Three Plug-Ins: The Cost to Drive - cars.com

You are confusing reliability with capacity. All batteries lose capacity in the cold, and the cars have additional draws of current in their heaters. These are drawbacks of EVs and PHEVs. The phv prius was reported to only have a 6 mile range in the cold. Nimh also suffers lower capacity in the cold. ICEs are also less efficient in cold weather. Both the Leaf's and Volt's battery packs appear reliable but we will not really know for a decade.

When a faq says something is designed for ..., but has a problem with reliability, it means the product is not living up to the design. As I said, I fully expect the prius phv battery to be reliable when it ships. I also expect it to be different than the batteries in the test fleet. I put this out their in response to a post saying the prius batteries were more reliable. If you have evidence that toyota will be releasing the same battery packs when the prius phv ships that will be news to me.

 

That's really bad. Using my Leaf numbers for this month I get 13.4 kwh or $1.47.

 

It's likely you didn't drive like they did, you would have likely gotten better numbers in all three cars.

 

Probably also to do with heater usage ....

With that kind of driving they would have only got some 50 mile range.

 

are you saying that compared to your numbers (averaged out to a 47.1 mile span) you burn up 13.4 kwh and it cost you 1.47 in electricity? can you get a volt to not turn on it's gas engine while trying to travel 47.1 miles? it seems as if the engine wasn't on very long.

all this does is offer a range guide. if you travel less mileage, you save, if you're over 50 miles from work (that number will go down with time) you don't save... in the end.. you still save.. because it's better than what a lot of people currently drive.. it might be cleaner too....

for someone in my scenario where family is hundreds to thousands of miles away, the prius wins... yet so do a few other cars (some are not hybrids). my g/f's mini will get 38 to 42mpgs... if i read previous ratings correnctly, the volt is at 36mpg (or so) long distance. her mini would spank that volt on long distance... fuel usage and time... (it would be a fun race to see).

 

I'm talking about my Nissan Leaf - it is also in my Sig

 

You are confusing reliability with durability. Volt battery is unreliable under cold temp. Gas engine is used to warm it up. Half the range loss the compared to optimal condition is not reliable.

NiMH does suffer in cold but no where near half.

 

So is the Prius PHEV is by your words 'unreliable' too. You can't compare the WORST of the Volt winter ranges and ignore the worst of the Prius PHEV ranges. We have 6 miles worst and many under 10.

All three of the plug ins do bad in the winter.

Prius plug-in stutters in bitter cold - Video - Technology

 

He wasn't clear if the 6 miles range ended when the gas engine kicked at 50 mph (instead of 60 mpg). Battery can continue to discharge with the gas engine blended. He needs to look at EV/HV ratio at the end of the trip. He did not even mentioned it was fully charged to begin with.

Preconditioning cabin temp using the plug power returned more than 12 miles range from the prototype model according to the controlled test. One issue our moderator Rick found during he had Prius PHV was the charging did not automatically resume after the preconditioning. I bet CNN tester was not aware of it and therefore partially charged.

We have yet to find out the final production model enhancements.

 

This makes it difficult to compare the PHV Prius to EVs and pure EV mode plug-in hybrids. How do you count the distances of blended operation during EV mode? Shouldn't they be subtracted from the EV range for comparison? Not doing so is the flip side of ignoring electric when calculating gasoline used.

Why bring this up when everyone is using lithium for plug-ins?

 

You appear really confused here. The volt does not have trouble driving in electric mode and is reliable. Your half range loss from cold in the volt is ignoring just about everything. The reported range drops from 35epa to 25 in cold. I was using reliability in the toyota uses it. The phv prius is the only plug in that has been reported to lose half its range, and I believe this may be fixed before it ships.

Nimh chemistries are much worse in cold than Lithium chemistries. At 10 degrees most lose half or more of their capacity. This is one of the reasons lithium is superior in electric cars. The prius batteries warm with the cabin by the engine to get in operating range in the hybrid. Toyota knows not to use nimh in a ev or phev.

+1

exactly.
bottom line, I expect the prius phv to have an improved battery when it actually ships. All plug ins have reduced electric range in the cold having to do with both heating and battery dynamics. This should be taken into account when purchasing one.

