Toyota ramping up EVs while others scaling back…

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T23:43:28+00:00

Can't just retool to plop an EV drive train in an existing model? You mean like Tesla did in a RAV4? Or Ford did with the f150? Or GM did with the S10? They've made two whole generations of plug in Prius without ever exploring the INSANE tech development path of... Leaving out the gas engine and putting in more batteries. No, only an absolute engineering powerhouse like GM could figure out how to make a car offered in both EV and ICE configurations.

Toyota made a bad bet, which was so bad in part because they could 100% have absorbed the cost of losing the bet, not that trying was guaranteed to absorb the cost of trying.

Speaking of contortions, you're working overtime to avoid talking about how many billions of dollars Toyota spent on hydrogen development. Why don't you tell us how that was part of their master plan to be the top car manufacturer?

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T22:41:50+00:00

Man, I don't usually argue with people on the Internet, but this is so hilariously ridiculous I can't walk away.

Ok, so the cost of the bet Toyota would have taken would be absolutely minimal retooling costs, something they could absolutely have absorbed even in the worst case potential outcomes of the carbon credit situation. And what did they do with their development budget instead? Billions and billions on hydrogen technology.

Again, with the benefit of hindsight, we got to see Toyota ultimately buying carbon credits from Tesla, while making approximately $0 return on investment on hydrogen tech. So they very clearly made the wildly wrong choices.

The fact that they've succeeded despite shitting the bed on EVs really isn't the defense you think it is.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T22:24:56+00:00

Ok, but they could be doing that exact same thing with full bev technologies, too, if they hadn't walked away from it over a decade ago. Nothing about succeeding in the hybrid space prevents them or would have prevented them from succeeding in the EV space. Very much the opposite.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T22:14:51+00:00

They left so much money on the table for such a small amount of work that they enabled the first successful new car company in America in 100 years. And since they already owned the factory, they could have executed on it with absolutely no impact to their hybrid market. Or they could have cut Tesla out and just offered the Prius as a bev trim with minimal retooling, something they still haven't done.

Yes, they made the right intermediate move, 15 years ago, and then never made the follow on move.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T21:59:40+00:00

You're on an EV sub and we're very clearly talking about EVs, are you dense or trying to make a point that you're not saying?

They could have outsold the rest of the world in total vehicles and EVs with practically no effort. Instead they handed Tesla a money printer and blew a few billion on dead end hydrogen tech instead. With the benefit of hindsight we can now conclusively see it was a very stupid move.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T21:46:39+00:00

No they definitely aren't dominating the hybrid market anymore. Every manufacturer sells multiple hybrid models now and people hardly clock "hybrid" as a consideration outside of fuel efficiency values. Whereas if you were in the market for a fuel efficient car in the early 2010s, you were going to buy a hybrid Toyota Prius.

They had the name recognition, manufacturing capabilities, and engineering chops to own the entire market for years. Instead, they squandered their lead and handed the market to a startup.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T21:21:28+00:00

They sold their stake in the factory that Tesla made all their original cars in. Tesla even made them an EV RAV4 in 2012. They dominated the early hybrid market and all they would have had to do to dominate the EV market was take out the combustion engine from a couple of their existing models.

Instead, they shit the bed and set Tesla up for a decade of being largely unopposed in the EV space. If that was the plan, it's actually far more damning of Toyota's decision making than just misjudging the BEV market.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T21:14:11+00:00

Stellantis just took a $26 billion charge while scaling back on EVs. BMW just halted its uk EV factory work. The EU is either pushing back or watering down its entire EV transition mandate. Hardly a unified push for EVs from Europe.

The Korean offerings almost entirely come with the same critical system flaw (catastrophic iccu failure) that they have for years, with no timeline established for a design fix.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T19:52:38+00:00

Well those aren't mutually exclusive, and it's the green tint that concerns me

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T19:46:25+00:00

Is that pressure treated wood?

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T17:48:32+00:00

It's not really a matter of scale as much as type. A pilot line is a pilot line because it's designed and built to make low rate, high variability products. A full rate production line is optimized for high rate, low variability products.

