No one needs to bother with that race. It is just a ploy by China to gain marketshare in the car industry. It won't work because it ultimately creates a massive new resource dependency. One that just happens to shift everyone's supply chain to China or Chinese controlled companies. I believe Western companies will eventually walk away from pursuing battery cars, at least in the sense of them being the only solution. it just has too many obvious problem.
Toyota in particular has wasted a ridiculous amount of time and money on consumer-level hydrogen tech. As a result competitors that focused on battery EVs over the last few years have a decent head start.
The other companies are wasting their time. Battery EVs are a dead end and they will all have to move to hydrogen tech eventually. It is the other companies that are way behind.
In EE terms, betting against batteries is like betting against CMOS. Progress will go where the industry's money goes, not where any one company's money goes. If I could say just one thing to Toyota's management, it would be, "Stop trying to make hydrogen happen. It's not going to happen. There are just too many technical and economic drawbacks."
But any of their engineers could tell them the same thing, so what'd be the point?
I think that's a little hyperbolic, but the Japanese are way behind. There was a decent analysis (as always) in the Economist recently.
https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/04/16/how-japan-is-losin...
No one needs to bother with that race. It is just a ploy by China to gain marketshare in the car industry. It won't work because it ultimately creates a massive new resource dependency. One that just happens to shift everyone's supply chain to China or Chinese controlled companies. I believe Western companies will eventually walk away from pursuing battery cars, at least in the sense of them being the only solution. it just has too many obvious problem.
What are these obvious problems?
2 replies →
Toyota in particular has wasted a ridiculous amount of time and money on consumer-level hydrogen tech. As a result competitors that focused on battery EVs over the last few years have a decent head start.
The other companies are wasting their time. Battery EVs are a dead end and they will all have to move to hydrogen tech eventually. It is the other companies that are way behind.
In EE terms, betting against batteries is like betting against CMOS. Progress will go where the industry's money goes, not where any one company's money goes. If I could say just one thing to Toyota's management, it would be, "Stop trying to make hydrogen happen. It's not going to happen. There are just too many technical and economic drawbacks."
But any of their engineers could tell them the same thing, so what'd be the point?
1 reply →