Everyone thought Toyota was Nokia when Tesla appeared... I think those days are over. Toyota survived that one already with a facelift for Prius.

BYD Dolphin base in Japan is $19k, the new Racco kei car is $14k. They're not doing so well - they just have no selling point. They're not even the cheapest of EVs in Japan, let alone the cheapest of all cars for Japan - $19k is literally 4k over the current gen JDM Corolla. I think that is an indication that BYD has no secret sauce but their pricing are just introductory one to starve off last bits of Western industrial capacities spared by Japanese automakers.

Toyota still sells 10M cars a year and has an enormous manufacturing, supplier and dealer network. That doesn’t disappear overnight because BYD can sell a $14k EV in one market

Toyota sells more cars per year than the US manufactures combined.

(Though there is some overlap as Toyota also builds in the US)

Toyota is riding on reputation of quality. If they can keep quality high and maintain the reputation, they will be okay.

You’re off your head if you think Toyota's days are numbered.

They make the best utes and 4x4 in the world.

Quality matters though. A 10 years warranty as long as you do the prescribed maintenance with hassle free ownership is a major reason why Toyota’s clientele sticks.

It’s not impossible to unseat them. But it’s also far from given.

> BYD is selling EVs for US$14K in Australia

Tech people seem to really be confused about the concepts of revenue and net income; must be the whole VC we lose money on every item, but make it up on volume thing.

> Indeed. Toyota's days are numbered.

Uhhhh excuse me? I just bought a new Toyota Camry Hybrid because its range is 650 miles on a single gas tank. I can drive from Bay Area to LA, drive around LA for 5 days and then drive back home on 1.5 tanks of gas. I love it, and I don't have to spend hours charging. My other car is a Tesla, which I also love but I will never use it for road trips. My friend drove from Chicago to SF and had to charge 15+ times.

> Indeed. Toyota's days are numbered.

> BYD is selling EVs for US$14K in Australia.

It's not even about BYD. All of Europe is now buying EVs like crazy. How many of these are Toyota? One 40k€ model basically.

This has been said so many times, yet Toyota's sales keep growing and incumbent EV makers plateaud.

Except Chinese ones, of course.

The weakness of the Yen does a lot for Toyota. You can pick a new Corolla for US$14K if you are buying in Japan.

BYD trucks haven't won a war yet, so at least in that segment Toyota is safe for now.

Toyota have more or less explicitly stated the thing which I think all the "legacy" manufacturers are struggling with: moving to EVs obliterates the engine division, which is both part of their competitive advantage and would make a lot of people redundant. A more middle class version of the transition away from coal mining making a lot of dead mining towns. And similarly, it has to happen in order to keep global warming below 2C.

The aesthetic has nothing to do with it being an EV. They just designed it to be ugly.

Cue the adage "we don't want your electric car, we want your car, electric".

Arguably hybrids rely on software much more than EVs do since it has to all the motor/battery management EVs do, but also coordination with the engine and transmission which EVs do not have, and Toyota has been the leader in that area for almost 3 decades now.

Unless you mean software as in fart apps on the touch screen, then yeah, Toyota lags in that department.

I don't think "which one to get" has been a problem for choosing cars -- much easier than choosing between i3/i5/i7 (or whatever they are called these days), and most consumers understand what they mean and the tradeoffs. It basically comes down to these questions -- do you want to pay more on the car to save on gas in the long run (hybrid)? Do you want to be able to plugin and charge your vehicle similar to an EV (PHEV)? Do you want to get rid of gas completely (EV)? And I'm sure salespeople will happily walk this over for a buyer.

> efficient structural layout

They don't need to be the most efficient on the market. Efficiency varies a lot among cars, and people don't make purchase decisions solely based on that (if at all).

> Which one to get?

The one that suits your use-case.

Don't have any way to charge it? Get a hybrid.

Don't go on long road trips, or when you do, you're OK with waiting a bit? Get an electric.

Want to spend a fortune on petrol? Get a gas one.

Otherwise, get a PIH.

IMO a prospective car buyer likely has a preference towards a certain drivetrain already.

An age old choice betwen petrol and diesel never seemed to be a problem, and electric vs hybrid/ICE are way more different to each other.

And as for the car software- after driving a new Prius I don't see any areas where Tesla's or BYD software is significantly ahead unless we are talking navigation which is shit either way, and I'd rather prefer car play

Not to be confused with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Modular_Platform . It seems like every surviving manufacturer has one of these, especially when the company like Stellantis is a cut-and-shut of struggling brands.

Might be true in some countries but EVs are rapidly becoming the highest sellers in many others. My experience is that once people experience an EV for the first time they prefer it over a hybrid/ICE car, unless there's a practical reason for needing hybrid range (which most people will argue but don't need day to day).

