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Plug-in Hybrids May Not Go Mainstream, Toyota Says
mattnyc99 writes "Honda's challenger to the Prius — the Insight hybrid that we discussed so lividly a month ago — got its official unveiling today at the Paris auto show, with insiders confirming it would be cheaper than the world's most popular 'green' car while still hitting the same fuel-efficiency range. But the hybrid-electric showdown comes in the midst of a sudden rethink by Toyota about plug-in hybrids. Apparently all the recent hype — over the production version of the Chevy Volt, plus Chrysler's new electric trio and even the cool new Pininfarina EV also unveiled today — has execs from the world's number one automaker, and alt-fuel experts, questioning how many people will really buy electric cars, whether people will really charge them at night to keep the grid clear, whether batteries will make them too expensive and more. "
The grid can handle this. Millions of cars aren't going to be plugged in overnight. Yes, it takes years for a large power plant projects and big high-voltage lines to be planned, designed, and installed. It also takes years for a new car to become a significant percentage of cars on the road. When you consider that the economy is starting to squeeze people, its pretty clear that millions of people aren't going to run out and buy a new car just because its shiny.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Plug in hybrids still use gas. That's why they are hybrids, otherwise they would simply be electric cars.
The idea here is to juice up the batteries at home and use them for the first x number of miles (hopefully enough to handle your commute). After that, when the batteries are low, a small diesel (or gas) engine will start up and begin charging the batteries providing you with more range. So if your out of juice you would simply fill up just like a regular car.
Of course I'm curious how they will report the millage on these cars. I would want to know the range on the electric system and the millage when running purely on gas, but I worry they will come up with some new way to measure it that has little to no meaning.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
unlike gas, which you can only get from one place, electricity would allow you to charge your car while you push it home. Convert calories to green energy, what a win-win situation.
So what could you do to charge your car?
* hook a generator up to a stationary bike
* lay out a few yards of solar panels for a few minutes (if you are only a few miles from home)
* knock on someone's door with an extension cord in your hand and ask to use a few cents of power
* harness some wind power using a wind strip
and last/worst case
* actually use a gas can and use a generator to charge for the few miles home.
converting energy into electricity is so easy and so flexible, it's hard to think what couldn't be used.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
why are automakers so irrationally risk averse! I understand making sound decisions, but damnit...the market was ready for electric plug-ins in the late 70's...today it's a no brainer!
yes
yes
no
If you build it, they will come...in my podunk former GM factory town, everyone would own a prius if they could afford to get a new car (many working and middle class people can't afford ANY kind of new car, no matter what make/model)
The people that can afford to buy a new car are buying Prius's in record numbers...a friend at the Toyota dealership (who helped my parents get their Prius) says they always order the maximum from Toyota and sell out before they hit the lot...for almost two years that's been the case
Plugging in at night is just a logical progression, and from an automaker's perspective, a simple engineering isssue (professional engineers can easily handle redesigning a Prius to have plug-in capability)
As far as added cost of batteries, the Prius my parents own now has more than sufficient battery power, all it needs is a plug-in...
Thank you Dave Raggett
When fuel prices got too high, interest in electric vehicles and alternative energy sources boomed, but simultaneously demand weakened. Now oil prices have come off ~30% from their highs, and suddenly EVs are not a totally obvious solution anymore? Duh... this is how the market it supposed to work. This means that electric vehicle companies are going to have to start competing on real merits and not just squishy fuzzy green feelings. And I hope that makes them stronger! But it's not the worst thing in the world if conventional gas-burning cars remain an acceptable/affordable thing for the time being.
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As long as the charger comes with a simple timer I don't see why people wouldn't be willing to charge the car at night, especially if you're in an area that has different rates for different times of day. As for batteries being too expensive, that's probably true right now, but do they really think we'll still be using today's lithium ion batteries ten years from now?
The cars being showcased today aren't the ones that are going to solve our energy problems. They are little more than prototype, proof of concept vehicles. That's why GM is only producing 10,000 volts the first year they are in production. Lets start producing them now and work out the issues that are bound to come up so that in 5 years we can begin producing them seriously. Or we can think like we always have and look one year out at a time, never bothering to invest in the future.
The chevy volt will fail because it will cost $50,000.00US by the time it's released. Only the rich eco-trendy will buy that car.
If you want to get hybrids and eco friendly cars to be adopted widely you gotta get the price down to where it's dirt cheap. $19,000 is the MAX price for the low end model. They refuse to make a car like that so they only end up as curiosity toys for the rich.
