Re: Has Toyota announced a Plug-In Hybrid Prius?

"Tomes" ...
"Ray O" ...
"Tomes" ...
"Ray O" ...
"badgolferman" ...
Jeff wrote:

On Sep 29, 9:05 pm, SMS <scharf.ste...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I saw a Toyota magazine ad, and in the bottom left corner they had
a picture of a Prius, and it was titled "Plug-In Prius." Has Toyota
announce this yet? I know you can get after-market kits, but I
hadn't heard about Toyota officially announcing this.

Old news: <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/business/14plug.html>

From the article:
"Plug-in hybrids differ from the current hybrid vehicles in that they
can be recharged externally, from an ordinary power outlet. In a
conventional hybrid the battery is recharged from power generated by
its wheels. "
----------------------
Why is recharging from an external source better than recharging from
the movement of the car? It seems to me more overall energy is needed
for a plug-in vehicle.

Recharging from an external source like an electrical grid costs less due to economies of scale. The jury is still out as to whether this is "cleaner" than charging the hybrid battery from the on-board internal combustion engine and regenerative braking.
--
If the engine never or relatively never comes on to charge the battery (meaning that it gets all the charge it needs from the braking and otherwise engine usage), what is the point of the plug-in accessory?
Tomes

Regenerative braking doesn't really create energy because it took energy to get the vehicle moving fast enough to brake, either by accelerating (depleting the battery) or travelling up a hill (depleting the battery) in order to be able to go downhill. Regenerative braking really recaptures energy that would otherwise be converted to heat.

Other methods to charge the battery on-board the vehicle have not advanced to the point where the vehicle is consumer-friendly at a reasonable price. A wind turbine installed on the vehicle is inefficient because it creates drag which the electric engine has to overcome. Solar panels are not yet efficient enough to provide enough power to operate the vehicle, although I read that Toyota is going to install solar panels on the next generation Prius to operate the air conditioner, thereby reducing drain on the traction battery, and Mazda had a solar panel a while back that powered the HVAC fan to keep the air circulating in the car when it was parked. Fuel cells require storage of hydrogen in some form in order to generate electricity, so their main advantage is that it is cleaner than an ICE to generate electricity, at a pretty high investment in the fuel cells themselves.

The advantage of a plug-in hybrid along with a larger battery pack is that the batteries can be "topped off" through the grid. If the method of generating electricity for the grid is clean like wind turbines, hydroelectric, solar panels, nuclear, etc could be, then the idea is to generate less greenhouse gases.
Ray O

Don't disagree with any of this, but it kind of skirts around my point. The Prius does not need to be plugged in because it does not need to be topped off. The first couple of miles of driving charges up the battery to near enough to the top anyway (mine does anyway) through both braking and engine usage (actually primarily engine usage in my case). It is capturing energy that was going to be wasted anyway. Therefore, plugging it in will top it off, but the energy that would have been recaptured in the early driving is not lost. So, we trade in recaptured energy for power grid energy. It is still not making sense to me...
Tomes
This line "energy that would have been recaptured in the early driving is not lost" should have been: "energy that would have been recaptured in the early driving is _now_ lost. Sorry for the typo...

.

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