Featured Tesla exec tells it like it is

I think the given was that Toyota began pushing a hybrid project forward (Prius) to counter anything that GM might put out in the way of a hybrid. At one time GM had shown evidence of a significant lead, which fizzled shortly afterwards - pushing instead more of the sameol' cars w/ different trim philosophy.
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I don't think it was you, but someone brought up toyota doing more than tesla. That is when I brought up the fleet average, which although much better than 1980, is not the best, or even striving to be.

Clearly if you only talk about up to now, and make it only the prius versus model S, the prius has reduced more oil and ghg, its the sales volume. Even if you only credit the prius compared to the new corola/honda fit (36 mpg in best trim) versus 50 mpg and a model S compares to a 23 mpg sports sedan, it only takes 5.6 prii for each model S or X. Prius does this.

THe question is does the math change when the model 3, bolt, gen III leaf comes out.

With GM and Nissan like toyota CAFE likely will use these cars to sell other less efficient cars. In fact the prius and similar cars are figured to give Toyota $2.5B worth of credits to use on tundras, and venzas, and land rovers. Toyota was number one winner in terms of value of the cafe credit scheme, honda was number 2, just in case you thought the congress favored american companies. Pacs of foreign corporations can buy congress just like big oil.

GM is the worst on the big vehicles. I'm guesing they are hoping that volt and bolt sell well enough so they can continue to sell the guzzlers. Toyota has the prius to offset their guzzlers. Ford went aluminum body on steel frame and turbo charged downsized engine on the F-series, in a bid to actually improve the fuel economy of their best selling thirsty vehicle. They don't need to sell as many plug-ins and hybrids.

Tesla is different. even though it will only produce about 5% of the vehicles a toyota or vw does this year, every one of them is efficient. It does earn some money from selling credits but they may be gone before its big.

 

I have heard a lot of revisionist history, but don't remember gm having a hybrid advantage.

They were part of pngv, which was a bomb of a bad program that built a hyper expensive diesel hybrid prototype that couldn't pass epa emissions. There was hybrid tech there, that IIRC became two-mode, but two-mode with partners mercedes and bmw was too expensive to sell well even if it had been marketed well. There was nothing wrong with the tech other than the price. I remember hearing that toyota wanted gm to partner in building a version of the prius at NUMMI, but gm in its shortsitedness, rejected the toyota offer. I'm not sure what the details would have been.
Toyota Said to Consider Offering Prius Hybrid to GM (Update2) - Bloomberg

 

This was gm's hybrid i was thinking about -
Building The Precept : EVWORLD.COM

It worked - but went nowhere what with cheep gas like we again temporarily have right now.
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Yep that is the pngv concept fail that had no chance of sucess.

The Green Brigade - Car Comparison - Feature Article - Page 4

Lets describe some more. Remember that diesel couldn't meet epa emissions back then, maybe today you could add a scr/urea/particulate filter.

How much would you pay

The thing was an abomination that needed to be killed. This thing would have cost as much as a bmw i8, but not been good looking (IMHO) or fun. In no way did this thing work right for a technological demonstraion, unless it was to tell you that diesel hybrids are too expensive.

Compared to the precept the volt is inesxpensive and sporty ;-) This was in no way ahead of the prius.

 

Agreed - but it was the notion that if the US is building it (albeit a disaster) - my understanding was that U.S. attempts were a catalyst for Toyota working hard on a hybrid as well.
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There is a lot of misinformation and revisionist history. We do have some facts, and some books.

TRW in the 70s created the concept, although there were others. The batteries and electronics were not good enough in the 1970s. In 1989 electrode technology improved and good enough nimh battery technology was available. The breakthrough came at Phillips lab in Holland. Electronics were probably available earlier, but by the early 90s the cost of electronics was ready.

8 years after the supporting tech was good enough there was the prius. Toyota was the first to put everything together in a desirable car the 1998 prius. The Japanese government was supporting electronics and battery research in the 1990s, and honda and toyota used those advances to create the prius and the insight. Technically the insight was more efficient, but the market greatly favored the prius. The 2000 insight was introduced about 2 years after the prius, but the market was fluid back then. Insight was less conventional and only sat 2, and had added cost of aluminum.

Here is the history many people look at
History of Hybrid Vehicles

Indeed Toyota did create a program in reaction to being excluded from the PNGV. When wada asked engineers what to build though they all picked gasoline hybrid, something that toyota had been toying with. The goals of the toyota program were the goals that ford had wanted, but PNGV rejected ford's reasonable goals for moon shot, and demanded expensive and exotic 80 mpg (old epa) cars. That meant that the atkinson approach that toyota used in the prius was not good enough, diesel was needed as were lightweight materials.

