Posts Tagged by PHEV
Announcing the Plug-in Version of the Toyota Prius: ZZzzzzzzz
| March 26, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Apparently, I’m wrong about the plug-in version of the Toyota Prius. When I first saw the prototype at the “Plug-In” show a year ago, I thought to myself (and actually asked the representative in the booth) “Are you sure this car is actually going into production? It seems like something that will never be built.” But it looks like they’re moving forward with it.
The problem with the car is that it offers essentially nothing to the customer of any real value: higher cost, two drive trains to maintain, the necessity of both filling up and plugging in, and an improvement in gas mileage that will virtually never pay for itself. And keep in mind that the car will enter the market a full year from now at the earliest (spring 2012 ) while companies like Ford, Mitsubishi, BMW, GM, and, of course, Nissan, are making improvements in their much better thought-through EVs.
I don’t like to irritate the innocent folks assigned to attend their companies’ tradeshow booths; they’re normally fairly junior, and certainly not a part of the decision-making cycle for bringing products to market. This is why I withheld my suggested name for the car: “The Prius Irrelevant” or “The Toyota Yawn.”
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Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles and Their Enemies
| November 28, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
I note a certain level of confusion surrounding plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. And I can certainly understand some level of bewilderment, as there are numerous variations on the plug-hybrid theme – as well as jargon that, in my opinion, serves to make the matter even worse — BEVs, ZEVs, PHEVs, REEVs, etc. But it’s clear that the enemies of electric transportation, whose motives remain unclear to me, are capitalizing on this moment of confusion to seize the day and turn people away from an important advancement in clean transportation.
In particular, I noted the recent fracas that resulted when GM announced the specifics behind the Chevy Volt’s drivetrain. Conservative columnist George Will loudly accused GM of deceit. “It’s just a hybrid!” he and his fellow cynics screamed last week, somehow overlooking the fact that many Volt drivers will never need to put a drop of gasoline in their cars.
I have to say I was stunned. Isn’t George Will an intellectual? Read More
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What’s Wrong Inside Toyota?
| July 29, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
I spoke with a couple of the people promoting the 2012 release of the Prius plug-in hybrid yesterday at the 2010 Plug-In show. Gosh, this seems like a strange concept. Its all-electric range? 13 miles. The net effect for the typical customer? A bit better gas mileage. “This is what Prius customers want – a more efficient Prius,” one guy told me.
I was incredulous. Maybe they want that now, pal. But do you honestly think they’re going to want that two years from now, when they can have a LEAF, an I-MiEV, a Mini E, a Volt, or half a dozen other EVs of various sizes and types? You’re going to ask them to go through the exercise of plugging their car in, just to get slightly better gas mileage?
This is a truly terrible idea. I have to think something has gone terribly off the rails there. Unless they make a major change, I predict that Toyota’s decade 2005 – 2015 will be the biggest single meltdown in automotive history.
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Battery Chemistry and the Future of Electric Vehicles
| June 20, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
EV World Associates’ Sam Smith explains the future of electric vehicles to me on an episode of 2GreenEnergy Report.
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60% of Chinese Ready to Buy Plug-in Vehicles
| April 28, 2010 | Posted by BillPaul under Electric Vehicles |
New report from Ernst & Young’s Global Automotive Center finds that 60% of Chinese consumers say they would consider buying a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. That’s a much bigger percentage than in the US, and is further evidence that China, not the US, will lead the plug-in revolution. That’s bad news for US car- and car-battery makers, and great news for their Chinese counterparts. Warren Buffett’s investment in BYD is looking better and better.
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Here Comes ANOTHER Billion-Dollar Green Industry
| April 22, 2010 | Posted by BillPaul under Electric Vehicles |
During my 2GreenEnergy free webinar next month, I’ll be emphasizing how vastly and quickly green investing is growing. Here’s an appetizer. While there are only a handful of EV and PHEV vehicles on the road today, by 2015 the infrastructure required to fuel electrically-powered vehicles will be an $11.75 billion global industry, according to research firm ABI. From zero to $11.75 billion in less than five years!! And that’s just one of many green tech businesses about to change the investing landscape!
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EV Adoption Curve – Astute Comments
| August 3, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Again, I urge readers to check out the comments on the Three Brass Tacks landing page, and to enter more if desired. I just read that incredibly lucid thoughts of Arlene Allen on the EV adoption curve, in which she brought up several factors that I omitted, for example, V2G. To me, her summary is spot-on: fun and interesting to talk about, but extremely unlikely to shape the calculus meaningfully in the foreseeable future.
IMO, her comment on the Volt applies to all PHEVs regardless of the financial health or design savvy of the OEM, i.e., it’s regrettable to have to own, maintain, and lug around two independent sets of energy storage systems and energy conversion equipment. With Moore’s Law applying, as it appears to be, to the energy density and cost of lithium-ion batteries, the whole PHEV concept may be short-lived.
