> Toyota is still digging its heels in on gas-powered cars, even though the fact that Tesla used Japanese batteries in its early days proves Japan was once ahead of the curve.but they always seem to retreat right back into their comfort zone after a brief flash of brilliance, watching the rest of the world race ahead while they continue living in the past.
Did Japan get behind on battery tech? Couldn't them make a priority to get an edge there too?
I used to follow it closely and be in the industry, but it still seems like Japan is gonna be the last "mostly ICE cars" of the developed countries.
Which is a shame, because it has a perfect combination of short-range needs (I mean, look at kei-cars), tons of wonderful places to hang out while charging (toll-way rest areas are so good), rare sub-freezing temperatures in most of the country, mandatory vehicle inspections (which could collect great safety data as well as preventative maintenance), general love of new cars and brand loyalty, lack of political or individual divide of "big gas trucks are manly", mobile-power-station earthquake preparedness (a nice bonus), generally cooperative nation-wide infrastructure...
I guess we just have to hope the main automakers can hold on long enough for solid-state batteries and move faster than a snail's pace when it does.
And one of the points that's a little more obvious living here: Japan is a remarkably car centric culture. Not quite to the extent of America, but in much of the country you really do need a car.
If anything the main exceptions to that are exactly the places tourists are most likely to go.
I disagree, I lived a year in a small town near Osaka far from any tourist attractions and never did I wish I had a car. Public transport was ubiquitous and walking infrastructure excellent. Lots of people on bikes. Roads were tiny so cars on them are tiny and driving slowly, making it feel safe to share the roads with them.
Maybe the most clear indication that Japan isn't a car centric culture was the complete lack of FREE parking space.
So, yes, the extreme pedestrian hostility that is sometimes normal in the US isn't around, and there's more likely to be a viable transit system. That's especially the case if you're in the outskirts of a major metropolitan area where there are going to be commuters into the core transit network.
Still, if I hop on an express train for an hour away from central Tokyo, every house has a car park and most significant stores have dedicated parking spaces, and I get a vibe of "suburbia with narrower streets". Heck, I get some of that even as close as Kawasaki or southern Tokyo once you're away from major train stations.
Which seems strange since Toyota are the origins of JiT manufacturing. I wonder what made Japan go through a period of incredible innovation and then just decide "ok, that's enough".
I have a theory: Japanese car's have excellent reliability, their interiors and design are lacking. If every car in the world is an EV, which due to their relative simplicity tend to be reliable, what remaining unique selling points does eg a toyota have?
I'd still prefer a more reliable EV to a less reliable one. Not too many good options for a EV minivan in the US (I'll never buy a Chrysler product, and I don't really want a VW).
Japan (Panasonic) is important baterry cell manufacturer, but most battery cells are exported, not used for domestic EVs. For example Panasonic is supplying batteries for Tesla.
Issues with home charging comes to mind, but I suspect it might have to do with gas station experience in Japan not being so miserable.
Phrases that are equivalent to "full tank every morning with no need for drives to gas pumps" basically don't appear on Japanese Internet. I just googled a bit for Model 3 user reviews in Japanese, and most mentioned items seem to be futuristic experience, various minor QoL and reliability issues like sensors and actuator issues, and disappointing chassis dynamics such as torsional rigidity and suspension designs. Few mention home charging and none as a positive. Fewer mention the CEO as a factor, whose eccentricity is still not widely reported in Japan - Trump/Musk derangement is not fun to watch and media tend to sanewash or simply skip over those.
Though, I think Tesla is also not doing that bad in Japan? I see pre-Highlander M3 and occasional MY Juniper on the road, about as often as Porsche(all models). It's slightly more common than Nissan Sakura, and definitely more common than Ferrari and BYD cars(all models).
Solid-state batteries are facing production hell now, with lots of issues cropping up when tested at large-scale in real devices.
So they are not expected in meaningful quantities until the early 2030-s.
And the LFP chemistry has now advanced so much that solid-state batteries might not even matter anymore, except for some niche uses like aviation/drones.
We could have smaller transportation with combustion engines too, but the margins are lower and they cover fewer use cases, so marketing larger vehicles works really well.
It is curious - you would think they would love it? But they don't - is it simply the case of the Chinese beating them - stubbornness and pride? Or is there something more going on?
Toyota was seemingly decades ahead at one point with their hybrid cars; but now they have resigned to a defensive position compared to Tesla, Chinese automakers, even the European ones.
I remember BYD actually had to design models specifically tailored to the Japanese market (k-car)—their preferences are honestly so bizarre. I think a lot of this comes down to their national character. Once external momentum fades—like the industrial transfers from the US—they seem to lose the drive for technological innovation. They just cling to whatever they already have and refuse to adapt to global shifts.People in Japan are still using Yahoo and fax machines（not to mention their own bizarrely proprietary text editors,Hidemaru/SAKURA editor, to compare, in china, it's also vscode）.
