Toyota to pursue plug-ins

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tideland Prius @ Jul 18 2006, 05:51 PM) [snapback]288455[/snapback]</div>

Will do. Just as an FYI, here is an excerpt from the remarks made by Mr. Jim Press, President, Toyota North America, before the National Press Club Luncheon in Washington D.C. yesterday afternoon . . .

Today, I'm happy to announce two key American developments from Toyota that have been highly anticipated...

First...Toyota is strongly considering introducing a flex-fuel vehicle program in the United States in the near term. We're already developing vehicles that can operate in ethanol-rich Brazil and we're optimistic that we can offer similar vehicles to American consumers.

And...second...we are pursuing a "plug-in" hybrid vehicle that can travel greater distances without using its gas engine...conserving more oil AND slicing smog and greenhouse gases to nearly imperceptible levels.

Both projects will help to solve some of the key issues facing society...as well as encourage other automakers to keep moving forward.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SomervillePrius @ Jul 18 2006, 03:52 PM) [snapback]288292[/snapback]</div>

I agree. Pure EV is the best flexi fuel. And I think the plug in hybrid is the best way to accelerate the research needed to get to it.

Ironically, much of the research into battery tech is being done by the electronics industry for laptops and cell phones. Sadly, the car related research has historically been an afterthought. When the plug in Prius starts coming off the line, this kind of car related research might finally get the investment that the ICE has been getting for 100 years.

This direction for Toyota must be making the oil industry quake in their boots. Just wait, we'll be seeing more and more articles (HIDDENLY FUNDED BY THE OIL INDUSTRY NO DOUBT) belittleing the plug in (because the oil industry won't be able to co-opt it into their business model) and more articles espousing the fantastic potential for e85 (because they CAN co-opt it).

It's all about the business model, not the tech. It's always about the busness model, it's never about the tech. At least until the new tech is so strong as to push the old tech aside.

 

wstander,

I have heard a couple of my friends say that too... I think what's happened is that some author 'fubared' and told readers that the European Prius has a plug-in option.

 

With no disrespect intended I don't think Toyota has a good choice on the plug in issue. They can either do it them selves and take the profit, or they can let other firms do after market conversion and let them take the profit. Let me see what to do! There are at least three companies that are starting in the plug in market. I would say don't put any money in they are about to go away. It is too good an idea for Toyota to ignore it. As for the Flex Fuel. The statement by Toyota says it all. They have already done it for Brazil. Now how hard is it going to be to expand on that. What I want is something like my camp stove and lantern. That thing burns white gas, regular gas, kerosine, and alcohol! Now that would be flex fuel! Go somewhere fill it up with what they have and go! Diesel would be a stretch I know but I can wish!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hdrygas @ Jul 22 2006, 07:30 PM) [snapback]290686[/snapback]</div>

Patience. They are not actually ignoring it. Remember, the evidence of long-term goals being more important than the short-term is overwhelming.

There is a benefit from having the aftermarket arena work out the details, do all the promotion, and build up the consumer base... all without Toyota having to deal with any of the business risks. That could end up to be a win-win situation.

In other words, Toyota has delivered the platfrom and the aftermarket crowd will deliver real-world acceptance data.

Don't forget just how voltile the automotive stage is right now. This odd type of partnership could work extraordinarily well. After all, Toyota successfully let the enthusiasts lead the way with Prius.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(john1701a @ Jul 22 2006, 06:12 PM) [snapback]290707[/snapback]</div>

OK good points! I don't think Toyota will wait all that long before acting.

 

well, having had my Prius for only 2 years, not in the market for a new vehicle for at least another 5-10 years. but i will keep my Prius until the PHEV version is released and upgrade even if its next year AND they provide a minimum 20 mile range. studies show that a 20 mile AER vehicle would satisfy 85% of all consumer driving needs.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hdrygas @ Jul 22 2006, 08:25 PM) [snapback]290713[/snapback]</div>

Let's see... They started development in 1994.

