Featured 2018 Camry hybrid to offer two different battery packs

They lowered the floor more than they lowered the ceiling ;-) I'm sure demographics stay old.

 

I took 'seat pad' to mean the part you actually sit on.
The Bolt does have thinner seat backs on the front seats to improve leg room for rear passengers. But seat backs don't have to handle my nice person weight. I haven't run into any problems with those mesh backs on office chairs.

But how much bigger?
I believe Toyota will do what they did in the gen4; the Li-ion pack will have the same capacity as the NiMH one. So it will be physically smaller, and should fit under the rear seat even if the NiMH pack doesn't.

 

which would mean they would have two different size trunks?

or:

here's something, the current hycam has a full spare. now, we know the mess toyota made of of gen 4 spare vs no spare.

 

I don't mind them lowering the price. Nope, don't mind by how much either!

 

Really, I think the underseat area is sized for the NiMH pack. Why would it not be?

And, the spare tire vs. no spare tire is ultimately a weight thing. Get more toys, get less spare tire.

 

But the Three with spare has more toys than the Two Eco without a spare. Weight is likely the factor, though.

 

The Two Eco is rated separately from the other trims, though.

Similarly, for weight reasons, the outgoing Camry is rated differently depending on trim level - LE is rated at 42/38, where XLE and SE are rated at 40/37 due to the added weight.

Here's my prediction (this is speculation based on what we know)... There'll be five trim levels, LE, SE, Eco, XLE, and XSE. LE and SE will have a NiMH battery and a spare tire. Eco will have a Li-ion battery and no spare, and LE-like equipment. XLE and XSE will have a Li-ion battery, and may or may not have a spare.

 

hard to believe the mpg difference. is it due mostly to wheel size?

 

They're certified differently, so it's almost certainly something along the lines of, XLE and SE were heavier enough to push them up into a different inertia weight class. It may be wheel size affecting things as well in their coastdown tests.

One would need to look at the test car data to be sure.

 

interesting that they do that for hycam but not prius.

 

They're only required to include the heavier options in the test car if they expect over 33% of that model to have them. (Or, they can test individual trim levels, as they did with the previous Camry Hybrid.)

So, Toyota expects less than 33% of non-Eco Priuses to be Tourings, and therefore didn't have to include those options on the test car for non-Eco Priuses or test them separately. That said, they did actually generate test car data for that configuration, and according to this post, the Tourings would be rated for about 49/46.

 

Nothing revolutionary about that. The Prius has varying hatch volumes, there is already the difference between the hybrid and ICE Camry, and a sound system option for the Mustang pre2000 took up two suitcases worth of space in the trunk.

If both batteries don't fit under the rear seat, then having the NiMH placed as it currently is isn't going to be a hinderance to manufacturig, and can be used for upselling to high trims. The Sonata hybrid has 60/40 folding seats with a full pass through, but only on the top trim model. The base hybrid doesn't even have a token pass through if I read their site right.

except weight or cost, I don't see Toyota messing with the Camry spare.

 

i guess we'll find out. should be due this fall, hopefully. we'll won't be in the market until 2018 or 19 probably. by then, who knows what else will be available.

 

Time travel?

 

Don't you travel through time already?
I find myself constantly moving forward through time, getting older.

 

guessing it's just a whacky /wrongfull interpretation on my part - but when I first heard about different battery "packs" - weather in the Camry or Prius - that immediately meant Toyota was going the route of Tesla, & offering different SIZES. So I'm reading and reading trying to figure out what the two sizes are. Come to find out it's just different chemistry - not capacity - which imo would REALLY be news. They're using their old nickel chemistry - & their using their somewhat more new lithium. So after a sort of letdown ... i ended up feeling like - oh ... ok ... that's nice.
.

 

It has been below freezing here and I went to use my Li-ion leaf blower to clear some drains in preparation for some snow that barely fell at all. I happened to be reading the "Instructions" for the additional 48v Ego pack I had just bought and it contained significant warnings about how performance degraded in cold weather. When I used the blower in 20F weather, sure enough it gave maybe 25% of its normal use life before showing out of charge. It had been charged inside at 70F.

So does the same thing happen to Li-ion batteries in cars that park in uninsulated garages? Can you CA owners go up into the snow country in the kind of weather you are having now and get reasonable range?

 

yes. the pip drops about 30% in winter, but some of that is the rest of the car. i'm down from 16 high to 10.3 right now.
is not the same for nimh?

 

funny you'd mention that! - our coldest days, living in the flathead valley Montana was -16°f. Our 1997 awd ford explorer's mpg dropped from its typical 14mpg to 9mpg. Did i wonder if i'd make it to my destination?

Many people find driving even 200 miles in multiples - strenuous ... either on the back/neck/leg muscles - or on one's concentration - or on one's bladder. Ev range on multiple manufacturers now exceed 200 miles. Likely that's not a coincidence. A couple weeks ago we took an 1157 mile commute around California & crossing over the mountain passes we were in the snow. So no, we weren't fearful of running out of fuel, any more than we were fearful in our old Explorer decades ago. So, just like the earlier days of refueling with toxic, highly explosive.,carcinogenic, clean air destroying non-renewables ... the infrastructure gets better & better for ev's, until it's completely saturated with all the refueling you could ever want or need.

 

I do prefer active, thermal management of the battery and liquid cooling and heating. The Prime air-cooled and heated traction battery would give me pause except I live in North Alabama. We don't really have much cold weather.

Bob Wilson