Featured Here’s Why The 2021 Toyota Prius Has Become An Undesirable Electrified Car

580 miles is roughly 930kms, one stop in a Tesla range battery for a top up charge, 2 recharges to 80% on most of the other EV's designed for highway use. A lot of stops with one designed as a shopping cart though :lol: A Hyundai Kona would do it with one stop to recharge to 80%, 20 mins at one of those fast chargers, no idea how long at one of the new mega fast DC chargers.
550km range could be matched or reduced with a motor/gen set added for those that need the longer range between recharge stations .... but I reckon those that purchased one of these would switch to the pure EV model on the next purchase and adapt their travel plans to the 1 hr stop over mid way for lunch and stretch the legs etc

T1 Terry

 

Many would eventually op for the BEV, but many are hesitant to try an EV without the range extender or charging times faster than they are now. Personally, I want a small BEV for commuting, but something bigger for trips and 'truck' jobs. There are very few BEVs, or PHEVs, that can do all I want from a home fleet. The ones that can are more than I want to pay, and even those will suffer range loss while towing, coupled with DC chargers not friendly to trailers.

A range extender itself is not bad. It is the fuel that is bad. Porsche is going to be making gasoline from water, CO2 and wind power. A PHEV with 80 to 100 miles of EV range will meet nearly every person's daily drive needs in the US. With fuel use only needed for trips, the higher cost of renewable fuels becomes palatable. Yes, it is higher cost than direct charging, but charging doesn't always happen when renewable electricity is being made.

 

This is where the commercial enterprises will adapt to the ever changing market. The roof of the establishment that is providing the recharge facility is an excellent site for solar panels, feed that into a big battery and the energy required for EV recharging as provided by the sun .... when it's shining, from the grid or other generation method when the sun isn't shining. Going "green" is a big selling point in Australia at the moment for supermarket chains and many manufacturers ... well, "carbon neutral" is another catch phrase but the one that is cutting through the best is 100% renewable powered. So, building a few wind turbines to go along with the solar not only improves the "green" image, it spreads the charging load across multiple renewable energy sources ... so it's now "if the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow and the batteries are discharged" will be the period recharging isn't from renewable sources actually on site. There are still renewable sources that feed into the grid .... In Australia, the coal fired power stations are reaching their end of service life and the energy providers are not doing refits to bring them back up to many more yrs service, they are putting bandaids on because they know the viability is no longer there, renewables and batteries along with regenerative water storage is replacing base load power. Fortunately nuclear power never got a start in Australia and it is so far behind in the $$ per gWh to build that it won't get a foothold, even if the public could be swayed to accept it.

Wave energy, ocean current generators and geo-thermal combined with solar thermal are still in their infancy stages, but they will get there, then synthetic fuel will be only for those that can afford it for the special Sunday driver ICE powered car ......

Then there is the whole concept of never again owning a car, just a least arrangement that provides a vehicle as required, no need to own a town car and a travelling car and a truck/tow vehicle, you just book the vehicle you need and pay for the period you need it ..... you don't even have to find a parking spot, servicing schedules or insurance, it's not your vehicle after all....

T1 Terry

 

Since the discussion was about long distance driving, the recharge facility is assumed to be a supercharger style fast charging station for those traveling between cities.

So the question is : How many square feet of roof are you figuring will be needed to provide the power to run a single fast DC charger all day long?

With so many BEV owners wanting charge at 125 to 250 kW, that's a lot of power to try to collect and store. Assuming you can get 330 watt panels, on an average sunny day 1 kilowatt(kW) of solar panels generate 4 KWH (units) of electricity in a day. 1 kW of solar panels is equal to 3 solar panels each of 330 watts. Considering about 6x3 foot per panel...

The solar panels on the roof of a charging station are more for looks than functionality. It would take all day for 6 panels (and storage) to charge the 7 kWH battery in my Prius Prime. A model 3 with an 82kWH battery would need 60 panels (about 1000 sq feet) and sunshine all day to charge it. And that's just enough for charging just one car.

But if you are only charging one car per day a max of 30 miles of range like you might do at work or at home, the solar panels can make sense. For fast charging, not so much.

 

That's quite appealing to me overall. Ideally I'd own "not much of an e-car" for the convenience of it always being immediately ready in my own garage to cover all the local family errands, and then rent any/everything else as needed.

I'm not sure how well the rental model works in the context of popular holiday traffic though.

Perhaps this is where electric cars as grid storage have a play? I'm not sure how valuable it would be to make a grid storage system that had high availability from Sunday evening until Friday afternoon and low availability all weekend, but it sounds like it's time to find out.

Edit:

Or maybe turn that on its head: I'll buy the BEV with the big battery and own it and maintain it as long as it generates revenue for me as grid storage for everyone else, less the time & kWh I take away from the plug.

 

Here’s Why The 2021 Toyota Prius Has Become An Undesirable Electrified Car
WHICH 2021 Prius?

