Plug In Prius - Seattle Times Article

[seattlite]

Would be interesting to see how these folks drove these conversions. I get about 55MPG on average. The MPG for the test fleet seems rather low:

Danny Westneat | Reality check on plug-in cars | Seattle Times Newspaper

[john1701a]

What the heck was the comparison to for them to draw such a negative opinion?

No control vehicle is asking for trouble. How do you measure the improvement the plug provided?

They just assumed 100 MPG was some kind of guarantee... kind of like the EPA estimate.
.

[Paradox]

Maybe the extra battery they were using was a standard nickel-metal hydride and not lithium ion...

Irv Miller, Group Vice President – Environmental and Public Affairs said in an open road blog article that numbers for these types of plug ins could vary dramatically... Here's the article for those who want to read it:

TOYOTA OPEN ROAD BLOG: Irv?s Sheet: Prius Plug-In MPG Not Yet Available


Either way, to me sounds like the author just wanted to trash plug ins from the beginning.

[Prianista]

From Sunday's Seattle Times:

"You may have seen the city's cars around town, painted with an eye-catching claim on the rear bumper: "This plug-in hybrid gets 100+mpg." Also, a greener boast: "150+City MPG!"

Not exactly, it turns out. Not even close.

Try 51 miles per gallon, city and highway combined. Not counting the cost of the electricity.

{snip}

That is the reason I'm writing this column. We are in the grips of green mania."

[Paradox]

There's a thread discussing this article here at PriusChat already: http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-ma...s-article.html

Just posting the link so we can try and keep all discussion in one thread.

[PeakOilGarage]

We have been discussing this topic on some other EV forums. Those city of Seattle vehicles have the Hymotion plug-in system.

The problem is that they are not being plugged in at night to recharge the batteries. The fleet drivers are driving around all day with a regular Prius that has extra weight (the empty Hymotion battery) in the trunk.

If they are not going to plug-in on a regular basis, there is no point in monitoring their results.

Here are the real Hymotion Plug-In battery results.


728 miles at 99.9+ MPG

[seattlite]

Originally Posted by PeakOilGarage

We have been discussing this topic on some other EV forums. Those city of Seattle vehicles have the Hymotion plug-in system.

The problem is that they are not being plugged in at night to recharge the batteries. The fleet drivers are driving around all day with a regular Prius that has extra weight (the empty Hymotion battery) in the trunk.

If they are not going to plug-in on a regular basis, there is no point in monitoring their results.

Here are the real Hymotion Plug-In battery results.


728 miles at 99.9+ MPG

AHH....I knew there was a reasonable explanation. SOLD! So how much is the stimulus bill paying for this conversion?

[boulder_bum]

So here's the response I received to a letter I wrote about the article, which is posted just below.

Does anyone have any further information about the full story here so I can include it in a response, or do you think his claim looks to be legitimate?

RESPONSE:

It's not true. Seattle plugs in the cars. I think they are referring to some of the Google cars which didn't get plugged in because they were being used at the homes of employees. But the Seattle cars are official city cars that are parked at city parking spots equipped with plugs.
Please don't start believing what you read in the comments section!
Here is the Seattle trial report through December. You can check it out for yourself.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABP...2008768175.pdf

ORIGINAL LETTER

Hi Danny,

Your article mentioned that the plug-in Prius fleet isn’t getting outstanding mileage, but the hybrid community is speaking up to note that Seattle isn’t plugging them in overnight, which makes the technology worthless (and even detrimental from added weight)!

If true, that’s a vital omission the article missed, and I hope you might independently verify that fact and make a timely, clear as day retraction others may reference.

The sad reality is that the anti-hybrid crown desperately latches onto articles that say Hummers are greener than the Prius or that the nickel mines in Sudbury Ontario made the environment a wasteland because of the Prius. The anti-hybrid crowd also tends to reference such misinformation ad nauseum, even after untimely retractions, that admit incorrectness.

Don’t believe me? Check your article’s “comments” section for Bob Knows’ first comment which alludes to the incorrect Sudbury information.

Anyway, my hope is that a timely retraction on your part, once you verify the “not plugged in” claim, would nip the problem in the bud so your story doesn’t get filed under the list of incorrect articles that just won’t die, despite the facts.

Thanks In Advance,
Colin McGraw

So far, I immediately notice that the .pdf he links to says:

Average number of charging events per vehicle per month when driven: 0
Average number of charging events per vehicle per day when vehicle driven: 0

[SureValla]

Originally Posted by PeakOilGarage

The problem is that they are not being plugged in at night to recharge the batteries. The fleet drivers are driving around all day with a regular Prius that has extra weight (the empty Hymotion battery) in the trunk.

Where are you getting this information?
also did you check out the google link? Are they making the same mistake?

[miscrms]

My comments.

Man, I didn't realize their were so many people running around with tinfoil hats on in the NW.