 

You can, but you need to take your driving conditions into account. evnow was talking about his leaf on his routes. He might have gotten 40 miles ev range out of the volt and driven 7 on premium gas.

If you are over 50 miles from work you don't want a leaf. The economics of the volt are iffy, but you will do better than most cars. A standard prius may be the way to go

The volt gets epa 35 city, 40 highway. Depending on driving conditions it should do better than a mini unless you are going very fast. But you may like the mini more. Some cars do much better than their epa and others do worse. YMMV

 

It does not have to fail to be unreliable. Volt's 25-50 miles EV range shows the wide swing for an EV application. The fact that gas engine assists to warm it up hightlights it's shortcoming. There is nothing wrong with operating like a hybrid - just call it properly. NiMH is reliable for hybrid application but probably not for EV.

 

All I have on that is that Nissan "expects" their battery to have 80% capacity after five years. They also recommend 80% charge for best longevity. Thus, the 100 mile estimate is after five years more like 64 miles. And the 100 mile is optimistic based on what I've seen anyway. if you're doing 80% recharge on your battery it seems like you could have a safe distance of only 50 miles or so after five years.

 

i wanna see battery replacement cost in there to
if it wil last the life of the car then i wanna know what "the life"is expected?
because i see 10 or 20 years not a life of the car more like 30 years for sure with the cars of today
and i think thats not going to happen what wil bring the 2e hand price for these things older then 10 years way dont to nothing.

i still want one but battery price cost is going to need to get way down from where it is today

 

People freaked about Prius batteries as first but the cars use them differently. A moderate reduction in true capacity of a Prius battery doesn't really matter for most driving. A capacity reduction in an EV battery will have an immediate and highly verifiable effect on range.

If Nissan is saying 80% capacity after 5 years and let's just say it's 80% again five years after that (I suspect capacity reduction may in fact accelerate but I am not sure--it certainly seems to for laptop batteries, though) you're at 64% capacity after 10 years. If you're still charging at 80% regularly as they prefer you to do the 100 mile range from day one (which is optimistic) is now 51 miles (100*.8*.8 for capacity *.8 again for charge level). Basically the car is unusable at that point with a real range much lower than 51 miles. Now that's range anxiety. The battery costs, I just found, $9k. Which isn't that bad, really, and it will drop, but even if it drops to $3k you're looking at a big cost (similar in scope to replacing a transmission I guess).

 

Cold is bad for all vehicle efficiencies. The Leaf has a 47 to 138 mile range swing. Nissan pegs Leaf range between 47 and 138 miles, individual results may vary — Autoblog Green Why the hate on the Volt? At least when it's SOC meter miscalculates, you aren't limping along at 15mph or stranded.

The past winter was brutal and my mpgs dropped into the 27's. But it was still reliable. Started up and got me where I wanted to go. Most of the time. The battery needed a jump twice. Guess it's unreliable. 5 years old with 2.5 years of EOC/FASing. What a mis-engineered component.

If the Prius PHV came out first and did this, you'd be exalting Toyota's wisdom of using a more efficient heating source, when necessary than drawing on the battery.
Have the exact conditions under which the Volt uses the ICE for heat ever come out?

 

No one knows what the replacement cost will really be when these 8 year warranties run out. When Ford said the life of their BEV transit connect they clarified that is around 10 years for 80% power.
For Nissan, their goal has been to get the cost to $9000/pack once the tennessee plant is running at full production. No one really knows what these things will cost the customer. Toyota is selling the replacement prius pack for much more than their cost. For this reason a lease is probably the best strategy for early adopters. As good as these cars are, those buying them will likely have something better to trade up to soon.

 

AFAIK official word has come down. Users have found that if the cabin heat is on and the teperature in the car is under 26 degrees F it will come on for 3 minutes. If the car is garaged it is likely to be warmer than this. The engine will cycle on and off as needed. 5 miles of emergency electric range is kept in the batteries when the switch to engine occurs for low pack state of charge. This range is only accessible when the car runs out of gas.