So, @TheTerribleTriplet , when are you replacing the Isuzu?
I will tell you, I was in for a shock in 2019 when I replaced the Corolla… and found out everything doubled since 2010.
I’m fine with cost-cutting. Do you suppose that when the alumium case got replaced by a steel case… that was because it was better? 
Some OEMs are driven by Beancounters, some are not. Firstly, as we all know, they need to make a profit at whatever price. They control component quality and cost. The beancounters bedevil most of this. Siloed cost cutting is the bane of all engineering efforts. We can get this steel 2% less then what we use currently. The procurement guy gets a bonus and award for his efforts…
Meanwhile, they spend 20% more on changing the dies to press the parts because the steel is not the same as the first type, altho chemically it is identical but cheaper. Now there are lots of waste and time spend to tweak everything to work again and 6 months later, it is somewhat working but with more waste and at huge costs…
So there is that on a scale of 7000 odd parts per car… YMMV
Groetnis
When there are no more parts for her.
Maybe she becomes a diesel/electric after I won the lottery.
Google 280TD Frontier, see what a good nick one sells for after 23 years.
Cause I keep an eye on Dad’s new cars every 3-5 years. When he sells them they still look brand new. Spotless he keeps them I tell you.
But man, the costs to keep these new cars spotless, on the road once out of warranty … nee.
I was thinking along those lines when I responded yes.
Competition is good, but at one stage, it becomes a “race”. Then add on what Sarel also points out.
It is not a competition for the best product anymore. It is how long it has to last to win the awards, get good reviews.
If you recall, my wife drove Suzi without water for 2 days. Your car is hissing at me, she said.
Had the engine checked, was fine, then replaced all the pipes, filled the water, and off we went.
And how many cars can still drive 300 000+ km without even blinking?
They don’t “build them like they used to” because of costs, profits.
All these awesomely featured cars, high-tech, computers, with Facebook too, is there a 2nd hand market for them? Most cannot afford to repair them.
I think there is still plenty of fat to cut. One of the big components right now is the R & D cost. The companies want that back. The cars are also still built in the more expensive factories (eg, Toyota isn’t building them en-masse yet in the cheap(er) factories in India/South Africa).
My aluminium/steel case example is actually a good one in this respect. It was a repackaging of a tried-and-tested design, into a less expensive case, and also cheaper to produce. The product was immediately cheaper to the customer, but also, it was more profitable to the manufacturer at the same time.
So in short, perhaps we can say there is good cost-cutting, and bad cost-cutting. It is possible to go too far, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near. It should be possible to build a small EV for the price of a Toyota Hilux. Really.
Edit: Let me make it even easier. The entry-level Hilux that most cost sensitive people buy (ignoring the petrol model) is the 2.4 Diesel. But many many MANY people opt for the more “prestigious” 2.8 Diesel. It really should be possible to build a small EV for that price. Here is the challenge… in colour…
On Toyota EVs:
Toyota
Groetnis
If there is no more engine, gearbox, clutch, or exhaust, immense cost drop methinks, one should like to see it come in cheaper, ideally.
The first price, thinking outside the box seeing as the Co2 was already spent on our existing cars, is for manufacturers to offer a conversion kit obtainable from your local dealer, and the car goes another decade as an EV.
Recycle all the removed parts properly AND it creates a job for all the mechanics to re-skill to convert existing ICE vehicles to EVs.
I agree with Toyota (Japan)'s position:
saying it needed to offer motorists a variety of choices
I disagree with Toyota (USA’s) lobbying…
Detractors say Toyota’s lobbying activities work to undermine the transition to EVs.
… assuming of course that is what is actually happening, since we are dealing with…
Under fire from climate activists…
In any case, I am loathe to equate anything that Toyota USA does, in their political climate, with the company as a whole. Cause US politics are crazy to start with.
Agreeing or disagreeing is immaterial. Toyota will do Toyota, and EVs are not their next step, hybrids are. If your view is, the Sun is controlling the climate, and not CO2, it really matters little what their strategy is in the end.
If your view is that it is CO2 controlling the climate, Toyota USA has a point, take your pick…
Groetnis
Por que no los dos?
