Toyota Is Losing the Electric Car Race, So It Pretends Hybrids Are Better 434
Ben Jervey from DeSmogBlog writes about how Toyota is "using questionable logic" to claim hybrid vehicles are superior than electric vehicles, when in reality it's only saying that because it decided years ago to invest in gasoline-electric hybrids and fuel cells in the long term instead of battery production. This decision is now coming back to haunt them. From the report: There are at least 12 car companies currently selling an all-electric vehicle in the United States, and Toyota isn't one of them. Despite admitting recently that the Tesla Model 3 alone is responsible for half of Toyota's customer defections in North America -- as Prius drivers transition to all-electric -- the company has been an outspoken laggard in the race to electrification. Now, the company is using questionable logic to attempt to justify its inaction on electrification, claiming that its limited battery capacity better serves the planet by producing gasoline-electric hybrids. For years, Toyota leadership has shunned investment in all-electric cars, laying out a more conservative strategy to "electrify" its fleet -- essentially doubling down on hybrids and plug-in hybrids -- as a bridge to a future generation of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. As Tesla, Nissan, and GM have led the technological shift to fully battery electric vehicles, Toyota has publicly bashed the prospects of all-electric fleets. (See, for instance, the swipe the company took at plug-in vehicles in this recent Toyota Corolla Hybrid commercial.)
Last week, at the Geneva Auto Show, a Toyota executive provided a curious explanation for the company's refusal to launch a single battery electric vehicle. As Car and Driver reported, Toyota claims that it is limited by battery production capacity and that "Toyota is able to produce enough batteries for 28,000 electric vehicles each year -- or for 1.5 million hybrid cars." In other words, because Toyota has neglected to invest in battery production, it can only produce enough batteries for a trivial number of all-electric vehicles. Due to this self-inflicted capacity shortage, the company is forced to choose between manufacturing 1.5 million hybrids or 28,000 electric cars. Using what Car and Driver called "fuzzy math," the company tried to justify the strategy to forgo electric vehicles (EVs) on environmental grounds. As Toyota explained it, "selling 1.5 million hybrid cars reduces carbon emissions by a third more than selling 28,000 EVs." As for the "fuzzy math," Toyota's calculation "seems to assume that for every hybrid sold, a fully gasoline-powered car would be taken off the road," writes Jervey. "In reality, many Toyota hybrid buyers are replacing a Toyota hybrid. And, based on Toyota's own revelation that they are losing Prius drivers to Tesla, it stands to reason that many Toyota hybrid drivers would jump at the opportunity to transition to an all-electric Toyota."
Last week, at the Geneva Auto Show, a Toyota executive provided a curious explanation for the company's refusal to launch a single battery electric vehicle. As Car and Driver reported, Toyota claims that it is limited by battery production capacity and that "Toyota is able to produce enough batteries for 28,000 electric vehicles each year -- or for 1.5 million hybrid cars." In other words, because Toyota has neglected to invest in battery production, it can only produce enough batteries for a trivial number of all-electric vehicles. Due to this self-inflicted capacity shortage, the company is forced to choose between manufacturing 1.5 million hybrids or 28,000 electric cars. Using what Car and Driver called "fuzzy math," the company tried to justify the strategy to forgo electric vehicles (EVs) on environmental grounds. As Toyota explained it, "selling 1.5 million hybrid cars reduces carbon emissions by a third more than selling 28,000 EVs." As for the "fuzzy math," Toyota's calculation "seems to assume that for every hybrid sold, a fully gasoline-powered car would be taken off the road," writes Jervey. "In reality, many Toyota hybrid buyers are replacing a Toyota hybrid. And, based on Toyota's own revelation that they are losing Prius drivers to Tesla, it stands to reason that many Toyota hybrid drivers would jump at the opportunity to transition to an all-electric Toyota."
TBF (Score:2)
Making the batteries are expensive and dirty.
Re:TBF (Score:5, Insightful)
The cradle to grave environmental impact of most lithium-ion batteries is small, especially if CO2 is your primary concern. See for example https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231269141_Batteries_from_Cradle_to_Grave [researchgate.net]. See also Bingbing Li, Jianyang Li, Chris Yuan's "Life Cycle Assessment of Lithium Ion Batteries with Silicon Nanowire Anode for Electric Vehicles" (which can be found easily online but which I can't link to because the Slashdot filter is unhappy with the very long URL). That's specifically for silicon nanowire anode batteries, which is a pretty common design. The numbers for most others aren't that far off. Note also that as battery recycling and reuse becomes more common, and economies of scale ramp up further, the footprints in terms of CO2 and other pollutants will continue to decline.
