Toyota Prius c: 53 MPG city / 46 MPG Hwy; Under $19,000

So solar is from Aliens above and hence okay.. how about wind? Hydro?

Actually it does get a boost from its EV motors. If the prius did not have the EV motor to boost it it wold not be able to get the 50mpg it does. The PiP will get a bigger boost as its grid charged.

MPG(e) is not about the efficiency of generating power, its about the efficiency of using the stored power. I fill my car with two sources, electrons and petrol and MPG(e) measure how well it uses them.

If a prius can complete the EPA testing without its ICE, it will get such MPG(e) rating ignoring the ICE. It will also get a combined MPG(e) (or maybe only a blended MPG(e). )

 

This EV is getting its electric energy from a petrol generator it is towing.
Compare this car to an identical petrol version.
Which has the higher MPG ?
Which has the higher MPG(e) ?

Which metric strikes you as BS ?

 

You must also remember that some European countries have a greater price difference between Auris and Prius.
Now that I have mentioned Denmark so much:
Auris hybrid is about 300000kr.
Prius: 400000kr.
While you can get a CT200h for 390000kr.

This is partially due to the Prius being rated lower on the Euro FE cycle and getting a smaller tax benefit.

Still. Neither of these cars move at all in that country!

 

When those energy inputs are excess for your wide-area connected grid, I will happily agree the upstream costs are negligible. In the meantime, your use of the clean energy to fuel your car just eliminates the possibility of that clean energy being used by someone else who is then forced to use dirty sourced energy.

 

Metrics are standardized ways of doing comparisons. MPG(e) has a standard definition that is useful for some comparison. Not for all comparisons.

Both you and I get way better than EPA, others drive like a banshee and get way less. So does that that make the MPG BS.

If that is the way the vehicle was tested using its petrol generator, then you would have a point. But the MPG(e) is about the vehicle as tested.
If vehicles tow any trailer it reduces the effective MPG for that trip, not the vehicle's stated MPG or MPG(e). (On the side, this may still be more efficient than putting that car on a flatbed to get it a long distance, which is how I've seen leaf's brought to events!)

 

33k for Auris Hybrid, vs 26.5 for Prius vs 17k for CTh vs 8k for extremely expensive RXh.

for 2011.

 

Our price difference between Auris Hybrid and Prius is only 10%.
With Auris being 55% more expensive than Auris 1.4 D4D Luna. Which is craaaazy.

CTh is actually very well priced - same as Prius here, and 10% more than much inferior Auris Hybrid.

 

For all the difficulty of coming up with one number, I think the EPA did a good job with MGEe. There needs to be a way to compare different energy sources. From a dollars or energy put in the car, the MPGe does a good job. For the amount of well/panel/turbine to wheel it does a poor job. It also does not capture pollutants in the chain. Depending on the measure you get different things. If you know your oil comes from oil sands and your electricity comes from wind, this is a different comparison than sweet light crude versus coal. I know the EPA did not want to get into this. Many of us are more concerned with imported oil problems than costs and would use a higher figure, say 100kwh per gallon of gasoline. Some are most concerned with CO2 and would use something around 15kwh per gallon of gas, but the sticker has electricity and gasoline usage, and you can calculate your own.

Routes and HVAC also have big impacts. That's why YMMV. I will never get close to the city MPG in my prius, because I take short trips in the city. The epa does not take into account the short trip penalty in a car like the prius.

The generator is a mod, and like any mod, you get a different mpge. If you add a large roots supercharger and drive fast you would not expect epa. The trailer makes things much easier. Just divide the gallons put in the trailer and divide by miles. Pretty simple. No epa involved with mods. This does get political though. If you do it in the car carb has different requirements than outside in a trailer. EPA like the honeybadger just don't care.

 

Take the RAV ev + outside generator, and presume for a moment that Toyota sells the vehicle that way -- no mods required.

Guess what ? Outstanding MPG(e), and a pure EV to boot. Kicks the petrol EV's arse, at about 3X the petrol's car MPG. Clearly a solution for America's pollution, AGW, and foreign oil dependency, right ?

Only an idiot would say yes. So why is MPG(e) flawed ? Simple -- upstream use of fossil fuels is completely ignored.

 

We are already there. Wind energy, especially at night, is highly underutilized.