 

I've been looking at the aftermarket PHEV options, just to get a handle on the numbers based on my own driving patterns. Basically, my Prius gets driven 10K city miles a year, almost all short trips. My wife and I sat down this PM to guesstimate what fraction of miles would be (round) trips of under 30 miles, and it came to 90%. But that led me to some odd conclusions.

First, the obvious: at current gas prices, for a 10 year vehicle lifetime, assuming no impact on maintenance (a key phrase, see below), $4500 for a 30 mile PHEV option pays for itself. For my driving patterns. I think that's maybe half the price of what's currently being offered as an aftermarket mod, but under the assumption of a $4500 30 mile PHEV add-on, I'd go for that without bothering to think about it.

But the unexpected repercussions are a bit weird.

Second, if I did that, it'd be a fair bet that I'd die before the Prius ICE would. We'd be down to 1K miles/year on the ICE. I'm 47. Do the math. I'd bet against me on that one, even if it weren't a Toyota. Or more realistically, rust would kill the car far before the ICE became worn. Fully understanding that the ICE is a sunk cost, I am still bothered by the fact that basically, I'd be throwing away most of the useful life of the ICE.

At this point, I guess I'm edging toward Darell's camp: why do I want to haul around that ICE in the first place, if all I'm going to do is waste it? I'm not there yet, it just sort of set me back on my heels to think that I'd willingly waste the majority of the usable service life of the ICE. I find that objectionable, and, if I could redo from scratch, would at least consider designs that didn't have the ICE.

Third, I'd have to do with the Prius what I do with my Ford now, which is buy gas two gallons at a time. Since we got the Prius, I drive my other car so little that I'm putting a little over a thousand miles a year on it. Takes me about 3-4 months to drive through a tank of gas. At that rate, I risk fouling the fuel system with varnishes from the old gas. For the Prius, good golly, the tankful I bought in January, I'd be burning the last of it in June. I mean, yes, that's great, but a little odd to contemplate.

Fourth, the obvious corollary is that I'd reduce my gasoline consumption 90% with this aftermarket add-on. Actually, over 90%, as we'd entirely eliminate low-gas-mileage short trips. That's pretty slick because it's so hugely nonlinear - a real tipping point. This tiny hypothetical investment (call it 20% of the cost of the car, say) produces a >90% decline in my gas purchases, relative to the current rather frugal Prius rate of consumption. Enough said.

Fifth, as has been pointed out in other threads, this clearly raises the bar for a BEV. If a $4500 investment in batteries covers 90% of my miles, it may not be efficient to attempt to cover the other 10% with batttery capacity. I guess others here have already figured this out, but I'm still working through it. So, I'm edging away from Darell's camp at this point. Though, to tell you the truth, having wasted much of my youth fixing the junkers I drove, I have zero affection for ICEs. Might consider a BEV just for the pleasure of never having to deal with an ICE ever again.

Finally, if I do this, I want an engine hour counter, because once I'm out of warranty, I'm not going to change my engine oil every 5K road miles, or 500 ICE miles. So, the over-maintenance issue that you get under the current setup (ICE miles < road miles) is highly magnified.

Oh, and I guess finally finally, I'd now worry about excess wear and tear on the electrical system. Do you get my drift -- it's as if the PHEV mod unbalances an otherwise nicely balanced system, moving it from the current setup where wear and tear is distributed across the components to a situation where it disproportionately and perhaps inefficiently concentrated on the electrical components. So the flip side of having the ICE outlast me is that I'd worry that the electrical components wouldn't last 10 years. I'd worry that a car correctly engineered for (say) 75% of propulsion based on running ICE would wear unevenly if changed to 90% propusion from the electrical systems. Knowing nothing in detail, you might think the car would be engineered somewhat differently if that much of the stress were to be loaded on the electrical systems. On the other hand, the car seems pretty robustly engineered to me. And the motors are spinning lot of the time now.

