Comments on: Report: Toyota to mass-produce plug-ins in 2012

The first plug-in Priuses will be tested next year with plans at Toyota to mass-produce plug-in vehicles in 2012, according to a report in the Nikkei.

[Jack K1]

All I want is a plug-in that goes 60mph with a range of 40 miles. Is that so much to ask? And I don't want anything with a gas tank or internal combustion engine. Overnight recharge is fine, but I would like the ability to set the recharge start-time so I can take advantage of off-peak power rates.

I'll want something beefier in about 10 years, but for now I can use one of my existing gasoline powered cars for longer hauls.

[lkrupp]

How much are you willing to pay? The Volt is rumored to go for $40,000.00 with the onboard generator. Not exactly a car for the "people". Battery technology (specifically the lack of) is the big boogieman waiting to snuff out affordable all-electric vehicles. And do you really think your employer is going to let you plug in your vehicle while at work...for free? This technology will also require a complete revamp of infrastructure to accommodate recharging. How much more electricity will be needed on the grid? How much more coal, oil, and natural gas will have to be discovered, minded, and burned to take up the slack for gasoline? If you run out of gas a tow truck can bring you a couple of gallons so you can get to a filling station. Not so with an all electric vehicle. Any assistance will require something to recharge your batteries. That will take a significant amount of time and will be expensive as well. It will probably be cheaper to just tow the vehicle to a charging station where you will wait hours for a minimal charge to get on the road again. With a 40 mile range you will see a sea of stranded vehicles on the side of the road. That's just how people are. They will forget to plug it in, think they have enough charge to make it to the grocery store, and wind up along the side of the road instead. Simple human nature.

Yes, such a transition is possible but it will be hard, costly, and time consuming. For now all electric vehicles (like the Tesla, for example) will remain prohibitively expensive. Unless and until a major breakthrough in electricity storage or generation occurs shortly the nirvana of electric cars is a ways off yet in my opinion.

[Dalmatian28]

Ok....I would raise the top speed to 70 mph but I do agree with the rest what you have wrote! I will never be able to figure out why GM Volt will cost $40 K. Yes, battery are expensive but still...it is just a anther car! In this crappy economy GM is placing another of its products out of the reach of most working class families and that is exactly who their primary customers are! I can't see GM ever coming out of bankruptcy with this type of business model! I just hope Toyota can deliver this car with price tag under $25 K and my conscience will be perfectly fine when I drive next to the GM dealership! I didn't purchase American because I couldn't afford our stupid car!!!!!!

[willdryden]

Watch ebay for toyota Rav4-EVs or Ford Ranger-EVs. The Fords are cheaper although they use the same batteries. The range is shorter because the Ford is heavier.

[sartor1]

I think the transition away from gasoline powered cars to Hybrid, and ultimately Electric is VERY exciting! FINALLY after all of these years, we are getting some innovation! It's No wonder GM went under! They had no innovation! They HAD an electric car years ago too, and Let it die.. That's good management! America, the GM employees, and the cities they live in and manufacture cars in have and are suffering.. Thanks GM! DON'T Keep up that bad work! Let's get some innovation, and sell cars here and around the world!

I am still wondering how long it will take for an electric car to compete in Nascar races!! Or will they disallow them? Or have separate races for them?

[willdryden]

It would have to be a separate race. The nature of electric drive would give them too much advantage.

[wfolta]

Hybrids, like the Prius, will be around for quite some time.

The obvious reason is that we have tens of thousands of gas stations and an infrastructure to support gasoline, and it's highly compact and quickly "rechargeable". And, of course, all-electric vehicles have too short of a range to actually count on. Things happen, plans change, detours occur, and you don't want a car that simply cannot do what you need it to do when you need it to do it.

The less obvious reason is: how many of us can actually plug a car in at home? We live in a condo, and there's no place to plug in. Same for apartment dwellers, of course. Same for many townhouse owners who do not have a garage and do not park their car directly in front of their house. And the idea of being able to plug our car in at a gas-station-like charge-station and recharge it in a few minutes is a pipe dream. So many of us are simply locked out of the plugin market for quite some time.

[mlamonica]

Well, there's always the plug-in *hybrid* market. It's the same idea as a hybrid where the car optimizes between gas/battery power and recharges the battery partially with regenerative braking. The difference is more stored battery power to play with.

