Toyota Motor is backing off from electric vehicles and focusing on hybrids, with plans to offer 21 new or redesigned hybrid models by 2015. It sells one electric vehicle now, the pricey Rav4 EV. It had planned to sell thousands of a second, small electric vehicle, but now it only intends to sell about 100 of them to to governments and “selected users in Japan and the U.S.” According to Reuters, Toyota says it “misread the market and the ability of still-emerging battery technology to meet consumer demands.”Emphasis mine. Bubba can confirm this, but barring something extraordinary happening, 20 years from now, we'll still be talking about battery technology as "still-emerging." And 20 years after that.
"The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society's needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge," said, [Takeshi] Uchiyamada, who spearheaded Toyota's development of the Prius hybrid in the 1990s.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
It's Electric, So Frantically Hectic
Toyota tells the truth:
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11 comments:
Mark--exactly right. For electric to be competitive, the energy density of batteries really needs to go up by an order of magnitude, along with their reliability. Given that we're already using the lightest material possible for the batteries, count me skeptical that this will happen.
That also assumes, of course, that those working with gasoline don't make similar advances. To be fair, at about 25% Carnot efficiency, they are limited in what they can do, but if you can get a moderate improvement at a fraction of the cost of the new technology, the new technology will generally be dead.
And shame on engineers and executives at GM and Nissan for not making this point. It shows how corrupting government money is.
It depends a little bit on your definitions, but I think that in general terms you are wrong. Right now, the old-fashioned lead-acid battery is good enough for electric cars if equipped with an onboard charging system. They are called "plug-in hybrids" but they are actually electric cars. Lithium batteries are vastly more efficient and in limited production use. Again, with an onboard charging system, they are more efficient than most gas engines. I can't wait for somebody to duplicate the testbed of 10 years ago, using a small gas turbine engine and an aircraft generator to recharge those batteries.
It won't take 10 years to get those the zinc-air batteries out of the lab, either. The same or less weight as lithium, twice the energy density and recharges in about an hour, as I recall. And General Motors already has (or had) a testbed chassis using a fuel cell to produce electricity from gasoline or methanol or hydrogen. If government would get out of the way, innovation and the free market would solve this problem. If not, it may indeed take 20 years or more.
J. Ewing
J. Ewing; it is feasible, engineering-wise, but does it make economic sense? More or less, the extra cost of the hybrid system--mild or full--needs to be offset by some sort of savings.
It works for mining equipment, locomotives, and possibly city taxis. Other systems, not so much.
Check out the release from Tesla Motors yesterday - cars with either 150 or 300 mile range depending on model that will recharge in 30 minutes. And they are building a network of grid positive(puts more electricity into the grid than it uses to charge cars) solar recharging stations that vehicle owners can charge their cars at for free, forever. Could be just the game-changer you are looking for...
It is feasible because the recharging system engine (especially that gas turbine) operate at peak efficiency all the time, much higher than a gas auto engine. And the electric drive system can be more efficient than the mechanical drive train, as well as lasting far longer. Higher initial cost, lower maintenance and operating costs.
J. Ewing
Could be just the game-changer you are looking for...
Not until Tesla bends the cost curve waaaaay down. Last I looked, a Tesla goes for $50-110K, which is not in the market for most drivers.
To further define things, the game changer for electrics and hybrids is when the fuel saved generates an ROI of 20% or more for the propulsion system. Absent that, it's technically, but not economically, feasible.
I'd love for some such game changer to come up, but as of yet, I just don't see it.
mr D hits it. its not miles per charge, or MPG. its all about power per dollar.
Tesla should stick to Heavy Metal Music!
"Not until Tesla bends the cost curve waaaaay down."
Mark,
Isn't that always the case with new technologies. We are all old enough to remember $600 to %1000 dollar microwaves that weighed about 80 pounds, $700 dollar VCRs, $1000 cell phones that sucked and needed back packs to carry, etc. But there is always a collection of geeks (I mean that in a good way) who have to be the first to own something, regardless of price and practicality. And thank God for them, because they fund the bending down of the cost curve and the dramatic improvements that are almost always right around the proverbial corner.
Making fun of or disdaining the Leaf, or Tesla Motors misses the point. Without them, and their predecessors, we'd have ice boxes and crank phones.
Regards,
Dick
But there is always a collection of geeks (I mean that in a good way) who have to be the first to own something, regardless of price and practicality. And thank God for them, because they fund the bending down of the cost curve and the dramatic improvements that are almost always right around the proverbial corner.
My dad was one of those. He bought a Texas Instruments calculator in 1974 for about $150, which is about $700 in today's dollars. You can get a calculator that does more nowadays for about five bucks. For $700, you can get a very good laptop.
The difference is we're talking about a different type of technology in this case. The problem remains batteries for these cars and the technology available for making batteries better is a long ways off. The problem is that batteries still require chemical reactions and that limits their effectiveness in the ways an electric vehicle needs to run.
Tesla may get there eventually, but they aren't going to be close to being able to offer a mass-market version of their vehicle that an average schlub can afford for a long time. And we need to be honest about that.
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