Toyota November Tops US Electric Plug In Vehicle Sales For November

However, the same amount of money could have reached 3 times as many consumers... and mass penetration is the ultimate goal.

 

Double standard implies conditions now are the same as they were 8.5 years ago.

That most certainly is not the case.

As for the complete disregard for the short and middle term, that's really disturbing.

 

How is that?

The tax credit is over many years. No one has maxed out. If the credit were lowered we would have likely sold fewer leafs and volts, making the program look like a failure.

The idea of the tax credit is to stimulate enough sales potential to get companies to invest in plug-in technology. You can tell its sucessful by all the new models coming out, and all the exciting battery anouncements.

If you want to favor the prius, you do anouther cash for clunkers. Maybe just restrict the money to imported cars. I don't think that would stimulate hybrid technology.

Would toyota have priced the prius phv the way it is now, making it available now, if not for the volt or leaf? I have serious doubts, but we can not rerun this experiment. The program on the 60K vehicles so far is far less than half a million. The hand wringing in congress goes between its too much money - its less than a day worth of oil subsidies - or no one wants them. The only way to find out if costomers want them is to build them.

 

In the short term every innovation loses money. That's why short term thinking kills innovation.

Now I know you don't want to kill innovation, so why would you want people to focus on short term thinking when it comes to plug-ins.

For cars the medium term is 2-3 cycles. For the prius a cycle is 6 years (1997, 2003, 2009). The medium term would therefore be 7-13 years after introduction. I think that is where the prius should be judged, and it was successful in the medium term. The volt and leaf should be judged on these terms also. We can speculate about success but until we see at least the second generations you need to give the tech a chance. Arbitrarily high standards would have killed the prius during this time period. The original insight was killed, so we can judge it unsucessful, and speculation why it did not work inspite of its better gas mileage versus the prius. -Too extreme, needs more seats, etc.

I do not think the current prius phv is a successful car in the short term. I do have great hopes from the gen IV leaks that the next one will sell much better.

 

Mass penetration comes when plug in batteries reach a price and range tipping point to compete with hybrids and even ICE only cars. The technology needs to improve for that to happen. Which means the battery cell manufacturers need to see an increasing and steady demand for their product in order to budget for that R&D.

The incentives are doing this. They could have been structered in a way to more cars onto the road by allowing more of the smaller battery cars to claim the credit. This runs the risk of back firing. If the incentive leads to a rush for the smaller battery PHV, the funds could be exhausted before the invested R&D comes to market. The PHV price to consumer jumps to pre-incentive amount without seeing any R&D benefit. Since more were able to take advantage of the incentive, those consumers willing to have paid this price already got theirs. The car and battery maker sees a sudden slump in demand. Which can limit needed R&D funding.

It also wouldn't be a good return on investment per incentive dollar spent. The Prius PHV has a 4.4KWh battery with a $2500 credit. That's $568 dollars per KWh of battery demanded from the battery industry. The Volt has 16.5KWh battery with $7500 credit for $454 per KWh. The Leaf is 24KWh with $7500 for $312 per KWh.

While $7500 could get 3 Prius PHV on the road, the same amount for a single Volt grows the KWh battery demand by the same amount as 3.75 P-PHVs. Its 5.45 P-PHVs with the single Leaf.

 

Ironically, that's exactly what Volt is struggling with now from its own self-imposed 40-mile absolute.

 

It seems that people are not very aware of which vehicle matches their driving patterns, or what their driving patterns are. We have witnessed the misconceptions, abundant on PC, about the crossover point between a Prius, PiP and a Volt. We have also witnessed the frustration level of owners wishing they had more EV range. I have yet to hear a complaint about having too much EV range.

Has anyone presented a driving pattern that doesn't benefit from a larger battery? Even the 10 mile commuter will derive some benefit from a larger batttery, fewer charge cycles, all electric cabin heating/cooling, etc...

 

That seems to be a counter intuitive comment.

40 mile AER was a design goal as it covers a large percentage of the populations daily mileage. If 40 mile was absolute they would not be shipping the 38 mile aer 2013 model now. YMMV as may your commute and ability to plug in during the day.

Anouther good whack at the mileage choice in the us is 20 mpg. This is about the point of diminishing non-linear returns. Most americans will use 20 miles per day of travel. The ford energis targetted this number.

We get from on-star that 35 mile aer on volt owners averages to about 62% of electric miles. When we self select on volts stats we get 71% with the median over 80% electric miles.

