4th generation coming 2015!

Absolutely right.

The day that miracle breakthrough happens in EV battery tech, Toyota will fire up all engines and do an EV better than most - absolutely no doubt about that. The other point is, do some some basic maths and calculate what sort of a cable and power plant would be required to recharge a decent sized EV battery in less than 5 mins? And now imagine a busy filling station in say Central London or New York with EVs queuing up to be recharged 30 mins at a time.

FCV is not about today, it never was. Toyota is pursuing it for its scalability and future potential - very long term that is.

 

It's horses for courses, just like people who choose between petrol or diesel today will choose between FCV and BEV tomorrow.

EVs are absolutely ideal for commuters and most people doing 10k miles a year could buy a brand new EV for the cost of their existing petrol bill. For these people they don't need to queue up to charge at a busy filling station as their car will be fully charged every morning. Nissan are bringing out a new Nissan Leaf later this year with a 150 mile real world range.

But some people drive up and down the motorway for 300 miles at a time and for these people a BEV is no use. So for the foreseable they'll use diesel and in the future they may use FCV OR BEV. The Tesla S available today will almost do 300 miles in one go. What will their version in 3 or 5 years be like?

I still think that before dissing BEV technology people should look into FCV tech. We'd be better ignoring hydrogen and just keeping clean petrol plug in's for folk who need to do 300+ miles each and every day until BEV tech catches up.

One question I would ask people who don't like BEV's. How much do you spend on petrol/diesel a month? £100? £150? £200? That's £1,200, £1,800 or £2,400 a year - for nothing. It goes up in smoke. A brand new Nissan Leaf could be had for £160 pm or £2k a year. That's the same as your petrol bill and no car tax or extra payments of buying a petrol car on top. Those savings in a year could mean you could travel first class rail or hire a taxi for the day for all those trips longer than 150 miles.

My Prius is going soon as it's nearly 6 years old. I'll be getting a BEV next and as Toyota don't do one, I'll be looking at one of the many options now available out there. I liked Toyota, my Toyota dealers were great, but they no longer lead the low emission/low cost vehicle segment.

Unless they have an Ace up their sleeve? How about a BEV Prius with a 200 mile range for £23,000 (the same as a base Prius)?

 

Wow, people would be all over that PriusEV

 

more like a joker up their sleeve.

 

Not so according to greencarreports. They think it will arrive in 2016 or 2017 and they don't know the range. Hoping for 120.

2017 Nissan Leaf: What We Know So Far About New Electric Car

 

I have hopes too. Nuclear fusion will become a reality; disease will be eradicated; the world will live in harmony; But , regrettably, I am too much of a realist.

Neither do I believe the new G4 will meet all of the hopes and aspirations identified above .... and at the cost of the current base Prius.
Get real folks. But you were joking. Right???

 

April "1st" was about 16 days...ago.

 

I don't doubt your experience, but I do question your estimates/conclusions. I can certainly fit more and larger suitcases in my Gen2 Prius than a Gen1 Volt, and that's not surprising - the 16.1 cu.ft. of the Prius hatch is comparable to many midsize cars, perfectly flat and unobstructed, and over 50% larger than the Volt's 10.1 cu.ft. (which is actually smaller and less useful than my i-MiEV's 13.2 cu.ft. - and that's a car that doesn't even appear to HAVE a trunk). I was uncomfortable in the Volt's back seat (again, more so than in the back of my crazy tiny i-MiEV) less because of legroom and headroom (both adequate for me) than because of the feeling of being sandwiched between the door and the battery; I certainly wouldn't want to spend 1000 mi. there.

From the pictures I've seen, I'd agree it doesn't appear the hatch in the Gen2 Volt is a lot better, but I think the back seat is greatly improved, with the battery not rising up between the rear seats to squeeze the occupants. The idea of the Gen2 Volt being a 5-seater is a joke (though not a unique one), but it now looks like a perfectly fine 4-seater. Had that been the car I saw in 2012, I'd likely have leased it instead of buying the i-MiEV. With the improved passenger space and decidedly more attractive exterior, I think it's going to appeal to a lot more buyers; I hope it will do well.

 

I wouldn't deny that today's F/C is a much less credible purveyor of EVs than today's GM. I'd also agree that GM's not nearly as bad as Toyota on EVs, especially with the Bolt announcement and the Volt's wide availability and big pending improvements this year. But the Spark EV remains a compliance exercise with very limited distribution, and the Bolt is not a present reality, while for some unfathomable reason Voltec has yet to be deployed in a vehicle suitable for a one-car family (the PHEV drivetrain's up to the job, but neither the Volt nor the ELR is a good bet for taking the wife and kids on a vacation). I look forward to respecting GM's BEV effort if/when it's respectable - it looks close, but the reality is just not there yet, and until it is I'll remain skeptical. They've disappointed me too often for me to feel otherwise, and that includes their past history of touting fuel cells.

