Lithium ion batteries

lol. Yes, I know they did.

My question to McShemp was how CalCars circumvented his contention that one cannot replace the other.

 

Toyota is planning to introduce the third generation of Prius with Li-ion battery in 2008.
However, it is not practical to replace the NiMH with Li-ion on the current Prius.
The ECU's have to be replaced to meet the Li-ion characteristics.

Ken@Japan

 

Take a look at this? would it have the Temp range and discarage rate the Prius is take advange of?

Altair's six-minute-charge Li-ions:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7081

 

Me too..when the come out with a plug in kit that is realistic in price, I will be in line.

 

Ken, do you know what type of performance they are expecting in mpg and how fast can you go in EV mode?

This may just be a battery upgrade with city improvement, but little for the road...

the real savings we are discussing won't happen unless they can go plugin.

 

even if EV mode did top out at 40 mph, the increase in efficiency would be huge. low speed travel even for a hybrid is where the most inefficiency happens. the gains, a hybrid has is because of the PARTIAL EV operation times.

imagine if your first 30 miles at 40 mph or less was 100% EV...or even if it was only 20 miles... 100 miles per gallon plus is easily obtainable while meeting most people's daily driving needs.

 

At speeds above 43 mph, the ICE will spin to protect one of the M/G sets, but at a small petrol consumption level -- around 0.2 gallons/hour if memory serves me. So even with the Prius' current limitations, if 20 kW motive power is enough to maintain desired speed, you could be going 100 mph, for an effective 500 mpg. This will not happen in practice of course; I just want to dispel the notion that somehow the 43 mpg pure EV limit is in someway a reason to not view the Prius as a phenomenal PHEV platform.

Anyway, as I wrote in the concurrent EV thread, electrical energy gained from the grid will displace the energy equivalent of petrol.

 

No one knows about the 2008 Prius.

Even this year, Toyota is going to introduce Lexus LS Hybrid, no one knows about it's performance and mpg number yet.

I'm doubtful about the Plugin Prius.

You know Toyota is keeping the battery as small as possible, like...
1997 Prius 40 modules
2000 Prius 38 modules
2003 Prius 28 modules
(note: the year number is CY when introduced. Not a MY.)
But, their performance and mpg numbers are increasing.

Prius and plugin vehicles are complete different animal and it is not a good idea to build a plugin vehicle with Prius as the base platform.

Ken@Japan

 

Hi Ken,

What is not to like in CalCar's LiLon PHEV-Prius, other than the cost of the batteries ? And I suppose a follow-up question -- do any of your objections seem unlikely to be overcome in the next few years, or only at high cost ?

 

Let's assume the PHEV-Prius could run 30 miles in EV mode and it covered 90% of travel distance, why he has to carry a heavy 1.5L engine and relatively complex MG sets which do nothing at 90% of distance. It's a waste of energy.

My ideal PHEV platform is a simple EV car plus series hybrid mechanism with a small (<1L) engine .

Ken@Japan

 

that would only work for me if it was powerful enough to not get ran over on the freeway.

 

Would this car be fast enough for you?

 

so your response is if it wastes energy at any time then forget it?? that is like saying its a waste if carrying less than 5 people...sure your overall mileage is less but passenger mpg will be 5 times higher...

lets face it... WASTE is what we do best. but that is why i bought a Prius. it wastes less. its far from a zero waste solution. very very far. but at least im not driving a 5000 lb behemoth that gets 12 mpg. and an all EVR solution is geared more towards not having the abundance of gasoline energy to waste.

its the first step towards replacing gas with other types of energy that we do have like wind solar, water etc. none of which will ever be practical as a localized solution on 4 wheels. right now, my area produces more electricity than it can use 70% of the time, so we send it thousands of miles away to an area where it can be used. this is also a WASTE. a better use of that electricity we produce is to use it locally and send our unused gasoline down there instead.

granted, not all of us will have acerage that we can build a solar panel array next to a half dozen windmills to power our Prius... but some of us could and will do. now all of a sudden, the oil companys only feel like a 200 lb gorilla instead of the 300 lb gorilla they felt like last fall.

a guy at UC-Davis has already set up an AER Prius and has been driving it for over a year. he says that emerging battery technology will push the AER range to over 100 km. (right now his can go nearly 20 miles on EV only. and he is getting about 150 mpg and that is with added freeway driving. in his personnal needs, he envisioned going months between fillups because he really had minimal need for freeway travel)

there is a guy who runs a website devoted to studying Ca coastal erosion. he runs a site called Californiacoastline.org. he has set up a solar system that is enough to charge 4 elect...oh wait...another gm EV1 victim (he offered to buy his EV1 and gm threatened to sue him)...make that two EV and a Prius or two (i hope), while selling back electricity to the grid.

granted, not all of us have the funds to do what he did, but the technology is there. and when an EVR vehicle is on the market, it will have a huge uphill battle fighting the all powerful oil lobby. (that is where all the resistance to the Prius comes from. the oil industry...ya they control the american automobile industry. that is why we dont have a real product here. in europe where gas is so expensive, super efficient cars are seen everywhere). the guy referenced above also talks about the uphill battles he had with PG&E over the electricity he produces and how he is penalized. hopefully things have gotten better by now as his project is a few years old.

 

I'm not against the PHEV.
I'm against to use Prius as a base platform for PHEV.

Ken@Japan

 

ok... i can see that point...not

i'd rather see every car in the world do it.

 

I think I understand Ken is saying that a future simplified car would be a better base for PHEV than Prius. That certainly may be true, but it is an answer to a differernt question of what current Prius owners will do with their cars in five to ten years. I'm sure that if we all had not already sunk 20 25K US$ into our Prius, we would be more receptive to his reasoning

 

I believe Toyota's intention is to keep the battery size as small as possible and to reduce a hybrid premium.
Also, I think a mass production hybrid vehicle should be close to a conventional vehicle, just drive it type.

The PHEV becomes expensive and it's for a niche market.

Ken@Japan

 

Yea..I read about that one.... I made a joke about how the mpg would be determined by how big the truck was that hit you when you went rolling sideways likea rolling pin down the freeway! :lol:

Truely all electric car is scarey... I would at least want gas as a backup... what will you do when you run out?... you can't just pull in a electric station and charge up in 5 minutes like you can with a gas fillup?

this car would only work for calculated distances like to and fro to work without any unexpected diversion trips....its not real practicle without some type of alternative fuel backup.

 

The CalCar programs did switch out the batteries ... but they either tricked the Prius interfaces re battery management, regen, etc. or they completely re-programmed the car. Either way, it was an involved and expensive process.

Keep in mind, CalCar created a one-off, test platform, proof of concept, plug-in hybrid vehicle based upon the Prius using Li-ion cells. The amount of time and effort involved was not trivial.

I'm hopeful that the Li-ion Prius is just around the corner, but it'll kill the value of the NiMH cars. Mixed emotions.

 

yea.. sorry... this happens all the time.... heres a nice link for you to spend a couple of days on! :lol:
http://calcars.org/priusplus.html
http://calcars.org/priusplusfactsheet-v1.12.pdf