Is a plug-in hybrid really the best of both driving worlds?

Yes you can! If you regen going down a high mountain, by the time you get to the bottom, that's a lot of braking!

 

So why plug in and waste electricity if you can fully charge a PIP just by regen braking like a normal Prius? I don't get it?

 

Agree, I often travel to a hilly place, and face two roads with a 300m altitude grade, can't make half of it in my HV without filling up the battery...
In a PiP, I would recover some miles. Not significant in the vehicle lifetime MPG, but it would.

 

Rocky mountain national park, west exit it is about 25 to 30 miles all down hill!

 

plug in at the bottom of the mountain.

 

The Li-ion might also be better than the NiMH at receiving a larger charge from regenning. Whether or not, the PPI's EPA rating is a little higher than the liftback. Not enough of a gain to pay for it, but there were deals that had the PPI lower to buy than the Prius.

 

Now I understand better fellas. Thank you.

I forgot that the PIP had a Li Ion battery pack with more capacity.

Why doesn't the reg. prius like mine have Li Ion? More expensive to produce I guess...???

 

This isn't so surprising:

Toyota has diverted so many resource to FCV production . . . at least three per day.

Bob Wilson

 

I've read that li ion is better for acceleration and nimh is better for long sustained cruizing. That's why some companies are working on 'hybrid' hybrid batteries.

 

Toyota just has a large investment in NiMH. So it's cheap for them, but everybody else is going lithium for their packs, which is dropping in price.

 

It would be neat if the next Prius has optional traction battery capacity. Say modular packs and the ability to have 1-4 of them. Better still, owner removable like a spare tire and as easily replaceable. Hummm, a little cart and apartment dwellers could wheel them inside for charging.

How hard could it be?

Bob Wilson

 

I don't think people would like the idea of having to remove and haul a battery back and forth every day from their apartment to the car and vice versa. Especially if they have to walk far to do it.

At least not with today's technology. But if they managed to get batteries down to the size of say, a shoebox that's not terribly heavy, and said battery will give them 50-100 miles of EV range, then it might be more acceptable.

I suppose they could always build a locker-room style cage near the front of the parking lot where you could put your battery in a small locker assigned to your apartment, and charge the battery there. But again, batteries would have to be a more manageable size if that's going to take off. The more hassle it is to remove the battery and/or charge it up, the less likely people will adopt that method.

 

The NiMH in the liftback is around 100 pounds. The Li-ion in the current PPI is bigger in size. The car loses the spare and the underfloor storage. If batteries get to the point that they are small and light enough to remove, they will need some serious protections to prevent people from frying themselves. Plus, it needs to be accessible by those that keep stuff in the trunk.

removable packs work for EV scooters, because they are scooters. They don't need a supremely high capacity battery to begin with.

 

We're just trying sell you a PiP...your first post said: (1) if it was sold in PA and (2) you could charge it, you'd buy a PiP.
So I said, you live very close NJ for the PiP purchase. The others said you can charge it by traction management.
So now we are waiting!

Keep in mind when Gen3 run was started, Li batts were yet not very common. Prius v in Europe has Li Battery. We have not really had any hybrid get to 10-years old with Li batts, so we do not really know what the end-game looks like. NiMH we get the picture: instant death of battery at some point around 10-15 years old and 150000-250000 miles for a ceratin % of the vehicles. Presuambly Toyota knows if the NiMH failure rate is acceptable re: profitablity of the Prius.

Some PiP owners say the extra 4 kwhr battery (vs. 1 kwhr in Prius) allows another 5-10 MPG just on gasoline alone, due to the extra battery size. But I believe the EPA says the PiP is slightly less MPG due to the extra weight of the battery off-setting the extra size. So some would say PiP is just a better hybrid all around, but I am not in that camp. I think you have to do some plug-in to get the value of it...but not constantly.

 

Thank you for the info everyone. Very informative to my pip ignoramus self

I'll probably be due for a new ride when the Gen4 pip is due to release, isn't the consensus it will be a yr after the reg. Gen4..

And by that time hopefully I'll have a darn garage to plug in at and the charging station infrastructure should be improved here in the East coast..

 

Only 13 people in manufacturing, and probably 200 in marking and lobbying the mirai, and tax subsidies for it and hydrogen. So not too many resources for production, and marketing doesn't really do anything for the prius outside japan anyway. Now those lobbyiest probably did ask toytoa not to make the prius phv too good, and not to release it at the same time, so we have end of 2016. I doubt any of these people slowed the liftback development, but if the prius phv was too competant and sold well enough, there goes toyota's request for more money and zev credits for the mirai, which it got from california last year.

It did take a ton of engineering hours to make the mirai so ugly and yet so expensive. It is almost certain stole development resources from the liftback. I guess its a philosophy thing. Some in toyota management think the prius will sell no matter what, and they do in japan. If they upgrade every 80 months instead of 60, they can amortize the R&D and a equipment costs over a lot more units. From a bean counters point of view, they would rather sell cameries and corrolas anyway in North America, they have a higher profit margin. In Europe even the prius liftback is a poor selling car, and the prius phv is even more over priced with a tiny electric range. Toyota doesn't want to sell these things in europe.

 

i think the only resources it stole are our tax dollars.

 

The PiP has the same EPA city mpg and is rated as 1 mpg better in highway mpg versus the regular Liftback. So, yeah, the PiP is a better hybrid overall.

As for the battery life of air-cooled NiMh versus Lithium-ion NMC we will just have to wait and see. It seems possible that Lithium might be more sensitive to heat degradation, particularly in the hotter regions. On the other hand, the PiP battery starts off with much more capacity and somewhat more peak power output so even if it did degrade somewhat faster it would not necessarily have a shorter absolute usable hybrid life.

 

I'm not sure why that would be true. NiMh packs can be designed for high power output vs energy capacity which is why they work well for hybrids. They can also be used for plugin EVs but NiMh packs are about twice as heavy as Lithium for the same capacity. NiMh is also somewhat less efficient in storing and releasing energy.

Lithium packs can also be tuned for high power output for non-plug hybrids so they are starting to be adopted. All the R&D and cost reduction is going into Lithium now so NiMh for automotive use is on the way out.

The discussion around "hybrid battery packs" that I have seen is not about pairing NiMh and Lithium. It is about pairing Lithium-ion with another chemistry that has less power output but higher energy density like Aluminum Air or Lithium Air.