Prius Now Profitable - Volt, Well Uh, It Could Happen

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--See below link for a very good in depth Reuters article on the Volt and the EV and Hybrid market.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/10/us-generalmotors-autos-volt-idUSBRE88904J20120910

"GM acknowledges the Volt continues to lose money, and suggests it might not reach break even until the next-generation model is launched in about three years. "It's true, we're not making money yet" on the Volt, said Doug Parks, GM's vice president of global product programs and the former Volt development chief, in an interview. The car "eventually will make money. As the volume comes up and we get into the Gen 2 car, we're going to turn (the losses) around," Parks said."

""I don't see how General Motors will ever get its money back on that vehicle," countered Sandy Munro, president of Michigan-based Munro & Associates, which performs detailed tear-down analyses of vehicles and components for global manufacturers and the U.S. government. It currently costs GM "at least" $75,000 to build the Volt, including development costs, Munro said. That's nearly twice the base price of the Volt before a $7,500 federal tax credit provided as part of President Barack Obama's green energy policy."

--But I thought they said if gas prices were to go up, these things would be selling like hot cakes. Once again, like many green projects, performance in the marketplace is way, way short of what was promised. Hopefully they will be able to double the range per charge, that would help a lot. On the plus side, after 12 years the Prius is now in the black, so it is possible the next iterations of the Volt could eventually climb out of the red. Check back in ten years.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
Richard Feynman 1918 1988

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[poorchava]

I think that current battery technology is far from sufficient to make an electric or hybrid car that would be usable for anything else than demonstrating that one is a treehugger.

What sense does it make to buy an electric vehicle when any savings made on fuel consumption will cancel out when batteries reach end of life. Modern batteries are to heavy, too large, too expensive and too short-lived for that.

[poptones]

That's truly ridiculous. Why would railroads spend premium money on GE hybrid locomotives? Why have locomotives been diesel electric hybrids for decades? BECAUSE IT'S EFFICIENT.

An electric doesn't have to be ALL electric. It has been demonstrated countless times that regenerative braking and small(er) localized storage (ie a battery) can radically increase the city fuel efficiency of a small internal combustion vehicle... or the long duration mileage of a much larger one.

http://www.economist.com/node/17791989

[NiHaoMike]

What GM should have done is bring back the EV1, complete with technology updates. The later EV1s could go 120 miles on a charge with rather old battery technology, so if they replaced those with the latest lithium iron phosphate batteries, 200 or more miles on a charge should be doable. The hybrid EV1 got 80 MPG, much better than the Prius. They could have dominated the green car market, but they instead dropped a good opportunity and let the Japanese take the lead with little competition.

[ejeffrey]

What sense does it make to buy an electric vehicle when any savings made on fuel consumption will cancel out when batteries reach end of life.

There isn't a lot of real-world data on the pure-EV or plug-in hybrids yet, but that is demonstrably false for 'traditional' hybrids like the prius, camry, and insight.

[G7PSK]

The reason for diesel electric trains is transmission problems when you get to power level and torque that the traction diesels produce, there were a few locomotives produced with hydraulic or mechanical drive trains but they were mostly used for shunting and or goods trains that did not require a high top speed.
Most of the diesel electric trains that I have seen use highly over compounded dc generators to feed compound wound dc traction motors, this way a lot of current control can be achieved by regulating the engine speed rather than switching.
The system in the hybrid cars uses electric motors to drive one set of wheels and a piston engine to drive another, hardly efficient to drag a set of PM motors at speed along the road and if they are used as friction drive alternators that is even worse.
The reason that there has been a switch to electric trains with all the trouble that overhead cables give is it is more efficient to generate electricity in a power house and not have the dead weight of a two thousand horse power diesel on board the train despite it probably being more reliable.(No one can nick the cables if there aren't any)

[mickpah]

there is another reason for diesel - electric locomotives - speed control.  an electric motor - usual series DC has a a torque curve that is far more suitable over the speed range required for a train than a diesel . - Ever heard a train change gears ?? .
Far better to run the diesel at peak efficiency to generate power - also opens up the possibility to recover energy from the electric motors using dynamic braking - either into batteries or a flywheel. In any case a train is far different  from a car, no stopping & starting in traffic and pulling heavy loads from standing start- enormous torque required.
has anyone ever seen a price for replacement batteries in a Prius ? I am betting significant. bet it kills resale value after a few years

[SeanB]

Mosr Diesel electric locos here run at constant speed. It is easier to get an engine to be ultra efficient and economical at a narrow RPM band than to get it to do the same over a wide range. The pistons inside are the diameter of dinner plates, and a lot taller. If you are running at either idle or full power you can optimise valve timing, injection, inlet and exhaust system to give a very big boost in power. Add a turbocharger optimised for that one point and you are very efficient. Drawback is that at low load it is inefficient, but most diesel locos are going to run at near full power when running, if you are slowing down then the loco will drop to idle, and will idle when stopped.

