I wouldn't hold my breath too much on lipo tech it almost as far off as hydrogen. Maybe about 5-8 years it will be viable but ont in the next few years. I fly alot of electric rc helis & planes the best current lipo's have about 200-400 cycles if you can even get that @ $70-400 per pack and these are only a fraction of the size required for automotive use plus they can be very dangerous if not charged and discharged properly.

Heck, there'd probably be even more tax-gouging on a plug-in hybrid. I guess all-electric cars came and went too fast to have attracted attention, but every dime you'll save off better hybrid technology, someone will want eleven cents in taxes...

Battery technology has been the holy grail of electric and hybrid car designers since day one. It's the reason the old GM EV1 was never a success. Hybrids exist as a compromise because pure battery storage is too expensive/slow to charge for reasonable range. In fact, Toyota designed some amazing battery management software to make our NiMH batteries last 150,000 miles and thousands of charge cycles without dying. If they were treated like your typical NiMH AA cell in your camera they would probalby last about a year!

depending on how this works out:
http://www.b2i.us/profiles/investor/ResLib...234&Category=24

PHEV might be just a 2008 time away.

Has the power release properties that a PHEV would need. If the recharge rate can be gotten down to 5 min you then could have a very small eng to charge battery on long trips away from a charging station.

Lost only 1% over 1000 charges...

So on that trip you stop along the way to charging stations.. plug in hit the restroom , unplug, go on your way.. I would think a min range would 150 miles on a charge. at 55 mph. less at higher speeds. With the small eng there to keep you going on the very long miles between charging stations.

Then there is the MIT project that has more power per inch..

just a thought.

Yeah, there were a couple of back to back articles on GreenCarCongress about the nano-engineered advances in recharge/discharge rates. 2 orders of magnitude increase. I didn't see anything about longevity but I bet that with good software management those issues could be overcome. "What's it gonna cost"? That's the big question. The gas savings would be substantial. For my situation I'd almost never use gasoline. 98% of my needs would be handled by the EV part of the equation.

The cost of nickel is a substantial fraction of the total cost of a NiMH battery; this is not the case for Li-based batteries. Ni "bottomed" in the early Prius days and has now tripled to about US$6.40/lb. Two-thirds of world Ni goes to the manufacture of stainless steel, and that demand will increase in the future by all accounts. Expect Ni price to increase with this demand.

Two bits of trivia: One of the richest Ni ore bodies is the world is at Sudbury, Canada, resulting from a large meteorite impact almost 2 billion years ago. Canadian nickel coins are almost pure Ni (unlike the US coins), and thus are suitable for gee-whiz demonstrations of the Curie effect.

Back to topic, as the manufacturing costs of Li-based batteries falls, it is a matter of time until they become the more economical solution for vehicle propulsion.

I think what's encouraging is the fact that there are now loooaads of companies that are separately claiming to have lithium batteries capable of 10,000 charge cycles, charging in 5 minutes, 10x calender longevity, fire-proof safety, huge power outputs etc etc (Toshiba, Altair, Polyplus, Valence, A123....)

The big question is who will be first to market? Toshiba say they've already signed agreements with hybrid car manufacturers... I wonder who and what kind of timescale they're working to?

:blink: ..
Do you really think that most of us want to plug our cars in?? The 50 mile range is just not worth it for the prius owners I know. My average commute is 70 miles each way... Until they can offer 4 to 5 hours of run time on a battery I will stick with the gas guzzler 04 opt pkg 8

40-50 mile range would suit me just fine! I'd still want an ICE to kick in when needed, though, in case I drove further.

Jan

Personally, I don't care what the battery technology is. I just want to be able to plug my Prius in at night and boost my mileage to 100mpg. I really don't think that Toyota "gets it". Their marketing geniuses are probably telling the decision makers that the public won't want to plug-in. If they only knew how wrong they are! The demand would be overwhelming. Would be nice if Toyota accomplished this by 2008MY, but I don't believe for a minute that they're even thinking along the lines of a plug-in hybrid. Does anyone know for a fact that they're putting R & D money into a plug-in hybrid?