They gotta get the price way WAY down. two seaters that are tiny and hybrid are the answer. If you get a Smart fourtwo as a hybrid that get's 80-100mpg for $19,000 you will have a car that will out-sell any other car in history.
Problem is, The car makers and the oil companies do not want that car to exist and will do what they can to keep it from existing. The current smart is one of the safest cars on the planet yet it was a uphill fight to get the thing in the USA and then they had to "add safety features" to a car that was already a 5 star crash rating car.
add safety features? why? oh to make it more expensive... I see. They wanted to make sure that the masses would not go out and buy it in droves destroying sales of higher profit margin cars.
If you make a cheap efficient small commuter car, everyone will buy one. I'd rather blow 12mpg on the weekend in my high power sports car on the back roads and clear highways than at 32mph stop and go, in 5 lanes wide traffic on 696 in detroit.
people wont want to plug it in? oh come on, the populace is not THAT lazy.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A lot of electric providers allow a system where electricity is charged at a higher rate in the day, and a dirt-cheap rate at night. Plug in the car when it's in the driveway, use a timer on the plug. Tada.
SIG: HUP
Brand loyalty is fleeting in the automotive industry.
Toyota doesn't want to build a plug-in hybrid? Fine.
My dad got invited to see the Jaguar Plug-in hybrid, which will run off the battery for 50 miles before burning any gas.
Considering my dad has a 22 mile commute, he can't wait for this thing to hit the road.
He doesn't know when it will become available, but he's already on the wait list. (Estimated price ~$80,000, by the way)
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
...there are serious issues with the pollution output from a diesel engine, even if you're using biodiesel fuel. Reducing the higher NOx gas output and the diesel particulates is a very expensive proposition, and just to make a diesel engine meet the EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 standard is expensive enough that you might as well buy a Toyota Prius or the new Honda Insight instead at pretty much the same price.
Calling the car an electric w/range extender, rather than simply hybrid (or series-hybrid) is marketing speak.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This functionality is already present in the Chevy Volt. It has a timer so you can plug it in to the wall socket when you park your car in the evening, and it can be programmed to charge the battery starting at midnight, etc.
The Volt is supposed to answer that issue by having a combustion engine as a backup -- it runs and generates electricity that is used to run the car. So, in theory, you should never be in the situation you describe. You would also just fill up at the next gas station.
Around the turn of the century, electric cars had a range of about forty miles... the same as the Chevy Volt. All the improvements in battery technology have been able to do no more than keep up with our expectations of automotive comfort and speed.
Electric cars have, for a century, been waiting for the big breakthrough in battery technology that has yet to occur. The brilliance of the basic TRW design--the one they could never get U. S. carmakers interested in, the design that is fundamentally the same that Toyota uses in the Prius--is that it only relies on the battery as a short-term buffering device, a "torquer" as TRW called it, to make up the difference between the torque that can be provided by a little economical gas engine and the torque that's needed in normal driving.
So, a Prius provides a very meaningful increase in fuel efficiency without demanding a battery made of unobtainium. The Prius battery in fact only stores about enough energy to drive the car for about a mile.
Despite the possibility that Toyota is putting a spin on things, what they are saying makes sense. As hobbyists have confirmed, a Prius is virtually ready to be a plug-in hybrid, needing only a bigger battery. It would seemingly be so easy for Toyota to compete in the plug-in hybrid market that I have to believe they have sound reasons for skepticism.
Another possibility is that Toyota has encountered some serious snags that they're not talking about in trying to produce a plug-in version of the Prius. Perhaps GM knows about these snags and has some trade-secret ways of overcoming them... or perhaps GM hasn't discovered them yet, or is ignoring them because the Volt isn't really intended to succeed and is just a very elaborate "image" ploy.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I often wonder why Toyota pulled the plugin capabilities from the Prius, the hardware is there in the first generation models, my friend has a kit to convert his once the battery warranty is up and there's not a lot to it, just a plug that attaches to some internal terminals and a chip mod to delay the engine warm-up until the battery is much further drained.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You are living in some weird cynical fantasyland. Plug in hybrid cars are expensive because they are new technology. The factories to build them have to be built, we haven't spent enough time figuring out ways to keep individual unit costs down, and R&D costs haven't been amortized over long periods of selling millions of units as with standard ICE.
