Electric Vehicles

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Electric Vehicles are a key part of our tomorrow and how we get there. If we can get all the fossil fuel vehicles off our roads, out of our seas and out of our skies, we'll have a much better environment. This community is where we discuss the various different vehicles and news stories regarding electric transportation.

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Honda commits to going out of business by pulling back on EVs as sales rise (electrek.co)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

As long as I've been casually aware of cars, which is about 20 years, Honda has always hated electric cars and had a hard on for hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I’m by no means a car guy but I thought hydrogen was more Toyota’s thing?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Tbh, all the Japanese makers tend to be really shy about electric and big on hydrogen for some reason that I've never quite got a handle on.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Does Japan have easier / better access to Hydrogen than other places? From what I understand the hydrogen cars are really cool but there’s a lot of logistical headache to store hydrogen as a fuel

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Japan is smaller, has reasonable public transportation, so people there drive shorter distances and less frequently.

The big problem with hydrogen is getting fueling stations. Japan is probably the right size where hydrogen fuel stations can effectively serve the demand.

The big problem with batteries is they require much more critical material than other automotive energy storage. Japan is a small(ish) island nation. Getting those materials is expensive.

That's my head cannon for it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

The other possibility I was wondering about is if Honda or Toyota envisioned themselves as becoming hydrogen suppliers, so that they'd be building their own vertical integration into the market.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

I worked at a Japanese company in Europe for a while. The manufactures car components. They really REALLY pushed the hydrogen and had their own hydrogen division in Germany. I never fully understood why, it always seemed so weird how focussed they were on it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I’ve always found it strange that Japan, a country with loads of nuclear power and thus lots of electricity, is against electric cars…

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

They have a weird power grid and unique geographic challenges that make hydrogen appealing in a lot of ways. I mean, hydrogen is appealing for a lot of reasons. The logistics and economic viability challenges are insane though