Toyota chief scientist: A single pure electric model is wrong

Toyota insists that new calculations show that the popular EV-only strategy is not working.

Platt made this point during a recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He reiterated this attitude recently in Tokyo.

▍Time will tell

Platt believes that with lithium so scarce, automakers can reduce carbon emissions more quickly through a multi-pronged approach to electrification, including widespread deployment of hybrid vehicles, rather than focusing solely on pure electric vehicles. His calculations contradict those who have proposed banning new fuel-burning cars in an effort to slow global climate change.

"Time will prove that our view is correct," Platt said at a roundtable. "In any case, diverse power systems should be used around the world."

It's especially important to figure this out as more and more automakers plan to move away from internal combustion engines and pursue 100% electric vehicles as a path to carbon neutrality. Now Honda has joined Cadillac, Jaguar, Mini and Volvo in announcing it will only sell electric vehicles. The Volkswagen Group, Ford Motor and General Motors are also aggressively entering the field of electric vehicles.

By contrast, Toyota and other automakers including Hyundai Motor Group tend to favor a more balanced approach. Toyota, for example, plans to sell 5.5 million standard hybrids and plug-in hybrids annually by 2030, more than double last year’s global total of 2.6 million.

But this does not mean that Toyota is opposed to electric vehicles.

Instead, Toyota plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in electric vehicles and expects to sell 3.5 million pure electric vehicles by 2030, including 1 million from the Lexus brand. Lexus aims to sell only pure electric vehicles globally by 2035.

Despite Toyota's promises and its history as a pioneer in environmental protection, some investors, environmentalists and electric vehicle enthusiasts are increasingly criticizing Akio Toyoda for his role in the fast-growing automotive industry. The electric vehicle sector has been slow to move.

▍Amara ’s Law

Platt, a tall, lanky MIT graduate, is a wizard in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. He is also the CEO of Toyota Research Institute, Toyota's future technology research center in the United States.

One of Pratt’s recent projects is working out numbers on various pathways to carbon neutrality. His team revealed an inescapable fact - lithium is in short supply. Lithium is a key component of the lithium-ion batteries needed in pure electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and standard hybrid vehicles.

A shortage of lithium will make it difficult for the auto industry to meet the demand for all electric vehicles. Toyota concluded that to minimize carbon emissions, it made more sense to electrify as many vehicles as possible by spreading limited lithium supplies across them.

Pratt's reasoning is that it would be more appropriate to use the limited lithium in a small hybrid battery than in a powerful battery for a pure electric vehicle. In this way, more hybrid models can be supported, and their overall impact in reducing CO2 emissions will be greater than the smaller number of pure electric vehicles.

Platt compared today's craze for electric cars to yesterday's rush for autonomous driving. In this regard, he cited Amara's Law - people always overestimate the short-term benefits of a technology, but underestimate its long-term impact.

Lithium shortages and lack of charging infrastructure will inevitably create bottlenecks that hinder the large-scale promotion of pure electric vehicles in the next decade. Platt said very firmly.

“The crisis will come,” Platt said. “Time will tell. Shortages—not just of battery materials but also of charging infrastructure—will make it very clear that a single model is not suitable. Everybody, the best answer is actually a mix of different types of cars.”

▍ "If conditions permit"

First, assume that a fleet of 100 conventional internal combustion engine vehicles emits an average of 250 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer.

Second, assuming there is a limited amount of lithium, it can be used to create a 100 kilowatt-hour battery.

If all the lithium were deployed in a 100 kWh battery, it could power a top-of-the-line Tesla. In this case, the entire fleet will have 1 electric vehicle and 99 traditional fuel vehicles, and the average emissions of the fleet (100 vehicles) will drop to 248.5 grams per kilometer.

Third, spread the limited lithium across 90 conventional hybrid vehicles using 1.1 kWh batteries. The fleet will have 90 hybrid vehicles and 10 traditional fuel vehicles. In comparison, the overall fleet average emissions dropped to 205 grams per kilometer.

Counterintuitively, a large number of hybrid cars has a greater impact on CO2 than a small number of electric cars, even though hybrids still have gasoline engines.

Toyota says this nuance is being ignored in discussions about legislating electric vehicles to achieve carbon neutrality.

"If you look closely at the commitments made by many different companies - that we will get there by a certain year...usually they will put a little asterisk after that, and the asterisk means, if conditions allow." Platt said.

▍Huge challenge

Platt criticized this flashy ambition as empty talk.

"We have to be more mature and stop wishful thinking." He said, "What we should really discuss is the constraints on the development of the world's resources, including physical resources, charging infrastructure and renewable energy... How can we reduce the increasing amount of carbon dioxide Total amount?”

"This should be a mature discussion, not dreamy talk," Platt added.

Toyota cited several authoritative forecast data. Before 2040, lithium battery demand will continue to exceed lithium supply. One data extrapolation shows that supply accounted for only one-third of total global demand during this period.

The main reason is that it only takes 2 to 3 years to open a new battery factory, but it takes 16 years to dig a new mine. So waiting for all the mining work to be ready is also a time delay, Platt said.

It's not just lithium that's affected.

Industry studies show that many other metals needed for batteries are also in short supply, including nickel and manganese. In addition to limiting the supply of electric vehicles, shortages of these materials could drive up battery costs. Pratt predicted that higher selling prices, in turn, could dampen consumer demand for electric vehicles.

"We have to somehow get CO2 emissions down as much and as quickly as we can, despite the huge shortages," Platt said. "And we're going to continue to have huge shortages of battery materials. As you can imagine, this is a huge challenge."

Platt was inspired to study the battery problem because his family owned a Tesla Model X. The car has an impressive range of up to 300 miles. But his wife usually drives less than 30 miles a day. He pointed out that this situation means that 90% of lithium-ion batteries have become a liability.

"It's an incredible waste of material." Toyota's chief scientist believes that automakers need to be more honest with the public and policymakers.