Featured Toyota Reveals EV Prototypes Ahead of 2020 Launch

Likewise, I find cell phones quite useful, even though they don’t work in all places

 

That's because they're a 99% solution, rather than a 5% solution. If it worked in 5% of the locations you went, or even 50%, would that be acceptable?

 

No, I wouldn’t. Of course, EVs work for me 100% of the time. Which is why I use them.

EVs work for enough people such that they have about a 3% market share. That percentage will grow as more people discover them as well as their capabilities.

 

There's no guarantee of that. Look at 2007, and make the same prediction.

 

The first cars weren't affordable either, nor TV's, computers, phones, etc. Some things just take time.

For many, and by many I mean thousands in the US, a BEV is 99% solution, and their costs and capabilities are improving.
It isn't for others, so good thing jack booted thugs aren't coming to replace their Primes with Leafs.

The peaks of hybrid market share correspond with high fuel prices. Which is a well known phenomenon; the public only embraces hybrids when they can see a short pay back period for the extra cost.

Plug in market growth has been mostly happening during periods of low fuel prices, because they offer more than just saving gas.
Incentives play a part, but they also played a part during the hybrids' climb in sales.

 

Everybody knows Tesla didn’t settle on those cells because they were liquid cooled, but because they are a standard size that can be acquired at commodity prices. Elon has tweeted about this ad infinitum. Toyota uses pouch cells which are bigger than the cylindrical 18650 or 2170 cells, so of course the pouch (or prism depending on who you ask) cells have a flat surface area suitable for air cooling. Ok not perfect, but the smaller cylindrical cells almost beg for liquid cooling.

@GasperG is correct, you can’t really compare an 8.8 kWh battery pack with one that is 85 kWh. I’m assuming you mean by long range pack you mean the 85kWh (or the 100kWh?). Since the Prime’s battery pack increased by 100 lbs over the PiP, simple extrapolation from the PiP battery pack to the Prime battery pack, you would get 6.9 kg/kWh at 70.4 kWh with no additional engineering and/or improvements. Not a big difference since there would be no additional radiator, external cooling pipes or coolant.

I would be the last person to argue air cooling is better than liquid cooling. That would be foolish.

What Toyota is looking for is completely air cooled power electronics as well as the battery pack. Thus their interest in SiC. However, this has been somewhat thwarted by a constrained supply of large defect free SiC wafers, which have been reserved (maybe) for Lexus vehicles (Toyota Changes Its Power Semiconductor Strategy (1) | NIKKEI XTECH). They are switching to RC-IGBT. An interesting development as it is not known if they can take the 200C temps SiC are noted for. Maybe they can still get to an air cooled inverter and dc/dc converter. Simplicity is their goal.


Unsupervised!

 

I am quite sure I never said anything differently about tesla. They chose the cells for the model S because they were least expensive and had high availability around 2010 when they made the decission. They of course needed a better bms and liquid cooling for the cells really developed for laptops that didn't have auto requirements. Everyone else in the industry was sure smaller numbers of larger cells develped specifically for automotive would be better. Nissan chose a large air cooled pack, Toyota at the time chose a very small pack (4.4 kwh) and thus also chose air cooling to cut costs. Chevy, Hyundai, and BMW chose large format liquid cooled packs. BMW choosing prisimatic cells the rest pouch. The liquid cooled less expensive chemistries have performed better.

Its 2019, tesla/panasonic have made improvements in the cells mainly to lower cost and make them more auto specific. Tesla has automated manufacturing of the battery packs further lowering costs. There is not a air cooled cell that when put in a pack has the energy density of the tesla packs. A changed technology cool happen, but we haven't seen it.

Exactly

The tesla model 3 already uses a large volume of SiC mosfets, 24 in each car's inverter. I am not convinced at all toyota is going for simplicity or will have an air cooled pack in a volume bev. They have manufacturing capability for air cooled packs for the prime, and its not selling as well this year as last. I'm guessing they prototype on that. Nissan sold their air cooled battery business. Its probably not a strategic technology until solid state. Sure it makes sense in a smaller hybrid pack, but systems costs look higher once energy goes up.

The toyota dynamic force engine is not as simple as the engine in an air cooled 70s era vw bug. Its got 2 kinds of fuel injection (direct and port) and a wide range of variable valve timing on its 2 intake valves and has 2 exhaust valves and even a liquid cooled egr and liquid cooling for the engine. It is much harder for people to work on themselves than that old bug engine. But its much more powerful, efficient and reliable. All this with much lower pollution before pollution control. Is the compexity a bad thing? I find the tesla model 3 quite simple compared to a prius ;-) even with all those battery cells.

 

Out of curiosity, does anyone know the $ end of a battery coolant leak, whether collision or corrosion/age-caused? Can the car detect an internal leak which allows coolant into battery space?

 

I notice that this conversation is about USA. That's 6-7% of the worldwide market. Yes, there are some countries in EU (+ UK - not sure if they're part of EU still?) which this would also be relevant.

But much of the rest of the world - is a totally different situation.

Some villages have power for a short period in the day - how are they going to charge an EV. Some countries, the average car still in use was built in the '50s - are they ready for EVs?

No and no. Hybrids would be a great place to start for those places.

