of living are because of those rules & regs. So never? It would have been my only new-car purchase, but I decided to stick to older cars instead and maintain them myself. The 86/BRZ is one of the four cars I contend seem to have near-universal appeal over here, the others being the Subaru WRX, the Jeep Wrangler and the Ford Mustang. Those four seem to not have an age, gender or other demographical boundary like other vehicles sometimes do.
