Toyota Going 100% Hybrid By 2020

autofan1 writes "Toyota's vice president in charge of powertrain development, Masatami Takimoto, has said cost cutting on the electric motor, battery and inverter were all showing positive results in reducing the costs of hybrid technology and that by the time Toyota's sales goal of one million hybrids annually is reached, it 'expect margins to be equal to gasoline cars.' Takimoto also made the bold claim that by 2020, hybrids will be the standard drivetrain and account for '100 percent' of Toyota's cars as they would be no more expensive to produce than a conventional vehicle."

Comments

All Cars or Trucks Too?

[WrongSizeGlass]

Takimoto also made the bold claim that by 2020, hybrids will be the standard drivetrain and account for '100 percent' of Toyota's cars as they would be no more expensive to produce than a conventional vehicle. 100% is a lofty goal. Is that just cars or does it include trucks & SUV's too?

Re:All Cars or Trucks Too?

[Otter]

I did read the article and then made basically the same comment. No doubt I missed something -- your point is?

(Incidentally, being unfamiliar with "take a wag", I searched it and found that you're using it incorrectly. HTH.)

Re:All Cars or Trucks Too?

[zippthorne]

One can only hope. Driving can be fun, but commuting isn't. I'd just as soon nap as anything on the freeway. If I lived in a place where public transportation were an option, I'd use that. And no, I don't think that "A bus goes by every hour (peak) and every two-three hours (off-peak)" is "an option" for anyone that doesn't want to waste between 45 minutes and 2.5 hours at each end of the commute. It's not even a good alternative for drunks since service inexplicably ends an hour and a half before last call.

Re:All Cars or Trucks Too?

[packeteer]

A bicycle works pretty good for me for commuting. I know that it wont work for everyone but I think most people could do it. It is good for you to get exercise, it is good for the environment not to use a car. Your metabolism shoots up all day when you exercise in the morning, you have more energy all day. Also our road capacity is being overwhelmed, many more bikes can fit on roads than cars.

Also I know someone wants to reply and say that bikes are slow but its just not true. I go much faster than cars on the freeway during rush hour.

Also bikes are cheaper to buy and maintain, by a LOT.

Re:All Cars or Trucks Too?

[tbo]

Also our road capacity is being overwhelmed, many more bikes can fit on roads than cars.

I am a big bike fan and don't own a car, so please don't take this the wrong way, but what you're saying is potentially somewhat misleading (unintentionally, I know). Yes, more bikes can fit on the road than cars, but the capacity of most bikes is 1, versus 5 for most cars. Bikes also have a much lower top speed, so the potential "flux" of bicyclists is lower than that for driver/passengers for the same density of "seats".

Consider a freeway flowing smoothly with moderately heavy traffic. The amount of road space occupied by one car (including the gap behind it) could comfortably hold maybe 12 bikes. If a typical cyclist averages 20 mph, versus 60 mph for cars on this idealized freeway, and each car contains 4 people, then the flux (number passing a given point per unit time) of cyclists is the same as that of car commuters.

I have of course made all sorts of assumptions in favor of the cars here--most commuters don't carpool, freeways often get congested and slow, and there are a lot of places where freeways aren't available. Obviously cycling beats the current reality of single-occupant vehicles stuck in traffic. My point is just that a well-designed carpool/vanpool system can actually be competitive with cycling in terms of road efficiency.

Re:All Cars or Trucks Too?

[AaronW]

I was talking with a friend of mine who works at Tesla motors and he said the same thing. A motor in each wheel adds too much mass there and makes the suspension far more difficult to deal with, plus having to properly split the power between different wheels. Basically it's simpler and cheaper to just use a centralized motor like a conventional car, which also gives better performance. Generally for performance you want to lower the mass as much as possible in the wheels since this reduces the angular momentum in the wheels and makes it much more responsive to bumps and other imperfections in the road surface.

I could see adding a smaller motor for the front and a larger motor in the rear, since the best acceleration comes from the rear, but front or all wheel drive is advantageous in some circumstances (i.e. driving in snow) and could provide even better regenerative braking support. (I.e. the front motor could be optimized as an alternator/generator while the rear one is optimized to provide power to the wheels).

Sure, a motor in each wheel would allow for some really creative designs, but it's not very practical due to the added weight, suspension, cost and complexity involved.

Also, in general, a single larger motor will be more efficient than two or four smaller motors, and is easier to add support for liquid cooling, power, etc. Having exposed high voltage wires to each wheel would be a reliability problem as well as a safety problem as well. Many hybrid motors run at well over 400 volts with multi-phase power and a lot of amps. Having this confined within the chassis means shorter wires, so less losses, less EMF, and better safety.

Sole automobile transmission is a hybrid in 2020?