[ejeffrey]

has anyone ever seen a price for replacement batteries in a Prius ? I am betting significant. bet it kills resale value after a few years

According to this:  http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1078138_toyota-hybrid-battery-replacement-cost-guide

List price is around $2300 for older cars, $2600 for the latest generation after the credit for recycling the old pack, plus about 1.6 hours labor.  You can probably add in the 'diagnostic fee' for them to plug in their ODB-II reader and be told the battery needs to be replaced.  I understand there is also a reasonable used/reconditioned market, but I don't know what the typical prices are.  So it is expensive, but similar to other 'major maintenance' cost cars incur.  The warranty period is 8 years / 100k miles or 10 / 150k.

Overall the Prius is rated to have a very low lifetime maintenance cost.  So yes -- if you get unlucky and your battery dies just out of warranty you are going to think twice before dropping nearly $3k on a car that age, but even if you have to replace it, that isn't a huge cost over the life of the car.

[NiHaoMike]

The Prius has an excellent reliability record. It's one of the very few cars to have a clutchless CVT, eliminating a very common failure point. In the unlikely event a battery needs to be replaced, it's pretty easy to find a used one in a junkyard, or better yet, replace it with an aftermarket unit that is bigger and offers better MPG.

BTW, used Prius batteries (there's a huge surplus because they almost never fail) have all sorts of interesting uses unrelated to automotive applications. They're rated for 100A or so at 200V for a few minutes, a very large current for a battery that size.

[perfect_disturbance]

The Prius has an excellent reliability record.

You mean of course other than the massive recall Toyota just announced.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cars/toyota-prius-in-recall-of-277m-vehicles-worldwide/2012/11/14/0e183e82-2e89-11e2-b631-2aad9d9c73ac_story.html

[r90s]

there is another reason for diesel - electric locomotives - speed control.  an electric motor - usual series DC has a a torque curve that is far more suitable over the speed range required for a train than a diesel . - Ever heard a train change gears ?? .
Far better to run the diesel at peak efficiency to generate power - also opens up the possibility to recover energy from the electric motors using dynamic braking - either into batteries or a flywheel. In any case a train is far different  from a car, no stopping & starting in traffic and pulling heavy loads from standing start- enormous torque required.
has anyone ever seen a price for replacement batteries in a Prius ? I am betting significant. bet it kills resale value after a few years

I have to say that the only thing that is recovered from the kinetic energy on electromotive diesel's is heat for they feed it into a shunt.  It's for braking assistance only.  At least in America that's the way it is.

Have a good day

P.S.    They don't change gears,  they have one gear.  Road engines are geared taller, so they don't spin out their windings.  What you are hearing is a change in one of the eight power settings that's available..
 

[NiHaoMike]

I have to say that the only thing that is recovered from the kinetic energy on electromotive diesel's is heat for they feed it into a shunt.  It's for braking assistance only.  At least in America that's the way it is.

Why don't they just turn the generator into a motor and then do compression braking in the engine?

[r90s]

I have to say that the only thing that is recovered from the kinetic energy on electromotive diesel's is heat for they feed it into a shunt.  It's for braking assistance only.  At least in America that's the way it is.

Why don't they just turn the generator into a motor and then do compression braking in the engine?

Hard on the diesel engine.  They turn the electric motors on the wheels into generators and feed the juice into a shunt.  This is just for assistance, as for something as heavy as a train they use all the wheels of all the cars for breaking with the air brakes.  They have to.  Eight to twelve wheels on the power units can't begin to handle that much force.

[poptones]

Please. The latest generation hybrid locomotives use regenerative braking to store the "lost" energy in internal batteries. CN is developing a loco that somehow moves the energy storage outboard, or the generator, or something I'm unclear of but it seems to be a throwback to the days when locos had "tenders" they were more or less permanently attached to and which essentially stored the energy reserve.

This is also not unique to diesels in the US, the Acela Express (so far the US only high speed rail service) is powered from an overhead caternary and shunts much of the energy from braking back into the 16KV high tension leads for use by other electrics (much of the power on the NE corridor is electric).

