Toyota's been sneaking around on Nickel-powered Priuses behind their back, performing a 3 year, 126 car road test of Lithium Ion batteries in the 2006 Prius. The results? The cost doesn't justify the "small" fuel economy gains. Here are all the details from Bloomberg:
Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp., the biggest seller of hybrid cars, is sticking with nickel as the preferred battery material for most of the vehicles after three years of secretly testing Prius hatchbacks with lithium-ion packs.
Toyota last month ended road tests of 126 Priuses in the U.S., Japan and Europe that began in 2006, company spokeswoman Jana Hartline said in an interview. Details of the program, in which the cars’ nickel metal hydride batteries were replaced with more expensive lithium models, haven’t been released.
Automakers including Toyota are introducing models powered completely or in part by lithium-ion batteries, which can hold twice the energy of nickel packs. While Toyota’s lithium batteries performed well and yielded “small” fuel-economy gains due to lighter weight, nickel will remain the material of choice for conventional, mass-market hybrids as lithium’s benefits didn’t justify the higher cost, said Kazuo Tojima, the carmaker’s senior staff engineer for batteries.
The Toyota City, Japan-based company’s tests showed lithium’s “durability, stability and safety are assured,” Tojima said.
The tests appear to be among the most thorough done by companies planning to introduce the batteries, said Menahem Anderman, president of consulting firm Advanced Automotive Batteries in Oregon House, California.
“We now know that a lithium-ion battery can work; that’s not really the question,” he said. “Cost is critical, and we still don’t know enough about long-term durability.”
Sounds like the wait continues until the 3rd Gen Prius is coverted over to Li-ion.
