Autoblog - Report: Toyota to price 2014 Prius plug-in hybrid same as regular models

Toyota has denied, but the point was there would be no more regular prii to be the same as, all prii would be plug in.

 

well we don't work for Toyota so we can only speculate.

Panasonic bought out Sanyo for their Lithium battery know-how, so it is possible we will see LiION batteries in future.. But IMHO Lithium batteries while have the better energy/weight ratio are too expensive, have lower charge/discharge rate, can handle less charge cycles. On other hand the Chevron/Ovonics NiMH while heavier, will be cheaper and have similar volumetric energy density as LiION.

We don't know how big Gen IV pack will be but Gen III battery pack is ~100lbs and cost ~1200$ to make (correct me if I am wrong). So why would Toyota bother to spend extra 1200$ to save 50lbs? Especially when NiMH are "proven" technology, and there are Toyota/Panasonic mfg capacities dedicated to production.

A1: given reasoning above I would expect all Gen IV to come with higher capacity NiMH. The difference btw plug-in and not plug-in would be the presence of an outlet charger.

A2: With respect to current Gen III taking advantage of higher capacity: not without updates to firmware for sure. And there is a question if current inverter can handle larger capacity pack. And then if Gen III and Gen IV packs are different, would Toyota bother to go back and redesign battery for Gen III?

 

Actually the end recipient of battery patent royalties goes to none other than to the US DOE. ECD/Ovonic and hence Cobasis pay royalties to the DOE because these patents were funded by the DOE, about 222 of them. And yes there is a substantial cross-licensing agreement with Panasonic/Toyota and ECD/Ovonic. Fast forward to today and Panasonic now holds about 4 times as many patents now as ECD/Ovonic. This is primarily one of the advantages of actually making a product and making it better by actually selling it instead of all those "come over here and see what we're developing" shows. For this particular reason, this is the main reason why US manufacturers are pursuing "the hydrogen economy". They have more patents in the fuel cell area.