1. The PHEVs in question are an after market hack of the existing Prius. This car is in no way designed to be a plugin hybrid, and there are significant limitations to what the after market kit can do. Given all that, its pretty amazing the kit works as well as it does. The folks at the city are obviously not using the vehicles correctly to get numbers that dismal. Maybe someone forgot to tell them they have to plug it back in every night. The DOE tested this version of the Prius, which is where the claims of 100-150 mpg came from. On repeated consecutive runs of the UDDS (urban driving cycle) the Hymotion converted Prius returned results of 148, 200, 187, 74 and 66 miles per gallon. The battery started running low during the fourth test, resulting in the higher fuel consumption. The test is 7.5 miles long, so for the entire 37.5 miles the car averaged 135 mpg. The urban cycle has lots of stops and starts to ~ 30mph, with one long run at ~50mph.
Emission Test Cycles: FTP-72 (UDDS)
http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/HV/455.pdf
Among the limitations the hacked Priuses face are a mandatory warm up cycle to keep emissions low (kills mileage on short trips), and a max all electric speed of 34mph (42mph or higher is possible in some cases). Contrary to a lot of claims, the electric motor is still supplying part of the power at highway speeds, which should give you 30-40 miles of 70-100mpg at 65mph. None of this is inherent to the Prius architecture, its just a product of it being designed to be used as a hybrid, not a plugin. There is no reason to expect that these same limitations will still exist when you have purpose built PHEVs from the auto manufacturers.

2. As mentioned above, the urban myth about the Prius battery toxicity, energy consumption, and lifespan have been long ago busted. Priuses are now on the road with hundreds of thousands of miles and more than 10 years on the clock. The batteries have held up fine. While their materials are not completely benign, they are far less toxic than the lead, sulfuric acid, and gasoline found in all vehicles. The 30-100 lbs of metals in the batteries are no more destructive to mine (which is to say pretty destructive) than the thousand or two pounds of steel used in the frame and body. Most of the energy consumed (80-90%) by any vehicle is in the fuel it burns. Since the Prius burns about half the fuel of a similarly sized traditional gasoline vehicle, it uses much less energy and produces much less CO2/pollution. As mentioned before, both nickel and lithium batteries are recyclable, so the waste and consumption impact is very low, at least compared to oil which must be continually pumped, refined, and consumed.

3. Numerous studies have now been done to show that even on a 100% coal supplied power electrics are cleaner than gasoline. Fortunately only about 1/2 of our power comes from coal, so the picture gets even better. Wide scale adoption of plugin vehicles must be met by wide scale adoption of clean energy sources to keep moving this equation in the right direction. Electric vehicles powered by clean energy sources have significantly lower whole life cycle energy, ghg and pollution costs than any other source, including renewable fuels and hydrogen. Renewable fuels from waste products are in the same ballpark, but only a limited amount is available. Once you start making fuel from virgin sources (veg oil, corn etc) its cost ($ and other) goes way up. Hydrogen is not a fuel, its a way of storing energy. You have to get the energy from somewhere to store in Hydrogen. Right now the easiest way to get hydrogen is to use the naturally occurring hydrocarbons found in fossil fuels. Unfortunately this is considerably dirtier and less efficient use of fossil fuels than current gas/electric hybrids like the Prius. Making "clean" hydrogen from water and renewable electricity is somewhere between 3-7 times less efficient than just putting that electricity in a battery and powering an electric car.

4. MPG on a PHEV can be misleading, as some have noted. It really depends what your goals are though. If your main concern is getting us off foreign oil, then miles per gallon of gasoline is a very relevant figure. It also gives a reasonable relative figure of merit for CO2 output if you are recharging on solar, hydro, nuclear, or other low carbon electric sources. Ideally we do need to know how much electricity the vehicle is using as well. For a Prius in full electric mode, this is about 250 AC Wh/mile. At the US average 10c/kWh, thats 2.5c/mile. At night, when their is a lot of wasted electric generation capacity, rates are often as low as 2-4c/kWh, or 0.8-1.7c/mile. At the US average 1.4 lbs/CO2 per kWh, thats 0.35 lbs CO2/mi. By comparison, burning a gallon of gasoline produces 19.6 lbs of CO2. So, at $2/gal - $4/gal an current US average 18mpg SUV omits 1.09 lbs CO2/mile and costs 11.1 - 22.2c/mile to operate. A US average 22mpg car emits 0.89 lbs CO2/mile and costs 9.1-18.2c/mile to operate. Due to its higher fuel cost and carbon content, a 40 mpg (the EPA 33mpg is agreed to be understated) 2009 VW Jetta TDI emits 0.56 lbs CO2/mile and costs 5.8c-11.5c/mile to operate. A standard 46mpg Prius emits 0.43 lbs CO2/mile, and costs 4.3 - 8.7 c/mile to operate. Its interesting to note, that with the current federal tax incentive you could install a grid tied solar PV array on your roof and have your own near 0 pollution/carbon fixed cost domestic fuel factory on your roof for ~4c/mile. If you have state incentives, it gets even cheaper. Here in AZ its about 2.2c/mile. Its also worth noting that the DOE has already concluded that since most PHEVs or EVs will be charged at night, there is more than enough generation capacity already in place to convert something like 80% of the entire light duty fleet to PHEVs without building a single power plant. It is generally agreed that day time charging will eventually need some smarts to keep from becoming an additional drain on the system. A side benefit of these smarts, is that these vehicles could actually be used to help level peak daytime loads, and help our existing infrastructure better cope with growing demands.

5. There is no silver bullet. Technology can help, but we are going to have to change how we drive, how we plan our cities, how we think about energy if we are to have a real impact on the situation. PHEVs are a perfect example of this. If you forget to plug them in most of the time, and drive like an idiot, you might "only" get 51mpg as above. On the other hand, used appropriately, I know people getting 100-150mpg from the same conversion in their daily commutes.