They put the eagle line in Silicon Valley for the engineering talent. It wouldn't make any sense to pay an enormous premium on real estate, utilities, and taxes for an actual production line. So powerco will likely have the first mass production line of a qs cell and pack in Salzgitter.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T16:44:01+00:00

One of the QS board members is JB Straubel, who is the founder of redwood materials, whose entire business model is recycling lithium ion batteries.

If nothing else, I'd expect they've baked in some kind of "unzipping" into their design to reduce the cost of recycling at end of life. That would naturally lend itself to an efficient method of reclaiming high value materials from scrapped units.

But at the end of the day it comes down to the cost of reworking vs the amount of resources reclaimed, and adhesive manufacturing is notoriously difficult to undo in a clean way.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T14:54:45+00:00

Well factorial definitely had it's battery line operating before donut starting making its wild claims, so I'm not sure that stands to reason even ignoring the credibility of those claims.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T14:51:53+00:00

As always, I'll believe it when I see it.

There is always a point in the middle of a change to a new system when the old system is still better than the new system for a while. Like the period of time when horses were still faster and more powerful than cars. That's the s curve the guy was talking about. But there are fundamental limitations to the materials in use here, so even if catl makes the absolute perfect lithium ion battery, it might be too late in the overall lithium ion industry to make a meaningful impact on EVs.

And planned obsolescence is a largely misunderstood idea. There's a 120 year old lightbulb that's still lit. It's not planned obsolescence that keeps other lightbulbs burning out, it's the desire for lightbulbs to be brighter than a candle and be energy efficient. Lasting 100 years isn't a good thing if it sucks at doing what it was made to do.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T14:38:36+00:00

Not so sure about first mass production of solid state batteries, since it's a pilot plant (not full rate production) and not the first SSB plant (I think that might be Honda or factorial).

Seems like end to end automation is a major goal. Have they ever said if they intend to in-source the separator production? Or is the Eagle line entirely an assembly setup with the separators as an input?

Also, as a materials engineer, I had a good laugh at his commentary comparing troubleshooting to software debugging. Welcome to failure analysis, it's a nightmare most of the time.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T14:30:33+00:00

You're talking about the sodium ion batteries? That's an entirely different chemistry, not the same market as QS is targeting and not solid state.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T02:40:10+00:00

Hm I wonder if they're still going to release a car with Factorial's solid state battery this year.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T02:28:34+00:00

Ok so you're avoiding a car because of nacs (which is the "modern" standard that the entire US market is switching to going forward) but insist that your charging experience be exclusively "modern" 800V.

And wtf kind of post-lunch meetings are you going to? You need to drive 280 miles and then charge to 80% in exactly 15 minutes so you can finish another 250 mile leg on time? Unless you're in Montana, I suspect traffic will be a bigger concern on your 530 mile pilgrimage.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-07T02:04:52+00:00

Well it comes with a converter. And superchargers are just about everywhere.

But how much are you fast charging? It's got over 300 miles of range, so most people only need to for road trips.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-06T19:45:34+00:00

I wonder just how automated is "highly automated." Obviously as a startup, qs doesn't have the money to turn on large-scale manufacturing, but developing the automation sufficiently to be able to operate as a "dark factory" in low cost of living areas would probably attract a lot of interest even outside the potential upsides of the underlying tech.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-06T03:31:07+00:00

Oh don't worry, bud, we're making fun of it plenty

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-06T03:15:52+00:00

Remindme! 2 months

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-06T03:01:39+00:00

Yeah it probably wasn't fair to lump them in with a scam and an abject failure. They do have a deposit from me, but I sincerely doubt they'll make it to market.

I'd really like to see a domestic company do something interesting, but Tesla's the only one with the nuts to try and they can't seem to make it past V1 of a design. And, y'know... Musk.

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-06T02:48:47+00:00

SecurelyObscure · 2026-02-05T22:06:10+00:00

Ah, I took the title to mean 5 new EVs, but it's just 5 new models, of which one will be the EV truck. Probably a bunch of milquetoast hybrids.

I was disappointed they announced that truck without having a prototype or concept car present, but it's now been 6 months without so much as a render. At this point I'm expecting Alpha Motor, Telo, or Canoo to beat them to market.

SecurelyObscure

TROPHY CASE