Toyota is still digging its heels in on gas-powered cars, even though the fact that Tesla used Japanese batteries in its early days proves Japan was once ahead of the curve.but they always seem to retreat right back into their comfort zone after a brief flash of brilliance, watching the rest of the world race ahead while they continue living in the past.
That's probably a good thing, the world needs appliance-like cars for markets where EV charging isn't there yet.
Meanwhile Toyota is #1, moving millions of units, something like half of them are electrified in most markets. A 2026 Camry, for $30k, gives the buyer a low-TCO, value retaining, 50mpg, 230hp appliance of a car. That's a rarity.
>They just cling to whatever they already have and refuse to adapt to global shifts.People in Japan are still using Yahoo and fax machines（not to mention their own bizarrely proprietary text editors,Hidemaru/SAKURA editor, to compare, in china, it's also vscode）.
James May suggests in his doco "The Peoples Car" that the US auto market was like this when Japan was recovering from WW2, giving them the edge. It wouldnt surprise me if after a few years of success that they also stagnate.
> I remember BYD actually had to design models specifically tailored to the Japanese market (k-car)—their preferences are honestly so bizarre.
You say this in past tense, but BYD's kei car won't be released until later this month [1]. It remains to be seen how well it will sell. I think they are expected to sell maybe 5,000 units per year initially, but obviously they are looking to expand sales over time.
And what's wrong with kei cars? They are inexpensive to buy, fuel efficient, easy to park, inexpensive to maintain, are shockingly roomy inside, and have practical features like sliding doors. They aren't the fastest or most luxurious cars in the world - but as a tool for getting around they do their job very well.
The government also provides strong monetary incentives to drive kei cars in the form of lower taxes and inspection costs, which is another reason they are so popular. That's why the BYD Racco is kind of a big deal - they are the first non-Japanese manufacturer to design a car that complies with kei car standards. No other foreign manufacturers to date have felt it was worth the effort.
Toyota's first Prius (hybrid) came out in 1997 and Nissan's first Leaf (full electric) in 2010. Both Japanese, both ahead of the curve, now way behind it.
It is an interesting situation.
Anecdote: I have a 2014 Leaf, purchased a couple of years ago as the first foray into EVs. It's a great little car, perfect for the daily short trips for which we bought it. Use-case matters!
Aren’t all Teslas made in the US supplied with American made batteries? In partnership with Panasonic, for the Model 3, but still a Tesla factory in Nevada. And I think 4680s are all Tesla made, correct?
No, they are all 100% made by Panasonic, with Panasonic technology, in buildings that Panasonic master-leases from Tesla. The only thing Tesla has contributed is the shell and the sign outside. Panasonic developed the 4680 form factor at Tesla's request, by the way that program has been a major failure.
> No, they are all 100% made by Panasonic, with Panasonic technology, in buildings that Panasonic master-leases from Tesla
Gigafactory Nevada is jointly operated by Tesla and Panasonic [1]. That's in America. (No clue on the master lease bit. Would be curious for your source.)
Fun, somewhat related, fact. For a long time (not sure about now), the high-voltage connectors in Tesla were made by (but not labeled) Yazaki. Made in Japan.
But the QC tests to Yazaki's deisred level didn't exist yet, and Tesla did their own tests. And Tesla was maximizing it's "Made in the US" stance, which either goes by weight or components.
So Yazaki was secretly making unlabeled high-voltage connectors in Japan, selling them to Tesla, who could then test them themselves and claim falsely the source of production.
“Master-leases” is a factually incorrect claim. Tesla owns the entire Nevada site and all of the buildings. Panasonic is a tenant of Tesla, leasing some sections of floor space to operate their 2170 cell production lines, manufactured to Tesla's specification. This arrangement was formed before Tesla had meaningful battery cell manufacturing expertise of its own.
In the same building cluster, Tesla does in-house battery module production, battery pack production, Powerwall manufacturing, Megapack manufacturing, electric motor manufacturing, drive units, and other powertrain components.
Panasonic was not involved in the design of Tesla's 4680 cell format. Along with this new form factor, Tesla gambled with various novel manufacturing processes, which resulted in many delays. Except for the delays, the Tesla 4680 production ramp has not been a “major failure”. It's producing a large volume of cells going into real customer cars, in the order of tens of millions per annum, and in that respect it has been successful. It is not yet clear whether the various manufacturing innovations (e.g. dry process) will be as transformative as hoped.
Separately to Tesla's efforts, and in response to Tesla's plans, Panasonic also developed its own manufacturing process to produce 4680 cells with the aim of being a supplier to Tesla.
> The industry standard for the recovery of lithium (remember there is a difference between recovery and extraction) is 90%, with some platforms now achieving 95%+ like those that use carbonation.
