Here are the top 20 quotes from Toyota and Honda executives criticizing plug-in battery cars (and one from Hyundai and Audi):
1. Los Angeles Times article – June 15, 2008
“‘Petroleum is not a long-term solution for cars, and battery cars have real limitations,’ said Bill Reinert, national manager for advanced technologies at Toyota Motor Corp. ‘Hydrogen technology is getting much better.’”
2. Wall Street Journal article – June 16, 2008
“(Former Honda CEO) Takeo Fukui: We feel the practical feasibility of the electric vehicle is very limited. The biggest issue is driving distance. The other issue is the recharging time. The FCX Clarity can be recharged in one minute. With the electric vehicle, it can take several hours. However, this is not to deny the possibility of battery electric vehicles. It’s very useful for vehicles with restricted applications, like golf carts.”
3. AutoblogGreen post – November 14, 2006
Steve Ellis, Manager of Fuel Cell Marketing for Honda, said that:
“There is a group of ‘EV Zealots’ who are constantly criticizing all hydrogen related work based on flawed arguments and without examining all the costs of a plug-in system.”
4. Earth2Tech article – June 15, 2008
“Standing next to a converted plug-in Prius (Reinert is in the brown jacket), rough language and impassioned rhetoric was exchanged, with neither side conceding anything. Much of the argument boiled down to the perceived demand for fully electric vehicles: Reinert and Toyota contend that there isn’t a viable market; Plug In America says quite the opposite.”
5. Cnet.com article – October 17, 2008
Masaaki Kato, president of Honda R&D, said:
“Our stance is that the use of electric vehicles is limited. To get the performance of an Accord, in terms of driving range, from today’s battery-only drivetrain, we would need to carry 2 tons of batteries. That’s no good.”
6. Toyota website – As of July 1, 2010
“Toyota Motor Corporation discontinued production of the RAV4 Electric Vehicle worldwide in the spring of 2003. Therefore, Toyota will no longer take orders for the RAV4 EV.
Toyota remains committed to developing an ‘Eco Vehicle,’ one that will have a minimal impact on the environment. Toyota believes that in order to have a positive environmental impact, a large number of consumers must embrace the technology. In order for this to happen, the vehicle must meet the lifestyle needs of, and be affordable to, the mass market. Although a significant marketing effort was undertaken for the RAV4-EV, we only sold about 300 vehicles a year.
In addition to overall customer acceptance, technical issues tied to electric vehicles remain a major hurdle. Industry practice regards batteries to be at the end of their useful life when capacity decreases to 80% of original capacity. A battery’s capacity is the amount of charge that it holds, and is commonly measured by the range of the vehicle. It is cost-prohibitive to replace an EV battery. The cost to replace the battery is more than the value of the vehicle.”
7. Edmunds.com Green Car Advisor article – September 15, 2008
“(Honda research chief Masaaki) Kato told Bloomberg that Honda engineers don’t believe lithium-ion batteries will satisfy most consumers because of their high cost and limited range compared to gasoline engines.
In Japan, he said, battery developers are still trying to meet a government goal of boosting energy storage capacity by seven times while slashing battery costs to just 2.5 percent of current costs.
‘That gives you a pretty clear example of what type of gap we’re facing relative to a gasoline vehicle,’ Kato said. ‘At this point, I’d say it’s impossible to imagine a date at which such a breakthrough could occur.’
He said Honda believes it will be easier, less costly and quicker to perfect the fuel-cell electric vehicle, such as the FCX Clarity that it is leasing in small numbers to select consumers in Southern California and Japan.”
8. Popular Mechanics article – October 2, 2008
“In an earlier interview with PM, (Toyota’s Bill) Reinert pointed out that in very cold temperatures, mountain regions in the winter, and hot zones, the American southwest in the summer, ‘You can lose an order of magnitude of energy availability in the battery. So if you have a 40-mile range normally, in Boulder, Colo., when it was 10 below zero, you might end up with a 4-mile range, with the heater going and all the other things.’”
9. BusinessWeek article – October 9, 2008
“Toyota has other queries about plug-in hybrids and electric cars, both of which will be offered by rivals GM, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Chrysler in the next couple of years. In all cases, it is assumed that owners will plug them in at night when local power utilities have electricity to spare. But (Toyota’s Bill) Reinert says that plenty of owners will want to plug in during the day. In some areas, that won’t be a problem. But in locales with older electric power systems or maxed out capacity, it could be an issue, he says.”
10. USA Today article – January 18, 2008
“If you take into account emissions from the powerplant generating the electricity to recharge the battery, the picture gets murky. If that power comes from hydro-electric dams or nuclear or natural gas plants, Toyota says emissions are cut. But not for the USA overall, Toyota says, because half our power comes from coal-fired plants.
Averaged across the USA, ‘There’s very little (emissions) benefit’ compared with a current Prius hybrid, says Jaycie Chitwood, senior planner at Toyota’s advanced technologies unit in the USA.”
11. Wall Street Journal article – December 30, 2008
“Some people don’t think the infrastructure is in place to support the widespread use of plug-ins. ‘For plug-ins to be all encompassing and to replace basic hybrid technology, the electric grid would need to morph into something we don’t have yet,’ says Jaycie Chitwood, Toyota’s senior strategic planner for advanced technologies.”
