The Prius was the first mass market car in the entire world that could drive on battery power. Sure, the range sucked, and they dropped the ball after that by failing to shift focus to hydrogen, but the fact is Toyota does have a history of strong innovation in this space and I could totally see them being the first to ship a car with a solid state battery.
The Prius was the first mass market car in the entire world that could drive on battery power.
Firstly, no it wasn’t. There were many attempts at pure BEV in the twentieth century, including several “mass market” models in the 90s. None were particularly successful, but that doesn’t make Prius the first.
Secondly, that was more than quarter of a century ago. The first Prius came out as many years before today as the Apollo 15 moon landing was before the Prius. The market has moved on. Toyota can’t dine out on Prius forever.
Arguably their biggest cockup was betting the house on hydrogen while the rest of the market realised battery-electric was the way to go. Hydrogen is a dead end technology for private cars, and Toyota was pretty much alone in not realising this.
Prius
And that leaves them towards the bottom, since that’s pretty much it.
The Prius was the first mass market car in the entire world that could drive on battery power. Sure, the range sucked, and they dropped the ball after that by failing to shift focus to hydrogen, but the fact is Toyota does have a history of strong innovation in this space and I could totally see them being the first to ship a car with a solid state battery.
Firstly, no it wasn’t. There were many attempts at pure BEV in the twentieth century, including several “mass market” models in the 90s. None were particularly successful, but that doesn’t make Prius the first.
Secondly, that was more than quarter of a century ago. The first Prius came out as many years before today as the Apollo 15 moon landing was before the Prius. The market has moved on. Toyota can’t dine out on Prius forever.
Arguably their biggest cockup was betting the house on hydrogen while the rest of the market realised battery-electric was the way to go. Hydrogen is a dead end technology for private cars, and Toyota was pretty much alone in not realising this.
The Prius is perfect, there is no need for Toyota to make any new models.
And then sat around for about the next two decades and watched everyone surpass them.