This also doesn't make much sense as an issue in the context of Toyota since a hybrid requires a pretty decent size battery also. While previous batteries were nickel-metal hydride for the Prius, the newer ones use a hefty lithium ion battery also. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1120320_lithium-ion-vs-nickel-metal-hydride-toyota-still-likes-both-for-its-hybrids [greencarreports.com]. If one thinks that batteries are a big problem, then it isn't clear why one would think hybrid cars are a good thing.
Re: (Score:3)
The greatest resource for mining and refining for new battery production old batteries. Industrial scale recycling for a dominant electric vehicle market, will make those old batteries the cheapest source of material for new batteries. The scale will be huge and put in right into the mining refining ballpark.
Toyota took a bet, that bet being people would be more resistant to all electric vehicles and they would be able to clean up with hybrids, they were wrong. Given a choice people are switching to all el
Re: (Score:2)
Are you a paid troll? Or why do you utter that myth?
Re: (Score:2)
I know. Extracting and refining hydrocarbons are all fairies and unicorn farts in comparison to that dirty dirty Lithium lifecycle.
Hey I like your thinking, can I interest you in joining our group? We meet with other severely brain damaged people on a weekly basis. It's a safe space where we can say stupid shit without judgement.
Re: TBF (Score:3)
Try it sometime; you might even feel less stupid.
Toyota's Smart Business Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, electric vehicles appear to be the future, but hybrids do have distinct market advantages today: range, refueling infrastructure, and refuel time.
If Toyota's competitors are zigging toward all-electric, it makes competitive sense for Toyota to zag toward an energy-efficient technology that fits better into the state of the current fueling infrastructure. In fact, doing so, Toyota can manufacture more hybrid cars and scale their battery production up when the electric infrastructure, battery storage, and refueling time issues are resolved.
This seems like a smart business strategy to me.
Re: (Score:2)
refueling infrastructure, and refuel time.
The problem is you're applying a gasoline paradigm to a battery vehicle. Everyone is so used to going to a gas station once a week/2 weeks that they keep thinking of this paradigm as how you "refuel" your EV.
You refuel your EV in your garage every night. Refuel time does not matter for the vast majority of drivers, because the vast majority of drivers never drive >200mi per day, so an overnight recharge is fine.
"But what about people without garages?!?!" They'll have to wait for battery chargers to be
Re: (Score:2)
Problem is that by doing so they are missing out on developing their EV tech, getting patents on it and serving a rapidly growing market segment. In 5 years time with millions of EVs shipping and people switching in droves due to lower running/maintenance costs and performance they will be starting from scratch.
Re: (Score:2)
This seems like a smart business strategy to me.
That's because you think you can do something at the flip of a switch. You can't. Investment in vehicle platforms has incredible cost and even bigger inertia. Pouring money into Hybrids made sense 10 years ago. Investing in them in any way now is just batshit stupid from a business perspective. Rightnow Toyota should be serious cash into all electric if they hope to at all be relevant in 5-10 years or they risk becoming irrelevant, as their own customers are currently showing them.
but hybrids do have distinct market advantages today: range, refueling infrastructure, and refuel time.
Advantages demanded by man
Motivated Reasoning (Score:2)
"I only want to do X, therefore X is the best option imaginable!"
Re: (Score:3)
Also sunk cost fallacy, in regards to hydrogen fuel cells.
It all depends on the use case (Score:5, Interesting)
I would say Toyota is right about some things but it's not what the market wants out of new vehicles today so they have to spin it anyway they can to keep up.
Where I live hybrids are better since the distances involved getting to a major city involves some pretty advanced travel planning if you are driving an EV which means the distance can increase with up to 50% to accommodate charging stations. Plus, it gets really cold during the winter which reduces any EV to a frozen lump that can travel at best 60% of their stated range which complicates things further.
Which also explains why everyone I know who bought an EV also has a gas guzzler or a hybrid as a second car.
Re:It all depends on the use case (Score:5, Funny)
I use an EV to tow a Prius. When the EV runs out of juice, I ditch it at the side of the road and drive the Prius the rest of the way. /s
Hey, works for rockets!
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I think this was true when EV's had sub 100 miles range. With EV's approaching or even exceeding 300 miles of rated range today, even if in the winter you get 200+ miles. I drive an EV with official EPA 259 mile rated range. I never charge it past 224 miles, never have any range issues. I drove it across the US in the fall with no more planning than I would have done with an ICE car, granted I picked a highway (I-90) with superchargers every 100-150 miles but I would have picked the same highway with an ICE
Hybrids are better, for now (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me count the number of all-electric cars that cost less than $30,000.00 USD new, have a range of 400+ miles, and a refuel/recharge time of 3 minutes. 0.
