…things need to change, or Toyota, the world’s largest car company by sales, “will not survive.”
…If Toyota feels like it’s losing ground, then the ground is probably moving.
The problem isn’t just one thing, either. It’s everything, everywhere, all at once. Chinese automakers are gaining ground quickly and setting a new standard for manufacturing costs. Software is becoming a core part of cutting-edge vehicle. Tariffs are still a thing. The auto industry has seen more upheaval in the last few years than it did over the last several decades…
Toyota has always had extremely strict quality standards…But that could soon change.
The brand is implementing something that it calls “Smart Standard Activity.” This is meant to slash…quality standards…Toyota believes it will lower the price of its components…
I bet if someone just came out with some simple cheapish electric cars without all the fancy bullshit then their sales will increase. Stop screwing over your customers and maybe they’ll replace their 15 year old cars.
I’ve been keeping an eye on this: https://www.slate.auto/en
Stripped down, simple, no touchscreen bs, and the vehicle is customizable through their website. Pricing and ship dates are going to be announced next week if I remember correctly.
I do like the Slate, and I ordered one immediately, but I so wish they made a car instead of a dumb truck with terrible aero and a bed I’m never going to use.
I know there’s a SUV package but certainly that will add a huge premium to the price. I’m pretty sure the “mid-20s” is the “entry” price and bottom-dollar to get eyeballs and then all the upgrades will be crazy overpriced.
Yeah, the percentage of buyers who will actually shell out only that base price would be small. I want a non-enshittified car too, but I also want basic conveniences like power windows and a minimal sound system. I don’t think a lot of people would also rawdog the exterior and will pay for the wrap.
Honestly I wish they would just install the wiring, and then let the owners decide if they want to connect them.
Unfortunately it looks like their pricing is creeping up into “regular EV” territory. I like the concept and hope I’m wrong.
What “regular EV” has pricing in the mid-twenties?
But don’t you see? I need my car to cradle my balls. They just didn’t do that in the old cars.
My GluckGluck9000 has a huge touchscreen which only knocks off 100 miles of range while I’m gooning
When did your mom get a huge touchscreen?
Walked right into that one lmao
Like slate trucks? I do wonder how that company works out.
I’ve been looking at Slate, def. one to follow. Until something EV and truck like shows up, alas, the ancient 'yota will stay on the road. And regardless my bike is my main transpo on the daily basis.
Sales would increase but profits would decrease, which is all they care about. That’s why they do it.
Aptera is currently making their production intent vehicles for testing and validation. The price has snuck up thanks to Trump’s economic — and literal — world war, but it’s still more affordable than others. It can also charge up to 40 miles per day on solar alone, so the operating costs should be very low.
Maybe appeals to some but I like being able to connect and change charging schedules and connect and pre-condition the car either hot or cold so it’s nice when I jump in. I like the HUD as well. Android auto is good but I would be okay just running a phone in a mount for mapping.
One of the biggest complaints from Aussie Volkswagen (and subsidiaries like Cupra) ecar owners owners is a lack of connectivity :)
Have a BYD here in Austrialia I 70% charge off my solar panels, 10% off public chargers and 20% using low cost tariffs after midnight… Don’t really care if China is monitoring me, it’s my Government monitoring me that concerns me.
But prior to this I was car free for 5 years living in the city, now in a rural areas and Australia is car brained that’s there’s only one bus a day (which I take when I can) and I cycle as well, like I have today
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Toyota fucked themselves over by having super rightwing leadership who were willingly blind to the ways in which being super rightwing makes you a dumbass.
☝️
Everyone has seen the way forward, the Japanese automakers put their fingers in their ears and went “na na na na!” for years. Now Korea and China are way ahead.
Conservativism is a disease for any society.
Conservativism is a disease for any society.
Yes, it is essentially a contagion on societies and it is growing like crazy right now. We must understand this threat for what it is.
Too many people look at the US and think we are uniquely stupid when the difference is our conservatives are more empowered and worshipped than in other countries. It is a dangerous mistake to think there aren’t rightwing fascist ignorant assholes who want to turn your country into a place like the US no matter where you are, anywhere on earth.