The first electric cars will be expensive. Probably the only ones that will sell well will be expensive luxury cars, because the people who can afford to spend $38,000 on a plug-in hybrid car that looks like crap & has no features probably prefer to spend $50,000 on a plug-in hybrid car that looks nice and is fun to be in.
Then we'll get better at making individual units cheaply, the manufacturing infrastructure will become more established, and car companies will get more comfortable about how many PIH cars will sell. And then they'll get cheap.
Car companies would gladly sell us cars that never required fuel if they could figure out how to make them at prices people would pay. If 90% of car companies elected not to sell cars that don't use petroleum (or use less petroleum) which everyone could afford simply because the people making decisions have a stake in petroleum sales, the other 10% of car companies would put them out of business.
I will buy an electric car. I will charge it at night. I will. I promise. Start fucking building them.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
For any kind of sizable battery, you'd likely want a dedicated circuit anyway.
The current Prius battery is about 1.5KWhrs, so assuming a dedicated 100-120V 15A circuit, it would take about an hour to charge from dead to full, but that will only get you a few miles on pure battery.
The current plug in modification kit's battery is about 6KWhr, so 4x the time.
Sources I see on the factory plug in say a capacity between 6 and 12KWhr, and a 12 would require a full 8 hours to charge, which is getting to the limit of "charge overnight", so you might want to put in a dedicated 240V 20A circuit, like you would use for an electric range.
And you'd definitely need a dedicated circuit for a full EV, like the Tesla, as the battery pack is 53KWhr, which would take about 35 hours to charge on a dedicated normal circuit, and still 7.5 hours on a dedicated 220V plug.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The American SUVs have basically all been around for 50 years, it's just soccer moms didn't want them before. They were originally for things like towing boats, horses, etc around and general work. They were based on pickup platforms that already existed -- the "american car companies" you single out did not create them for the craze.
However, Toyota has more lines/platforms of SUV than any other car manufacturer, and has introduced almost all of them within the period of the craze -- almost all of them were introduced during the last 10-15 years. And, each one has been bigger and bigger, basically. In fact, they're so "gung ho" about them that they're still coming out with their largest and most wasteful ones ever now (eg the brand new 14mpg Sequoia and their newest SUV nameplate the lovely 16mpg 6cyl FJ Cruiser).
You've basically got things backward. The American manufacturers had SUVs all along (conceived as worktrucks). It's Honda, Toyota, Nissan, etc that have been scrambling to make as many SUVs, conceived for soccer moms and people trying to be cool) as they can possibly shove out the door to feed the craze.
The Chevy Volt seems to be using two basic metrics.
1. How far you can run on fully charge batteries (40 miles)
2. MPG when the generator kicks in (50 MPG)
And in fact they are the only true hybrids. These other so-called hybrids run on gasoline only. Simple proof: no gasoline, no drive (once the battery discharges).
I prefer doubloons per league.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
That would have to be some kind of solar panel to be able to charge your car at night.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
The 50 MPG is based on using only the gasoline generator without any energy input from the batteries.
So, if you start up in the morning with completely dead batteries, you can still drive and get 50 MPG.
Perhaps connected to some sort of ultra capacitive charge storage solution that charges during the peak sunlight hours, then discharges when you connect your vehicle as a load?
Not sure how efficient that could be, but it's unlikely that the op completely overlooked the fact that there isn't much sun at night.
A "plug-in hybrid" does have a gas engine for charging the batteries and energizing the motors, by definition. That's what makes it a "hybrid."
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
They should design hybrids so that the transmission switches the energy source. Higher gears switch to battery power, lower gears switch to gasoline.
That's pretty much the opposite of what you want. Electric motors develop peak torque at low RPM, gas engines at high RPM. In fact I wonder about the losses in the additional transmission if you want to drive the wheels from the gas engine; mechanically it makes more sense to use the electric all the time (much simpler transmission) and run the gas engine at a constant speed (more efficient) to keep the batteries charged.
-- Alastair
"People are going to plug in when they get home."
Fine. Plug it in. But I don't suppose you've heard of a new, top-secret invention that's just now making it's way out of the lab?
It's called a timer. Read the DOE study, and you'll see that timers and/or "smart" recharging systems eliminate most of the load-balancing issues. Heck, quite a few of the newer home A/C systems (since you brought them up) now negotiate with the grid and shutdown intermittently to reduce peak loads.
If they can do it, so can a car charger.
On a side note, I wish more people would actually do some research and consider SOLUTIONS to these kinds of issues, and not just spend their time smugly shooting entirely theoretical holes in other people's proposals.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.