And Australia is included, as we only have one EV available for less than about $120/130,000 - the IONIQ (there is the Zoe, but I don't think that counts as it's only available to restricted customers). There is only a small percentage of Aussies who can or would spend that sort of money on a car.

But - there are quite a few Hybrids, and with RAV4 and reportedly Highlander (called Klugger) Hybrids coming this year, there will be something for every sector apart from trucks. I read that Camry Hybrid is on a waiting list from Japan - they'd sell more than the 48% Hybrid/52% ICE ratio if they were available.

 

What sort of car? Not a PRIUS, I presume?

 

Hybrids can also offer more than just saving gas, Toyota blew it on the marketing and product. They should introduce a true hybrid hot hach, even if just for marketing purpose. They are getting there with the latest generation and racing at LeMans, but the damage from the past has been done.

No matter what Toyota produces some people will still se negatives: "CVT gearbox, "self charging" hybrid nonsense, not fun to drive." There is a reason other manufacturers don't dare to market their hybrid cars as hybrids (Kia Niro), because a hybrid is generally known as a slow, not fun to drive, ugly, gas saving people carrier. That is not a desirable product, Toyota should allocate all the resources to change that otherwise they will stagnate in the markets with cheap gas and without eco initiatives.

 

.... thankyou captain obvious .... & you forgot to mention the lack of charging at the North Pole & the Antarctic & the middle of the Sahara and the Amazon rainforest - what's left of it. Those too, places we need to wring our hands over ..... not the millions & millions for which a plug-in will work.

A fun fact to consider (from ½ decade ago) while worrying about everyone else in the world; There are roughly as many licensed drivers in China as there are people - in all of the USA .... about ⅓ billion .... as well as ¼ billion cars. If plugins increase there, to just 2%, that would represent ~2½ milion smog reducing/fossil fuel burning rides. Is that a perfect solution? Of course not. Like Bob says, perfect is the enemy of good enough. Someone throws you a life preserver, & you want to wait for a cruise ship instead?
.

 

I think you got it the wrong way around. We have ready demand for life preservers, but the industry is only offering cruise ship tour packages.

 

With the Corolla and RAV4 hybrids so non-Prius like, who would that be?

 

First of all, I refer to the USA’s car market because I am in the USA market, experience it and its marketing first hand. Because of this, my knowledge of the auto market in the USA is vastly more than my knowledge of other auto markets.
I welcome insight into other markets.

Second, the USA car market is about 18% of the world market, not 6-7%. Focus2move| World car market. Top 100 Countries Ranking in 2017

 

The interesting thing is, anyone who has been in my car as a passenger ended up saying - wow, I never knew it was such a great car. And I leave this screen on - and they always comment about it looking verrrrry envious (as long as I hadn't done some drag racing the last couple of days and got bad figures).

 

I was always under the impression that PRIUSCHAT was a worldwide forum.

Interesting - I just GOOGLED - and found this as the first hit:


Maybe it's fake news.

 

These are two different things. Prism cells have a hard shell like cylinderical ones. Pouch cells are literally contained in a plastic bag.

There is going to be a big difference in energy density per volume. Air cooled packs need more space for air flow around and through the pack. Increase the pack size without increasing that space, the battery retains more heat as the volume to surface area ratio goes up. Otherwise the larger air cooled pack has a shorter life, as was seen in the Leaf when Nissan started offering the larger pack size.

I thought their interest in SiC was that allowed inverter cooling on the same loop as the engine, as oppose to needing two separate ones as their hybrids now use.

Unrelated, the new Escape and Explorer hybrids without plugs are using liquid cooling for the battery. At least that is being reported.

The Volt had such installed after the NHSTA crash testing fire, though that may have been just a coolant level sensor. As long as the system can detect battery shorts, and I think most can, detecting actual fluid in the pack isn't a need.

How much of the market do such places make up? These places also tend to be the last to get the latest in ICE technology. Plus, they likely don't have the per capita GHG emissions that the first world does.

Aren't Australia's car prices just high in general?

IIRC, the Camry became hybrid only in Japan with the last generation, but they could easily have two "Camry" models there with one being ICE and the other hybrid, using two different names. I have read that over 90% of Camries sold in India are hybrid.

Power hybrids haven't done well in general. The public couldn't move past their first impression of hybrids. Toyota could try to change that with marketing, but they are going the other way with the next Highlander hybrid, their first power hybrid; the V6 is becoming a 4 cylinder. Then those companies pushing performance hybrids are adding a plug and bigger battery for bigger improvements.

The internet is worlwide; it's right in the www.
Priuschat ownership and most of its members are located in the US. As with any site, conversations tend to assume local bias.

 

or .... maybe Google considers production of cars & trucks, to include the junk like this - where the entire passenger compartment disappears at a relatively low speed;

Whereas REAL cars & trucks are a different/larger percentage

.

 

Hilarious fake. That's a Volkswagen T3, circa 1984, and the crash test in question was to find out what would happen in a frontal crash with an overweight payload in the bed.

The raw video is well known to VW Transporter enthusiasts, though I had not seen this version with the graphics claiming it was a Chinese truck. Funny stuff!

Photo examples of the T3 DoKa