Australia

@zurohki @notgold In some ways, it's also a tech standards war, a bit like VHS vs Betamax. Or HD-DVD vs BluRay. Or Windows Phone vs Android.

Right now, it looks like most of the auto industry is going in the direction of BEVs, just like most of the home electronics industry went with VHS in the '80s.

Meanwhile, Toyota is sticking with hydrogen.

The best technology doesn't always win a standards war. There are some benefits to green hydrogen cars over BEVs, just like Beta had some benefits over VHS.

The problem with one company supporting one standard when the rest of the industry goes the other way is that it can get expensive.

You have most of the economies of scale with the industry-leading technology. That tends to make it cheaper for consumers.

You have a bigger ecosystem of companies and more infrastructure supporting the industry standard.

That means a company that uses the non-standard technology typically has to do more work (and has more costs) to support it.

At this point, Tesla doesn't have to spend a lot of money to roll out its own EV charging stations, because there's a growing ecosystem.of companies doing it.

However, if hydrogen doesn't become the industry standard fuel for cars and Toyota wants to stick with it, then it might need to cover some of the costs of rolling out hydrogen refueling itself.

A company like Apple, which has a large and loyal customer base, can get away with charging customers more to use its own standards.

I'm not sure Toyota does.

None of that in itself means Toyota will go out of business. But it will be a lot more challenging.