It’s a little bit of both, is it not? The slightly higher amount of CO2 is not a problem for breathing. It is a problem in that it absorbs infrared and therefore heats the atmosphere. Right?
Saying that the sun is responsible is a bit like saying you’re just holding the dog’s tail, the dog is doing the pulling!
It’s a bit more nuanced than that. They’re saying (more) Hybrids is a better intermediary step, because the infrastructure won’t make it by the end of the decade. Frankly… they are not wrong.
I mean, not to take a leaf from the average anti-EV book, but if we’re going to use coal-generated electricity to charge an EV (which is very close to being a sideways move, due to excellent efficiency from EVs), then a Hybrid really is the better vehicle for now. I get the feeling we’re dealing with a bunch of people who cannot handle it that Toyota won’t dance to their demands…
Nevertheless, I gave you a “like” because I agree with what you say, or with what I think you are saying. If the matter is serious, and we really ought to move faster, then Toyota is on the wrong side of future history. If we have some time left, Toyota is frankly the only people to see the light. I cannot actually say, I suspect it is somewhere in the middle, and slightly to one side, but I am unsure which side that is
Let me perhaps confess. I may be suffering a little bit of that fear that I always say I understand so well.
I’m deathly afraid of discovering, within a small number of years, that personal transport has become unaffordable. If I lived elsewhere, say in Europe, I’d just take the train or a bus, and none of this would matter. But I don’t. I live in Africa, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest extended family, and over a thousand from the furthest. There are no planes. There are no charging stations.
I am terribly afraid that a bunch of people who see only their vision of the world, will completely walk over me.
I think I am open minded enough to admit, that my personal freedom is less important than collective survival. My feelings on the matter doesn’t mean the people who are worried about survival must be wrong. The truth of that is a separate matter.
Is there a clear answer? No, of course not. That would be way too useful, right?
As an example. Remember the e-toll project? One of the reasons provided for that project, is that government wanted to incentivise people to use public transport. Let me put that in perspective: You make it expensive NOT to use public transport WITHOUT actually providing (or providing the environment) for public transport.
I fear that the same will happen with EVs. We will need to move there, but we will only get the stick… no carrot. And I hate that.
A perspective on the power from the Sun to the Earth:
How much energy does the sun produce per second compared to what earth uses in a year?
The total radiant flux (power output) of the Sun is about 3.8×10263.8×1026 joules per second. Earth’s energy usage in 2013 was about 3.9×10203.9×1020 joules. So the Sun’s energy output in a second is almost exactly 1,000,000 times greater than all of Earth’s energy consumption in the year 2013.
Keep in mind that the actual percentage of the Sun’s energy that falls on Earth is very, very small. I’m talking about all the Sun’s power output, in every direction.
This is a law of physics, no knee jerk here, no greenie or woke outlooks. I am a pragmatist and a realist. My mind do not simply accept dogma nor climate hysteria.
Oceanic tide gauges are within less than a mm or so over about a 100 year period, agreeing that there is no rise in sea level as but one example. From the Journal of Coastal research:
"CONCLUSIONS
Our analyses do not indicate acceleration in sea level in U.S. tide gauge records during the 20th century. Instead, for each time period we consider, the records show small decelerations that are consistent with a number of earlier studies of worldwide-gauge records. The decelerations that we obtain are opposite in sign and one to two orders of magnitude less than the +0.07 to +0.28 mm/y2 accelerations that are required to reach sea levels predicted for 2100 by Vermeer and Rahmsdorf (2009), Jevrejeva, Moore, and Grinsted (2010), and Grinsted, Moore, and Jevrejeva (2010). Bindoff et al. (2007) note an increase in worldwide temperature from 1906 to 2005 of 0.74uC. It is essential that investigations continue to address why this worldwide-temperature increase has not produced acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years, and indeed why global sea level has possibly decelerated for at least the last 80 years."
Yes, it is. A whole different debate that, but simplistically, too much Co2 and too little forestation, and we have a huge problem heading our way, and fast.
But I agree with Toyota. If I had a hybrid, I obviously would prefer to use the EV side as much as I possibly can, all the time if I can only use the ICE side if I have no choice. I vote hybrid until most of the i’s are dotted, t’s are crossed.
Scientifically, how much do we have and where is it considered dangerous? Well, really 12 X more than we have today. And this level has a considerable margin of error to be safe.
