Will the 2012 be the same but with a plug-in option?

Yikes! 40 miles??? I get over 400 miles from 10 gallons of gasoline, and could get over 200 miles at 100 MPH, in my AT-PZEV Prius. Why, pray tell, would I ever want to settle for a 40 mile range restriction?

Figure out the actual pollution toll from a 40 mile trip and I'll lay you odds, all other things being equal, it's higher than 40 miles in a Prius. Unless you are using 100% wind, solar, or water sources for mains power, in the US your stuck with a truly filthy coal, oil, or gas plant powering that 40 miles.

My mountain driving is usually at least 90 miles one way; not an ideal target for full EV when the average trip is over 250 miles.

EV might be OK for the daily commute in the city, but usually there is still the garbage being spewed out some power plant stack. You may not see it in that city but the world most certainly does.

When we store our own home generated wind, solar, or water power for use in the daily commute then EV will be a truly earth friendly tool for cities. Not only is that solution easily possible now, it is imperative we do it as soon as possible.

Think vertical air turbine for the converter from wind to rotary power. NASA has developed a particularly bulky vertical turbine, but there are any number of vertical cylinder designs. A typical 25 HP high efficiency cylinder turbine can be from 20 to 30 feet tall on a four foot base using ~15 mph wind.

That's 750 watts per horsepower. Think about that powering your house, car, etc., almost 19kw per hour. How much power does your house use per month? Even at only five mph wind speed you'd get more than enough.

 

I was replying to someone who claimed 40 miles of batteries were too heavy for a Prius PHEV. I was pointing out that they are not. With a PHEV-40 Prius, most people would do most of their driving on grid power, and they could still do longer trips.

Actually, figures have been published, and even a dirty coal-fired power plant puts out less pollution (due to efficiencies of scale) than the cleanest cars, such as the Prius. Thus an EV is always preferable to a gasoline car. But FWIW, here in Spokane Valley, Washington, all my electricity comes from the Bonneville dam, except for a very small percentage that comes from wind.

A PHEV is probably not the best choice for someone who always drives long distances. But a sustainable energy policy would also include lifestyle choices that would not require driving 90 or 250 miles in a day. Your 250-mile "average" drive, even in a Prius, pollutes more than my average 10-mile drive would do even if I drove a typical upscale American-nameplate family sedan instead of my 4-seat low-speed Xebra.

Agreed.

 

Once we have EV's or PHEV's, the "clean green power' will come, there will be incentives for locally generated wind or solar, and people will be more likely to install locally generated green power, once they have a vehicle to use it on... of course it will also power there houses etc.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? once there are more EV's/PHEV's, more and more people will realize they can live cheaper, and cleaner, by generating their own electricity, and by then (2015 or so), perhaps we will have another few breakthroughs in lowering the initial cost of solar. Many of us in citys/suburbs don't have enough wind to do much, but solar always works, just in certain areas we don't have much usable daylight (Northeast US), and the cost of solar systems is still very high for the average consumer.

Mitch

 

The dirties coal plants almost certainly start losing out if you factor in things like aerosolized mercury, uranium, and thorium.

Unfortunately, while it's true that the electricity itself is lower carbon, increased PHEV range carries with it a higher overhead cost. The batteries themselves carry a significant manufacturing overhead. The electricity has overhead in transmission losses, fuel mining & delivery or manufacturing (which can be significant for solar) And of course, increased battery weight reduces efficiency.

Combine these together with our current power grid breakdown, and a PHEV10 represents most of the carbon reduction currently possible. PHEV 40 would offer at best marginal gains, and higher ranges could easily increase total GHG rather than decrease them.

(primary source: Green Car Congress: Study: Meaningful GHG Benefit from PHEVs Requires Low-Carbon Electricity )

 

Don't forget the political implications of buying our transportation fuel from people who finance terrorism, as opposed to domestic energy; or the fact that we have the technology and the capacity to install sustainable energy to supplement and eventually replace coal. I suspect that if we began now, we could install renewable energy at about the same rate as we could reasonably make the shift from gasoline to electric transportation.

 

isnt xebra like tiny 3 wheeler with 7hp engine which gets 30 mile range at 20 mph?

how do you translate that into normal sedan, that weights 2x and goes at much higher speeds, which will obviously spend more electricity?

whats the estimated weight of Volt?

