Motor Trend: Okay, so Volt is not an EV. It's a Hybrid. But we think it's a superior hybrid to HSD.

Re: Motor Trend: Okay, so Volt is not an EV. It's a Hybrid. But we think it's a superior hybrid to H

Yes, please. I have only read about Toyota not receiving any financial assistance from the Japanese government for the project G21.

To answer your question, it is not only the sales volume. You have to take the amount of incentives, gas price, starting price, etc.. everything. The sale numbers are disappointing with the extremely favorable conditions put in place.

I wouldn't pull the plug on the Volt. I think it is still too early. We'll need to see how the Gen2 does.

 

Re: Motor Trend: Okay, so Volt is not an EV. It's a Hybrid. But we think it's a superior hybrid to H

Do you count guaranteed loans or purchases as financial assistance? I think some of this sort of thing comes down to semantics.

 

Re: Motor Trend: Okay, so Volt is not an EV. It's a Hybrid. But we think it's a superior hybrid to H

This much is true, Toyota did not get money for G21. Development of its motors, electronics, and batteries were subsidized by a different program for EVs. Once the prius was manufactured, the manufacturing was subsidized. Once it was sold, MITI helped with R&D for the GenII.

Here is a summary.
Government policy & the development of hybrid and electric vehicles in Japan « Think Carbon

All Japanese companies got the same support, but Toyota had the vision to do it right. Toyota also participated along with all the american car companies in an older american HTV program, that built a plug in hybrid in 1982. Some of the lessons of that program look like they made it into the G21 thinking.

That older program gave american companies the edge on lead acid batteries for HV and EV cars. MITI continued its support of BPEV and Panasonic and Sanyo got a big lead in Nimh. Meanwhile the american program excluded batteries from pngv. This resulted in the ability of gm to kill ovotics battery, and american batteries falling greatly behind. The current US programs are trying to learn the lessons of this by supporting Li battery technology and pushing plug ins with subsidies.

Well if congress had written the checks to gm and nissan so that it was more like the MITI program for prius and insight would that make you happier New technology is expensive as it was at the introduction of the prius. The volt may be sucessful in the second generation like the prius, or may be a market failure like the insight. We should take the right lessons from past programs, and try to incubate these technologies instead of writing constantly disparaging accounts. The prius phv, ford energi's etc are all being incubated so that eventually we hope to get a plug in winner.

well at least we can agree to that.

 

Re: Motor Trend: Okay, so Volt is not an EV. It's a Hybrid. But we think it's a superior hybrid to H

For cars smaller than a full size, it likely started for liability reasons. A bench seat is cheaper to install than two seperate rear seats. It's also a little more practical for when stuffing things into the back. Since people were stuffing three people into that bench seat, despite there not being a seatbelt for the middle person, and in cars which obviously not meant for it (I once sat in the middle rear seat of a '78 Camero), the car companies simply started putting a middle seatbelt in before they got sued. If intended to seat a fifth person from the beginning, 4+1 would have been more honest nomecalture for some cars.