[SpzToid]

Isn't this a bit like the current market leader placing its eggs all in one (hybrid) basket? I welcome the rebel fighters willing to tackle the status quo. Hybrid is neat tech, but still. It isn't the be all, end all solution.

- - -

every bicycle is green

Disappointed.

[Anonymous Freak]

I'd actually like to see them commit to alternative fuels more. "100% hybrid" isn't good enough for me. 100% hybrid by 2010 would be nice, with a move to embrace other fuels by 2020.

Of course, he didn't say gas hybrid. Diesel hybrids would be nice; and this doesn't exclude plug-in hybrids, which have more utility than pure electric vehicles. And, in some strange way, you could consider a fuel cell/battery car to be a hybrid, even though the actual drivetrain is 100% electric. But some pure electric vehicles would be nice (bring back the RAV4-EV!) as would other alternative fuels.

Before this happens...

[CaptainPatent]

I would really like to see Toyota build a car that is identical to a current hybrid and find the costs associated with the vehicle including:
1) The money saved in the design by not having the electrical engine, battery, extra alternator system
2) The added vehicle life (if any) by not having extra parts to fail.
3) A more realistic estimate of the gas money saved under the new, more realistic mileage ratings
4)The additional cost of disposing batteries from the hybrid upon the hybrids end

I feel that we still may have been too quick to jump on the bandwagon with hybrids. Air pollution is reduced overall, but the added cost of the electrical engine may not make up for the forgone cost of gas. Additionally, how good is it going to be to have a mound of spent batteries laying around in landfills?
Let's see some data before such a large move is made.

What a dreadful idea

[ronanbear]

Hybrids are only more efficient for certain forms of driving. For cruising at motorway speeds the hybrid is just extra weight lowering efficiency. Improvements in diesel engines might well outpace hybrid technology.

Why would anyone wants to do this? It actually doesn't make any sense. 100% of cars represents a lot of recycling and a lot of cost (and pollution) in expired and leaking batteries.

A hybrid can't make an engine more efficient. It just makes it more efficient over certain parts of the power band. Unless they redefine hybrid to mean starter-alternator with minimal power assist there are going to be a lot of cars that don't see any gain. Incidentally I do think every car will (and should) have a starter-alternator in that timescale.

Other improvements in engine technology are negating the need for a hybrid motor at all. Going back to the Honda Insight the original hybrid: it doubled the milage of a Civic. 35% was due to exotic materials, aerodynamics, reduced rolling resistance; 35% was due to a more efficient engine and the last 30% was due to the expensive hybrid drivetrain.

By all means hybrids should become more popular, even more popular than conventionally powered but full replacement is based more on dogma and marketing than sound engineering reasons.

Re:What a dreadful idea

[Chirs]

"Other things equal, vehicles with regenerative braking will always be more fuel-efficient than vehicles without."

That's only true if you are actually braking.

Driving long stretches on the highway there is no braking involved and air resistance is high. You are limited by the power of the gas engine (because you'd drain your battery if you tried to use it continually), so most of the time the weight of the electric portion is a disadvantage.

The real advantage of the hybrid is where there is frequent braking involved and speeds are relatively slow. Stop-and-go city traffic, for instance.

prepare for renewed onslaught of hydrogen power

[Locutus]

marketing pieces. I think it was a GM executive who released a public statement that hybrids were bad because it distracted attention from the real future, hydrogen fuelcell vehicles. Oh, and he chose to release this the same week that Toyota invited the press to see the Prius built on the same productionline as 4 other cars. Not being custom built in some special production facility.

Go Toyota, show em how its done. Can you believe that the US had actually started working on hybrid vehicle in 1993? Yup, but good ole George Dubya Bush terminated government backing/involvement once he/Dick created the hydrogen program?

LoB

Re:Hmm...

[SnowZero]

...and your Civic isn't a bomb on wheels waiting to go off should the battery compartment be intruded upon by another vehicle. Since when have NiMH batteries been explosive? They are just about the safest battery around (better than the lead-acid, certainly). Would you feel safer with a larger gas tank in its place? I'm not a Prius owner, but this is just FUD.

Re:Hmm...

[sunspot42]

Your Civic is a LOT safer than the Prius

Source, please. According to Consumer Reports, in US Government testing the Prius did better in all regards than most cars in its class, with excellent driver side impact performance. In no way, shape or form is the Civic a "lot" safer than a Prius.

has significantly more performance

Source, please. The Civic automatic sedan does 0-30 in 3.6 seconds and 0-60 in 10.1 seconds. It does 45-65mph in 6.0 seconds. The Prius does 0-30 in 3.7 seconds, and 0-60 in 10.5. The Prius goes 45-65 in 6.4 seconds. Virtually identical performance, and the Prius is a larger car with more interior volume and a much quieter ride than the Civic.

and your Civic isn't a bomb on wheels waiting to go off should the battery compartment be intruded upon by another vehicle

Source, please. I haven't seen any reports regarding a Prius going up in smoke. Frankly, I'd be a lot more worried about the gas tank in either car than the batteries. Gasoline vapors are far more likely to explode than any battery.