 

kind of... europe is finding out that despite huge amounts of money pumped into renewable source, their goal of 20% renewable energy by 2020 wont be met...

 

OK it isn't the flying car you expected to be out by 2010 model year, I know it was in the Jetsons so it should be true but it isn't.
Ford and GM put different tail and headlights and call it a new model, Toyota build a whole new shell, fill it with new running gear, load it with goodies, fix all the complaints with the existing car, and do it all with more go and better fuel economy but some say it shouldn't be called a new model? Yeah, what ever.

Oops, I quoted the wrong post.
I suspect like the 2006 was an update of the 2004, the 2012/13 will be a PHEV update as long as the batteries are available in good quantities. I suspect Toyota are working with potential suppliers already.

 

Sadly, even if we abolished gasoline tomorrow we'd still need to import petroleum. Though it certainly wouldn't hurt to reduce our gasoline consumption.

As for renewable energy, as the portion of the grid supply is intermittent grows, there become some significant issues with power conditioning that will hold back the growth of renewables quite a bit. That said, in the short term, efficiency investments will most likely prevent our grid supply from getting any dirtier, if not cleaner, before we start getting new Nuclear capacity online in 10-15 years.

 

I was under the impression the current Prius NiMH pack was around 100 pounds (sorry, I see you're in Europe, I'm not sure of the conversion to metric). I am almost sure the gas engine weighs more than that.

And I'll just go ahead and agree with darelldd (again!) that all the gas stuff removed makes for a nice 100-120 mile EV (see his Rav4 EV). Take the rail for those trips of longer distance...oh...wait...we don't have that here in the US...dammit. Okay, let's get on that, too.

Sad that ALL this EV stuff was here 10 years ago and it is largely ignored (or crushed).

 

The Xebra SD (sedan) is a 4-passenger 4-door car about the size of an old VW bug with a gross vehicle weight of 2,103 lbs as listed on the tag. It has three wheels (one in front and two in back) so it can be called a motorcycle and sidestep legal requirements that otherwise prevent small companies from entering the car market.

As it comes from the manufacturer, it has a top speed of 35 mph and a range of about 20 miles depending on terrain. Jeremy Clarkson would consider it underpowered. I'd like more power in it, too, and yet it provides me nearly all my in-town transportation. I actually give up fairly little in order to have 100% electric transportation most days. Lots of people claim they "need" more power, size, or range, and yet most of those people have two cars and could manage with one Xebra or Zenn and one gas car. They just do not care that their gas dollars fund al Qaeda and are wreaking havok with the atmosphere. They ask only "What's in it for me?"

The Xebra PK is a pickup truck version with two seats and a pickup bed where the back seats would be. Otherwise it is similar in weight, size, and power.

I have an after-market LiFePO4 battery pack which gives me 40 miles of range. Without that I'd be unable to get from my home in the suburbs all the way to downtown Spokane and back (almost 30 miles round trip).

The motor is not very efficient, so I figure 50% more energy would propel a Prius. I got 3 miles per kWh, measured at the wall outlet, when I had a lead battery pack that weighed 500 lbs more (also after-market, for added range). I cannot measure now, since my present system uses a 25-amp charger, which is too much for my Kill-a-Watt meter, but I presume a tiny improvement due to reduced weight.

The Volt does not exist, so it has no gross vehicle weight.

Actually, they fixed none of my complaints except the seat is reported to be more comfortable. I have complained that it does not make use of all that battery power to give really fast heat; that the EV speed limit is less than the car-initiated electric limit; that it must stop for 10 seconds before it will go into stage-4 operation; and that you have to turn on the fan before you can change the temperature setting, which is relevant because even with the fan off, hot air will come out if the temperature setting is above cabin temperature, as often happens when it was cold in the morning, but I don't want heat in the afternoon.

 

well, eh... so many things to say, yet no need for it... i am pretty sure that if you would wanted to make electric Prius with same functionality, you would end up needing much larger batteries/motor and car would end up at 4000lbs... and how long are those aftermarket ones supposed to last? 200k miles?

