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Toyota Shows Distain: Even for their Own RAV4-EV

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by hill, May 6, 2014.

  1. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Let's say you travel 15000 miles per year and have a bev that covers 80% of your miles and something like a 1000 mile aluminum air battery for the other 20%. That means in a year you will go through 3 aluminum air batteries. But these won't be tossed in the trash, the main thing that needs to be replaced are simple aluminum plates, that after discharge covert some of the aluminum air and water to hydrated aluminum oxide or aluminum hydroxide. These plates then would be recycled.

    If you could have the plates changed and recycled at your oil change place, that really would not require much more infrastructure. Certainly that sounds like a much more viable proposal for a range extender than hyrogen where you need to pay for a fuel cell using expensive platinum and paladium then have carbon fiber bulky tanks. Ofcourse work needs to be done before this is better than a gasoline range extender.
    Green Car Congress: Alcoa and Phinergy enter joint development agreement for high energy-density aluminum-air batteries
     
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  2. 3PriusMike

    3PriusMike Prius owner since 2000, Tesla M3 2018

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    Yes, that is what they "want" when the question is phrased a certain way. But I think that is based on you get the same size of battery and you get that much range. I think if you were to give people big chunks of foam after answering the question, the delta size of the new battery and ask them to place the chunks in the space they are willing to give up, that the number would be a lot smaller than 2.5x to 4x...probably 1.5x to 2.5x.

    Mike
     
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  3. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

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    Then ask them how much they are willing to pay.
     
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  4. 70AARCUDA

    70AARCUDA Active Member

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    Right now, it seems they are "...willing to pay..." for ga$oline more than they are for LONGER range EV.

    I believe a more accurate rephrasing of the question would be: " how much are they willing to pay...in the future..." when ga$oline costs $4, $5, or $10 per gallon?"
     
  5. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

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    The obvious answer is "when that future arrives, I'll decide."

    Remember that the overwhelming fraction of the populace keeps cars less than 10 years, and a huge number keep the cars for the duration of a lease or a loan. Discounting EV costs due to the risk of future fossil fuel price increases is a tricky business few people know how to do; and those that do know how do not apply anywhere near the discount you seem to think is right.

    Do you buy stocks ? Look up the options prices for as distant a fuel price as you can find.
     
  6. 70AARCUDA

    70AARCUDA Active Member

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    FWIW (within the context of this conversation) to me, it was the:

    1) uncertainty of future fuel pricings (OPEC still exists; Iran/Putin are rattling swords, etc.)
    2) certainty of always increasing ga$oline prices (Exxon-Mobil needs another BILLION profit)
    3) certainty of finite petroleum reserves (eventually the well(s) run dry)
    4) sunlight converts into electricity easier than it does into ga$soline

    ...that made me originally want a PiP, even though I was forced to settle for plan-B and get a "regular" Prius.
     
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  7. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

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    How much will prices rise, with what probability, over what time - frame ? Those are the important quantitative questions.

    You answer just says that you are risk averse, but that is not a rational answer to the question of how much to pay for a fossil fuel price hedge.
     
  8. 70AARCUDA

    70AARCUDA Active Member

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    I "voted" with my purchase.

    Risk averse, frugal, or simple mathematics (backwards & forwards) say items in "limited" availability go UP in price = simple reality.
     
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  9. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    First we have a skewed sample of california initial adopters of prius phv, volt and leaf with the extra state incentive and hov sticker. 68% make over $100K versus 29% of the general car buying market. If you included the tesla, it would skew even more.

    The ford (transit connect) then tesla showed how in a bev you can make the battery a structural element. That just means you really can add a 300 mile battery in a car, it just gets a little taller. If you do a design for bev, then getting to 200 mile range is not a problem for packaging or acceleration or handling as the tesla proves. What we do have is a cost question and a battery question. Certainly we don't have enough of the right battery capacity for all the 200 mile bevs, people want, so the price will be too high. If gm or nissan started now though, by 2019 they could be there with battery supplies. Tesla is going to break ground soon for their battery factory.

    For phevs, porsche went mid engine, high tail pipe, bmw rear engine, both strategies get the hot exhaust away from the battery. Or perhaps you do an extra bit of liquid cooling if its big phev. I'm sure you can get 60 mile aer phev with 5 seats if its designed from the ground up. A derivative car like the fussion energi, has some real problems growing its range. I expect phevs in the next generation will range from 15-80 mile range, and space is definitely a tradeoff with range, if you are trying to use the same design for the prius liftback and one that holds a battery for more than 30 miles. I expect something bigger than today, packaged bettery, but I would bet the next gen prius phv and fussion energi get less than 25 miles epa aer.
     
