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Toyota Unveils Plug-in Hybrid Prius
phlack writes "Toyota has announced a plug-in hybrid vehicle, based on their popular Prius. So far, it will only have a range of 8 miles on the battery (13km). They are going to test this vehicle on the public roads, apparently a first for the industry. From the article: 'Unlike earlier gasoline-electric hybrids, which run on a parallel system twinning battery power and a combustion engine, plug-in cars are designed to enable short trips powered entirely by the electric motor, using a battery that can be charged through an electric socket at home. Many environmental advocates see them as the best available technology to reduce gasoline consumption and global-warming greenhouse gas emissions, but engineers say battery technology is still insufficient to store enough energy for long-distance travel.'"
what is the environmental advantage of electricity for cars ? It's mostly made with fossil fuels. I've never understood this. Am I missing something ?
How much electricity is needed to charge the sucker?
8 miles? under ideal conditions, flat road, no a/c ... very disappointing. Toyota's engineering is very good. If this is all such great engineers can manage, it shows that batteries have a long way to go.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My round trip to work is 7.5 KM. A little too far to walk or bike (and not be too fragrant for my cow-irkers), but perfect for this little beastie. In fact, even though I live in one of the worlds sprawliest cities, it's still enough to get me one-way somewhere, and I can plug in there for the trip home. I'm sure this would be great for most people and their little jaunts to the grocery store, or to get a movie, or insert the blank here. The majority of driving is short little trips, and this fills the bill.
Of course, I'll still keep my bigger, gas fueled beast for when I have further to go, but this should be a real option for many people.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Only 8 miles??? http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectricca r/
This is out of my home town's paper:
http://www.t-g.com/story/1218203.html
http://www.t-g.com/story/1232246.html
Basically it is a car with no fuel and a self recharging battery and runs on a hydraulic pump system. They are getting a patent for it now, so they are trying to keep the details to a minimum. But they say from the fly wheel back the car is unchanged.
:wq
And where do the batteries get the electricity to go those 2.5 miles?
Oh yeah, you put gas in the tank, and the engine will charge the battery, or you could put gas in the tank and drive it up a hill and brake all the way down. Either way it is powered by gasoline.
Get your $50k cash ready for the downpayment:
:)
http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php
100% Electric
0-60 in ~4 seconds
135 mpg equiv
Over 200 miles per charge
Less than 2 cents per mile
Now if they could get the price of this down to a reasonable level like a Honda Civic I'd buy it...and a buncha other people would too I'm sure. This would be an IDEAL car for me
Considering there used to be a waiting list to buy a Prius (All models are hybrid, 50MPG), and used cars were selling for the same price as new, but you could walk to your local Honda dealership and buy a Civic Hybrid (48MPG) off the lot, they made the right decision. It is about the type of people who want a Hybrid, they want it to be clear they are driving a Hybrid, the Prius does that while the Civic does not.
Most comments so far have dismissed the short battery-only range as mediocre; this article was even tagged "toy". The Toyota Plug-in HV isn't an electric only car. It's a hybrid. It can still go hundreds of miles a day like a regular car. Most of the miles on American's cars are from short day to day trips, not vacations. A plug in hybrid would mean that all those trips wouldn't require drivers to burn any gas (but would still allow them to take the occasional interstate drive).
Even if your daily commute is too significant to be made in electric-only mode (mine totals 40 miles and my employer won't let me recharge an EV at work), cutting some portion of the gas burning miles is still a major breakthrough. Running few power plants is more efficient than running millions of small engines to generate the same amount of energy. They physics of scale makes ICE cars look insanely wasteful. Electric cars aren't tied to any single fuel source--energy can come from coal, solar, wind, nuclear, etc. This makes EVs a great way to transition from a fossil fuel economy to any future power source. An all-electric car with lithium ion batteries and a several hundred mile range (at working class prices) would blow my mind. But I'm not going to complain if I can't have one yet. Plug-in hybrids may not be ideal, but they're a step in the right direction.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Toyota's engineering is very good. Meet the 78MPH-top-speed, 120-miles-per-charge 1997-2003 Toyota RAV4 EV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV. I was passed by one this morning on the freeway, I felt so inferior in my comparatively gas guzzling Prius.
