> early entrants might get burned by some new chemistry or form factor.

the iphone is an outlier imho, and i dont think EV will replicate this.

The manufacturing capacity of batteries in china will continue to be a dominant force, and prevent competition in other countries from really setting up properly.

Not to mention the chinese EV giants have the R&D budget to be the ones to discover new chemistry.

Yeah, my Toyota BZ is great.

Yeah that's nonsense. Toyota is behind on a number of technologies. They are still making cars, but its the old style of cars in every aspect. They haven't done the integration of technology and the car the way Tesla or China has.

They are surviving because of massive scale but they are losing ground.

> The only thing Toyota would need to wholeheartedly jump into EV is the supply chain and production capability for big battery packs.

So the only thing they need is the hardest part of the supply chain. At Toyota scale building that supply-chain is fucking gigantic. It takes a decade to build that.

All the battery companies already have large multi-year of-take agreements. And they are not building massive new capacity without new demand.

> but don't discount the possibility that batteries are not at the end of their evolution and early entrants might get burned by some new chemistry or form factor.

We haven't seen new form factors in many decades.

As for chemistry, everybody is working on that. Toyota has burned billions and achieved nothing.

Yes new chemistry are constantly coming in, but the reality is, each new chemistry innovation needs a decade or so to scale. And it mostly builds on existing supply chains and suppliers.

Take a look at things like silicon additives, they have been talked about for a long time, and it has been increasing. And it will continue to increase, but its not a magical pill that makes all existing battery factories obsolete.

Battery companies sell their new state of the art batteries to their long term partners first. And those partners are the first to learn of new innovations.

Nokia was the leader by profit until they weren't. They even experimented with hydrogen powered phones!

It's really insane. I live in Japan where you'd think Toyota may have some pull to make their dream come true. My city actually has one (1) hydrogen station, it's only open a day or two a week - it's basically only open by appointment, you have to call ahead if you want to be sure to be able to fill up.

I have an insider friend that says they just don’t believe in battery electric and so have never built the supply chain for it. It leaves them searching for the next thing despite what is occurring in the market, they think they’ll prevail as they’re not focused on a (perceived) faulty approach. I’m not privy to all the details they have to reach that investment thesis but it explains a lot we see from the outside.

Oh no, how dare a company try and invest R&D into a diversified portfolio of propulsion technologies. I'm sure HN has all the right ideas, just like they had the right idea when Starship was almost sure to beat SLS to orbit and full IOC a decade before Artemis II. I'm sure Morizo is crying after winning his latest gentleman drivers' race and wiping all his tears away with his paper yen.

It is genuinely insane how divorced SV is from actual people and reality.

    > It's a shame __________ didn't lean harder into EVs 

Blame Carlos Ghosn. He basically took everything Nissan would've liked to use and spent it on Renault instead. The Leaf was supposed to be the first of three electric cars for Nissan and Infiniti starting in 2010, but Ghosn cut that off in favour of pumping the Rogue and Murano instead because they were solid earners that could funnel money back to Renault during the recession. And he just never changed that afterwards. Nissan's board of directors even had several revolts over this between 2012 and 2018, one of which got the French government involved.

Nissan has the Ariya (crossover SUV) and Micra (small city car), both of which have been very well received and are popular in Europe.

Nissan seems to be scaling back their EV push in the US, though — but not in Europe, as far as I know.

Nissan is also making EVs for the Chinese market, which are not being exported anywhere else.

> Chinese keep prices low with .. subsidies from a totalitarian government

Lower labour costs per hour can be balanced against lower cost of living for workers.

Industrial Policy Spending for China’s EV Sector (subsidies) have dropped from $13,800 USD per vehicle in 2018 to $4,700 USD in 2023 and are less today in 2026.

How do these subsidies compare to US subsidies to the fossil fuel oil and gas industry?

BYD subsidies ended this year and Xiaomi was never subsidized.

China, for all its flaws, is the undisputed master of innovative automated manufacturing. They can iterate over design revisions quickly. They will build you whatever you want, and, unlike twenty years ago, it will be insanely precise, and everything that can be automated will be. US and EU automakers have to keep their unionized employees happy, which means less automation and less precision and higher prices. Robots and AI don't unionize.

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