You mean American consumers. Toyota still has to consider the rest of the world while America is basically a shrinking market now.

Consumers don't want an expensive EV. Now that EVs are becoming cheaper than ICE vehicles, they will take over the market because they are the better product.

> The reality is, however, that consumers don't want EVs for a myriad of reasons and prefer hybrids.

I think this is completely true for the period 2010 - 2030.

But from 2030 onwards, it seems 4 things are structurally different in many markets: 1. energy per kilometer, improved about 30% (from about 5 km per kWh to about 6.5) 2. kwh of useable battery, increased by about 80% 3. chargers per person, increased by about 20x 4. Charge speed increased by 5x from about 50 kW to 250 kW

All these figures are approximate averages for normal EVs, the very low / very high end are different.

So we have more battery, which we use less of to drive, which we can charge faster, and at way more places.

The reality is that an average European for example drives about 30km per day. Take the base model Tesla 3, it has 575 km of range and can charge 285 km in 15 minutes. The base model. So for the average driver that's a ~15 minute charge, every 10 days. For the average person an EV makes more and more sense.

That's today, for a base model car, which is suffering from cheap and quality competition out of China that will be even better.

Cars that will be released in 3 years from now (>2030) are even more favorable. I honestly think the 'myriad of reasons to prefer a hybrid' is soon going to be an exception, not the rule, for newly purchased cars (of course the 2nd hand market is a different, delayed story). And compromising your car design won't let you compete with manufacturers that don't compromise and go fully EV.

If you consider the squeeze that regulators worldwide are going to be putting on gas the next decades, I think going full-EV on new models makes sense. Sure you can keep selling some ICE cars but developing entirely new ICE models, and mixing an EV into them?

Current Toyota engines - several years in production already - used in hybrids have 40% thermodynamic efficiency, new Chinese engines (Geely and BYD) - 45% and soon coming out Toyota engine is claimed to hit 50%. With the numbers like this the hybrids ( and plugins, given the falling prices and increasing charge/weight density of the batteries) seem to still have a long and profitable path forward.

Granted it may result in Toyota losing the battle in the long run. On the other hand any large improve in batteries may gradually bring Toyota into EV world just by letting to upsize the plugins' batteries.

Personally i like very much my 2015 Prius Plugin, and the only thing i'd want about it is to have additional 20KWh of batteries (may be one day i'll throw them in myself :)

Seems like a chicken-and-egg problem. Part of the reason consumers don't want EVs is because there are limited options that are any good.

In all markets where Chinese EVs are available, BEV sales significantly outstrip hybrids in 2026. EU, Australia, you name it.

At the end of the day hybrids are a transitional technology, and it makes sense to ditch the ICE entirely as soon as you can.

What consumers want varies a lot by country and region. It becomes apparent if you look at a map, e.g. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/european-alternative-fuels-ob... , that there's a sort of ""geographic contagion"" as adoption spreads out from Norway.

Part of this is charger infrastructure. But I think part of it is also social proof: once someone you know has an EV, or you start seeing them parked around you, it looks like a more realistic option. People don't like the unknown.

Differential cost also matters. This doesn't have to be subsidies, but most countries are afraid to tax new ICE vehicles to the extent that Scandinavian countries do.

That is not true of Australia consumers.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/04/ev-sales...

I think if OEMs prioritized phevs more as a gateway drug, the transition to EVs would have been a lot less painful in NA. Even just driving a PHEV with 50km electric range makes you appreciate how great an EV can be.

Sadly, there's few good PHEV options. And even Toyota underserves this market.

"Consumers don't want EVs" is an absolutely insane take. You're disqualified from this discussion.

It's not consumers decision, it's a dealers mafia. If everyone on EV, you will not change oil and other gasoline attributes repairs. If you have hybrid, it's a cherry on the top, best of both worlds, pay for regular issues of gas and electric car combined :)

Further, Japan is especially hard hit by the Strait closing. Toyota may have thought they had years before they had to go fully EV, but the world has forced their hands. They need to be offering options today.

The new Chevy Bolt EV is also a "normal car but electric" to me. It's not a car, but it's not a huge SUV either. It has physical controls, you can disable the modem by pulling the OnStar fuse, and it has a decent range and decent fast charging.

But isn't that what the Corolla was?

Note that this is a concept, I've never seen an actual production model look anything like the concept.

My father has a hybrid model, 2023 MY I think. It has physical controls for the radio, for AC and related things, for the heated seats, for the various "driver assist" features (like auto high beams, a parking thing (no idea what that is), radar, lane assist). It has a touchscreen, but that only seems to handle the maps, fancy radio controls (think equalizer and such), and other "car settings", whatever those are. You can absolutely drive it without ever having to interact with the touchscreen while doing normal things. I hate touchscreen controls as much as the next HN poster, but I have strictly 0 beef with the Corolla on this front. Door handles and windows work exactly the same as on my 2005 "dumb" car. Hell, I think it even has a physical toggle for the "automatic night mode" on the rear-view mirror, while mine couldn't be "non automatic".

To GP's point, I don't think it ever was an "entry level" car, just a "normal compact" car. I don't see why adding an electric drivetrain would have someone expect it would somehow become a basic, "entry-level" car.

I don't say we don't need those, but the Corolla never seems to have targeted that market, at least here in Europe. There always were plenty similar-sized cheaper and more basic cars from domestic manufacturers. Is it different in the US?

Kia Niro is where the Koreans have invested their stuipd; a stateful panel in which volume and temperature knobs are multiplexed, and and so are tactile-free touch places on the panel between them. And it won't stay in the same mode; it changes it behind your back. You think the knob is volume because you last tweaked it a minute ago, but nope, you are messing with the temperature now.

Had found this in the 2nd generation Nissan Leaf. It would have been perfect but for the slow and non-standard charger.

Looking forward to the Volkswagen ID Polo hitting the used market in a couple of years. Physical buttons, decent range and charge times, and it’s rated to pull reasonable loads.

A lot of EV design seems to assume every familiar control is a problem that needs to be reinvented

3 button presses just to start driving. I hated kona so bad. Annoying bing bongs, no app and of course we hit wheel of fortune issue.

I think Volkswagen ID.4 is alright. It's perhaps a bit small. Also - I kind of like the ID.Buzz though not sure if it will sell.

Not quite normal but not "future" - the Renault 5 E-tech electric is nice but I don't think it's available in the US.

The OG Ioniq (not the 5) was also sold as two kinds of hybrid (self-charging and charging) as well as full EV.

Maybe they could shave $3-5000 off the cost by not giving it a "high-tech interior", going completely against the design philosophy of the car in the first place.

Omitting the cellular modem would be a nice way to save a few bucks, and would save me the effort of pulling the fuse or disassembling the dash in order to silence Internet traffic to and from the car. But how will Toyota sell my driving habits to car insurance companies then?

I'm not in the US, but here in Europe Toyota's hold their value really well (too well I'd say). Is that reflected in the US financing rates, so you can get it for really low payments?

That's not bad. Those are going to be some fantastic value used cars, eventually.

It's not even "concept car from 2035", it's "concept car from 2015 trying to look like a car from a sci-fi story set in 2035"

And I agree. People like normal cars, people like normal door handles, people like A/C and heater knobs, people like PRNDL levers. None of that has changed just because the drivetrain uses a different kind of engine. Why is it so hard to make that, but electric? Why does "electric motor" somehow mean "all controls must be on the iPad"?

I hope it's just a phase that's about to reverse. Maybe they felt the need to go all futuristic design to cash in on how electric drivetrains used to feel futuristic. Maybe, as electric drivetrains just become "normal, boring" technology, we get options with normal designs too.

Depends on where you live. In states like Connecticut, or certain areas of California (PG&E Bay Area customers), the ROI is very long or simply doesn't pencil out at all. I think for Connecticut, which has high electricity prices but low gas prices, it's just net negative. For me in SF, despite high gas prices the ROI is just too long (5-10 years?), and that's before factoring in the ~$5000+ required for updating my electrical box, which is a conservative estimate because now the city requires the meter to be outside the house, whereas it's currently in the garage.

It's not just that. EV charging and solar resources have improved while fossil fuels have become more expensive. The maths is very regional. Some countries are better at producing electricity or oil than others.

"BTW: The price premium for electric is offset by the lower cost of electricity…"

How about depreciation though?

My sense is that after so many years (5?, 8?) an EV is going to be desperate for a new battery. That's, what, $5K (10K?) or more? It's like if an ICE car needed a new engine after 65K miles.

I assume the resell value for an 8-year old electric needing a new battery is close to zilch.

I want an EV, but they have to come way down in price.

Yes, concept cars are more about the stylistic "vibe" than actual design cues.

Wonder if they'll have different battery sizes like Hyundai does.

The 2026 Leaf made some big improvements. Liquid cooled battery, faster charging, longer range.

It has the usual modern car cost cutting where steering wheel inputs are plastic panels with mysterious capacitive regions and no feedback so you can't feel if you've successfully pressed anything, whether you pressed the right thing, or if your fingertips are too dry and don't register. Most of the center console inputs are replaced with a screen with another row of cheap capacitive touch icons below it.

Charging is behind the times again with an awkward 2-port arrangement, but it's different from the previous gen's J1772 L1/L2 and CHAdeMO for L3 up to 50 kW.

For 2026 they replaced the CHAdeMO port with NACS, supporting a maximum of 150 kW L3 charging, but it still uses a separate J1772 port for L1/L2 unlike every other car where the NACS port does both.

All things considered it's a solid entry level EV.

There used to be huge FUD campaigns against Leafs, and against not many others. Perhaps because Leaf at face value could have rendered entry trim Model S and Model 3 pointless.

There is also a chance I won't buy a car without knobs. Car software has been historically so bad. My latest doesn't have a volume knob so my front passengers can't turn the volume at all (the UX is sliding the screen from the side to get navigation bars to appear which contain a volume button that you have to drag laterally - no increase/decrease software buttons). Otherwise it's a great car and that is literally the one drawback.

I must be the minority surely, but given the choice between knobs and screen, knobs are the deciding factor. Even if it's more expensive, it's UX that you use permanently while operating heavy machinery!

Id argue by an order of magnitude. Knobs require cables, connectors and assembly; they also require dedicated robots and/or a human to test them in the assembly line.

They've been making concept cars that entire 20 year period.

They just get completely watered down for production. As will happen here. That's why they're concepts.

I don't mind analogue buttons or anything and I think screens can kind of suck especially with Android and auto manufacturer abandonware, but with the Tesla I now own I'm always wondering what people are using all these buttons for - thinking back to my previous Hondas. In the Tesla I've got climate control, heated seats, and music/navigation. Some of the other features like adjusting mirrors I can use the multi-purpose buttons for in the correct context. On any given drive I hop in, put my phone on the charger and don't use it, and then just drive.

What am I missing? Or is it just that folks want buttons? Is it the design?

No one actually wants highly analog car. Also it's illegal to sell in most countries. Mandatory cameras, safety features, emergency assistance etc

the slate truck is about as close as we'll get to that.

Hyryder is not an EV, it's hybrid

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It's weird to me because they apparently have the same issues across their gas cars that sell enormously well.

My friend with a '25 taco has issues with remote start, fob range and infotainment stability.

My friend with a '24 corolla has the same issues on his car.

I hadn't heard of the uncharted, sounds like it's closer to a C-HR electric than anything else? not that there's anything wrong with that. I love subes and drive an old one but they have a certain vibe that I wonder if the Toyota collab takes away.

all kind of academic since I'm planning on getting a slate but it's nice to know Subaru is bouncing back from that Solterra disaster.

I own very first model Y, but wouldn’t buy the facelift. Changing gears swiping touchscreen is too much despite many real improvements. Build quality is definitely not premium, but it was single electrical vehicle I was able to afford and use as a substitute for petrol car. Many others at the time were good only as 2nd or 3rd car in the household.

I've been in my friends Model 3 many times and it's full of "oh why didn't anyone think of this before" and EV-centric choices. There's stupid stuff too (no turning stalks or shifter) but even ignoring the software choices it's really that much better of a car.

> The software and interface are all completely fine

Perhaps whatever platform mine, my friends corolla and friends taco are on is just busted but I wish it had even 70% reliability of just working when I'm using anything software related.

> Are they really so much better?

They have ups and downs.

The build quality has improved significantly, though I would not put them on the level of a Toyota or anything. Maybe Ford.

The software is mostly quite a lot better, the quality of the infotainment exceeds almost anything else you can buy. The remote control ability is also exceptional. But they have glaring omissions like a refusal to support CarPlay. Or a persistent need to prove that vision can replace a bog standard IR rain sensor (it still cannot).

They do get some things right that for whatever reason seem difficult to get from other makers (like a simple climate hold when you park, or dog mode). And love it or hate it, FSD is light years ahead of anything else you can buy as a consumer. I won't pay for it, because I like to drive, but it now exceeds any expectation I ever had for it. I would wager that if I put grandma's house in the nav system and told the car to drive all the way there (about 175 miles distant), it would most probably take me all the way from my garage to grandma's driveway (and park) without me doing anything other than putting it in drive and hitting start.

I loathe Elon and this was a pretty big consideration, but I do not make purchases based on single factors, and overall the value proposition was impossible to ignore. Partly this is because there is basically zero competition for an M3P.

I got a Model 3 in 2020 and I still don't see anything competitive from other manufacturers. There are so many little things that it does right. You pair your phone with the car, so when you walk up to it and pull on the door handle, it opens. If you're not next to the car and someone else tries to open the door, it's locked. Each driver has their own profile which saves things like UI preferences, acceleration settings, seat position, side mirror angles, climate control, etc. So if my wife was the last person to drive the car and I open the driver's side door, the seat moves to my position. The mirrors adjust to my settings, and so on.

Even though my car has the older hardware, the self-driving is far beyond anything else I've used. It makes road trips far less tiring. I basically sit in the driver's seat while it drives from charging station to charging station. I've gone hundreds of miles without touching the steering wheel. Usually I intervene because I want to park in a specific spot, as the car tends to choose spots that are less convenient. Also it likes to park in my neighbor's driveway instead of mine. (The driveways are about 5 feet apart.)

The phone app lets you control all kinds of stuff remotely. I like to turn on the climate control before going to the car, that way my kid's car seat won't be uncomfortably warm on a sunny day. You can view the cameras from your phone, lock/unlock the car, open/close the windows, and open the trunk & frunk. And it works anywhere there's cell network connectivity, not just within direct radio range of the car.

I'd love it if more cars had these sorts of features, but I don't see it happening any time soon. Tesla seems to be a software company that happens to make cars, while everyone else is a car company that happens to make some software.

I've had not a single "quality issue" with my Model 3 other than the cabin air filter. The car interior stinks worse than any other car I've owned, if it isn't replaced on time! I too have heard a ton of bad things on Reddit. Then I went on the subreddits where people actually owned them. Those folks really seemed to like their cars. I can't say I LOVE the car... removing turn signals, wiper controls and ability to physically shift into reverse seem like brain-dead moves. Otherwise though? It's a lovely care to drive.

the leaf is the cheap shitbox this country needs!

This is what the market is being told to expect from an EV.

The Dacia Spring is what the market actually seems to want:

https://www.dacia.co.uk/hybrid-and-electric-range/spring-cit...

It's a car, not an Autobot.

Yeah, a lot of people on Hacker News are asking for a bare-bones EV, but that market isn't big enough for US or Western carmakers to justify building one. Still, I'd bet that over the next few years, as batteries keep getting cheaper, we'll see plenty of these bare-bones cars in Africa and Asia. They're already building electric tuk-tuks, and as solar power electrifies more of the world, we'll get bare-bones EVs.

Toyota's EVs share most of the same components as their non-EVs, like door handles and screens. They have become the fourth best selling EVs behind the Teslas and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 in recent months.

It isn't what I want and it seems many people on- and off-line agree with me.

How do you know if there isn't a sensible car to compare it with? Nobody wants something that looks like a tesla

I drive an EV. It sucks. Sucks. Sucks. Worst driving experience of all cars I've owned. The lack of buttons and crappy HVAC controls are things I notice daily.

Outside of Tesla owners, I don't know a single EV owner who praises these elements. The EV market does not want this.

at first, sure, but they've since donated large amounts of money to climate-change deniers who fight hard against electrification and emission standards

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/toyota-scrutinized-after-rest...

I do feel like y'all need to read the news more instead of just going by brand rep

They have also been slowly, but surely, moving all their vehicles to HEV/PHEVs (at least in Canada). For example, you can only buy a new Camry, Sienna or Rav-4 (most popular SUV in the world) in hybrid/PHEV form.

please, I beg of you HNers, maybe read the news instead of just going by your brand sentiment

https://www.citizen.org/article/driving-denial-how-toyotas-u...

> Over the last three electoral cycles, Toyota has become the top auto industry financier of climate deniers[4]. It has helped to finance campaigns of 207 climate-denying congressional candidates, more than twice as many as Ford and nearly 50% more than General Motors, the only other automakers with federal political action committees (PACs)

> [Toyota] is bankrolling an army of climate denying lawmakers and lobbying aggressively against emissions and fuel economy standards

We don't really have a limited supply of batteries. At least not so limited as to prevent every passenger vehicle having a large enough one.

I mean for gosh sakes, they make semitrucks, boats, and planes with batteries. Huge grid storage systems as well.

There is no limited supply of batteries. Production is growing and prices are declining rapidly.

based on what? there's so many sources noting their anti-EV lobbying

https://chargedevs.com/newswire/toyota-actively-lobbies-agai...

https://thedriven.io/2026/06/17/japan-car-giants-still-pushi...

https://blog.ucs.org/dave-reichmuth/why-does-toyota-oppose-c...

and here's their CEO going on a tirade about Japan's EV-adoption mandate: https://evannex.com/blogs/news/puzzled-by-toyota-ceo-s-anti-...

They were AMAZINGLY anti-EV a few years ago. They couldn't shut the heck up about hydrogen being endgame and even shipped a flagship car that used the technology to prove it. (It barely sold, you couldn't refuel it outside of the Bay Area and the entire program was eventually written off.)

I don't believe either of those statements.

That could be caused by EU regulation because they have to meet fleet emission standards. Pretty much the only way to get there is to sell some EVs.

https://blog.ucs.org/dave-reichmuth/why-does-toyota-oppose-c...

it's sunk cost on their hydrogen cell R&D - they want there to still be room for that instead of going with electrification but they have to diversify their portfolio to keep up with markets

> "Toyota in particular has been vocal that they are uninterested in making ZEVs available in California. [...] Toyota has invested in hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles [instead]."

