The new energy information analysis network will summarize the new energy technology route battle between Toyota of Japan and GM of the United States in China and even the world. Based on the irreconcilable contradictions at the ideological level and the entanglement of geopolitical dimensions, it is predicted that the new energy technology route in the next five years will conform to China's national interests.
Remarks: EV is electric technology, HEV is unplugged oil-electric hybrid technology, PHEV and plug-in oil-electric hybrid technology, REV is unplugged extender oil-electric hybrid technology, EREV plug-in range extender oil-electric hybrid technology, FCV is fuel cell technology
Toyota Japan:
In March 2020, Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan announced the establishment of a joint venture with BYD of China to jointly design, manufacture and sell electric vehicles. It is reported that the first model developed by BYD and providing all technical solutions including "battery, motor and electronic control" will be launched and will be affixed with Toyota's unique "bull head" logo. In addition, Toyota Motor's first electric vehicle, the bZ4X, has been unveiled, and it is worth paying attention to whether its core technology is related to BYD.
As a world-class automobile company with a long history, Toyota Motor of Japan has a complete and reliable HEV hybrid technology model application program, and has a leading FCV (hydrogen fuel cell technology) model application solution. However, in the mainstream technology route of new energy in the Chinese market, it has to seek cooperation from BYD to break through the current stagnant dilemma.
U.S. General:
In October 2021, U.S. automotive giant General Motors released its own high-end, all-electric Ultium Platform (Altion solutions including core technologies). The platform has a comprehensive and leading electrification technology, including a flexible layout of the modular body, efficient and integrated electric drive system, 800V power battery platform, high-power fast charging and so on. Based on the first model of the Aoteneng platform, Cadillac LYRIQ has been launched in the global market, and the domestic pre-sale situation is also very hot.
As a traditional automobile manufacturer with a century-old history, GM has reserves different core technologies of new energy such as EV, HEV, PHEV, REV, EREV, FCV and EV, and has put into the application of related new energy technology in the terminal market for retail sales.
Since the outbreak of the energy crisis in the 1970s, Japan's Toyota and the United States' GM have been affected by international crude oil production and selling prices, and have begun to seek different levels of new energy technology development and mature model application solutions that get rid of the influence of traditional petrochemical resources on the political, economic and military aspects of their countries. However, based on the differences in geopolitical aspects, the attitudes and actions of Toyota of Japan and GM of the United States towards the trend of new energy core technologies are completely different or even different.
Toyota of Japan: Reject EVs, stick to FCVs, and take into account HEVs
As early as the 1970s, Toyota began the research and development of HEV technology, and by 1997, the world's first hybrid car Prius was pushed to mass production, and Toyota had already accumulated considerable technology for motors, batteries and electronic control technologies. Therefore, Toyota has been reluctant to admit that it lags behind its opponents in the process of electric vehicles, on the grounds that Toyota has all the core technologies related to motors, batteries and electronic controls.
However, it was not until April 2020 that Toyota launched its first electric model, the C-HR EV, in China, which is still a standard oil-to-electric model. By December 2021, toyota's mass production of EV models in China will almost all be "OEM" from the AION S series manufactured by GAC Aehan. Even Japan's Toyota has just launched a recall of the Lexus series HEV models sold in the Chinese market.
Even the Lexus UX300e electric vehicle, which represents the highest level of Toyota's local EV technology, uses the power battery active air cooling cooling and electric heating technology, which is at least 2 years different from the domestic mainstream EV model technology.
Toyota's explanation for the delay in introducing positive electric models to the market is that the size and cost of the batteries still do not meet the expectations of being able to mass-produce electric vehicles. Previously, Toyota chairman and "father of Prius" Takeshi Uchiyamada said in a public interview that if electric vehicles are rapidly popularized, then almost all car companies will lose money, so the era of full electrification of automobiles will not come.
However, when Toyota established the Electrification Division in December 2016 and was personally led by Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, it was already vaguely clear that there were some differences within Toyota about the past "conservative". Since then, Toyota has successively cooperated with Mazda, Denso, Daihatsu and other companies on the EV technology route, including close contact with China's BYD in the past two years.
At the geopolitical level, Japan's Toyota adheres to the HEV+FCV new energy technology route in a vain attempt to change the direction of the technical route of countries and regions around the world, including China:
As a country with scarce petrochemical resources and a complete need to import, Japan adhered to the "southward" strategy in World War II in order to obtain strategic resources such as oil, steel and rubber.
Taking advantage of the US oil crisis and taking energy saving and fuel saving as a strong advantage, Toyota Motor has developed rapidly since the 1960s, and since then Toyota has also been deeply branded as "fuel saving" in the world, and later HEV hybrid technology and high thermal efficiency engines are all centered on how to minimize fuel consumption. All this is determined by the very limited oil resources of Japan, a country composed of multiple islands. The data shows that most of Japan's oil fields have long been depleted, and the annual oil production is less than one million tons. Its oil consumption is the fourth highest in the world, consuming 4.4 million barrels per day.
That being the case, wouldn't the development of FOSSIL fuel-free EV technology be more in line with demand? Non also. The above-mentioned factors of island countries not only make oil resources scarce, but also all kinds of rare natural resources in Japan. The copper, permanent magnet rare earth, cobalt, nickel, lithium and other element materials required for motors and batteries are even more precious to Japan than oil, and currently need to rely on a large number of imports to meet the demand. Compared with China's large number of copper mines, rare earth mines, and lithium reserves, there is no advantage in developing an electrified vehicle route.
