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?

[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.

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.

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.

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: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

[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...