Battery pack upgrade for Prius claims 150MPG
By Conrad Quilty-Harper 
posted October 20th 2007 6:53PM
posted October 20th 2007 6:53PM
[Thanks, I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY]
posted October 20th 2007 6:53PM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Wonderfull and poo to all you nay sayers.
I just hope that this sort of thing (should electrics take off in the future) doesn't lead to the government just making up for lost taxes on oil etc.. by loading on taxes for power consumption.
In the end, they're the ones who will determine how cheap it really is.
I just wish I was close enough to work to pedal it each day.
At 10,000 dollars, the battery pack addition might be worth it.
1) 50 miles without a drop of gasoline..
2) Piece of mind...you wouldn't have to worry at all about the price of oil.
3) Electricity is way cheaper then oil, and it doesn't climb up and up at the drop of a hat.
The price of oil will still be extremely important since probably 90% of the components of and in that vehicle are made from petroleum based products.
The price of electricity will increase greatly if we switch to these crappy electric cars. By the way, Toyota sucks. So does GM.
"It'll cost $9,500 including installation, but half of that could be covered by rebates as part of a new electric cars bill soon to be before Congress."
This is great. The taxpayers will get to pay to improve the Prius, at the expense of those of us that have been driving 36mpg gas cars for years.
@Mark
"3) Electricity is way cheaper then oil, and it doesn't climb up and up at the drop of a hat."
That idea goes against the laws of economics.
Reason:
Majority of electric power is produced from fossils fuels (Coal and Natural Gas) Natural gas goes up in the winter time due to heating, so does coal because more power is used to heat electric powered heaters.
If everyone used only electricity, gasoline would be extremely cheap and electric bills would be through the roof. The only reason oil is ever changing is the giant deamnd for the product. That's everything in the world. It's the simple laws of supply and laws of demand.
Also I hope we don't do what the end of this article says: "Onwards we go, tip toeing towards a petrol-free future."
Tip toeing our way to another form of energy which will have the same extreme price drops and extreme price increases as gasoline does now. The only way to utilize the equalibrium of a market such as power is using every different form to achieve the supply equalibrium. Enviromental wise yes less petrol is good, unforunately the laws of chemistry and physics really aren't completely enviromentally freindly to produce all the other forms of energy we have/want to have.
The interesting part will be in 5 or so years. Prices should drop substantially and upgrading an older prius should be cheaper.
The interesting part is when you get in an accident. The people who buy these things are stupid and I do not think they are very good drivers. Thus, more accidents.
in 5 years you will need another ten grand to replace all the original batteries in the prius and end up filling a landfill with a pile of toxic waste
@thomas There are battery types around that are recyclable. No landfills required. With a sustainable supply of materials worked up, the price of manufacture will fall. You just take your battery to the person that sold you your last one and get credit towards the next set.
or you can just get a diesel jetta (for the amount of that battery pack) that has enough power to spin the tires in first and second gear and get OVER 50 mpg on the highway and doesn't look like a prius...
oh forgot.. you can run a diesel jetta on fuel thats GROWN in america
Ethanol fuel is one of the most environmentally harmful fuel out there. It requires more energy to make the fuel than what you get. I know there have been improvements, but it will never be cost effective in America based on geography, not to mention the starving people who will see their food price jump up because of ethanol. Only reason ethanol is as cheap as it is right now is because tax payers are subsidizing the hell out of it, so we are not paying less, we are paying more. Although oil has jump up to $90 a barrel, ethanol is just not a good way to go, and never will be. We are using food for fuel, and the damage to the environment is huge. So before you get sucked into the idea that it is grown in America, so it must be good, you better damn well know what you're talking about. This ethanol fuel is a catastrophy, and the fact that we are still subsidizing it, wasting billions of dollars as we're in huge debt right now, which is also why the dollar is fallen hence the subsequent increase in the price of oil, we all need to learn the facts. Grown in America, hurting the world.
ETHANOL!!????? thats a total disaster.. DIesel engines run on diesel not ethanol... i am talking about biodiesel.. any oil or waste oil runs in my car and it still gets better fuel mileage than a prius.
Ops, thought you were talking about ethanol, then read that you were talking about diesel.
"tip toeing toward a petrol-free future" !?!?
With the attitude of most car companies and American consumers, it's probably better to say "dragged kicking and screaming toward a petrol-free future."
Not me, of course... I haven't bought a drop of gasoline since early April. I've been driving an electric bike since then, and I'm still doing it, even with the cool weather. I predict I'll stop when the snow actually shows up and sticks on the ground. I calculate that I probably saved over $1200 by not driving an internal combustion car to work, the grocery store, and other places all spring, summer and fall.
