Toyota Going 100% Hybrid

[dpc]

For you VFD enthusiasts, here's a press clipping indicating that Toyota says the cost of producing hybrids are dropping and they expect 100% of their cars to be hybrids by 2020.

http://www.motorauthority.com/cars/toyota/toyota-cutting-hybrid-costs/

 

[itsmoked]

2020.. Sheesh. And GM still has nada. Pathetic!

Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.-

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[Skogsgurra]

Sorry to be such a Besserwisser, but GM has (or had, I think five or six years ago) an H2 program. The guys at the Global Alternative Propulsion Centre in Rochester N.Y. did lots of research. I know, I was there to discuss the air system and the drives for it.

GM didn't go for hybrids then. Their thinking is that you have to team with the gasoline guys. So, they were using the reformer technique to pull hydrogen out of ordinary gas. That way, the infrastructure is already in place. Then, as the H2 technology matures and more and more H2 "pumps" are available, they planned to make more and more cars without the reformer.

I really have to read up on this. Anyone has updated information?

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

--------------------------------------
100 % recycled posting: Electrons, ideas, finger-tips have been used over and over again...

 

[dpc]

My personal opinion is that GM has been touting hydrogen to avoid having to actually do anything substantive.

There are just way too many problems with hydrogen - it doesn't make any sense, especially since the hydrogen has to come from hydrocarbons in the first place.

But this is probably a subject for another forum so forgive my ranting. I only posted this here because of the electric motor/VFD angle. I suspect Toyota is now the largest seller of VFD-driven equipment in the world, and only getting bigger.

 

[LionelHutz]

I thought that too dpc - for a number of reasons hydrogen just doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

[stevenal]

Isn't Saturn still part of GM? They've been advertising hybrids.

 

[dV8r]

Hybrids are one of the BIGGEST scams of the the time!

http://www.machinedesign.com/ASP/vi...91&strSite=MDSite&Screen=CURRENTISSUE&CatID=3

If you can believe Leland Teschler.
It takes MORE energy to produce a vehical than what it will use in its life, but you will not hear this in a "green" circle.

 

[cswilson]

dV84:

While the point is well taken that you must consider total energy costs and not just user gasoline purchases, the study cited by Teschler is just ridiculous. Look at the study directly, as Teschler encourages you to do -- an easy Google search will find it.

First, use your basic engineering BS detector with some order-of-magnitude calculations. The study assigns a lifetime cost of $325,000 to a Prius (at only 100,000 miles!). Given that a Prius owner is extremely unlikely to spend much over $50,000 total on the car over this entire lifetime, the obvious question is where this other money comes from. Or as one Prius owner put it, "Who do I write to in order to thank them for the quarter-million dollars?"

Look at some of the technical assumptions -- large among them assigning a 100k mile lifetime to the Prius and a 300k mile lifetime to the Hummer. I guess that's because everyone knows that GM cars are 3 times as reliable as Toyotas... At first, the low value for the Prius was ascribed to the 100k mile warranty on the battery pack, as if you would expect the MTBF to be the same as the warranty period. More recently it is ascribed to the fact that Prius owners don't drive much -- they say an average of 7k miles per year. Even if true, this is not appropriate for a comparison of vehicles.

Next, put on your accountant's hat as far as they assign costs. (I would love to see a real accountant go through this in detail.) They allocate all of the Prius R&D costs to only those Priuses (Prii?) built so far. No new technology could ever survive this kind of comparison.

There is horrible double counting of costs going on as well. They assign all of the commuting energy costs for both production and R&D workers to the resulting cars. But these costs would also be ascribed to the cars of the workers themselves. This looks to be one of the main ways the costs are so inflated.

I'd love to see a good study of overall costs. But this one doesn't even come close.

Curt Wilson
Delta Tau Data Systems

 

[jraef]

We have a 2001 Prius, my wife drives a lot as a home visit therapist. She now has 105,000+ miles on it, not a lick of trouble beyond the glitches in the beginning, which did not cost us 1 dime. I keep expecting the batteries to explode any minute now according to all the nay-sayers.

Interesting side note: When new, she has never got more than 45mpg, which at the time we bought it Toyboata was claiming 55mpg IIRC. Still, it was pretty damed good for how much zip that thing has for accelerating into California freeway traffic. We had tried several of the high mileage gas only cars and she was deathly afraid of getting rear ended trying to merge into traffic, they were all incredibly gutless for acceleration torque. The Prius is a zippy as any car we have ever owned. I attribute that to the better torque response capabilities of the electric motor. The interesting recent development is that her mileage has been INCREASING with age! She is now getting 50mpg consistently! Try to explain that; I can't.

 

[DanEE]

The post above referencing the article saying Hybrids are a scam has been debunked as follow up post indicated..

Judging from the financial performance of GM, Ford and Chrysler, they look to be on a track to prove Fujio Cho, president of Toyota Corporation (when the attached presentation was made) to be correct..

This month Toyota will build its 1 millionth Hybrid (world wide volume). 2012 has been stated as the point where hybrid drive trains are no more expensive than conventional.. and of course 2020 for 100% hybrid in their cars..

Why Change? Enlightened Self Interest..

 

[itsmoked]

Mr. Cho seems to have that, typical of the Japanese, long view.

I have trouble believing GM can look beyond the next stock report.

Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.-

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[FreddyNurk]

An interesting point indeed, considering that there are equivalent sized vehicles in Australia that achieve better fuel economy than the Prius currently. However, as Toyota alludes to, I also expect the prices to come down and the efficiency to improve.

I believe that current vehicles such as a Volkswagen Jetta have at least as good fuel economy without resorting to a hybrid system.

One of the guys I used to work with owns a Prius though, reckons its the best for avoiding road rage, as it just sits there silently at the lights. No stress, no thinking about all that fuel you're idling away and the air con keeps working without the engine running.

As an aside, after reading about the 'Toyota Way', a reference I picked up from here no less, I'm a big fan of Toyota's development principles. Clearly they seem to be working.

 

[DanEE]

"As an aside, after reading about the 'Toyota Way', a reference I picked up from here no less, I'm a big fan of Toyota's development principles. Clearly they seem to be working."

Same here...

The company I was lucky enough to bridge out of to retirement before the division collapsed and remains sold off, had very similar principles as the Toyota development principles until the MBA wonder boys got control and started the looting the business for short term gains..

My favorite saying in the company as development funds were being cut back was "Unless you invest in the future, there will be no future".. Not very profound, highly disappointing to see it happen.

I have always admired the Japanese for having the wisdom to invest in the long term.. From what I have read the R&D is pretty well complete on the lithium-ion technology the 2009 Toyota hybrids will receive.

I read that they launched in the past year or so, the lithium titinate R & D that was stated would take at least 10 - 15 years of effort to bring that technology to high volume production.. another example of ongoing long term thinking...

This technology will remove the use of carbon in lithium batteries (major contributor to the risk of fire) and employ nanotube technology to attain very high plate surface areas for significant increases in power storage density.