Posts Tagged by plug-in hybrid
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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EPA Produces MPG-e Ratings for Plug-in Hybrids
| November 27, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
It looks like the debate on fuel economy for plug-in hybrids rages on unabated. General Motors just announced that its Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid car will carry a better efficiency rating that the Toyota Prius (long been recognized as the industry leader in the category). The fact that this is like comparing apples with trombones doesn’t seem to be of any major concern to GM, the EPA, or anyone else. Read More
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Honda Announces Plug-in Hybrid and EV Commuter for 2012
| November 5, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Am I the only one who was a bit stunned at Honda’s announcement today? CEO Takanobu Ito outlined the company’s plans to introduce both a mid-size plug-in hybrid and an electric commuter vehicle in the U.S. and Japan by the end of 2012. He told Reuters, “It’s starting to look like there will be a market for electric vehicles. We can’t keep shooting down their potential, and we can’t say there’s no business case for it.”
So what so weird about this?
In the first place, Honda’s longstanding commitment to its current alternate fuel vehicle, the hydrogen fuel cell F6 Clarity, which, of course, is an electric vehicle; batteries and fuel cells are simply two different ways of providing portable electrical energy. Perhaps Ito simply misspoke, but that strikes me as a mistake that the CEO of Honda would be most unlikely to make. Read More
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[The Vector] Electric and Hybrid Cars – Is Their Time Finally Coming?
| July 26, 2010 | Posted by Kathy-Heshelow under Electric Vehicles |
The Vector believes that a paradigm shift is coming, and coming quickly, in the way the U.S. consumers views their cars.
Here is why: Read More
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Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles
| February 4, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
I happen to be looking through an issue of Car and Driver yesterday and noticed their discussion of the EPA’s struggle to measure and report MPG ratings for plug-in hybrids. Apparently, there are people who fail to realize that this is a completely meaningless number. Those who never exceed the battery-only range never need gasoline, and thus experience an infinite number of miles per gallon. Those who never charge their cars experience whatever number is associated with the size and efficiency of the internal combustion engine as it operates their car, given its weight, wind resistance, etc. Of course, most people will experience a number in between – say between 100 and 1000.
But is that really helpful? Can’t we just note that this is metric that doesn’t apply? I had a friend in college who would ask, “How long is a piece of string?” and “Is it shorter to New York, or by car?” It seems to be that the people seriously pursuing MPG ratings for the Chevy Volt and the Fisker Karma are asking questions that have no more meaning than that.
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Toyota's Plug-In Hybrid
| December 15, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Not to harp on the obvious, but without vigorous grassroots efforts to the contrary, the migration to renewable energy and clean transportation will be slow and arduous. In news that underscores this point, Toyota unveiled its new plug-in hybrid, promising sales in 2011 at an “affordable” price. Executive vice president Takeshi Uchiyamada told an eager audience that Toyota’s plug-in travels 14.5 miles as an electric vehicle on a single charge.
Not everyone agrees with me on this, but I find this product — and the timing of its launch — a considerable snooze. Toyota could have had a plug-in hybrid with 30 – 50 mile electric-only range in the market many years ago. Why didn’t they? Because it wasn’t in their interest to do so. They were already perceived as “green” (with the Prius), and there was nothing in it for them to move this along until they absolutely had to.
This offering is good for Toyota in every way. The small battery pack will be easy to build, support, sell – and ultimately replace with new technology as soon as it comes along. The fact that most drivers will be disappointed in that they will continue to use gasoline on a daily basis is apparently not a significant part of the equation.
I’m reminded of shopping at Costco, the experience of which always leaves we thinking: I’m not buying what’s good for me; I’m buying what’s good for Costco to sell me – whatever they can source inexpensively, and sell in quantities that are almost always far greater than its customers want. Need a canister of salt? Think you can get it at Costco? No, if you want salt, you get a 25-pound sack – sufficient to last a family of four about 30 years.