 

For our use, even a 5-mile limiton EV range would be good for a PHEV. We have about 2 miles to the nearest freeway at 35 MPH speed limit. If we were to start out with a fully charged battery, we could get to the freeway on electric alone. Coming home, we could go EV the last 2-4 miles, and then charge the car overnight for the next day. Mileage would drastically increase. At the same time we use our car on enough longer trips that a 40-mile radius would not be sufficient, especially with AC need in summer. I would love to see the new Prius with a plug-in option--I'll even take a 1.5 mile EV range! But I hope they have put better seats and better nav system in the 2010 model!

 

What if the added weight of the PHEV battery meant that your mpg was improved for the first, say 10 miles, but was reduced after that?

In your example above, with 5 miles of PHEV, assuming 50 mpg average on gasoline, you would save 1/10 of a gallon of gas each time you fully charged and discharged the battery. That's 15 cents per day at today's gas prices, or 50 cents at $5 gas. Or a yearly savings (based on one charge-up per day) of between $55 and $182. If the added cost were $1,000 (a low estimate, in my opinion) it would take you ten years to break even, and if you drive 10,000 miles a year, you'd only reduce your gas usage by 18%.

My point is that the savings in either money or gasoline conserved would be very small for such a short PHEV range. Once you get up into the 30 or 40 mile range, the average driver would significantly reduce gasoline consumption. But you'd still have to take into account the reduced mpg on the longer trips, where the battery is dead weight. The last I read about it, the anticipated mpg for the Volt, once the ICE takes over, was rather poor, meaning that long trips would counteract the benefit of using grid power for short trips. The PHEV is great when driven mostly on electric, but not good when driven mostly on gas.

 

Extending the range to 5 miles is doable with minimal impact on weight and thus performance--Prius/HCH are over 3000 pounds with a driver.
Saving 1/10 of a gallon of gas would bump the mileage from 50 to 56 MPG, a pretty sizable improvement on short trips.
If the objective was to save money with a car, I would buy a 10-15 year old Civic, and blow your payback calculations out the door! Why the preoccupation with cost calculations and payback? Some folks have other priorities.
Electric cars are simply not practical in this day and age, except for short commuter trips at slow speeds. Do you want to calculate the cost savings/break even point for a Tesla?

 

That statement is only true for what is on the market now. It is not true for what was on the market when the EV-1 and EV RAV-4 were in production.

 

My point is that the payoff for 5 miles worth of PHEV is small, and that it only works for short trips. The "payoff" is negative for long trips.

I agree with you on the used Civic. I've always said that the cheapest car to drive over its lifetime is a used Civic or Corolla.

Most of my driving on a daily basis is in an electric car. You may consider it impractical, but it works for me. It all depends on what lifestyle choices you have made. Perhaps you have made lifestyle choices that are incompatible with a 35-mph car. The Prius has caught on so well because it fits in with lifestyle choices that give no thought to the environment. But we are going to drown in our own pollution if we do not adjust our lifestyles to conform with sustainability.

A PHEV only makes sense if it has enough range that it is usually driven on grid power.

 

Since most trips are short trip, a 5-mile EV range could do a lot, and when battery technology allow us to economically extend the range, we can be ready to do so.
You're darn right a 35-MPH car doesn't get close to meeting our needs. I am not the least bit interested in going back to a caveman mentality because of concern for the environment. The main issue we have with the environment is too many people--that's the elephant everyone is ignoring while stomping on ants such as unplugging phone chargers.

 

Your daily trips are under 5 miles, and you think a 35-mph car is inadequate? Anyway, calling low-speed electric cars, or their drivers "caveman mentality" adds nothing useful to the discussion.

 

Where did I say my daily trips are under 5 miles?
I did not call you nor your car a caveman mentality. A 35-mile car may indeed work quite well for for you, and more power to you. It doesn't even get close to meet our needs. Moreover, I think they are plain dangerous in todays driving environment. What I call a caveman mentality is some folks obsession with retreating from the benefits technology and prosperity has brought us in some misplaced concern for the environment. We need to be careful taking care of our environment, without a need to sacrifice our lifestyle.
Face it, electric cars are simply impractical for 99.99% of people until some major technological breakthroughs are made. In the meantime, hybrids provide the best alternative for decreasing fossil fuel dependence, and extending the range of a hybrid through more EV range is a sure way to increase mileage on shorter trips.