Toyota May Be Developing Plugins

What's the point of a hybrid plug-in? If you want to go the plug-in route, then just go all electric. :huh:

 

Not being a slave to the wall outlet like standard EVs. Those battery packs take a long time to recharge and the range is not acceptable to the mass market. Plug-in hybrids are sorta of a best of both worlds. You can drive a decent distance on juice (a typical commuting distance) but if you need more you can burn a liquid fuel. If you combine that with E85 then you're really sticking it to the oil companies. That is until they buy up all of the ethanol producers. The real question to me is where are we going to get all of the generating capacity to "fuel" all of these plugins if it goes main stream?

 

remember how close we are to the grid limit, one little power problem in I think it was Ohio and the whole east coast power grid went down. I really doubt that there is execss capacity in the system. Now people want to plug in say 15,000 cars and zap down it goes and it's those damn hybrid Prius cars.

 

LOL...i would love to go to work and back and not use gas

 

I wonder what would happen if one of them, like a big one went off line, would we still be ok.......Hm maybe maybe not. They're all hooked into the westcoast grid so hard to tell. I wouldn't want to find out.

 

There is always excess capacity in the overnight hours. “Grid Limit†is a daytime/peak demand thing.
http://www.caiso.com/utility/status.html

There are certain methods of generating which take a long time to start-up and shut-down and therefor are kept spinning and are used as the base generating capacity. Think Nuclear and Coal.
This base capacity is many times more than what is needed for overnight demand . . . but you can’t just flick on and off a Nuclear plant’s switch.

Other methods have quicker start-up times and are ideally suited to provide peaking power.
hydroelectric and oil/gas plants can be brought online or ramped-up in minutes.

Wind power unfortunately can not be counted on for either base or peak generation. It’s a take it as it comes proposition.

The vast majority of electric cars are recharged in the overnight hours . . . and utilities will give discounts for doing so.

 

This press-release is way behind the times. Toyota are FAR more advanced in Plug-in hybrid research than they're letting on. They have kept quiet about it for a good while to allay public misconceptions that existing hybrid vehicles like the Prius may need to be plugged in; while secretly testing PHEV-60s in Japan and buying up all the intellectual property on advanced battery tech as they can (and when needs be - buying out the whole company).

Also an AMAZING admission to openly announce that plug-in hybrids are more efficient than hydrogen fuel cells. That's going to hurt GM, who have invested $1-2 billion in fuel cells and the big oil companies who are desperate for everyone to move to hydrogen after the oil runs out.

The limiting factor of battery longevity may be solved in the form of Toshiba's or A123 system's - both of which can recharge fully in about 5 minutes and last many thousands of cycles. A123 cell is also inherently safe.

 

I never thought I'd agree with the EV car folks, but this is something I could get behind.

A plug-in prius wouldn't even need as much battery capacity as the old EVs did. They had around a 80 mile range, but with a plugin hybrid, you could get away with something much smaller, like maybe a 40 mile range.

40 miles would cover the commute distance of most people and if you had to go bit farther, it would just switch over to gas.

In fact, you could design the car so that it uses pure EV primarily for city driving and the ICE on the highway, where it is most efficient. Perhaps when you accelerate to over 50 mph, it switches to ICE and below that it tries to stay in EV. Also, during heavy acceleration demands, it could start up the ICE.

 

> After years of emphasizing its hybrid vehicles do not have to be plugged in, Toyota appears to be on the verge of a dramatic reversal

I'm all for practical implementation of a plug-in option. In other words, affordable. The current experiments that place it in the $10,000 to $12,000 price range are totally unrealistic for mainstream acceptance.

To make matter worse, that spin from the quote above is very frustrating... because it is simply not true. Where is this emphasis they claim? My extensive article scrapbook, printed advertisement collection, and television commercial DVDs simply don't support that. A few mention "don't need to plug it in" aspect, but only within the list of other details. It is far from a common theme.

There is no reversal either. For 5 years now, the enthusiasts have been discussing how practical the "full" hybrid design is for supporting the plug-in option. We knew it would happen someday. That's why we started fighting the "assist" design way back then. Once the battery price drops enough, it will be no big deal to offer the plug-in feature. This isn't dramatic. It is just the next logical step.

 

Strictly from a practical point of view, plug ins will be better accepted by the public because the hybrid aspect will allow them to treat it like a regular car, and the plug-in feature simply becomes an option that they can consider using.

It's a lot less scary than the whole idea of a pure EV, and you'll still have to put gas in it just like a regular car.

But if it turns out that they do their homework and realize that given their commute, it makes a lot of sense, they can start using the plug-in feature.

 

Put me on the waiting list. I want my second Pruis to be a plug in. Now if they can just develop fusion reactors (ITER), and combine fusion with wind, solar and biomass, we will have solved most energy problems. Aviation remains a question - I can't see a plug in A380 any time soon!.

 

What's the 50psi thing?

 

Well, that's true in a lab but not at your house. The typical house does have the juice required to charge that fast. Still, I agree these are great advances in battery technology. They're gonna have a big impact on the automotive industry and the cool thing is that it will start in the short - mid term. NOT in 2020.

 

We are NOT close to grid capacity. People tend to focus on centralized power plants and forget there is more energy available in decentralized plants. There is a surplus of wind and solar energy out there.

Every plug-in owner should install an inverter and photovoltaic panels. The meter runs backwards during the day - putting "high quality" (sine wave) energy into the grid. At night we plug in and pull a portion of the "surplus" to recharge our plug-in vehicles.

Result: better use of wind and sunlight, more cost-effective hybrids and further reduction in emissions.

 

Frank, most cars would charge at night during "off-peak" demand. It's unlikely the infrastructure would have to be expanded, simply that the power plants would run full capacity round-the-clock instead of during peak mid-afternoon A/C loads.

Also, local solar would likely become attractive to plug-inners. Free driving! Imagine that.

Nate