Yep bz, chr, bz woodland and the upcoming highlander Bev, at least - but they’re late to the game for sure.

They have large electric cars / SUVs, but not small EVs.

Speaking as a car enthusiast who used to build cars and bikes in my youth, I would enjoy this very much.

Speaking as an adult who reluctantly owns a car because inadequate public transport and poor city planning force me to, I would want nothing less than a project car to buy groceries in (think of the insurance costs).

I don't care about flexing on people, I just need something that requires minimal maintenance, gets me to/from the supermarket and plays music/maps off my phone. 0-100 in 8 seconds and a 300km range is just fine by me.

I get funny looks from friends because I own a used 2006 Corolla despite being able to afford a much nicer car. I just don't care enough to spend 40k - 60k on a spaceship.

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Meanwhile, batteries keep getting better and cheaper, in most places the charging networks are growing, and charging is getting faster.

Toyota, like many companies that succeed based on merits beyond the aesthetic, secretly dreams of being an aesthetics-first company like, say, Porche or Ferrari, and always tries their hardest to reject reality so that they can do the sexy-but-awful thing instead of the amazing-but-ugly thing.

You see this recently over the last couple years in tech where everyone is "an AI company" even when they make something totally unrelated - same impulse, different industry.

Yep, the only thing I love about newer cars are dynamic cruise/lane keep assist, blind spot monitoring, and memory seats. Cars from 20 years ago had better controls and were likely cheaper to repair in most cases.

Main car of anime Initial-D is a Toyota. They revived it a while back. So they are doing that kind of aesthetic.

How are they subsidizing ICE production over EVs? Or is it just that the subsidies are easier to get if you don't need to include rare earth elements, which EVs require, in your inventory?

Various OEMs have sort of soft-exited the US EV market, but that doesn't mean they're not offering the cars or stop development of them in other markets.

It just means the US market is too unattractive and low-volume for EVs that aren't a Tesla.

America, where they are pulling models. I have PHEVs and enjoy them, but I am aware that many people are not going to buy EVs with their current specs. Either they live somewhere cold, where range will fluctuate and not be sufficient at times of the year, or they live somewhere that has power outages frequently enough (or at times of emergency) that they do not consider pure EVs. This is especially true for people with only one car. Families that have multiple cars are obviously more open to having one car that's an EV.

You are forgetting the elephant in the room: the charger at home and all the implications that brings in between costs and actual possibility of installation at all.

Yeah Toyota's PHEVs are quite nice, but the price premium is too much. It basically makes no sense unless you can charge for free at work, and even then you'd have to drive 50,000 miles before it pays off. If you're like most of us and you pay for electricity at home, the inflection point is even further out. How many people even keep cars for that long anymore?

It axed the F150 Lightning. They might have later announced that they're going to bring it back as an EREV (pretty much PHEV), but that seemed like a separate decision. If it were the same decision, they would have announced it at the time of the cancellation announcement, to make it seem more like a pivot.

I think the US is still pretty far from saturating the potential market of garage-owning car buyers with EVs, but that is a major hurdle for people who rent or street park and might be interested in saving gas money.

I'm not sure why you got downvoted as I think you are mostly correct.

We've had an EV for 1.5 years and love it. In fact any time I'm in a gas-powered car it feels downright primitive with all the noises and smells and sluggish performance. The range anxiety we experienced at first has completely given way to it being awesome that I never have to stop at gas stations and don't have to waste time/money on oil changes.

But if we couldn't charge at home it would likely be more expensive to fuel than a gas car instead of being much cheaper (but this depends on your local electricity and gas prices).

However, I do think there is still a big pool in the US who haven't even ridden in one to know what they are missing. Americans have never let poor gas mileage stop them from buying a car (or truck) that is bigger or faster or somehow "better" than the economical choice.

True, and it's especially interesting since Toyota I think offers some vehicles only as hybrids/PHEVs. For example, the Camry and RAV4 fall into this category, I think. It's deceptive because it makes it look like the RAV4 PHEV isn't that much more than the base model. But since the base model is already more expensive than an ICE would have been because it's a hybrid, this isn't the true differential between ICE and PHEV.

In general, they've been pretty uninspired. That said, the Hyundai Kona/Kia Niro cousins were pretty much just "replace the engine with a motor and bolt the battery to the bottom" and those were perfectly reasonable cars for the vast majority of actual needs.

Right now it looks to me like companies that didn't plunge into EVs are part-way through the destruction stage. I mostly hear negativity about the state of most of the traditional car companies.

I'm not in the US though, so I can see the uptake of EVs in, essentially, a free market.