The batteries don't have a long way to go, they've just been forced out of the picture.
Any technology that is distinguisable from magic is insufficently advanced
Li-Ion batteries are still very expensive, so a Li-Ion Prius would cost at least $10-15K more.
Nimh batteries would be a more cost effective option, and Toyota used them in it's all electric Rav4. Sadly, Chevron now owns the patents and won't let the technology back on the market -- http://www.ev1.org/chevron.htm
Wow, what a deal. All you need to do to drive for one cent per mile is spend $98,000 for a Tesla roadster.
I wonder, how many Teslas have ever been sold, and how many Toyotas were sold.... -last month?....
-------------
Here's a fun comparison:
The Tesla costs $98,000, does zero-60 in 4 seconds, and the battery pack lasts 100,000 miles.
The 2006 Chevy Corvette Z06 costs $65,000 and does zero-60 in ~3.6 seconds.
The EPA mileage is 16/26 city/highway (let's use an average of 20 mpg, in use?)....
And to drive 100,000 miles at 20 mpg will take about 5000 gallons of gas. At $3/gallon, that's $15,000 in fuel costs.
So for $20,000 less, a 2006 Corvette has a faster zero-60 time, a faster top speed, better resale value, and,,,,,, with an 18-gallon tank, it has a range of 360 miles, and can be refueled at any gas station.
Hmmmm,,,,, decisions, decisions.....
~
How Much CO2 Do Electric Cars Produce?
...Given the same assumptions about electric vehicles as in the American analysis above, electric cars in Canada could expect on average to cause CO2 emissions of 0.2*1.1*236 = 52 g/km to 0..3*1.1*236 = 78 g/km, compared to ICE emissions of 167 to 224 g/km.
2 0CO2.html
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Electric%20Cars%20and%
You remind me of the people who said cars would never be practical, explaining that there were no gas stations, and that you didn't have to crank a horse to start it.
The Tesla is a carefully crafted, rare, high-tech, high performance ride, very early into the market, and it is priced accordingly. A corvette is an assembly line commodity produced in comparatively huge volume after literally decades of absorbing engineering costs and marketing costs. When the automakers get around to putting a comparable electric car into mass production, the niche the Tesla occupies will close (and the cachet of having a high performance, non-polluting car will go away because they will no longer be rare.) If you think the Tesla's price represents an accurate measure of the price in a competitive market, you're not paying enough attention to how industry works.
My point was that electric cars don't need to be either slow, or have an 8 mile range. The price is what, maybe 5x that of a Prius? That's not so far off, frankly. This is the beginning of the curve. Some of us see that clearly and are all about waiting a little; but others... are still looking at Corvettes.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Even the dirtiest coal-fired power plant is far more efficient (read: cheaper, less polluting) a power source than your car engine is. Plus, using grid energy has the added benefit that, as grid power becomes more efficient/less polluting, your car is automatically "upgraded" along with it. While car engines will always be inefficient - grid power need not be.
As for hybrids - I agree that they are not the long term solution, but they can be a positive force. I get 60mpg in mine, and have since 2000. Tripling the national average isn't too shabby...
South Park is pretty funny, but probably not a very good database of information for this type of subject.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
You know, not everyone is as much of a tool as you think. It doesn't sound like you've thought much about the relative merits of various energy sources or transport systems if you're just lumping them all together like that. There are many motivations for using different approaches; political, environmental, economical, and yes, even fashion. Everyone buys cars for an assortment of logical and illogical reasons, too. Even you.
I can't reduce my environmental impact or foreign fuel usage to zero, but I try to lessen it, and I buy products like the Prius to vote with my dollars for technology that can lead in that direction. I don't expect anyone else to follow suit unless they want to.