Would there be hybrids without the US push? Of course, as we can see ford, gm, toyota, honda, audi were all working on them without the program. Toyota didn't pick its tech until 1995, using mainly non-Japanese tech. We don't know if toyota would have been the first successful hybrid without pngv, but they were coming with or without the program. The reason toyota was rejected was this was supposed to help american companies be more competitive in terms of fuel economy with Japanese car makers, a goal that was an absolute fail. The battery consortium was excluded from PNGV. By 2005, Japan had a monopoly in nimh auto batteries, partially because of the program. Worse yet, the program morphed into freedom car, further hurting US competitiveness. While these two programs through democratic then rupublican administrations (bipartisan idocracy) cafe standards were not raised, and the vehicle fleet in the US did not improve in fuel economy. Finally in 2007 a better program was adopted, and plug-in plus higher cafe, lasted into this administration. fleets are finally improving in terms of fuel efficiency. Plug-in program embraced all manufacturers as it was about changing the fleet, not trying to help competitiveness of the big 3. While the majority of hybrids are built outside of the US, the majority of plug-ins, and plug-in batteries are domestic. People that hate this program, probably don't realize how bad pngv was.

PNGV just was government at its most incompetent.

 

sorry, not my intention. but i do believe that toyota made the most concerted effort, (of all the companies at the time) to make a paradigm shift in mpg/emissions. successfully i might add. that's why i said toyota led, and everyone else followed. you can conjure up whatever reasons you want as to why they did it, i'm just happy that they did it.

 

Your point here is well stated. Having 20 choices of pickup trucks and 1 choice of ultra high mpg car can only make one happy Toyota did great with the 1 high mpg car...which was the situation in 2001.

Reading the history of the Prius, I was struck by one aspect that was an extremely high priority in the initial design but not known to most Prius non-owners. The original Prius design was intense about making the outer body small and the inner room large. This meant compacting the engine, transaxle, battery, and gas tank into a vastly more confined space than what any previous auto maker would even consider. My 2001 had about the exact same interior room as our 1999 Camry but was about the same size as an Echo (and made better looking by adding a spoiler on the trunk). The room inside the Prius is amazing for the size of the car.

PS. The spoiler comment is humor, even though Toyota had to do something to make it look less Echo-like.

 

camry must have gotten a lot bigger since then.

 

Government incentives for electric vehicles in Japan go back to 1978, with a lease program for businesses and municipals. In 1996 the purchase incentive for electrics, hybrids, and other alternate fuels started.
http://www.evaap.org/pdf/incentive.pdf

I do not intend to down play the effort the Prius took for Toyota. I just think led is too strong of a word for what did, in light of the fact that the Japanese government wanted low emission and fuel efficient cars, and it used carrots(incentives and R&D programs) and sticks(increasing fuel efficiency standards) to get the their auto companies to come along.

Then other companies were also working on hybrids and BEVs during the time Toyota worked on the Prius. I don't think they put in less of an effort than Toyota did.

 

To be honest, I actually think Toyota undertook a much bigger effort. I base this on the book, "The Prius that Shook the World". What really got my attention was how the manufacturing infrastructure was being developed in parallel with the Prius engineering. The transistor factory Toyota designed, the motor winding machines, the high volume battery arrangements are not something done by the other automakers "working" on hybrids and BEVs. What they do is all the engineering and then figure out the reasons not to commit to manufacturing or how to splice in a low volume, lukewarm Hybrid into an existing manufacturing line. Only Tesla has shown the same commitment to EVs (with Nissan a close second probably reacting to Toyota's vast success and lead in the high mpg market).

 

They don't pass out the checks and medals for effort.

Toyota just seemed to do a better job on the prius.
Insight didn't properely identify a market, and ev-1's batteries were just too expensive.

Bigger effort, gm put out a huge effort. 32 microprocessors in the precept. They controled the best battery technology. They spent $2.5B of their own money on fool cells.

Of course they used a lot of it for evil. Remember this?

Texaco Press Release - Texaco to Acquire General Motors' Share of GM Ovonic Battery Joint Venture


I'm sure engineers at gm worked as hard if not harder on the ev-1, precept, two-mode escalade, fuel cell van. The management decided to make bad decissions and bury things. Lots of evidence of effort to design great systems. They just were all a little or a lot off, with strong management decissions to do the wrong things.

 

Yes, there are way two many companies running the show like the board members in charge of (as well as the captain of) the Titanic, even to this day.
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agreed, they were just all losers. and here we are 20 years later. if it were honda or nissan that were successful, this website would have been named after them.

edit: i actually can't agree that they all tried as hard as toyota, we don't really know, and it is difficult to quantify. honda could have done more imo, (they had the technology) but they chose not to for some reason.

 

Many different ways to tout manufacturers "green" credentials and some compelling arguments on different sides of the fence.

Toyota has the most gasoline efficient - Prius - but doesn't have the cleanest fleet. Tesla has a very clean fleet, but still affordably available to far fewer. Yes, the Model X will be here at some point, and perhaps even something more affordable, so these stories are still being written.

Manufacturers will have the opportunity to show if they have stepped up their "green" worth in the next few years.

 

tesla reminds me of the jet blue story. they cherry picked all the profitable routes, while the old timers were stuck with the non profitable ones as well. nothing wrong with that, as long as you understand the dynamics.

 

Bisco, mind your manners! How dare you suggest Saint Musk could possibly have any motive other than green (not $$$ green) benevolence.

 

sorry!

 

Yep, I remember. I certain have my tales of working like a dog for months only to have senior management change directions after spending the entire R&D budget. (Sometimes I think it is a qualification requirement for CEOs to misspend badly.)