Not only are consumers resisting electric vehicles, but Akio Toyoda has also been resisting them. It’s not that electric vehicles are bad, but that previous electric vehicles were unreliable due to technical limitations!
Toyota started the process of electrification as early as the 1990s. At that time, it happened to catch up with the oil crisis. Oil prices around the world were soaring, and environmental protection became more and more strict. Toyota had no choice but to embark on the road to electrification. The road to the first transformation.
At that time, Toyota faced three choices, one was hybrid, the other was pure electric, and the third was hydrogen fuel. From the current perspective, the pure electric route is definitely the simplest.
However, taking the pure electric route will face three very real problems.
1. Large-scale use of lead-acid batteries will cause serious pollution.
2. Electric vehicles require the construction of a large number of charging piles, which has high construction costs and a long payback period.
3. Electric vehicles equipped with lead-acid batteries have short cruising range and short service life. They are not as convenient as fuel vehicles and are difficult to promote.
In fact, the problems faced by electric vehicles back then have not been completely solved now. Toyota believes that taking the pure electric route is simply unreliable.
General Motors in the early 1990s was a lesson learned from the past. It invested billions of dollars in research and development. As a result, in the eyes of Americans at the time, electric vehicles were an IQ tax.
Toyota gave up on electric vehicles with the simplest technical route, and focused its research and development on gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells.
In 1997, Toyota launched the world's first gasoline-electric hybrid car, the Prius. It swept Europe and the United States as soon as it was launched and became a representative of new energy vehicles. Even without charging, the fuel consumption per 100 kilometers can be as low as 3.2 L.
In November 2021, the United Nations Climate Conference held in Glasgow, England, issued the "Glasgow Declaration" on "zero-emission" cars, committing to stop the sale of internal combustion engine cars globally in 2040.
However, Toyota took the lead in opposing this declaration. None of the Japanese car companies signed it. Akio Toyoda has always believed: "The direction of the evolution of new energy vehicle technology is from gasoline-electric hybrid to hydrogen fuel."
As the saying goes, don’t talk too much, otherwise you will easily be embarrassed. In a blink of an eye, in December 2021, Akio Toyoda suddenly announced All in (go all out) pure electric vehicles, and released more than ten in one breath It has launched a pure electric model and announced that all Lexus series will be electrified.
You see, there was only one month between Toyoda Akio's opposition to all-in electric vehicles.
I am not surprised at all that Toyota has entered the field of electric vehicles. As early as March 25, 2020, BYD and Toyota jointly invested in the establishment of "BYD Toyota Electric Vehicle Technology Co., Ltd."
Some sources said: "BYD is responsible for vehicle design, research and development, and manufacturing, and Toyota is only responsible for acceptance."
If this is true, to put it bluntly, Toyota will sell domestically in the future The only electric car is a BYD electric car with a Toyota logo.
Things are really changing. BYD used to learn from Toyota, but now BYD and Toyota are on an equal footing. Perhaps this is the fundamental reason why we strongly support the development of new energy vehicles. It has changed the backwardness of the automobile industry for a century and achieved true significance. Overtaking on the curve.
Toyota’s entry into the field of electric vehicles shows that hydrogen energy vehicles cannot be effectively promoted at present. Policies and capital are all aligned with electric vehicles. As the electric vehicle market grows larger, Toyota also wants to get a share of it. soup.
There are many reasons. The most important reason is that domestic electric vehicles left a bad impression on consumers at the beginning. It can be said that once bitten by a snake, they will be afraid of the rope for ten years.
In 2014, Tesla announced some patented technologies, and new domestic car-making forces suddenly sprung up. Many car brands were added overnight. It has been 8 years, and there are still many The brand has not mass-produced a single car.
The development routes of the new car-making forces are basically similar. Most of them build cars using PPT. As you may know, the only one with a good development momentum is "Wei Xiaoli".
Traditional car companies are completely different from the new car-making forces. They have factories, technology, and funds. Originally, the transformation to electric vehicles had advantages over the new car-making forces, but the results were shocking.
Traditional car companies’ car-making ideas are stuck in the era of fuel vehicles. They believe that electric vehicles have only changed their driving methods. They have replaced the three major components of existing fuel vehicles with electric drives, electronic controls, and batteries. , the electric vehicles produced are all "oil-to-electricity".
Although the new car-making forces are looking for traditional car manufacturers to manufacture their products, at least they are brand-new pure electric platforms, at least with intelligence as the development direction, and at least the electric cars they create have no shadow of fuel cars.
Before 2019, the electric vehicles on the road were basically converted from oil to electricity. These electric vehicles had backward electronic control technology and false mileage standards, which gave consumers the impression that they were unreliable.
