Electric Vehicles

Unfortunately it looks like their pricing is creeping up into "regular EV" territory. I like the concept and hope I'm wrong.

I hate that slate is backed by Jeff Bezos I'm sure he'll find a way to fit some spyware or ai in there. I really can't see him backing it for altruistic reasons

Chinese EVs are cheaper because the components are made in the same country, often in the same city, and perhaps in the factory down the street. Transporting stuff costs money and forward-thinking industrial planning can reduce these costs.

Japanese automakers put their fingers in their ears and went “na na na na!”

Katamari damacy?

But how could they foresee something like EV, especially chinese ones, which were years in the making??!!

Conservativism is a disease for any society.

Yes, it is essentially a contagion on societies and it is growing like crazy right now. We must understand this threat for what it is.

Too many people look at the US and think we are uniquely stupid when the difference is our conservatives are more empowered and worshipped than in other countries. It is a dangerous mistake to think there aren't rightwing fascist ignorant assholes who want to turn your country into a place like the US no matter where you are, anywhere on earth.

Bet Sears will outlive Toyota haha (my local one is still open believe it or not)

At the same time, the sentiment common in this thread way overstates things. Toyota is continuing to make profits at this very moment, and has the cash on hand (and future profits) to be able to afford to pivot slowly.

If the future is all battery based EVs, there's no reason to believe that this particular company won't survive the transition. They have the supply chain already in place for batteries and electric motors, and have been public about batteries being supply constrained so that they believe that building hybrids with smaller capacity batteries is a better use of that existing supply. It's a self-serving position that one should be somewhat skeptical about, but they're such a huge company they have to think about scale in a way that smaller manufacturers don't have to worry about.

They've been talking a big game about not wanting to make the switch until battery tech and volume gets up to its standards, but they can actually afford to wait. They talk a big game about waiting for solid state battery tech, and while other companies can't afford to wait another 3-5 years for mass production to catch up, Toyota actually can.

And, even before then, Toyota is slowly pivoting to EVs anyway. Their plug in hybrid lineup targets some of their most popular models (Prius, Rav4). On the all-electric front, the bz is available today, and the EV Highlander and the EV Lexus ES are going to be competing side by side with the hybrid counterparts (with the ES selling at a lower MSRP than its hybrid counterparts and the Highlander expected to do similar). They can afford to actually test the market to see whether sales volume data informs how they allocate production resources to EVs versus hybrids.

I expect they'll survive. They probably won't find their way back to #1, but there's plenty of reason to believe they'll still be selling lots of cars profitably in 10 years.

You can test drive a Tesla at a Tesla showroom. You can test drive a Rivian at a Rivian showroom. You can then buy one of them for exactly the price listed on their respective websites. There’s no haggling with sales people, no negotiating over random features, etc.