Toyota still cautious on lithium technology
Next step for plug-ins unclearToyota is still on track to release a pilot fleet of 500 plug-in Prius hybrids this year, but the automaker is not yet certain what the next step will be for lithium-powered plug-in hybrids.
Yoshimi Inaba, chairman and CEO of Toyota Motor Sales USA, told the DetroitNews, that Toyota isn't yet fully committed to selling plug-in vehicles commercially until Toyota is confident that large lithium battery packs pose no safety risks. Thus, this demonstration fleet will be critical to the future of Toyota's plug-ins.
"All the learning that we can from that, I think we will decide the next steps," Inaba said.
Labels: lithium battery, plug-in hybrid vehicles
posted by Dahcredyns at
7:05 AM
7 Comments:
Battery life concerns?
They didn't go into detail on the subject, but i don't think the concern is battery life. I think it is purely safety.
Still, 500 phevs won't resolve that issue in my opinion. Ultimately, we won't know until tens of thousands of the vehicles start hitting the road.
Even the safety issue, I'm sure, is manageable, but the more you have to spend on safety, the less cost-effective the vehicles become. So, the right BMS might be sticking point.
Of course, Bob Lutz of GM has claimed that Toyota's lithium chemistry has been the wrong chemistry.
Maybe he's right. Maybe it's all just spin and conjecture. Maybe its a question of how much you want to pay to guarantee safety.
Hopefully, GM isn't planning to bean count the Volt the way they did the Corvair!
Remember when laptop batteries were catching on fire? Did thousands of batteries burst into flames or was it just a few.
How much damage [litigation and money] do you believe this incident caused just one computer manufacturer like Dell Computers?
Toyota has worked long and hard at building a reputation of excellence in the automotive industry. If you were them what would you do? Risk the farm on a few failures or wait for technology to make them safer?
As fans of hybrid technology, it's natural to long for the lithium revolution, but the technology just isn't ripe enough, at least not for major manufacturers.
Inevitably, I think Toyota knows that its hybrid success is based upon cost. Today, NiMH just provides more bang for the buck in conventional hybrids.
And, as you alluded to, imagine one fiery explosion related to lithium. Even if the same explosion would have happened in a gasoline powered vehicle, people will naturally assume it had something to do with this new battery technology, and adoption could be significantly affected.
I agree Dahcredyns. I want a plug in hybrid with a 40 mile range really really bad.
Why? - Well for several reasons. I live in a small town in the desert southwest and we don't even have freeways where we sit and idle for 30 minutes a day. And the longest distance to work and good shopping is 15 miles each way. So a plug in hybrid would work really well for me.
Now if I lived in Minnesota where it gets 30 degrees below zero in the winter, maybe not so much LOL.
Still, a plug-in hybrid works very well stuck on the freeway for 30 minutes, and I'd bet it would still work well in pretty cold weather on a Minneapolis freeway.
I'll let someone else prove that later assumption however!
Dahcredyns:
Another reason I want a hybrid is to leave the Air Conditioning [AC] running while I go into the store. It is frequently 105-110 degrees here in the summer and having an electric drive motor on the AC would be a big plus. Since the unit will be running on Direct Current [DC] that is also a big advantage.
My Minnesota comment was at best misleading [sorry]. I was born and raised in Minnesota and sometimes my dry sense of engineering humor is not very effective LOL
There are lots of excellent solutions to a cold winter day and the first one that comes to mind is a gasoline powered heater. You might be too young to remember but the Chevrolet Corvair had a gasoline heater back in the 60's which worked well for me.
Another idea might be to capture some of the heat given off by the electric drive motor. All of that heat has to go someplace right?
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