 

No, seriously, I don't really hate oil companies enough to blow money in a vindictive fit. I just had a use case for my 2nd car that never requires a 50 mile round trip but for which too many trips were ill-suited to an ICEV (like a minimum of 10 trips a week in the sub-5mi. range, really hard on an old Toyota Matrix that we didn't drive on weekends because there was a Prius sitting next to it). A budget-busting Tesla was unnecessary - the entirely affordable Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MiEV were just fine. As of the 2014 model, the i-MiEV is Corolla-priced, and for buyers who can use the tax credit, it's YARIS-priced, one of the cheapest rides you can buy of any kind. I'd never argue that today's affordable BEVs could replace all our ICEVs, or even most of them, but a great many households (probably most in areas with milder winters) could replace one of their ICEVs with one of these BEVs TODAY. That's a game Toyota could play, and not with something as silly as the eQ, but they choose not to. And that's where they're "missing the boat."

 

Why'd you say that?

What's wrong with a 200 mile range car (EU rating ) for the cost of a Prius when you can buy a FCV Mirai for half the cost of manufacture?

 

Say what? My gas bill is about $50 a month. I can't even buy a decent electric motorcycle for that.

I guarantee you I've looked into hydrogen far more than you have, with several papers published, a patent granted, and thousands of hours spent. You are wrong, and so is Elon.

Which is 5 years worth of gas for my Prius, and the Leaf costs more and is a much less useful car. Oh, and electricity isn't free.

 

Where have you been: Ford's already made the Fusion.

 

I believe those numbers aren't like to like between the Volt and Prius. The specs listed on the EPA site are 16 cu.ft. for the Prius and 18 cu.ft. for the Volt. I know the 10 cu.ft. comes from Chevy, but it is likely the volume up to the seat tops, and not the total volume of the hatch area that the EPA appears to use.

I agree the Spark EV is just a compliance car that happened to be also available in Oregon now. GM may have has bigger plans for it, if it had qualified for CASE credits for its domestic car fleet. It will be available in Maryland sometime this year.

Nissan and Tesla are the only car companies dedicated to the BEV, IMHO. The others are just compliance to some degree, or too late to the party to tell at this point.
The Focus EV is available nationwide, but in practice, it takes effort to buy one outside of California. Most of the people willing to put in the effort likely opted to import a Rav4 EV from California.
I preferred the iMiEV over the leaf, but Mitsubishi is a bit of a strange case. The company has been struggling in the US for years, and if the Outlander PHV doesn't hit big, they might pull out of the market here. They were making the iMiEV for other markets and needed it for California. Offering it nationwide may have been done to get more people to the showroom. They could be more supportive of BEVs, but are simply in a bad spot to help get them adopted in the US.
The first gen smart ED wasn't available nationwide. The current gen has been rolling out in stages. It could be nationwide now.
The 500e is California only.
Kia recently announced expanding Soul EV sales outside the West Coast.
The i3 is nationwide, but is big for BMW beyond being a BEV/EREV. It is their first mass produced car using carbon fiber extensively. They want it to do well in order to refine and reduce the cost of the manufacturing process. Then they'll take CF to their wider selling non-BEVs.
Audi/VW is starting to release BEVs, but they, and Kia, are in that too early to tell phase.

With the next gen Leaf and the Model 3 arriving relatively soon, I don't think GM feels they can just sit out of the market. Doing so with hybrids, and just plain fuel efficient cars, hurt them. The ELR was an attempt at competing with Tesla. Recent history also had them verbally distancing themselves from fuel cells. Honda can do the heavy lifting there.

I think GM is waiting for further price drops in batteries before expanding Voltec EREV models. The drive train in the upcoming Malibu hybrid is the one out of the new Volt with some slight changes to reflect the fact it doesn't have a plug.

 

I was responding to a guy from Scotland where petrol is $8 a US gallon and where filling up a Prius costs £50/$75.

Such pricing confirms my figures for a UK (and possibly European) based member.

 

Do tell... Why does it make sense to commercialize FCV ordinary passenger cars today?

 

So Lee Jay, what is your reader's digest summary as to the outlook for FCV in the next 5-10 yrs?

 

what he said. ^

 

Because I was responding to the implied sarcasm of this question:

 

It doesn't. It may never.

BEVs won't make any sense either until batteries have five times the energy density at 1/10th the cost with ten times the cycle life that they do today. Maybe that will happen, maybe it won't.

What makes sense is hydrogen plug in hybrids.

I've posted this in this thread before. A 40 mile hybrid (or so) will cover 2/3 of all vehicle miles traveled and also climb the biggest hill in the US with only an average-power APU supporting it. So, that's 1/10th (or so) the size of the battery in a long-range BEV and the APU could have 1/10th (or so) the power as the fuel cell in the Mirai. Combined, they are 1/5th the size (and cost) of using one or the other alone.

So, you'd have a 10kWh battery instead of a 100kWh battery, and you'd have a 12kW fuel cell instead of a 120kWh fuel cell.

You'd use the plug in for most of your commuting and shopping and such, and only use the hydrogen on a long trip, where it would sustain battery charge and allow the battery to handle hills and acceleration. As a bonus, refueling takes 3 minutes for a full tank versus 40 minutes for 70% of a charge or 75 minutes for 90% of a charge at a supercharger station.

The overall car would weigh hundreds of kg less than a long-range BEV and the reduced energy consumption caused by the reduced rolling resistance all the time would make up for the poor energy recovery fraction of the 1/3 of your miles you drive on hydrogen.

So, the hybrid car is lighter, cheaper, and uses the same energy as a BEV, and uses less energy and is cheaper than an FCV.

Sort of like a Prius.