Buy the prius for the electric drive....

Agreed! http://www.darelldd.com/ev/ (I get zero MPG, by the way...)

You certainly don't have to replace the Fuel Cell stack with batteries. Just leave the dang batteries where they belong in the first place!

 

Hi Darell,

Do you drive zero mile per a lot of gallons?
What a wasting energy.

Anyway, I have a question about plug-in Prius.
Looking at FAQ page of EDrive...
- Their plug-in Prius can run 50-60 miles EV mode using 9kWh battery to DoD 80%.
- The battery lasts 6 to 8 years which means about 2,500 cycles.

I suppose 2,000 cycles of DoD 70% is achievable.
Do you think the 2,500 cycles of DoD 80% will be real?

Ken@Japan

 

Very well said, Horton. I agree completely. I bought the car with much the same foresight. I'm an ME, not EE, so have a limited knowledge in that area, but to understand energy storage is not too complicated. And, A TON of research is going into electric energy storage (i.e. batteries) at the moment, much the same as fuel cell tech.
Looking at the Mechanics, and the impressive control strategy going on behind that video screen is what I bought the car for, along with the Toyota quality reputation and the Atkinson cycle engine they've used.
The car is a bargain in my opinion, and HAS to be subsidized to some degree by Toyota. To pay off the engrg. development alone you'd have to add $5k to the price of the car, I would think.
Anyway, I'm on the prowl for those aftermarket mods that you'll go into business with!

 

Well said,

The Prius is just a small step (*and in many ways a step backwards for Toyota since they already have an EV car they refuse to sell!*). I too hope that plug-in hybrids will be the next step and here whitin a few years. I sure know I love to cruise in EV mode in this car and with just a bit more battery I could get to crusing speed on EV as well.

What I like about hybrids is that it shows a simple way to success with each step feasable (and maybe even profitable).

I like the hybrid step we are in. This step proves to more and more people DAILY that battery cars don't suck and have real world gains. All people who drives them loves them and sing their praise. Within a year or two hybrids will be standrad an even uninterested car shoppers will choose them more and more (they camry is important here)

The next logical step is too reintroduce the Prius as a plug-in hybrid. You market it (again) as a techo geek car (but with a cute design) and you don't say that everyone has to do it. You simply say that this car when plugged in can probably take you to work and back and never start its combustion engine. If you go futher you still have your combustion engine and all it's unlimited range glory. Geeks like us wiull buy it and drive it and sing it's praise. A few year later when plug-in isn't so "scary" and has been proven reliable the camry gets re-introduced with plug-in feature

At this time it's time to geek out the Prius again. This time you make the Prius a true EV car. You sell it as a true commuter car (by this time I think this will be more accepted because plug-in hybrids have shown that EV mode works even though that is true today) but with a range of a couple of hundred miles AND with a quick charge time of less then an hours (and a full charge in a couple). Geeks like us buy the car and sings ir praise. More and more work, etc starts setting up charging stations to lure in customers ("free charge-up with dinner!", "Come to our mall, we'll charge you up!"). This time I don't think the camry will follow but you might be able to reintroduce the Camry with basically just a "back-up" engine. The performance is from pure EV but if you would run out you can cruise (like today's Prius EV mode) on ICE (if you have too).

Ahh! a man can dream! In the end I'm sure it's just another fad and GM is right and we all need heavy tractors (sorry I mean SUVs).

 

Yeah well. I either get zero mpg, or infinite mpg, I can never decide which makes the most sense. I don't go anywhere on a gallon of gas, but I go everywhere without a gallon of gas. Hmmm.

In a modern Li-ion or Li-poly pack, I sure do. If you haven't yet seen the Rav4EV reliability reports, you might be as surprised as Toyota was to learn that the NiMH batteries in these Rav4's have now lasted over 10 years and 150k+ miles. Southern Ca Edison has several million miles on Rav4EVs (spread amongst their hundreds of vehicles). And all this was accomplished on 10-year-old battery technology. We typically "abuse" the heck out of our batteries (going from 100% to 0 Dod somewhat regularly).