Re:Conservation alternative

[malsdavis]

"Additionally, alternative fuels are not benign."

I think this is an extremely important point. In the rush to limit the environmental damage caused by fossil fuels, it seems the environmental risks of some of the alternative fuel sources are being almost completely ignored. The potential environmental damage which widespread biofuel usage could cause is particularly scary.

Every single study has shown that the astronomical land requirements needed to produce biofuel crops on a scale for it to replace gas in the USA would require near enough all the existing farmland along with all the worlds remaining forests, rainforests and protected areas of nature (e.g. national parks) to be cleared and replaced with biofuel crops. The thought that this could be done in the name of the "saving the environment" is pretty baffling!

Re:That's a scary thought

[ASBands]

You are absolutely correct: this graph shows the average miles per gallon of all vehicles in the United States. It is extremely telling that the graph is practically level since the mid 80s. To think that we haven't gained any more knowledge of engines is ridiculous - we should be improving fuel-efficiency standards, but we're not.

To address the GP, I recall reading somewhere that if the average vehicle got 28 miles per gallon (the actual number is between 25 and 30), we would not have to import a drop of oil from OPEC. Even if hybrids get only 50 mpg, the demand for fuel would decrease substantially. Furthermore, the technology that goes into hybrid vehicles could easily improve (it's a relatively new technology).

Re:Prius experience...

[terciops]

Agreed in full. I have owned a 2001 (series 2) Prius for 2.5 years now and apart from a new set of wiper blades and routine oil and filters it has required nothing spent on it at all - except fuel. I get ~1000kms between fill ups and it returns 20km/lt if driven hard and 22-25 km/lt in normal driving. My best tank mileage was 28 km/lt (see table to decode for non metric drivers). It is now on 103,000 kms total mileage (kilometrage ?) and is in perfect health. Tyre wear is better than normal and it still has the factory brake pads installed with 50% wear remaining. A remarkable car in all respects and an absolute joy to drive. Everything else I drive feels and sounds like an old clunker by comparison. Conversion from Km/Lt to MPG (US and UK) here - http://www.teaching-english-in-japan.net/conversio n/kilometers_per_liter/

Re:unsprung weight won't stop it

[AaronW]

I would think it would be simpler. After all, most (if not all) diesel locomotives have been hybrid for the last 50 years. They have a diesel engine that drives a generator and use an electric motor to power the wheels. By doing this, they completely eliminate the transmission and are able to provide tremendous torque, even at 0RPM, and there's no clutch or transmission to wear out. I still think a single, or possibly dual motors would be better than one in each wheel, just because it will be cheaper. Also, it might still be advantageous to have a transmission, though it would likely need far fewer gears, since it could keep the motor in its optimal range for providing high torque when accelerating yet keep the speed of the motor down when running at highway speeds. I would think such a transmission might be a lot simpler than a conventional 18 gear one.

Also, having a single motor means a lot less duplication for things like the inverter, cooling, etc.

Re:unsprung weight won't stop it

[Firethorn]

What the heck do you think it takes to 'keep up' on the highway? I travel on the highway all the time, and I only have a smidge over a hundred horsepower.

It looks like you're still thinking in terms of gasoline engines. An electric engine is different than an internal combustion engine. While a car's horsepower is rated in terms of maximum power, an electric is rated in terms of sustained power. It's quite possible to drive an electric motor to 300% of it's rated maximum for a short period of time. For the most part, this rating is only limited by the motor's cooling. Increase the cooling through forced ventilation or other cooling and you increase the capacity.

From my research, due to the efficiencies and torque range of electric motors most conversion sites(from gasoline to electric) say that you only need 1/3 to 1/2 the horsepower for similar performance.

So a 300hp electric could act like a 900hp electric for about 10 seconds. Plenty of power to pass even a number of vehicles on the highway, not to mention get any highway patrol real interested in talking with you...

Re:In related news...

[Blkdeath]

Actually, the license is to avoid patent disputes. Ford uses their own tech. Think of it as avoiding 1-Click lawsuits. GM in the meantime only currently offers partial hybrids, and Chrysler has nothing.

Partial points, but not quite accurate. Ford developed a hybrid system that was totally inefficient, so they scrapped it. They re-designed their system and found that, hey, this is almost identical to Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive. They licensed the technology from Toyota, tweaked their own production lines, and blam-o, we have a Hybrid Ford. Bring an Escape Hybrid to a Toyota dealership and they'll be perfectly suited to maintain it, save for the use the Ford's Duratec gasoline engine and other mechanical parts.

uhm..

[SuperDre]

by 2020 all new cars should be non-hybrid, but complete electric, comeon, it's about 13 years away..