12. Energy Tribune interview of Bill Reinert from Toyota – February 2, 2009
“Within Toyota, we’re working on a niche electric vehicle (Toyota FT-EV battery-only vehicle with a ~60 mile range – see the following YouTube video). At the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this year, we showed a concept of what our current thinking is. A small, city car with relatively limited range, that’s reasonably affordable, targeted at non-traditional markets. But it’s not intended to be a mass-market car. We’re looking at sales volumes of thousands not millions. To produce an electric vehicle that’s truly intended for a mass market, a replacement for your current gasoline car, we’re going to need a battery chemistry that isn’t currently available.”
13. This quote was given by Bill Reinert from Toyota at around minute 46 in the following video of a session at the Google plug-in battery conference in June 2008 in Washington, D.C.:
“The fact of the matter is there is a huge variability in the gas mileage you get, I see 100 miles per gallon here. And yeah, you can do it if you are driving 35 miles an hour. But if you’re on the 110 Freeway going to Pasadena where you’ve got an on-ramp that’s not even as long as this stage, you’ve got to run wide-open throttle to get into the lane and not get killed. And when you start doing that, you know, what you started out with a 20-mile range becomes a 5-mile range. And what you started out as 110 miles per gallon ends up being more like the common Prius. So you gotta worry about that kind of stuff, because you don’t want to send mixed messages out to the customer.”
14. New York Times article – June 7, 2009
“Bill Reinert, the company’s national manager of advanced technology, brought the PowerPoint. In his presentation and a subsequent interview, he cast doubt on plug-in cars achieving the 100-m.p.g. claimed by some aftermarket conversions. The extra weight resulting from larger battery packs, he said, means that brakes, springs and subframes also have to get bigger and tougher, adding more pounds. ‘We can achieve 50 to 55 miles per gallon, but after that there are diminishing returns,’ he said.”
15. BNET Auto article – June 2, 2009
“(Toyota’s group vice president of environmental and public affairs, Irv) Miller said that the promise of the lithium-ion battery pack—used in both PHEVs and pure battery EVs—has led to ‘inflated expectations beyond the technical realities.’”
16. Post by Phil LeBeau on CNBC’s Behind the Wheel blog – July 20, 2009
“(President of Toyota North America Yoshi) Inaba is skeptical we will see electric cars sold in mass numbers any time soon. He says he has seen the breakthrough in battery technology needed to support mass production and sales of electric models.”
17. AutoblogGreen post – July 18, 2009
Quote from Bill Reinert from Toyota:
“Using ethanol for fuel is like electing the dumbest kid in school as class president. As for plug-in electrics, they’re just not plausible right now. Lithium-ion batteries are too expensive by at least an order of magnitude. They’re not energy-dense enough. And we generate a lot of our electricity from coal…I mean, Shai’s bragging about driving an electric RAV4 with a seventy-mile range. How many of your friends are going to buy that car?”
18. Financial Post (Canada) article – July 15, 2009
“Toyota is bringing a plug-in version of its Prius hybrid car to North America later this year. But that will be on a test basis only and in limited numbers, Mr. Beatty (Stephen Beatty, managing director of Toyota Canada Inc.) said. ‘We’re not entirely convinced that the technology is a winning proposition for consumers today,’ he said.”
19. New York Times article – August 19, 2009
“Toyota executives rattle off reasons to be skeptical of electric cars: They do not travel far enough on a charge; their batteries are expensive and not reliable; the electrical infrastructure is not in place to recharge them.
Executives also say that Toyota’s reputation for reliability could be tarnished if the company forged ahead with an unproven technology.”
20. AutoblogGreen post (“Honda CEO: People will embrace fuel cells when they realize battery limits”) – October 22, 2009
“According to (Honda CEO Takanobu) Ito, who assumed the top post at the company last June, hydrogen fuel cells are still the best long term strategy for vehicles. The only reason Honda is developing a plug-in vehicle right now is to meet California zero-emission vehicle mandates coming up in about five years.”
21. HybridCars post – June 23, 2010
“However, don’t expect full electric cars from Hyundai, according to The Detroit Bureau. Woong-chul Yang, president of Hyundai’s R&D operation, contends that lithium batteries still are still too costly and do not offer adequate range. ‘We’d need seven times the level of performance at 20 times less price,’ he said.”
22. MSN Autos article – September 2, 2009
“(Audi of America President Johan de Nysschen) dismissed GM’s upcoming plug-in hybrid as ‘a car for idiots,’ saying that few consumers will be willing to pay $40,000 — the Volt’s estimated base price — for a car that competes against $25,000 sedans and conventional hybrids. Nor, he noted, is the Volt a luxury car whose green-technology costs will be excused because it also delivers prestige or performance.
‘No one is going to pay a $15,000 premium for a car that competes with a (Toyota) Corolla,’ he said. ‘So there are not enough idiots who will buy it.’”
Related posts:
- Hydrogen cars are safe
- Is the $50,000 price figure for Toyota hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in 2015 reported by Alan Ohnsman of Bloomberg much higher than the high-volume figure would be?
- Challenge to Elon Musk: Since you took a swipe at hydrogen, I want to bet you $1000 that Tesla stock will be in the single digits a year from now
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