And although perhaps more practical on big rigs, very, very few hybrid cars use "ground coupling" as a poster alluded to earlier. The prius, and most I have ever seen, use a transmission not at all unlike the prius, which uses a cvt and a power unit coupled into a common transmission system. There are ground coupled systems, but those are mostly retrofits or big rigs which have multiple drive axles anyway. In any case, the operation of a hybrid car is exactly analogous to a hybrid locomotive (or truck) in the regard that both waste far too much energy stopping, slowing, starting and idling and well designed hybrid operation minimizes these losses for either. A locomotive alone can't stop a mile long train, but it does need brakes and it can still recover the energy used from stopping and slowing itself. Additionally, because the train itself will move the loco forward whether that is desired at the moment or not, there's a substantial amount of regenerative energy there to be recovered. And a truck... well, Wal-Mart finds the technology cost effective, and I'm sure they know a thing or two about saving on transportation costs.

Additionally, in the case of hybrid locomotives, the engine CAN be designed for most efficient operation at one speed (diesel electrics still use engine throttling and variable speed to determine the amount of energy provided by the alternator and, so the amount of energy sent to the traction motors). High power AC control circuits will make both cars and diesel locos more efficient over a wider operating range as they adopt short term, high output, energy storage methods.

And BTW, both use modular batteries. It is no more necessary to replace an entire battery in a loco than it is to replace an entire battery in a prius. The word battery generically describes a battery of cells and that is how modern hybrids are designed - in either case individual modules can be queried, report their condition, and be replaced as needed.

Anyone want to see a Nissan hybrid race a Challenger R/T?



Very close. And which one would you want to feed at the pump?

[vk6zgo]

has anyone ever seen a price for replacement batteries in a Prius ? I am betting significant. bet it kills resale value after a few years

According to this:  http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1078138_toyota-hybrid-battery-replacement-cost-guide

List price is around $2300 for older cars, $2600 for the latest generation after the credit for recycling the old pack, plus about 1.6 hours labor.  You can probably add in the 'diagnostic fee' for them to plug in their ODB-II reader and be told the battery needs to be replaced.  I understand there is also a reasonable used/reconditioned market, but I don't know what the typical prices are.  So it is expensive, but similar to other 'major maintenance' cost cars incur.  The warranty period is 8 years / 100k miles or 10 / 150k.

Overall the Prius is rated to have a very low lifetime maintenance cost.  So yes -- if you get unlucky and your battery dies just out of warranty you are going to think twice before dropping nearly $3k on a car that age, but even if you have to replace it, that isn't a huge cost over the life of the car.

A "croaked" Prius battery would have to be pretty expensive to match the cost of replacing a worn out engine in a conventional car.
My son recently got a rebuild done on his VZ Holden Commodore,which cost him $A4000.
( All the engine rebuilders seem to have disappeared).

Car designers seem to have gone crazy,one really dumb thing is putting the battery in the boot (trunk),& turning off the Alternator from time to time "to save fuel".
In an imaginary world,this would work well,but in the real one,the result is dead batteries & according to the Auto Electricians,Alternators.(at $700 "a pop"!)

There are plenty of Prius's & Hybrid Camrys around,& reliability doesn't seem a problem.
Whether they really save much fuel is another question!

[poptones]

I dunno. My Magnum had the battery in the truck (as all those lx body cars do) and I never had any problems. I alkso relocated the battery in my 87 Mustang to the trunk and not once in the 200,000 miles following that  did I have a problem.
And alternators have always been run intermittently - that's how voltage regulators work: by energizing and de-energizing the field coil.

[vk6zgo]

I dunno. My Magnum had the battery in the truck (as all those lx body cars do) and I never had any problems. I alkso relocated the battery in my 87 Mustang to the trunk and not once in the 200,000 miles following that  did I have a problem.
And alternators have always been run intermittently - that's how voltage regulators work: by energizing and de-energizing the field coil.

That's not what I'm referring to.

The Body Control Module (BCM) has a look at the charge condition of the battery,takes a wild guess at how long it will take to flatten it,& shuts the whole charge cycle down for a while till the battery charge has dropped to the point where it absolutely has to start recharging it.
The sensors seem to give a little trouble!
By contrast,a  normal regulator attempts to maintain the battery at (nearly) full charge.

[SeanB]

So basically the alternator is always run flat out at max amps to charge the battery. No wonder they fail, most are not going to give full output for long before the diodes overheat, as most are optimistically specced at the engine bay operation temperature.

[poptones]

LOL you two are second guessing automotive engineers. I'm not saying they're never wrong, but I still find it funny. Monday morning quarterbacks.

Yes, alternators run "flat out." It's the only practical way. They've been doing this for decades and while the diodes do sometimes go out it doesn't seem to be any more common than, say, bad thermostats and certainly less common than worn distributor parts. And yes, newsflash, letting your car run hot will overstress the components under the hood. I also don't know anyone, except maybe Benz and Ferrari owners, who would be stupid enough to pay $700 for an alternator. I can buy a new alternator for my Oldsmobile for $79.

shuts the whole charge cycle down for a while till the battery charge has dropped to the point where it absolutely has to start recharging it.

