Featured California slashing ZEV incentives. New limits introduced on range and purchase price.

Come again?
Why would charging at work, make a small battery more efficient then if you charged at home. For that matter, if your drive to work is, say - 50 miles - but your electric range is only 25 miles then you're burning gas for ½ of the drive each way. How is that more efficient.

Cali CARB meetings have suggested over the years that a 35 mile minimum range should apply to HOV stickers - because many manufacturers put puny batteries in their phev just to get into the carpool lane which makes their guzzlers more appealing. Tbe BMW x5 comes to mind .... ~10mi EV range ..... but seeing the writing on the wall - they recently increased their traction pack size by 300%.
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cali probably wants to see continuous improvement. manufacturers have to be forced, kicking and screaming all the way.

 

I’m curious about how they came up with both the 20-mile and the new 35-mile minimums. I’d like to think that it’s primarily keyed to some average of actual miles driven by Californians, but who knows?

I am happy to see that they recognize the demand for the HOV stickers. From my own observation that’s the driving force behind HV & EV adoption in California. It’s the biggest leverage the board has in terms of steering the market; I’m encouraged to see what looks like good stewardship of that resource.

I think that’s a perfectly reasonable assumption.

 

iirc, when we were all buying pips, californians who had nowhere to charge were buying them for the hov
and when they were selling them, potential buyers would come here and ask if it was okay that the battery had never been charged

 

I lived in Los Angeles when the Prius launched. I knew a few people who bought in early on. Almost every one of them traded an Infiniti/BMW/Jaguar sort of imported luxury car to get it because they were all long-hauling up from Orange County and the HOV lanes were like a drug to them.

I hope they eventually restrict that HOV privilege through a few more steps to stimulate demand for some cars that don’t exist today.

 

constant improvement. hmm... where have i heard that before?

 

I think the problem is the incentive is too high compared to cost for these small batteries. Its not going to hurt the prime or rav4 phev, as the federal incentives likely more than compensate for toyota's costs. $1000 california rebate plus $4500 federal is kind of crazy high for a 8.8 kwh battery that likely costs toyota less than $2700, $4500 is enough. Toyota could probably make the prime more profitably than the prius without a plug given just the federal incentives (although those will also end). On the other hand the tesla model 3 long range will get $2000 california and $0 federal tax credit next year for a 75kwh+, and a model S or X get nothing. The mirai gets $4500 california. Toyota is doing very well under california and federal rules.

 

ma went to bev only for state rebate

 

Just in case anyone else is totally in-the-dark regarding "ZEV":

Zero Emissions Vehicle

Also known as: electric car.

 

Some Prime and Volt buyers also only bought for the HOV stickers without intending to charge.

The average distance is around 40 miles, which is why GM targeted that for the Volt. That's an average though. Commutes tend to be longer in California, and it is a region with more super commutes; those over a 100 miles or take over an hour. A thread about putting a larger battery into the Prime was started by something that drove a hundred miles a day for their commute. Then for many, work place charging isn't available.

Besides, these various incentives worked better than expected in improving battery performance and cost. Raising the bar to qualify only hurts the manufacturers doing the minimum to qualify.

That said, yes, a battery sized to just meet your daily needs is less polluting. California having a longer EV range to qualify isn't going to kill off shorter EV range PHEVs, as the larger battery for longer range costs more and takes up more space, and some states don't have additional incentives, some of which are CARB states.

 

I still feel like the idea of range extender batteries is fertile ground for development.

Buy the car with a 25kW battery and loads of trunk space… or with less trunk space and a second 25kW pack etc.

 

Nice strawman.

My math says at least 80% of these workers are covered by the Prime's range if they can charge at work as well as home.

 

Interesting but I agree with @Leadfoot J. McCoalroller that the "big deal" in Cali is the free HOV.
So I do not see a big loss for Toyota Prime sales yet. Basically the Model 3 sales sucked up the tax rebate monies.