Some battery recycling challenges are minimal volume at this point on the EV adoption curve, and LFP and sodium ion battery chemistries won’t be worth recycling for the materials alone (but still require recycling as ewaste).
Sulfuric acid, hydrogen peroxide, sodium carbonate. Not catalysts but reagents. Most currently come from fossil fuel feedstock but that isn't essential.
Why would any of those compounds come from fossil fuels? Sulfur is mined, hydrogen peroxide is water with some oxygen taken off, and sodium carbonate is made from salt and limestone
Sulfur is produced when the H2S is removed from petroleum and natural gas. Elemental sulfur is burned to produce Sulfuric acid using the Contact Process.
It really should not be surprising that we can get very high recovery percentages from batteries -- we do not mine elemental lithium, so the processes we use for extraction are already designed to extract lithium from fairly low-purity sources. In contrast, lithium batteries are an incredibly high-purity source of lithium. The main question is when it will become cost-effective to create recycling pipelines.
Lead acid batteries had a similar trajectory and modern lead acid batteries are effectively 100% recycled.
> It really should not be surprising that we can get very high recovery percentages from batteries -- we do not mine elemental lithium
Plenty of substances we don't mine elementally are not worth recycling. The main advantage with lithium is it tends to go into large volumes of standardised chemistries.
U.S. lead acid baterries recycling has been outsourced.
"
As the United States tightened regulations on lead processing to protect Americans over the past three decades, finding domestic lead became a challenge. So the auto industry looked overseas to supplement its supply. In doing so, car and battery manufacturers pushed the health consequences of lead recycling onto countries where enforcement is lax, testing is rare and workers are desperate for jobs.
"
Yeah, too many lead batteries here, and there are a lot of battery recycle factories. It's been a health and environment concern for a while. And these batteries allowed to put motors on rickshaw, we call them "Tesla", And they are also another hazard, and menace for the price of faster transportation.
Still, the overall benefit might be seen as positive for lithium from shifting widespread air pollution from combustion engines to more localized pollution. Though obviously the world needs to work on better processes for the local pollutants.
As an Indian this is exactly one of the reasons why I am afraid of EV boom. All of that bad stuff, which we are mostly unfamiliar with (in terms of how to handle it properly, because battery tech is always changing) is going to dumped in places like India. And would silently sustain the bad effects for many decades or even more, until it (the bad stuff) somehow reaches some developed country (probably never).
If you've ever seen a video of Nigerians "recycling" lead batteries you'd be hard pressed to call it that. Katana in one hand, bucket on the floor, no shoes, let's go.
This is probably somewhat true, but also I suspect there might be an order of magnitude difference from extracting trace lithium from inert rock vs collecting it as a salt from amongst a medley of very refined metals.
Case in point - lead acid batteries are not a fair comparison. A lead acid battery is so robust you can separate the cathodes and anodes with your (gloved) hands. Getting the elements out of a lead battery is like picking pieces of pepperoni off of a pizza. Whereas taking lithium out of a lithium cell is like pulling only a certain protein out of a roll of bologna. And the protein catches fire in contact with air.
> And the protein catches fire in contact with air.
FWIW neither lithium metal nor most Li-ion electrode chemistries autoignite in air at STP. The fire hazard is primarily due to heating up to the ignition temperature through short circuits though there are also exothermic reactions with e.g. water that can heat things up sufficiently.
Being the eager electron donor it is, once it is on fire it is very hard to put out, of course.
As late as the early 80s and probably later there was a guy in the city I live near that had a battery recycling company where they did just that - melted the pitch to extract the cells from the battery "bucket", cut the old cells off and melted them down, cast new grids and put new lead oxide in, and sealed it all up again.
My dad bought a recycled lorry battery off them in the late 70s, and I remember going to the place to pick it up. I can't imagine it was a very safe place to work, and I expect that was pretty much a maximum lifetime exposure to lead in one hit ;-)
I think the issues with recycling lithium from electrolyte containing lithium hexafluorophosphate in solvents is more the hexafluorophosphate part; it's highly reactive, hygroscopic and releases (toxic, corrosive) hydrogen fluoride upon contact with water. So purely from economic perspective it's possibly not worth it unless we are very lithium-constrained. Of course it should be done anyway as there will be a lot of used batteries in near future.
The article doesn't really give us the details which is a pity.
This article is poor, because lithium is just one part of the value contained within EV batteries. Far more valuable is any nickel, cobalt and graphite. Equally valuable is any copper and aluminium. Unless you're effectively recycling a significant number of the major materials, it's not enough.
Furthermore, it's not a remarkable achievement. By contrast to this headline, Redwood Materials claims "Redwood’s technology can recover, on average, more than 95% of materials like nickel, cobalt, copper, aluminum, lithium and graphite in a lithium-ion battery."[0]
Yes, LFP is a better chemistry for various reasons including cost. Thankfully this means that nickel and cobalt are not needed for EVs adoption to continue scaling.
