Featured The story behind the Prius

I'm not sure of your point here. You used inflated cafe figures. The old epa and cafe figures are calculated by the 2 cycle epa test. Your figures apply the wrong algorithm.

You can probably get the results of these two tests and get old epa figures for the post 2009 cars. I'm not sure of the point of the cafe?

As a metric for reduced oil consumption, one of the goals, the new tests are more accurate and appropriate. We can calculate the old metric and the new, as there is an algorithmic method to go from 2 cycles to current epa. I gave those with old stickers for respective cars in my link.

Well both your snippet and the car and driver article have similar facts and we should not again revise history to make them fit some opinion.

The bush administration and the car makers cancelled the requirement to build these cars to sell to customers. They were close to fulfilling one of the goals 80 mpg. As car and driver pointed out they failed at what should have been more important goals.

1) The diesel emissions could not meet epa standards at the time. This would later be technically met by urea based SCR and lowering the amount of sulfer allowed in diesels. 2003 could not have been met, but perhaps these could have been sold in 2009 if not for other problems. The car companies didn't know when the clean diesel tech would be viable.

2) In order to reach emissions interal space and speed were not met. Perhaps again this could have been done in 2009.

3) Cost was a problem as it was for the prius, but more so. Now you not only need a hybrid but a more expensive diesel engine, ligher weight more expensive materials and pollution control technologies. Think of a larger 5 seat vw xl1. The xl1 costs over $100,000, I doubt these could have been built for less than $50,000 in 2009. This is a fail on another goal affordability.

2004 prius got 55 mpg on the old epa. Ford, GM, Chysler, and the Bush administration knew it was coming when they made the decission. Do you think any of the car and driver prototype expensive diesel hybrids would sell against it. Part of the program was leaf frogging import cars. What was the point of a 80 mpg diesel hybrid at that point?

From the original PNGV documents

The wiki you mentioned seems to fail to understand it failed to meet any of the 3 goals for the program.

I'm not quite sure what you are disagreeing on. PNGV turned into hybrid diesels to meet the 3x efficiency goal. Freedom car changed the goals and pushed things out 20 years, which would be 2023 or 2024 after PNGV failed miserably. Certainly you cuold not have built the mirai in 2003, so there has been progress, it just has been much slower than promised.

Austin is harder on mpg than alabama. Either way you are not driving a pngv disaster car. MITI had much more reasonable goals as did toyota, and incubated a better technology.

 

Well we also gave up on other things than just the PNGV . . . a budget surplus that was paying off the national debt and reading daily security briefings come to mind.

Bob Wilson

 

Well on the PNGV its one of those things hindsight makes the DOE look brilliant in ending the program.

Does any one in 2015 think that 80 mpg (now probably 65 mpg new epa) diesel hybrids that cost at least 25% more than a gasoline hybrid would sell well? Would have making GM and Chrysler make these cars help their competitiveness and avoid bankruptcy? No! People just want to blame bush. This was a screw up and one that happens in government often.

PNGV wasn't the worst thing to come out of Clinton/Gore (repeal of Glass Steagall comes to mind), but not fixing cafe and doing this program instead (fixing cafe was a campaign pledge) was not good for oil consumption or the US auto manufacturing sector.

In 2006 the DOE started supporting plug-in cars both as part of freedomcar and outside it. The electric car (plug-in) program is much more sucessful than PNGV, and is modeled after part of the successful MITI program than that helped incubate the prius. It also was about manufacturing in the US, not only helping american companies, so it has aided LG Chem (Korean company manufacturing in Michigan) and Nissan Leaf (Japanese company manufacturing in Tennessee) which are a large part of the success. As well as providing incentives to sell plug-ins where ever they are built including toyota's built in japan or canada, as reduced oil use not just manufacturing are goals.

 

Obviously not the kaizen way which would take the PNGV and refine them into better vehicles. But I would observe something about 'plug-ins' from your curious history.

I had observed the first plug-in Prius were done by home-grown folks who then formed after-market companies to modify Prius. These companies evaporated when Toyota released their PiP. Sounds like you think these home grown systems somehow should be attributed to the "DOE" and "freedomcar" association.

