@reuters article on #Toyota talks of a possible reboot of it's EV strategy because it's present mixed EV/ICE manufacturing strategy just can't compete with Tesla lower cost pure EV platform. reuters.com/business/autos…
To compete you have to make a compelling product and to make it at volumes and costs that are profitable.

Right now Toyota is loosing at all 3 when competing with Tesla, and Toyota's tactic of delay and FUD to slow BEV growth hasn't worked sufficiently to stop them breaking out.
Waking up to the realization that they can't put the BEV genie back in the bottle is progress, but they actually have to come up with a compelling and profitable BEV product line.

Cancelling BEVs they currently have in development and to restart from scratch is likely too late.
Toyota's should have done a BEV platform reboot 5 years ago.

How long will it take them to come up with a totally new BEV platform? Another 3 to 5 years?

BEV production worldwide has been growing rapidly across the world, those manufacturers that have forged ahead are learning.
As companies grow experience in making BEVs they learn how to improve the products and refine the manufacturing process to increasing production, lower costs and increase quality.

If you want to compete you need to be already making and refining vehicles, not at a drawing board.
What are Toyota to do?

They have to do the reboot as they can't make competitive products as profitably as the leading competitors.

Buying in expertise and perhaps a whole set of designs and manufacturing capacity might be the quickest way to get to market. Foxconn perhaps?
However, I suspect Toyota will be too proud/driven by ego to call in outside expertise on design and manufacturing.

This leaves lots of internal machinations within Toyota as they try to cobble together a team that execute a reboot rapidly and profitably.

It's do or die.

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More from @RobertOsfield

Oct 24
I have checked in improvements to #VulkanScneneGraph shader composition support so that now a range of shader variants can be pre-compiled to SPIR-V and built as part of the library itself:

github.com/vsg-dev/Vulkan…

This can mean no more loading and compiling shaders at runtime!
Shader composition might at first seem like another layer of complexity on top of GLSL shaders, but it actually makes shader and C++ code management easier once you understand how to use it.

To explain the improvements I've started a thread on vsg-users:
groups.google.com/g/vsg-users/c/…
The #VulkanSceneGraph uses the #pragma(tic) shader composition approach that I developed as part of the #OpenScenegraph project, allow apps to inject #define into shader compilation

This text.vert shader illustrates use of 3 different #defines:
github.com/vsg-dev/vsgExa…
Read 6 tweets
Oct 22
@AlefAeronautics debut a novel Flying Car, aim for it to be capable of VTOL so capable of flying without needing a runway.

Personally I think even it works it'll neither make a good car, or a good aircraft, but then I've yet to see any design that might be good at both.
@AlefAeronautics This is the launch video (with fixed audio as the original launch video had screwed up audio) :



Even without the original audio fail the presentation still doesn't inspire much confidence there will be a vehicle on sale in 2025.
@AlefAeronautics The problem with these Flying Car projects they are trying to solve a problem that other vehicles solve it better.

Dedicated #eVTOL will be around by 2025, and will be faster and have better range.

And we'll have #robotaxi by 2025 so the need for owning a car will diminish.
Read 4 tweets
Dec 30, 2021
Bosch’s chief executive Volkmar Denner said “We need combustion engines. We need to build combustion engines. We need to have them on the road, And that’s a fact.”

"We" being Bosch, fact is rest of humanity need to get away from combustion engines ASAP.
ft.com/content/924758…
The status quo coupling between Profits and Pollution needs to inverted.

The likes of Tesla show that it's possible to increase profits without causing life long pollution from use of it's products.

The likes of Bosch execs try to tell us that's not possible nor desirable.
The ICE advocates are claiming we need to keep investing in them to achieve improvements to solve the climate crisis. But at best it'll be a couple of % reduction in emissions.

Compare to moving to existing BEV tech, it'll be 75+% reduction in emissions.

It's not even close.
Read 8 tweets
Dec 29, 2021
Sounds like Hyundai are going all in on electric drivetrains:

"Hyundai Motor Co., the group’s larger carmaker, closed its engine development division at its research and development center, according to industry sources on Dec. 23. "

kedglobal.com/newsView/ked20…
And... "has fallen short of virtually every target they had for fuel cell vehicles. Production and sales are lower than expected, cost is falling slower than expected, infrastructure is being built slower than expected, and hydrogen fuel prices are higher"
electrek.co/2021/12/29/hyu…
We should expect quite a bit of consolidation around pure Battery Electric Vehicles in the next few years as traditional car markers respond to shrinking market share of ICE vehicles.

First to go will be Internal Combustion Engine R&D, then costly distractions like Hydrogen.
Read 6 tweets

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