Feeling it over here in Canada…where even the Liberals are Conservative and the Socialists are centrists…
Never let people in your country forget that there is nothing special about their nationalism and their particular flavor of rightwing xenophobia. It is all the same product just with a slightly different shitty label plastered on depending on where in the world you are.
Rightwing ideologies that traffic in dehumanizing groups of people are all violent, they ALL lead to the same place the US is rocketing towards.
I think one of the best ways to fight violent rightwing ideologies obsessed with exclusion, austerity and seeing everything through a zero sum framing no matter what, is to loudly point out to everybody around the periphery of these ideologies that they haven’t stumbled on a new idea, the words they are saying are the same broken record playing in the US and elsewhere.
Call toxic rightwing violent men who pride themselves in projecting whatever identity they identify as The Original or The Superior shitty cheap knockoffs of US rightwing culture. Other them from their own context by pointing out there isn’t any actually unique localized identity to their beliefs beyond a superficial crust. Even if this doesn’t get under their skin, that isn’t the point, the point is to undermine their call towards reducing your societies horizons by pointing out to everybody the horizons those people want are themselves foreign, imposed and twisted in specific ways that don’t take into account your local context at all.
Point to the US and emphasize that person is arguing for the same ideology that is tearing the US down into poverty, misery and war. Use people’s natural desire to shit on the US as stupid from outside the US to open the door to them seeing their local homegrown version is literally the same stupid shit just without the megaphone the US has.
A specific example, invite people into laughing at how stupid some aspect of the US with a joke or comment, then point out that the conservatives in your area look up to the rightwing people that made those choices here in the US and look them in the eyes with a smile.
Japanese automakers put their fingers in their ears and went “na na na na!”
Katamari damacy?
Even Vw is ahead …
New vws are the worst and way overpriced.
Not really
What does this mean
How many car models were registered in Germany in February.
That doesn’t mean they’re good
you’d think they would want to “conserve” the planet, since they cal themselves conservatists. There should be some more apt term for them that would let them know what everyone thinks about them. conservatist doesnt sound right anyway, they dont want to conserve anything just make things worse for everyone else.
But how could they foresee something like EV, especially chinese ones, which were years in the making??!!
Lmao Korean cars are garbage
Drivers want affordable electric vehicles. If you still cant do that profitably, you have no business being in the automobile industry.
The industry that has been pumping the brakes really hard for decades is now complaining about their competitors being ahead on the road. Crocodile tears.
Other top offenders include Volkswagen, which collects demographic data (like age and gender) and driving behaviors (like your seatbelt and braking habits) for targeted marketing purposes; Toyota, which features a near-incomprehensible galaxy of 12 privacy policy documents;
Hard to care when they’re evil.
https://www.wired.com/story/car-data-privacy-toyota-honda-ford/ - a similar article from Wired. Modern cars are privacy hazards.
So Toyota’s plan to compete in a changing world is to… copy Chrysler (Stellantis)?
No wonder they’re worried for their future.
Have the consequences of under investing in EV tech and over-reliance on the nonsensical USAmerican economy caught up with the world’s largest car company?
Oh, Toyota will not survive. For a moment there I thought he was acknowledging the existential risk to global civilisation caused in part by his company’s products.
Toyota did nearly nothing for E-Cars. So of course they will fall.
It was so frustrating to watch too since they did so much for pushing hybrids. They were the face of the “eco car” and they could have pivoted to fully electric and people would have just gone with it.
Instead they pulled a Sears. Sears had the catalog business down and would have destroyed upstarts like Amazon if they wanted to pivot to online sales, instead they stuck their head in the sand and suffocated.
Or like Blockbuster refusing to adapt, and also not buying Netflix for cheap twice when they had the chance. Or Kodak literally creating the digital camera…
Kodak was at least TRYING to be ahead of the curve. They saw the writing on the wall before either Blockbuster or Sears did.
It is hard for a business to realize that their core product is going the way of the buggy whip or ice delivery companies, but I do think it can be done.
