Should Toyota release PiP Gen2 nationwide, if...

It already is, to 60 anyhow. The Leaf apparently uses ~1.4x more energy across the board compared to the PIP (30mph/60mph) in EV mode.

 

I just looked (again) at both the Prius and PIP web pages on Toyota.com. What's the #1 feature listed on each? Price and Gas Economy numbers. What's not mentioned anywhere on the front page? Emissions. Heck, I even drilled down several submenu's and could not find even one mention about the environment.

Toyota's primary objective is to make money by selling cars. Toyota's Audacious Goal: Double Profit by 2015

 

Roll out nationwide (and Canada), gas cars are stuck with the emission profile but plug in and EV's. Profile can get cleaner as the overall grid produces with more renewables.
Newfoundland is currently engaged in a $7 billion hydro expansion which will bring our grid up to 97% renewable energy by 2017

 

The solar roof package is kind of a joke, no? Only enough power to run a fan through the passenger compartment.

Now, if it could generate 400W/h, and make a small but significant dent in EV range, that would be a different story. But don't hold your breath for that happening unless there is a major breakthrough in photovoltaics.

 

I suspect that, rather than blaming photovoltaics, the watts of solar power simply aren't there in such a small area.

 

I question your assumption that the rear cargo area can get full sun over its entire area for 4.5 hours without taking the hatch and roof off.

 

Two of those panels stacked in the cargo deck won't get much sun.

 

The prius' current solar panel has some merit: it's most effective when you need it the most, with summer sun beating down, heating the interior. Then when you use AC you've got a leg-up: with the interior cooler from the outset.

I'd equate it to the block heater, not a complete solution, but something incremental.

 

Half of one would if it were broken up into rows of individual high efficiency cells across the rear hatch, ala rear window louvers. Granted, it's probably not a whole lot. Something like .6kWh/day, with more in the summer and less in the winter, but that's still +2-3 miles on the way home. A ~15% improvement in EV range after sitting at work all day sounds like a good idea to me.

The hardest thing about this as a project would be figuring out how to integrate it with the existing charging. It'd need a boost converter for sure, along with control circuitry and some way of tricking the battery ECU into thinking it was charging normally, so it wouldn't overcharge the pack and would kick the HVAC fans on to cool off the cabin/etc once the pack was charged up.

 

With one or two exceptions do to status change, the PIP is only offered for sale in the CARB States to meet the zero-emissions rolleyes standards. Had they not offered such a product in them, they would not have been allowed to sell any vehicle in those States...at least that's how it used to be. The EV RAV was only a short run experimental partnership "additional" option...which I am more than positive was not a profit maker for Toyota Corporate.

 

I don't really have any idea why Toyota picked the 14 states, but I agree more CARB and not clean elec. MD has quite high coal%. If it was CARB, you'd think CARB PA would have been on the list. Instead they picked non-CARB VA, I suspect because at the time, VA was in top 5 states for Hybrid sales (probably due to VA HOV incentives which were weakened in 2011 but still exist for some "grandfathered" owners). I've also since learned Baltimore MD is largest car import port in the US, so I don't know if PIPs come into MD. Also DC is major market but they have to buy in VA or MD.

 

Toyota has a history of retricting car configurations regionally.
It's been decades since you could buy a Camry with a manual transmission in his area.

 

do they still make one?

 

Including the tar sands region?

 

Toyota would not base the PiP availability on the EV component of pollution while maximizing sales of gas guzzlers everywhere.