Seems to me that they're selling all of them that they made last year, despite the fact that, cordless or not, ALL of them are sedans, and ALL of them have somewhat....Uhmmmm....."controversial" styling -
I'm thinking that aesthetics and size notwithstanding, they are fairly capable compliance PHEVs and I have read posts from a number of people on this forum that don't put much gas in them at all.
This informs me that their humble 25 mile EV range is...good 'nuff.
So....Why spend $40,000 plus on a range limited, big battery sedan with arguably better looks but lacking the utility of a hatch and still plagued with a big question mark over build quality issues?
AND....while the purple-faced Tesla fanboys are wiping froth from their screens, I'll point out that the build quality issues (perceived or real-world) I'm talking about might be layed on....Chevy, Ford, Vee-Dubbaya, OR Tesla.
Me?
I can't really use a Tesla right now.
I could use a Prime.

Of course, I'd have to beat on it with a hammer some and tell my friends I got it for $15,000 off after a riot but even if I paid full bull for a new PVEH it would be a car that I could charge anywhere, and go everywhere in.

AND....if the "Prime" we're talking about is the Rav4 - there's a waiting list for THOSE puppies that is about as long as the single-fueled vehicles.

Undesirable?

...don't think so!

 

I stumble every time I read that title; technically that car is not even a plug-in, and "electrified car" conjures up pure-battery vehicle to me.

 

Batteries for charging stations are already starting. Acting as a buffer between the chargers and grid to reduce the cost of demand fees is likely the main driving force than going green though. The charger operator could build renewable power elsewhere, and may have too. The gas stations I use on my trip likely see thousands of cars a day that are on a trip, and realestate is already pricey in some areas. Too much for the massive battery banks to feed those cars.

Right now storage batteries are the same type as going into EVs. During the growth phase of EV adoption, we will likely see battery shortages at times. Do we make cars, or do we make energy storage during those times? While other battery chemistries and energy storage types exist that have promise for grid storage, and won't compete directly for Li-ion cells, the level of investment in them at this time still means a shortage will happen.

Whether because there is simply too few people to make full use of the potential, or building the transmission lines are an issue, there are places in the world that are great sites for renewable electricity, but can't be utilized. E-fuels can be an energy carrier to make use of those renewable sites. Porsche's plant is being build in Chile, where they are also installing the wind power just for it.

The fact is that it will be easier to get the masses into a PHEV than into a BEV. People are simply uncomfortable with change. Businesses at charger sites desirable to visit isn't enough for people to get over the discomfort; they'll just visit in their ICE car. People are already use to charging phones, tablets, etc. on a regular basis when not in use. Getting them to the daily charge of the car after they are done using it isn't a big stretch. Getting them to change how they handle refueling on trips is.

The industry has been using electrified to cover any car with a battery bigger than the starter for some time now. From mild hybrids to BEVs.

 

some of Tesla solar panel roofs are far outside these presumptions. SunPower for instance is making their newer panels with over 430 Watts, & they're smaller so more fit on the same roof.
There's a bit of irony in pooh-poohing the function of solar - especially considering some stations may have 60 - 80 or 100 panels, that continually recharge massive battery backup. panels don't have to necessarily offset all grid use, but at least stop over taxation on it. Plus - all stalls at a supercharger station are not necessarily full - so it's presumptuous to assume that there will be grid overtaxing. And never mind the fact that panels continually get more and more efficient with each iteration as do battery weight to ratio efficiencies. Another irony, no one worries about how much electricity is used to refine petrochemicals and gasoline and such, much less the seven or eight kilowatts that many central air units run on.
Not to say there's anything wrong with liquid fuel, just trying to keep things in perspective
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The assertion was that charging stall roofs were a good place to put solar cells to charge the cars ala supercharger. So let's ignore the 60 or 100 panel per stall example. For the reasons that I pointed out, you will never get to the point where a supercharger class charging station gets a significant portion of the energy it needs from the panels mounted above each stall.

If you have cars that need 250Kw in order to charge quickly, you will need approximately 750 panels using current technology to provide the juice in real time. That's around 13,000 square feet. But wait! There's more! That's only usable during prime daylight hours, generally given as 6 hours per day. So to provide charging for 12 hours a day you need a roof over that stall of about 26,000 square feet and storage for about 1 and a half Million killowatt hours of energy. Per stall.

Of course there are human factors that will reduce the energy use. For every car that charges there will be dead time while people get in and out of the car and fumble with cables and seatbelts and such. There will be people who are late getting back from their bathroom break. There will be stalls that just are not used.

So, in perspective, solar panels on top of charging stalls at freeway superchargers are window dressing. Solar panels at home are quite useful, especially for topping off batteries for local driving.

 

but pre & post PV daylight beyond 6 hours still works. Our AC rated - 8 kW system is back feeding our home by 8:30 am for example. Power back to the grid - helping to keep it stable. That's the point of PV & battery backup. NOT to offset each kW at each minute only to damn the use because it doesn't keep producing at night or only peaks during mid day. To make that a narrative is a red herring. Speaking of which - doing a Eor on Tesla - does nothing to help justify Toyota's cars/electrics.
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My contribution to this sub-discussion was to mention that a range extender might weigh less than the additional batteries only used on a long trip, and that the fuel for a range extender can be renewable. That is probably what brought up charge stations(discussion what not tesla centric, superchargers used as example) using PV to renewably fuel cars.