Could it be that some people just like to insult other people's actions without understanding them?
I saw the South Park episode, by the way, and it's great. It even recognizes, unlike you, that hybrids can be a good thing if people aren't assholes about it. The show wasn't about hybrids, it was about people thinking their better than others without cause, kind of like you're doing with your post here.
Cheers.
Waiting at stoplights isn't going to wear you battery down much. ;-)
Besides, while TFA doesn't explicitly state this in the first couple paragraphs or what I skimmed, there's no way that this is running JUST on electricity. I don't think there's a person in the world who would spend $25K or whatever (number pulled out of ass) on a car that they can only go 8 miles. (Well, maybe Bill Gates.) It's a typical gas-electric hybrid, but where you can charge the battery externally then use it to go 8 miles. After your battery runs down, the gas will kick in as normal.
But for your short trips around town, you'll still use the gas engine much less, so it could still be worth it.
This story is total corporate BS!!! As anyone who has seen the film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" can attest. http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectricca r/
1) The jump to electric power is a must, it's cleaner, easier to transport over long distances, and it can be produced many different ways. What we don't have yet, is a great way to store electricity in medium-sized quantities efficiently. Batteries just simply won't take us there, chemical storage is not the best solution. While Fuel cells may provide some relief, I'm not sure they will be optimal long-term.
Electric power is best stored as electric power, and that means that we need to continue to develop ultra-capacitors. While the density is not yet on par with the other two technologies, there is a lot of promising research being done to increase the density. In time it will become competitive with battery densities, but there are much greater advantages to using caps over batteries:
*Caps can be charged very quickly, and as the technology matures, we're becoming more efficient at discharging caps at variable rates while retaining high efficiency.
*Caps can be charged and discharged millions of times with little to no performance loss.
*Caps are very safe for the environment, and also safe to put on board a vehicle and hand-held electronics. No hazardous waste, no explosions, and most likely no chemical leaks, etc....
2) The gap from cars and planes needs to be made back to trains. Japan and Europe have a huge advantage over the US, and we need to invest some money in making smarter decisions. The bullet trains in Japan get groups of people from one place to another at very impressive rates, almost rivaling airfare speeds. When you think about the time it takes to go through security, board a plane, load it with cargo, take-off, get up to cruising speed, land, get off the plane, go through security and get back on the road, there is a lot of overhead.
Bullet trains can offer speeds up to 200 mph, and typically have much faster boarding and unloading times. A trip from San Antonio to Dallas could take an hour and a half, but Google maps tells me that it takes over 4 and a half hours via automobile. I think it would be tough to beat an hour and a half total time from the time you stepped foot in the airport in SA until the time you left DFW. Similarly, you could easily make it from Boston to DC in under 3 hours.
While I understand that planes can make these times currently, they do it on fossil fuels, and they are not efficient. Trains can use a lot less power to move people a lot more efficiently, and they can do it on electric power. Trains with caps on board could pick up charge at various stations, while the passengers load and unload, and then travel on cap power to the next station. Wind and solar power could be set up at these various stations to keep a steady supply of power waiting for the next train to arrive.
Trains also offer safety over both cars and planes. There are much fewer accidents, as there are fewer drivers and more passengers. This is also an advantage in places like Europe where passengers can make their long trips while sleeping in a cabin at night. Imagine boarding a train in Denver at 10 PM and waking up the next morning in New York City with enough time to make an 8 AM meeting. Imagine paying prices similarly to taking a bus to get there.
I know that was a long comment, but I really think this could be promising if the government would tax gasoline more and start funding the construction of a better train transportation system. It would have to start out small, Boston to New York, DC to Philadelphia, Dallas to San Antonio, Atlanta to Miami, Chicago to Detroit. Eventually it could expand. For inner city travel we could use subway systems and buses.
Trains are affordable, efficient, clean, fast, safe, and versatile.
If knowing is half the battle, what is the other half?
