"EVs Aren't the Only Answer": Toyota Scientist on the Future of Cars: Gill Pratt, CEO of the Toyota Research Institute, Fears Hype rather than Science Is Rushing Us into a Battery-Only Future

July 12, 2022

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by Jim Holder (AutoCar) ... Today his (Gill Pratt's) job titles at Toyota include chief scientist, executive fellow for research and CEO of the Toyota Research Institute; his past includes stints as a robotics and computing lead for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and an associate professor in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He’s also notable for being explicit about the fact that he can’t prove that he’s right; and for acknowledging that his employ allows for him to be accused of having vested interests.

However, as he explains here in his own words, he’s absolutely certain about two things: that the climate crisis is real and that us rushing into a future of only battery-electric vehicle (BEVs) isn’t in the planet’s best interests.

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“Hype closes minds. It leads to too much investment in one approach over another; and a hype cycle leads to disappointment when what was promised doesn’t transpire, which is bad for everyone.”

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“Lithium ion batteries aren’t without consequence. They’re made using rare, mined materials – in contrast, an engine is made using more common materials – and weigh a lot. The grid energy mix is also variable around the world.

“Cradle to grave, the evidence is that PHEV [plug-in hybrid] and BEV are very close – certainly close enough to suggest that picking one over the other as the ultimate solution isn’t currently always the correct answer and that PHEV more often than not currently is the better choice.

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“What I have a problem with is the correct solution being prescribed. The correct solution isn’t a single technology – or at least we can’t say that it is with any confidence today. I would rather see the technologies that make the most difference to the planet available and the technologies that could make the most difference to the planet being investigated with potential for real-world application.”

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“It’s right that everyone should be ambitious. But zero tailpipe emissions doesn’t mean zero emissions. What about the infrastructure? What about the power generation? What about the raw-material availability?”

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“Nobody can say with confidence what the battery supply chain will look like. Nobody can predict the geopolitical shifts of the next 30 years. Will there be another pandemic? The only way to resolve questions that you can’t answer, in my view, is to keep your options open, not narrow them down to a single choice.”

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“The mistake being made now is that some people think EVs are the silver bullet. There’s so much genuine good being done to reduce CO2, and I think reduction targets are a great thing to measure the outcomes. But I really worry in the short term that prescribing the way to accomplish that reduction is going to result in an oscillation.

“We might build a load of cars that customers won’t buy because the charging infrastructure isn’t there, or they might not buy them because the up-front cost is too much. You can’t force people to buy something. Now, I don’t know that’s going to happen; I’m not stating it as a fact. But if you don’t let the marketplace or the science or the research answer your questions, you constrain your ability to deliver the right answers.”

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“Yes, we can demand that they change, but asking them to copy Norway just isn’t feasible; they don’t have the same natural resources. And that means there might be better ways to achieve carbon-reduction goals than just setting a date to switch to BEVs.”

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“On climate change, my view is that we would be in a better place if we kept in focus that CO2 is the enemy, not a particular drivetrain type.”

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“Then there’s the issue of the availability of raw materials, the supply chain that’s required to support the manufacture and the environmental impact of mining. Recycling can answer some of that, but do we have the answers to do that in a responsible way now? I’m not certain that we do. And then there’s the question of how we lower the amount of CO2 emitted in battery production. The list goes on.

“To be clear, these problems are surmountable. But it’s a matter of time and about a rate of growth, not an overnight switch. There’s an element of hubris to declaring how many electric cars should be made by a certain date, because nobody can accurately predict the supply of raw materials or the impact on the planet of creating and using them. That data simply doesn’t exist.

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“Fuel cells are an incredibly attractive means of fuelling vehicles for the future. They don’t require the scale of mining that a battery requires and they can be much closer to true zero-emissions vehicles than a BEV. But it’s going to be a long journey.

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... we have to recognise that there are other areas that need to decarbonise using hydrogen also – fertilisers, feedstock, petrochemicals, cement and steel making, for instance.

