Battery Charging and Self Charging

Believe it or not, I thought the same thing after I wrote that. The more they confuse the customer the easier it is to convince the customer to buy what the salesman wants to sell. They make a ton of money from confused customers.

 

Yep, those silly physics laws of thermodynamics get you every time. There are losses every time you convert energy from one form to another. As Jerry says, there are only some very special cases where it is advantageous to use the gasoline engine to charge up the battery. In HV mode, the system alternates between putting a little charge into the battery with the gasoline engine, and then using that charge to move the car, so it can keep the gasoline engine running in its most efficient mode. When you do a long drive and don't do anything special, you will end up with battery in a low (but not empty) state of charge, with the car behaving like a standard Prius. The only way to fill up the battery is to plug it it in to the wall, go down a long decline, or (in special cases that are hard to describe in a single sentence) manually use the CHG functionality

 

I'm willing to bet on precisely the opposite for the value of ICE vehicles. I can't think of anything the government outlawed the acquisition of that decreased in value afterwards. When it became illegal to purchase machine guns in 1986 their value went from a couple hundred bucks to over $10,000 each.

 

To clarify, I believe it wasn't machine gun 'purchases' that were banned, it was just new registrations. Previously registered units were grandfathered and could still be transferred until the old registration law. This FOPA-1986 law froze the number of units legally in private hands, but still allowed them to be traded legally, so that isn't a black market price.

 

This is good to know. I have several boxes of incandescent light bulbs which came from my late father's basement. I think the U.S. government banned these in favor of high-efficiency LEDs. I saw a package of four 100-watt equivalent (15 watt) LEDs at the supermaket this morning for $3.99. So those incandescent bulbs must be worth a fortune.

 

The difference in your case is that there is no additional utility in the incandescent bulbs. They can't do anything a good LED can't do. We aren't there yet with BEVs. The charging infrastructure can't even properly support the number of cars wanting to charge now, let alone if everyone needed a charge. I often cannot charge because of lack of availability, broken chargers, occupied chargers, or just not enough time. This is electric's Achilles Heel for now. The day you can "fill up" in 10 minutes at chargers plentiful to be on street corners and highways wherever you wish to go, that's when the ICE car may not command a premium. Until then it will hold value over a BEV.

 

Incandescent lamps can serve as heaters for pump houses, chicken coups, etc., which LEDs do very poorly.

And that is how some enterprising folks got around the European "ban" on incandescent lamps. They relabeled the items as heaters, which just so happened to also produce light. But it was legal, and the market was so small that it didn't materially alter the changeover to non-incandescent lighting. Enough of the lighting customers who had been resisting the changeover to CFLs and LEDs still understood that electric heaters are generally too expensive to operate in their house.

 

Incandescents tend to play nicer in old-school pit lamps too?

 

newbie here. I'm not sure how the ev only 25 miles range work. Does it run on the battery in the cargo area or it also incorporates the "regular" hybrid battery that every prius has.

Also, has anyone been in a minor rear ended accident and did that damage the battery that is in the cargo area?

 

The "battery in the cargo area" and the high voltage "hybrid battery" are the same battery (unless you were counting the separate little 12V battery that was also back there in older generations).

But in your Prime, it is much larger than in any regular non-plug-in Prius, so can provide much greater driving range.

 

Or try to use an LED bulb in one of the original Easy Bake Ovens.

 

Or lava lamps...

 

Dude, you're just funny.
"Their primary purpose is to shift money from your wallet into their own wallets".

 

You make a good point about "fuel availability" but I am old enough to remember the gasoline crises of the late 1970s when gas stations had green, yellow and red flags to represent whether they had any gasoline available. And many of us waited in line behind dozens of other drivers for a turn to buy no more than ten gallons at the few available pumps.

Inevitably, the complex, expensive and difficult to maintain internal combustion engine will become a historical curiosity. And, because there will be fewer of these vehicles on the road, there will be fewer gasoline stations remaining in business -- making it much harder to find a place to buy gasoline. (Sure, gasoline will not disappear -- but may become as scarce as finding a 67.5 volt zinc-carbon battery for your vacuum tube portable radio.)



As someone else pointed out, if you looked at a photograph of almost any major city around 1915, there were many horse-drawn vehicles clogging the streets and few, if any, automobiles to be seen. By 1925, the reverse was true. It took only about ten years to completely change the dominant motive power.

(Technology changes quickly. When I entered the Boston Public Schools in the first grade, we were taught to write using steel-nib pens dipped into ink-wells set in round holes in our wooden desks. By second grade, the steel nibs and ink-wells were gone and we were all given ball-point pens. I still prefer using my Waterman fountain pen but I admit that I gave up "Palmer Method" cursive script for architectural-style block lettering years ago.)

 

There is only one traction battery, just larger than the regular Prius. A small portion of the battery charge is reserved to be used for the hybrid operation after the EV range has been exhausted.

As for the accident, it depends on how severe the impact is. If it is severe enough to cause structural damage to the frame, then yes, battery can be damaged. But minor cosmetic fender bender should not cause structural damage.

 

I agree it will happen, but it won't happen until it's more convenient and the initial investment isn't such a large economic barrier for many people. The tax incentives help, but they're of limited assistance to people with less income. I'm not even poor by any stretch, but my tax liability doesn't amount to even $7,500 a year so I can't get the full benefit of a BEV incentive. People with a few more children and less income than me will have to pay even more for a BEV.

 

Yeah this is not good.

 

Yeah, $4500 tax credit on PP is a sweet spot for me too. For my next vehicle, if I decide to get PHEV or BEV with a full $7500 tax credit, I will have to plan ahead to make sure I can take full advantage. Roth conversion would be the easiest and most financially sound method, but unfortunately, I don't have any retirement account I can convert to Roth at this point.

 

Unfortunately a lot of well-intentioned, but misguided people will take this as a sign that we need to alter incentives. I think that's the wrong approach as most of the time (there are exceptions) the market price of things with rebates and incentives attached tend to adjust to consume some or all of those rebates and incentives. For example, manufacturers and dealers have less incentive to reduce prices because they can "price in" the rebate.

When I was shopping for a BEV all the dealers kept telling me how the real price was actually $10,000 less than whatever I paid them because of the various federal, state, and local incentives. Most of the salespeople were confused when I explained that wasn't the case for me because my tax liability wasn't high enough to get the full amount of those rebates.

I think it would be more beneficial to focus the same resources on reducing the cost to produce BEVs and increase the competitive pressure in the retail space.