Creating the fuel requires energy, the best supply of high volume, high quality CO2 neutral energy is electricity derived from carbon neutral sources (solar, wind, tidal, etc).
Why would you take perfectly good electricity, use it to create a synthetic liquid fuel using a lossy process (some energy will be lost as heat), then burn that fuel to extract, at most, 25% of the energy you used to create the fuel. Rather than just taking the electricity, putting it in a battery, and running an electric motor. A process that’s 70%-90% efficient.
The cost difference between EVs and ICE cars would have to be astronomical to make synthetic fuel ICE cars appealing when compared to EVs.
There still a use case for synthetic fuels, but that only in situations where you already have a large ICE fleet (could be cars, trucks, ships, planes) that are very expensive to replace, or where batteries don’t mix well with the form of transport (aircraft for example). But for _new_ passenger vehicles, where EVs are basically a solved problem, I can’t see how a new ICE + synthetics fuel could possibly hope to compete with a new EV + electricity.
When one approach is half as efficient as the other, it hard to see how you build a cost competitive product using the less efficient approach. Especially when the more efficient approach is already approaching price parity, with a much cheaper technology (diesel from the ground is much cheaper than diesel from the air).
OTOH, Lithium is easy to recycle, and a car only uses ~50kg of it.
A combustion engine throws away >70% of that costly green energy, whereas EVs are 90+% efficient. The more panels/turbines/batteries you need to do the same job, the more pollution is emitted in the manufacturing step.
We need solutions that reduce the huge amount of green energy supply needed to go 100% carbon-free, not self-futile solutions that push the finish line further away.
On the other hand, hydrogen combustion is an inefficient process that uses an astonishingly bulky, expensive fuel that needs to be compressed to absurd pressures and has no realistic use case - except to give petrolheads hope that things don't have to change and to kick the can down the road while continuing to burn fossil fuels. Check out this analysis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJjKwSF9gT8
or the numerous sources cited.
This is not about German car companies like BMW, Volkswagen, and Mercedes being cut off from productive lines of inquiry. Those lines were only undertaken for show to allow them to continue business as usual. This is about them successfully bribing the German government to allow them to keep destroying the planet.
this guy makes a methanol fuel cell and battery hybrid car:
https://www.motor1.com/news/535002/next-toyota-prius-hydroge...
[0] https://autoesporte.globo.com/um-so-planeta/noticia/2021/04/...
It's for several reasons, interwoven.
One, Toyota lagged behind everyone else. VW and GM, the other giants, are far ahead of them. Even Nissan, the shittiest manufacturer in Japan, is far ahead of them. Took them a bit (the Leaf was a joke until its most recent incarnation because of Nissan's cost-cutting, refusing to implement proper, liquid-based thermal management.)
Toyota, and the Japanese economy, are heavily dependent upon the Japanese replacing their cars every few years, which is why they obsessively re-style their products with little changes "under the hood." For something like decades the Corolla by and large did not change much except for body panels and interior changes. Another reason people replace their cars is the unreliability as they exit the warranty period. BEVs are much more reliable, so people won't replace them as often.
Japan's economy is heavily dependent upon a huge cottage industry of mom and pop car part suppliers, and BEVs are both vastly simpler and much more reliable, meaning there will be far less demand for parts during manufacture, in warranty, and post-warranty sales.
Japan's economy is also heavily dependent upon people replacing their cars often, as previously mentioned, to keep fueling the whole industry. Further, they export a huge number of used vehicles, mostly to the rest of Asia - and there's a very large industry around that. Transporting the cars, evaluating their condition, auctioning them, shipping them.
If people keep their cars longer, that all grinds to a halt...particularly because the cars often go to countries where frankly there's little hope of there being EV infrastructure any time soon. So as used EVs enter Japan's used car export economy, nobody will want them. Because nobody will want them, auction buyers won't buy them. So dealers won't be able to get much money for the cars. Which means they won't be able to offer good trade-in values. Which means people won't be able to afford buying a Toyota Camry with differently shaped headlights and bumpers every 3 years. Which means the Japanese economy, frankly, grinds to a halt.
Further: Dealers make all their money on maintenance and service, especially out-of-warranty. BEVs require far less maintenance and service. So dealers are pissed about the huge drop in income from these BEVs. So keeping ICEs means dealers keep getting maintenance and service on the engines.
By the way: another reason Toyota changes the headlights/taillights bumpers so often? They're the most commonly damaged in a collision, and by changing them constantly (and assuring that only one or two model years will fit a car...saaaaay, by making them stretch deep into other body panels like the front fenders with long bits that, oh by the way, happen to be pretty fragile!), they get to keep the parts expensive, and aftermarket suppliers (and the used car parts industry) have a nearly impossible time keeping up.
Further by-the-way: some cars, it's incredibly difficult to change the headlight bulb. Guess why? That's right: helping dealers inflate the labor costs for a bulb change. 15 minutes at $120/hour isn't sexy. But if you have to take apart a dozen things in the engine compartment? Why, now you can justify an hour's labor!...and because your techs are probably paid for the "book time", they figure out how to do it a lot faster....and both the dealership and tech make out like bandits, while the customer gets fucked for the full book time labor charge.
IMO Toyota has chosen a path that is congruent with the reality that is, not what might be.
I call that pragmatic. Those calling for full electrification right now when we can’t even keep our porch lights illuminated every single night in California, not so pragmatic IMO. Present battery tech requires a huge infrastructure buildout required and I’m not talking about charging solutions for residents of multi-family dwellings.
If such a time should come to pass where those problems are solved, Toyota will at that time capitalize on everyone else’s mistakes and possibly buy solutions like batteries and enter the market then. It’s a basic risk containment strategy.
[1]: https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/02/09/will-german-engineer...
Is that actually based in reality? Toyota's hybrid vehicles that have ICE engines also have battery packs, and the newer hybrid models have battery packs approaching 6-7 kWh. These aren't even classified as PHEVs.
Their PHEVs have battery packs upwards of 10 kWh (between 10 and 20 kWh) and sell like hot cakes.
So if you were to look at the aggregate capacity of all the batteries Toyota is shipping with their vehicles, I would bet it's at least average or actually higher than other manufacturers, e.g. Ford or Chevy or VW.
Basically, unless you have the raw numbers for comparison about aggregate pack capacity, your whole point is kind of moot.
Laws are generally followed by the letter, not by intention. Whole cottage industries exist that look for ways around laws without breaking them.
What is written down matters even if what was intended differs.
In practical reality this just means there's just going to be fossil fuels cars past 2035. Not "hydrogen" or other.
Not a big surprise, the "plan" was unrealistic from the start, and it's just put forward because 2035 appears "too far away". It's going to be revised time and again anyway.
>> Germany's government is refusing to agree to European Union plans to effectively ban the sale of new cars with combustion engines from 2035, according to Finance Minister Christian Lindner.
(Fossil fuels = bad) does not mean the same as (combustion engine = bad). There are lots of green combustion options, first on the list being hydrogen gas as fuel for a combustion engine. Then there are fuel-from-air approaches whereby a normal combustion engine would burn hydrocarbon fuel made without "fossil" carbon sources. German auto makers are rightfully upset at being told to abandon such lines.