Actually we're talking about Plug-in hybrids, not electric vehicles. You'd get the best of both worlds. You could run the first 50 mi on cheap electricity and then the car would basically act as a "regular" hybrid at that point.

I wonder if the amount of energy recovered through regen braking would increase with these advanced batteries that could handle more throughput from MG2. Seem like the efficiency would go up a bit.

I would be simply ecstatic about a Prius PHEV with a 40 - 50 mile range. I'd even be willing to clean out my garage to make room for it.

You wouldn't have to clean out the garage--run an extension cord out the garage door to the car. I read that electric power companies supplying power to southern CA can supply power to 1,000,000 PHEV's IF THE CARS ARE RECHARGED AT NIGHT with the existing generating capacity. Therefore, the national grid can supply power to 10's of millions of PHEV's if recharged at night. Considering the price of the electric "fuel" is 10-20% the price of gas, the demand for these cars will be unbelievable. And, what are the American car companies doing? Working on the hydrogen car??? They better wake up or there won't be any American car comapnies. If the demand requires additional power plants, none of the new plants will be burning foreign oil. The new plants will be built by American companies with American workers, operated by Americans, burning North American fuel. BOOOOYAAA!!!

Just saw a report on theautochannel.com that says that Toyota and Matsushita Electric via a joint effort with Panasonic, is going to accelerate their development of a lithium-ion battery for use in hybrid vehicles, with the goal of producing a 'smaller, more powerful' hybrid car. Maybe the Yaris is next?

Could be the Yaris. A Wash. Post article says Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai and Kia are going to be importing subcompacts this year. Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit, Nissan Versa, Hyundai Accent and Kia Rio. GM has its Korean-built Aveo. Smaller car + more powerful battery = greater electric range = possible PHEV. Even if Toyota doesn't provide the plug-in capability, an after market company surely will with a plug-in kit.

No prob here!.. I would buy a setup immediately if I could find one that was reasonably priced!
From the above phrase, it sounds like you think a plug in car is limited to the juice collected while being pluged in?.. that would be an electric car!... But the prius would still be able to do what it does now... just with added economy from the electric also. And I believe the regular driving even after that storage was depleted would still benfit with the larger capacity batteries.. esp in the city.
Reserves would be that much more! We would win on both ends!

If I could get an extra 50 miles a day on electicity, it would be very simple to bend down on my way into the house and plug in, and bend down on my way out to get into my car to unplug...
I don't see the inconvience at all?
It I "had" to plug in, in order for my car to work, that would be one issue, because my trips would be too limited....

But why not have both worlds?... plug in capability "with" gas ability too?
Most of the gas we spend is in our routine day to day driving that could be almost wiped out with that type of alternative supply?

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain?

Europe

A california based NFP called calcars has the technology to convert our Priuses into optional plug-in vehicles. We don't need to wait until we buy a next generation hybrid. We need to get the automotive industry excited about this technology. Ideally, Toyota should embrace this available tecnology to serve existing Prius owners. Instead of spending millions publicizing the fact that the Prius need not be plugged in, it should tell the world that a plug-in option is available and use its infrastructure to make it commercially viable. One day soon, we should be able to walk in to a Toyota service outlet and walk out with our Prius complete with a supplementary battery pack and plug. I live in Quebec, where the electric power grid is probably the cleanest and cheapest and where gas prices are among the highest on the continent. The benefits here from a plug-in Prius would be phenomenal. Toyota .. are you listening?

Also read what's happening in Europe

It all sounds great, but CalCars is expecting the conversion of an existing Prius to cost between 10,000 and 12,000 dollars US. That's a pretty hard sell, and I think only hard core environmentalists with deep pockets would spend that kind of money for an extended range EV mode.