When hybrids are cheap, efficient enough (40+ mpg), and for all intensive purposes (just kidding, don't freak) instantaneously refuelable, they're better than those with an lesser range, higher cost, and marginally better fuel efficiency. Not only that, there's 50 years of manufacturing knowledge behind toyota's ICE. I would trust toyota's naturally aspirated camry to run 400k miles, because it has a proven track record. Will your tesla 3 make it to 400k? Maybe, maybe not. Will it cost $15k to refresh it? Maybe, maybe not.
I *WANT* all electrics to be the norm. I want them for their MPGe, and lack of any transmission. However, it's just too early to claim that toyota is losing because they're not going balls deep into EV's. They're probably rolling every car they have off the lot as-is.
Re: (Score:2)
have a range of 400+ miles
Uh.....gas cars have ranges of 200-300 miles. Jacking up the requirements to make a point about EVs isn't exactly unbiased.
Not only that, there's 50 years of manufacturing knowledge behind toyota's ICE
And when you attach it to new technology to make it a hybrid, you lose a great deal of that benefit.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
have a range of 400+ miles
Uh.....gas cars have ranges of 200-300 miles. Jacking up the requirements to make a point about EVs isn't exactly unbiased.
200-300? What kind of gas cars are you driving? I'll admit to limited experience (I'm currently in an early Leaf, and before that I drove Priuses and Geo Prisms), but every car I've ever owned could go at least 350 miles on a tank of gas, and most could make it to 400+ if you weren't spending all your time stuck in stop-and-go traffic. I assume 400-500 is what the industry as a whole is aiming for; the tank sizes seem to shrink as the mileage goes up, and vice versa, so a 45-50 MPG car like the Prius gets a
Re: (Score:2)
most could make it to 400+ if you weren't spending all your time stuck in stop-and-go traffi
And that's the key. The official range isn't based on highway driving.
16 gallon tanks are common. 20mpg is common. That theoretical car has a range of 320 miles.
Re: (Score:2)
16 gallon tanks are common. 20mpg is common.
Not in the same car.
Re: (Score:3)
Um. No.
Itâ(TM)s not the â70s or â80s anymore. My Mazda 3 (Not a hybrid. Not a Smart or iQ or even Fiat500 sized mini. Just a normal, everyday, ICE hatchback.) does better than 300 even in 100% stop-and-go hilly city driving. On an average tank, with mixed driving, I get about 375. And on a freeway road trip, itâ(TM)s good for nearly 500 to a tank. Itâ(TM)s actually the first car Iâ(TM)ve owned that routinely beats its EPA numbers.
Re: (Score:2)
Uh.....gas cars have ranges of 200-300 miles.
My Toyota Camry is not that small of a car, and it has a range of between 350-500 miles - depending on the type of driving involved. If it's all freeway I can easily get 500 miles on one tank of gas.
My old 93 Ford Escort GL Wagon routinely got 350 miles per gallon doing mixed driving. Even just driving it 3-4 miles at a time, from my house to where I catch the train, I'd still get 300 miles out of a tank of gas.
Now if you start talking SUVs or trucks... then you are probably right.
Re: (Score:2)
Even adjusting the figure down to 200 miles range, it's still a bit hard to claim the EV is a full replacement for ICE just yet. There are some EVs that can manage the range part, but they sure won't refuel in 3 minutes.
I'm actually doing the math for myself since I would LIKE to go EV, but there are a few scenarios I may face frequently where it just won't quite cut it. If it was just occasional trips, rental would be an option, but for now it's too frequently a concern.
Re:Hybrids are better, for now (Score:4, Informative)
Uh.....gas cars have ranges of 200-300 miles. Jacking up the requirements to make a point about EVs isn't exactly unbiased.
Maybe in gas-guzzling USA, not in Europe. 45 liter tank is pretty standard and a consumption of 6 l /100 km is too. That makes a range of 750 km or 465 miles. My previous diesel had 45 liter and did 4.4 l/100 km making 1000 km or 630 miles possible.
Larger cars have higher consumption but also fuel tanks of 60 or 80 liter.
Re: (Score:2)
per tank on the highway
Which isn't how the range of a car is measured. Which is why the official ranges are shorter.
Re: (Score:2)
Per tank is the practical measure someone actually driving the car will find useful.
