Elon Musk: A Prius is not a true hybrid, really. The current Prius is like, 2% electric.

You have to wonder how he explains the MPG difference between the 2004 -2009 Prius (48 city/45 mpg highway) and the Yaris. (29 city/35 mpg highway) Both use a 1.5 liter Toyota NZ engine, and the Yaris is lighter.

48/29 implies he thinks a 60% improvement is 'slightly better'. I bet if he could get a 60% improvement in range, he would not describe that as 'slightly better'

 

Musk got it right with Paypal, but it doesn't mean he'll never speak in ignorance. I suspect someone will correct him, and he'll acknowledge he spoke in ignorance. I hate it when i do that.

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I say the 2009 Matrix with 1.8L engine is quite close for comparison to a 2010 Prius. Matrix has 132HP, curb weight with automatic is 2965 lbs. Prius 134HP total, 3,0xx lbs.

base Matrix EPA - 25city /31 hwy - price w/ automatic - low $19k

2010 Prius - 52 city /49 hwy - Prius II - $22,750

Prius 100% better in city and 66% better on hwy.

Little better than gas counterpart?

O. K.

 

I hate to side with Elon Musk as he often comes across as an nice person, but you have to admit that until you can plug it in, the Prius is still 100% gas.

By that logic, he's being generous is claiming that the Prius is 2% electric!

 

Already discussed at http://priuschat.com/forums/other-cars/63527-elon-musk-gasoline-should-probably-10-gallon.html but I guess I should've originally made my headline more inclusive.

 

It's not 100% gas, as it does have regen....
Not to mention that the idea of the engine is to move the car AND recharge at the same time. When it comes to plug in, the car isn't moving while being "refuled".
I don't see him mention the Rav4 Ev...if Toyota wanted to, they could build that again.
Besides, he said it isn't a "True Hybrid" nothing about being a "True Electric Vehicle"...which it is not.

 

Regen is still 100% gas, unless you find some other method of lifting your Prius to the top of a hill.

As for the term hybrid, it has nothing to do with the source of the energy. Hybrid means anything derived from a mixture of two sources. In this case we are mixing electric and mechanical propulsion. All modern railroad locomotives are diesel electric hybrids. All of the energy comes from burning diesel fuel in the ICE. The ICE powers a generator, which in turn powers the traction motors. It is the combination of diesel engine and electric propulsion that make it a hybrid, not the source of the energy.

You could, of course, have a hybrid where the two components were different energy sources. Hybrid is a flexible term.

Tom

 

Again, by using the hill, that makes it not 100% gas.
Because it's not using fuel going down the hill. If it was using fuel going up and down and not recovering anything on the way down I would agree with you.
My point about the word hybrid is why is he comparing the Prius to his electric vehicle...calling it not a true hybrid...his isn't a hybrid at all.

 

Not totally correct. Yes, without gas, no regen would take place. But most of my regen takes place due to braking, which is energy that would be 100% thrown away in a gas-only car: heat and brake pad dust.

This braking regen is an added efficiency that is not obtained by a gas-only car and can therefore be legitimately viewed as electric-only. Otherwise, you may as well say that the Tesla is not an electric car, but rather (dirty) coal-powered.

 

Tom is absolutely correct, and Elon Musk is using the term "hybrid" incorrectly to mean a car that gets some of its energy from he grid. His 2% refers to the (approximate) amount of time that the gas engine shuts off.

The only way to put energy into a non-plug-in Prius is to put gasoline into it. Regenerative braking does not put energy into the car. It merely converts some kinetic energy (supplied by gasoline) or some gravitational potential energy (also supplied by gasoline) back into electrical energy, avoiding its loss as heat during braking. This is a significant gain in fuel efficiency. But it is merely making more efficient use of its gasoline. It is not bringing energy into the car by any other means, since kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy are both forms of energy which gas has supplied to the car, and which regenerative braking can convert into a form that can be stored again for later use rather than thrown away as friction heat.

Consider the total amount of energy in the car: Chemical potential energy in the form of gasoline + gravitational potential energy in the form of its distance from the center of the Earth + kinetic energy due to the car's mass and velocity.

The only way to increase that quantity is to add gasoline to it (unless you want to be silly and have another vehicle haul it up a hill.) Regenerative braking does not increase the figure. In fact, it lowers the figure since it is not 100% efficient. Whether you use regen to slow down, or to avoid speeding up on a downhill slope, you are losing energy due to efficiency losses. The total amount of energy in the car only increases when you put gasoline into it.

By contrast, my Xebra and my Porsche increase their total energy when I plug them into the grid.

But of the three cars only the Prius is a hybrid because only it combines a gas-powered drive train with an electric drive train, even though gasoline provides all the energy for the electric drive components.

 

wfolta, by your reasoning all cars are hybrids because they can cost in neutral as opposed to in a gear. Can a car be labeled a hybrid if it can, at operator discretion, change fuel use from weight friction to air drag ? Say by throwing out a passenger ?

