If you can't drive a Chevy Volt, drive a plug-in Prius

6/20/2011 11:40 PM EDT

Toyota says you can go on the order of 13 miles in the EV only mode, and I confirmed that in my driving (sometimes around 14 miles). As for speed, Toyota lists 100 km/hr, which is about what I achieved on a level highway (62 mph).

6/20/2011 11:36 PM EDT

This is a Toyota Prius model available in "early" 2012. It is not an aftermarket modification, so there are no warranty issues.

6/18/2011 10:03 PM EDT

This is the typical "continue to do what we have been doing, only more efficiently, forever and we will find a way to keep it going" mentality.

The plug-in hybrid is a transition to the electrification of transportation.

You can forget about driving using fossil fuels for anyone other than the wealthy. Those days of the middle class and the poor burning cheap gasoline are soon coming to an end, no matter how efficient your three-banger is.

Intermittent renewables coupled to EVs with big batteries using a bi-direction smart grid is just about the only practical option available for continued private, powered transportation.

Of course, we can always go back to bicycles, horses, walking, etc.

Those that think fossil fuels will not be going down the bell curve within the next few decades are living a dream.

I call it "head-in-sand" syndrome.

6/21/2011 7:48 AM EDT

More effecient internal combustion engines are definitely needed (to make the oil we have go further), but to say that the other choices aren't fit for engineers is a bit much. People are trying to do what they can to make a positive difference. Maybe the PROs of "feel good" outweight the CONs of "it doesn't add up" because of the intangible.

6/22/2011 8:57 AM EDT

The best bet would probably be to charge an EV from home solar.

A home-charged EV is very approximately the equivalent of buying gas at 50 cents/gallon. That in the sense that, if you start with two otherwise-approximately-equivalent cars (say Nissan Versa and Leaf), put 100 miles of gas into the gasoline car, and 100 miles of KWhr into the EV, then if you paid for the gas what you paid for the electricity, it works out to around 50 cents/gallon. Obviously that depends upon many factors, such as electric rates in your particular area.

The Prius drive train is very reliable, and is not expensive to maintain. I find it very odd that many sources (e.g., a lot of German Automotive makers) describe its power-split-device-based drive system as "complicated." Totally the opposite: It's just a planetary gear and two motor/generators. That as opposed to a typical transmission with ... what? a few dozen gears, torque converters, etc? I'll agree that it's "complicated" to *understand* at first, but if anything, it's a *simpler* mechanism, not more complex.

6/22/2011 11:04 AM EDT

Charging up your EV from solar is hardly feasible. Solar will not give you the amount of energy needed to recharge your EV.

6/22/2011 11:37 AM EDT

Mr88cet, here are a few numbers. We'll use my commute and location (VA) for the exercise. I commute 40 mi/day round trip. If I had a Prius, it might take one gallon of gas. Gas contains 35 MJ/L of energy, so my trip requires 133 MJ. A solar panel here receives about 5 kWh/day/m^2. That's 18 kJ/day/m^2. I'd need about 7,400 square meters of solar collection. That's about 86 meters on a side. I happen to have a spare 7,400 m^2; many people don't. On the other hand, I don't have the purchase price of those solar panels by any means. So, to charge your car entirely solar, you'd need both land and also capital. This isn't a solution for most people. Charging your car from the mains is a different discussion. I leave it to others to figure out the cost. I will point out that charging from the mains merely moves the actual generation of energy to another point, with attendant efficiencies.

6/22/2011 12:53 PM EDT

Bob: I think that's 18 MJ per KWh, isn't it? that makes about 7.4 square meters, say 37 KWh or 48 horsepower hours, which sounds about right.
Charles Grimm

6/22/2011 1:44 PM EDT

Charles, you are right, I cannot multiply. In my defense, I was doing it in my car on an envelope while driving to work at only 20 miles per gallon. I'm off by a factor of 1000, and it is specifically converting 5 Kwh to joules that I made the mistake. Still, that's a bunch of solar area, not good for apartment dwellers. I wonder what a reasonably efficient 7.5 sq. meter solar array would cost, along with installation, conversion to 120 AC, etc... I'm afraid to make the estimate. ;-)

6/23/2011 4:57 PM EDT

37 KWh in your area would be about %15,000. Panels and inverters are expensive. I've worked with EV's and hybrids for years, small vehicles see less benefit than large vehicles on a cost basis, (My $12,000 Saturn manual gets 40+ mpg), but big trucks could save $15,000/year if they go hybrid. Sorry, I can't tell you how I know that :).
CG

6/22/2011 10:52 AM EDT

Mr Jokr:
I will not get into your "social policy" complaints. But why are you assigning any blame to engineering for whatever complaint you have about costs, or social issues. Since when engineering was supposed to provide solutions to social economics, or social justice?
Engineering is about coming up with technical solutions to a problem, even if the "problem" is a "pseudo-problem". Example: recall the origins of cell phones? Had it not been for those "bricks", we would not have today's cell phones. Also, if it was not for engineering, we would be able to find microwave ovens for $30 today, would we? Then again, following your idea, who needs a microwave oven?

6/22/2011 1:38 PM EDT

I've driven a Prius for five years, have a master's in engineering and another in economics.

Read a book, and get your facts straight before you throw your necon bull on this site.

6/22/2011 1:56 PM EDT

Jose_engineer: could you tell us what bearing these facts have on the discussion? (a) that you've driven a Prius for five years; (b) that you have a master's degree in engineering; and (c) another in economics? If and when you present your facts and conclusions, then if your assumptions, data, and conclusions survive scrutiny you may be in a position to label other people's opinions "bull", even though it's rather impolite to phrase your dissent quite like that. Presenting your credentials is neither here nor there: these columns are loaded with credentialed individuals.