But the rest of you can keep driving your SUV to the corner store and enjoy those wonderful gas prices to keep your mobile entertainment center on the road. You gotta have your air conditioning, stereo, TV, electric butt-warmer, and other things, and you're paying for them in gasoline. I might be a little colder than you when I get to work, but I'm also not going to have to stop for gas on the way home.
I also never have a problem finding a parking place, or worse- Paying for a parking place.
I still like having a car, but you can bet as soon as an affordable electric car is on the market, I'll be getting it.
Well aren't you just the bestest person on the planet.
Great! Are there any four passenger electric bikes so that I can fit my whole family on it for those 80km round-trips to see my parents?
"If everyone used only electricity, gasoline would be extremely cheap and electric bills would be through the roof. The only reason oil is ever changing is the giant deamnd for the product. That's everything in the world. It's the simple laws of supply and laws of demand."
This would be true is oil wasn't an inelastic good. Unfortunately Gas is inelastic and even if everyone in the US switched to electric our oil would just be sold to other nations. Now though we are trading one demon for another, which will be taxed heavily at some point so that the government can recoup it's lost income from the eventual decline of Gas sales and it's tax revenue. The upside is that as this is all coming about in the next few decades the technology for "green" energy sources is becoming cheaper. This will mean that energy from wind, water, and sun can be used to generate the energy we need. I know this may sound a bit optimistic, and it is, but I am not expecting this to happen over night. I could see this happening in the next few decades though.
I do want to say that at this time I don't feel that American car drivers are the real pollution problem in the world. Is it a part of the problem, yes, but the real pollution comes from business and factories as well as developing countries such as China which don't have the strict car emission standards we have here.
We don't have strict emission standards. Our standards have fallen in the last 30 years. What we do have is more than half the total pollution of China and less than a third of China's population. We own more cars per person. We pollute more per person.
ever taken a gander at the Dept of Energy website?
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/topworldtables1_2.htm
the net imports of US oil are twice that of the next nearest competitor (japan) and almost 4 times as much as china.
If you count all of china's 3 billion people, sure, but how many of them are actually capable of using the resources that are the cause of the poplution? I would guess at something like .5 to 1 billion people that live on the coastline that is so polluted that it is beginning to reach the US. To cover the whole planet in toxic crap is terrible and not even the US is THAT bad.
We own more cars per person because we can afford to own more cars per person and can afford to clean up most of our mess, all of this comes from the lovely 40,000$ per capita GDP we have compared to China's 1000$, 40X more $ --> better, safer, cleaner, environment in the US.
Hi All,
The guy who I first heard saying cars like this (PHEV's) getting 150 mpg was the Ex CIA director. His point was that 150 mpg is 150 mpg less oil imports. In actuality the MPGE (mpg equivalent) is more like 100 for cars like this, which includes the energy put into the battery, as well as the engine consumption during accelleration and high speed cruise.
Standard gasoline engines (not like the one in the Prius) are horrendously poor in fuel economy at partial load. And that is most of driving. Only accelleration is under fuel efficient loads. Unfortunately, accellerations need to occur quickly, and they send a extra squirt of gas in to go from stop to accelleration in engine only vehicles. Which even kills the efficiency during full load.
Power plant engines are much more efficient as they are specialized and run at a constant RPM. This allows the internal aerodynamics of power plant engines to be finely tuned. 40 to 55 % efficiencies are quoted for these engines. Which is a world of difference than 10 % of an Otto engine creeping along in traffic.
Additionally, gasoline requires electricity in refining. EV people are commonly commenting that that electricy it takes to make a gallon of gasoline, will run an electric car for the same distance as that gasoline in an traditional car. One really does not even need the gas, since motors are that much more efficient than car engines during low speed crusing and traffic accellerations.
Interestingly the linked site says:
this aftermarket kit converts the car into a plug-in hybrid and allows it to run on electric power for the first forty miles of a trip. As you can expect, total gas mileage goes through the roof and company executives claim drivers can easily exceed 150 miles-per-gallon in the city and 100 MPG on the highways.
The logic being (I'm assuming) that citytrips are short and you can recharge and end up seldomly using the gaspowered part of the engine.
Oh and to solve the start/stop thing manufacturers can install flywheels that store the breaking power and use it to accelerate, been tried and tested I hear.
have fun driving 50 miles at 35 miles per hour...
In the NYC area, you'd be lucky to get that fast during rush hour.
OK, that's great. It really is. But, why should Congress be giving away tax dollars to fund your car's upgrade?
where I live the hybrids are cheaper then cars that are not.
I live in ISRAEL. The tax on Cars is 85% and the tax on a hybrids
is 30%. So at the time when you buy your hybrid you have saved
some times over $3000.