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  10. FL_Prius_Driver

    FL_Prius_Driver Senior Member

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    That was an excellent point about how designing in a battery from the beginning results in a completely different vehicle than a battery added after the fundamental design was done.
     
  11. 70AARCUDA

    70AARCUDA Active Member

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    Battery packs should be STANDARDIZED in the same manner that different grades of GASOLINE are now.
     
  12. Zythryn

    Zythryn Senior Member

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    That would be rather disastrous.
    How many different 'grades' of gasoline are there?

    E85
    E10
    85, 87 & 89 octane
    All of the above in both winter and summer blends.
    Oh, and let's not forget Diesel.

    And doesn't California require different refining formula?
     
  13. 70AARCUDA

    70AARCUDA Active Member

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    STANDARDIZED battery size, shape & connections, as in: AAA cell, AA cell, A cell, C cell, D cell, 9V, etc..
     
  14. Zythryn

    Zythryn Senior Member

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    Why?
    Flashlights aren't, radios aren't, electric lawn mowers aren't.
    We can't get a standard for charging, and there is actually a reason for that.

    With EVs you have lots of company specific knowledge in the battery packs and a number of different chemistries and management tactics being used.

    There is no way you could get the variety of types of EVs on the market if they all had to use the same batteries. Why not tell all car companies they have to use the same size engine?
     
  15. mozdzen

    mozdzen Active Member

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    In 10-20 yrs, the EV batteries will not look like anything in our cars today.
     
  16. acceleraptor

    acceleraptor Member

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    1. Back to the OP question, if your target markets comprise different personas with conflicting biases, even adversarial ones, e.g. eco-friendly, green, efficient buyers and gas-guzzling, huge, off-road-worthy behemoth-drivers, it's far from atypical to make advertising that appeals to the beliefs of each, even when they may be contradictory. They're in business to sell cars to what the buyers want. The wants of those buyers may not actually be coherent or consistent.
    2. Regardless of all other issues of viability, whether it be fuel cells or hydrogen in general, recharge|refuel time is a legitimate concern to certain buyers.
    3. As insane as Toyota may seem right now for pursuing FCVs and hydrogen, I remember everyone calling them just as insane during the late '90s too, when they put a $1B commitment into making actual market-ready hybrid tech into ordinary passenger cars. Even the rest of the auto industry, with the exception of Honda perhaps, thought they were crazy. Who genuinely believed that anything along the lines of electric could ever be viable? It'd take too long to charge. It wouldn't be able to go far enough after it did. It would burden electric power generation even more than it already was. All the alternative-fuel vehicle concepts from other manufacturers were purely token efforts intended to just qualify for federal incentives. 10 years later and now everyone's a believer, of course, including all the auto companies who've been playing catch up to Toyota. (Now, Toyota may actually be insane this time--perhaps, they're really biting off more than they can chew this time--or perhaps this isn't a serious attempt like hybrid was, but the market's mass acceptance of the Prius overall may have already validated Toyota's belief in their own minds that they can actually prove people wrong again, for better or worse..)
     
  17. FL_Prius_Driver

    FL_Prius_Driver Senior Member

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    The critical thing to standardize is any battery aspect related to safety. Car color, size, shape, and features vary greatly as desired to most everyone's benefit. At the other extreme, changing the location, size, and behavior of the accelerator, brakes, steering, etc. would result in many deaths. Same for EV batteries. Most of these issues have been worked out. Charging a EV or PHEV is totally battery independent due to the extensive thought of how to properly standardize this. Right now the problem is between the US, Europe, and Japanese standards and even these may converge. Safety management in cars for emergency responders is also well worked out. After that, standardization can hinder more than help.
     
  18. Zythryn

    Zythryn Senior Member

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    Even that isn't standardization.
    Sure, a certain level of safety needs to be set as minimum.
    However, the specifics of brakes, for example, are very different.
    Brake drums, discs, various sizes, etc.
    Steering? You have steering that adjusts automatically as speed increases, power steering and manual are dramatically different. Some cars even allow you to change the behavior of the steering wheel 'on the fly'.
     
  19. FL_Prius_Driver

    FL_Prius_Driver Senior Member

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    I was not clear. My bad. I'm talking about "major" changes to the brakes like locating the pedals in a different location and replacing the steering wheel with a joy stick.
     
  20. 70AARCUDA

    70AARCUDA Active Member

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    My meaning of STANDARDIZATION was pointed towards how the orginal MANY different re-chargable hand tools battery packs/systems have gradually coalesced down to a FEW common products, albeit, not identical...but far, FAR, fewer differences than when they were first introduced.