Re: (Score:2)
I have to agree, placing a wager against a company like Toyota is a fools bet. Remember how they managed the failed GM plant in Freemont, produced an excellent product and made money with the same workers? We do know what that plant is today (Telsa) don't we?
The last naturally aspirated Camry was in 1989, past that the aspiration (fuel flow) wasn't mechanically managed. If they could only figure out how to make a strut bumper as durable as their drivelines, they'd never have maintance aside
Re: (Score:2)
have a range of 400+ miles
Let me count the number of passenger vehicles where this is actually a legitimate requirement: 1-2%
and a refuel/recharge time of 3 minutes
What's a refuel time? Electric car owners want to know. I mean you actually drive somewhere to increase the range in your tank, and spend 10min doing so? How quaint.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, MPGe is a very solid measurement. Take the amount of "energy" in a gallon of gasoline and compare that energy in another storage form. This is a very big disadvantage to gasoline as ICE engines are about 20% efficient. BEVs are 85% or so (after the electronics). FCEVs are 60% or so, but have the "advantage" of being better in cold weather than BEVs (you can use the FC waste heat to heat the cabin and the capacity of H2 does not degrade with temperature).
MPGe has nothing to do with fuel or elec
Re: (Score:2)
Toyota's plug-in electric range is just too low (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
More likely, they'll just buy out an EV manufacturer or a battery production company. Toshiba's market cap is 1/3 of Toyota's cash on hand (~$58B), for example, if they wanted the entire company.
That is not the deal (Score:2)
It's not that Toyota is "losing the electric car race". It's that they are betting on hydrogen but it takes more time to get right.
Personally I still think a long term bet on hydrogen as the ultimate electric car tech makes way more sense, in terms of being able to refill a car quickly, and even home power units based on hydrogen...
Until then they get by with hybrids, but it's not because they are losing - it's because they are Japanese and really thinking way longer term than any American company (except
Re: (Score:2)
I think the 'quick refueling' thing is oversold. If you don't have to stand there and watch it, most people won't care how long it takes. If you're on the road, so long as you're recharged enough in the time it takes to make a pit stop, to make it to the next one, then that's good enough.
Moore's Law for batteries exist. (Score:5, Insightful)
All the "delays" and "missteps" by Tesla are basically waiting for battery price to fall enough to make its promises deliverable. Every announcement of Tesla is met with, "it is impossible". Then as years go by and when people are all berating Tesla for not keeping the promise, the battery price falls enough and suddenly its product is viable and has a positive gross margin!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Musk fanboys are a strange breed.
Status symbol (Score:5, Insightful)
Nowadays every other Prius is a taxi/Uber/Lyft, and they're fairly common. Why would someone want to drive around making everyone think you're an Uber driver? The Model 3 got so much press due its delays, and now there's a sort of mystique surrounding it. People will pay attention to you again, and you can claim that you bought the car because you want to save the environment, but in reality, you care about the status symbol more than anything else.
Re: (Score:3)
Uber and Lyft drivers drive Prius hybrids because they are the lowest operating cost cars you can buy. The gas engines last to 200K+. Brakes are 100K+. The hybrid system is zero maintenance and the battery does not wear out. And you get 40 MPG is you drive it like a taxi cab.
Car is freedom (Score:2)
Why be limited to the set range of all-electric?
Enjoy more of the USA using energy offered on more roads.
Why wait years and decades for all-electric support along roads to catch up?
Enjoy all of the USA today. Winning with energy that is ready and usable.
Re: (Score:2)
You can go east to west coast easily on a Tesla, your knowledge is old.
Besides, the amount of people driving 1000 miles is like 1% of all car owners.
Get a clue, go view the Tesla superchargers map.
Oh and no need for oil changes, or break fluids or other crap.
You get OTA updates too.
Re: (Score:2)
Freedom of movement. Freedom in energy use. Freedom over distances. The freedom not to have to buy into one brand of electric car
The freedom to buy more energy to do see something different anywhere in the USA.
Thats what's sets lower cost and better quality car design apart.
Price, quality, the ability to go on a holiday anywhere in the USA.
Not having to only go on set "east to west coast" roads.
Better car designs with
Legal limitations from the Rav4 EV-95 battery suit (Score:5, Interesting)
So I have to wonder, why is Toyota so adverse to EVs when they were once industry leaders? Does it have to do with some legal declaration they made long ago in order to be "allowed" to continue to make and sell hybrids? It's almost insane how they are staying away from EVs.
LoB
Re: (Score:2)
they almost lost the right to sell their hybrids because they used NiMH too.
