New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) in China

FairAndUnbiased

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier
Registered Member
B.I.B. said:
ICE cars with some minor modifications can run on ammonia. Perhaps Toyota Honda Audi and Renault are counting on that.
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An ammonia fuel engine is interesting. It can be used as a hydrogen sink for renewable hydrogen and use renewable electricity for the Haber Bosch process.

There's a few challenges, of course:

1. Not liquid at STP
2. Highly corrosive in anhydrous form
3. Highly toxic in anhydrous form
 
O

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
supersnoop said:
Simply put, they are just really behind...

All the mainstream automakers are releasing or announcing EVs: Ford Mustang Mach-E, GM Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, VW id series, Audi etron series, etc. Who's missing? Toyota and Honda.

Sometimes corporations just have these huge blind spots. The American automakers had this in the 70's and 80's where they did not develop competitive small engines and cars which created the lost decades of 1990s to 2000's.

What's interesting is that this is the second Japanese industry to get blindsided. The first was the consumer electronics... Names you could buy 20 years ago (Toshiba, Sanyo, Panasonic, Sharp, etc.) all gone now. Sony, still around, but not really the leader in anything.

For whatever reason, Japanese companies are not very nimble. Some blame yes-man culture, some blame a propensity for the government to do bailouts, etc.
Click to expand...

It's really more because they scale up production and get too invested in one form of technology and that creates inertia.

The corporate culture also prefers doubling down rather than lift and move. However, the Japanese are also great technological innovators nonetheless. The manufacturing and corporate side make them less flexible and the higher costs for engineers, land, overheads etc are all going to contribute to resistance to rethink and redo except for very niche and high end stuff that requires a new technology and replacing entire production plans.

ITP for projects probably have this "strategic blundering" type of mindset carved into stone for mass produced stuff. A general cultural disdain for change and preference for the same old and familiar too.
 
PiSigma

PiSigma

"the engineer"
FairAndUnbiased said:
An ammonia fuel engine is interesting. It can be used as a hydrogen sink for renewable hydrogen and use renewable electricity for the Haber Bosch process.

There's a few challenges, of course:

1. Not liquid at STP
2. Highly corrosive in anhydrous form
3. Highly toxic in anhydrous form
Click to expand...
And forms ammonium salts in low water at cold temperatures that plug up everything
 
T

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
supersnoop said:
They didn’t miss VHS to DVD, this was actually the boom time for them as most of the disc manufacturing plants and associated chemicals were all Japanese companies.

They also didn’t miss CRT to LCD. What killed them in LCD was that Korean and Chinese companies were able to ramp up quality really quickly while maintaining the low cost production. I don’t have the technical reasons for this, but they didn’t “miss” it totally like the CD to MP3 example… remember minidisc??
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Japan did miss CRT to LCD transition. They went for Plasma instead. It was South Korea that bet on LCD. Plasma at the time was superior in color accuracy and low latency but bad in size and power consumption. LCD was less blocked by Japan's patent monopoly, so South Korea put their investment in improving it. Japan never really put equal amount of effort as South Korea. By the time LCD caught up Plasma in picture quality, Japan has no technical and market foundations to compete.
 
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broadsword

broadsword

Brigadier
taxiya said:
Japan did miss CRT to LCD transition. They went for Plasma instead. It was South Korea that bet on LCD. Plasma at the time was superior in color accuracy and low latency but bad in size and power consumption. LCD was less blocked by Japan's patent monopoly, so South Korea put their investment in improving it. Japan never really put equal amount of effort as South Korea. By the time LCD caught up Plasma in picture quality, Japan has no technical and market foundations to compete.
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Pioneer went for plasma, Sharp went for LCD. I think Sony went for LCD and Panasonic went for both.
 
G

gadgetcool5

Senior Member
Registered Member
supersnoop said:
Simply put, they are just really behind...

All the mainstream automakers are releasing or announcing EVs: Ford Mustang Mach-E, GM Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, VW id series, Audi etron series, etc. Who's missing? Toyota and Honda.

Sometimes corporations just have these huge blind spots. The American automakers had this in the 70's and 80's where they did not develop competitive small engines and cars which created the lost decades of 1990s to 2000's.

What's interesting is that this is the second Japanese industry to get blindsided. The first was the consumer electronics... Names you could buy 20 years ago (Toshiba, Sanyo, Panasonic, Sharp, etc.) all gone now. Sony, still around, but not really the leader in anything.

For whatever reason, Japanese companies are not very nimble. Some blame yes-man culture, some blame a propensity for the government to do bailouts, etc.
Click to expand...

Plus, every major American movie studio announced streaming services in the past five years. The only exception? Sony Pictures. The Japanese deliberately go out of their way to not innovate.
 
T

Tyler

Captain
Registered Member
taxiya said:
Japan did miss CRT to LCD transition. They went for Plasma instead. It was South Korea that bet on LCD. Plasma at the time was superior in color accuracy and low latency but bad in size and power consumption. LCD was less blocked by Japan's patent monopoly, so South Korea put their investment in improving it. Japan never really put equal amount of effort as South Korea. By the time LCD caught up Plasma in picture quality, Japan has no technical and market foundations to compete.
Click to expand...
Sony just bought the panels from Samsung. Besides TCL, Hisense and Haier, which Chinese TV maker offer the best LED screens?
 
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