But is it fair to expect altruism from Toyota — or any other corporation, when their sole purpose is to make money? Today’s corporate titans think of themselves as “customer-focused,” though that’s for business reasons, not out of true concern for fulfilling customers’ needs. If that weren’t the case, we woudn’t have planned obsolescence — products that are built to wear out and fall apart, necessitating replacement by new ones.
The bottom line is this: at the end of the day, electric transportation will not come from the “push” of the OEMs; the only thing we have going for us is the “pull” from customers like me (and, I hope, like you) who simply refuse to buy another 25 MPG planet-buster.
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Have a Great Solution in a Huge Market? Consider Making It Too Cheap to Steal
| November 28, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
As I’ve noted previously, the eminent venture capitalist Vinod Khosla advises “Since one fails often, address markets that make it worthwhile when one does succeed.”
This, of course, is solid advice. But unfortunately, not everyone is a position to swing for the fences; some technologies, while not really transformational, are nonetheless worthwhile and need to be brought to market. Examples would include marginal improvements in the efficiency of solar panels. I suppose one could also say that plug-in hybrids fit that description. When battery energy densities and cost curves advance pass a certain point, fewer and fewer electric vehicle customers will be concerned about extending their range by lugging around big, heavy, and expensive internal combustion engines. 20 years from now, I predict that we’ll regard plug-in hybrids the way we do eight-track tapes or floppy discs today.
But what a joy it is to promote a technology that really changes the way billions of people live and work. I happen to be talking to some people who are sitting on what appears to me to be a real game-changer in renewable energy: relatively inexpensive, unobtrusive, and benign to its local environment.
Maybe what I like about bringing a technology like this to market is that it’s so easy; there are far fewer errors that can be made along the way. Thus my advice to them:
It seems to me that there are only two basic mistakes we can make here:
a) Losing control of the technology; in particular, letting it fall into the hands of someone who suppresses it. I don’t think I’m being at all paranoid in making this point; the energy industry is rife with examples of this.
and
b) Waiting for a certain preferred business model to take form, while excellent opportunities for perfectly valid but different business models come and go before us.
The beauty of the energy market is its enormous size — measured in trillions of dollars. In this case, I recommend entering it by “making (this solution) too cheap to steal.” One-tenth of one percent of the market is still billions of dollars. That will make everyone quite happy, won’t it? Let’s just go get it.
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What MPG do Plug-in Hybrid Owners Get?
| August 4, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
A reader takes issue with my comment that, if driven a certain way, PHEV owners would experience “near infinite MPG,” referring to it as “dishonest and disingenuous.” He goes on, “Energy is still being consumed, that must be produced somewhere and has a cost. In all cases the energy should be taken into account. Perhaps we will need a new metric in future, but for the time being documents such as yours should talk about mpg-e, or miles per gallon-equivalent.”
There are two issues here. One is the actual MPG (in terms of gasoline) that drivers experience, and this itself is a hot topic. I’ve had numerous conversations with Tony Posawatz, the Vehicle Line Director for the Chevrolet Volt, about his frustrating dialog with the EPA over the difficulty of assigning a fair MPG number to the Volt.
This reader’s point, however, concerns the carbon associated with the electrical powerer being used. And of course he’s right that even a pure EV has a carbon footprint that includes the cost of generating the electricity. As I’m sure readers are aware, even with the dirtiest power generation technology (coal) with no modification to sequester the carbon, EVs still represent a significant boon to the environment. And, of course, as the migration to renewables progresses, this will only improve. This whole calculus makes it virtually impossible to identify an “MPG-e” with any real accuracy.
I can assure the reader that I had no intention of being dishonest, btw. “Wow,” as my teenage daughter would say, as she rolled her pretty green eyes.
But let us not forget, as I’ve written elsewhere, we could charge 90 million EVs this very evening with off-peak power that would otherwise be dumped back to ground. And we’re a very, very long way from having 90 million EVs on our roads.