 

[Broken External Image]:http://www.darelldd.com/ev/images/prius/prius_misc/global warning.jpg

 

Too funny!

 

I hate to burst your bubble, but the reason there aren't any Li-Ion powered cars in production now is due to battery issues. NiMH is the best solution today and that's why it's in the Prius, HH, 400H, Civic, Fusion, etc. There are different requirements when comparing the energy needs of an Ipod to a Prius.

Also, you just won't be able to swap out the NiMH batteries with a Li-Ion replacement without upgrading the software (and maybe some hardware) to change the charge/discharge control strategy. The two battery chemistries react differently during charging/discharging and there are some things to watch out for.

 

Was likely true when these cars were designed. I don't believe it is true today. Have you heard of Valence? This car uses Valence Li-ion batteries.
http://www.darelldd.com/ev/wrightspeed.htm

Quite true! But also not insurmountable as the EnergyCS guys have found.

 

I'm Glad you guys know what your talking about LOL :blink:

 

Thank you for your comments.

It's good to know the technologies are improvement.
Also, it is a good news RAV4 EV's and their NiMH's are working great.
Do you have any link to the reliability reports?
I'm wondering the DoD level.

Ken@Japan

 

Here is a bunch of info and links for you.
http://www.darelldd.com/ev/rav_data.htm

Feel free to cruise around my site. Lots of info.

 

Is your degree electronics or electrical engineering?

I'm sure the Prius was optimized for cost, weight, mileage, emissions, appeal, marketability, and other factors. If you design for only one of the factors, you may not be able to sell the car. There is a balance between what they thought works best between ICE and battery power, etc.

Believe me, the engineers consider all these things and it ain't easy to decide how to weight the various factors, or to trade between them.

So... if you plug the batteries into the wall, you are still using energy. What's more efficient? 120V AC supplied by dams/coal/oil/nuclear/solar or gasoline? That might be an interesting thing to compare. Maybe plugging the car into the wall costs more due to inefficiencies of creating and transporting electric energy? Maybe it is better (especially where power is created by hydro or some other renewable resource)?

 

Careful! As soon as we think something is "optimal" innovation dies. There is always room for improvement. What might be the most marketable is not neccessarily the best product for everybody.

Gasoline will lose this one every time. Yes, we're obviously still using energy to charge batteries, but NOTHING like the amount of energy we use when we burn gasoline in an ICE. The best gasoline ICE (not found in automobiles!) is about 30% efficient. Electric motors are in the high 90's. When we compare well-to-wheels, electricity is very hard to beat for efficiency (there are losses in both processes of course) and cost, and possibly more importantly, national security. We make all of our electricity domestically, from mostly domestic sources of energy. Same can't be said of gasoline by a long shot.

And here's the REALLY big surprise to most - there's enough electricity used to make a gallon of gasoline to power my car 20 or more miles down the road. It takes gobs of electricity to make gasoline. If you bypass that step, you're WAY the heck ahead with charging batteries instead of using that electricity to first make gasoline. And we haven't even started in on clean air and water... or the potential to make electricity cleanly (impossible to make clean gasoline!)...

Here is some information that I've collected on the subject:
http://www.darelldd.com/ev/emissions.htm

 

Yeah, I know Valence in Austin. I know of the CalCar plug-in Prius using their cells. I also know that this is a test bed vehicle ... not a production car. You can't buy it, and there's no conversion kit for sale. It's not even a prototype vehicle. They're trying to showcase their battery chemistry, and they're doing a good job. It's just "not ready for prime time" yet.

As I said, today's production cars use NiMH because it's the best solution right now. I expect we'll see a Li-Ion hybrid in production in the next 12-18 months ... maybe sooner.

 

The kit is for sale actually. Not through Calcars, and apparently not advertised, either. But I'm personally aware of a utility that has purchased a few of them.

 

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