My main point is that BEVs are a good solution, but they can't be the only solution. There are use cases in which they won't work, and some of the population will resist the required change.

With talk of a hydrogen fueled Prius being available, I don't see a BEV option happening with the next Prius. Battery packaging on the next Prime should get better. It has to get better.

 

Just as "gas" stations bury their tanks under ground because of the area above ground would essentially make the whole site impractical, so could the battery packs be under ground, but in used shipping containers so it was a simple plug and play approach to battery servicing when required or additional capacity was added.
I see this as a great end of use market for EV battery packs, recondition them and use them for renewable energy storage.
As far as the solar required, the recharging bay isn't the only roof area at any site, so combining the available roof area allows for a lot more solar area. A lot of "gas" station over this area of the world are already covering their roof area with solar, so are the shopping centres, and the workshops and .... anywhere they can put up a solar array really, because there was some financial incentive to do it and sell the power back to the grid, but now there is a lot more incentive in storing it and reselling it when the market demand is higher now that the electrical energy market has become a lot more of an open market place. There is no reason why these places wouldn't sell their stored power to a local recharging station if the price was right, the only additional costs then is the grid connection charges that they have to pay anyway .....

Maybe the whole market system over there is different, but I can't see it surviving unless it learns to adapt very quickly ... the future is already here, just ignoring it won't make it go away and you can't price it out of the competition like in the old days, they could even build container battery packs to recharge station packs and simply move them around with electric trucks in the local community, no reliance of a pipeline, rail fuel cartage or the trucks actually having the fuel to make the deliveries ..... these are all problem the system has now ... it will only get worse.

T1 Terry

 

Just as a bit of a foot note to this idea Scope of Application-Home page｜Thunder Sky Winston Battery- products, scope of application, then scroll down the photo of the truck portable power station .... now think about the possibilities of changing that concept to shipping containers and delivery trucks that simply link onto the trailer to move it from where ever is doing the solar to storage onto who ever has purchased the container full of renewable energy to download into their storage batteries .... just like the "gas station" but now a recharging station .....

T1 Terry

 

I recall one of the companies working on flow batteries assembling them in shipping containers.

An issue with burying the batteries could be cooling. Not a major issue, but one that will add the construction and operation costs.

Hauling batteries around has the same issue as trucking hydrogen. The lower energy density means less energy per load, adding more shipping costs to the final cost at the energy dispenser per unit. Just build the transmission cables. If that isn't practical, the energy needs to be converted to a form better suited for shipping. Groups working to make hydrogen viable are looking into converting hydrogen into ammonia or methanol, because those are far easier, and cheaper, to ship. Japan will be getting hydrogen from the Middle East in the form of ammonia.

 

Certainly another fuel option, making ammonia using hydrogen and nitrogen is certainly another method for moving hydrogen over longer distances, and might even become a range extender fuel carried in tanks and feeding a fuel cell to supply the drive electrical energy as well as recharging the on board battery. This might become a reality if synthetic fuels prove too expensive for use with an ICE motor or a turbine ... noise pollution might even come into play, who knows what craziness the future holds.

Short distance transportation, like within a 50km radius, container batteries might be a viable way to move energy from renewable energy sources that don't have grid connection because the multi nationals think this is a way to squeeze them out ..... it was just a solution to a problem that could be thrown up as a road block.
The fossil fuel people will not continue to sell at a loss to control the market for too long, the profit margins are already getting squeezed. They will look for a way to gain control that won't cost them or bit into their profits if they can find one .... Renewable energy only cost for infrastructure and maintenance, the actual generation is free, so the price war is tipped in their favour.

T1 Terry

 

If you're going to recondition lithium batteries after their 1,000 cycles, it's probably better to put them back into a car.

Solar recharging stations don't have to be portable, and one presumes that if you used one off-grid, it will go through 1,000 charge-discharge cycles rather more quickly than some urban commuter's BEV.

I'm thinking for this application a grid tied system would be better.

Eventually we will figure out an economical and perhaps even a more ecological way to deal with batteries in BEVs/

 

Another issue that came to mind, one probably more important, is flood and moisture control.

 

Watched the entire video for the first time. He must be a Prius hater who emphasizes more on looks and performance than pure efficiency and reliability. And, in the year 2021 who really considers a regular hybrid car as an "electrified" car? For me, the regular hybrid Pirus has fallen from favorite purely because of economical reasons. When I can get Prius Prime $6K less than the MSRP of the base Gen4, who would buy it?

 

The Prius Prime is saving Prius sales in the US.
For those looking for hybrid without a plug, there is simply more choices, even among Toyotas, that are in the same efficiency range as a Prius, or require less compromise from the replacement car.