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Lutz says fuel economy regulations will add 5K to price

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by Chuck., Apr 19, 2013.

  1. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Why would the engine matter?

    The big scary factor priced onto the prius is a change of batteries. The prius c has a smaller different battery. What if it actually is more energy intensive, and doesn't last as long. The weaker engine also puts more stress on the battery.

    prii go many more miles than yaris, yet the yaris has the same engine as the prius c. Why should we penalize the prius liftback with an expensive battery change?

    I don't think either car will need battery replacement, why should the liftback be charged for a replacement for the bigger battery?
     
  2. Troy Heagy

    Troy Heagy Member

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    No I didn't realize the C uses a smaller battery than the G2. What's the size difference?
    Also I don't see where Greenercars website is penalizing the Liftback with a battery change..... are you making an assumption?
     
  3. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    I didn't read the full thing, but trollbait, poped up the link that seemed to say hybrids got penalized for 2 batteries (original and 1 replacement) from the model they are using. greenercars website said it didn't do an analysis of individual cars to determine what should be counted.

    Prius c uses a 0.9 kwh battery, the prius liftback and prius v use 1.3 kwh. The other factor that these lifecycle energy uses models will use is the prius liftback uses an aluminum hood and hatch panel, and uses more steel.
     
  4. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    This illustrates the problem with presumptions vs. long term data. Greencars will now be assuming no need for replacement of a NiMH battery during a hybrid's life in 2013 onwards. Since the evidence from the road shows that is the case. For lithium battery cars, they'll still use the more conservative GREET numbers for replacement. So hybrids using the older battery tech are going to score better than ones with lithium in future reports.

    It is still too early to tell if the GREET assumptions with be more conservative with lithium, as it was with NiMH.
     
  5. Troy Heagy

    Troy Heagy Member

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    Where did ACEEE aka Greenercars say that?
     
  6. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    It was in the quote I posted from their site.

    "For hybrid vehicles with nickel metal hydride (Ni-MH) batteries, GREET assumes that the battery gets replaced once during a vehicle's lifetime. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that only a small fraction of hybrid owners have required battery replacements since the purchase of their vehicles. For 2013, we assume that a hybrid vehicle’s Ni-MH battery lasts the lifetime of the vehicle. For all other battery technologies, we revert to GREET's replacement assumptions."

    I might just be assuming that GREET's replacement for non-NiMH batteries will be pessimistic, but it turned out to be so with NiMH in hybrids. It might turn out not to be so, but I believe Ford, Hyundai, and others using non-NiMH batteries in hybrids aimed to have the battery last the life of the car. Same with the plug in hybrids. At this point, I would only expect having to replace the battery in a BEV during its lifetime, but I'm counting lifetime as 10+ years.
     
  7. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Thanks, I had that backwards. At least they didn't hit the prius liftback with 2 batteries like I thought, they stopped that in 2012;)

    I just have a problem with these lifecycle analysis boiling down to single numbers.

    The odds are greet will get it wrong again.

    If you define green only as using less ghg in a vehicles lifetime, I can't imagine, unless you use a large percentage of renewables, hydro, and nuclear, that plug-ins will come out much ahead of a hybrid unless there are very favorable assumptions for the plug in.

    If you include less environmental destruction from using the most scarce resource (oil) and look at reducing oil sands use, and the possibility of paying most of the pollution up front, than plug-ins look greener. They are more expensive though. That is the real trade off.
     
  8. Troy Heagy

    Troy Heagy Member

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    I still don't see where it says "The Greet Analysis [or our analysis] will replace the battery in Li-Ion hybrids." I think you may be jumping to false conclusions.

    Let's be honest: Would replacing the battery in the standard Prius truly make the difference between a green score of 55 (the standard prius) and a 58 (the C). I doubt it. It doesn't require much energy to make a battery..... probably just 0.1% of the total ~300,000 mile energy cost.
     
  9. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    For the life of me, I can't understand why the prius c would be greener. It doesn't use less fuel per mile. the prius c is greener, whatever that means, and that is when my eye thought they must be penalizing nickle production of the battery.

    So here we have it
    http://greenercars.org/2013methmemo.pdf

    Through 2012 they were penalizing batteries too much. They seem to have corrected that now, but they still project a larger number of pollutants simply on vehicle weight. This comes from greet, and the prius c is lighter than the liftback. plug-ins are heavier. They are getting closer.
     