[willdryden]

Hybrids will be around until the fast charge stations are installed. It is not a pipe dream and is being tested as we speak (type) right now. If your condo and other apartment owners want to keep tenents, they will start installing at least 120V charging spots. There is no reason right now because there are no cars. When people start asking, it will happen.

[Man_vs_City]

Instead of waiting hours for a recharge of spent batteries, an intelligent re-charging infrastructure would have replacement batteries as an option. Quick replacement would take minutes, as opposed to hours for a recharge. Pull into the charging station, replace the batteries, drive away.

[Dave Reckoning]

The sad truth is the plug-in hybrid dream will remain out of reach for vast numbers of people, either because they can't afford them or the use scenarios don't match their living arrangements or lifestyle. By the way, does anyone think the world will have recovered from the Great Recession by 2012 enough to make a plug-in Prius a smash sales phenomenon?

But this is beside the point, and the point is hybrids promote the continuation of car culture, and our reliance on the car transportation paradigm...in the U.S. at least. Wouldn't it be better to pour our efforts into changing the country's transportation infrastructure to something more energy efficient and sustainable? Light rail, train transport, water transport used to have a HUGE place in the U.S. transportation portfolio before oil & automobile companies made car transport so cheap and easy to obtain.

Well now that the world's oil supply is about half gone, and ever more expensive to extract, everyone wants to "go electric". That would have been a good idea 30 years ago, when oil was still plentiful and cafe standards were still aggressive, but that ship has sailed. Millions of Americans have already started to realize that walking, biking, or using public transportation is preferable to skyrocketing gas prices and plug-ins that cost tens of thousands of dollars to buy. Will plug-ins be massed produced? Yes. Will there be a market for them in the short-term? Sure. Will they keep car culture from going away? Probably not.

[willdryden]

I think that by 2012 the ONLY cars selling will be hybrids ( either Prius style or Volt style) and electrics. People will not be able to make car payments and pay for gas to go anywhere at the same time.

[Joe Real]

By the time Toyota mass produces their plug-ins, they are already very late in the game. GM-Volt from the newly approved New GM would be on its 2nd or 3rd generation, costing a lot lower than the 1st gen GM-Volt. Aptera may have risen in popularity. Perhaps the Tesla S and Fisker Karma would have tremendously reduced their prices by then. Thanks to the competition and the pioneers of Silicon Valley, primarily the Tesla Motors who showed that it was possible for electric cars to be superior than the ICE cars.

Toyota's 18 mile electric range would be pathetic compared to what will be out there at that time, unless Toyota will make options for longer mileage using larger battery packs along with the increased prices for comparison with others. Toyota has never been an active proponent of Lithium Ion batteries and have been dragging their feet about its adoption but instead advocating NiMH. Now, when they have decided to go with Li-Ion, it is very late in the game. They have just started their test fleets when other companies are almost done with retooling. They lost three years in this game.

Yes we need to worry about supplying power with the influx of these plug-ins, be it hybrid or pure BEV's. And the best solution is obvious, but still in its perpetually high priced as well. In order to minimize their impact, incentives for solar along with the purchase of plug-in EV's should be encouraged. Solar PV and EV's are a perfect match without straining much of our grid. A 4 kW peak capacity solar panel at an average 5.6 sunshine hours should give you more than 100 mile range each day on your EV that uses 200 WH per mile. If your commuting roundtrip is just 40 miles per work day, you would have power to spare for others who are not fortunate enough to install solar PV.

So when you buy plug-ins in the very near future, you might as well install solar PV whenever you can. Buy US manufactured EV and US manufactured solar PV, and you will be helping the US economy at the same time.

[raywkirk]

Wow! And for ONLY 30,000 DOLLARS (or more) you can get a 4kW peak capacity solar panel!
Great solution! (BG)

[ddarovsky]

Interesting post Joe Real. I am working on solar charging stations right now at Friends of the Earth SF for the summer. We are targeting businesses and for them, after doing a sensitivity analysis, there is great positive value that is accrued to them from such an investment. You seem to know a good amount about the intersection of PV and EV. Do you have a website or some contact info? We are doing outreach now and always welcome any support!
Thanks,
Dan

[willdryden]

Raywkirk, your numbers must be dated. I just had a quote of $22,500. for a 5kW grid-tied system installed. Tack on the 30% federal tax rebate and that brings the actual cost down to $15,750. The break even point for me is 7.5 years if I do NOT drive electric. As 98% of my driving IS electric, the break even point is 3.9 years.

