That Prius Prime is now on my wish list! Could cover most of the daily commute in Auckland, New Zealand in EV mode for sure! Anticipating demand in the future for the Prius Prime Battery Rebuild I have already added thresholds / alarms for Li modules into my multi-channel High Voltage Battery Analyser and reserved 5 x 20-channel Battery Analysers for myself . Do we know much about Prius on-board charger cooling system? (I have recently dismantled Nissan Leaf on-board 3.6KW charger made by Panasonic - that one is liquid cooled, bulky and pretty much useless standalone.) Do we know how many modules inside the Prime's 8.8kW pack? Rated Capacity? Can the pack be dismantled down to modules easily (i.e. no spot-welding)? Japanese Video shows 19 modules in 5 rows - that is 95 modules.
I'll try and answer a couple of questions here and there. Since the Toyota Prime charger is 3.3kW, I'll hazard to guess it's probably air cooled like the current one. Making it liquid cooled would require turning on too many subsystems. That seems like an awful lot of modules. The PiP battery has 56 prismatic cells. Doubling that would be 112. Of course they may have gone to another chemistry making the battery cells smaller, thus requiring more of them. Toyota is pretty aggressive about rebalancing their cells within their modules. iPad ?
let's see, the pip has been on the road for 4 1/2 years with no battery failures, so prime should be good until at least 2022. that gives you plenty of time to ramp up!
We are now have over 1000 EVs in New Zealand - majority are Japanese imports, mainly Nissan Leafs, few Teslas, BMWs and Mitsi-s. Toyota is bringing in few first generation 3 year old Prius PHEV to NZ. I guess in preparation to futher introduction of Prime. In regards to battery degradation due to aging I would not be overoptimistic by looking at Nissan Leafs and at Li batteries (both pouch and 18650) in modern laptops. I have piles of failed 2013-2014 laptop batteries (uneven degradation of modules in the packs). We are observing uneven degradation of modules in 2013-2014 Leafs already with < 15000 - 20000 km ODO and the range being reduced to 90-100kms. Looking forward to test drive Prime when it arrives here.
reports here, (observation only) show up to 10% degradation. we don't have a ton in hot climes, except so cal. but they're also not getting used like a bev in general.
PHEVs also have to comply with ICE emission laws, so manufacturers need to provide more buffer to reduce, or anticipate for, capacity loss than in a BEV.
