Prime destined to be doa?

Makes me kind of wonder where people think the cut off point is for buying a car based on AEV, never recharging it, and HOV access. I mean is 22 miles enough to make people feel they need to recharge it or just buy it and drive it for the HOV access? From some of the rumors and reports I've read on this site, a lot of CA buyers were getting the PiP just for the HOV. Must be a crap load of used PiPs with almost no battery usage.

 

absolutely. surprised no one has come out with a plug in with 1 mile range for cheap hov access.

 

The sun. Sunshine provides 1 kW of power per square meter. The amount of space needed to provide the power for the US could be just the existing roofs of existing buildings and parking lots. No need to block the sun giving life to plants. So abundant energy is available to power a very good standard of living. Now the challenge is doing this sustainably, with minimal environmental impact, and within economic sensibility. The key technology parts are available and getting better, but the amount of energy harnessing infrastructure needing to be built is immense.

Is it meaningless to solve the mobil pollution until all the fixed site pollution is solved? The best answer is solving BOTH in parallel. That is what is happening now.

 

you're right of course - those up in the land of tundra - who have no wall outlets, or electric dryer outlets or solar, or electricity of any sort ...

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merged.

Agreed
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Well PiP2 addresses that sort of...CARB basically asked for more than the 6-miles EV which is where PiP1 engine comes on in their test sequence. We do not really know how wide-spread non-plugging is for Volt/PiP/Fusion.

 

but you could design a 6 mile phev with out the engine coming on, and it would be cheaper.

 

But you're gonna be taken off the HOV and tax credits? Actually that's what I would like a mild plug-in but it's not a winner right now. Possible after the pro-big-Li-batt incentives run out (if ever).

 

i thought you said 6 miles qualifies for hov?

edit, 6.1 miles? thats about half the battery of the pip. might be cheaper than the tax saving, and everyone gets the benefit, not just those who can use the deduction.
and you could fit a spare tyre!

 

See, this is how ill-conceived policy ends up becoming an incentive to game the system. Building a plug-in solely to fulfill a CARB requirement or take advantage of HOV access undermines the objectives of conserving resources, reducing emissions, increasing ride sharing, reducing foreign fuel imports, and reducing fossil fuel consumption.

Plug-in vehicles are mostly pointless because they don't significantly reduce fuel consumption given that they don't go very far, and many people don't even plug in. They also increase the price of transportation rather than reduce it due to the increased initial cost. Really, it's just a transitional technology to build up charging infrastructure until BEVs start replacing vehicles in significant quantities.

Eventually BEVs will be the affordable means of transportation; having lower initial cost, lower maintenance cost, and lower fuel cost. As it is right now, plug-ins miss the first 2, and sometimes miss the 3rd.

 

agreed. i was in business for 30 years, gaming the system just comes naturally. but you have to see rodney explain it to his professor in 'back to school' to understand.

 

you give carb way too much credit. It's much worse than that. Take Toyota's Mirai as an example. Not only did the manufacturers & the hydrogen lobby see to it that they get way more credits, they tried to take away plugin credits unless it could refill as fast as a hydrogen car. And when Tesla build a battery swap stations that could beat their time? What did CARB do then? They took that feature off the table, because Tesla beat them at their own game.
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I'm a rebel by nature, so I'm the first to think of ways to follow the letter of the law, but entirely avoid the spirit of it.

Gaming the system is probably how VW got into the diesel emissions mess it's in today. If I were an engineer, I would probably have said to myself, "it only has to pass emissions testing, there is no law that says it has to remain compliant as it's being driven".

As much as I have to admit VW is wrong, I did laugh with delight the first time I read about the deception.

 

I think that's what Toyota did with their 1st PiP. Design a one off as cheaply (for them) as possible to meet requirements. Now they have designed the Prime's EV system to be modular so they can take advantage of economy of scale and put it in other vehicles as well as sell it in all states now.

 

as you know, the battery is good for 11 miles on the old epa test, so whatever tripped the engine at 6 could probably be avoided.

 

Ha ha I'm sure they took one look at the grid lock and figured the engine will never come on.


iPhone ?

 

Your down-playing of PHEV is based your feeling that 100% battery BEV is some kind of superior solution, that I do not salute to as yet. The benefit of liquid gaso is the enormous amount of energy packed into it. Yes we have the promise of Bolt and Model3 -- which by the way I am thinking chances of that going as well as everyone is thinking is iffy -- but you practically need a power plant for each car charge it up fast.

On the other hand I see much value in mild plug-in which gives local driving without fuel. And I like the idea of charging that off -grid (home solar/wind). I don't want a big batt because I can't fill it at home.

 

when red says eventually, that's kind of open ended. but i agree that we're headed in the right direction. chargers will increase and improve, batteries will decrease and improve, all the while, ice and hybrids have pretty much maxed out. fcev? i have no idea.

 

Well as Toyota Engineer, Jackie Birdsall, stated at the 2016 SAE World Congress:

“It’s not essential to have a hydrogen station on every corner, we only need about 60 stations in California to support hydrogen vehicles” she explained. “However, it’s incredibly challenging to get the infrastructure ready.”

 

yes, challenging would be an understatement. it's a long term commitment, you think ev's are 10 or 20 years away, you have to think fcev's are 25 or 50 years away. but in the scheme of things, both are very near term.

 

Well the other thing to think about, is with only 60 stations in the entire state of California, there would little to no competition. No competition would lead to little incentive to bring the cost down when everybody has to start paying for it.