50.3 & 66.7 kWh Battery.  Those are the sizes of the battery-packs for bZ4X built in China for the Chinese market.  What gets built for Europe and North America comes from Japan and they have 71.4 kWh and 72.8 kWh capacities.  This difference emerged in a discussion of how prices could be dropped to retain a lead on Tesla... which is a very big deal for China, where the entry-level market rapidly growing.  How do you get more expensive vehicles to continue to attract sales?  FSD (Full Self Driving) has been a disaster for Tesla, most definitely an "over promise, under deliver" situation.  But dropping that source of revenue is still very unlikely.  It's needed to fund investment in the potential for an entry-level offering.  It's basically Tesla acting like a legacy automaker now, leveraging profit from more expensive vehicles to establish more affordable choices.  Toyota will obviously be doing that with hybrids to build up plug-in choices... which is how those lower capacity battery-packs come into play.  Fewer cells means less power and slower DC fast-charging.  Figuring out what consumers will be attracted to has to start somewhere.  China is a great place to find out.

That Endgame.  Backlash is emerging.  Those voices saying we have a resource limitation are getting attention.  There simply isn't enough battery available.  We have a looming supply shortage.  Watching giant electricity guzzlers impede demand puts BEV purists in a very difficult position.  It sure is nice hearing opposition, those in favor of plugging in but don't support wasteful battery use, posting statements like this:  "PHEV is not booming in mature EV markets, quite the contrary.  As a Swede I am more concerned about EV's share if total fleet.  That moves way to slow.  We need to pay more attention to that since the question itself is more complex.  The endgame is the same - electrification of transport."  Think about what Hummer EV represents with its 210 kWh battery pack.  4X is literally only one-third that size.  I jumped into the discussion with:  Sadly, it will take significantly longer than even what EV supporters hope.  Federal efforts, like NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) are a great example of why.  With the first round of funding (2023-2026) allocated, we are still looking at several years of work to get those initial DC fast-charging locations established.  State efforts, like Xcel Energy's proposal to MPUC (Minnesota Public Utilities Commission) for both Level-1 and DCFC installs also only address an initial effort taking us to the end of 2026.  Slow is a painfully reality. Anyone who was part of the hybrid support way back when tax-credits were available knows that all too well.  There will be pushback, intimidation, and supply/support shortcomings to still deal with.  Proving the technology is only an early battle won in the long war to overcome status quo.  It's all about leveraging options along the way to achieve that endgame.

This is a tipping point where building more will not actually overcome new barriers.  Tesla is in a difficult position now.  That supposed leadership is now stalled, allowing others to catch up.

Renewed Attacks, part 3.  Elsewhere on the internet, we have attacks like this taking place: "Wheel Problem Is Still Not Fixed"  That is an outright lie.  Details of fix were provided in October and by November owners were getting their 4X back.  Subaru deliveres hadn't started yet; so, all of those deliveries were with the fix already applied.  In other words, that recall had been closed.  Today though, it was revealed that a team of contractors who had performed some of the work did not follow instructions correctly.  How they could have messed the procedure will probably remain a mystery.  With torque specifications a precise lb-ft value, how can you mess that up?  Thankfully, it's a quick fix because no parts are needed.  Having to wait for an order delivery would be really bad.  Instead, it's a matter of verifying bolt status and making sure there are properly tightened.  Unfortunately, the requested process is having the vehicle towed rather than driving it to the dealer.  That will take extra effort, but it shouldn't be much beyond making the request.  Point being, we'll hear antagonists making a very big deal out of this.  Despite other issues in the BEV world, like VW's recall of over 21,000 ID.4s for a software update to prevent stalling issues, we'll see this made into a much bigger problem... more "proof" that Toyota is supposedly so far "behind" they are ultimately doomed.  Ugh.

Renewed Attacks, part 2.  I decided to respond to his comment directly.  This is what he had posted: "Though engineering has distinguished it in the past, dependence on Toyota engineering takes Subaru down a peg or two in my opinion.  Toyota is not a friend of the EV revolution, despite a couple of token models."  With over a decade of fighting this guy about Volt and knowing how bitter he got from losing so often, I was careful not to make it personal:

What is this so-called "EV revolution" supposed to achieve?

