TOYOTA-all ELECTRIC CAR- soon available

soon available.

I understand that Toyota will be adding a new feature to their Prius hybrid.

You'll be able to: 1.TURN OFF the gasoline engine and

2 charge the battery with a wind generator and/or photovoltaic panel and/or electric generating exercise machine (i.e. treadmill, etc.) and get 100 FREE miles ON THE BATTERY ALONE!

Hopefully, they will have a REMOVEABLE battery pack in the car so you'll be able to charge another battery or two, while driving on a charged one.

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Email Toyota and congratulate them and encourage them to get this on the market ASAP !

Reply to
misterfact
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wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

How soon?

Where are you getting this information?

100 miles? Not unless they add a lot more batteries than the current Prius or find far better batteries.

Assume a Prius can get 50 mpg on the highway (I think this is optimistic, but go with it). This means that the engine consumes 2 gallons of gasoline to go 100 miles. 1 gallon of gasoline provides about 125,000 BTUs. Two gallons provides about 250,000 BTUs. Assuming the Prius is 25% efficient (25% of the original energy in the fuel actually finally is used to move the car), then it actually used 63,000 BTUs to move the car 100 miles. Assuming the electric drivetrain is 90% efficient, the batteries will need to provide around 70,000 BTUs of energy. 70,000 BTUs is approximately 20.5 kilowatt-hours of energy. NiMH batteries as used by the Prius are 1.2V cells, so you need a total of around 17,000 Ah worth of batteries capacity (under ideal conditions). Typical D size NiMH batteries have an ideal capacity of around 10 Ah each. Therefore under ideal conditions (new batteries, fully charged, ideal discharge rate, etc) you would need 1,700 D sized NiMH batteries to move a Prius 100 miles - assuming you drive slowly (55 or less), accelerate moderately, don't need to climb hills, don't need A/C, don't use to many accessories, etc., etc. 1700 D sized batteries will weight between 550 lb and 600 lb. This is far larger than the current Prius battery pack. The current Prius battery pack consists of 38 NiMH modules from Panasonic. Each module consists of six 1.2 V cells connected in series. The module has a nominal voltage of 7.2 V, capacity of 6.5 Ah, weighs 1.04 kg, and has dimensions of 19.6 mm (W) X 106 mm (H) X 275 mm (L). The weight of the complete battery pack is 53.3 kg (around 120 lbs). The energy content of this pack is around 1,500 Ah. Under ideal highway conditions this might be enough to go 15 miles (no hills, gentle accelerations, no winds, etc.). To go 100 miles, you are going to need a battery back 5 to 10 times as large. This means a battery pack that weighs between 600 and 1200 lb in total (at least 480 lb more than the current battery pack). Even adding only

480 lb to the weight of the car will reduce the range, so you'll probably need to add at least 600 lb of batteries to get to 100 miles (again under ideal conditions). But then adding this much weight will require a larger car with more air resistance (if you plan to maintain interior space) and a stronger structure, which will require even more batteries to go 100 miles. So in the end, if you want a Prius-like car to go a 100 miles on batteries alone, you are probably looking at least a 1000 lb battery pack and a car that is 1200 lb heavier. And this is under ideal conditions. Climbing a few hills, accelerating hard, having batteries with a little age, driving on windy days, using the A/C, etc., etc., etc. will all reduce the range. And don't forget the cost of the batteries. I don't know what the current Prius batter pack costs. I have seen estimates as low as $1000 and as high as $6000. I estimate that in the best case, a battery pack with enough capacity to go 100 miles will cost at least $8,000 (and likely more). Even at $4 a gallon, you are going to have to save a lot of gas to offset $8000 worth of batteries. If you are willing to but up with the limited range and speed limitations of your 100 mile range electric car, I believe you could design a gasoline powered car that would get 50 mpg (or a diesel that will do even better). Given a 50 mpg car, you could go 100,000 miles on $8000 worth of gas. Even if the electricity to recharge the 100 mile range electric car was free, you would only just break even (assuming there were no other cost adders in the electric car design).

And even if the 100 mile range was true, the electricity to recharge the batteries won't be FREE. Even if you use solar or wind power to produce the electricity, you'll need to buy and maintain the power generation equipment. This is even close to free.

Not likely, unless you are willing to swap out 1000 lb worth of batteries and pay thousands of dollars for each extra battery pack.

I suggest you email Toyota and tell them someone is spreading fairy tales.

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

Ed; I'm sure there will be a battery modification. Maybe it will be solar assisted, the car pulling with a lightweight trailer with 100 sq feet of pv's. behind. Have you seen the solar assisted Prius? internet explorer keywords: SOLAR ASSISTED PRIUS.

Besides- I keep seeing people all over the internet talking about how their electric car gets 80 miles per charge WITHOUT solar assist while driving.

Reply to
misterfact

Assuming this is accurate, I would be willing to bet that these vehicles aren't like the Toyota Prius. Probably cars with less carrying capacity and performance, with much larger batteries.

Reply to
westin

You definitely can build an electric car that will go 80 miles on a charge. But that is not what you seemed to be describing in your original post. I thought you were implying that Toyota was on the verge of incresing the Prius' range on batteries alone to 100 miles. Electric cars that can go 100 miles are not like the Prius. For instance (from

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"The EV1 was an all-electric vehicle conceived, developed and built by GM, and offered for lease through Saturn retailers in California and Arizona beginning in December 1996 and through August 2004.

"The lead acid EV1 required a 5 to 6 hour charge, which offered a driving range of 55 to 95 miles. The nickel-metal hydride battery pack required a 6 to 8 hour charge, which provided a driving range of 75 to

130 miles......"