So how is it they managed to make the Prius? The Prius used NiMH, and the first model came online in 2003, the year the electric RAV4 was discontinued. If it was for some "legal declaration", seems like they would have continued making the electric RAV4 instead of switching to a new platform.
Can't innovate (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"BRZ uses an engine developed by Subaru"
Developed yes, but the engine was designed by Ferdinand Porsche. Who btw also designed the first hybrid in 1900.
One of those days... needs to be all the time. (Score:3, Insightful)
What hybrid and gas vehicles need is... very very slow pumping gas stations. I mean, what if it took you an hour to fill up. Suddenly, electric charging makes a lot of sense.
So.. slow down the pumps. Create huge gas lines.
I remember how such things changed cars forever back in the early to mid-70s.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There really is no "pretending". In many ways hybrids, and especially plug-in hybrids, are superior to all-electric.
Plug-in hybrids use no gas for normal day to day driving, yet have the range when you need it. So you get the benefits of both gas and electric.
They also cost less, which means way more people can afford them, and they stretch the world's economical accessible lithium reserves much further.
My wife has a Tesla, and most days she doesn't even use 10% of its range.
Re:Title? (Score:5, Interesting)
I will go stick my neck out and agree with you on this. With a plug-in hybrid, there isn't any worry about range anxiety, and you have the benefit of an EV of not needing to refuel often. To boot, I've seen inverters added to use the hybrid as a very efficient whole-house generator in case of a power failure.
I do agree while most people can do OK with an EV, as they don't go far, day to day, it is nice to have the ability to not worry about trying to find a plug or Supercharger when going on an impromptu trip somewhere out in the country.
Re:Title? (Score:4, Informative)
This is the exact reason I own a plug in hybrid versus and electric vehicle. I am a single guy, so I have 1 car. If I want to take a road trip somewhere, I would be screwed with an electric vehicle. Sure it would be possible, but it would be a nightmare trying to find someplace to charge in the midwest where I live. Sure, down the line when electric vehicles are more common this won't be an issue, but charges are still uncommon here. So I went with the plug in hybrid and have only filled the tank 3 times in 16 months, with 2 of those coming after road trip that used 75% of a tank of gas.
Re:Title? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How much maintenance is needed the way the parent poster is using his IC engine at 3 tanks of gas over 16 months?
With good oil, best antifreeze, it should be an oil change a year, coolant flush every 7 years, air filter perhaps once a decade and most of those other things in your list, almost never.
The ideal is your using electric for most of your driving.
Re: (Score:2)
So as much maintenance as an ordinary ICE engine then?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on your use case. More than 80% of USians live in urban or exurban areas and their driving pattern will follow a 95/5 pattern of short commutes vs long trips. Based on that pattern a plug-in hybrid will need a service visit once ever 18 months or so, although the owner may want to take it in a little more often to have it checked for minor software updates (the manufacturers only notify the owner for major updates, so there could be minors queued up).
These doom--and-gloom scenarios are based on tak
Re:Title? (Score:4, Informative)
Most post-2010 vehicles now state to change the oil when the oil use monitor says to do so, which could be a long time for all-highway driving in moderate weather. Longer than 6 months in any case. Those of us who grew up with dinosaur-era vehicles that were lucky to make it to 3000 miles without leaking or burning 3 quarts of oil have a hard time accepting this, but modern engine designers don't think that short oil change intervals are needed.
As for the gas, the Chevy Volt at least keeps track of when you buy gasoline and if it calculates the gas is getting stale (at a minimum every 360 days) it will turn on the ICE engine and use up the tank.
Re: Title? (Score:3)
The single biggest problem for hybrids is all the maintenance that's still required due to the ICE
Do you know anything about the engines Toyota puts in the Prius? They require minimal maintenance and are, for practical purposes, virtually indestructible.
Re:Title? (Score:4, Insightful)
All what maintenance? Current plug-in hybrids have longer maintenance intervals than current ICE cars, which themselves require virtually zero maintenance as we thought of it for 60s/70s/80s era cars. The dealership service department will tell you otherwise but if you read the recommended maintenance intervals in the manual for a post-2010 vehicle you will see that there is very little routine maintenance up to 24,000 miles and not much after that - even oil changes are now handled by the usage monitor not on-interval. And the plug-in hybrids put a very light load on the ICE engine in typical usage patterns.
Re: (Score:3)
Someone else mentioned not letting your gas get too old - I'll second that.
Dirk, I hope you are up on cars enough to know there is summer gas and winter gas - it is formulated differently in the winter so it does not freeze up on you. Fill your tank in the summer and you may end up with a frozen fuel line in January.
