Toyota ends three-year lithium-ion tests, Decides to stick with NiMH for the future (for now).

Wow...but this makes sense from everything we've seen and heard from Toyota thus far. It appears that Toyota PHEVs will go forward, else they wouldn't be debuting them at Frankfurt, it's just that the main emphasis will still be the NiMH technology due mainly to cost reasons.

 

The only data point I have are my battery refurbishment experiments. I found that simply adding water was all it took to restore NiMH batteries to like new, actually a little higher, Ahr capacity. I don't know enough about LiON battery chemistries but I suspect they are not so easily restored to 'like new' capacity.

I understand from Wiki that the critical NiMH patents will expire in 2014 and the bones of Cobasys will turn to dust and a bad memory. A patent system whose purpose should be to spread technology and afford the inventor some profits will have once again been the dog in manger.

I have only one thought about the USA patent system and that is to require a fixed rate fee system. Say 2-3% of the gross sales based upon capacity of the product. The inventor gets a fair return based upon gross sales of products using their idea. But the big thing is banning or blocking of product becomes a thing of the past.

Bob Wilson

 

I would add that the original patent cannot be transferred or sold from the original assignee. That would shut down the patent troll business.

Re: Toyota sticking with NiMH

I think this may also be a strategic move in that Toyota has already assured a supply of Ni to build batteries, but I have read that the Lithium may become a supply issue in the future as it is concentrated in a few areas (e.g. Bolivia).

 

In a similar vein, refusing to license a patent for a reasonable fee should void the patent and turn the invention over to the public domain. Defining "reasonable" would be the tricky part. Perhaps Bob's 2-3% comment is really saying the same thing.

I would also do something like this with copyrights. If an author isn't going to publish something, someone else should be able to do it. Many works remain out of print due to copyright disputes. Set a statutory amount and the problem goes away.

Tom

 

This makes total sense for the standard hybrid model. The Plug in will have to be Lithium and as we can see from others comments, the plug in will only suit some people's needs (though a significant majority I wager).

 

The good news is that Toyota's Li-ion battery is durable, stable and safe. The bad news is that the extra cost does not justify the small increase in MPG.

 

So the hybrid as envisioned by Toyota gains little from lithium, and they aren't changing their vision for now to match the electrical range of a Volt. I guess that's OK, but it seems like a PR problem down the road when the Prius no longer seems modern...

 

most people didnt read the article properly:

a. Toyota said that nickel is better because of the cost, for standard hybrids, not phevs.
b. they feel assured about durability, safety and reliability of lithium-ion batteries.

so only problem is cost - you dont gain enough to offset the costs in regular hybrids.

Also, test was run from 2006.... You can just see how far ahead Toyota is when they were doing 3 year tests on lithium-ion batteries in 2006 while all these companies are skipping testing and will ust try to sel cars in 2-3 years from now.

 

Yes, it is a shame we have to wait that long. There is some good news....

http://www.ovonic.com/PDFs/Financial_Reports/form_8k/8k_mbi_patent_infringe_settlement_7july04.pdf

If you read this carefully (backed up by the Wikipedia article on Cobasys) Panasonic and Toyota can act sooner, they can sell large format batteries NiMH in cars in the second half of 2010. This is a big deal because GM, Ford and others can not. The others have to use non NiMH until 2014.

 

My feelings exactly, thanks for saving me a lot of keystrokes!

 

Did anyone here doubt that Li-X is more expensive than NiMHydride ? Or that Li-X's superior performance characteristics would not matter in our Prius type hybrid use ?

All that was non-news. Safety and short term reliability through the test was good news though, and will hopefully continue into a PHEV future.

 

I just see future commercials: "And we use the new lithium technology, much more advanced than some of the competition uses. Maybe change scares them..."

 

I think it's because Toyota has invested too much money in making it's own batteries, it needs a few more years to ROI it's plant.

Probably in 2-3 more years it will have to reconsider.

Me, my personal favorite option is three-fold :
- an UltraCap for the brake regen, that delay-feeds into the NIMH pack
- an NIMH pack that's recharged from the ICE & regen
- an LION pack for the plug-in, that feeds the NIMH pack.
- whenever the NIMH is full, the amps bleed into the LION pack

Similar to the Enginer PHEV, but integrated into the current HV pack. Basically halve the NIMH batteries and put in the other half LION.

 

Like sage said, nothing really shocking here. There are lots of people out there who expected the Prius to suddenly get amazing mileage gains as soon as Toyota got rid of those boring old NimH and upgraded to shiny new Lithium. The reality is the NimH batteries are very well suited to the small capacity batteries needed for HEVs and short range PHEVs. Much of the buzz around lithium is either marketing hype and/or simple necessity due to the NimH patent situation. Its amazing how much damage that patent did to the EV industry. The situation starts to change when you get to long range PHEVs and BEVs, but even then large scale NimH doesn't suck. If it hadn't had its hands tied behind its back for the last 10 years it would probably suck even less.

 

"Its amazing how much damage that patent did to the EV industry."

This is true and probably more true than we can yet realize!

 

Yes, NiMH is around $500 per kWh just now, whereas LiFePO4 is around $300 per kWh.

Also, because LiIon can have a higher power density than the NiMH used in the Prius etc (3 kW per kg vs 1.3 kW per kg), a smaller battery (read cheaper) can be used to achieve the same power output, which is what really matters for current generation hybrids.

The reason Toyota cites cost as an issue is because they don't have a huge LiIon factory yet, whereas their partner PEVE does have a fully scaled NiMH factory. If they had a different battery partner it would be a different story.