Quote from Guest Post: Kicking Oil Addiction With Windfuels : Greentech Media


This is part of why I choose to buy wind now as I work on solar garden to get others to move forward with me. (I'll still keep the wind even with the PV, as its not costing me too much and we're probably going to get an another PHEV (SUV) so it can directly use the PV during the day).



And if you want to consider say I must consider the wider-grid issue, then one cannot use the average of the grid. At night, the marginal "efficiency" for 10kw is very minimal as even coal plants are often running at minimal capacity (well below optimal efficiency) and sometimes even move to spinning reserves. The marginal efficiency and marginal GHG is not in the argonne wheels-to-wells reports, they do bulk statistics. They are shutting off wind at night because they cannot idle other pants farther. But even without the wind, they are often running in an inefficient state and could add kw with much less than the average efficiency loss.

 

Going by that logic, you can say Prius competes with BMW 3 series, A4 and Jetta.

Prius c provides the best bang for the buck and it is one of the most advanced, cleanest and efficient car. Plus, there is no need to plug it in. It will outsell the Volt for sure.

 

Don't know that Rav EV has an official MPG(e), but agreed its probably better than the gas version.

But the rest of your example is about an inefficient means to do generate electricity, and not related to MPG(e). Would it make the MPG for petrol worse if it happens to be derived from tar sands, or if I was using a diesel and made my own biodisel from discarded food waste? It is irrelevant to the computation/comparison.

MPG(e) is about how efficiently the vehicle uses energy. How one gets that energy is different question. I'll agree it is not an irrelevant question but that does not make the question of how efficiently one propels the vehicle meaningless.


MPG(e) is not related to America's pollution, AGW or Foreign oil, its about how efficiently a vehicle uses its fuel. Now I see why you consider MPG(e) to be political, because you keep connecting it unrelated items. Upstream pollution, foreign oil, ecological impact, military lives supporting oil regions, etc. are things to consider depend on what else matters to a person.

 

If you recharge your Volt at home from a gasoline generator, you can brag 94 MPGe. That is the point. How is that better than 50 MPG Prius c?

The equivalency is not equivalent unless you take the total efficiency from the well to the wheel.

That's is what DOE use in PEF calculation as average efficiency. 30.3% for electric generation and 83% for gas.

 

My logic was: if 6% of the cars traded in for car X are a BMW or A4 you can say its competing with them. However, the fact that both Prius and BMW owners are trading up for a Volt does not make the prius and BMW equivalent trades. (Trading is not transitive). So your application of logic is faulty.

I too expect the Prius c will outsell the Volt.. its cheap and there are far more cheap cars sold. If I was a fresh grad and could not afford a Volt, I would seriously consider the Prius C. I also agree the Prius C is one of the most advanced cleanest and efficient cars, just that for me, and many people, the Volt is more advanced, cleaner and more efficient.

 

OK, so this is a range-extended EV?

 

IIRC the EPA stated clearly that sources were not included. We can create a gallon of gasoline using 100kwh of electricity if we want to do it badly. The point of a plug in is not to use gasoline:mod: Anyone doing what you are asking is doing it for political reasons and is likely anti-plug in. Problems with the DOE numbers have been discussed on other threads and I have no idea why the topic has come up again here.

Yes! It should have 3 numbers MPGe without the trailer. MPGe with the trailer in charge depletion mode, and MPGe in charge sustain mode. If you are only charging from the trailer the MPGe will be equal to miles/gallons of gasoline.

But what has this got to do with the c. It seems quite a diversion. Toyota's plug in in its least expensive form is $10k more than the prius c in its least expensive. I think that price and availability will not have many prius c buyers decide to trade up to the phv. Do we need to play pretend with trailers to make bevs look worse? If a person wants a leaf they are not going to go for the prius c. That has been rehashed ad infinitem on other threads.

But really the question is whether the c or aqua is good enough to get people to trade their gasoline cars for a hybrid. In japan at least that seems to be the case.

 

It is interesting how the claim of "most advanced" gets thrown around. I noticed it first when Prius II was released and the claim was backed by the complexity of HSD, self parking and dynamic cruise. Then came the latest S-class touting the same claim because of the advanced safety system. Now GM claims that the Volt is the most advanced car because... it runs on batteries most of the time.