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... the best answer to reduce net CO2 emissions is to give each customer, regardless of circumstance, a way for them to most contribute to CO2 reduction. In other words, we believe that diverse circumstances call for diverse solutions.” READ MORE

EVs Aren’t a ‘Silver Bullet’ for Climate Change, Says Toyota’s Top Scientist -- Toyota’s lab coat-in-chief thinks people are being a little too bearish about hybrids and hydrogen. (The Drive)

Manchin, Playing to the Home Crowd, Is Fighting Electric Cars to the End: The West Virginia senator, who holds the swing vote in negotiations for a budget plan, wants to cut incentives. The president and most Senate Democrats say buyer credits are crucial to fight climate change. (New York Times)

The False ‘Green Jobs’ Promise: Ford may lay off 8,000 workers to meet its federal electric-vehicle mandate. (Wall Street Journal)

Ford CEO Doesn't Deny Report of 8,000 Job Cuts to Ramp Up Electric Push (Newsweek; includes VIDEO)

Americans support incentives for electric vehicles but are divided over buying one themselves (Pew Research Center)

Why the Electric Car Revolution Won't Change Everything -- Building EVs isn’t as simple as some want you to believe, and it might not be any cheaper.. (Motor Trend)

A handful of states are driving nearly all U.S. electric car adoption (Axios)

Australian bank will end loans for new gas and diesel cars in shift to electric vehicles: Electric vehicles only make up about 2% of the market for cars in Australia (Fox Business)

Climate Disasters Risk Putting a Damper on Electric-Car Making -- Droughts in China and Germany are giving the industry a glimpse of the threats posed by global warming. (Bloomberg)

The barriers to an EV revolution (Axios)

Big hurdles on the road to moving millions of U.S. drivers into EVs -- Persuading a reluctant Congress to spend big on electric vehicles may have been the easy part. Now millions of Americans need to be enticed to buy them. (Washington Post)

California Wants Residents to Slow Down on Charging all the EVs -- Just over a week after announcing a 2035 ban on gas vehicle sales, California wants EV owners to not charge their cars as much because the grid can't take it. (Jalopnik)

Why Toyota – the world’s largest automaker – isn’t all-in on electric vehicles (CNBC)

Bosch Warns Auto Industry About Putting All Its Eggs In The Lithium-Ion Basket (Clean Technica)

Toyota CEO doubles down on EV strategy amid criticism it’s not moving fast enough (CNBC)

Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda talks about why he isn’t all-in on EVs — and what made him do a ‘happy dance’ (CNBC)

Exclusive: Toyota scrambles for EV reboot with eye on Tesla (Reuters)

Not So Fast on Electric Cars -- Toyota’s CEO delivers a timely warning, and many states echo it. (Wall Street Journal)

The Expensive And Harmful Truth About Electric Vehicles (Forbes; inlcudes VIDEO)

Opinion: Industry’s last great electric-car skeptic accepts the inevitable (Washington Post)

Excerpt from Newsweek: Ford also announced new battery material deals, saying it would be adding lithium iron phosphate cell chemistry and nickel cobalt manganese for electric vehicle batteries. READ MORE

Excerpt from Pew Research Center: A recent Pew Research Center survey – conducted before news of the potential Senate deal – found that a broad majority of U.S. adults support providing incentives to increase the use of electric or hybrid vehicles.

At the same time, however, Americans are divided over whether they personally would consider buying an electric vehicle the next time they’re shopping for a new car or truck, and a majority oppose phasing out gas-powered vehicles in the years ahead.

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When it comes to current rates of ownership, around one-in-ten U.S. adults (9%) say they currently own an electric or hybrid vehicle, slightly above the 7% of Americans who said the same in April 2021.

While hybrid and electric vehicle ownership is increasing, the public leans against phasing out the production of gas-powered vehicles.

Overall, 55% of U.S. adults say they would oppose a proposal to phase out production of gasoline-powered cars and trucks by 2035, while 43% support the idea. Opposition today is slightly higher today than it was in April 2021, when 51% opposed and 47% favored the idea.

Democrats and Republicans (including those who lean to each party) continue to be deeply divided over whether to end the production of cars and trucks with internal combustion engines. About two-thirds of Democrats (65%) favor phasing out gasoline-powered cars and trucks by 2035. In contrast, just 17% of Republicans support the idea, while 82% oppose it.

Among Democrats, a large majority of liberals (77%) favor phasing out the production of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035. Moderate and conservative Democrats are more closely divided: 55% favor this idea, while 44% oppose it. READ MORE

Excerpt from Clean Technica: The head of mobility for Bosch warns the world needs an alternative to lithium-ion batteries in order to avoid a supply disruption. -- Markus Heyn, head of mobility services for Bosch, has some strong opinions about the auto industry’s reliance on lithium-ion batteries. Automotive News Europe reports that he told German newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung recently that the industry should look at the turmoil caused when Russia decided to shut off methane supplies to Europe. The result is chaos — soaring electricity prices, people freezing in their homes, factories unable to produce goods because of energy restrictions, and the like.