For now, NMC remains superior for some high performance applications, as well as for high-end laptops and phones. Yes, there are "myriad" problems with nickel and cobalt. These problems will diminish as scale makes recycling economically competitive to virgin material mining.
At some point the number of EV batteries being disposed will approach equilibrium to the number of new vehicle batteries manufactured. When this happens the amount of virgin nickel and cobalt needed will also approach zero.
> Far more valuable is any nickel, cobalt and graphite. Equally valuable is any copper and aluminium.
All of these metals are already almost fully recycled (not sure about graphite). Lithium is the toughest to recycle and it's not solved yet, so it's right to focus on that, because there will be a lot of lithium electrolyte to dispose in the near future.
> This new technique doesn’t just recycle materials; it recovers most of them at an unbelievable rate.
I'm so tired of reading articles written by LLM. There are several sites that just ingest material (like studies) and crap out low-effort LLM articles.
I used to enjoy watching smaller youtubers, but everytime I've given one a chance lately it has been unbearably clear that it was written by an llm. Supposedly people have ingested so much llm writing that they've naturally started writing in a similar style.
The key point will be the energy inputs, and catalyst or other process input losses. Not the % recovery, its more recovery at an economically viable cost
Many processes could recover the inputs. Some are tremendously polluting. Cheap methods to recover lead from older lead-acid car batteries would be an example, or the way scavengers burn plastic insulation of recovered copper wiring.
TL;DR exernalities and economics and pollution drive recycling issues, not % recovery at this point. We know how to recover a lot of the inputs. Knowing how to industrialise and scale it up is what counts.
John McCarthy (of LISP fame) was an (in)famous curmudgeon on USENET, frequently used to say future generations will thank us for making giant collections in the ground of highly valuable recoverable industrial inputs, what we call "rubbish dumps" -He was only partially less wrong, but had a point to make about the cost of inputs to industry vs raw mining costs. If we do come up with a process to strip mine rubbish dumps and send feedstocks in the appropriate directions there's a lot there. Complex plastics, Metals, Organics, Acids, Methane Gas, you-name-it. We already collect and harvest the methane to drive other dump works, the idea of mining the materials isn't "wrong" as much as insufficiently economic right now against raw material sources.
The 90% recovery rate is not groundbreaking by itself. The real value is lower contamination and emissions—but it still needs to prove cost-effective at industrial scale.
> Scientists found a way to extract up to 90% of oxygen from air! They call it “breathing”
No, they don't and no, they wouldn't. "Inhaled air [at sea level] contains 21% O2 while exhaled breath contains approximately 16% O2 and 5% CO2" [1]. 24% recovery.
The article seems to be very unspecific about what it is this company does that is so different. It also steps over the fact that there are already quite a few companies active in the US, EU, and China that are recycling batteries. Nor is the cited percentage that remarkable. That's ballpark what competitors are achieving as well. Probably a bit more. 10% lithium is a lot of lithium to not recover. Most natural deposits of lithium have very low concentrations of it.
The main thing actually holding back the recycling industry is the lack of batteries that need recycling, not the lack of technology needed to recycle them. Most of the batteries produced in the last ten years are still being used. And quite a few might head for a second life in storage for another decade or so. It's probably going to be another decade before recycling hits a scale where it becomes a significant and lucrative source of valuable raw materials.
And as others mentioned, it's not just about recycling the lithium in batteries. It's not like cobalt, nickel, copper, graphite, etc. end up on the trash heap.
Japan was one of the first countries to be hit with rare-earth export-restrictions by China - going back to 2010. It seems that a lot of policy came out from this unpleasant shock, incl. the decision by Toyota to focus on developing FCEVs which would be less dependent on Chinese supply-chains. Ironically, the resulting vacuum may have actually led to Chinese/American companies gaining market share in the BEV space.
Still, given how things are going, FCEVs (and Japan with it) might actually end-up having the last laugh.
There's a reason Japan could be burdened with the largest modern nuclear disaster and then choose to double down on nuclear capacity. It's an island nation with no domestic energy reserves - completely dependent on energy markets.
FCEVs make no sense if you have plenty of fossil fuel or access to cheap lithium batteries. But if you see hydrogen as a less resource-bottlenecked way to store energy, it starts to make sense.
I’ve always been amazed at how differently the PHEV, HFC, and standard EV market ended up (well, until recently) playing out, in Japan Vs The Rest of the World. I always found the hydrogen stations here in California to be an interesting anomaly — but once you learn about the infrastructure and vehicles forced on the Japanese by gov/corp alliance, you really get a fascinating ‘alternate reality/history’ localized entirely on the island of Japan lol
Currently hydrogen is just oil with extra steps. Efficient electrolysis either needs ultra-rare materials like iridium and platinum, or exotic ceramics for continuous high-temperature electrolysis.
