'People are finally seeing reality' about electric vehicle demand, according to Toyota's CEO, whose company sat out the frantic EV investment of its competitors in the past few years. Honda has announced the end of its GM partnership on sub-$25,000 EVs, too.https://www.notebookcheck.net/Toyota-gloats-it-was-right-to-sit-out-the-EV-craze-as-Honda-ends-cheap-electric-car-project-with-GM.762290.0.html
Honda dropping the sub $25,000 EV is stupid. The biggest complain about EVs is value for money. This would have been one of the cheapest cars on the market EV or gas. This would have quickly become the best selling EV maybe car.
Toyota are nothing but a joke. They didn't wait out anything, they weren't interested in BEV at all and then when they got caught with their pants down on BEV they even tried to lobby the Japanese government to hobble competitors as they tried to catch-up.
What is there to gloat about exactly? Honda was never big on EVs either, actually less than Toyota. And the partnership fell apart because GM failed to deliver their side and just opted to use someone else's technology for EVs instead of their own
Also, what "slump"? EV sales are record high, and Tesla's sales are also record high. Tesla already is has the best selling cars in all their classes. With covid causing delays on new models, obviously you would have some slowing of growth, even more so with the new Model 3 and Model Y refreshes around the corner, people are waiting on the new models rather than buy the old ones. But sales are still up YoY despite that
Yeah, this seems as just an excuse to cop out of investing in EV manufacturing. And most likely it is due to the manufacturing cost. They likely did not see a path to profitability on cheap EVs. Tesla is just that far ahead of everyone on that. They had the leeway to lower their prices in response to chinese manufacturers beating them. Now everyone just looked at that and thought 'a hell no!' All of that investment pledge was made when EVs had record prices over MSRP during the pandemic. Now that the market is mellowing out everyone cooled down their expectations.
A cheap (~25k) "good" EV from Toyota would sell like hotcakes. Unfortunately no one but Tesla and Chinese manufacturers can deliver one at that price.
Quote from: Sportbike Mike on October 25, 2023, 20:43:30Honda dropping the sub $25,000 EV is stupid. The biggest complain about EVs is value for money. This would have been one of the cheapest cars on the market EV or gas. This would have quickly become the best selling EV maybe car.
I can't see EVs getting cheaper, especially when ICE cars around that price can still give way more reliability and longer mileage than EVs.
I definitely agree with Toyota about infrastructure. EV technology might keep evolving, but the same cannot be said for infrastructure. And then there's also the question of range dependencies and charge time. One of my friends used to own an EV, thinking it'd be a better experience than ICE. It did work in cities, but going back to his hometown, which is a 300-mile drive, proved to be a nuisance because of the ridiculously long charging time. That drove him to sell off his EV and buy a hybrid instead.
Current Prius Prime seems like the best of all worlds.
Enough range on Battery Electric for daily commutes/chores.
Then Extra ICE range (500+miles!) For long haul trips into the hills.
Shame you can't actually buy one. Wait-list can be 6+months.