That same vague sentiment was expressed for PHEV and the result was upset on a profound level.  GM repeatedly failed to deliver something for their own loyal customers with Volt twice (both generations), then they repeated that same mistake with Bolt.  Lesson learned was a successful start with a technology should be quickly carried over to a format for the masses.

Toyota did exactly that, which explains the continued abhorrence for them.  Success with Prius Prime was carried over to RAV4, which was also a huge success.  That is exactly what GM should have done with Volt, applied that technology to Equinox.  Taken the next step further, Toyota is taking what they learned from both those designs to create a new Prius Prime for a much wider audience.

At the same time, we see a lot of rhetoric attention on cold-temperature performance for bZ4X.  Focus was on expectations set with regard to range estimates, not actual efficiency.  WLTP values were indeed off, efficiency wasn't though.  In fact, when you look at a wide sample of BEV, the results from Toyota were right in the middle... just average... not the horrid failure it was portrayed to be.  And now with reports of warm-temperature performance starting to trickle in, claims of terrible efficiency are falling apart.  bZ4X is turning out to be quite competitive in those conditions... a trait Subaru will benefit from.

That brings us back to goals. PHEV encourage upgrades at home, the install of level-2 EVSE. They also significantly increase the probability of the next purchase being a BEV.  That is fantastic in markets where there is a great deal of resistance and painfully slow infrastructure investment.  Again, what is this so-called "EV revolution" supposed to achieve?

Toyota is well aware of how to hype dominates the news and how sales targeting the masses (affordable, sustainable, profitable) are brushed aside with disinterest.  Seeing the spike in battery material cost and the backlash from having a plan to address that is proof of the industry not being able to stand up on its own yet.

Loot at what the upcoming next-gen Prius Prime has to offer.  Try to deny that won't provide a great bridge to help us get to BEV becoming a simple & affordable choice?

In other words, the claims of "automakers lie" is an exercise in avoiding certain facts to support a narrative.  A well designed PHEV can be substantially cleaner than the portrayal in studies that clearly cherry-pick data.

Toyota Lies.  The attacks on Toyota are relentless.  People just make up stuff, saying whatever they want without providing anything to support their claim: "Toyota is extremely fond of pushing the lie that 'PHEVs are clean'."  Turns out, much of that comes from not actually understanding how the hybrid system works.  Sound familiar?  That's the same nonsense I dealt with for years from the Volt entusiasts.  They kept claiming Volt was vastly superior with its EREV design, but couldn't ever explain what made it different from a PHEV like Prius Prime.  They desperately wanted it to be different for the sake of claiming it was better.  There was no substance to back up statements.  It was meritless gibberish... just like I'm hearing now about BEV and supposedly how far behind Toyota is.  So when I comes to that on-going nonsense, I keep asking the same questions.  Only thing is, Prius continues to evolve.  The newest generation adds power & range, making it even more of a difficult design to argue against.  They'll keep trying though and I keep asking:  What part of their design are you refuting?  EV top speed of 84 mph?  Heat-Pump for better efficiency?  Range target of 40 miles?  MPG far better than ICE-only?

When some of those NEVI funded DC fast-chargers finally get built on 35W in the Burnsville/Lakeville area, which will be conveniently close for me, I can contribute to education videos with many real-world examples.  Until then, it's just a long-winded reply.

They Already Did.  This was remarkably well timed: "Since their biggest product feature is a superb AWD mechanical drive train, one hopes they than can replace this with an electric equivalent."  It was a comment posted about an article pointing out how Subaru will be shifting focus to EVs for the US Market.  I was amused to point out the irony of statement:  They already did.  Watch yesterday's Subaru Solterra video from the "Toyota Norge" channel on YouTube. It shows the Solterra climbing up a snowy ski slope... something we haven't seen from others.  It's a true SUV, with high ground-clearance delivering very capable AWD.  It's ironic how so many have attacked Toyota for supposedly coming up short; then, we find out there's more to the design than originally assumed.  Put another way, Toyota's e-TNGA platform leveraged tried & true experience to produce a genuinely competitive SUV.  That's the tradeoff for not being as competitive on price or range... something perfectly fine for Subaru customers.