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Today, Lexus dropped the LF-Z concept car, stepping on the electric-vehicle (EV) accelerator. By 2025, the company expects to have 20 new PHEV, HEV, and BEV models from which to choose.
670,616,629 miles per hour, the speed of light, is how fast energy travels as electromagnetic waves. This is nearly as fast as car companies are becoming EV manufacturers.
Lexus, and just about every other carmaker, is EV giddy. They proclaim this is the transformation of the century, linking sustainable development, changes in lifestyle, values, and mobility needs as to why they’re swinging for the fences. What’s the big rush to get to a Disney-like Autopian society, where we’ll chug along at a preset MPH and have our routes selected for us?
So Lexus putting a battery in the LF-Z is a big deal because they think this is what 2025 will look and drive like. For one, they’re calling Direct4, their four-wheel, driving-force control technology, the optimal placement of batteries and electric motors, one that sets them apart from the rest. EVs, whether battery (BEV), hybrid (HEV), or plug-in hybrid (PHEV), are putting the cart before the horse if there isn’t enough electricity or kW in the grid to recharge their growing numbers.
Will the sales ratio of EVs exceed that of gas-powered vehicles by 2025, as Lexus predicts? By 2050, will they and their vehicle counterparts, achieve carbon neutrality? Is the formed exterior of the LF-Z Electrified ’emotional’ as its designers say, just as the open, minimalist cockpit provides a unique EV driving experience? Exactly what is that experience compared to the one you get when you go off-road in a Ford F-150, or when you drive long stretches of the open road in a Corvette? Maybe as fewer drivers have the adventure that comes along with the responsibility of controlling the rate of acceleration by themselves, this experience will become lost, like that of riding a horse.
[Images: Lexus]
“Lexus, and just about every other carmaker, is EV giddy.”
One would actually think that going to relatively simple electric vehicles would remove the primary reason for buying a Lexus over its German competitors, superb reliability. When you have a cookie cutter motor and battery, with a generic “futuristic” body on top, why not buy the one with Mercedes or BMW written on it?
I’m sure the Germans and Italians will find a way to add unreliability to their EVs.
Voltswagen could make the wheel unreliable if it needed too.
“Voltswagen could make the wheel unreliable if it needed too.”
GM beat them to it with the C8 and it’s porous wheels.
Don’t worry, that’s coming if it isn’t already here.
Battery degradation is real.
“Battery degradation is real.”
They’ve made a lot of advances recently in electrode coatings. The VW/Quantumscape battery retains 80% capacity after 800 cycles. That’s 240,000 miles. Tesla’s new cells test out at 90% retention after 15,000 cycles. That’s 7.5 million miles in a Plaid+ or 4.5 million miles in a 300-mile range Model 3. The VW battery isn’t in mass production and I’m not sure if Tesla has implemented their new chemistry in production cells yet, but when they do, battery degradation is essentially a non-issue. In fact, I think that a battery could very well spend its life in several different vehicles. Here’s a scientific paper in the “Journal of The Electrochemical Society” explaining the technology for those that are interested. I have to base my designs on future battery technology, so I have to keep up with the technology. I spend a lot of time reading scientific journals because you can’t trust the companies in the industry. It’s good reading:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/2.0981913jes
Tesla pulled off the feat of making EVs less reliable than gas cars, against steep odds. While the Germans seem to be improving at reliability a bit in recent years, I have no doubt that the usual suspects like Stellantis and JLR will manage to do the same.
” why not buy the one with Mercedes or BMW written on it?”
May be because you are not a snob?
Normally I hate Toyota/Lexus styling, but I really like what they are doing here. By taking predator maul and inverting the locations of grilles and paneling, they have recreated an entirely distinctive front while still keeping the same styling lines and proportions of the rest of the line up. Brilliant bit of design.
They cadged the steering wheel from Tesla. The rest of it looks like a science-fiction movie about the future, which is what automakers seem to think electric cars should look like.
“They cadged the steering wheel from Tesla”
There are rumors floating around about a Tesla/Toyota partnership. I’m skeptical about them because I’m not sure what either has to gain and many, many other reasons, but that steering wheel is a dead-on copy. I do predict that eventually, that steering wheel will show up on everything and on racks at PEP Boys.
Here’s the Tesla/Toyota rumor. Take it with a grain of salt. As everyone knows, these kinds of rumors float around all the time. If your high school Korean is a little rusty, you might need to run Google translate to read it.
https://www.chosun.com/economy/int_economy/2021/03/30/VCCYMG5DOVHIHNTZCWWKJYHEFM/
“There are rumors floating around about a Tesla/Toyota partnership.”
Will not work. Their culture is opposite to each other.
@insidelookingout:
“Will not work. Their culture is opposite to each other.”
For sure. I’m not so sure Toyota even gets along with Subaru. Lots of other reasons too,
You mean they hate dogs?
“transformation of the century, linking sustainable development, changes in lifestyle, values, and mobility needs as to why they’re swinging for the fences. What’s the big rush to get to a Disney-like Autopian society, where we’ll chug along at a preset MPH and have our routes selected for us?”
EVs are just cars, but with more efficient power and no localized exhaust. They’re not robot cars, unless we learn otherwise. And all of that stuff above is really about robot cars. Despite the difficulty I’m excited about robot cars because 42,000 people died on American roads in 2020, the overwhelming majority because of bad human driving.