Do you add fuel stabilizer at every fillup? If you don't now, maybe you should start. Or would a fuel additive like STP be better? Even I'm not really up on those.
Or easier still - NOT fill
Re:Title? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most plug-in hybrids can't handle normal day-to-day driving without using any gas, because most plug-in hybrids don't have enough electric range for that. The average American commutes 52 kilometers to work, round trip. Toyota's PHEV has an electric range of 40 kilometers. It can't even handle the *average* commute. Most PHEVs seem to be in a similar situation. There are a few that can actually deliver "no gas for normal daily use". The Chevy Volt, with its 85 kilometer electric range, can probably do it for most people.
Toyota is putting a tiny 8.8 kWh battery in their PHEV. Chevy puts 18.4 kWh in theirs. Chevrolet reportedly pays $205 per kWh, and Tesla is supposedly around half that, so Toyota is only saving between one and two thousand dollars by skimping on the range...
Re: Title? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh My God! Your math is impeccable because there is No Way to plug-in at Anyones work! And oh shit! If not then they might have to use a whole quarter of a gallon to get home!!!! Eeeeeep!!!!! You are so right, hybrids are completely useless because having a calf that can cross the country and back without requiring a long stop at a plug is HORRIBLE! It is so much better to go 200-300 miles and then fucking stop.
All electric is insane for anyone who needs to do more than a short commute EVER which is almost EVERYONE.
All the Tesla owners I know have a second pure ICE car for -real driving- they say.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh My God! Your math is impeccable because there is No Way to plug-in at Anyones work!
this whole argument seems pointless: horses for courses, full stop. But on this point: to a first (>90%) approximation: no, there is no plug in space for your car at work.
Re: (Score:3)
once hybrid get some real power in the next 4-5 years
erm. you could buy a Ferrari four years ago with a 789hp petrol engine that supplemented it with a 161hp electric one. If 950hp isn't real power then you need to stop looking at cars and think about a large cruise liner.
Of course, you could also have bought the McLaren at the time with a mere 903hp or that little known brand from Germany were selling a hybrid Porsche with a 600hp petrol engine and 280hp electric engine.
But lets say you wanted a practical comfortable car for a family of four. It's not as tho
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Title? (Score:2)
No.
Re:Title? (Score:4, Informative)
Plug-in hybrids use no gas for normal day to day driving
Not really. The gas engine, more complex transmission, gas tank and so on mean you lose a ton of battery space. So in a car that could support a 200mi range battery pack, you get a 30mi range battery pack. Which means unless your commuting is particularly short, you're going to regularly use some gas.
Source: I own a Volt.
Re:Title? (Score:4, Insightful)
Plug-in hybrids use no gas for normal day to day driving
Not really. The gas engine, more complex transmission, gas tank and so on mean you lose a ton of battery space. So in a car that could support a 200mi range battery pack, you get a 30mi range battery pack. Which means unless your commuting is particularly short, you're going to regularly use some gas.
Source: I own a Volt.
The 1st-en Volt battery was 38 miles, and the 2nd-gen battery was 53 miles. The current gen plug-in hybrids all get around 50 miles, as that happens to be the capacity to qualify for the full federal tax credit. Since the median US commute is around 26.5 minutes, most commuters will use no gas for their daily commutes. And since there is zero range anxiety, there is no need for a backup car for longer commutes.
Re: (Score:3)
So you don't quite understand the meaning of "median."
I love it when others point out my ignorance. It helps me to learn, although I would prefer an explanation of my ignorance rather than an unsupported assertion. So, the median commute time (albeit not median commute distance) I was referring to was data compiled from the US Census Bureau [census.gov]. I haven't personally verified the Census Bureaus's understanding of the term median, but I assume that they understand it.
Re: (Score:3)
Plug-in hybrids use no gas for normal day to day driving
Not really. The gas engine, more complex transmission, gas tank and so on mean you lose a ton of battery space. So in a car that could support a 200mi range battery pack, you get a 30mi range battery pack. Which means unless your commuting is particularly short, you're going to regularly use some gas.
Source: I own a Volt.
As much as I hate Toyota's pathetic plug-in electric range, for many people that 25 mile range is sufficient to cover their daily commute. Toyota would be much better positioned to do so for more than the average person if they'd just double that range though. But, still, here's a bit of article to explain:
https://itstillruns.com/far-am... [itstillruns.com]
If you drive long distances to your job each day, you are not alone. According to ABC News, the average American drives 16 miles to work each way, with a daily commute totaling nearly an hour round trip. While the average commute involves 30 minutes in the car each way, many people commute less than a mile to work each day. On the other hand, this number is tempered by "extreme commuters" who must drive more than 100 miles each way to work during the week.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Plug in hybrids are a long term loser though. There's two entire systems to maintain.