I personally can't see how this arrangement can supplant oil and batteries.
The article is very, very light with details. The university or research center is not named. No scientist is named. No link. Nothing that tells "look, we're telling you real, solid, serious stuff."
The technical challenge has never been recovering materials. It's recovering them cheaply enough that recycling beats mining.
If this process scales economically, it could end up being more important than another small improvement in battery chemistry.
Or the fact that China is the primary source of lithium and if Chinese car brands start exporting their cars worldwide, there is no reason for them give the raw resources to western car manufacturers, forcing them to buy the whole battery pack from China.
Australia will sell the raw resource ( hard-rock spodumene ) to anyone that wants a X-year contract - it's on them to process the concentrate (although we are currently building out spodumene processing).
Australia has one of the biggest lithium reserves, and is the biggest producer of lithium by weight, with most of its production coming from mines in Western Australia.
Lithium mining in Chile is the second largest in the world in terms of extraction after it was surpassed by Australia in 2012. Chile, like Argentina and Bolivia, is located within the Lithium Triangle, an area of South America that houses the largest known reserves of lithium on the planet.
Incidentally, companies developing technologies for reusing EV batteries in grid storage applications (where even <80% capacity EV batteries are just fine for many years), have trouble getting enough EV batteries, because they last much longer than we were made to believe.
fzeroff | 6 hours ago
donjapan22 | 6 hours ago
realxrobau | 4 hours ago
yanhangyhy | 6 hours ago
jazzyjackson | 5 hours ago
nextaccountic | 56 minutes ago
> Toyota is still digging its heels in on gas-powered cars, even though the fact that Tesla used Japanese batteries in its early days proves Japan was once ahead of the curve.but they always seem to retreat right back into their comfort zone after a brief flash of brilliance, watching the rest of the world race ahead while they continue living in the past.
Did Japan get behind on battery tech? Couldn't them make a priority to get an edge there too?
mc3301 | 5 hours ago
Which is a shame, because it has a perfect combination of short-range needs (I mean, look at kei-cars), tons of wonderful places to hang out while charging (toll-way rest areas are so good), rare sub-freezing temperatures in most of the country, mandatory vehicle inspections (which could collect great safety data as well as preventative maintenance), general love of new cars and brand loyalty, lack of political or individual divide of "big gas trucks are manly", mobile-power-station earthquake preparedness (a nice bonus), generally cooperative nation-wide infrastructure...
I guess we just have to hope the main automakers can hold on long enough for solid-state batteries and move faster than a snail's pace when it does.
cammikebrown | 5 hours ago
zdragnar | 5 hours ago
cyberax | 5 hours ago
klempner | 4 hours ago
If anything the main exceptions to that are exactly the places tourists are most likely to go.
happosai | an hour ago
Maybe the most clear indication that Japan isn't a car centric culture was the complete lack of FREE parking space.
tonyedgecombe | 57 minutes ago
klempner | 46 minutes ago
Still, if I hop on an express train for an hour away from central Tokyo, every house has a car park and most significant stores have dedicated parking spaces, and I get a vibe of "suburbia with narrower streets". Heck, I get some of that even as close as Kawasaki or southern Tokyo once you're away from major train stations.
mc3301 | 4 hours ago
inatreecrown2 | 5 hours ago
toomuchtodo | 5 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Synergy_Drive
https://autos.yahoo.com/ev-and-future-tech/articles/toyota-p...
https://www.motor1.com/news/798173/toyota-chairman-reveals-w...
Loocid | 5 hours ago
leonidasrup | 4 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades
tyre | 5 hours ago
chubs | 5 hours ago
NegativeLatency | 3 hours ago
protocolture | 2 hours ago
Toyota seem to be spartan intentionally.
GWM has them both outflanked they just push comfortable interior as its easier than catching up on any of the other engineering.
Teslas just feel like Jony Ive reinvented the car interior from an artistic design perspective with zero reference to the comfort of the passenger.
mc3301 | 4 hours ago
Edit: I also think there's a fear of this: wide acceptance of EVs open the door to BYD (or similar) huge takeover of the car market.
leonidasrup | 3 hours ago
https://opengov.jp/en/economy/energy/crude-oil-imports/
Japan (Panasonic) is important baterry cell manufacturer, but most battery cells are exported, not used for domestic EVs. For example Panasonic is supplying batteries for Tesla.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electric_vehicle_batte...
numpad0 | 3 hours ago
Phrases that are equivalent to "full tank every morning with no need for drives to gas pumps" basically don't appear on Japanese Internet. I just googled a bit for Model 3 user reviews in Japanese, and most mentioned items seem to be futuristic experience, various minor QoL and reliability issues like sensors and actuator issues, and disappointing chassis dynamics such as torsional rigidity and suspension designs. Few mention home charging and none as a positive. Fewer mention the CEO as a factor, whose eccentricity is still not widely reported in Japan - Trump/Musk derangement is not fun to watch and media tend to sanewash or simply skip over those.