Curiously, I've seen some evidence of plug-in modifications of the 2001-03 Prius. These are not being done as a business as much as home-brewed, plug-ins experiments. They also dove-tail with something I've been doing to mitigate engine warm-up. Perhaps someday we can attribute these efforts to "DOE" and "freedomcar" along with the wildly successful, ever popular, fool-cell cars jamming up the California HOV lanes.

Bob Wilson

 

When you have a hard goal of 80 mpg, kaizen does not make it. Ford asked for a more reasonable goal of 50 mpg (old epa) which the gen I prius was close (48mpg). Fruits of the PGNV can be seen in the XL1, which improved on that theme. It is not a car that would reduce america's oil consumpttion, provide good american jobs, or increase american car manufacturers competitiveness with the japanese. It is a fail compared to vw's own phev and bev cars.

If you are saying the moon shot program could have been reformed, well sure, but the very idea of the program paying for R&D and the cars would magically appear seems wrong headed. 4 of the accomplishments congress gave to PNGV were about converting gasoline to hydrogen and other fuel cell ideas.

I don't know how you could read that into it. DOE supported plug-ins before PNGV, but in PNGV dropped it from the program. Hobbiests and car companies made bevs and phevs. GM as part of EV1 outside of PNGV produced a ev1 with 4 seats and one with a gasoline range extender. When the first hybrids came out people added more batties and a plug.

What the doe did as part of freedomcar and outside of it, beginning in 2006, just 3 years after abandoning the diesel hybrid as the picked technology, was to encourage car makers to make plug-ins. These were commercialization dollars. The Prius phv recieved these commercialization dollars. Toyota was able to through its PAC lower the threshold to 4kwh, so that it had advantages. It also was able to through california legislation, to shut down phev modifiers in that state.

some were businesses some home brewed. The change for PGNV which was targetted to the big 3 versus the now larger electric car incentives, it they go to everyone and are primarily for commercialization. The difference is there were simply a handful of prototypes for PGNV, and the hydrogen version of freedom car. Soon there will be over 400,000 plug-ins on the roads of the US if they don't make it this month. Tesla, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, honda, bmw, mercedes, bmw are all part of this not just the big 3.

I really don't understand defense of the PGNV given hindsight. I could see it in 2004 when people thought maybe diesel hybrids could beat the prius, but really that was a fail.

 

We just have different hindsights. The announcement of "freedomcar" came with emphasis on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Source: What can we learn from Bush’s FreedomCar Plan? | Grist (26 Feb 2003)

. . . new FreedomCAR and Fuel Initiative, which was cheered by automakers and jeered by environmentalists, hydrogen fever swept from the Beltway into the printing presses and airwaves of mainstream media. CNN, Business Week, the New York Times, and U.S. News and World Report, among others, ran stories that, although sometimes skeptical of the Bush plan, trumpeted the promise of a hydrogen economy, calling it the antidote to both our dependence on foreign oil and the mounting threat of global warming.

. . . any plan geared toward a long-term energy shift must provide for short-term solutions along the way. Bush’s plan does nothing of the sort. “The FreedomCAR is really about . . . freedom to do nothing about cars today,” says Ashok Gupta, the lead energy economist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. A plan that was serious about shifting toward hydrogen and protecting the environment would include provisions for stricter mileage standards for cars and trucks . . .​

Because I passed chemistry and thermodynamics, I knew back then that hydrogen claims were for fools. So PNGV was killed and we have had a decade where Toyota, Honda, and Ford were the only ones making serious product.

That GM sells the Volt-2 in only 10 states suggests they are only doing it because CARB made them for credits. In contrast, I'll get a test drive in Gen-4 Prius in about 60 days and I live in a 'fly-over' state.

Bob Wilson

​

 

I'm not clear on this point. CARB forced GM to make a Volt-2 or CARB prevented Volt-2 sales outside of the 10 states? I ask because the PiP has never been for sale here whereas I expect the Volt-2 to show up for sale in Florida a whole lot sooner than any generation of PiP.

 

Can we at least agree that the miti program that incubated the prius was sucessful and that freedom car has not been sucessful. You act as if I am advocating that freedomcar was a good program. I don't think anyone on this forum thinks so.