Too early to say. they seem to be getting their rest if world market eaten by BYD etc. but it will take some years to play out

You clearly haven't driven both.

Who cares if the roof is higher off the ground? The EV6's center of mass is much lower than the Porsche's.

The EV6 GT suspension is vastly superior, and it's active electronic; the Taycan just toggles between two settings ("normal" and "high-clearance" for going over speed bumps).

The EV6 GT's rear differential has electronic control; you can feel it when you take freeway turns at >80mph -- your brain tells you "the rear wheels should be fishtailing"... but they just don't. It's crazy. I think they actually factor in the steering wheel position, something you can't do with a simple mechanical differential. I've never felt anything like that in any other car.

But it still has the Kia badge. And the cheap interior. It's a shame; they could've used this car to launch an "Acura"-like brand with the EV6 GT as their NSX.

Still, Porsche should be embarrassed of the Taycan. That car is a joke.

That Venn diagram will collapse to the same thing very quickly once someone actually brings out a good electric sports car. Electric has significant advantages in acceleration. As soon as you can use an electric car on a race track, people will discover they're blowing away their competition. On the track we are talking about the difference between your losses during shifts and the full torque right off the line, which is maybe only a second per lap, but a second would be shatteringly huge in a race.

Of course a lot of race rules are very strict and an electric car wouldn't qualify and also most electric cars don't have enough power to show this off but the potential is right there.

Yeah I've heard, but this is like the fourth or fifth "greenlight rumor". There were several "electric 911" rumors that fell flat.

I would prefer a two-door two-seater.

If they actually build the damn thing I will certainly try it and probably buy one. But I'm not getting my hopes up.

Tesla suspension.

Hard pass.

You can buy the Model 3 for $37k, which is not far off $30k, and definitely not in the premium segment.

Upfront cost is dropping and as electric cars become popular their used car market will increase.

You're wrong. The best-selling vehicle is the Flying Pigeon bicycle, the standard bicycle from Mao-era China with more than 500 million produced since 1950.

Me too. Not for me, but for my kids. The idea of a dead nuts reliable Toyota EV is appealing. They're not going to blow your socks off with performance or tech, but combining Toyota manufacturing prowess with the inherent superior reliability of EVs could make for one hell of a long term ownership experience.

To be clear, exterior design only. The interior looks stupid. The seats look deadly to me at 50 with back problems.

I really did think Toyota would have a nice market if they stuck to hybrids.

And that's just operating cost. PHEVs have a higher maintenance cost and worse reliability than pure EVs, typically. Certainly higher complexity and more parts.

On top of that, my Lightning was less expensive than the gas equivalent. I've been winning since day one. If I had to sell it today (that would make me so sad), the depreciation would be the lowest of any car I've ever owned.

You really do have to do the math using your local costs. I'm in a place with slightly cheaper gas but much cheaper electricity than California. Combined with cheap night time electricity I'm paying under $0.03 per mile for a large EV. I would need 150 mpg vehicle (assuming $4.50 gas) to beat that. However I'm cheating a bit - I'm on a plan which raises my day time electric costs a small amount in exchange for half-price at night, so they're getting some of that back, and I should amortize charger and electrician work ($1600 for me).

What's the math on that? Average kWh in California is around 18 cents. Assuming 0.35 kWh per mile, that's 6.3 cents per mile. You'd need to get 100mpg+ to beat an EV at current gas prices. A brand new Corolla hybrid my family recently bought gets around 40-60 mpg driving around a small city. And that's without factoring in maintenance differences costs per mile.

Yeesh. I get 44 mpg in a much heavier Toyota hybrid. But it probably depends on what percentage of your driving is in the city, vs highway.

Maybe but it's much more expensive upfront (3000 euros or so). And the total fuel cost depends on the distance you travel and your speed.

This is likely to sell well in Canada if they manufacture outside of the US.

> Nobody wants EVs

Tongue-in-cheek, or a persistent case of cope?

An EREV is basically the worst of almost all worlds. It's a BEV with a motor tacked on. It ends up with a battery not a lot smaller than a pure BEV, so no real reduction in the cost of an expensive component, plus an engine and generator along with associated maintenance headaches. Not to mention the almost certain loss of cargo capacity.

I can't see myself ever wanting a Lightning EREV, for example, because of this exact issue. If I needed to tow, that would be the sole situation where it might hold enough of an advantage to matter. Aside from that, it will have (most likely) about 75% of the battery the BEV Lightning has, and it will lose the frunk, which is one of my favorite features. Plus, unlike my Lightning with it's 200K mile first required maintenance work, the EREV will probably have to be serviced every 10-20K miles. Ugh.

Everyone wants to rent that trailer at the same time. That is Christmas break, spring break, and summer vacations. Most of the year it is going to sit unused and so you're going to have to buy your own trailer if you want one not rented because they're just not the economics of it. You'll be paying for it either way because you're going to be the only user.