Tobacco figured it out…
For better or worse…
(Definitely worse)
Bet Sears will outlive Toyota haha (my local one is still open believe it or not)
Here’s to hoping the whole dealership model crashes & burns as well.
I understand the sentiment but it’s also intended to make sure there is a location with parts and people trained to repair the vehicles they sell. The cost reduced alternative may be worse.
Sorry, a car Is still something I have to look, feel and drive before I shell the moneys.
You can test drive a Tesla at a Tesla showroom. You can test drive a Rivian at a Rivian showroom. You can then buy one of them for exactly the price listed on their respective websites. There’s no haggling with sales people, no negotiating over random features, etc.
Wait, so what do you mean with dealership? Not the kind of shop where you can see and feel a car and then buy it? And you’d need staff anyways.
Do you not understand the concept of a car dealership? You can not buy a car directly from Toyota or Honda or Ford, etc. Prior to roughly 2010 it was illegal in all 50 US states to sell automobiles direct to the consumer. If you wanted to buy a new car you had to buy it through an independent dealership, which is basically a middleman that tacks on various fees, etc. and tries to upsell add-ons.
Part of the way they make money is to not publicize the actual amount you will pay but instead publish the MSRP and their dealership markup. Then they’ll pretty much force you to negotiate that, along with haggling over optional accessories, trying to convince you to finance the car through them etc. So you may not even know the final cost of a new car until you spend hours haggling with them and commit to buying it.
One thing Tesla did right is to get rid of that independent dealership model and sell direct to consumers. You can go to one of their showrooms and test drive a car, and if you decide to buy one you just go onto the website and order it. The price on the website is exactly what you’ll pay. No dealer middleman is adding unnecessary fees just to sell the car to you, and nobody is pressuring you to finance through them etc.
I understand it, thank you very much. What I mean is that here we have a e.g. Ford showroom where you go, look at the cars and maybe drive them: then you sit down, choose color and optionals and buy it. No strange negotiations or haggling for hours like we were in a sukh. That’s why I thought you meant something different.
A lot of these legacy automakers have to deal with a supplier network, too. EVs will also need those relationships, but it will likely be with different companies, and cause some friction in broken relationships. The company manufacturing fuel pumps might not have the same future as the company manufacturing wiring harnesses.
A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.
– Wayne Gretzky.
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Going with the heroin dealer logic of killing your customers for a quick profit
So, they’re going to just make cheaper gas cars to compete with EVs?
FYI a cheap stripped down electric car already exists in Europe. it’s the L7e quadricycle. looks like a car, acts like a car, can go up to 55 mph, most do 28 mph, $8700 USD. I live in a Florida retirement community and everyone is driving electric low speed vehicles (golf cars). Mine is an older gas model but gets 50mpg. If it dies I’m definitely going electric.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadricycle_(EU_vehicle_classification)#Heavy_quadricycles_(L7e)
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Europe has no oil. Your option of avoiding it is now on a 30 to 60 day fuse. You can pay big euros for a real car or buy a bike, but a lifestyle build on other people’s oil is over.
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A valid point. I assume you are still young and healthy. I look at the world from the perspective of a senior citizen in Florida. Although I do walk and bike, there are days when I can just barely make it to the car, and into the doctor’s office. I never expected to be this fragile and impaired in old age. I just look at the rest of the world from my own perspective.
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are the thinese cars poor quality - it will take 5-10 years to find out, but toyota can’t afford to give up their reputation.
All the manufacturers were sure Chinese cars would be incredibly unsafe and terrible quality, and then the Chinese cars actually turned up, and they were well made and got 5 star safety ratings.
And American and European manufacturers have been in a blind panic screaming for government protection ever since.
and then the Chinese cars actually turned up, and they were well made and got 5 star safety ratings.
That’s because they’re on the fifth or sixth generation of EVs. They’ve worked out the kinks. They’ve figured out what’s necessary to get good safety ratings in world markets, and how to make it all relatively cheaply.
Meanwhile the rest of the world are on about their 2nd or 3rd generation, and it shows.
