Toyota in hot pursuit of Tesla, unveiling EV with 500 km range

[Quicksilver]

Toyota.......leading from the rear.

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[jerhenderson]

Nope, Toyota ( or he Toyoda) has not learned a thing.

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Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) announced today that it will enter a vehicle equipped with a developmental hydrogen-powered engine at the five-hour-long Super Taikyu Series 2021 Powered by Hankook Round 5 Suzuka S-tai, which takes place from September 18 to 19, 2021.
Toyota City, Japan, September 18, 2021―
https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/36074055.html

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Toyota To Launch Hydrogen-Powered Prius And Corolla In 2023
Peter Lyon
Aug 29, 2021
https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterl...ed-prius-and-corolla-in-2023/?sh=59cee8da2fa1

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Running on Hydrogen, Toyota Mirai Dazzles Again
The Japanese automaker has not wavered in its pursuit of vehicles that can run on hydrogen
https://www.wardsauto.com/2021-10-b...s/running-hydrogen-toyota-mirai-dazzles-again

wow. just wow. maybe they'll go bankrupt before GM.

 

[Crissa]

As pointed out before, a hydrogen economy uses less material resources than a battery based one, which Japan being a small island nation, explains going in that direction.

-Crissa

 

[jerhenderson]

As pointed out before, a hydrogen economy uses less material resources than a battery based one, which Japan being a small island nation, explains going in that direction.

-Crissa

how are they planning on generating the Hydrogen?

 

[Crissa]

how are they planning on generating the Hydrogen?

Waterborne wind and solar. Not energy efficient, but materials efficient.

I'm not saying the plan is a good idea, just mentioning that there are reasons that make it look like a good idea.

-Crissa

 

[NiceGuyMax]

What?? No Tacoma extended cab dual motor having a 500 Mile range with fast charging under $50K? ?

 

[Akgolf]

Coming first to Japan in 2022. No mention of other countries or quantities.

This could be another compliance car.

 

[Ehninger1212]

Hot pursuit? this is more like the OJ simpson chase.. slow..

 

[FutureBoy]

One thing I’m concerned about with Toyota is actually their software. Back when Toyotas were having the uncontrolled acceleration issues, it took a very long time plus the work of external specialist engineers to find various software issues that needed to be fixed. That experience did not instill a lot of belief in their internal software engineering capabilities.

In the EV space, a huge part of the overall technology is in the software. And Tesla is able to update, change features turning on a dime. Seems like really high quality software engineers would be a real necessity in order to compete effectively in the EV space.

No matter what overall technology Toyota implements, without the software chops on board, they will have a very hard time competing. But of course many legacy auto makers may have a similar issue. Perhaps there will be enough EV market that Tesla cannot fulfill that these other auto makers might be able to at least survive on the scraps without getting up to truly competitive levels.

 

[Crissa]

Yeah, I had a friend work for one of the companies that did peer review on the software teardown and they had been violating protected memory - two programs would expand their memory allocation and could impinge on each other. So it was possible to write into the acceleration field when it shouldn't have been possible.

Very low chance of this happening and turning the computer off would have reset the memory. But that should have never been a thing to do simple non-protected memory.

-Crissa

 

[Ogre]

One thing I’m concerned about with Toyota is actually their software. Back when Toyotas were having the uncontrolled acceleration issues, it took a very long time plus the work of external specialist engineers to find various software issues that needed to be fixed. That experience did not instill a lot of belief in their internal software engineering capabilities.

I think all of the classic auto makers have an unhealthy relationship with software and computers in general.

Ford’s approach to the F150 Lightning and Chevy’s Bolt don’t exactly suggest these guys are turning a new leaf either.

 

[Revoltlution]

#notatruck

 

[FutureBoy]

Yeah, I had a friend work for one of the companies that did peer review on the software teardown and they had been violating protected memory - two programs would expand their memory allocation and could impinge on each other. So it was possible to write into the acceleration field when it shouldn't have been possible.

Very low chance of this happening and turning the computer off would have reset the memory. But that should have never been a thing to do simple non-protected memory.

-Crissa

The thing about unprotected memory is that even though the problem people experienced was unintended acceleration, the same issue could end up overwriting so many other things. The acceleration issue was really serious and clearly observed by customers. But that's not the only serious side effect that could have been experienced. What if the issue affected the brakes? I had a friend that experienced an accident because the brakes on his Subaru suddenly cut out completely in an emergency situation and he rear-ended another vehicle. Was that caused by a similar issue? My guess is that it was software but I haven't seen any reports of internal software reviews or issues for Subaru so who knows. Could just be that it hasn't killed enough people yet to warrant a serious investigation.

At this point, I trust Tesla software more than I trust any other auto manufacturer. Not saying that Tesla software will be perfect. Just that based on what I've seen, they appear to be better engineers and to be thinking through software design in a much better way. One side effect of this better design is their ability to make quick updates, feature adds, etc, and still have everything perform well without obvious issues. A few years ago, I met a former Tesla employee who worked with their back-office systems that handled data from vehicles and other internal systems who said that their back end was a total mess. So it wouldn't surprise me if things like orders, financial reports, or other non-life threatening systems off vehicle experienced issues that could potentially be seen by customers at times. A possible side effect here is the level of details available on the Tesla.com site regarding our pre-orders. I wouldn't expect anything fancy there any time soon. In the vehicles though, I expect things to work very seamlessly. Tesla most likely keeps all the best engineers for systems on board the vehicles.

 

[Crissa]

The biggest black-mark is that Toyota had black boxes in the cars and chose not to record crash data.

-Crissa

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