[Joe Real]

Dan, you have very sensible project. I commend you for that. I have figured a long time ago that we can be independent of oil for our transportation and household needs. I have been tracking the progress of the various alternative energy industries. These are just my personal interests and not my main job, and I am able to digest these as well as do all simulations and sensitivity analysis because of strong mathematical, engineering and computer background. I have built many life cycle analysis models and also dealt with agricultural systems modeling in my previous careers so I am comfortable dealing with the integration of various knowledge that surround my interests. Unfortunately, my website is unrelated to these topics. If you can post your website in reply to this, I would be able to contact you.

[Joe Real]

Willdryden, can you share with us the company who offered the quote? Just the company name and address would suffice. My main rant with the solar PV industry is that while production costs are dramatically way down, and there's reported oversupplies of some panels, the low cost hasn't reached the retail outlet. Most installers are bagging the money difference, even the ease of installation of these newer panels that can speed up the installation, the quoted price hasn't dropped down low enough to reflect the price trends from the manufacturing side. It is like that they knew you're going to have those big rebates, so they did not pass on the lower costs, and hoard all the savings in terms of low cost and ease of labor installation, for themselves.

If I were to install the solar PV myself, I've been quoted with about $3K-$3.5K/kW peak capacity before rebates, which is economically viable for our electric rates ( retail $ value of electricity produced from these panels will be greater than or equal to the principal and finance charges on after-rebate price). However, your quote is very attractive, it is $4,500/kW installed before rebates. I haven't found such a rate yet and am glad you mentioned this. The usual quotes that I can get are typically in the $6K-$10K/kW peak capacity which is actually proportional to the degree of the overhead and marketing expenses of the company.

If we have solar PV and plug-in EV, we are not simply exchanging the oil companies with your energy utility company. And do we know for sure that the majority owners of our for-profit electric utility companies are not the same set of people that are running the show on oil? The current for-profit electric utility companies would love the coming of the plug-in EV's, expect the prices of electricity to increase. But if we have solar PV installed, rated for our household and travel needs, we would be almost independent of our energy needs, not simply exchanging one form of energy manipulator with another.

[born_yesterday]

plug-in for $40,000? not a chance...

[BSinton]

In America I understand that a large part of your electricity is produced in coal burning plants.

The electricity is then converted into chemical energy in the battery and then into mechanical energy.
Have heard that the energy required to get the mechanical energy via electricity is more than from petrol . Probably more pollution from the coal than from petrol as well.

I wonder what the life expectancy is of the rather expensive battery is.It could end up an expensive route to take.

[Joe Real]

Electricity from coals to power the modern electric cars have a lot lesser carbon footprint per mile than from petrol powered cars. Most life cycle analysis have shown this. The biggest bonus is that the emmissions from coal-fired power plants are point sources and easier to control and much more economical to deal with than the non-point sources from tailpipe emissions of ICE cars.

Why should we limit ourselves with electricity from coals only? At today's production cost of sub $1/watt of solar PV, the solar arrays would be a lot cheaper to build than nuclear fusion power plants for the same power without cost overruns and about 5 times quicker too. Those of Stirling energy systems are operational as each module is setup, unlike coal plants and nuclear plants which needed many years of completion before you can see power generation.

There are even cheaper technologies that can provide baseload power supply using molten salt technology that would allow a solar power plant to sustain power generation at 24x7.

Electricity would be a win-win for these new generation of cars. We can continue to develop cheaper and cleaner technologies of generating electricity without burning coal or petrol or building more nuclear power plants that have no viable solution for nuclear waste disposal.

[fredtheviking]

Perhaps Toyata is becoming complacent and isn't willing make a big bet on Plug-ins. But if I can get a Plug-in that goes 12 miles on electric for $25,000. Has over overall fuel economy improvement and feature improvements. I would say this is pretty good. I think Toyota will do well with the Plug-in. Consider the completion will have plug-ins first but it will be more expensive to get one.

[willdryden]

The real problem is that Toyota is still not convinced that lithium batteries can deliver the reliability that Toyota purchasers expect. They can not use NiMH batteries in plug-in vehicles as Chevron controls the patents.