'Hybrid' has always been an approximate definition, suggesting two 'somethings' that are present in one body. If each is a separate system then most would call it a dual config, while hybrid implies inter-connection. In the case of the Prius, the somethings we talk about are interconnected chemical energy -> rotation conversion devices.

If you define the 'somethings' as energy sources then the Prius is not a hybrid at all. And as GM tried to define their vapor Volt for a while using hybrid to mean two *parallel* chemical-> rotational devices, the Volt is not a hybrid, either (they didn't want comparisons with the Prius).

Come to think of it, a plug-in Prius is a dual, dual hybrid
Honestly, trying to turn the hybrid label into an ideological stomping ground has no rational basis. Hybrids can come in infinite variations, just like engines. Some are better designs than others. A 50 - 100% efficiency improvement is a damned good design.

 

My dad has been driving hybrids for years. He has had cars which run on petrol and propane gas for the past 20+ years. 0% electric but still a hybrid.

 

That just means it's not an electric vehicle.

That says nothing about it's "hybrid" nature.

Musk is simply confused by trying to equate electric to hybrid. The prius is 100% gasoline powered but it still has a hybrid power train powered by both an ICE and electric motors.

 

Now that we've reached the "maximum picky-youny" factor, I'll weigh in . Even "pure" EV's are hybrid, using the "dual source" definition. Your electric power is a coal conversion. Your PV power ... the panels were made from fossle fuels that were in turn, converted from mostly coal burning power plants ... unless you go WAY back and consider all our power ultimately comes from the sun (giving life to carbon based life) ... in which case every bit of power is solar. Woah! I gave myself a pain behind my right eye just thinking about that.


But yea ... your Prius batteries can only regenerate once the ICE recharges ... either directly ... or via braking or down hill runs. NO regen takes place that ultimatley didn't come from first getting interaction from the ICE. I think we're all on the same page, just looking from different angles. Yes we all get it.

 

His comments remind me of an old proverb: 'Tis better to remain quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Need I say more?

 

If you charge your electric car off the grid, at least around here (Virginia), you only reduce your C02 emissions modestly. I calculate about a 30% reduction for electric miles in my Hymotion-conversion Prius. Roughly speaking, the electric miles give the same C02 emissions you'd get from a stock Prius getting 66 MPG. But the 2010 is rumored to get 60 in eco mode. So at this point, a grid-charged electric mile is only a bit cleaner (in terms of C02 release) than the most efficient stock gas car available. There's a lot of potential in electric transport, but right now, unless you have access to clean power, moving from the average US vehicle (21 mpg) to the most efficient gas vehicle available gets you almost all the emission reduction you can get.

Let me put it this way. If the 2010 Prius in eco mode really gets 60 mpg, then moving from the average US vehicle to that car reduces C02 release by 63%. Moving from the average US vehicle to electric miles in a plug-in Prius, charged off the grid in Virginia, reduces C02 release by 67%. Realistically, at this time, anybody who dismisses the Prius for not being green enough either assumes widespread availability of carbon-free electricity or just hasn't done the arithmetic.

If you're in (e.g.) the Pacific Northwest using hydro power, electric is a great concept. If you've got rooftop PV, great. In Virginia, off the grid, it's a modest improvement over an efficient gas car.

 

This is clarifying things for me. (Along with other postings.) There are two ways that I can see to define a hybrid car: 1) Having more than one external way to pour "fuel" into it while not driving, or 2) Having more than one type of propulsion mechanism. The Volt is type 1 but not type 2, while a Prius is a type 2 but not type 1. (A Plug-in Prius would be both type 1 and type 2.)

Well, if you go several steps down the path, I guess you could say that a car coasting in neutral is "capturing" or "generating" energy by not spending it at this instant, so there's more fuel in the tank to use later on. But that seems like a terrible stretch.

On the other hand, it seems to me that it's reasonable to say that a Prius with regenerative braking literally is capturing energy that a non-hybrid must throw away as heat and nasty dust. (Which is less of a stretch, for me, to compare to a solar panel on top of the car, which is capturing energy that would otherwise be "wasted" in heating the car.)

Yes, I agree. A hybrid, by definition, must have the characteristics of two different things, combined in such a way that there is synergy.

Yes. And I would add that a hybrid is not a superset of dual-config.

That is, if you disconnected the two parts from each other (and inserted a way to charge up the battery independently of the gasoline engine), I'd say that the Prius' 1-mile battery range would be too wimpy to really call it a dual-config.

In my book, then, the Prius is not a dual-config, but it is a hybrid because it can not only be driven by the gas engine or the electric motor, but by both working together (so that each can operate to their strength), and beyond that the two work together so that the electric motors can gain energy directly and indirectly from the gasoline engine. (And even from themselves.)