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Good News for PHEVs and EV

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by tripp, Nov 1, 2005.

  1. tripp

    tripp Which it's a 'ybrid, ain't it?

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    Good news for all of you PHEV and EV enthusiasts out there. Fujii Heavy is reporting some substantial gains in battery recharge/discharge rates... to the tune of 2 orders of magitude! Check out the article on GreenCarCongress here....

    http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/10/fu..._and_.html#more

    There was no mention of costs vs standard batteries but these are batteries designed for use in hybrid vehicles. Nanotechnology is playing a key role but the article is dissappointingly vague. Still, it's welcome news.

    Cheers,

    Tripp
     
    #1 tripp, Nov 1, 2005
  2. mikepaul

    mikepaul Senior Member

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    If Toyota ups the battery-only cruising speed to 40MPH, I could easily use that mode a lot more around here with a bigger badder battery. Limited to 32MPH or so, I'd still be burning a lot of gas...
     
    #2 mikepaul, Nov 2, 2005
  3. LaughingMan

    LaughingMan Active Member

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    Under the right conditions, you can use stealth mode up to 41 MPH right now with the current Prius. I do it regularily.

    It may be difficult to accelerate from stop to 40 MPH using just the battery (SOC has to be very high for that to be possible) but you can use the ICE to accelerate you up to 40 MPH and then use stealth or glide to keep you there. That's the core of the pulse and glide technique.
     
    #3 LaughingMan, Nov 2, 2005
  4. tripp

    tripp Which it's a 'ybrid, ain't it?

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    P&G works great. Thanks to all of the posts about it here I knew about it before I got my car. It really is a great tool for MPG boosting. How much bigger would the battery have to be to be able to get the car up to 40 mph on juice alone? Right now it seems like big battery banks cost ... uh, bank. Price is going to have to come down. Economy of scale will help. Competition will help. Of course once Plug-ins are main strream, where are we gonna get the power?
     
    #4 tripp, Nov 2, 2005
  5. mikepaul

    mikepaul Senior Member

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    If I get a new battery in say three years, and it holds enough power for 30 miles at 40MPH, the only conditions I'd expect are:

    1) A reasonable but not drag-race-like acceleration to 40MPH will not start the ICE.

    2) The cruise control will function just like it does in normal mode. I understand that EV mode eliminates CC.

    I'm not really interested in plugging the car into the wall to fill it for the day. If I manage to hold the car to 40MPH for the whole trip to work it'll be with people tailgating and honking like crazy. Getting over to the Wal-Mart 6 miles away and back and stopping here and there along the way without burning gas would be excellent. Driving over 40MPH would be where the battery gets refilled.

    In an ideal world, Toyota would already have the car programmed to work as specified above with a bigger battery, so just dropping one in would unlock all the features. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world...
     
    #5 mikepaul, Nov 2, 2005
  6. TonyPSchaefer

    TonyPSchaefer Your Friendly Moderator
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    I fully expect that when it becomes neccesary to replace my existing battery (in >9 more years), my existing battery will go to the recycling center and the technicians will say something like, "wow I haven't seen one of those antiques in years. This new one's a hundred times better."

    I think of it like replacing the CPU or Hard Drive in my computer. The CPU is still cranking along at 502mHz. I'm thinking about replacing it with something >2gHz only 5 years later. My original HDD was 12Gb and I've already gone through three iterations to be at 60Gb.

    It's all evolution, Moore's Law, and you ain't seen nothing yet.
     
    #6 TonyPSchaefer, Nov 2, 2005
  7. tripp

    tripp Which it's a 'ybrid, ain't it?

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    #7 tripp, Nov 2, 2005
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