  10. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    Perhaps they are just 'jerking our chain.'

    Bob Wilson
     
  11. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Their scores are also factoring in the disposal of the larger battery, and we can only guess at whether they are considering reuse of the battery in another application, refurbishing(for most bad packs, it is only a few cells), or recycling, in that disposal factor with the info we have here.

    I don't think the battery differences between the LB and C are a major reason for the different scores. I do think it is one of the reasons for why they score hybrids and BEVs the same. Not only does the BEV use a larger battery, but it is also more abusive on it with deeper discharges. Which would lead to more battery replacements over its lifetime compared to a hybrid.

    The other major factor is that they are likely using an average national grid mix from 2007, possibly 2009. A hybrid does better in regards to CO2 under that criteria, but the grid is cleaner and it varies by local. If the greencar score broke out by local, BEVs would better or worse. They don't. So the consumer needs to consider their local grid mix in relation to their score.
     
  12. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    No, and I don't think its bad intention,its mainly incompetence. At least greet 2012_2 reduced the environmental cost of nimh batteries in hybrids.

    From the previous link pdf
    Greet 2.7 nimh battery 32.23 MMBtu per ton
    Greet 2012_2 nimh battery 2.3 MMBtu per ton

    They also needed a replacement in the older model, and finally acknoledged that these things get recycled the biggest part of the difference.

    In the old model a hybrid with a battery 1/20 ton (about the prius size) would add 3.2 MMBtu, in the new model its a more reasonable 0.1 MMBtu.
     
  13. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    I'm starting to enjoy the ridiculousness of Lutz's rantings. Contrast that against Toyota ... not waiting for regulations - but simply building their now famous 50 mpg hybrid almost a decade ago - and a 30 mpg hybrid SUV to boot. Then there's GM - the company that cried about having to install catalytic converters and padded dashes, crumple zones etc ... because their cars will then cost too much. Too bad Lutz can't grasp facts how much running out of cheep oil costs ... as we continually try to outbid China for the remaining cheep oil contracts ... or how much it costs to keep our meddling hands (via military) on the middle east's oil spigots. Perhaps Lutz doesn't care how his heirs will make do - as long as he gets his. After all, that's the kind of reasoning that led GM executives to fly in private jets to go beg Congress for bailout money. Yep ... you can always count on lutz to be lutz.
     
  14. Troy Heagy

    Troy Heagy Member

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    That's only 14 gallons of gasoline for a 100 pound battery. The Prius burns 6000 gallons during its 300,000 lifespan, so only 0.004% penalty. That's why I said the 2nd battery penalty was trivial, and would not account for the +3 difference between a Prius C and a regular Priuses' greenscore.

    [edit]
    I just realized 6000 gallons == $24,000 in cost in California. More than the car itself costs. Ouch. It really is beneficial to try to get as high an MPG as possible. (My EPA-rated 70mpg insight would burn just a little over $17,000.)
     
  15. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    The green score is also including the environmental costs of the components after the vehicle's life. Depending on their assumptions concerning the disposal of the battery(reuse, recycle, or into a landfill) and how they weigh them, the penalty of the larger battery can add up. It will be greater than the cost of 14 gallons in that regard.

    The 3 point difference may account for the fact that the C has more shared components with other models. Mostly, it is because it is just a smaller car, taking less materials to make and then dispose of after. Which includes its battery.
     
  16. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Again, I was wrong about how much I thought they were counting the battery.

    I really don't understand how the prius c gets a lead over the prius if its not the battery though, nothing else should get charged with a big difference. Perhaps someone else could look into their assumptions.

    Here is a UCLA study that makes everything much more apparent, and would mainly just credit the prius c with a tiny bit for the smaller battery, while the rest of the car would save almost nothing at all.

    life-cycle analysis bev versus conventional versus hybrid | PriusChat
    Assumptions prius, versa, and leaf like cars with a 180,000 mile usefull life, half the bev batteries replaced. bev lowest energy and ghg. hybrid lowest cost over lifetime and least expensive way to reduce ghg. Lots of data to allow calculations based on your your hypothetical grid, battery replacement, and miles.