I am excited about them, and will likely buy a used fusion, volt, or Civic plug in for my next car, but in the long term it's a losing tech, and Toyota's moves into that market are pretty sad.
Re: Title? (Score:2)
There's two entire systems to maintain.
Don't get caught up in irrelevant details; hybrids clearly aren't without their problems but "there are not one but two " systems to maintain" is hardly one of them.
Re: Title? (Score:3)
Yeah, this was a non-story. Toyota is betting on H fuel cells. Tesla is betting on Electric. Most of the rest are following the current "trend".
Right now, for selling cars, the efficient route is in the hybrid area. And Toyota is all about efficiency. So that's where their general population sellers sit.
Since they are investing in fuel cells, it doesn't make sense for them to handicap that investment by routing funds to electric. They have no need to shotgun approach their R&D. If fuel cells fail, the
Re: (Score:3)
You sound jealous
You're damn right I am. She spent $80k on a high performance car, and she won't let me drive it.
Re: (Score:2)
Li-ion wasn't proven to be cheap at scale yet when they made that bet.
That's what the story is about; they made decisions 20 years based on future predictions that were wrong, and they still aren't changing plans now even though everybody already knows they were wrong.
Presumably because of internal company politics, since the reasons they cite are so pathetic.
Flawed logic (Score:2, Insightful)
Just so we're clear, you're logic there is completely broken.
I for one love to go on road trip vacations, and the time spent behind the wheel is more like 14-16 hours, if want to get to where I'm going reasonably quickly.
I'm sorry, but there is no EV on the market at the moment that's going to last 14 hours. Or even 12 hours, or even 3. Not at highway speeds.
So you're going to be stopping a LOT to recharge. This why I'm still staying away from EVs. They don't make sense if you like to road trip vacation
Re: (Score:2)
They don't make sense if you like to road trip vacation, or do any road trip, or any prolonged driving
EVs have ranges of 200-300 miles. Just like gas cars.
So unless you are refilling your gas car multiple times per day, you're not going to be exceeding the range of an EV.
Re: (Score:3)
I frequently have to drive roughly 600 miles (an 8 hour round trip) in a single day for my job. This does indeed involved refueling twice, if not more. People frequently take trips of 400 miles, involving one refueling stop, in a single day.
Not only do EVs take longer to recharge, but at the moment there is considerable planning involved in making sure that you will be near an adequate charging station. This will improve as EVs become more common, but it is silly to pretend that EVs are currently as conven
Re: (Score:2)
Congratulations, you're about 5% of drivers. Clearly, the other 95% need to hold off on EVs because of that.
Re:Flawed logic (Score:4, Insightful)
Just so we're clear, you're logic there is completely broken.
I for one love to go on road trip vacations, and the time spent behind the wheel is more like 14-16 hours,
Per day? You will one day fall asleep behind the wheel and probably kill yourself. No way you are not taking any rest stops. And during a rest stop you can charge your EV. 250 kW chargers are out there now and that means you can charge for the next 2 hour's drive in less than 10 minutes.
And that charging speed will only get better in the future.
(EV's are worthless for taxi's for example. And police cars, and buses, tractor-trailers, etcetc.)
EV's are excellent for taxi's. Most taxi's don't drive that much. Schiphol taxi at Schiphol airport in the Netherlands has had 160 Teslas since 2014 and are now replacing them with new Teslas. Public transport contracts in the Netherlands more and more specify electric buses as mandatory.
Sure, I'll give you tractor-trailers. They use lots of energy and have a driving pattern that is less suited for having to recharge. Police vehicles I'm not so pessimistic. With 500 km range and usually not being in high-speed pursuit, I don't see the problem.
Re: Flawed logic (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but there is no EV on the market at the moment that's going to last 14 hours. Or even 12 hours.
If you of a hybrid or ICE car thar can do that without refueling, let me know (hyper-miling down a two-laner @25mph doesn't count).
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Since you mentioned Superchargers I assume you are specifically talking about Tesla's EVs
In a Tesla you don't stop for 30 minutes every 100 miles. You start the day with 300+ miles of range and drive for 3-4 hours. Then you stop for lunch. Superchargers are very widespread, and almost always are next to food., A 30 minute stop adds 200+ miles of range, so you can drive another 2-3 hours.