There are two kinds of battery life that needs work. One is related to range.. The 8 mile or 250 mile debate. Often overlooked is the battery life in charge discharge cycles. The only reason the Prius doesn't have a dead battery every 1-2 years like a laptop battery or cell phone or business 2 way radio is because they don't deep cycle them in normal use. A Prius seldom has a battery under 50% or over 80% charged.
Heat, deep discharges, cell reversal, and overcharging is hard on batteries. The long range drivers do the worst.. Top the batteries off to get maximum range, run them till they go no more and repeat. Plan on buying new batteries every few years just like you do for your digital camera, MP3 player, cell phone, laptop, and other devices that get deep cycles often.
I think the Toyota 8 mile range is to extend the battery life to 10+ years. It is not for maximum driving range at a high cost.
The truth shall set you free!
It's the assumption of a "reasonable dielectric" that knocked you off your horse. That's where ultracaps have left the building. They're using altogether unreasonable dielectrics, and there is stuff on lab benches that is approaching battery levels right now.
Batteries have energy storage on the order of 1 MJ/kg. The numbers I quoted for the theoretical limits for capacitors are on the order of 1 MJ/kg. You aren't doing a very good job of disproving my point with your examples.
I assumed you had a magical dielectric with a dielectric constant of 1000 capable of supporting electric fields of 10 MV/m (capacitors are typically rated to half the breakdown voltage, so this means 20 MV/m). The best reported dielectrics I've heard of have constants of around 6000, but no breakdown information was provided (10+ MV/m is very hard to get).
Supercapacitors and ultracapacitors get their performance by using nanoporus materials to vastly improve surface area. Electric double-layer capacitors get their performance by using clever techniques to get a very uniform dielectric layer, which lets them work closer to maximum tolerances. No magic in either of these.
If you're claiming much more than 1 MJ/kg, provide citations, or it's vapour.
An acquaintance of mine converted his own vehicle into an electric only vehicle... He drives it to work every day.
For anyone interested, he has a site describing how he did his conversion here:
http://www.evhelp.com/
-Nate
One of the reasons the Prius looks the way it does (and has the tiny wheels it has) is because the engineers designing the Prius wanted to maximize fuel efficiency. To do that, they gave it an aerodynamic shape and low-rolling-resistance tires, etc etc. You may think it's ugly, but it looks like it does for a reason. (Personally, I think it looks pretty cool).
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Vapor? Perhaps. But I think we're about to find out. EEStor, a company backed by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, claims a specific energy of about 280 watt hours per kilogram, compared with around 120 watt hours per kilogram for lithium-ion and 32 watt hours per kilogram for lead-acid gel batteries. They say this is in a UC with dielectric strengths from 1000 to 3500 volts; the underlying technology has something to do with barium-titanate powders, and yes, I am hand-waving, that's all I know about it. Jim Miller, vice president of advanced transportation technologies at Maxwell Technologies (a competing maker of ultracaps) and an ultracap expert who spent 18 years doing engineering work at Ford Motors, said "I have no doubt you can develop that kind of material, and the mechanism that gives you the energy storage is clear" which I doubt you would catch him saying if the technology were not as described. He also says a number of doubtful things about the physical stability of ceramics in automotive applications, worries about the low temperature range (which is just FUD... my darned BATTERY needs a heater where I live - temperature low problems are solved off the shelf.) Anyway, when a competitor says "yeah, this is real technology", I'm inclined to go, ok, it's real, then. EEStor has said this tech will be shipping this year - 2007 - as an energy supply system for an electric vehicle. This isn't my claim; this is theirs. So we'll both wait and see.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Running few power plants is more efficient than running millions of small engines to generate the same amount of energy.