Theoretically a 20 mile aer should be about 45% electric, a 10 like the prius phv 25%. Again YMMV as will you driving percent.

The odd men out on driving distance are the prius phv - very low, which makes the rumors of 22 mile aer on the next generation seem likely - and the leaf - 73 miles too little for long trips.

 

Yet, it applies quite well. The design makes scarifices to remain in EV and there is a major benefit dropoff with smaller capacity.

There are many comments about it being right-sized.

 

That's if you charge it once a day. If you can charge at work, C-Max Energi would give you 42 EV miles.

 

Yes, the benefits of a phev drop off if batteries are too small, and batteries add weight and take up space and costs money. This makes your argument counter intuitive. You are assuming the volt's battery is wrong, because you don't like the volt. Sales figures seem to suggest people are willing to pay for the volts trade offs inspite of the car being made by gm. If toyota made a 40 mile aer I'm sure many here would be praising it as needing no gasoline most days.

If you are talking about the prius phv battery, it is for a very small segment of the population. Would you take say a 1 mpg hit for another 5 miles of range at approximately the same cost? I'm sure Toyota is learning their customers preferences and will increase the battery size in the next generation. Do you think it will shrink in capacity? Stay the same? Add more miles based upon feedback?

 

Yep that is why its good to have choices.

Really over 200 days a year I either drive less than 20 miles or could plug in to and be within charge range. But different people have different needs.

 

I was willing to pay 25% more for a Toyota ($15/day) versus a GM ($12/day), but not for 12 miles of EV rather than 38.

 

You know the target-price for a mainstream plug-in has been $30k.

Any automaker capable of delivering that reliably, profitably, and in high-volume will get praise.

Prius has always delivered a balance of priorities. It will continue. In other words, the base model will not sacrifice price or cargo or seating for the sake of greater capacity beyond confines already established. Could Toyota diversify by offering the choice of a second model with more? Of course.

 

Here is your problem. Plug-ins are initial adopter cars today. That is why toyota killed the iq ev at birth. If you have the poor idea that in 2012 plug-ins are mainstream you just are not following the market.

The list price after tax credits for the prius phv and volt are within $3K. You make it sound like there are big differences. When you include cost of fuel, YMMV and the 38 mile aer pack may be less expensive.

The only automaker close to positive cash flow on plug-ins is tesla. The car starts at $50K after credits. I don't know where you get your ideas about high volume. corvette is actually profitable.

So are you saying you think toyota will stick with a 11 mile blended pack? That seems lunacy if you follow the market research. It would be as silly as doing a city car ev today and expecting good sales.

 

Sure.

1. People who have residual battery charge when they next charge up.
2. People who regularly exceed the larger battery car's EV range and end up running on a less petrol economical ICE.

Keep in mind the context of petrol use. If pollution or GHG is the concern, EVs are pretty much a non-starter.

 

So the answer is NO.

 

Only in the land of denial.

 

According to who?

Prius is well established already. PHV simply swaps in a better battery-pack and adds a plug... positioning it for rapid market acceptance.

Volt requires the wait until next generation rollout... hence all the downplay we keep getting.

PRICE isn't the slightest bit constructive, especially when it comes about from heavy dependency on government assistance.

COST tells us the true story... which is quite different.

 

You've brought up a very cogent argument. In my investigations of different gasoline brands and potential Prius failure modes, I have run out of gas over 40 times between our 2003 and 2010 Prius. Now I can tell the those who run around in circles 'set their hair on fire' at deliberately running out of gas that when I report my results:

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It is wasteful to arrive at a gas station with excess fuel in the tank.​

That should put them in a complete apoplexy, stuttering fit, and hopefully cramp up their fingers to keep them from posting their outrage . . . or at least post in a funny way. <grins>

I also throughly agree with this point. I am growing concerned that EV advocates may choose to ignore vehicle inefficiencies simply because the power comes from a plug. In particular I'm thinking of the Fisker and Tesla. But a Hummer electric would be a complete Franken-plug vehicle and one exists:

An advocate of the right tool for the right job, I don't see this monstrosity has any practical role. It is too small to be a service truck, too limited range, and too heavy to carry an effective payload.

Battery technology continues to improve and ultimately, I'm thinking an air-fuel chemistry is the end game. Several appear to be practical especially at refractory temperatures. The current sealed batteries are less bad but still too low energy-density.

Bob Wilson