From the article: "Toyota has run the numbers and doesn’t think the power grids are ready to handle electrifying billions of cars. We’ve reported on this for months now."

Well, Duh. If only our greenie government understood this. I mean, lets fire up more coal and natural gas burning electrical plants to support the 'green' cars, right?

Not to mention other less developed countries and areas.

You think Central Africa, South America, Siberia, or the deserts of Saudi or Australia are ready for electric cars? Nope nope nope.

ICEs are going to be around for a long while yet.

Didn't they just come out yesterday and say, if the USA goes green with electric vehicles, solar power plants, wind power plants, etc, there would need to be between a 2X and 3X increase in power transmission lines. Now understand this, CA came out today and stated due to the temps, the grid was close to failure. That means, people are using electricity and the system is pretty much max'd. One huge problem is NIMBYism. People don't want the huge power lines running near them so actually achieving a 200-300% increase in transmission capacity is a pipe dream. Toyota and Cummins seem to have this figured out. In reality all the auto makers do. The automakers in the US went to the gov and asked them to please not increase the CAFE requirements as there is only so much money for research. They can either make ICE engines more efficient or research electric vehicles. By the way, GM makes what, 5 cars, Ford makes 1. Why? Well besides the profit margins, SUVs fall into a different area for CAFE? Cummins is going Hydrogen. I heard long term that is what Toyota things will work the best also. Cummins believes with just a bit of tweeking an ICE engine can run on Hydrogen and become almost pollution free. I guess we will see. What is also not covered is right now homes are not set up to charge the vehicles. I have a 110 outlet by the garage. 1 hours charge will get me 3 miles according to what I read last week. My daily commute is 30 miles and that doesn't include running errands or going over to see customers. That is 10 hours of charging. But there are 4 drivers in the family and that many cars. Solution? Install 220. Hey, somebody has to pay for that. Guess who. How many boxes have 8 extra slots?
What I do like is reading about the new solar tech. They estimate that by 2025 a panel on your house could produce 80% more electric. In many areas, homes could be literally free of the grid. That would cut down on the transmission requirements for sure but nothing is free folks.

Interesting Story. Thanks for posting.

Eventually there will be a shift to more, or full electric, but it is going to take time and probably government money to do it.

We have done it before in similar ways.

Gasoline was sold at hardware stores in the late 1800's and people said horses would never be replaced because you couldn't buy gasoline just anywhere. Gasoline because easily available and the government built interstates for cars.

It won't happen overnight but it will probably happen. On the other had electric vehicles could go the way of flying cars where it was just unfeasible but everyone got excited about the idea for a time.

Interesting to watch what happens but I don't think it will happen in the next 20 years. Too much infrastructure to build IMHO.

Yes the NIMBY’s want all these high voltage line underground which increases the cost many times over IN ADDITION to the lines not being too close to their homes. Cause that cell phone, tanning bed, and cosmetic injections are much much safer.

The hope is that a battery could GET enough solar power and STORE enough to power to charge two 19.7 kW fast chargers overnight.

Most residential infrastructures need a pad mounted transformer on your property or directly between 2 properties to simultaneously charge two Tesla fast chargers per house. … not a problem if YOU pay for it. An easy $30k+ for trenching, ductwork, high voltage connection work, structures, new meter panel, etc

I work for a power company that has one of the strongest and most reliable grids in the country, and if too many car chargers got added in a short time span, our grid would burn down every day. Power companies are having a hard enough time keeping up with the housing boom. The Tesla Supercharger stations that you see here and there are all working on 480 volt 3 phase, and that is the only way to get those POS's to charge at an acceptable time frame.

Here’s some math….

One 19.7 kW fast charger = 91.21 amps @ 240 volts

2 fast chargers = 182.42 amps

One 4 ton air conditioning unit = 25.92 amps approx


Two Tesla fast chargers are like running 7 homes worth of decent sized A/C

Saudi Arabia going green? Sure thing: right after their wells run dry.
But hey ! plenty of sun & area for solar.

How about a requirement that either the a/c OR the charger is energized at a given time?
They'll want the ability to turn On/Off those stations remotely at their discretion I'm sure.

EVs are superior to ICE cars in about 20% of the cases, mostly urban commuting or return to base type vehicles (school buses, mail trucks, delivery vans, etc.). Then there are some push cases and then there are a big huge list of vehicles that have zero chance of going EV in the near future. Anyone who thinks we're going to convert everything over to EVs in the next 20 years is nuts.

A lot of people will be better off with an EV and many of them don't know it yet. But once that first wave of adoption is over it is going to be slow grind to convert the next segment. A lot of things will have to change before it ever makes sense to convert more than a third or so of all cars to EV.

Also, return to base vehicles are more cost effective and quicker to upgrade the infrastructure for.

One property, one entity, less construction impact, less cost vs ev’s gained, etc.

I think they're against them purely because they are much simpler than gas cars and therefore it'll be easy for anyone to match their reliability record

In the same token, I can't wait to see the blatantly built in planned obsolescence the Germans did with them. Those pieces of crap falling apart in 5 years is part of their business model

The average age of vehicles on the road today is over 12 years with 25% of them over 16 years old. It will be interesting to see how these battery powered units and their maintenance costs will fair compared to today's ICE powered units. And then there's the issue that electrical gremlins today are what seems to be the most difficult problems to have accurately diagnosed. Which will only get worse as vehicles get more, varied, and more complicated electrical systems.