Though, I think Tesla is also not doing that bad in Japan? I see pre-Highlander M3 and occasional MY Juniper on the road, about as often as Porsche(all models). It's slightly more common than Nissan Sakura, and definitely more common than Ferrari and BYD cars(all models).
cyberax | 5 hours ago
So they are not expected in meaningful quantities until the early 2030-s.
And the LFP chemistry has now advanced so much that solid-state batteries might not even matter anymore, except for some niche uses like aviation/drones.
xbmcuser | 4 hours ago
adrianN | 2 hours ago
chvid | 5 hours ago
Toyota was seemingly decades ahead at one point with their hybrid cars; but now they have resigned to a defensive position compared to Tesla, Chinese automakers, even the European ones.
yanhangyhy | 5 hours ago
no. i just found it funny.
> Or is there something more going on?
I remember BYD actually had to design models specifically tailored to the Japanese market (k-car)—their preferences are honestly so bizarre. I think a lot of this comes down to their national character. Once external momentum fades—like the industrial transfers from the US—they seem to lose the drive for technological innovation. They just cling to whatever they already have and refuse to adapt to global shifts.People in Japan are still using Yahoo and fax machines（not to mention their own bizarrely proprietary text editors,Hidemaru/SAKURA editor, to compare, in china, it's also vscode）.
Toyota is still digging its heels in on gas-powered cars, even though the fact that Tesla used Japanese batteries in its early days proves Japan was once ahead of the curve.but they always seem to retreat right back into their comfort zone after a brief flash of brilliance, watching the rest of the world race ahead while they continue living in the past.
hnav | 5 hours ago
Meanwhile Toyota is #1, moving millions of units, something like half of them are electrified in most markets. A 2026 Camry, for $30k, gives the buyer a low-TCO, value retaining, 50mpg, 230hp appliance of a car. That's a rarity.
protocolture | 2 hours ago
James May suggests in his doco "The Peoples Car" that the US auto market was like this when Japan was recovering from WW2, giving them the edge. It wouldnt surprise me if after a few years of success that they also stagnate.
freetime2 | 13 minutes ago
You say this in past tense, but BYD's kei car won't be released until later this month [1]. It remains to be seen how well it will sell. I think they are expected to sell maybe 5,000 units per year initially, but obviously they are looking to expand sales over time.
And what's wrong with kei cars? They are inexpensive to buy, fuel efficient, easy to park, inexpensive to maintain, are shockingly roomy inside, and have practical features like sliding doors. They aren't the fastest or most luxurious cars in the world - but as a tool for getting around they do their job very well.
The government also provides strong monetary incentives to drive kei cars in the form of lower taxes and inspection costs, which is another reason they are so popular. That's why the BYD Racco is kind of a big deal - they are the first non-Japanese manufacturer to design a car that complies with kei car standards. No other foreign manufacturers to date have felt it was worth the effort.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Racco
BLKNSLVR | 4 hours ago
It is an interesting situation.
Anecdote: I have a 2014 Leaf, purchased a couple of years ago as the first foray into EVs. It's a great little car, perfect for the daily short trips for which we bought it. Use-case matters!
jeffbee | 5 hours ago
rootusrootus | 4 hours ago
Aren’t all Teslas made in the US supplied with American made batteries? In partnership with Panasonic, for the Model 3, but still a Tesla factory in Nevada. And I think 4680s are all Tesla made, correct?
jeffbee | 4 hours ago
JumpCrisscross | 4 hours ago
Gigafactory Nevada is jointly operated by Tesla and Panasonic [1]. That's in America. (No clue on the master lease bit. Would be curious for your source.)
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/panaso...
mc3301 | 4 hours ago
But the QC tests to Yazaki's deisred level didn't exist yet, and Tesla did their own tests. And Tesla was maximizing it's "Made in the US" stance, which either goes by weight or components.
So Yazaki was secretly making unlabeled high-voltage connectors in Japan, selling them to Tesla, who could then test them themselves and claim falsely the source of production.
simondotau | 2 hours ago
“Master-leases” is a factually incorrect claim. Tesla owns the entire Nevada site and all of the buildings. Panasonic is a tenant of Tesla, leasing some sections of floor space to operate their 2170 cell production lines, manufactured to Tesla's specification. This arrangement was formed before Tesla had meaningful battery cell manufacturing expertise of its own.
In the same building cluster, Tesla does in-house battery module production, battery pack production, Powerwall manufacturing, Megapack manufacturing, electric motor manufacturing, drive units, and other powertrain components.
Panasonic was not involved in the design of Tesla's 4680 cell format. Along with this new form factor, Tesla gambled with various novel manufacturing processes, which resulted in many delays. Except for the delays, the Tesla 4680 production ramp has not been a “major failure”. It's producing a large volume of cells going into real customer cars, in the order of tens of millions per annum, and in that respect it has been successful. It is not yet clear whether the various manufacturing innovations (e.g. dry process) will be as transformative as hoped.
