New Brands.  They make a name for themselves by attacking big names... like Toyota.  That's how an article with this as a title came about today: "Polestar Exec Goes After Toyota For Its Anti-EV Strategy"  The idea of a tiny, new EV going after a giant legacy is the hero's story everyone wants to hear.  It's not reality though.  It's a story.  I was happy to point that out too:  Who is Polestar trying to gratify?  Spinning a narrative of Toyota being anti-EV is very difficult when ordinary consumers see a variety of plug-in options being rolled out.  Enthusiasts hate both the pace and the approach, but having an antithesis is necessary now that the low-hanging fruit is gone.  The reality of a 13.6 kWh battery-pack satisfying daily driving needs for most people is a bitter pill to swallow.  5 PHEV will make far more of an impact to reducing emissions than 1 BEV + 4 ICE. It's a winning formula for Toyota during this next stage, as industry-wide charging & production shortcomings are addressed.  That next-gen PHEV platform the new Prius brings must scare the crap out of everyone.  Notice how they are dead quiet about their own fleet plans for this next stage? Think about NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) funding, what must happen with it over the next few years.  How exactly will the Osborne Effect be avoided by legacy automakers?  We already see Tesla struggling with Innovator's Dilemma.  Has anyone given the thought that Polestar's provoke was simply an effort to muddy the waters, providing them as a new to the market easier passage?

State Plans.  The nonsense from Wyoming that was wasting everyone's time is still wasting everyone's time.  You would at least hope it would spark some critical thinking.  Instead, it's stuff like this: "As ICE vehicles disappear in other states, manufacturers aren't going to make vehicles in low volumes for the least populous state as demand wanes.  It's not politics but business.  If the State can't plan for its own economy, it will get what results from it."  That isn't reality.  Consider who would do the planning.  Anywho, the hope is this dies a quick death.  We'll see.  In the meantime, I asked:  ICE choices will become highly selective, resulting in only a small number of competitive models being produced.  It's just a natural process as each production sight gets converted to build BEV instead, a means for each automaker to attempt mitigating risk and retaining profit.  For an automaker like Toyota, who serves markets that will struggle with infrastructure far longer than Europe, China and the United States, that highly optimized inventory approach should work fine.  They'll offer limited choices of super-hybrid there and plug-ins elsewhere.  Timing is the challenge.  Think about what happens when the market becomes saturated with used ICE, then think about what happens when next-gen BEV become available.  Better motor & battery tech will disrupt the fragile status quo... kind of like we are seeing right now with the massive Tesla price drops.  Legislation like this will take advantage of that confusion & uncertainty.  Expect more of the seemingly absurd to continue to stir what is already a volatile situation.  The line between politics & business are already quite blurred.  How can a state plan for that

Shame.  This new year brings new tactics.  Enthusiasts were unwilling to listen.  They were too naive to consider the possibility of having to fight the absurd... which a great example of was revealed today.  Believe it or not, a bill in Wyoming was introduced today with legislation to phase out the sale of electric vehicles there by 2035.  That stands no chance of passing, but the idea itself will be extremely difficult to kill.  Rather than focusing on that though, I turned attention to those who enabled such political gesture in the first place.  BEV purists continue slow down plug-in momentum.  Who cares of PHEV aren't perfect.  Know your audience.  RAV4 Prime would be a great vehicle out there.  I know.  I have a sister-in-law there.  It's such an obvious way to mess up feelings against plugging in.  Anywho, I was a great opportunity to shame the purists.  So, I climbed up on my soapbox and posted:  This article doesn't tell the underlying story of what's happening in Wyoming.  It's easy to see if you have some family who lives there, making the pushback happening now very easy to predict years ago.  This excerpt from the EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration) points that out well:  "Wyoming has been the top coal-producing state since 1986, accounting for about two-fifths of all coal mined in the United States in 2020.  The state holds nearly two-fifths of U.S. coal reserves at producing mines."  We see their giant coal mines as a source of survival out there, while back at home in Minnesota we watched purchases of that coal come to an end.  At the same time, we have been working hard to spread solar so our own supply of natural-gas doesn't become a dependency.  It's ironic how BEV supporters allowed this obvious resistance to get so far.  Heck, they still claim Toyota is anti-EV, despite evidence to the contrary.  Toyota's effort to deliver a 1,000,000 km (621,000 mile) warranty is exactly what is needed to counter that resistance claiming batteries will just end up in landfills or be too expensive to recycle.  Sadly, not seeing the bigger picture is a chronic problem for enthusiasts.  This absurd attempt to ban electric vehicle sales comes from being unwilling to fight on all fronts.  It was easier to just promote driving-range and charging-speed, portraying progress as if that was the only remaining challenge to overcome.