At that time, many online ride-hailing drivers drove this kind of gasoline-electric vehicle. They found that the battery decayed quickly, the battery life was short in winter, and charging was very troublesome. As a result, online ride-hailing drivers had a very negative opinion of electric vehicles. Difference.
At that time, many second-hand car dealers would not give a higher valuation when they saw such an electric car, resulting in a very low value retention rate for second-hand electric cars.
These electric vehicles not only hurt the hearts of the first batch of electric vehicle owners, but also hindered the development of domestic electric vehicles. The battery technology, fast charging technology, electronic control technology, and intelligence required for the development of electric vehicles , none of these have made progress.
Many people’s impressions of electric vehicles come from online ride-hailing drivers and second-hand car dealers. Their evaluations established the early reputation of electric vehicles. This bad reputation made many people deeply Oppose electric cars.
In 2018, Tesla announced the establishment of a super factory in Shanghai. This was the fastest growing year for domestic electric vehicles. Both traditional car companies and new car-making forces felt the crisis.
The entire electric vehicle industry has been reshuffled. Traditional car companies have begun to develop electric vehicles, and mass-produced models of new car manufacturers are gradually rolling off the production line.
BYD Han EV, Xpeng P7, NIO ES8 and other models have gradually entered the public eye. The first impression is that they look good, which is essentially different from the fuel-powered vehicles. They also have a longer battery life and faster charging.
Some people’s understanding of electric vehicles has begun to change. They have become the second batch of owners to buy electric vehicles. Their experience in all aspects is better than switching from oil to electricity, and electric vehicles have begun to gain a good reputation. Word of mouth spreads.
So different voices emerged. Electric vehicles cost less than 10 yuan per 100 kilometers, have strong power, smooth driving, good quietness, and high degree of intelligence. Once you are used to driving electric vehicles, you will no longer want to drive fuel-powered vehicles. car.
In my opinion, some people’s understanding of electric vehicles is lagging behind, and the progress of electric vehicles should be viewed from a developmental perspective. In addition, the shortcomings of electric vehicles have not been completely resolved.
The essence of range anxiety is "energy replenishment anxiety". As long as energy replenishment is convenient and fast, an electric vehicle's cruising range of 500 kilometers is enough.
As of the end of 2021, the number of new energy vehicles in the country has reached 7.84 million, the number of charging infrastructures is about 2.617 million, and the vehicle-to-pile ratio is about 3:1. The number of pure electric vehicles has increased, amplifying the power of electric vehicles. Charging problems for car travel.
As long as there are peak travel times during holidays, many electric car owners will have to queue up for charging. After many people saw this scene of queuing up for charging, they deepened their resistance to electric cars, thinking that electric cars are There is no way to run long distances.
At present, electric vehicles are in a stage of rapid development, and it takes time to improve supporting facilities. For consumers with long-distance needs, electric vehicles are indeed not the best choice.
Many people do not have fixed parking spaces. Fuel vehicles can rent parking spaces and change parking spaces at any time. Electric vehicles cannot be so casual. It costs money to install a fixed charging pile. If you change parking spaces frequently, the cost is Too high.
Renting a parking space is not possible, and buying a parking space is too expensive. One netizen said: "I live in Shenzhen, and a parking space costs 200,000 yuan, which is more expensive than a car. There is no parking space, so I can only buy fuel." Car." Such views are not uncommon.
For cities where parking spaces are more expensive, even if the cost of electric vehicles is low, if the comprehensive vehicle cost is included, there may not be an advantage over fuel vehicles.
If we look at the root cause of everyone’s resistance to electric vehicles, perhaps it is the attenuation characteristics of power batteries. Many people think that it costs 70,000 to 80,000 yuan to replace a battery for an electric vehicle. The gas money saved earlier is just a replacement. The battery is back.
In order to alleviate everyone’s anxiety about buying a car, many car companies have implemented warranty policies for batteries and even lifetime warranty policies for battery cells.
It can be said that it is full of sincerity, but this does not dispel everyone's concerns. Many people question the battery warranty policy and even think that it is full of tricks.
To put it bluntly, the essence of these people’s concerns is that they are afraid of battery degradation, but power batteries are not that easy to degrade. Taking lithium iron phosphate batteries as an example, they can be cycled 2,000 times, and a family car can be used normally for more than 10 years. There will be no significant attenuation.
Those who say that the battery decays quickly are still the same group of online ride-hailing drivers who switched from oil to electricity. They can only say that it is difficult to erase the scars on a broken heart, and the inherent cognition does not change, maybe I will resist electric cars my whole life.
The development of the times is rolling in. Whether you are opposed to electric vehicles or not, the era of electric vehicles is coming to us in great strides, and no one can stop it.