So, after all this, I'm thinking that maybe a 9-mile PHEV option may have been thought through by Toyota. Could just be a relic of the underlying engineering, but maybe not. Nine miles doesn't sound like much, and yeah, my driving patterns are a bit out of the mainstream, but at this point, for me, it's almost as if 30 miles PHEV capacity would be too much. For me. Not sure, still thinking about it, and kind of confused. I know it would pain me to junk a car with 20K miles on the ICE. Yet it might be the right thing to do.

I think I'll go to the US DOT website and get some data on the US average distribution of trip lengths, run the numbers for the average American.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(chogan @ Jul 24 2006, 10:39 PM) [snapback]291768[/snapback]</div>

I think it's worth having the ICE, because then most people can get by with owning just one vehicle, rather than two (an EV for most trips, an ICE for longer trips). The saving over having to buy a second car would more than make up for the extra ICE money. However I think a proper PHEV should only have a max 600 cc engine.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(chogan @ Jul 24 2006, 10:39 PM) [snapback]291768[/snapback]</div>

The 9-mile range is all about price. Toyota wants the next Prius to remain as affordable (and hence accessible to the masses) as possible. Lithium batteries are still too new to be as cheap as they should be, so they went for a small battery to make sure the next Prius could still come in around $20,000. No sense alienating the many thousands of existing Prius owners considering trading up to an '08.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(clett @ Jul 25 2006, 06:00 AM) [snapback]291873[/snapback]</div>

Clett,

Both of those thoughts are rational ways of looking a this. The ICE is the second car I didn't have to buy. Compared to having my Ford waste through rust, I'd actually be wasting a smaller hunk of iron by scrapping the Prius with (e.g.) 20K on the ICE (in 2026?). So I needn't feel guilty about the waste. I'll go with that.

And, for the engine size issue, I guess that's where I was headed on this. If you knew ahead of time you were going to get a 30 mile PHEV mod, you might design it with a smaller ICE. But maybe not because that compromises maximum acceleration. So, ultimately the design specification for required maximum acceleration rate would set a lower boundary on the combined ICE+electric output, and hence set a minimum size for the ICE. All other things equal, you'd at least be willing to trade ICE output for electric motor output.

Thank you for bringing this up because it allowed me to clarify a significant point about PHEV operation for which I had made an ignorant assumption. I had been thinking that the aftermarket conversions would work like the European EV button, just bigger -- they'd force all-EV mode, essentially displacing the HSD management until the PHEV battery pack was exhausted. Which raises the concern that you wouldn't have the max acceleration available if needed. Oh for dumb. No, of course not, at least not for the E-drive (still searching for details on the others). They're fully integrated with the HSD controller, so in my layman's terms, the car would just drive as it does with the battery on green, only more so. Modest acceleration is all EV, flooring it will still turn on the ICE in a split second.

So, you wouldn't have to be maxing out the electrical components all the time just to drive around town. That was part of my concern on the possible wear-and-tear issue. Running machines near their limits all the time tends to identify where those limits are, the hard way. Still, if wear and tear on the electrical side is a concern, one might program the PHEV conversion to provide slightly less-than-optimal fuel consumption, in return for clipping these (hypothetical) peak loads on the electrical drive components (turn on the ICE) at a slightly lower level. Be nice to know whether this is an issue or not, and to what extent that was considered by the aftermarket manufacturers. I guess, in practice, unless Toyota wants to get involved and stress-test a few vehicles, that amounts to converting a few and seeing what, if anything, breaks. Perhaps I'll see if some of the research (university) conversions have any information available.

 

chogan,

Thoughtful analysis !

I'll just point out that your < 30 mile city driving will NOT be ev only. Pretty much every time you take off from stop, pass, or go uphill, the ICE will be on. You would actually be unwise to to try and drive otherwise, because the ICE is required for some of the electrical drivetrain lubrication, not to mention keeping up with other cars in the above situations.

The flip-side is true also: in highway driving, the stored energy *will* be used. The Prius brains will see to it.

So to a large degree, a 10 mile ev capacity will be used up in 12 - 15 miles of driving, regardless of city or highway driving. That ratio will change by driver habits, mostly distribution of ICE power load demand use (and lead to some extreme hypermilers !!), but for your purposes of figuring out cost/benefit, I think taking 80% of your daily driving as ev, up to the capacity of the modded HV battery is ballpark.