“We are currently seeing the consequences of the gas shortage for Germany and Europe because we prepared too few alternatives,” Heyn said. “In the automotive industry, we should use this occasion to ask ourselves what we can do if there should ever be too few battery cells.”

If that were to happen, “everyone would certainly like to see an alternative to battery power. But this will only exist if we have prepared it in good time.” One alternative Heyn mentioned is fuel cells that use hydrogen and oxygen to make the electricity needed to power electric motors.

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What he is claiming is that as the world embraces batteries as the pathway to a sustainable future, we should have a backup plan in case things go awry on the way to our energy utopia. Common sense says there should always be a Plan B in case Plan A doesn’t work out. It’s hard to argue with that.

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Right now, we have almost more solar energy than we need during the height of the day. In fact, much of it gets wasted because it can’t be put to use right away. Many believe that excess energy should be used to make green hydrogen, which will serve as a form of battery itself.

Make it today, use it to power a fuel cell vehicle or a zero emissions steel factory tomorrow. What’s wrong with that? From a Muskian point of view, it is horribly inefficient and therefore not worthy of consideration. But from a practical perspective, it may be just the ticket.

Prices for battery materials — especially lithium — have reached insane levels recently. ... The lithium-ion battery is an amazing thing, but it may be too expensive to power an EV revolution. Perhaps those precious battery cells should be reserved for use in energy storage rather than for people to potter down to the Piggly Wiggly in their electric cars to buy groceries.

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Fuel cells also lack the power of a lithium-ion battery pack to accelerate quickly — one of the features of electric cars that drivers like best. The cost of hydrogen fueling stations is outrageously high. Ford dealers may be up in arms about the cost of adding DC fast charging equipment at their dealerships, but that is a fraction of what adding hydrogen filling stations would cost. Finally, you can’t refuel your fuel cell car at home the way you recharge your EV.

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Maybe it’s time for EV advocates to lighten up on the whole fuel cell thing. READ MORE

Excerpt from CNBC:

Toyota Motor is standing by its electric vehicle strategy, including hybrids like the Prius, following criticism.
Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda said Thursday the company will move forward with plans to offer an array of so-called electrified vehicles for the foreseeable future.
Toyota plans to invest roughly $70 billion in electrified vehicles, including $35 billion in all-electric battery technologies over the nine years.

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Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, who has built a corporate strategy around the idea that EVs aren’t the only solution for automakers to reach carbon neutrality, said Thursday the company will move forward with plans to offer an array of so-called electrified vehicles for the foreseeable future – ranging from hybrids and plug-ins to all-electric and hydrogen electric vehicles.

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Toyoda addressed the need to convince skeptics of the company’s strategy, including government officials focusing regulations on all-electric battery vehicles, saying the automaker will “present the hard facts” about consumer adoption and the entire environmental impact of producing EVs compared with hybrid electrified vehicles.

Since the Prius launched in 1997, Toyota says it has sold more than 20 million electrified vehicles worldwide. The company says those sales have avoided 160 million tons of CO2 emissions, which is the equivalent to the impact of 5.5 million all-electric battery vehicles.

Toyoda’s remarks echoed comments he made to thousands of Toyota dealers and employees on Wednesday, saying the company will play “with all the cards in the deck” and offer a wide-array of vehicles for all customers.

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Toyoda doubled down on company expectations that all-electric vehicle adoption will “take longer to become mainstream” than many think. He said it will be “difficult” to fulfill recent regulations that call for banning traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines by 2035, like California and New York have said they will adopt.

Toyota executives, while increasing investments in all-electric vehicles, have argued such cars and trucks are one solution, not the solution, to meet tightening global emissions standards and achieve carbon neutrality. Toyota continues to invest in alternative solutions as well as hybrid vehicles such as the Prius, which combine EV technology with traditional internal combustion engines.

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The company has said its strategy is justified, as not all areas of the world will adopt EVs at the same pace due to the high cost of the vehicles as well as a lack of infrastructure.

Toyota’s strategy has been criticized by environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, which has ranked the Japanese automaker at the bottom of its auto-industry decarbonization ranking the past two years. READ MORE