And, a recent tour of one of the Asian powerhouse’s vehicle plants has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least to Honda President and CEO Toshihiro Mibe.
“We have no chance against this,” Mibe said upon a visit to a Shanghai parts factory, commenting on its seamless automation across all levels of production. Logistics, procurement and all aspects of the process were so automated, in fact, that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier’s floor.
Ford executives saying even three years ago that China was way ahead of the game
Toyota’s CEO has likewise said regarding not just his company, but the industry in general, “unless things change, we will not survive”
Toyota is way too conservative. After nailing hybrid tech early on, it seems like they wasted the opportunity to put it on every vehicle they make which would have been such an amazing step forward, instead of treating it as a weird niche for so long.
Also that bz4x or whatever deserves a spot on the worst cars of all time list, just straight up ewaste.
What makes you say that? I don’t really know much about cars, why is that one particularly bad?
Compared to everything else on the market it had big problems with reliability, range, charging speed, and it was overpriced.
I think everyone expected that Toyota, with its hybrid experience and the benefits of seeing all other EVs on the market wouldn’t make such a poor attempt. It felt like they were poisoning the well, as if not wanting to compete in the EV space in the first place.
I never owned one so I can’t say this is true, but from what I read over the years, those early hybrids weren’t great for performance/driving feel compared to other vehicles. They worked, they were efficient, but at the time turning all their cars into it probably wasn’t a winning path.
How will you know its electric if it doesn’t look like shit otherwise?
Because unlike Tesla, they need to sell cars and make money.
Yeah. Spot on. And the Busy Forks not only has an awful name, not only has awful styling, but it is an extraordinarily bad EV by any measure. E-waste indeed
Wait, I haven’t read up about it. What makes it so bad?
Well the wheels fall off, that’s not ideal. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM)
Other than that it has poor battery size for the cost, slow charging, and poor efficiency (burns more kW per mile/km).
There are more criticisms, but they’re the big ones. It is just not a good EV.
And the wheels really did fall off initially, they had to do a recall. Was a design error.
Now recalls happen very often to all companies but for straight up safety issues they’re rare. They tend to be a lot smaller issues.
The thing with the wheels though is just indicative of how little care they took with it, Toyota are renowned for quality, sure they’re boring designs but they’re built to last right ? Well this one seems to be been designed by the work experience kid and a punishment detail who clearly didnt want to be on a BEV.
Oh, shoot, yeah, I do now remember about the wheel recall! You’re right; Toyota has fallen in quality. I’m now recalling Genesis overtaking them in JD Powers’ reliability ratings… I’ve gotta review this stuff more. So sad, but we really should never have brand loyalty.
You can just buy a JD Power award btw. The auto manufacturers pay to play. Its a marketing company.