Not Coincidence.  Watching for patterns in the chaos is key.  With enough observation, you can deduce if a choice was intention and make a prediction based upon that model.  That was overwhelmingly confirmed with the "rule of thumb" I started quoting many years ago.  In fact, it was the reason I had 40-amp lines installed instead of 50-amp.  Sure, it would be easy enough to pull a 6-gauge wire through the conduit later to replace the 8-gauge that was  used.  So, there wasn't really much risk or a huge expense difference.  There simply wasn't a benefit.  I'd have a much better time promoting the base if that is what I had been using for all that time.  In this case, that is already 5.5 years now.  It will continue working well, completely unaltered, for my 4X.  So, watching for patterns clearly worked well.  Today's tie into that was: "My level 2 charger states 33 miles charging per hour. I'm going with that."  The Subaru Solterra owner making that claim was almost certainly just reading the label on the box his EVSE came in.  That isn't what you actually get.  But rather than confront him, I presenting the following detail:  Anything with reference to a "miles" estimate needs some type of associated efficiency value.  Based on observed draw from Toyota's level-2 on single-phase 240-volt lines, we tend to see around 7.2 kW as a sustained rate.  For 1 hour's worth of charging to deliver 7.2 kWh of electric returning a distance of 33 miles, it would calculate to an efficiency of 4.58 mi/kWh (excluding charging losses).  That's highly optimistic.  At a more reasonable 3.5 mi/kWh, that 7.2 kW rate would be delivering around 25 miles per hour.  Note when level-2 is commonly referenced, that "25" is the baseline sighted. It's the minimum recommendation for owner installs... a 40-amp line.  That supports the maximum of 32 amps our vehicles can draw.  (A buffer of 20% is needed for safety.)  Some vehicles are capable of drawing more, but that is counter-productive when encouraging off-peak AC recharges.  From a practical perspective, 8 hours of 25 miles per hour is 200 miles.  Toyota's approach has been to target the masses by focusing on need and avoiding want.  This is yet another example of them doing exactly that when you look at the base 4X offering... the FWD model delivering 252 miles or range.  The recommended charge to 80% using baseline measures comes to 201.6 miles.

In short, what happened in back 2022 really didn't make any impression.

Half Baked.  Here's another one of those opinions based on poor or incomplete information: "I have come to the conclusion that the BZ-4z is not fully baked.  It's missing many features that an EV should have, such as map guidance to charging stations."  Since when is a vehicle's performance based upon an aspect of engagement which has nothing whatsoever with actually driving?  Have you ever read a review that claimed a disappointing outcome due to an audio system that was only adequate?  The recommendation from many BEV owners is to just use a third-party service anyway.  We see Google, Plugshare and ABRP (A Better Route Planner) already striving for dominance outside of the Tesla world.  Why must Toyota compete directly with them?  I simply don't care.  When traveling, I will be checking with multiple information sources regardless.  They have nothing to do with the EV system anyway.  Of course, that post begged the question of what else could be missing.  Hmm?  I wondered, then moved on to reply by pointing out what is really important:  Depends on your perspective, 4X is better off than what VW delivered for ID.4 in terms of software.  Thanks to the Prime vehicles and the EV convert models, we find that Toyota invested a lot into operational detail.  It's all hidden, so subtle it gets overlooked, but the flawless electric-only operation of Prius Prime over the past 6 years should get some recognition... clearly, that was fully baked.

Overlooking Forethought.  Remember how antagonists would twist reality, claiming Toyota had to go to great lengths to find a way of adapting their hybrids to support a plug?  The die-hard supporters had done research years before that, discovering the design supported all-electric drive long ago.  It was really just a matter of waiting for a battery capable supplying enough electricity at a reasonably competitive cost.  2 full decades ago, we saw specifications revealing 100 km/h was available... but for such a short distance and with so little power, there wasn't any benefit.  This is why we saw aftermarket upgrades and even a prototype from Toyota itself using the second-generation Prius.  That platform worked, but it also revealed how much more potential there was.  With third-generation, being able to squeeze out 11 miles from advancements in batteries became realistic.  With fourth-generation, the system itself along with more battery capacity changed everything.  Delivering all-electric drive was easy.  It worked fine, was affordable, and there were no doubts about reliability.  In other words, all the details necessary for BEV driving had already been worked out by 2017.  Toyota could now shift to spreading that technology... which is exactly what we saw happen.  So by last year, the only piece of the puzzle remaining was to deliver a dedicated platform.  Nothing about the EV system itself was unresolved.  It worked well already.  That makes a statement like this pointless: "We have a 2022 Prius Prime as a company car.  This [bZ4X] feels nearly identical, just a slightly different body style and EV vs PHEV.  Feels a bit phoned in by Toyota, tbh."  Toyota is already at the fine-tuning stage.  Not feeling revolutionary is the goal.  The next step forward is supposed to be as obvious and as simple as possible.  Know your audience.  The last thing you want give to a customer with intimidation is a reason to be intimidated.  Ugh.  This is how I responded to that poster who completely missed the point, overlooking all the forethought it took to reach this stage:  Replicating the feel is challenging.  But that's exactly what you want when addressing a reluctant audience.  Kudos for having achieved that.