The EV-1 was a relatively small 2 seat car with a battery pack with 20 times the capacity of the battery pack in the Prius. The range drivers actually got was highly dependent on dirivng style, driving conditions, and the age of the batteries. The Prius is a much larger car. Getting it's range up to 100 miles on batteries alone will require a significant increase in the number of batteries. Right now NiMH batteries appear to be the best batteries available for electric vehicles. Other battery chemistries are under investigation, but I would not suggest that you hold your breath waiting for something so much better than electric cars go from a curiosity to a practical reality overnight. On the other hand, changes in society could make electric cars practical rather quickly. If people only needed to make short commutes and short trips to shopping, dining, and entertainment locations, electric cars would be useful. I don't expect battery powered vehicle to ever be practical for long trips.

The solar assisted Prius is a joke. There is no chance that all the complicated equipment needed to add solar panels to the Prius will ever generate enough energy to make it worth the cost. I read the article at

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. Underideal conditions, the solor panels he is using will only generate 360watts. This is about 1/2 horsepower. If you assume my originalcalculations are at least in the ballpark, I figure the following: At 55 mph I estimate that the Prius needs about 205 W-h worth of energy to go one mile. At 55 mph, and under ideal conditions, the solor panels are able to provide about 6.5 W-h per mile (i.e. 0.0065 kW-h per mile). For a 15 mile trip, the total energy collected by the solar panels would be on the order of 100 W-h (i.e. 0.1 kW-h, or about 341 BTUs, the amount of useful energy you could get by using about 0.01 gallons of gas in the Prius's gasoline engine). This is enough "extra" energy to go about another 0.5 miles. And just how often will you be able to operate the car under "ideal" conditions (especially in Canada where the guy who built the solar assisted Prius lives)? You'll be lucky to average 150 watts out of the panel during daylight portion of a "good" day. Total energy collected over the course of a typical day will probably be on the order of 1.5 kW-h (assuming the car is parked in the open and the solar cells are used to charge the batteries while the car is parked). So for all the extra complication, you might be able to get an extra 7 miles of range out of a Prius - on a good day. You could do the same thing with a couple of extra batteries that you charge at home in the evening.

Ed

Reply to
Ed White

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Solar assist is great until you have a solar-deficient day. Nights aren't very solar either.

Search engine keywords, you mean. Internet Explorer is not a search engine.

Yeah, and everybody here whines about how their sooper-expensive Prius only gets only a little more mpg than a Corolla.

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did a bit of math on this Lapp guy's conversion, and it looks like he'd have to drive about 30,000 miles on solar power alone just to break even on the gas he saves versus his $3,000 Cdn investment. We pay about $4 Cdn per US gallon up here. Then there's the battery replacement. And what about lost cargo space?

Reply to
TeGGeR®

Internet Exploder is an engine that breaks down as often as a Ford. :-)

Reply to
High Tech Misfit

. Getting it's range up to 100 miles on batteries alone will require a significant increase in the number of batteries.

How about only 5 standard deep cycle lead-acid batteries (250#), a sunny warm day, and sufficient collection surface of efficient pv panels to keep the batteries charged while driving? Like I say- a very lightweigt trailer loaded with pv's- towed behind the car.

Reply to
misterfact

For a Prius like car, 5 standard deep cell batteries aren't going to get you very far (maybe 200 Ah - good for maybe 15 miles) , so you are essentially trying to run the car on solar cells alone, with the batteries acting as a big capacitor to supply peak loads and get you past the cloudy bits of the trip. So how many solar cell will you need to run a Prius size car a 100 miles at a reasonable speed (say 55 mph)?

A good solar panel might weight about 0.1 lb per watt and measure about 7.5 sq in per watt. To maintain 55 mph, I previously estimated a Prius like car will require approximately 13,400 watts (18 Hp or so). This means you would need around 1340 lbs worth of solar cells and a flat area of around 700 sq ft, which is a 87 foot long, 8 foot wide trailer if you lay the solar cell flat. I suppose you could do some clever angling of the panels to cut the length somewhat, to maybe 60 feet. Of course trying to pull a trailer this big that weighs half as much as the car is going to drastically increase your power requirements. So you might as well figure on a trailer 120 feet long and limit your speed to 25 mph (to reduce power requirements). Should be an interesting trip.

Even if I am off by a factor of five (and I am not), this will not be a practical arrangement. Sometime reality sucks.

If you want to see what a working solar powered car that can go 100 miles looks like, see:

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These are basically one person, lightweight, very aerodynamic vehicles. They are using the very best solar cells. They probably require less than 10% of the power of a Prius like car to go 55 mph (say 2 Hp). 2 Hp is roughly 1500 watts. This would require a car about 10 foot long by 8 foot wide.

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

Obviously Toyota has something else in mind besides a lead-acid battery. My brother-in-law said he read the article about the solar assisted Prius. I don't know where he came up with the 100 mile figure.My guess is that there will be enough battery storage and pv surface to get you around on short trips with plenty of time parking in the sunshine between trips. He did say that you'll be able to put the gasoline engine on "disconnect" and it will re-connect and run as soon as the battery reaches a specified low charge point.

Mike

Reply to
misterfact

I'd sure like to see the article. I suspect your brother in law is leaving out some important information. If you are willing to make a large investement in solar cells, and drive a car that is more like an Insight than a Prius, I suppose you could have a solar powered car of a sort (but the solar cells would be left at home and you'd run the car on batteries).

Let me know if you find the article. The Solar Powered Car article I did fond was just total BS.

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

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