I really hate the MPG or KMPL or Liter Per 100 KM or whatever they want to use on hybrids..
None of them tell the real truth that "we eco friendly consumers" put on it.
I would much rather see a whole other measure that tells us something about how much the thing pollutes.
How about a miles pr kg/ton of CO2/lead/other toxins put into the atmosphere?
A car running on electricity still pours out loads of stuff into the atmosphere just not directly but through the powerplant that produces the power i plugs into.
I realise that some places use hydro or nuclear power, but some places use coal or oil that spreads loads of bad stuff into the air.
Using these measure Im sure the hybrid will still win over the regular cars but the playing field will be a much more relevant one than MPG.
TouchSky are you serious? -> *Emissions generated by the production of electricity?*
Um what? Do you even know how a prius produces its electricity? And do you understand that a prius is A HYBRID and not an ELECTRIC car?
Do you really think your saab is more efficient than a prius?
"many studies are beginning to show that the TOTAL COST owner ship is hard on the enrvironment than gasoline driven automobile" - THIS STATEMENT IS COMPLETE BS. and i would like to see proof.
A gasoline engines is only 20% efficient, meaning that it can only use 20% of the energy in liquid gas, the rest goes out your tail pipe. Not to mention engine repairs, clutch repairs, tranny repairs, transmission repairs ETC.
How ever Electric cars use 80% of the energy from a battery or other source, and there is only ONE moving part, The engine which will last a VERY VERY long time.
I dont know where you got your statics from, but they sound ridiculous, kinda of like "weapons of mass distraction" scenario, and you haven't provided any evidence of the weapons, but you claim they are there.
Stick with your saab, gas cars are over rated and we should have never have had them in the first place, electric cars were first anyways :).
Seriously though TouchSky, i would like to see some of this evidence suggesting that owning an electric car is more harmful in the long run than a full gas car (it makes me laugh inside just typing that out..)
First of all, if you want to have this dialog with me, you have to remain civil. Failure to do that will instantly terminate all future responses to your comments.
The total cost of ownership studies on electric hybrids are well known and published. You can google them on your own time. However, lets take a look at what I meant by Total Cost of Ownership.
1) Material Production - This is roughly balanced for body including frame. US safety regulations mandate much of this so there is little variance between vehicle types. However, where there is a imbalance is the battery packs and the cost of recycling the chemicals contained in them.
2) Fuel Usage - Electricity does not magically appear, the Hybrids produce electricity while using the gasoline engine. A proportion of the gas/diesel fuel is consumed to generate electricity, which in turn produces emissions directly related to the electricity stored in the battery packs for later uses. The conversion of potential chemical energy to thermal expansion to mechanical force used to turn a generator that then produces electricity which is then stored in a battery pack for later conversion to mechanical force to move the vehicle is less efficient then then directly using the initial mechanical force to move the vehicle. This is mostly because of lost of energy to friction and resistance in wiring.
So, your gasoline engine which is, as you state, 20% efficient passes on the same efficiency to the electricity it generates for the battery pack on less you obtain electricity from another sources. If the electricity generated is strictly on-board, you will always have a built-in 20% efficiency which will only get worse each time you transform the energy from one form to another. You pointed that out yourself, the battery then loses 20% of the energy that is stored when transformed to mechanical energy.
The proposed 'extra' battery back would seem to indicate the added mileage is a benefit of power grid recharging rather on-board recharging. If that is the case, one has to consider efficiency and the cost of the emissions generated by the power grid to supply the electricity to recharge the battery pack.
Instead of measuring efficiency is miles per gallon, we really need to look at the problem at BTU used per mile. This will actually capture a more accurate picture of the overall efficiency of the vehicle.
The reason the Pirus is fuel efficient is not that power train system is more efficient but in the way the Pirus shuts down the gasoline engine when it is not needed allowing the vehicle to use stored electricity. This makes a huge difference in energy efficiency for city travel when large amounts of time a vehicle is running is spent idling or slow moving traffic. Needless to say, this is a well understood problem that is neatly expressed in the difference between city and highway mileage. In fact, if I read the article right, the Prius gets getter city mileage than highway which is a reflection of the engineering design of the power transfer system.
As I said, the hybrids are not all they claim to be and I am sure that you can google up the studies that show the problems I have attempted to outline in this message.