Hysteresis.

Yes, since decades.

I think you bought a cheap battery and would rather blame the engineers who designed the car than blame your wallet.

[vk6zgo]

LOL you two are second guessing automotive engineers. I'm not saying they're never wrong, but I still find it funny. Monday morning quarterbacks.

Anyone who has been around for more than three minutes can recite a litany of stuff ups by automotive,&.if it comes to that,Electronics Engineers!

Yes, alternators run "flat out." It's the only practical way. They've been doing this for decades and while the diodes do sometimes go out it doesn't seem to be any more common than, say, bad thermostats and certainly less common than worn distributor parts. And yes, newsflash, letting your car run hot will overstress the components under the hood. I also don't know anyone, except maybe Benz and Ferrari owners, who would be stupid enough to pay $700 for an alternator. I can buy a new alternator for my Oldsmobile for $79.

shuts the whole charge cycle down for a while till the battery charge has dropped to the point where it absolutely has to start recharging it.

Hysteresis.

Yes, since decades.

I think you bought a cheap battery and would rather blame the engineers who designed the car than blame your wallet.

I think you are being deliberately obtuse!
What the hell has that to do with Hysteresis?

I have been doing my own automotive work for over 40 years,& have a pretty good handle on normal alternators.
These are not the normal regulator/alternator system.

The charging system is deliberately disabled to remove the load from the engine.
As a result,the battery is allowed to discharge to a point just above that where it adversely affects engine operation,at which point,the charging system is enabled.
It requires a special battery to do this,as conventional auto batteries will fail.

The problem is that the special batteries also fail.
 The BCM does not always detect the minimum point of charge accurately,as the vehicle ages,with the result that the very expensive battery gets below the level of charge necessary to start the vehicle.
After this happens a few times,the battery starts to deteriorate,& eventually fail.


 "I can buy a new alternator for my Oldsmobile for $79."

Well,lucky you!
With every car I have had,I have been able to buy rebuilds nearly as cheaply,but these new units have all the alternator rebuilders bluffed, to the point that they do not touch them,so the only alternative is a new one,at the price quoted.

[Uncle Vernon]

Very close. And which one would you want to feed at the pump?

Meaningless! 2 cars of unknown origin at the strip driven by pilots of unknown ability.

[G7PSK]

The battery in the boot is not new my father had a Rover in the 1970's that had the battery in the boot, Land rover put them under a front seat as well, it stopped the engine heat cooking them, they certainly appear to last longer with that configuration. As for only charging the battery when it is flat what happens when the battery reaches that level just as the journey ends, will the car start again after stopping in this condition, and what is the point with modern electrical loads such as power steering and even on some cars the AC and water pump the battery will be flat in minuets without charge and the alternator on cars uses a lot of energy spinning without load, you would need a clutch on the alternator drive pulley at the engine end as the belt will absorb up to a kilo watt of energy on its own also the alternator is best run at about 75% load.

[Precisiontools]

http://au.toyotaownersclub.com/news/one-million-toyota-hybrids-sold-in-a-year/

[poptones]

It requires a special battery to do this,as conventional auto batteries will fail.

Please, post a link to an example of this mysterious new type of car. I've never seen a conventional fuel car that didn't use a lead acid battery from the factory, I'd love to see something new.

Cars have used alternator cutouts at WOT for years, it actually makes the car perform better WHILE saving fuel. And the losses from free spinning an alternator at steady RPM pale in comparison to those old fashioned thermostat or flex fans. A freewheeling alt might suck up a hp or two, a clutch fan can suck up 20hp or more - far more than a 200A alternator pumping full load.

Oh - hysteresis, from wikipedia: In electronics, a Schmitt trigger is a circuit with positive feedback and a loop gain greater than 1. The circuit is named a "trigger" because the output retains its value until the input changes sufficiently to trigger a change. In the non-inverting configuration, when the input is higher than a certain chosen threshold, the output is high. When the input is below a different (lower) chosen threshold, the output is low, and when the input is between the two levels, the output retains its value. This dual threshold action is called hysteresis

This happens to be how voltage regulators in cars work. They've worked that way since the use of the alternator.

I'm sure you've had your share of mechanical experience, but I grew up in Detroit and most of my family was in the auto industry. In my early twenties I designed electrical body test equipment for GM, Ford, Caterpillar, Chrysler, Yamaha and Packard Electric. Some of the equipment I designed was used in construction of the M1 Abrams tank. Another was used to test the electrical chassis of every GMC and Chevrolet truck that came off the line.

So um... yeah.