 

each manufacturer gets their own $200,000 'vehicles' piece of the pie. So the fact that the model 3 burned through their piece of the pie fastor - has no bearing on the manufacturers that haven't yet used up their totals, as both Tesla & GM have done. Those incentives aren't just disappearing though, they are tapering off - but eventually those Fed tax credits will be burned all the way through - unless Congress establishes another bunch of free money. Sime individual states have their own incentives too.
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Here, being able to charge at work is a big if. Friend with a Tesla works for one of the big pharmaceutical companies at a main campus, and they don't provide work place charging. I don't see my job offering it anytime soon, and if they allow use of an outside outlet, cords would being running over sidewalks.

If you talking about choice of different size packs in a new car, that already exists, and the batteries are already modular, or they should be. The packs are made up of modules of cells packed together. Using different numbers of them, or different sizes is what most are doing. The new Insight Electric with longer range has a slower fast charge rate, as the battery has a lower voltage, because it sounds like a Kona battery with fewer modules.

For PHEVs, it isn't happening because of market size, and because they are still using ICE platforms with space constraints for batteries.

As add on range extender for a BEV, I think it would have limited appeal. The added range isn't going to be enough to have a large impact on range for long trips, and there will still charging time. Bigger battery means less stops, but longer waits. The solution is more DC fast chargers for those making trips in BEVs. Cooling is an issue, most BEVs use liquid cooling. The system will need to be sized for when a range extender pack is added, which increases cost and weight. or leave the pack air cooled, which limits its performance, and increases the space it takes up. the rear suspension will likely need to be upgraded for the extra weight.

A primary battery, like Al-air, could work. Those just need to have water added every couple hundred miles or so. The research there more into having the battery built in, and making removing the waste slurry and replacing the aluminum anodes easier. Doing so makes better use of space.

BEVs are using skateboard designs because it makes good use of space and improves driving dynamics. It is possible to get large packs into them. Adding modules later will take more work than throwing them into the trunk. Tesla's battery swapping system would make it easy, but I don't think newer models can use it after the lack of interest in it by the public. But I think balancing the added modules with the rest of the pack will take time going through charge and discharge cycles.

The question is how much California wants to spend on incentives; those had no such limits. With more plug ins coming to market, more tax money will go out without making these changes.

 

like @Trollbait mentioned, some only have a charger at one end or the other. Guess how badly that drops down the % that short-range PHEV' owners can do on EV. That little pasted blog cite pie chart also fails to mention the MILLIONS of miles actually driven by those who commute OVER 50miles / 1-way each day. ...."

23 Commute Statistics to Know Before You Go to Work

So you take those long-range driver and compile them with the ones that average 35 miles or more, suddenly you're looking at 1 billion miles annually. Yes it's great that little traction batteries cover short drives .... but there's certainly an advantage to drive electric on a larger percentage of the drives.

iduno - we got a $5,000 incentive check back from the state when we purchased our 2011 leaf. The better ½ got a 33 ev mile 2018 plug-in minivan just over a year ago, and iirc, the State money was down to something much less (i wana say $3.5k?).

yep HOV stickers save over 40min each direction going from OC to LA. during drive time - & yep - when we got our 04 Prius, we traded in our RANGE rover ..... but it wasn't for the yellow HOV stickers back then, it was the Benjamin we were throwing into the tank every week. with carpooling, we weren't even driving it that much.

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I should’ve provided more detail. I’m imagining a situation where you’ve got a small integrated skateboard battery in addition to infrastructure (electrical connections, suitable mount points or enclosure) to add a second battery of significant capacity. Now, I can’t presently imagine a way for that second battery to integrate physically as well as the skateboard main battery, so let’s call it a box in the trunk space for now.

The integrated battery is small. Really small. Tesla owners would pass out laughing. The point is to get a usable EV into mass manufacturing and on the market, even if it can only be used for the very shortest of commutes. Adding the second battery would bring it up to par with an Ioniq or a Leaf.

Crucially, the battery box is a way to build in some future-proofing. If somebody triples the power energy density in mass produced cells 5 years from now, there’s an upgrade path. It’s admittedly likely to go unrealized, but I think it would create some value in the buyer’s mind. For that matter it doesn’t even have to be a second battery- it could be a range extender genset of many types.

I know Tesla has offered cars with different battery capacities, but I don’t think they offered a big enough spread. Where’s the P30?

EDIT: fixed my density