Featured Toyota Won’t Make A Proper EV Because Dealers Say It Won’t Sell

aren't they claiming 2022, like everyone else?

 

I love to see what's in the works, if anything.
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They did claim they are waiting for solid state battery to mature.... but who knows when that will be? Sound like the old GM answer.

 

I get much less excited about “future plans” when there are cars currently on the road that offer what I am looking for.
That said, if Toyota came out with a 150+ mile range Prius, I would definitely check it out.
Until then, I’ll limit myself to manufacturers that do offer 150 miles+ all EV driving.

 

Here we go again, chicken & egg. Who paid for, & where ARE these solid state quick Chargers? ..... or is that entire, "we're going to do solid state batteries" statement supposed to just be so comforting, that we never think it through that far?

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unfortunately, no one is making a bev that i am interested in. i also would love a 150 mile prius, or even 100.
i wonder how many miles they could stuff in the engine bay

 

Nice post. I agree with most of it.

I'm not sure why there is this big idea that utilities waste power at night. Another post said it was 80% wasted.
Untrue.

See today's estimate and actual demand in CA here:



California ISO -
Todays Outlook



The minimum at night is about ~19000 MW at ~3am and the highest peak is ~29000 MW at ~6pm.
Note that during the summer the peak is around 50,000 MW just for reference.

- there is no way that you can find 80% waste here
- There are some peaker plants that run only during the daytime morning and evening peaks
- the variation between the predicted and actual is pretty small (a few percent) most days so power can mostly be scheduled
- there is a big gap between potential capacity and actually used capacity at night -- this could be used to charge cars at night, but it isn't "wasted" power
- yes, power plants are most efficient when run at their rated max capacity and all less efficient at, say, 80% of capacity.
- coal (not in CA) and NG plants are often run in a hot standby condition where they are ready to come on line within 15 min (NG) or 30-60 min in the case of another plant failing, for example. This is always the case (day and night) and even more so with bigger wind and solar being used -- this "waste" is built into the system for reliability

Mike

 

Thousands.
If it was fishing line miles.
But if you mean miles of battery range I would think at least as many as the Leaf gets...100 to 200

Mike

 

Why you asking me? I don’t collect pay checks from Toyota. Hehehe.

 

Why do you think street lights exist?
(It ain’t for safety)

Read court registered testimony
ERF - Public Comments

In CA maybe
here in Wisconsin you can get older graphs that list hour by hour demand.

For one utility the minima was under 500MW and the maxima over 2600MW, this also varies seasonally.

Wisconsin has mostly baseline power due to poor planning and government kickbacks to fund unnecessary generating power. (Read above)

Many plants are under 15% utilized, the 56% efficiency a plant may have nearing peak drops off a cliff below 80% and to maintain ready state without power generation can easily use 10% of the fuel of full load.

Despite the waste our rates are still moderately low because of hydro.

However Our off peak power used to be a penny a kwhr for reference up until a few years ago when fixed fees went up.

Currently the two and three tier schemes aren’t worthwhile

Ah well

 

I'm sure if you have a more specific question there are some good answers. Natrual gas is the most expensive to transport since it must be liquefied, kept liquefied then pumped. Japan chose to go go coal when their fossil needs grew, which is easier to transport than natural gas, and less expensive transportation included plus cost of the energy than oil. Oil is less expensive still to transport than coal, but the oil itself is more expensive.

This has been part of the con all along. We are waiting for the next big thing. Truth be told we could have had a decent phev with lead acid but Nimh was better. This wasn't really good enough for a bev. The ev-1 looks expensive and poor performing compared to the tesla model 3 ;-) But lion was really good enough in 2010 for bevs, and nimh good enough in 2000 for phevs. . Toyota and panasonic now think solid state is at least 9 years away (10 years a year ago) to being better for plug-ins than lion. 2030, I hope we will see the charging tech and battery tech be better. For now porsche and audi can charge a significant amount on a 350 kw charger on lion in 20 minutes. It remains to be seen if people will pay more for such fast charging versus 170 miles in a tesla in half an hour on a 120 kw system. I can't see anyone paying more for solid state. The key for that will be total car cost being lower (it may need less protection and less battery cooling) than lion.

