Very sensible plan. Unlike GM, Toyota seems to understand incremental development. Althought I wonder if A123Systems makes significant progress in reducing cost of their Lithium battery tech in the next year or so, whether Toyota will be forced to accellerate their schedule by a year.

Are they seriously producing a 6 door Prius?

Wow, this is exciting!

Yes, it's a limo for all the eco-poser politicians and hollywood types...

Oh, gawd. Not a Prius minivan. That'll ruin it for me.

I suppose if you must roll in a stretched limo, it's better to be a hybrid than a stretched Hummer.

Until stuff like this comes FROM TOYOTA, I'm going to simply
continue my wait-and-see take on it. The rumor mill is far too
busy on these things, and leaping on every little such third-
party "announcement" as gospel is a total waste of time.
.
_H*

To me, joe consumer, the timetable listed to actually have a shot at a plug-in from the Toyota factory will push me to Hymotion's "addition".

I mean, it's available NOW. Toyota's is not and won't be for 4 years? Hymotion will make a killing on their aftermarket lithium plug-in conversions in the meantime. I can see $5-$6/gallon gas in that 4 year period. $10,000 to offset that RIGHT NOW is looking pretty good.

Eco-posers haha. This is very exciting news. I suspect I might be better off for now to buy a gently used 06+ Prius II and go from there. I will wait until January to decide. For now I will continue to be financially responsible and maybe do a little investing in these new battery companies.

Still no announcement on a van? Unbelievable...my wife reaaaaallllllly wants to get rid of the Caravan due to the poor mileage (and it's 7 years old now, she's ready for a new car) but she wants a hybrid. We need seating for 6-7 for the family car, so that pretty much rules out most of the SUV hybrids. The only thing out there is the HiHy, which we're looking at but would really be more comfortable in a van, we think.

+1

Wish there was something out there along the lines of Mazda 5 with an HSD.

Rob

While it seems like a lot of money I kind of doubt Hymotion is making a killing on these. A system like this would have run you $30-50k a year ago, and would have been built from Chinese batteries with no warranty. This is a huge step forward IMHO, and I would speculate this pricing is only possible because they're owned by the battery manufacturer. I would not even be surprised if A123/Hymotion is selling these at loss in order to push Li-ion battery adoption. Thats just a guess though.

Rob

I know if you try to salvage the batteries from Dewalt equipment the cost of the batteries are about $16 each. The Hymotion upgrade uses 616 batteries which puts the conversion price for the batteries at $9,856

Here is a quote from for model planes that tells how to extract the cells.

"COST - LiPo packs are very expensive for larger planes. I believe that the ultimate acceptance of electrics by the "glow" community hinges on "40-size" and larger planes. For many, the cost of LiPos is prohibitively expensive for these planes. I consider the 20C cells from reputable brands such as Kokam and Polyquest (Hobby Lobby "Twenty") to be the measure of cost for larger planes. By this I mean that a "good" LiPo cell in the 2- to 3-AH sizes is in the $30 to $50 price range. I reject the claims of "Chinese copies" that appear to be much cheaper. Right now, if you buy a DeWalt 36V power pack for list price, you will pay $160 for 10 2.3AH cells. That's $16 per cell. You've also purchased a large electronic speed control module and a lot of plastic. Once DeWalt gets their supply line filled, other OEMs should eventually be offering cells and/or packs at less than $10 per cell. Considering that the M1 is equivalent to about two and a half NiMH cells, I think we've turned the corner on cost. The difference between the M1 and LiPo becomes a lot greater when you consider the ability to charge the M1 in less than half the time. For some, this means less packs to buy to fly as often as they would like."

So in my opinion, A123 being the owner of Hymotion is the only reason the price is at $10K which I appreciate.

Are you certain you need a Van? We found our van was almost always driving around with only 3-4 seats filled. The only time we needed 7 seats was on the weekends or a vacation trip. Thinking outside the box, we bought two Prius' and when we all need to go to the same place at the same time we take two cars...that gives us 10 seats and 2 cargo areas. Combined MPGs for two Prius making the same trip is 25 MPG...that's 6 MPG better than our van. It sounds crazy, but spending 7K a year on gas was getting ridiculus. Not looking back on the van!

What if you're limited to 5 gallons of gas per week? Does a van make sense if (or when) oil supplies become tenuous?