Phev: Why Not Now?

Wow. Paranoia is alive and well in this thread. Whether it's the oil companies, auto companies, Elvis, or JFK. Everyone is at fault for not providing us with an incredibly efficient car. My interest in hybrids stems from my search for a practical electric car as a commuter vehicle for the masses. What I've found is that battery technology is woefully behind the technology for the rest of the car. The charge-discharge cycle will wear a battery out so fast that it ceases to be practical for such an energy intensive application like an automobile. By practical I'm talking about mass-produced cars with a range that rivals gasoline powered vehicles. I believe that this technology lag is more due to chemistry rather than black helicopters or corporations trying to maximize profits for their shareholders. I'm hoping that the rumors of the Prius plug-in being only available to fleets turns out to be wrong. That's some great technology that I'd like to get my hands on. It could be the big step allows us to move closer to a primarily electric vehicle. Why can't I break this up into paragraphs?

 

zeeman pretty much hit it on the head as to why we dont have the technology today. i said many many times, that as soon as gas gets to the breaking point, i predicted $5 a gallon, then EV alternatives will come out...as we all know, that appears to be about fall 2009... now, to be honest with ya, the money crowd did mess it up and it looks like the intro will be about a year too late...hopefully, the year we will have to wait wont hurt us too badly...

just one comment on the "expected" lifetime of different battery types as a plug in option...

to assume that we will completely exhaust the range DAILY, is pretty much beyond my comprehension. something as little as just 30 miles EV i would not use 80% of the time...

i am assume that opportunity charging would be recommended and that even a standard household current can recharge a significant portion in a few hours, so that would again extend the batteries ala the Prius charging method perhaps.

add charging stations at work (something that i hope will become much more popular as more EV's emerge) and now we double the range and more than double the battery life...

so sure, as usual, plug ins, just like anything else, does not work for everyone, but i think there is a significant portion of the public whose needs would be filled very well..

but as zeeman said, we all know that is not why the technology is not available today

 

Daveinolywa, I'm not disagreeing that the batteries could be used more gently than one full discharge per day. And for NiMH that would extend their total usable mileage (but for traditional Li-ion, as I understand it, that's not the case -- it's the total current that passes through the battery that determines lifetime, or shelf life, whichever is smaller).

But I'm asserting that manufacturers can't sell a NiMH PHEV with a reasonable warranty if a) it's OK to run the batteries down to full discharge, b) some significant number of purchasers would be expected to use them like that, and c) that'll kill the batteries in short order.

Could Toyota offer the 8-year (10-year) battery warranty if you could routinely run the battery down to full discharge without voiding the warranty (but you were told that it was a bad idea?)? IMHO, not a chance. They could sell it in a form that you can kill it, with no warranty, or they can sell it with a warranty, in a form that you can't kill.

But for PHEV, being able to kill the pack dead = the advertised PHEV range.

So for PHEV, if running the battery down ever day kills it, then you can either offer a PHEV pack with no (or trivial) warranty, or you can put in a bigger pack and prevent full discharge. What you can't do (profitably) is offer Joe Consumer a long warranty on a product that he can kill by using it as directed (20 mile PHEV pack = 20 miles on a full discharge cycle).

So the dedicated and smart electric user can make this work. But PHEV for the masses has to wait for a bulletproof battery system. Or a much higher energy density so you can prevent full discharge yet offer reasonable range.

 

well, like you, i have no verifiable facts. other than i am pretty familiar with Li_ion batteries and i am also pretty familiar with the well known fact that not all batteries are seemingly created equal and among different users of the same battery which although not identical, but should have capacities within say 10-20% of each other???. have actually seem differences that go way beyond typical user variances...

so, to say that Li-Ion does have a finite definable charge (which btw, in my industry where Li-Ion is the defacto standard that is the "industry standard canned response) is not really to be believed.

conditions like heat, environment, etc do play a part. but generally would not reach the extremes advertised to make a difference.

so all in all, i think how a battery is charged does play more of a role than we like to think. but once again, who knows?