Big Oil Greed - Toyota already paid $30 million for patent infringement. Big battery packs using NIMH are not available for that reason.

Big Oil company profits or the survival of the planet's ecosystem?....sounds like a reasonable exchange........

Yep, I've been saying the same thing. It makes absolutely no sense that we can't have plug in hybrids now with ~40 mile+ electric only ranges, as the electric side is old tech.

It does make you think that people running companies like Chevron don't have any kids. I say Chevron under the widespread info that they are the ones who bought GM's patents regarding the EV-1 battery technology and are squashing it - but it applies to anyone else doing the same.

Would it be possible for an executive order or an act of congress to take a patent and make it null and void under extreme circumstances? After all, we are entering some serious issues with the energy situation foremost including national security by continuing to import middle east oil. That way the patents Chevron now owns become public domain.

stevecaz,
I think the answers to your questions can be found in this article.
EVWORLD FEATURE: RAV4 EV: Exceeding Expectations: Toyota | Electric Car | Plug-in Prius

Honestly I wanted the EV plug-in feature very much too.

But.... Toyota has been delaying the plug-in..... properly for their own hidden reason ? If there is nothing to worry.... I can't see why they don't take advantage to get further domination / lead in auto-industry.

My guess is the Electric-Motor or other Hybrid componet may get overheated for constant long distance travel in Electric mode or may shorten the life of Hybrid system in general.

When the Offical Plug-in introduce in the future... properly will likely to see Toyota shorter warranty coverage on Hyrbid parts (say 5Yrs or 50,000 miles)

PHEVs wear out the batteries much faster than the typical EV, and only now are batteries being developed that can last the life of the car when used for PHEV. And at this point those new-generation batteries are expensive, at least to the retail consumer. Though they need not be once production volume grows.

Why does a PHEV wear out the batteries faster? Because the battery is small relative to expected travel distances. That means you expect to run the battery from fully charged to fully discharged every day. One full charge cycle per day. Current-gen batteries can't take that very long. Lifetimes are typically on the order of a few hundred full charge cycles.

For example, if you did the same thing to a RAV4 EV -- drove it from fully charged to discharged every day -- you'd kill the batteries in a few years. That would be 150 miles per day or so, or about 50,000 miles per year. At that rate, most of the battery packs would last two years, arguably most of them would not last three years, based on the tests done one of the California utilities on the earliest RAV4 EV models. (The endpoint is a little fuzzy, because they're batteries, and they just kind of fade out at some point, in terms of capacity.)

So, you could have an PHEV now, with the understanding that if you had NIMH batteries (like the Prius), you'd likely have to replace the batteries every 3 years or so. Costing, in the neighborhood of (say) $10,000 per replacement, if the Prius retail battery cost is any guide. Or you can have one now using lead-acid batteries, vastly cheaper but with more limited range. And those would typically be good for 2 (?) years or so of daily driving.

For the Calcars PHEV conversion, the lead-acid batteries didn't even last a year. They used 18 20ah lead-acid batteries, which I just costed from their source at $81 each, or (call it) $1500 plus probably some pretty stiff shipping. Weighing nearly 300 lbs (= 150 lbs of lead). So, a PHEV like the initial CalCars setup would require $1500 a year for battery replacement and would result in recycling 150 lbs of lead every year.

http://www.calcars.org/conversions-factsheet.pdf
http://www.electricrider.com/batteries/index.htm

Lithium ion batteries just keep getting better and better. Last-gen cells would typically be listed with lifetimes of around 300 - 600 charge cycles. That'd be two years in daily PHEV use. The newer ones are talking about 2000 - 3000 charge cycles and up, at which point you can plausibly say that most (or at least some) of them are going to last the life of the car. But those are just now coming onto the market and they are expensive.

Did the oil companies delay development/implementation of advanced battery tech in cars? You can certainly make some case for that. But developing a vehicle-lifetime PHEV battery was hard enough with or without their interference.

Good news is that battery tech is progressing rapidly, and 2010 looks like they year when everybody is on the bandwagon bring EVs and PHEVs to America. Can't happen too fast to suit me.

Sorry, but I think Big Oil sitting on the patents has a lot to do with it. Why would you assume a for profit corporation that answers only to its shareholders would do the right thing if its not in their financial best interest?

Large capacity NimH batteries were the only commercially viable energy storage device available for the last 10-20 years. Lead acid works, but you just can't get the energy density or cycle life high enough to really be appealing. And I say that as someone who has done a lot of calculations regarding converting my car to electric. The key to the feasibility of the EV1 and RAV4 EV was the large Cobasys NimH batteries. Unfortunately the GM/Cobasys patent covered basically all use of large NimH batteries for vehicles. When GM sold that patent to Chevron, Toyota/Panasonic even got sued for using batteries 1/10 the size in the Prius. This is the main reason early Hybrid packs were often forced to literally use stacks of D sized batteries. The complexity of using this size battery for a much larger pack made it impractical for anything larger than a hybrid pack. Now that Li-ion is finally looking like its almost ready for vehicle use, Cobasys has popped up back on the scene offering large scale NimH for vehicles. Coincidently the only place they popped up is in GM Hybrids. Judging by the fact that GM just had to recall all their batteries I'm not sure much can be said for the quality of Cobasys' work under their current owners.

You are absolutely right. There is no reason we shouldn't all be driving electric cars by now, except that the automakers and oil companies decided it was not in their best interest. The EV1 and RAV4 EV showed the promise. Were they perfect? No. Is any revolutionary product in its first incarnation? No. The amount of work left to do turn these into widely marketable products was minimal.

Rob

Aren't Prius batteries listed at around $3000? I like the rest of your post.

I understand the technology development, and I understand that cheap oil simply didn't force a market for PHEV. There are many reason why good PHEV isn't a real reality, and many reasons why it shouldn't have been.

However, what has always existed is being held hostage to energy dependence and buying oil from enemies. This alone should have forced PHEV development and the only reason it didn't is administration after administration not pushing for energy independence. They were probably all scared that doing so would cause oil prices to skyrocket if the Middle East knew their largest customer was trying to stop buying the product. Now that China and India are taking up our reductions, they don't care as much.

Right now, the only people I would consider capable of pushing hard on this are McCain and Romney, as both consider our energy dependence one of the greatest threats to US security and economic prosperity there is. Hmmm, McCain/Romney '08, thats not bad. I guarantee that ticket is the fast track to electric cars.

A Prius battery is much too small for a useful PHEV. You would need about four of them to do much good, so 4 * $3,000 = $12,000.

Tom

Here's a question to ask yourself. If reliable batteries are coming in the next 3 or 4 years, could this also help with the current oil speculation? If we can develop Phev cars (and trucks) the next 10 years, gas would be useless because the need would be drastically reduced.

Wedge

primary reason is NOT greed, or bad business decisions, or stupidity, it is INTENTIONAL suppression of alternative technology.

centralized control of energy, amongst other things is the most important aspect of their matrix of control.

did you ask your self why is the cost of fuel skyrocketing even in countries that should be totally unaffected because they have their own resources?!

suppression of technology was used for decades because it gives "someone" control.
think of it for a second here; decentralizing the control of resources by say allowing you and me to use alternative energy methods to power our homes, car, machinery ... will remove that control from the hands of a few oligarchs that control resources and it would put it in our hands.

once you learn (like i did) the ugly truth that advanced technology was suppressed for many decades and that alternatives to our stupid, inefficient ICE engine already exist(ed) you would too see the things in a different light.


and, all of you who still would like to argue otherwise need to take a look into EV1 and E95 battery technology and "patent infringement" lawsuits, like that one in which Toyota was stopped from producing electric RAV4's
and battery manufacturer (Panasonic) was sued as well.
think, why would they sue Toyota and Panasonic then keep that technology on the shelf and only allow it to be used in low power non-automotive applications.

See, E95 battery was perfect for electric cars because of its high capacity and hight current levels and lower cost, and even without improvements in that technology it can be a no brainier in today's times of "energy crisis" (another B.S. pushed on people) that we can easily adopt E95s in most of the electric vehicles.

if we did that, we would have 2 categories of cars; fuel wasters, low economy and clean energy and higher efficiency vehicles.
so, you would have on left side a 17 MPg vehicle powered by ICE, or on other side a vehicle that you do not even need to plug into the grid, if you invest in say enough solar panels.

How often would you visit a gas station if you owned vehicle B?
how can they tax you on using Sun rays to charge your car?
they can't!

how would they make $$ when you won't see the gas station ever or your mechanic for tens of thousands of miles?
what happens with your dependency on fuel?

What if you are clever enough and you decide to buy more solar panels with the money you are saving on gasoline you no longer need to buy and now you are putting energy back to grid, so that your electric company has to buy it from you?

or you decide to store that photovoltaically converted energy to set of batteries that you can keep charged up constantly then use power inverter to make your house energy grid independent?

or, you take it another step and you start your own business to build standardized battery packs that can be used in different applications, and that can be easily exchanged. Same pack for the house, boat, RV, car...
and if you need more capacity you just add packs...


check my earlier post about suppressed inventions and how patent office is using "national security" clause to PREVENT clean, liberating, abundant energy devices, and self-healing methods and natural products and really nice inventions from reaching the masspeople.

it may just become crystal clear why would GM kill EV1 and why would they keep delaying Volt and why a gallon of fuel is 5 bucks.
And, why is there OPEC in first place.

yes, all that technology to make a decent electric car already existed, years ago. You really need to read about suppressed inventions to better understand the situation today.

remember, scarcity = dependency , dependency = control
"Big oil" is exactly that.

that is why they started pushing "peak oil" bull crap (scarcity)
just after they gave those incentives for gas guzlers during first term of Bush administration, then when people got hooked on big SUVs and oversized trucks they started pushing "peak oil" B.S. and raising the prices of fuel.

People, the dumb they are got their latest download from the TV set, while listening to experts what to buy, what to drive, what to think, unable to even see how they have been setup. See, big boys know that time of oil is nearing its end, they know because they bought out those patents that can allow us to liberate our selves from oil, those patents can remove oil dependency. And, they know that just like a beach ball that you are trying to keep underwater the truth will shoot out, for all to see.

so, that is the good news for us, the age of gasoline powered cars are numbered. 20 years from now everyone will look at relics of those big monster SUVs and Trucks and wonder what was wrong with the people a generation ago.

you can keep something a secret/suppressed for a while, but not forever.

the discoveries of more and more independent tinkerers will probably help release that beach ball.
.

Oh, right. Thanks.

Yeah, but it would take a bigger battery to make (say) a 30 mile PHEV. The Hymotion Li-ion pack weighs in at around 300 lbs, versus the 100 lbs for the Prius traction battery. I know I'm mixing lithium and nickel there, but my point is that the PHEV pack would be bigger than the Prius traction battery.

Edit: I should have read the whole thread before replying. Already been answered.

I can only suggest that people who think the RAV4 EV batteries would have done well as PHEV batteries should read the 100,000 mile evaluation of the RAV4 EV. As I read it, none of them were outright dead, most showed modestly reduced capacity, and there were some signs of module failure at 100,000 miles. That didn't require replacing the packs outright, only required replacing individual modules here and there. But that's more-or-less the equivalent of a couple of years' driving for a PHEV battery, when you express it in terms of the number of full-discharge-equivalent cycles.

http://www.evchargernews.com/miscfiles/sce-rav4ev-100k.pdf

Also worth noting that, as far as I can find, NIMH batteries are always listed with a life expectancy of less than 1000 full charge discharge cycles. Which, again, would be about 3 years of daily PHEV driving. If somebody can show me an NiMH battery that's listed for, say, 3000 full discharge cycles (call it 10 years of PHEV running), please post a link here.

Here's what Cobasys itself says this about their large-format batteries, when deeply discharged:

"The Cobasys NiMH batteries have demonstrated cycle life of greater than one thousand 80% Depth of Discharge (DOD) charge discharge cycles. "

Which you can read here if you wish:

Introduction to NiMH Battery Technology

1000 cycles = under 3 years at one deep discharge per day.

Edit: Whereas, Valence Technology's Lithium-phosphate battery shows just 10% loss at 1600 cycles, when kept cool:

http://www.valence.com/assets/pdf/vlnc_epoch_data_sheet.pdf

Presumably the A123 batteries used in the Hymotion PHEV conversions are at least as good, but Hymotion only offers a 3 year warranty.

Convert your hybrid electric vehicle into a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle

However, Altairnano claims 10,000 to 15,000 cycles for their batteries. Now that would be a more-than-life-of-the-car battery.

Altairnano - Power & Energy Systems

There isn't much else that I CAN tell you. Without that hurdle, there is nothing that keeps us from having these cars made. We MUST jump up to Li-Ion now, and that seems to have been a stumbling block.

I have a car parked in my garage right now that has 100 mile range. It was designed in the early 90's with battery tech from the time. When my pack goes bad, I can't even buy replacement batteries for it! How nuts is that?

Actually, if you know anything about the rav4-ev, you be disgusted at how ignorant the Toyota mouthpiece was, in that interview. Virtually no dialogue between the owners/users of the EV, and Toyota.

The only reason we don't have Plug-In cars now is that the Auto industry saw how dependable they were. They don’t break down, so no repair money could be made. That scared them so they pulled those cars. If they had gone ahead with them we would have affordable lithium-ion batteries in our cars now. They did not do it and now aftermarket companies are making more and more electric car conversions and the Auto industry is taking notice.

They are going to be forced to either build new electric cars we want or, not get the sale at all. We are slowly tying their hands and if they won’t build them, Sony, Toshiba, or even Apple, will! Can’t you picture it now? The I-car!

The auto industry better jump on making electric and plug-in hybrid cars, trucks, and SUVs, or people like me will!

Patents can be taken under the takings clause of the Constitution, just like land. In fact, the government threatened to do so during the anthrax scare when it wanted to secure large quantities of a certain antibiotic cheaply.

It wouldn't become public domain but the patent owner would receive reasonable compensation. What the patent owner can no longer do is sit on the patent.