Ok so current CO2 levels are at ~412-414ppm or 0.0407%.
The OSHA permissable exposure level is as follows:
OSHA has established a Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) for CO2 of 5,000 parts per million (ppm) (0.5% CO2 in air) averaged over an 8-hour work day (time-weighted average orTWA.)
So how much is to much? We are really really far away from danger to humans, animals etc. And the more the plans get, the more they yield. The inverse is far far more dangerous. With less than 150ppm CO2, photosynthesis cannot happen, so CO2 and Sunlight, water and nutrients are required for plants to survive.
Remove the CO2, plants die, the animals that eat plants die and then we do too.
Groetnis
Yes, true. But that is not the issue.
It is more about the changes that are taking place around us, all over the world, because of minuscule increases/decreases in global temp, stuff that could force mass migration. Stuff like repeated crop failures. Change that could be forced upon us all because of a small % increase/decrease in global temps. Co2 is bad, but methane defrosting out of the permafrost is worse.
Will EVs solve this problem? Nope, I don’t think it will. Mabe procrastinates it all. We need to make core-level changes to not mess it up more.
I’m not sure how the amount of the sun’s energy that reaches the earth really factors into this. I can concede all of that, and I’m still not quite sure how the conclusion follows. I see the math, but it is like you skipped the last step.
I will weigh in on the seal level thing so long. Phil had this project where he wanted to put a hot water tank into paraffin (that waxy stuff you put around cheese). Because state of change takes a lot of energy, so the effect would be that the water stays around the melting/freezing point (that is, nice and hot!) for a really long time. It is similar to the high school experiment, where the water stays at 0°C until all the ice has melted, except that the oceans are of course a much bigger “glass”. Sometimes things can change very little, before they start changing quickly.
With that said, I have in the back of my mind the idea that perhaps we cannot just extrapolate linearly, perhaps we cannot look at the glass and go “pffft… hardly any of the ice has melted!”. I’ll get back to that again.
Secondly. There is a clear relationship between the CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s not hand waving. Empirical data. Drilling out ice cores in Antarctica and looking at the trapped air bubbles. Thousands of years of data. So yes, correlation doesn’t imply causation (and I will say that a few more times), and there is also the question of when CO2 actually increases plant activity, and how the planet essentially auto-corrects, but… I will get back to this.
Third. This excellent representation of the history of our temperature. Yes, it’s XKCD, but they guy has a way of being factual at times. Funny how drastically things changed since the industrial revolution.
So this is me getting back to what I want to say: Though correlation does not necessarily imply causation, it does suggestively wiggle its eyebrows and whispers: Look over there! And when that happens, the reasonably approach is caution. Not wild abandon. Not let’s just do what we always do and drill in the sea bed for more oil. Caution. Not panic either. Just caution.
So that’s where I am at, which is why I am neither on the anti-climate-change team, nor on the OMG-the-world-is-ending bandwagon. We should probably be ready for the correction-cycle though…
Solar energy drives the climate and weather on earth. The magnitude of the energy is relevant. Humans do not have any influence of nearly any order close to the influence of the Sun. So the other item that remains then is what CO2 really does?
Can CO2 prevent radiation from being transmitted from the Earth to space in an outward direction, when the same molecules allowed the transmission from the Sun to Earth inwards? A conundrum indeed. By that postulation, it can either allow it in or not, there is n directional preference.
Sooo there is that… and the relevance.
Groetnis
But this is me apologising for the hijack of this thread. Enough here already.
Groetnis
CO2 - The slightly leaky energy diode. 
That was a good conversation, but agreed, best to let it rest
To be fair, I look at most things in life more on a probability scale, and few things if any have a 100% certainty to them. For some things, I take a Pascal’s wager approach, where I will act as if it is 100% true because the alternative has only downsides, but for others, I simply go with what seems more plausible.
There is an old saying that you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all the people some of the time, but it is impossible to fool all the people all of the time. While it is a joke, it is basically the main reason why any theory that requires a very large number of scientists to be wrong, will get scored <50% from me. But… it has happened. Philosophers of science has told us as much
In the mean time, I still want an EV… not so much because it is green, but because it is insanely cool!
My views on the topic:
