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Plug-in Hybrids May Not Go Mainstream, Toyota Says
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Oct 02, 2008 04:10 PM
from the charge-up-before-wyoming dept.
from the charge-up-before-wyoming dept.
mattnyc99 writes "Honda's challenger to the Prius — the Insight hybrid that we discussed so lividly a month ago — got its official unveiling today at the Paris auto show, with insiders confirming it would be cheaper than the world's most popular 'green' car while still hitting the same fuel-efficiency range. But the hybrid-electric showdown comes in the midst of a sudden rethink by Toyota about plug-in hybrids. Apparently all the recent hype — over the production version of the Chevy Volt, plus Chrysler's new electric trio and even the cool new Pininfarina EV also unveiled today — has execs from the world's number one automaker, and alt-fuel experts, questioning how many people will really buy electric cars, whether people will really charge them at night to keep the grid clear, whether batteries will make them too expensive and more. "
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I work in the power industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I work in the power industry (Score:5, Insightful)
You may feel nice and fuzzy warm about getting an electric vehicle, but then, you get a whoop-ass dose of reality when you find out, low and behold, your electric provider uses COAL FIRED plants to create this invisible power. What is the dirtiest method of power?????
The dirtiest would be a tiny mobile power plant burning fossil fuels that can't afford to have large-scale scrubbers on them because, being mobile, this power plant has to carry its own weight so any emissions controls directly effect the amount of fuel needed to travel.
Being large and stationary means coal plants can be made more efficient and have more environmental controls with minimal impact on operation. Even with electricity generated from coal, an electric car is producing less pollution per mile traveled than your gas car.
And hey maybe you didn't know but us tree huggers are also pushing for more green power generation. So while your gas car stays as bad as it is for its entire life, the tree hugger's electric magically becomes more green every time someone builds a wind farm.
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Re:I work in the power industry (Score:5, Interesting)
Winds farms don't scale, and do affect the environment some. Hydro doesn't scale, and building new dams just to make power certainly screws with the local environment. Geothermal doesn't come anywhere close to scaling, and may affect the environment in surprising ways.
Right now, nuclear is the only scalable choice for clean power. Eventually, solar will work too, but since solar isn't reliable it will never be a primary power source until someone invents a magic battery. However, with a magic battery, solar power is "fusion power too cheap to meter" so hopefully somone makes that happen.
ULEV cars are *far* cleaner than existing coal plants, and may be cleaner than a pure-electric car depending on where you live.
"Serial" hybrids (motor turns generator, not axel) are a fantastic idea, because they allow turbine engines to replace reciprocating cylinder engines. Gas turbines can be may much *more* efficient than 4-stroke engines, because you can make good use of the waste heat. I think the theoretical limit for a turbine is double tht of a 4-stroke - anyone know for sure?
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Re:I work in the power industry (Score:5, Informative)
Wind farms don't scale
They do. http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/december5/windfarm-120507.html [stanford.edu]
Parent
Re:I work in the power industry (Score:4, Informative)
That article doesn't say wind farms scale, it just notes that multiple wind farms can take up the slack for each other.
That article has a rather pathetic output for each one of these. 1.5MW of *peak* power which they are not producing all the time.
A nuclear power plant will produce 2000MW.
The average wind turbine according to Wikipedia, produces an average of 0.35MW.
"Typical capacity factors are 20-40%, with values at the upper end of the range in particularly favourable sites. For example, a 1 megawatt turbine with a capacity factor of 35% will not produce 8,760 megawatt-hours in a year (1x24x365), but only 0.35x24x365 = 3,066 MWh, averaging to 0.35 MW." (thanks wikipedia)
That means almost 6000 turbines(!) to match one nuclear power plant.
I don't think the parent was questioning our capacity to distribute power, I think they were questioning the number of turbines we can reasonably fit without 'em taking over the landscape (wind power kills far more animals than nuclear power - think of the fuzzy bats).
And, yeah, those turbines are *huge*.
You can count the number of turbines that you can fit in a massive wind farm in the dozens.
6000 turbines to equal one nuclear power plant. Dunno. I think that's what he was talking about.
Parent
Re:I work in the power industry (Score:5, Interesting)
Dude, the Department of Energy says you're wrong:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/09/excess_nightime.php [treehugger.com]
One common critique of an electric car revolution is that the increased energy demand might just lead to the generation of new power plants, negating some of the cars' positive environmental benefits. Well, according to a new study by the U.S. Department of Energy, those critiques are misguided. The study shows 84% of the 198 million cars, light trucks and SUVs on America's roads could be fueled by the existing energy infrastructure if switched to plug-in hybrid vehicles. When you add vans and other vehicles in the "light duty fleet," 73% of the 217 million vehicles could be powered with the power plants we have in place today. In switching from 6.5 million barrels of oil every day to electric cars fueled by off-peak power production, the study estimates a reduction of greenhouse gases by 27%.
Even with America's current power mix, with a heavy dose of coal power generation, electric vehicles are show to reduce total greenhouse emissions, however the picture isn't all rosy. The Department of Energy study also points to an increase in total particulate emissions with the grid pumping power all night. This, however, is much easier to tackle than petroleum-based pollution. As alternative energy gains a greater share of the American power pie chart, we can look for less particulate emissions as well. In the meantime, check to see if your power company offers green power or try to generate your own. Then, when you get your electric speedster, you can rev it up without worry.
Emphasis mine.
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Re:I work in the power industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, unlike you and I, most "greens" are dead set against expanding nuclear power. They seem to think wind/solar/"biofuel" will be able to get the job done (no, covering the surface of the Earth with solar panels or wind farms is not practical, feasible or desirable). Most of them don't bother to think of the logic behind their positions so it's no wonder they don't have an answer to where all this new electricity will come from. All they know is that their trendy new EV doesn't burn any evil hydrocarbons.
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Re:I work in the power industry (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I work in the power industry (Score:4, Insightful)
Um... have we managed to find a place to store nuclear waste? Have we uncovered an unlimited trove of radioactive material? Most intelligent people realize that a change is coming where we're going to have to move away from the oil economy. Oil is finite. Do we really want to spend all our time and money on building infrastructure that's also non-renewable? Nuclear is a lot of money and risk for a non-renewable energy source.
That said, will we add more nuclear as we move away from oil? More than likely. Should it be a goal? No. It's unsustainable.
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Re:I work in the power industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear is not comparable to oil because the quantity of substance needed and expelled is literally millions of times less.
There is enough Uranium on the planet to run modern civilization for many millennia. And waste is a trivial problem which does not deserve all of the attention it gets. France has similar nuclear generation capacity to the US but is a much smaller country (75% of their electricity is nuclear), and you don't see a looming French nuclear waste disposal problem.
The current problems with nuclear power are all political. Uranium supply is not a problem. Construction of new plants is only a problem because it's politically impossible. Waste is only a problem because waste reprocessing is politically impossible.
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Re:I work in the power industry (Score:5, Insightful)
You could vaporize the waste and shoot it up through chimneys, and still release less nuclear waste per watt than coal plants.
But seriously.. it's not waste. It's still mostly-unused-fuel. You do the same thing the foundries do with slag: store it on site until it's economically or politically favorable to process it and run it through again.
There is plenty of fuel available for a LONG time. The only thing more "sustainable" than nuclear power is still, technically, nuclear power.
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Re:I work in the power industry (Score:5, Interesting)
"Environmentalists don't care where Coal, Gas, or Oil waste goes"
Wow. That's one of the most stunningly ignorant statements I've read in a long time. Seriously. Almost every environmental political and legal group is constantly working on issues related to air-pollution from power plants.
You are right in that it's hypocritical to have higher standards for nuclear power than the other power sources. But I'd prefer to bring our standards up, rather than lower nuclear's standards to that of coal. The way most coal powered plants are run it'd look like Chernobyl around the plant, and they'd store the waste in big piles out in the open.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:DOE study (Score:4, Insightful)
"People are going to plug in when they get home."
Fine. Plug it in. But I don't suppose you've heard of a new, top-secret invention that's just now making it's way out of the lab?
It's called a timer. Read the DOE study, and you'll see that timers and/or "smart" recharging systems eliminate most of the load-balancing issues. Heck, quite a few of the newer home A/C systems (since you brought them up) now negotiate with the grid and shutdown intermittently to reduce peak loads.
If they can do it, so can a car charger.
On a side note, I wish more people would actually do some research and consider SOLUTIONS to these kinds of issues, and not just spend their time smugly shooting entirely theoretical holes in other people's proposals.
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Why so doubtful? (Score:3, Informative)
These same american car companies seemed all too eager to give us bigger, less fuel efficient tanks while demand was high. Obviously, that was a fad that was unsustainable, but they kept churning them out. Here we have clear proof that people want more efficiency and at least to feel like they're driving green, yet car companies aren't convinced they should give us them? Why is that stopping them now? Surely they haven't learned their lesson to think long-term rather than "Everyone is buying this right now, if these trends continue forever, and they will, then WOO HOO!"
Re:Um (Score:4, Interesting)
The American SUVs have basically all been around for 50 years, it's just soccer moms didn't want them before. They were originally for things like towing boats, horses, etc around and general work. They were based on pickup platforms that already existed -- the "american car companies" you single out did not create them for the craze.
However, Toyota has more lines/platforms of SUV than any other car manufacturer, and has introduced almost all of them within the period of the craze -- almost all of them were introduced during the last 10-15 years. And, each one has been bigger and bigger, basically. In fact, they're so "gung ho" about them that they're still coming out with their largest and most wasteful ones ever now (eg the brand new 14mpg Sequoia and their newest SUV nameplate the lovely 16mpg 6cyl FJ Cruiser).
You've basically got things backward. The American manufacturers had SUVs all along (conceived as worktrucks). It's Honda, Toyota, Nissan, etc that have been scrambling to make as many SUVs, conceived for soccer moms and people trying to be cool) as they can possibly shove out the door to feed the craze.
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FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
why are automakers so irrationally risk averse! I understand making sound decisions, but damnit...the market was ready for electric plug-ins in the late 70's...today it's a no brainer!
yes
yes
no
If you build it, they will come...in my podunk former GM factory town, everyone would own a prius if they could afford to get a new car (many working and middle class people can't afford ANY kind of new car, no matter what make/model)
The people that can afford to buy a new car are buying Prius's in record numbers...a friend at the Toyota dealership (who helped my parents get their Prius) says they always order the maximum from Toyota and sell out before they hit the lot...for almost two years that's been the case
Plugging in at night is just a logical progression, and from an automaker's perspective, a simple engineering isssue (professional engineers can easily handle redesigning a Prius to have plug-in capability)
As far as added cost of batteries, the Prius my parents own now has more than sufficient battery power, all it needs is a plug-in...
The market works to reach equilibrium! (Score:4, Informative)
When fuel prices got too high, interest in electric vehicles and alternative energy sources boomed, but simultaneously demand weakened. Now oil prices have come off ~30% from their highs, and suddenly EVs are not a totally obvious solution anymore? Duh... this is how the market it supposed to work. This means that electric vehicle companies are going to have to start competing on real merits and not just squishy fuzzy green feelings. And I hope that makes them stronger! But it's not the worst thing in the world if conventional gas-burning cars remain an acceptable/affordable thing for the time being.
--
Learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation. [nerdkits.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
EVs don't compete on squishy green feelings. They compete on the fact that their maintenance costs are substantially less (no or small transmission; no ICE parts; motor, batteries, inverter are primary drivetrain components) and the cost to drive is around 2 cents/mile compared to 15 cents/mile for gasoline. The problem is that the playing field isn't level. Oil is subsidized in the US through heavy tax breaks to oil companies, and energy density in batteries is still low because not much R&D has been d
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Regular unleaded is still around $3.60/gl where I live. That doesn't sound like much of a drop off. An EV would still be a very attractive option for me and everyone else in the state of California. Also the longer gas remains "cheap" (in a relative way) the longer we will put off developing alternatives--and meanwhile the environment continues to be affected--so it is harmful if gas burning engines remain acceptable and affordable.
Re:The market works to reach equilibrium! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are these issues really that big? (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as the charger comes with a simple timer I don't see why people wouldn't be willing to charge the car at night, especially if you're in an area that has different rates for different times of day. As for batteries being too expensive, that's probably true right now, but do they really think we'll still be using today's lithium ion batteries ten years from now?
The cars being showcased today aren't the ones that are going to solve our energy problems. They are little more than prototype, proof of concept vehicles. That's why GM is only producing 10,000 volts the first year they are in production. Lets start producing them now and work out the issues that are bound to come up so that in 5 years we can begin producing them seriously. Or we can think like we always have and look one year out at a time, never bothering to invest in the future.
Who cares about Toyota? (Score:4, Interesting)
Brand loyalty is fleeting in the automotive industry.
Toyota doesn't want to build a plug-in hybrid? Fine.
My dad got invited to see the Jaguar Plug-in hybrid, which will run off the battery for 50 miles before burning any gas.
Considering my dad has a 22 mile commute, he can't wait for this thing to hit the road.
He doesn't know when it will become available, but he's already on the wait list. (Estimated price ~$80,000, by the way)
Diesel could be an alternative but... (Score:4, Informative)
...there are serious issues with the pollution output from a diesel engine, even if you're using biodiesel fuel. Reducing the higher NOx gas output and the diesel particulates is a very expensive proposition, and just to make a diesel engine meet the EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 standard is expensive enough that you might as well buy a Toyota Prius or the new Honda Insight instead at pretty much the same price.
Toyota may be right. (Score:4, Informative)
Calling the car an electric w/range extender, rather than simply hybrid (or series-hybrid) is marketing speak.
Re:Toyota may be right. (Score:5, Informative)
The Chevy Volt uses an IC engine to recharge the battery when necessary - like all other hybrids (though Chevy calls it a "range extender").
Calling the car an electric w/range extender, rather than simply hybrid (or series-hybrid) is marketing speak.
I don't think that's fair. In all other hybrids (on the market in the US today), the ICE is connected to the transmission and provides power to the wheels directly, in concert with the battery. They will use the battery and ICE proportionally to drive the car based on the speed. At highway speeds, they only use the ICE to drive and don't use the batteries at all. The range of most hybrids on pure electric power would be very small, and is really only the case when accelerating from a stop. On any normal daily commute of even a short distance, you're burning gas.
The big difference in the volt, whether you call it "electric w/ range extender" or "series hybrid", is that the ICE is not connected to the drive train at all. It is nothing but a gas generator to recharge the battery. Thus why I think it's fair to call it an electric car, because the motor is in fact pure electric, and the fact that so long as the battery has sufficient charge, the ICE will not turn on at all. Also it has some big practical advantages. The ICE can be made smaller, and can be optimized for its task and made to operate at only at its ideal RPM -- the Prius' CVT means it can operate in a narrower band, but it still varies as it has to increase power to the wheels to accelerate.
So I think it's fair to call it an EV. If you're only doing a short commute each day, then that's absolutely true, since the car will drive on nothing but electric power. If you need to go farther, the generator kicks in, extending your range. It's not just marketing, it's correctly emphasizing the real practical advantages that differentiate it from a normal hybrid.
Oh, and in most places, yes it is cheaper to use electricity from the grid instead of gas. Especially if you charge during off-peak hours.
Parent
I'm buying an EV or PIH (Score:3, Interesting)
My wife and I might not buy a Volt immediately because so many companies are entering the market, but we'll buy the best EV or PIH we can afford sometime around 2010-2011. Most of our trips are 10 miles round. Rarely do we go more than 40 round. In the future, we'll make those once or twice a week at most.
So give me an EV for most of my trips, a PIH for the rest, and a Lotus Elise (30mph highway) for weekend blasts through the canyon.
I give Toyota some credibility here... (Score:5, Informative)
Around the turn of the century, electric cars had a range of about forty miles... the same as the Chevy Volt. All the improvements in battery technology have been able to do no more than keep up with our expectations of automotive comfort and speed.
Electric cars have, for a century, been waiting for the big breakthrough in battery technology that has yet to occur. The brilliance of the basic TRW design--the one they could never get U. S. carmakers interested in, the design that is fundamentally the same that Toyota uses in the Prius--is that it only relies on the battery as a short-term buffering device, a "torquer" as TRW called it, to make up the difference between the torque that can be provided by a little economical gas engine and the torque that's needed in normal driving.
So, a Prius provides a very meaningful increase in fuel efficiency without demanding a battery made of unobtainium. The Prius battery in fact only stores about enough energy to drive the car for about a mile.
Despite the possibility that Toyota is putting a spin on things, what they are saying makes sense. As hobbyists have confirmed, a Prius is virtually ready to be a plug-in hybrid, needing only a bigger battery. It would seemingly be so easy for Toyota to compete in the plug-in hybrid market that I have to believe they have sound reasons for skepticism.
Another possibility is that Toyota has encountered some serious snags that they're not talking about in trying to produce a plug-in version of the Prius. Perhaps GM knows about these snags and has some trade-secret ways of overcoming them... or perhaps GM hasn't discovered them yet, or is ignoring them because the Volt isn't really intended to succeed and is just a very elaborate "image" ploy.
Oh noes! (Score:3)
Car dealer #1: Will people actually BUY a hybrid car, saving them hundreds/thousands in fuel costs? /me wants "+1 Sad But True" ...
Car dealer #2: No, they just want GPS and a phat system, yo.
I will (Score:5, Insightful)
I will buy an electric car. I will charge it at night. I will. I promise. Start fucking building them.
Re:Electric Gas Cans? (Score:5, Informative)
Plug in hybrids still use gas. That's why they are hybrids, otherwise they would simply be electric cars.
The idea here is to juice up the batteries at home and use them for the first x number of miles (hopefully enough to handle your commute). After that, when the batteries are low, a small diesel (or gas) engine will start up and begin charging the batteries providing you with more range. So if your out of juice you would simply fill up just like a regular car.
Of course I'm curious how they will report the millage on these cars. I would want to know the range on the electric system and the millage when running purely on gas, but I worry they will come up with some new way to measure it that has little to no meaning.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They never run purely on gas though. Like you said, the gas engine merely charges the batteries, it isn't directly connected to power the wheels at all.
Personally, I'd like to see a MKw measurement (miles per kilowatt) become standard. Then, for the gas generators, you could get Kw/gallon.
Re:Electric Gas Cans? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not sure how efficient that could be, but it's unlikely that the op completely overlooked the fact that there isn't much sun at night.
Parent
Re:Electric Gas Cans? (Score:5, Informative)
The Chevy Volt seems to be using two basic metrics.
1. How far you can run on fully charge batteries (40 miles)
2. MPG when the generator kicks in (50 MPG)
Parent
Re:Electric Gas Cans? (Score:5, Informative)
The 50 MPG is based on using only the gasoline generator without any energy input from the batteries.
So, if you start up in the morning with completely dead batteries, you can still drive and get 50 MPG.
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Re:Electric Gas Cans? (Score:4, Insightful)
And in fact they are the only true hybrids. These other so-called hybrids run on gasoline only. Simple proof: no gasoline, no drive (once the battery discharges).
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Re:Electric Gas Cans? (Score:5, Funny)
I prefer doubloons per league.
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Re:Electric Gas Cans? (Score:5, Informative)
They should design hybrids so that the transmission switches the energy source. Higher gears switch to battery power, lower gears switch to gasoline.
That's pretty much the opposite of what you want. Electric motors develop peak torque at low RPM, gas engines at high RPM. In fact I wonder about the losses in the additional transmission if you want to drive the wheels from the gas engine; mechanically it makes more sense to use the electric all the time (much simpler transmission) and run the gas engine at a constant speed (more efficient) to keep the batteries charged.
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Re:Electric Gas Cans? (Score:5, Funny)
unlike gas, which you can only get from one place, electricity would allow you to charge your car while you push it home. Convert calories to green energy, what a win-win situation.
So what could you do to charge your car?