Separately to Tesla's efforts, and in response to Tesla's plans, Panasonic also developed its own manufacturing process to produce 4680 cells with the aim of being a supplier to Tesla.
zaik | 6 hours ago
iwassayinbourns | 4 hours ago
Edit: linked article is also from April.
bamboozled | 5 hours ago
jazzyjackson | 5 hours ago
acksmack | 4 hours ago
somenameforme | 4 hours ago
adrianN | 2 hours ago
contextfree | 52 minutes ago
waterproof | 5 hours ago
> The industry standard for the recovery of lithium (remember there is a difference between recovery and extraction) is 90%, with some platforms now achieving 95%+ like those that use carbonation.
toomuchtodo | 5 hours ago
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/13/nx-s1-5847025/ev-battery-recy...
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/02/nx-s1-5706658/electric-vehicl...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48893945
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48013768
koolala | 5 hours ago
nicman23 | 4 hours ago
koolala | 4 hours ago
Sabinus | 4 hours ago
mattclarkdotnet | an hour ago
Perz1val | an hour ago
wombatpm | 11 minutes ago
jorisw | an hour ago
cyphar | 5 hours ago
Lead acid batteries had a similar trajectory and modern lead acid batteries are effectively 100% recycled.
JumpCrisscross | 4 hours ago
Plenty of substances we don't mine elementally are not worth recycling. The main advantage with lithium is it tends to go into large volumes of standardised chemistries.
leonidasrup | 4 hours ago
" As the United States tightened regulations on lead processing to protect Americans over the past three decades, finding domestic lead became a challenge. So the auto industry looked overseas to supplement its supply. In doing so, car and battery manufacturers pushed the health consequences of lead recycling onto countries where enforcement is lax, testing is rare and workers are desperate for jobs. "
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/world/americas/car-batter...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/18/world/africa/...
t_mahmood | 3 hours ago
dv_dt | 2 hours ago
This is recently (2010) in California even: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exide_lead_contamination
Still, the overall benefit might be seen as positive for lithium from shifting widespread air pollution from combustion engines to more localized pollution. Though obviously the world needs to work on better processes for the local pollutants.
dtech | 2 hours ago
qsera | 40 minutes ago
As an Indian this is exactly one of the reasons why I am afraid of EV boom. All of that bad stuff, which we are mostly unfamiliar with (in terms of how to handle it properly, because battery tech is always changing) is going to dumped in places like India. And would silently sustain the bad effects for many decades or even more, until it (the bad stuff) somehow reaches some developed country (probably never).
worldsayshi | 37 minutes ago
I had the impression that India is quickly turning rich enough to say no to things like this.
anal_reactor | 8 minutes ago
protocolture | 3 hours ago
Getting rid of all that waste material from Galena was maybe a different incentive structure but yeah.
vasco | 3 hours ago
legitster | 2 hours ago
Case in point - lead acid batteries are not a fair comparison. A lead acid battery is so robust you can separate the cathodes and anodes with your (gloved) hands. Getting the elements out of a lead battery is like picking pieces of pepperoni off of a pizza. Whereas taking lithium out of a lithium cell is like pulling only a certain protein out of a roll of bologna. And the protein catches fire in contact with air.
Alpha3031 | 28 minutes ago
FWIW neither lithium metal nor most Li-ion electrode chemistries autoignite in air at STP. The fire hazard is primarily due to heating up to the ignition temperature through short circuits though there are also exothermic reactions with e.g. water that can heat things up sufficiently.
Being the eager electron donor it is, once it is on fire it is very hard to put out, of course.
lstodd | 20 minutes ago
One can replace air with pure nitrogen for example, but that complicates things.
ErroneousBosh | 8 minutes ago
My dad bought a recycled lorry battery off them in the late 70s, and I remember going to the place to pick it up. I can't imagine it was a very safe place to work, and I expect that was pretty much a maximum lifetime exposure to lead in one hit ;-)
tpm | an hour ago
The article doesn't really give us the details which is a pity.
simondotau | 5 hours ago
Furthermore, it's not a remarkable achievement. By contrast to this headline, Redwood Materials claims "Redwood’s technology can recover, on average, more than 95% of materials like nickel, cobalt, copper, aluminum, lithium and graphite in a lithium-ion battery."[0]
[0] https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/recycle-with-us/
mbgerring | 2 hours ago
simondotau | an hour ago
For now, NMC remains superior for some high performance applications, as well as for high-end laptops and phones. Yes, there are "myriad" problems with nickel and cobalt. These problems will diminish as scale makes recycling economically competitive to virgin material mining.
