4th generation coming 2015!

This is somewhat off topic, but I have observed:
(If anyone cares, I traded my 2010 Prius on a 2015 Toyota Hybrid Avalon. Fantastic car!!!)

I have observed, the Avalon is quick. Much quicker than the Prius. True, fuel efficiency is 40 mpg and not 50, BUT ....
The Avalon is a much heavier car; with a lot more insulation; is it quiet, it is roomy, and it is luxurious. I love that it does not drag the front end on every dip in the road, nor scrape the front-end on curbs and wheel stops.

I suspect, the battery is larger, and I know the ICE is larger. Otherwise, the hybrid system works exactly like the Prius. In addition, the EV milage is greatly improved, and it will go faster on EV. I have never gotten down to 2 bars on the HV battery.

Maybe ... all the Prius needs is a larger battery? What other sacrifice were made to achieve 50 mpg?
I know this is a foolish statement, but if the Prius had a larger ICE, battery and more powerful electric motors (like the Avalon), it would accelerate like a sports car.

 

not foolish, but really not the point. honda already went that route and failed. not many people ant a fast hybrid, most want the gas mileage. you don't, nor does my wife (hycam). but look at the sales numbers. but i agree with you, the avalon is a fabulous car.

 

It's called the Prius plugin. With a discharged battery the only improvement in fuel efficiency is 1 mpg on the highway. Not exactly worth the cost of extra batteries.

 

HSD scales well from a small Prius c to a monster RX 450h.

Avalon uses different NiMh cell than Prius. It has the same one that Camry hybrid has, with metal casing, tuned for higher power (and weight) but lower energy density.

 

How does the Prius c numbers look to the Corolla or Yaris?

 

exactly.

 

A very disappointing development here in the UK that all new cars after 2017 will be road taxed at a flat single rate. Full EVs are exempt. Currently all low emission vehicles are exempt from road tax.

So essentially, what the government is saying is that after 2017, we don't care whether you buy a low emission car or not, unless it emits 0g CO2, we don't want to encourage you to buy one.

I can sort of see the point but let me tell you, this is very bad news for prospective Hybrid car owners especially those looking to get a G4

 

That's correct. There are several levels currently depending on CO2 emissions, so at the moment any vehicle emitting 99g C02 per km or less pay no road tax while a BMW X3 3L will pay heavy road tax. Under new rules, only the first year of ownership will follow these rules, year 2 onwards all vehicles are charged a flat road tax except those emitting 0g CO2 (EVs, HCVs) so essentially, there is no encouragement from the government to keep using a low emissions car. Hybrids were struggling against cheaper European diesel alternatives and this move is not going to help.

 

But as of September 2015 Euro 6 Emission standards kick in so the environment still wins. Can't speak for your side of the pond, but I think every vehicle that uses the roads should pay...tolls, taxes or what ever you want to call it.

 

We've depleted battery a few times driving in mountains, and it was shocking to see how well electric works to mask Gen3 lack of power. BTW if you wanna say underpowered, try to drive Gen3 and Prius C back to back. Gen3 will look like a champ in this comparo.

I suspect the bottleneck isn't the the battery size, it is the charge/discharge rate it can take. The Prius only makes 134HP for a few seconds, then they have to dial it back to preserve the battery. If they could supplement battery with super capacitor and designed it to take higher amps or higher voltage, that would have improved MPG and performance, but at additional cost. So the sacrifices were made to make car cheaper and for batteries to last longer, not to achieve better MPG.

 

cyclopathic - Interesting. I do not understand battery chemistry, and density, but I do know that I like how Toyota has used the technology to make the Avalon a very civilized hybrid. I really enjoyed my Prius G3, otherwise I would never bought the hybrid Avalon, but I must say I am not as conscious of the hybrid as before. The power just seems to be there when you press the pedal, and there is even less awareness of where it comes from. In the Prius I kept the display on the horizontal screen that displayed charging-economy-power. On the Avalon, I think less about all that, and just let the car deal with it. Consequently, I am finding less fluctuations from the low 40's to the mid 50's in miles per gallon like I saw in the Prius. So far, the Avalon has been a consistent 41 mpg.

 

The simple analogy for battery would be a light bulb. If you push it too much it will blow. So the load is limited by the current. (in reality ECU will throttle it back according to state of charge and temperatures). The voltage works similar; Gen2 had 288v battery stack and Prius C has 144v. So effectively if you were to feed battery with 1Amp current, Gen2 would give x2 more energy than C.

It is possible that the bottleneck is inverter, not only batteries, but it is definitely not the electric motors.

I haven't tried Avalon or even hycam vs Gen3 back-to-back, so I take your word for it. I am getting similar MPG from C and Gen3 (~58 MPG), but Gen3 is far more forgiving. You don't have to restrain yourself, you can brake and accelerate much harder and still get good MPG.

From quoted leaked specs the power on Gen4 is up to 150, but the ICE is very much the same so it looks like Gen4 had addressed this

 

hycam and avalon are designed to mask the hsd from the occupants of the car. very little feedback from the gauges, and heavily insulated from hybrid switching noise and vibration. wonderful engineering.

 

Do remember, the small capacity of the traction battery was due to patents, not technology. Those patents expired recently, I'm told. So certain oil companies have lost control of hybrid design.

While the Camry Hybrid and Avalon Hybrid may be nicer to ride in, they can't match the fuel efficiency of the Prius. I chose the Prius over the Camry Hybrid. They both cost about the same at the time. I was also distressed that the Camry rear seats were fixed. There was no way to utilize the trunk/interior to carry long objects. The Prius design is much more flexible. It's amazing what it will carry.

 

Yes these are Ovonics patents. Panasonic (in part owned by Toyota and OEM battery supplier) has the batteries of similar design. They were planned for Gen3 but had to change b/c of patent situation. They supposedly expired in 2014.

Not sure what impact it has on Gen4 as we still don't know what batteries are used there.

 

IMHO for BEVs to pick up you need to get iMIEV price down to Mirage level, and the major hold back is the battery costs. But at $10k iMEIV will be selling as hotcakes. It would make a perfect sense for majority of commuters living within 22mi from workplace. Low maintenance, inexpensive, charged overnight commute vehicle and grocery getter addition to soccer mom-mobile.

Funny you say that co-worker just traded in his 2013 hycam for Mazda3 hatch. He had main issue with ski pass and inability to carry anything (he is into woodworking). MPG-wise he didn't loose much only 2 MPG.

 

Toyota Camry to go turbo

"But rather than reducing lap times, the latest application is more about improving emissions and fuel economy."

The CEO described the new Prius as "strong". Is there a chance that it's going to be a turbo/Miller cycle?

 

The entire point of a turbocharger is to recover the thermal and kinetic energy wasted and lost as a hot, high-pressure exhaust of the Otto-cycle engine. OTOH, the entire point of a Miller-cycle engine is to reduce the thermal and kinetic energy wasted and lost in the exhaust by giving an effectively longer decompression stroke relative to the compression stroke.

There isn't much usable energy there left to recover, at least not after the inefficiencies of the turbo.

(Tangentially, this is why there is so much attention paid in a hybrid to conserving the heat between engine and catalytic converter; there isn't nearly as much heat to get the cat to hit operating temps quickly as an Otto-cycle.)