How to get 95 mpg

An observation: people are funny about cars.

They'll put curtains in their pickup and have none in the house. They'll put memorials to dead relations on the back windows but not put flowers on the grave. They'll effectively speed the depreciation of their commonplace, ugly, slow vehicle by spending bales of money customizing it. They'll buy expensive fast cars, and use them to sit in traffic and say "huh?" when heel-toe is mentioned. They'll drink diet soda and sit behind the wheel for two hours each day. You can tell a person their spouse is ugly, their kids are stupid, and their food is disgusting--and they might shrug--but disrespect their car and the mitts are off.

The good news is that cars like the Volt, Prius, LEAF, Tesla, etc are at least a band-aid on our expensive and wasteful fascination. Better news is that younger people are driving fewer miles and are less interested in cars.

(I have to admit, I'm only half-reformed: I've owned some beautiful, fast, and rare cars and loved driving, working on, looking at, talking about...)

 

I used their services to upgrade my OEM Toyota EVSE to 240v compatibility.
IMO it was well worth it, I now charge in 1.5hrs at home. On a busy Saturday I sometimes ran out of charge with the 120v system. Even a quick 1hr charge at 240v gets you near 9EV miles to use, it's saved me on several occasions.

FWIW- I ran a dedicated 240v circuit for the PIP.

 

These are typical figures for the PIP while charging:


Kilowatt is power.
Kilowatt-hour (kilowatt * hour) is energy.

The draw is 1 kilowatt (8.3 amps @ 120 volts).
Charging for 1 hour therefore gives 1 kilowatt-hour.
Charging for 3 hours gives 3 kilowatt-hours.

Read more: http://priuschat.com/threads/phv-charging-power-draw.93769/#ixzz2ej5F4kkL
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Exactly my point. Some people think the higher EV ratio, the better. My question was designed to provoke the thought of both efficiency. Once we have that ground work, the next topic would be, what is the best balance? Of course, it would depend widely on everyone's commute range, charging pattern and driving technique.

I also want to point out again that MPGe is a measure of vehicle efficiency. It does not take account of upstream fuel production.

 

I don't see how that was your point.. you were asking about a ratio and touting the ratio of a particular driver achieving a particular MPGe


When is a higherEV ratio not better for MPGe? I am unaware of any PHEV where the CS/ICE mode is more efficient than the CD/EV mode.

I understand the upstream argument.. and if concerned about GHG, either one should buy renewable or live in a clean enough state or not drive a plug in. If you want to consider GHG upstream as well, then either CD/EV is better (depends on your upstream) or CS/ICE is better.. if EV is better then higher ratios of EV are better, if not then just drive a prius/Prius-C. There is virtually no scenario where from an MPGe or GHG standpoint where mixing both is better. Only when considering cost is there an advantage to blending.

 

I did the upgrade. Totally worth it.


iPad ? HD

 

The PiP gets a bit better mpg in HV mode (depleted main battery) than the standard Prius, since (1) the LiIon battery in the PiP can accept more regenerative power than the NiMH battery in the standard Prius, so you can brake harder in the PiP without engaging the friction brakes, and (2) the larger battery means that there is more capacity to store energy on long downhills, where the standard Prius would have to dissipate the energy with engine braking.

 

I thought we both agreed that high efficiency of both fuels are important to achieve high composite MPGe.

Higher EV ratio is desirable only if you do not compromise gas efficiency. The reason is simple. A gallon of gas has 33.7 kWh equivalent electricity. Volt with less efficient gas engine would need to use more electricity to maintain the same MPGe as PiP.

Needing bigger battery come with more compromises. More expensive. Less interior space. Longer charging time. Heavier car. More manufacturing emission.

If 2015 PiP gets more EV miles and maintain 50 MPG on gas, it is desirable. It would be even better if it gets 55 MPG. Improvement in both powertrain will raise the composite MPGe.

 

Imagine if the next PiP EV range is increased to 1,000,000 miles. The mpg however, is decreased to 10mpg.
This would be bad because ...
... you live in a parallel universe.

HIgher EV ratio is desirable even if you compromise gas efficiency, as long as the gain from the higher EV ratio is greater than the loss from reduced CS efficiency. It's exactly the same principle as hybridization which is worth it as long as the gain from hybridization greater than the loss from the additional manufacturing.

Hybridization come with more compromises. More expensive. Less interior space. Heavier car. More manufacturing emission.

Depends.

 

You may see gain in vehicle level but if you include fuel production efficiency, it may actually be a loss. Per DOE, it takes 3 kWh of energy to generate 1 kWh of electricity. That's because it was about 33% efficient. The latest figure with more efficient natural gas power plants increased it to 40%. That's no way near 85% efficient for gasoline production.

I may sound like anti-EV but it is the reality. More EV miles may boost numbers displayed in-car but that leads to upstream emission blindness.

I understand the principle but I just don't see the same being applied to EV biased plugin like Volt, for majority. For midsize 5 seater plugins like PiP and Ford Energi, I can see this principle being applied. I guess that's where we disagree.

 

Don't quite agree. Both fuels contribute to MPGe, but high efficiency in both is not critical. Of course improving efficiency in both can help, but increasing the more efficient source and decreasing the less efficient source can still improve overall efficiency.

Decreasing gas efficency but increasing EV range is generally a good tradeoff.

Yes increasing PiP's EV range while maintaining 50MPG would be good, but if the choice was 35miles EV and 45MPG vs 15 miles and only 45MPG.. they would be better off decrease to 45MPG. Increasing to 55mpg would be good if only because there are people that cannot plug in and still drive a lot an so for them it would be an improvement.

Yes, a bigger battery comes with tradeoff, but please please stop the stupid "charge time" issue. Charge time is about how many miles are added per hour of charging, bigger batteries can charge FASTER not slower. (Though both PiP and Volt are only 3.3.. which will hopefully be fixed in the next release of each). Charging while sleeping or working is not more time.. its just a better use of time.

The 3kWh of energy to generate 1kWh of electricity is only for coal. For NG its higher better and Nuke and Renweable its even less. You can look at the GHG upstream as a measure of efficiency as the two are tied. In most of the country its more efficient to drive on EV than on 50mpg hybrid. and if you pay the premium to charge via renewable its clearly better upstream anywhere.