At some point the number of EV batteries being disposed will approach equilibrium to the number of new vehicle batteries manufactured. When this happens the amount of virgin nickel and cobalt needed will also approach zero.
tpm | 56 minutes ago
All of these metals are already almost fully recycled (not sure about graphite). Lithium is the toughest to recycle and it's not solved yet, so it's right to focus on that, because there will be a lot of lithium electrolyte to dispose in the near future.
jmcgough | 4 hours ago
I'm so tired of reading articles written by LLM. There are several sites that just ingest material (like studies) and crap out low-effort LLM articles.
dodos | 4 hours ago
ggm | 4 hours ago
Many processes could recover the inputs. Some are tremendously polluting. Cheap methods to recover lead from older lead-acid car batteries would be an example, or the way scavengers burn plastic insulation of recovered copper wiring.
TL;DR exernalities and economics and pollution drive recycling issues, not % recovery at this point. We know how to recover a lot of the inputs. Knowing how to industrialise and scale it up is what counts.
John McCarthy (of LISP fame) was an (in)famous curmudgeon on USENET, frequently used to say future generations will thank us for making giant collections in the ground of highly valuable recoverable industrial inputs, what we call "rubbish dumps" -He was only partially less wrong, but had a point to make about the cost of inputs to industry vs raw mining costs. If we do come up with a process to strip mine rubbish dumps and send feedstocks in the appropriate directions there's a lot there. Complex plastics, Metals, Organics, Acids, Methane Gas, you-name-it. We already collect and harvest the methane to drive other dump works, the idea of mining the materials isn't "wrong" as much as insufficiently economic right now against raw material sources.
justnoice | 4 hours ago
nkmnz | 4 hours ago
JumpCrisscross | 4 hours ago
No, they don't and no, they wouldn't. "Inhaled air [at sea level] contains 21% O2 while exhaled breath contains approximately 16% O2 and 5% CO2" [1]. 24% recovery.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8672270/
nkmnz | 31 minutes ago
stevefan1999 | 4 hours ago
feverzsj | 4 hours ago
est | 3 hours ago
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61481-y
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/china-recovery-mat...
feverzsj | 2 hours ago
[0]: https://www.yicai.com/news/103030411.html
mbgerring | 2 hours ago
googletop | 4 hours ago
jillesvangurp | 3 hours ago
The main thing actually holding back the recycling industry is the lack of batteries that need recycling, not the lack of technology needed to recycle them. Most of the batteries produced in the last ten years are still being used. And quite a few might head for a second life in storage for another decade or so. It's probably going to be another decade before recycling hits a scale where it becomes a significant and lucrative source of valuable raw materials.
And as others mentioned, it's not just about recycling the lithium in batteries. It's not like cobalt, nickel, copper, graphite, etc. end up on the trash heap.
akssri | 3 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Senkaku_boat_collision_in...
https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/comme...
Japan was one of the first countries to be hit with rare-earth export-restrictions by China - going back to 2010. It seems that a lot of policy came out from this unpleasant shock, incl. the decision by Toyota to focus on developing FCEVs which would be less dependent on Chinese supply-chains. Ironically, the resulting vacuum may have actually led to Chinese/American companies gaining market share in the BEV space.
Still, given how things are going, FCEVs (and Japan with it) might actually end-up having the last laugh.
legitster | 2 hours ago
FCEVs make no sense if you have plenty of fossil fuel or access to cheap lithium batteries. But if you see hydrogen as a less resource-bottlenecked way to store energy, it starts to make sense.
topato | an hour ago
dudisubekti | an hour ago
Can I ask your reasoning?
Currently hydrogen is just oil with extra steps. Efficient electrolysis either needs ultra-rare materials like iridium and platinum, or exotic ceramics for continuous high-temperature electrolysis.
I personally can't see how this arrangement can supplant oil and batteries.
tonyedgecombe | an hour ago
BaudouinVH | 3 hours ago
Here is another article with that details : https://www.techspot.com/news/112051-japan-finds-way-recover...
neuroelectron | an hour ago
cicko | an hour ago
progx | 3 hours ago
dburkland | 2 hours ago
runtime_lens | 2 hours ago
trhway | 2 hours ago
eecc | 2 hours ago
imtringued | an hour ago
defrost | an hour ago
Australia will sell the raw resource ( hard-rock spodumene ) to anyone that wants a X-year contract - it's on them to process the concentrate (although we are currently building out spodumene processing).
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_mining_in_AustraliaThere's also Chile:
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_mining_in_ChileIt might pay to brush up on mineral resources, processing, and global trade patterns before over confidently launching into faux-facts.
broccolover | 2 hours ago
hungryhobo | 2 hours ago
jwr | an hour ago
qsera | 36 minutes ago
brandelune | 23 minutes ago
https://green-innovation.nedo.go.jp/en/article/liquid-lithiu...
“While these targets have already been achieved at the laboratory level, we are now moving into the phase of mid-scale demonstration,”