We need to stop using this unsupported claim.

 

Sometimes most advanced is not a good thing. With the talk of bad engines, the first ford V8 overheated. The cadilac v8-6-4 was the most advanced cylinder deactivation, but acted terribly. Both of these advancements are now used well in cars, but they were untested. The prius gen 0 was awfully underpowered, but then we got gen II. The s-class is most advanced in some areas that aren't all that important to us, but is likely to work. I would say the volt had the most advanced plug-in hybrid system, because it was the first factory system, but... These things are new and will get better. Ford's self parking is much better than the original systems on luxury cars.

Prius c, the lightest full hybrid:rockon: And its likely to work out of the box.

 

If I recharge my Volt at home using a separate gasoline generator grab a gun and shoot me as a zombie must have eaten my brain and infected me with your illogical neurons.

If I light my Prius C on fire so I can use the light to see, how is that better than using the Volt battery to power the headlights so I can see. One can always ask stupid questions by suggesting misusing things. That does not make your view meaningful.

I recharge my Volt using electricity for which I'm paying for wind-power. That's how its better than a 50MPG prius C. Since I've been driving a Volt I've saved over 60 gallons of petrol compared to a 50MPG Prius. That's how its better.


Efficiency is measured with respect a given resource within a defined system boundary. One can define different measurement boundaries and do different type of Life-cycle analysis and get different measures for different analysis. Tank to wheels is one standard boundary, Wells to wheels is another and so is everything before wheels.

However, as the boundaries get larger it becomes harder and harder to measure individual things and so the approximations/assumptions get larger. There are many many assumptions in just a wells-to-wheels analysis. The GREET model is almost all simulation, not actual data. And small tweeks in the assumptions can have big changes. And to keep the simulation reasonable lots of things are excluded. What is the energy cost of the electricity used in a refinery? (E.g. In the most well-to-wheels for gas production that is just kWh not the actual sources). Electricity used by gas stations? (not modeled). On the electricity LCA side where is the energy split between electricity and co-generation heat (no models).

Maybe more complex, in your Well's to wheels, what assumptions are made for the energy usage by the US military operating in the Middle east supporting oil interestes? What is the energy cost of a human life protecting oil interests? What is the energy costs of cleaning up the Gulf Oil Spill? And to get before wells, to exploration, drilling, etc needs even more assumption to close the boundaries. And what about the efficiency of the people producing these products. What is the efficiency of the water usage in these facilities. All of these, and many more, should be included in a "total efficiency measure".

Wells-to-Wheels studies are way more political and problematic than MPGe. And why stop at Wells-to-Wheels, Why not do full life cycle analysis.

So lets go total: Efficiency as measured by everything it takes to produce the transportation mile. That, it turns out, is easy to approximately measure, without simulation. The market has already priced "efficiency" into its costs so that means everything before wheels can be well approximated by simple economic efficiency of fuel. Miles per Fuel Dollar (MPFD) which measures (not models) the "efficiency costs" of everything before my tank are included in that efficiency measure. I'm getting 41MPFD, what is your prius C, maybe 15MPFD.

And in terms of why the Volt is better, I can go even farther on the economic side. What fraction of your fuel dollars says in the US? My Volt is way more efficient if measured with respect to that boundary.

 

Ah.. now you want to use Political cooked number, not science.

PEF was not based on actual energy, its a fudge factor for Cafe and did a bunch of weird things to try seem more consistent with previous silly cafe definitions. In their definition they clearly stated the 32.8 as as a fossil fuel factor. Then they divided by .15 to as their "fuel content" factor. If you want to use PFF, then use it, including all the fudge factors, not just picking and choosing pieces of it.

In responses to public questions in 2000 when that was put forward, DOE said the efficiency factor for electricity generation is relative not absolute and not about fuel usage and then added some BS about Nuclear plant Carnot efficiency. (i.e. what one could get from an atom vs what we really got) and said including them would actually lower the relative efficiency number which would about offset the renewables. So they basically ignored all non-fossil fuel power.


But if one included the proper ratio of other sources the overall efficiency (KW out vs fossil fuel used) is over 53%. In terms of carbon its about the same.

Finally your numbers are just wrong, even if you want to use PEF, then the number would be 32.8 not 30.3.