I doubt it, unless the power plant is nuclear or solar etc. If you're burning fossil fuels to make the electricity, which do you think is more efficient: a car which turns chemical energy directly into kinetic energy, or a car which starts by converting that same fuel first to electricty at the power plant, then transmitting it many miles, then converting it to chemical energy in the battery, then converting that back to electricity, and then using that electricity to produce kinetic energy? Don't forget to factor in the increased weight you have to lug around, and all the energy consumed in manufacturing the car itself.
I'm all for reducing pollution, but if electric cars are running off the power grid, aren't they _worse_ than gas cars?
No. Ultracaps can discharge and charge at hundreds of times the rate of batteries without heating at all; if they had a high series resistance, they'd heat up or outright explode. They have a relatively high leakage rate, or at least, some of the technologies do - you must have confused that with the series resistance, which is essentially non-existent.
That isn't what appears to be happening. Existing production is being diverted, and prices are going up. Just check corn futures; it's as plain as day. But your presumption is wrong anyway; because you are assuming that "extra" plants are grown; Where, and what do they replace? Arid spots with no plants? Buildings or roads? Not likely. They'll be grown in fields, most likely replacing other, less profitable crops (that is what we're seeing right now, BTW.) If weeds can't grow, neither can corn. So of course, they replace other plants. Even if they are just replacing weeds, which is the best case because it doesn't screw up other food crop balances, still, they are other plants that would not have been converted into atmospheric carbon dioxide, but which were already involved in scrubbing it from the atmosphere. So in the end, you are taking in carbon and the releasing it; you would have just been taking it in if you had used the plants for food or just left the lot to weeds. Electric systems produce no CO2, and therefore they clearly win on this basis. You're right that technically, this is an actual carbon neutral system; but if you want to go there, then corn can't be, it is carbon positive as soon as you burn it because if you had not burned it, there would be less CO2 in the air.
Hmm. Interesting. I don't know a whole lot about this. What is the lifetime of a fuel cell before it needs service, replacement, etc.? An ultracap typically allows for many millions of full charge / discharge cycles. So if you fully charged and discharged a system each day (call it 300 miles a day of driving) and lowballed to one million cycles, you'd get a million days of lifetime out of the cell, or about two thousand, seven hundred years of lifetime without any kind of service on the ultracaps whatsoever. Basically, they're install and forget until the car is junked, and then they can be moved to your next vehicle. How do fuel cells stack up to that?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors#Sports_s edan
Sports sedan
Tesla is also currently working on an announced but unrevealed sedan, codenamed "WhiteStar", which may be introduced in 2009 as a 2010 model. It is being designed as an alternative to the BMW 5 Series, with an estimated price of $50,000-70,000. [1] WhiteStar is to be built in a new plant in New Mexico.
[edit]Future models
Future plans include a more affordable third model. The development and production of this future model, codenamed "BlueStar", will be funded by profits from the WhiteStar sedan. According to Tesla, if everything goes according to plan, BlueStar will be released in 2012 and cost around $30,000.[3]
-- Boycott Shell
Not so much because of their storage capacity limit, but because the process of converting electrical energy into chemical energy (charge the battery) and the process of converting chemical energy into electrical energy (use the battery) is not extremely efficient. Somewhere from 70%-85% each way, depending on the battery technology employed. We CAN do rather better than that, with kinetic energy storage.
Something like 95% conversion efficiency is routine for electric motors/generators, between electrical and mechanical energy. If you are deliberately designing a short-range vehical, then flywheels can fill the bill MUCH better than batteries. They even weigh less, too.
OK, first off: why is a purely electric vehicle being described as a hybrid?
Second: Why are we still hyping the hybrid cars?
I have had a Prius for a little over two years, and driven over 40k miles. The fuel economy is considerably less than that of a comparable diesel (Audi A3 estate). Yes, the car is safe, and fairly economical for a petrol car, but it's not fantastic. It is exempt from congestion charging as the government are trying to encourage fuel efficiency, but I rarely drive into London. The annual car tax is minimal. However, all in all, it would have been far cheaper to buy a diesel car, whose manufacture would have had less environmental impact, and whose fuel efficiency would be better.