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?

[Charcharodon]

Actually an electric drive train on trucks and SUV's would be more desireable than your typical transmission that we've had for the last 40-50 years. Electric motors make the most torque at zero RPMs for much better load/towing. There is also once they make the switch to independently powered wheels (an electric motor built into the wheel) you could have much more interesting steering suspension options since there would be no drive shafts getting in the way.

As far as they've said they mean all their vehicles will have hybrid drivetrains. The only sad thing is going to be our grandkids asking us what it means to drive "stick".

Re:All Cars or Trucks Too?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with in wheel motors is that they have a really high un-sprung weight. This means that on bumps, the momentum that the wheel/motor has will be hard to stop with a shock absorber and thus the tire will lift off the ground resulting in poor cornering / braking and a rough and noisy ride. Having an individual motor for each wheel mounted to the car's frame that has a small axle to the wheel is required for decent performance.

in hub motors are bad, unless they are really light, like around 4-8kg.

Re:What the Japanese don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

"What the Japanese don't understand" is a hilarios way to start any sentence about automobiles. There are things that Japan has been getting right for over 20 years that GM still hasn't learned.

Re:Batteries

[esampson]

From Toyota's own website (http://www.toyota.com/about/environment/technolog y/2004/hybrid.html)

Is there a recycling plan in place for nickel-metal hydride batteries?

Toyota has a comprehensive battery recycling program in place and has been recycling nickel-metal hydride batteries since the RAV4 Electric Vehicle was introduced in 1998. Every part of the battery, from the precious metals to the plastic, plates, steel case and the wiring, is recycled. To ensure that batteries come back to Toyota, each battery has a phone number on it to call for recycling information and dealers are paid a $200 "bounty" for each battery.

So I suppose that yes, they will have a battery recycling program in place since it is doubtful they would discontinue their current one.

0% Zero Emissions

[Doc Ruby]

So Toyota will sell no all-electric or other "zero emissions" cars in 2020? No H2 or fuelcell vehicles? Hybrids are better than simple internal combustion engines, but not good enough. Has Toyota and the car industry just figured out that they can avoid the really big change away from gasoline just by getting us all to go "ooh, hybrids - that's good"?

Re:What a dreadful idea

[Control Group]

The real win of hybrids isn't the drivetrain, it's rengenerative braking. Storing kinetic energy rather than dissipating it as heat is an obvious efficiency win, since you're presumably going to stop moving at some point.

Really, the other efficiencies of hybrids are side effects of regenerative braking - once you've got an infrastructure in the car to store kinetic energy and subsequently deliver it to the wheels, you might as well use that infrastructure to improve the running efficiency as much as possible.

Now, it's possible that for current hybrids, the overhead incurred by including that infrastructure outweighs the gains of regenerative braking for some driving profiles, but there's no reason to think that will always be the case, since that's an engineering problem, not a physics one.

Other things equal, vehicles with regenerative braking will always be more fuel-efficient than vehicles without. The challenge is to make other things equal.

Re:Hmm...

[esampson]

From Toyota's own site (http://www.toyota.com/about/environment/technolog y/2004/hybrid.html)

How long does the Prius battery last and what is the replacement cost?

The Prius battery (and the battery-power management system) has been designed to maximize battery life. In part this is done by keeping the battery at an optimum charge level - never fully draining it and never fully recharging it. As a result, the Prius battery leads a pretty easy life. We have lab data showing the equivalent of 180,000 miles with no deterioration and expect it to last the life of the vehicle. We also expect battery technology to continue to improve: the second-generation model battery is 15% smaller, 25% lighter, and has 35% more specific power than the first. This is true of price as well. Between the 2003 and 2004 models, service battery costs came down 36% and we expect them to continue to drop so that by the time replacements may be needed it won't be a much of an issue. Since the car went on sale in 2000, Toyota has not replaced a single battery for wear and tear.

So it isn't as though you will be replacing the battery every few years. 7 years without a single replacement makes me suspect that if you bought a new Prius now the battery would last on average at least 10 to 15 years (since the batteries being installed now are even better than those installed 7 years ago).

Also because of Toyota's battery recycling program paying $200 per battery (though I expect that would drop as the cost of the batteries get lower) you won't, or at least shouldn't, have any form of disposal charge.

In related news...

[vought]

GM, Chrysler and Ford announce that they'll transition to "thinking about possibly getting some of those battery-rechargey cars" into production by 2015.

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).