New Trademark Filing.  Someone discovered Toyota had filed more trademarks recently.  BZ1C, BZ2C, BZ3C and BZ4C appear to be vehicle names being reserved for the automakers use.  The plan to deliver 7 dedicated-platform BEV within the next few years would appear to be on schedule... which would make it a rather remarkable feat.  Most EV-related announcements tend to have delivery dates that slide.  We know that Toyota does things their own way, following plans that defy enthusiast logic.  That has worked well for them in the past; though, you'd never know it.  I'm still hearing hybrid history portrayed as if Prius represented all of Toyota's advancements, that no other rollout was as important.  Ugh.  The introduction of so many important upgrades long ago... like Estima offering their first AWD hybrid system and Camry offering their first two-speed hybrid system.  More recently was RAV4 Prime offering their first liquid-cooled battery-pack.  Anywho, some of us have been waiting years for this next piece of the puzzle to fall into place.  If I had to guess, that smaller version of 4X resembling a crossover like CH-R will most likely end up being 3C.  Timing of such a reveal is a mystery.  The next-gen Prius Prime will probably targeted for the build up to Earth-Day.  Perhaps the first prototype to use this new nomenclature will be mentioned shortly thereafter.

Usable Capacity.  I had to look way back in my notes.  The same two values kept being sighted as battery-sizes for bZ4X when it was first written about with actual detail, following the initial debut.  That specification reveal was 63.4 kWh for the FWD and 65.5 kWh for the AWD.  Seeing those numbers repeated so often throughout 2022 made me wonder why they weren't clarified.  Reference to "usable" never seemed to emerge.  Yet, given any thought, what else so precise could that represent?  It had to have been the capacity Toyota allocated for propulsion from the total available.  There is always a buffer for longevity.  There is always some type of "empty" portion as well... at least for Toyota.  The fact that other automakers pretty much don't bother was the issue.  So when people talk about it now, I need to remind them that those who wanted to know had that information available all along:   When details of 4X were revealed last spring, that 64 kWh value was often noted as capacity.  That was indeed the usable amount.  It was unfortunate when many switched to gross without stating they were doing so.  Confusing matters more is how the various estimate systems do such a poor job of informing people what all the different numbers mean and how much they can be influenced by driving conditions.  Oh well.

Survey Questions.  They don't always ask the right thing.  Focus on whether or not a PHEV owner plugs in their vehicle every night simply by requesting a yes/no reply is a waste of everyone's time.  Not knowing any of the circumstances... simple things, like what vehicle and location of charger... is a fundamental mistake.  There's no context.  It's like asking a Leaf owner how often they DC fast-charge when the area they live in is heavily supportive of Tesla SuperChargers.  Basically, it's a loaded question, an easy mislead... but completely valid results.  That is the nonsense of many survey results that become quoted "studies" with obvious bias.  It's easy to tell too.  Just go looking for the data.  Nothing beyond an executive-summary should be a red-flag.  It's no different than finding out the sampling was tiny or only from a select region.  Ugh.  I pretty much blew off the question being asked by introducing something with the hope of stirring some recognition of being misled.  Who know if this did any good:  That's a valid question, but the point is to find out why or why not.  Imagine if the study broke down data based on fuel cost.  When gas is cheap and electricity expensive, it is reasonable to question value of plugging in.  What is the likelihood of plugging in when switching from regular electricity billing to off-peak discount?  Programs like that are only now rolling out.  The study wouldn't have reflected those opportunities at all.

Subtle Approach.  In a new discussion about plug-in hybrids supposedly not being plugging in, this came about: "Most PHEVs still don't have electric heating, so there's still plenty of education needed.  Toyota has a heat pump on all Prime models, but they don't even mention it anywhere in the vehicle specs.  You have to look elsewhere to find the info."  That followed a post pointing out how Kia/Hyundai didn't have any type of electric heating.  I hoped to stir some critical thinking with:  Toyota bides their time, which becomes an egg-on-face revelation for those pushing the "behind" narrative.  Finding out that Prime was using a heat-pump years before Tesla gives good reason to find out what else Toyota has planned for their long-game strategy.  Notice how we have heard nothing about the alternate battery 4X uses?  It makes you wonder if that partnership with CATL started in 2019 secretly delivered a LFP option capable of closely matching NMC specs.  Discovering years later that they quietly rolled out something very competitive would be another egg-on-face revelation.