In texas they are for safety. ;-) but we have been converting to he LED ones that need less maintenance and power.

It seems Wisconsin and California have opposite problems that contributed to high energy costs, but both stem from poor government oversight (which may be by design). California under built and is paying to import, Wisconsin overbuilt and is paying to finance and maintain plants that weren't needed. Perhaps if Illinois and Indiana close more of their really badly polluting coal plants Wisconsin can export some of power from the natural gas plants and rates can drop. I doubt anyone would want to pay california electricity rates in wisconsin.

Wisconsin - Rankings - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

 

Why couldn't solid state battery BEVs use the network of chargers already out there and growing?

 

I read it. No where does it say 80% of night power is wasted. It does talk about under utilization which is a completely different thing.

[quote[
For one utility the minima was under 500MW and the maxima over 2600MW, this also varies seasonally.
[/quote]

Again, are you talking about under utilization?
Are you talking about having standby reserves?

By design, you want to have more capacity than you are using...just in case a power plant fails and has to go offline.

That is different than waste.

Just because the min is 500 and the max is 2600, so what? Again it looks like you are confusing waste with low utilization
That isn't for an entire grid...that just a couple of power plants, most likely.
The grid operator "chooses" to lower the load on those plants for any number of reasons, such as:
- that is what the contracts calls for -- they may be shutting down a few peaker plants only using them during the day
- they may have a couple of plants in standby for night operations in case another plant fails -- they keep them running at a minimum state so they can pick up load in an emergency within seconds (depending on the type of plant)

Mike

 

Think of it like your garden hose. If you got to fill 30,000 gallons in 5 minutes, you're going to need more pressure (amps) than your existing delivery system is set up to do. So existing locations either need much higher voltage transformers or much larger wire (hose) , or both, in order to deliver 100kWh or so.
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100 kwh in 5 minutes means a power of 1200 kw or about 12x the tesla supercharger or 2.7x the porsche/audi stations for combo plugs.
FastCharge Pumps Over 400 kW Of Juice Into Prototype Porsche

Tesla has opened a couple of 50 stall charger stations in china. That means they could have 4 cars going at once at 1200 kw (assuming they could do 50 cars at 120 kw) with the same power going into the stations. Not really much of a problem. The problem comes when you look at expense for each plug. The siemen's station porsche is prototyping requires liquid cooling. They also likely will need big batteries to buffer the power at the stations, and these will be more expensive. They likely need a new heavier duty plug for 1200 kwn like the tesla megacharger. How much more will people be willing to pay. IMHO there will not be a vast network of these like the L2 chargers. Close-up look at the Tesla Semi "Megacharger" charging port

I do wish the public L2 connectors were 11 kw instead of 6 kw. I'll be plugging into one of those 6kw chargers tonight for a couple of hours when I go to a movie. That should take care of most of my driving today and tomorrow. Some need it to be faster, but most of them really will likely use gas as a fuel instead of electricity and are not waiting for these batteries.

 

Not only are these so-called 6.6kw Chargers moderately insufficient, often they are split off 3phase - 208v, which often gets pulled down to 200V, so here at work it's more like 5kW. Beggars can't be choosers.
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That is an issue for rapid charging any large battery BEV, regardless of battery type. The charging standards aren't just for current Li-ion chemistries.

Besides, we all know Toyota isn't in the energy business. None of this is their concern. But since Ford might get into making baby cribs and doghouses, maybe Toyota should look into expanding their business too.

 

Makes you wonder why 270 volt wasn’t OK within the EVSE standard

After all 208 is from a simple circuit converting the 277 vac off an industrial 480 leg
Meaning anywhere there is 208, there is also 277 and 480 lurking somewhere nearby

 

Maybe Toyota feels some people aren't ready for EVs.

 

like the audi diesel ad. how did that work out?