In recent years, in the hot new energy electric vehicles, Tesla has done its best. On New Year's Day 2021, Tesla released sales data for 2020, with a total sales volume of 499,550 units. In addition to Tesla, there are many new energy vehicle brands such as BYD, Weilai, and Singularity in China.
But in Japan, I haven't heard of them developing pure electric vehicles.
When it comes to the first time electric energy was used in cars, it was Toyota in Japan. In 1977, Toyota proposed a plan to build electric vehicles, and in 1997, the first gasoline-electric hybrid model, the original Prius, was released. Not only that, the place where lithium batteries were invented is also one of the top 5 power battery companies in Japan: Panasonic Group is a Japanese battery manufacturer.
Since the advantages of electric technology are so great, why doesn't Japan promote electric vehicles?
This should start from the following aspects: First, Japan's environmental protection concept. Although batteries appear as new energy sources, they are temporarily replacing fuel vehicles. But it has to be said that batteries will still consume coal and natural gas, and the use of these two will inevitably have pollution problems. And the battery has a service life, how to deal with the battery that has passed the service life is another problem, which is contrary to the Japanese concept of environmental protection.
Second, although Japan's land area is small, its population density is not low. In 2018, Japan ranked 8th in the world in terms of population density, while China ranked 16th. The large number of people and the lack of land have also led to the congestion of their cities, for them, K-car is more suitable for their daily travel, the cost is also cheap, so pure electric vehicles have not been implemented in Japan.
In recent years, more and more countries have proposed plans to ban the sale of fuel vehicles. Norway is scheduled to be implemented in 2025, the Netherlands, Germany, China's Hainan, etc., and the implementation time is tentatively set for 2030.
Today, when new energy has become a trend, what energy vehicles are Japan studying?
For Japan, they want to achieve a truly zero-pollution, or zero-emission new energy source, which is the hydrogen energy vehicle they are now working on. Compared with today's fuel vehicles and electric vehicles, the combination of hydrogen and oxygen with hydrogen as fuel, the final product is only water, which just meets Japan's pursuit. And compared with hydrogen energy batteries and lithium batteries, there are many advantages.
Each kilogram of hydrogen battery can store 40 degrees of electricity, while the lithium battery per kilogram is only 0.278 degrees of electricity, coupled with the low endurance of lithium batteries, Tesla Model3 is 480 ~ 613km, and some electric vehicles are only 200km. Coupled with battery loss, the mileage is even more worrying. Not to mention that electric vehicles take 8 hours to charge at home, while hydrogen energy batteries only take three or five minutes, which is similar to adding gasoline and easily driving 600km. Toyota's second-generation hydrogen battery car Mirai has a cruising range of up to 250km.
This is where some people have to ask, hydrogen energy vehicles have such a big advantage, has the mainland studied it?
Don't worry, the mainland is also studying hydrogen energy vehicles while studying electric vehicles. However, due to the need for expensive platinum metal in hydrogen fuel cells, this will inevitably affect the pricing of vehicles. In addition, the cost of making hydrogen energy is relatively high, and the method of large-scale production of hydrogen is to use petroleum fuels in addition to electrolysis of water, which is polluted as the use of lithium batteries. Therefore, hydrogen energy is still under research, and hydrogen vehicles have not yet been popularized.