So there's your 500 mile round mile trip. One stop. You did stop somewhere along the way right? Otherwise why did you mak
Re: (Score:2)
You start the day with 300+ miles of range and drive for 3-4 hours.
Assuming you had a full charge and you bought the 220w charger instead of the 120w. Also assuming it's a warm day and not too hot or too cold, in which case your battery will be draining itself to keep in operating temperature range.
Then you stop for lunch. Superchargers are very widespread, and almost always are next to food.
No, you do not. You spend 5 minutes in a drive through and get back on the road because you've got things to do. Also, 4 superchargers in this state per Google maps. No clue on other brands of chargers, presume none. Gas stations? Everywhere. Your EV is now dead, the Hybr
Re: gas isn't going anywhere hybrid is fine (Score:2)
I've always wondered... On the off chance that you do drain the battery in an EV. What do you do?
What do you do when your gas car breaks down? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
At current time, all-electric is out for me. Considering that I live about an hour from the nearest decent-sized city, and regularly take a 3 hour drive to my vacation property, where there simply isn't the infrastructure for quickly recharging, I'd probably inevitably wind up stranded eventually. Just last week I had to drive 5 hours to get to my dying aunt, and at the other end, guess what, there wasn't anywhere I could have recharged. Certainly not at the hotel I stayed at, at least.
A hybrid would be
Re: (Score:2)
My next car will almost certainly be all-electric, as I never travel more than 150 miles in a single hop. But I get annoyed when EV zealots try to hand-wave away concerns about range for people who occasionally have to drive long-ish distances.
Electric vehicles make good commuter cars if you live reasonably close to work, but unless you get a very high-range EV and live in an area with a sufficient density of charging stations, they're still pretty impractical for most medium to long-distance travel. Unle
Zealots get annoyed at you... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wow. Please point out where I claimed that EVs can't work for ANYBODY. I started off by stating that my next car will be an EV, and I already mentioned charging stations, which I thought implied superchargers as well. Clearly, I think they'll work well in my own use case, and plenty others like mine.
Re: gas isn't going anywhere hybrid is fine (Score:4, Informative)
The average person is not interested in the hassle of keeping an EV charged
It's really not any hassle. You plug it in when you get home. Ta-da! You will now be keeping your car charged.
(And if you can't reliably park somewhere with a charger, then don't get one. But chargers will get much more common as EVs take off, just like gas stations did when cars took off)
People talking about battery cars keep using the gasoline paradigm where you go somewhere to "refuel". You don't do that with a battery car. Which means you're trading the hassle of an extra trip/stop and pumping your gas for the hassle of pushing in a plug.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Because it isn't actually lined with nails 5% of the time.
The vast majority of drivers don't go on road trips. So, demanding that all electric cars must support road trips as well as a gas car is silly.
The few who need the extra power density (ie. towing, hauling), or virtually unlimited range will still buy gas. And that market is plenty large for car makers to continue to support it.
But we don't need to support that segment with every vehicle.
Re: (Score:2)
I drive a Prius. I think it is an excellent car. I'm sure the driveability feel of the HSD can be improved (it is now very much focused on efficiency, giving rise to the "howling transmission" complaints when people floor it) but overall it is the best transmission out there. Even though, my next car has to be an electric
Re: (Score:2)
all traction is electrical
Nope.
As you point out with the Prius, Series hybrids use 100% electrical only below about 20mph. Above that, they use the gas engine.
Plug-in hybrids can use all electrical until their battery runs out, at which point they behave as series hybrids and use the gas engine above about 20-40mph (varies by car). Also, plug-in hybrids will never use the gas engine to entirely charge the car. It will, at most, charge up the battery about as much as a series hybrid does for initial start from a stoplight.
A Chevy bolt is much closer to this ideal.
The Bolt
Re: (Score:2)
and the batteries have been getting bigger as that tech improves and becomes cheaper.
The battery range on Toyota's plug-in hybrids is something like 20 miles.
The battery range on my 8-year-old Volt is about 40 (in favorable conditions, 30 in unfavorable conditions).
They're behind, even on hybrids.
Re: (Score:2)
I also have a Mirai. There are three H2 stations near me. The car is a bit of a science project, but it works very well. FC failure rates are very low. Much lower than reported battery or motor issues from Tesla. The rest of the car is rock solid. The weakest part is the Michelin tires.
Hybrids that regen break are a must. With a BEV, you can re-purpose the motors and battery. With a FC you can re-purpose the motor, but need an additional small battery. The Mirai has a 1.5 KWh NiMH pack for regen an
Re: (Score:2)