RVs are where I would think this would make the most sense. People with a travel trailer already have a heavy trailer and they want a lot of battery to get it anyway. beef up the axle a little you can put a thousand pounds of battery on you get more range when you're towing and if there's any left over your RV can run on battery power. It's also very common for them to plug in once they get where they're going and so they can charge on 220 volt power that's already at the RV park and be charged and charge your car while you're at it overnight.

I noticed that they are selling RV trailers that help haul themselves, and now electric trailers for semis.

https://electrek.co/2026/03/26/lightship-electric-rv-trailer...

https://electrek.co/2025/06/30/pebble-begins-deliveries-elec...

https://electrek.co/2026/05/08/really-quick-charge-with-rang...

Hybrids make a lot of sense, they just have a lot of the same costs as building EVs and most buyers in the US weren't willing to pay an extra $5k to increase gas mileage by 15%.

Toyota is currently seeing record sales of their hybrid models and has made multiple models hybrid-only as costs have fallen.

Plug-in hybrids with larger battery packs are a harder market fit. They cost more because of the larger battery (often more than full EV equivalents) and are not saving you any extra money unless you can plug it in daily. If you have that extra money to spend and a place to plug an, an EV will probably work fine for you and save you more money over time.

"only to realise that no one really wants them" - 1 of every 6 new cars sold in the US are hybrids

"You have to have a specific daily drive for them to make much sense" - You'd have to have an extremely specific commute for an ICE car to potentially beat a hybrid (flat highway driving with zero traffic). Even then it's doubtful as hybrid engines can be designed to optimize more for efficiency since the electric torque can augment to make performance acceptable. Try to find an ICE car that gets better EPA ratings than equivalent hybrids.

"You're carrying two engines and to fuel/power sources, so mileage is terrible on gas and battery." - The corolla hybrid LE weighs 100lbs less than the ICE LE, in part because hybrid transmissions are quite simple in comparison to a manual/automatic required in an ICE car. In either case, hybrids have a huge advantage in the types of driving where weight matters (stop-and-go/hills) because they can reclaim that energy rather than losing it as heat.

The Toyota hybrid system is a marvel of simplicity and efficiency. A small Atkinson-cycle ICE run at optimal efficiency paired with two electric motors via a planetary gear set simpler than a manual transmission. It's far more reliable than traditional ICE/gearbox.

Hybrid mileage is well known to be much better I fail to understand the origin of your comment.

Most hybrids Toyota sells have a ~1 kWh battery which cannot be charged externally.

In a pure series hybrid a gas engine acts a generator which charges a battery, which drives an electric motor, which provides power to the wheels.

In parallel hybrids, both the gas motor and the electric motor provide traction, sometimes simultaneously.

Parallel is more efficient if you're depending on gas often, as every conversion has losses. Toyota mostly sells hybrids you can't plug in, and the ones you can plug in are variants of the ones you can't, so they all share the same drivetrain.

As far as I know, such plug-in hybrids directly drive the car forward via the internal combustion engine, which is more efficient than using a (possibly smaller and simpler) engine to charge a battery which then moves the car via electric motors, which is what I understand the person that you're replying to to be describing, though I am not familiar with the specific Chinese cars in question, since those are not options available to me due to living in the United States.

Related, though not for plug-in hybrids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnUFH5GX_fI

The volt was more like a Prius Plugin++. It still has a planetary gearset through which the engine would drive the wheels.

Does this change the fact that they quit making subcompacts?

From what I've read, EVs mostly break with the engine, and recover quite some of the energy that way. To the point that I've read warnings about the breaks rusting here in south Sweden, and that you need to do some aggressive breaking now and then to clean them out.

You do know that regen braking is a thing, right? The friction brakes on an EV are basically never applied except in emergencies or at speeds under 10 mph.

EVs end up with unique brake problems because they get used so little.

> Then there's tire dust particulate considerations with the heavier EV with all that torque.

This part is slightly true. EVs are heavier and will wear out tires faster, and if you actually use the extra torque, that'll contribute.

I'm suggesting they self-identify by resisting changes customers want.

Detroit fought against safety features until it was forced on them and Volvo led the way. They continued to fight against infotainment, offering horrible in-house trash, until Tesla shamed them with something from this century. All the Japanese makers fought against the EV wave by putting up a fake signal with H2, which they knew would never fly, which let them continue without retooling.

Now, BYD shames them all with scores of features at a reasonable price. If it weren't for protectionism, they'd be wiping up western markets. And to your point, yes Hyundai is old but they're listening to demand and responding by delighting customers.

They can keep the buttons and the normal interiors instead of making them look like something out of Star Trek.