6/23/2011 11:03 AM EDT

This entire argument is based on the false assumption that our electric utilities will always be coal/oil based. While currently this is (mostly) true, without electric cars, the conversion can never be made at all. And, as has been pointed out, you can, indeed, charge it at home on solar without any dependence on the grid at all. Between the car and the panels you'll be out $40K+, but that's certainly do-able.

6/23/2011 11:32 AM EDT

Well, first off, they are not all that much oil, but certainly coal: fossil fuels. Then some nukes and hydroelectric. Other than widespread nukes, there isn't much way to get electricity into the grid, electric cars or not. As far as charging at home being do-able, it is, technically. But how many people can afford that sort of outlay, and how many have the area needed (15 m^2?) to set up panels? So do-able perhaps technically, but as a practical matter, no great number of people are going to be charging their electric cars from solar or wind or tide... it's just not practical. But electric cars founder more on range and cost issues. Someplace in this thread I mis-calculated the solar cell area needed for a 40 mile commute in a Prius. Charles Grimm (are you there? ;-) corrected my wildly absurd result down to 7.5 m^2 under the best conditions. But let's also look at the way an all-electric vehicle will store the energy of one gallon of gas, about 133 MJ. Suppose you use a sensible energy method, that is used on some city buses, supercapacitors. Then at 240 VDC, you need about 4600 farads, and at 600 about 750 farads. Those are available; you can actually dump braking energy into them; they charge ~ten times faster than batteries, but: they cost a fortune. (Maxwell will sell them to you ready to go: 125 VDC; 63F, fan cooled and data bus. They weigh 120 pounds. They store 143 Wh. You'll need a bunch of them.) I don't know what they cost: probably hefty. They are used on city buses where the cost over 12 years must be minimized, but for cars? Not quite yet. Perhaps when charging takes 7 minutes (the time of one cartoon) we'll see some appreciable fraction of the driving community turn to the electric car with good reason. Meanwhile, we have a chicken-and-egg problem that won't go away by wishing.

7/6/2011 12:37 PM EDT

How are you going to charge your car at home on solar if your car is parked at work during the day?

8/8/2011 12:58 PM EDT

Thank you for exposing the emperor's lack of clothes. It is always more efficient to consume the fuel at the point of use, rather than convert it and suffer additonal transmission costs. Besides, the infrastructure for handling liquid fuels is ubiquitous and efficient...

12/30/2011 4:59 PM EST

Today's hybrids, plug-in or otherwise, are definitely "feel-good" designs. However, these early ventures into something other than pure liquid fuel are necessary steps on the road to propulsion future. Back in the early eighties, I could buy a Chevy Sprint and get a legitimate 50 Mpg. That's amazing even by today's standards, but vehicle requirements are different now and will continue to diverge from the old "go there" boxes.

The first DVD players, flat screen TVs, refrigerators, microwaves and computers were difficult, if not impossible to cost justify. But the practice lead to the ubiquitous products that we have today.

Hybrids or even pure battery powered vehicles may eventually disappear, but they're really part of the process of getting to where we need to be.

6/21/2011 5:15 PM EDT

I don't think there are many people here criticizing the Prius, per se. The reason you and most owners like it is that it fits your driving needs and Toyota built it. If you had my vehicle requirements, you'd not have a Prius; that's not an argument for or against hybrids. The arguments for hybrids are founded either on economy (which is dubious given the purchase price for a small vehicle) or on feel-good social blather about carbon footprints and saving the whale and so on, which is just hot air. So a Prius serves you well: great. Will it save the planet? No. What I would like is to hear a plausible scenario for a vehicle not powered by fossil fuels. You can skip electric anything: the technology to run the US fleet with any overall efficiency doesn't exist. Coal gasification? Fossil fuel, that. Sunlight? On Mercury, maybe. Wind to electricity to your battery? Hopeless. Really, really small nuke in your car for a steam engine? Sure. For the moment, we're stuck with lots of burnt petroleum.

6/22/2011 10:22 AM EDT

Obviously I am driving the Prius plug-in now in warmer summer weather. Fully charged, the gas engine does not come on when starting. Even in the EV mode, during the first 13 miles you are on electric-only power, you can maintain highway speeds up to about 60+ mph. If you stomp the "gas" pedal for high acceleration, the gas engine may come on.

6/22/2011 11:48 AM EDT

Tim: yes, technologies need time to mature, but sometimes the alternatives such as fossil fuel have so much headstart that the "newer better" ideas don't get off the ground. Until, of course, the time is ripe. But how shall users modify their habits? This is a sticky point. People won't be forced; they tried that with Prohibition. People change their habits when an attractive alternative arises, and the hybrid car isn't a universal attraction. Nor have we seen an all-electric car that could address more than a niche market.

6/22/2011 11:44 AM EDT

Dan, for the most part you are correct. But two points. One is that zinc-air batteries don't need both active species to be carried, and some interesting work is being done with zinc-air systems. Have a look at www.llnl.gov/str/pdfs/10_95.1.pdf. This is a neat battery, we'll see how it makes out. My second point is that many battery costs are hidden: they are not necessarily clean to build nor dispose of, and of course, they have a finite life.

6/23/2011 9:54 AM EDT

Hmm, I don't think anyone here is criticizing the Prius as an engineering product. Indeed, it's hard to criticize Toyota products in general. I have had three Toyotas, and that's only because I totaled one when I took a sled ride down my toboggan run of a driveway and came to rest with an interference spacing between a tree and my front end. I want my cars, generally, to be built in the US, and be marked "Toyota" or "Honda". This is on the basis of maintenance, quality of construction, and durability. The Prius doesn't suit my needs, but it certainly falls under the Toyota quality umbrella. The discussions here are really about the value of a hybrid drive vehicle, or an all-electric vehicle.