I have no problem with green energy and battery powered vehicles up to a point. It just seems that the Federal government is getting the cart before the horse. The technologies need to mature and the costs come into reality and the infrastructure problems be addressed BEFORE we launch head long into a conversion to battery vehicles.

The future will have decentralized energy production and delivery and cars will run on power stored in some manner other than electrochemical batteries (flywheels, hydrogen, hybrids of the two, etc).

I like the thought of this but it won't happen until the "power" company/manufacturer figures out how to repetitively bill for the energy you use.

They developed self contained reactors in the 80's that allowed you to drop a technically safe reactor on a deserted island and have power to run desalination equipment, household equipment, etc. About the size of a small car and under $10k (1980's dollars). Non were sold that I know of. There is no recurring profit so no interest to produce them.

Batteries and motors have been around longer than the ICE but ICEs won for a reason. Sure electrical motor and battery tech has come a long way but so has the ICE and the efficiency from things like VVT MDS variable runner intakes, stratified charges, turbos, 8-10 speed or even more transmissions have all helped improve the efficiency of ICE cars dramatically. A modern dodge dart is as fast as an old dodge dart wile getting double or triple the MPG (of course they look butt ugly though). Like Andyf said electrics are fine for a very small percent of people, I think probably even less than 25% really.

I am curious why electrics and hybrids get so much aerodynamic attention compared to the ICE powered cars, look under a honda civic vs a hybrid honda civic, they do waaaay more stuff to improve the efficiency of the aerodynamics, full belly pan with louvers to carefully direct airflow, heck even the wheels are more aerodynamic but then they give all the credit to it being a hybrid. Also the power to weight of a hybrid is terrible, they are much slower than the ICE counterpart, make an ICE that slow and they would get great MPG also. Another example is the tesla, they have pulled out all the stops to make it aerodynamic to extend the range, how about make an ICE car that slippery and see how much the range is extended in that also.

I think an easy solution would be to toss a small honda generator in the truck of a tesla to start charging anytime battery level gets lowish, it could run after shut down if there is no charging station to hook to, it could be very efficient because it only needs optimized for one specific RPM as well as optimized emissions.

I still regret not buying an old nissan hardbody someone had converted to a big electric motor years ago and sticking a little generator in the bed to keep the lead acid batteries charged.

Hydrogen is certainly not the solution, there is just too much energy lost in splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen vs what you gain from re-combining them to generate electric or combustion heat. I think the dollars for hydrogen research comes from the advertising budget, "hey look, we are studying hydrogen, buy our diesel to help fund our green research!".

I'm really not an electric car proponent, but even after all you said is absolutely true, electric has thermal efficiency in spades over ICE's. Nothing I know of is ever going to overcome that. Long trips in electric cars are going to be longer than ICE's. A lot of people seem to be wiling to bear this burden. I don't think it'll be long before the novelty wears off and they'll want an ICE powered vehicle for trips, unless they go airlines? FWIW, I hope to NEVER again enter a winged greyhound

20% say they will go back to ICE powered next purchase. www.greencarreports.com/news/113210...asoline-and-home-charging-is-a-big-issue

Maybe. But then again, maybe not. Then there's the all-important question of 'when'. And then how long before they are proven. Can you say guinea pig? So, I wouldn't be saving for one just yet.

The when will be measured in decades - likely our kids might see it.

Hybrids at least make some sense because they won't leave you stranded with dead batteries like a pure electric vehicle will.

The hydrogen fuel cell technology seemed to make the most sense to me, Daimler Chrysler was working on it in the 2000-2005 era then they just dropped it never explaining why.

I saw an add today from GM where they were braggin about how they have been working on hydrogen power since the 1960s, still nothin though. The problem is not making something with a fuel cell or even burning it in an ICE. It is fun to think about not producing anything butt water for emmissions butt they just can't produce the stuff in a cost effective manner.

You can burn hydrogen in a normal engine but the last time I saw it done it was down on power nearly 50%.

Toyota is cautious of the latest tech and trends. That's why they have not gone to stop/start technology. They figured the fuel savings on paper is not worth it long term. The green crowd will not address the inhumane treatment of the exploited humans- many of them children working in the lithium mines. They will not address the pollution to the ground, water and air done by the mining and then manufacturing of the lithium batteries. If those lithium batteries were mined and manufactured according to US guidelines of worker and environmental safety (yes the big United Racist States of America) I bet those batteries would cost $200,000 and not $15,000. The abundant slave labor and zero environmental laws on the other side of the planet make manufacture of batteries cheap so one can still afford a latte and sip it while planning their next protest.

In my world, Trucking, those are all small numbers.

Hold on...you cannot interject facts into an emotional, political subject. Lets be realistic. NOBODY wants reality or facts.

They do actually offer stop start vehicles.

I stand corrected.

My understanding is that the stop/start on a Toyota is also capable of being disabled. Not so much on a GM. My buddy has a Mali-boo-boo and hates it.

I was recently told a “heavy” boom with bucket truck for linemen use takes 50 kW of fast charging to change overnight.

Of course, those are not stored in residential neighborhoods with residential infrastructures.