Fwiw, I came to the same conclusion, that $5K for a 20 mile battery is a gimme. Your question of longevity for the electrical system working at 20 kW most of the time is spot on. I hope some engineers jump in with their opinions.

 

the wear and tear on electrical is pretty minimal. industrial motors are rated in the hundred thousand hours range and have a fraction of the maintenance costs. the replacement cost is the only drawback. replacement for a large EV would be more than an engine but should easily have double the mean lifetime. that would be a hurdle. raw materials would be an issue as well, but the benefits to getting more on the grid and less off oil is HUGE.

now with all the rolling blackouts experienced from the oppressive heat wave in cali, putting more on the grid might seem like a bad idea, but its not. cleaner air, less smog, less hot exhaust would all contribute to cooler temps.

but in my area (average high temps for summer 76º. number of days in 90's average 7 PER YEAR) temps for previous week 91, 101, 98, 98, 95. today predicted to be 85 (PLEASE!!!). the last heat wave makes the 9th day in the 90's this year. we have not even gone thru half the summer yet.
global warming?? its a myth

 

Living in California we see how the electrical grid can be strained to the absolute limit with a few hot days. With global warming one could see this occur more frequently. How would an increase of PHEV affect the grid especially with more and more hot days in the years coming?

 

The idea is that PHEV will be charged during the night when demands are lower and there is a lot of spare capacity even in CA.

If people start charging their cars at work (like I'm planning too) then it will add to the strain of the network. Here in NE theyt seem to be able to handle it. In CA it could be a problem.

I'm sure many large companies will offer free charges for plug-ins. Most alrge companies already volunteer to turn down AC etc when demand is high. They could do the same with the plug-in option.

As most people work for large companies during the day the total extra demand shouldn't go through the roof.

The change will also be gradual with only a few thousand cars being added in CA/year (in the beginning). If the demand increases the grid might have to be expanded.... BUT and this us a big BUT.... a large chunk of CA's electricity goes to refining gas (if I understand it correctly)... as you are using a lot less gas with a hybrid the demans should go down.... so as we switch away from gas the total electricity demand might not incerease as much as we think.

Also remember that expanding the electric system can be done a lot cleaner and more efficent that having each one of us running dirty ICE engines

Just my $0.02

R

 

cars would be plugged in at night when demand AND rates would be lower

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(EricGo @ Jul 25 2006, 11:13 AM) [snapback]291963[/snapback]</div>

EricGo,

Absolutely right. I'm just getting up the learning curve on this, didn't realize this would integrate fully with the existing HSD controller. Now I get it.

Your comment is timely, as I couldn't find tabulated data on the distribution of car trip length and had just downloaded the 2001 National Household Travel Survey to do a quick cut of "how much gas would we save".

THE OIGINAL NUMBERS POSTED HERE WERE GROSSLY INCORRECT. A PROPER ANALYSIS OF THE US DISTRIBUTION OF TRIP LENGTHS IS GIVEN IN A LATER POST. THE PROPOSED 9-MILE PHEV ADD-ONLY WOULD RESULT IN FAR SMALLER REDUCTIONS IN GAS CONSUMPTION THAN ORIGINALLY ESTIMATED.

 

To me, if it has to be a plug in, I basically want a full time EV with a small ICE to recharge the battery. Imagine going 100 miles with EV alone. And a small ice to constant recharge the battery (a slow lost in battery SOC). If you know you are going with 100 miles round trip, the EV on mode to not run the ICE. If in EV off (econ) mode, the ICE will run efficiently and produce the most power and still be most efficient. If in EV off (max) mode, the ICE will run to generate as much KWH as possible with no regards to fuel efficiency. If left in EV off mode, the ICE would continue running to recharge the battery until battery is fully charged.

This design will eliminate the use of HSD complexity. HSD is not a great design of plugin if given the choice.