* hook a generator up to a stationary bike
* lay out a few yards of solar panels for a few minutes (if you are only a few miles from home)
* knock on someone's door with an extension cord in your hand and ask to use a few cents of power
* harness some wind power using a wind strip
and last/worst case
* actually use a gas can and use a generator to charge for the few miles home.
converting energy into electricity is so easy and so flexible, it's hard to think what couldn't be used.
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Time Based Charge (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Time Based Charge (Score:5, Informative)
I ordered an electric vehicle, and am building another one from scratch. To charge them, I built a charge controller that fetches the current price of power from my utility, and only charges the vehicles when the price of power is below a threshold. This way I take advantage of Time Of Day pricing (1-2 cents/kwH between midnight and 4am, Nuclear power in Northern Illinois).
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Re:Time Based Charge (Score:5, Informative)
The volt has a charge timer built into the car's charging system. Set the timer once, and plug the car in any time. It will start charging (and/or stop charging) when you specify.
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Re:Electric Gas Cans? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:The problem isn't plugging them in (Score:5, Insightful)
The chevy volt will fail because it will cost $50,000.00US by the time it's released. Only the rich eco-trendy will buy that car.
If you want to get hybrids and eco friendly cars to be adopted widely you gotta get the price down to where it's dirt cheap. $19,000 is the MAX price for the low end model. They refuse to make a car like that so they only end up as curiosity toys for the rich.
They gotta get the price way WAY down. two seaters that are tiny and hybrid are the answer. If you get a Smart fourtwo as a hybrid that get's 80-100mpg for $19,000 you will have a car that will out-sell any other car in history.
Problem is, The car makers and the oil companies do not want that car to exist and will do what they can to keep it from existing. The current smart is one of the safest cars on the planet yet it was a uphill fight to get the thing in the USA and then they had to "add safety features" to a car that was already a 5 star crash rating car.
add safety features? why? oh to make it more expensive... I see. They wanted to make sure that the masses would not go out and buy it in droves destroying sales of higher profit margin cars.
If you make a cheap efficient small commuter car, everyone will buy one. I'd rather blow 12mpg on the weekend in my high power sports car on the back roads and clear highways than at 32mph stop and go, in 5 lanes wide traffic on 696 in detroit.
people wont want to plug it in? oh come on, the populace is not THAT lazy.
Parent
Doesn't want us to buy them? (Score:3, Insightful)
You are living in some weird cynical fantasyland. Plug in hybrid cars are expensive because they are new technology. The factories to build them have to be built, we haven't spent enough time figuring out ways to keep individual unit costs down, and R&D costs haven't been amortized over long periods of selling millions of units as with standard ICE.
The first electric cars will be expensive. Probably the only ones that will sell well will be expensive luxury cars, because the people who can afford to
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Roadster mileage is now 244 miles/charge. A significant efficiency gain was had with the transmission fix (which really we beefing up the inverter and the motor).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This functionality is already present in the Chevy Volt. It has a timer so you can plug it in to the wall socket when you park your car in the evening, and it can be programmed to charge the battery starting at midnight, etc.
Re:Main disadvantage: What if you forget to charge (Score:4, Informative)
The Volt is supposed to answer that issue by having a combustion engine as a backup -- it runs and generates electricity that is used to run the car. So, in theory, you should never be in the situation you describe. You would also just fill up at the next gas station.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Charging at night (Score:5, Informative)
For any kind of sizable battery, you'd likely want a dedicated circuit anyway.
The current Prius battery is about 1.5KWhrs, so assuming a dedicated 100-120V 15A circuit, it would take about an hour to charge from dead to full, but that will only get you a few miles on pure battery.
The current plug in modification kit's battery is about 6KWhr, so 4x the time.
Sources I see on the factory plug in say a capacity between 6 and 12KWhr, and a 12 would require a full 8 hours to charge, which is getting to the limit of "charge overnight", so you might want to put in a dedicated 240V 20A circuit, like you would use for an electric range.
And you'd definitely need a dedicated circuit for a full EV, like the Tesla, as the battery pack is 53KWhr, which would take about 35 hours to charge on a dedicated normal circuit, and still 7.5 hours on a dedicated 220V plug.
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