You've given some good pointers. I would like to give some evidence you might take into consideration as well. The comparison between material costs you give are likely accurate, however one thing does need to be taken into consideration; the operational life of the battery. This website http://www.hybridcars.com/faq.html provides information on hybrid batteries, and includes a discussion about the lifetime of the batteries. Basically, they last a long, long time, and are NiMh batteries which are environmentally friendly. Since the introduction of the Prius, their batteries have not had to be replaced because of "wear and tear" (perhaps the wording is specific because they are replaced due to accidents). This website http://www.buchmann.ca/Article16-Page1.asp talks about battery recycling, and confirms NiMh batteries are considered environmentally friendly unless there are high concentrations if nickle. So, considering some cars have well known problems with engine, transmission, and other equipment failures that require replacement all too quickly, the material cost would likely go down if all cars were to be immediately replaced with hybrids.
And actually, electricity does "magically appear" in this case. I don't know if all hybrids are designed this way, but several of them are. As you break and any time you are coasting, the momentum is somehow converted into electricity used to recharge the battery. So while I am coasting and breaking down a hill, the gasoline engine turns off and the momentum is converted to stored electricity, meaning gravity is creating the electricity. While I have no direct data on how much of this is done, the efficiencies that have been quoted thus far have not taken regenerative breaking into consideration, and the overall efficiency of the vehicle may very well be over 20%.
The way in which the electric motor uses the stored energy is much more efficient than the combustion process in the gasoline engine is. For example, only 20% of the energy in gasoline may be used to move the car, but 90% of the energy stored in the battery may be used to move the car (example numbers, I don't have electric motor efficiency numbers in front of me, I just know it is much more efficient from previously read articles and discussions with individuals in various science fields). Also, you talk about the pollution from producing energy from other places which are put into the power grid, and then used to power the car. Well, it would depend on which method of creating the energy was used wouldn't it. For example, what if hydro generation, wind energy, solar panels, etc., were used to charge the batteries? They have a much higher efficiency than gasoline engines, produce much less pollution, and therefore a higher efficiency would be transfered to the battery from the very beginning with a lower cost to the environment. In fact scientists have discovered a way to increase solar panel efficiency by a tremendous amount. Previous solar panels used to require many photons to produce one electron, and now new experimental panels only require one photon to create many electrons. If nothing but solar panels were used to recharge the battery in a purely electric car, not only would the efficiency be tremendous, the cost to the environment would only be the cost to recycle them after 10 or more years, with the likelihood being on the more side. None of these ideas are far fetched either, they are being developed right now as well as cars to take advantage of them.
You say that the power train isn't more efficient, yet proceed to say it is more efficient because it turns the gasoline engine off. The whole system makes the car move, and so it is all considered part of the power train. If using the battery was not more efficient than the gasoline engine, then how else do you explain the increase in gas mileage? I'm still using less gasoline, no matter how you look at it. I just bought a Prius, and my MPG jumped nearly 3 times what it was in the previous car, and it is still more efficient than the most gutless 3 or 4 cylinder car available at this time.
That is all of the data, thoughts, and evidence I have to offer. If you want to think that your Saab is just as efficient or more efficient than a hybrid, then you have all rights to think that way. However looking at all of the changes that are happening right now in energy development, storage, and usage, your Saab is going to be far and above more harmful/wasteful then any hybrid or pure electric car.
The battery pack is wall charged, so the electricity does not magically appear.
At present, the TCO and environmental impact for hybrids still exceeds traditional vehicles. What the future may bring is anyone's guess, but I suspect eventually, the hybrids will surpass traditional cars.
Compared to my 5.2 liter, V-8 pickup, the SAAB is very efficient, but I live in the country and need a powerful vehicle for moving horses from time to time.
As for hybrids, I will wait for the technology to mature and development of vehicles that are able to meet my needs.
Just switching from Gas to Electricity does not mean it is clean. Most of the Electricity today in US does not come from renewable sources. The renewable portion is approximately 5%.
Another factor to consider is the cost of the electricity per mile vs cost of gas per mile.
I live in québec city where we have the lowest electricity prices in the world because of all our dams. Filling up the battery would cost me next to nothing. We still complain about the price of it though , people are never happy.
The Prius is hideous, inside and out. Toyota could do a much better job. Love the function, hate the form. If you want to say they look good, you are biased and obviously own one. Yes I care about the looks of my vehicle, Prius doesn't and there is nothing wrong with that.
Isn't this basically the exact same thing as the Chevy volt concept? At 20k + 10k it certainly gives hope that the volt will come in under 30k like they're hoping. Also I noticed 50 miles of city driving, I take it I'm not going to be getting on the freeway with this?
It's not the static numbers that matter, it's the rate of growth. China's economy is growing at a record rate and is poised to be an economic world power in the next decade. With this growth comes a large number of people who can now afford cars along with factories that create huge amounts of pollution.
For more info on the topic check out this link.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html
Why would anyone want to stop using petroleum?
Great! With all the gas-money you save you can purchase "cadmium-offsets" to mitigate the environmental impact of purchasing a prius + even more batteries.