However, the coastal areas of Japan can more easily take water to produce hydrogen, so Toyota vigorously promotes the hydrogen fuel cell route. By 2020, Japan has built more than 100 hydrogen refueling stations, which is quite sufficient for a country with a small indigenous area. However, for other major powers in the global automotive industry, the hydrogen fuel cell route has many inconveniences, including high infrastructure construction costs, high difficulty in hydrogen storage, and difficulties in large-scale promotion.
Obviously, while insisting on maximizing profits, Toyota of Japan has introduced electric nickel-metal hydride batteries or ternary lithium batteries loaded with only 1 or 3 degrees of electricity as the core technology for HEV models to reduce comprehensive fuel consumption. The introduction of FCV technology using seawater to produce hydrogen is all in search of once again getting rid of the dilemma of lack of petrochemical resources and the need for imports. In fact, Toyota's adherence to the HEV+FCV new energy technology route is also a typical strategy for other industrial structure characteristics on the Japanese island and to reduce energy consumption and save costs.
On December 14, 2021, Japan's Toyota announced an electrification strategy that will invest $35 billion by 2030 to develop and mass-produce 30 electric vehicles and produce 3.5 million units per year.
Earlier in December 2020, Japan's Toyota's Shonan told the media that electric vehicles are currently being over-hyped and that advocates are not taking into account the carbon emissions generated by the power generation process and the cost of transitioning to electric vehicles. Akio Toyoda argues that all cars are electrically powered, so there will be a shortage of electricity in Japan by the summer. If Japan fully transitions to electric vehicles and builds supporting charging facilities, it will cost $135 billion to $358 billion. And Japan currently relies mainly on coal and natural gas to generate electricity. Therefore, Akio Toyoda believes that electric vehicles do not help the environment much, and the more electric vehicles produced, the more serious the carbon dioxide emissions.
Just during the period of 2020-2021, while Toyota continues to blow up the fact that electric vehicles are not suitable for Japanese society, Toyota continues to release the information that "it will abandon fuel cell technology, vehicles and subsequent development".
Throughout the 2010-2020s, Toyota, Fuji, Mazda and other car manufacturers have claimed on different occasions that the electrification technology route does not meet the needs of the economic development of the Japanese island, and even Toyota Shonan has repeatedly said that it insists that the development of EV\PHEV new energy technology is over-hyped.
In fact, as an important supplier of technical equipment for the Japanese Army and Navy, Toyota's insistence on FCV technology is directly used in the Japanese Navy's "Soryu" class submarines. Interestingly, the Japanese Army insists on basing ternary lithium batteries and lithium-sulfur batteries as energy storage systems for the continuous development of EREV and EV technology wheel-track armored verification vehicles.
As Toyota's peers, Honda and Mitsubishi have a wider range of applications in technology research and development and model applications such as FCV, EV, HEV, and PHEV than Toyota. Why is it that a dominant Toyota suddenly switched to the EV and PHEV routes after 20 years of sticking to the FCV technology route?
Japan's Toyota's cooperation with China's BYD in seeking EV technology vehicle solutions can be seen as a step "relaxation flag". The use of BYD and its mature and reliable e-platform 3.0 architecture, combined with Toyota's existing model platform, is a simple and direct means to quickly obtain China's new energy market share. At the same time, Toyota and Denso (suppliers) are cooperating with BYD and the Fordy series (suppliers) to delay the "empty window" period of Energy Storage for Toyota-based EVs and power batteries to the greatest extent.
The key reason, looking back at Toyota's FCV and HEV technology routes and mass-produced vehicles over the past 20 years, may be in demand in small Japan and socially turbulent Europe. However, in the Chinese market that adheres to the "dual motor + double electronic control" hybrid technology that adheres to EV and PHEV and integrates the characteristics of PHEV and EREV technology, Toyota FCV technology in Japan will not have the possibility of large-scale commercial application within 5 years (while China's existing huge gas stations and charging facilities are being built in full swing, and then invest huge costs to build too many uncertain hydrogen production, hydrogen transportation, storage, and hydrogenation systems, which are almost impossible in the next 5 years) The energy-saving advantages of HEV technology have been replaced by plug-in technology based on "dual motors + double electronic control", and the manufacturing cost of mass production models is almost the same as that of traditional fuel vehicles of the same level.
Obviously, Japan's Toyota abandons FCV and HEV because it is "not allowed to smoke" in China's Chinese market, which is the world's largest economy in the world, including core technology, vehicle manufacturing and the most perfect layout of the whole industrial chain.
At the same time, GM's adherence to EV, HEV, REV, PHEV and EREV technologies and vehicles coincide with the development of mainstream technologies in China's new energy.
In the end, Toyota's FCV+HEV technology is not only abandoned by the terminal market, but also the inevitable result of the geopolitical confrontation.
The author has this to say:
The battle between Toyota of Japan vs GM of the United States over the core technology road of new energy ended with Toyota's total defeat after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
However, the United States GM's response to The Japanese Toyota is not a smooth ride, and it can even be described as bumpy. However, geopolitical factors did not play a decisive role in the struggle between Japan's Toyota and the United States' general new energy technology route. On the contrary, it is the "contradiction" of different levels and multiple ideologies between different political systems, which makes Toyota of Japan completely lose this game of chess on the surface.
The difference between the victory and defeat of the new energy technology development route of Japan Toyota vs. the United States General Geopolitical Dimension is determined by China, which has the most complete new energy industry chain in the world and the fastest growth rate of new energy vehicle sales.
To be continued...
Produced by the news group of the new energy information analysis network