If was deeply flawed IMHO because it followed some of the same mistakes as PNGV. They did fix some things but it was a moon shot, with low probability of sucess just like pngv, and did not require commercial viability just like PNGV.

Well if PNGV wasn't killed maybe ford would have gone bankrupt too. Do you think they should have spent resources trying to make a 71 mpg diesel hybrid pass US emissions? I don't understand how PNGV would have helped? It seemed to have killed the idea of miller or atkinson engines in favor of turbo di diesels because they could get enough mpg. Not good goals. It might have been reformed, but why, it was so deeply flawed.

As for chemistry and thermodynamics, the gen II clarity seems to prove you can make a 5 seat fcv in a decent package. Electrolysis works well, as do wind turbines. There are no physical laws saying that everyone could not build things like clarities and lots of wind turbines and hydrogen stations. Economics are another matter. A prius, or even Lexus ESh are a lot cheaper to build and fuel before subsidies than a mirai. A gen II volt gets rid of most oil dependence. Hydrogen might be more viable in a decade or 5, but it isn't in the US right now.

You do relize carb and the california delegation were the big pushers for Freedom car. David LLoyd ran the california fuel cell partnership and carb. Mary Nichols is the PAC leader and CARB leader today.

The volt and volt II are not compliance cars, nor where they PNGV compliant. I don't like that gm is delaying until late spring or summer the natioinwide roll out of the gen II volt, but it appears to reflect more on designing to lower sulfer gasoline emissions control equipment then anything carb mandated. Carb doesn't even give it a single zev credit.

If PNGV was still alive today do you really think you would be driving an expensive diesel hybrid over a prius? It makes no sense. How would continuing the stupid wasteful program have helped?

Happy New Year

 

He said, she said, bottom line: The Toyota Prius has cleaned GMs' clock.
Time for GM to step up to the plate, face reality, and admit it.

DBCassidy

 

Those managers left GM about eight years ago. Sad to say, GM limiting 2016 Volt-2 sales to just CARB suggests they are still fighting reality. Source: Most of the US won't get 2016 Chevy Volt

So what happens in November 2016 that might have an effect on GM's decision to sell the Volt-2 nation wide? Perhaps some effect similar to what killed PNGV.

Bob Wilson

 

I don't believe you are aware of what GM is doing.
GM has already decided to sell the 2nd gen Volt nationwide in the first half of 2016, as an early 2017 model.

As for why the slow rollout, I would guess they needed more CARB credits and have limited production capacity to start. So, to get the most bang for the buck, they are only selling in CARB states.
I don't like it, but given the initial statements about the PIP and the fact the first gen PiP NEVER officially sold outside of the few rollout states, I'm happy to give GM 6-9 months.

 

Source?

Bob Wilson

 

Bob,

Green Car reports ran a story in September that had the following quote from a GM employee:

"A 2017 Volt will begin selling nationwide "early this spring," a General Motors spokesperson told Automotive News (subscription required).

But this doesn't constitute a delay of the Volt launch, Kevin M. Kelly of GM communications told Green Car Reports, adding: “Chevrolet has a shortened model year for the 2016 Chevy Volt that will have a limited distribution network."

"The 2016 Volt will be sold in our strongest extended-range electric vehicle markets," he continued. "The 2017 Chevrolet Volt will begin production early this spring and will be available throughout the country.”"

The story can be found at: 2016 Chevy Volt: Limited Markets Only, Nationwide Rollout In Spring For 2017 Volt

 

Thanks TomSwft, good to know my memory is still decent.

Bob, there were a few.other stories, however, I suspect they were all based on the same information.

 

With the drop in gas prices, the trucks are selling like hotcakes and its screwing up the CAFE percentages. To get the Volt sales up, they're adding more features without raising the prices, to sweeten the pot, that's why the short run on 2016 Volts. The sales manager at the dealer I bought my Volt from said that the diehards are buying them, but because of the cheap gas, it's harder to sell them to the general public. This is also why the push is on to get the Bolt out there, to offset the gas guzzler sales.

 

Who cares!!! GM dug their own grave and jumped into their own hole. The only thing left to do it the burial. The competition will see to that.

DBCassidy