Reported sales of hybrid cars were down by ten percent in 2008, according to Green Car Congress, who keep track of these things. Keep in mind that 2008 was the year that saw $4+ gas, $7k Geo Metros and a general wave of related hysteria. On the other hand, gas has also become quite cheap in the last few months, and hybrid sales are undeniably falling off a cliff. December hybrid sales are down 42.7 percent year-on-year, as Priora pile up on lots and Americans re-learn how to save money. But is the hybrid downturn a sign of a dying fad, or a temporary blip? There’s a strong argument to be made that the hybrid price premium will be a tough sell in weak economic times, but if another oil shock comes that premium could look like chump change. But this is not just a question of predicting the oil market. If any of us could really do that, we’d be doing the backstroke in a Scrooge McDuck-sized vault of ducats, not discussing the auto industry. Toyota thinks that they can whittle the hybrid powertrain premium down to a mere $1,500 over normal ICEs, but then they built the hybrid bandwagon nearly single-handedly. Meanwhile, Honda is attacking the Prius on price point with the Insight, and Ford is going after the Camry on patriotism with its Fusion hybrid. But will this competition saturate a still-niche market and destroy profitability? After all, hybrids still only make up 2.4 percent of the US market, causing some to call hybrids a dying fad. Or will hybrid technology eventually become ubiquitous, rewarding those who made early investments in it?
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I don’t think there will be any long term reward for early adopters, but hybrid technology will become ubiquitous, and relatively quickly.
When it was first being adopted the electronic fuel injection over carbs cost premium was probably pretty close to the current hybrid over gas only cost premium.
Also, hybrid technology is not all about efficiency; it can do fancy things like give a FWD car AWD without a driveshaft.
Finally, even if oil remains cheap gas tax increases may be on the horizon. Piss and moan if you want, but I’ll be glad to take gas tax increases over private roads where my every movement is constantly tracked to charge for use.
If and when the technology does become “ubiquitous,” I’d like to know what the hell we’re going to do with all of the batteries.
I don’t think it is so much that people are abandoning hybrids, it is the simple fact that hybrids are more expensive than their full gasoline counterparts.
What I think is happening here is people are actually learning how to use their calculators again. They are actually sitting down and figuring out their full consumption costs and actually seeing if a hybrid is actually worth the extra money over the pure gasoline models.
I see this as a good thing
If hybrids (or diesel for that matter) reach a point where there is no cost premium, I certainly think they would become ubiquitous. You eliminate the shortcomings while maintaining or even improving the benefits.
Shouldn’t it be “Wither Hybrids?”
I think the Prius is slumping because the hotshot 2010 redesigned model is just around the corner. The other hybrids may not deliver enough bang for the buck.
I’m having a hard time coming up with a scenario where a hybrid engine costs the same as a normal IC engine, because every hybrid will have all the costs of the IC engine, plus the hybrid components. I don’t see it like the direct inject vs. carburetor that no_slushbox mentioned, because the hybrid system is additive. It doesn’t replace anything, so unless the price of the hybrid components is zero, hybrids will always cost more.
The Honda Insight should be successful
Hybrids will not become universal because they are green. Vorenus is right about the batteries which will have to be manufactured and disposed of in exponential numbers. Anyhow, environmentalism is a side effect of wealth. The last round of eco-conciousness in late 60s-early 70s came only after a 20 year period of (mostly) economic boom. The trend had mostly evaporated by the early 80s when lots of people were out of work and there were more important things to deal with – like eating. But after another 20 boom years, green has been “in” again. I think that with the current economy, greenism is about to go back into the closet and will stay out of sight for quite awhile again until conditions improve.
That said, Hybrids will become popular only when there is an economic case to make for them (which has not been the case up to this point.) It will take a combination of lower initial cost and higher gasoline prices (or gasoline taxes). I’m talking $4/gal and up. If long term gas prices in the usa stay at around $2.50 (which I think will be the case, barring massive inflation or short term panic induced bubbles) then Hybrids will continue to be everybody’s favorite cars that nobody buys.
I’d like to know what the hell we’re going to do with all of the batteries.
This argument again? We’re going to recycle them. Just like we do with all the batteries in non-hybrid cars.
It doesn’t replace anything, so unless the price of the hybrid components is zero, hybrids will always cost more.
That makes sense. Car companies have to buy the batteries from suppliers, who can’t achieve substantial cost savings from higher sales volumes because the material costs that make up most of the expense aren’t getting any cheaper.
That guarantees that there should always be some sort of price premium for hybrids. It also means that low priced hybrids are unlikely, because that markup would be too high in percentage terms in comparison to the non-hybrid alternative. A Lexus RX buyer might be happy to pay it, but a Yaris buyer might not be so thrilled.
In my opinion, the real challenge is with the need for large batteries made with the materials that we currently have to work with. They aren’t ideal mediums for storing the kind of energy needed to operate a car, and they cost a lot to produce and add a lot of weight.
If some alternative power storage device could be invented, that would be a breakthrough to make hybrids commonplace. Otherwise, I believe that it will be a niche. That could be a pretty large niche for Toyota and possibly Honda, but I can’t imagine that everyone else will do particularly well with them.
Well, let’s parse this…sales of everything—vehicular and otherwise—are down, and hybrid vehicles are caught in that net along with trucks, sedans and sportsters. That hybrid sales are off only 10% in a year when other segments are off five times that is almost a compliment.
Gasoline has climbed by roughly twenty cents per gallon in the last two weeks, and common sense says it won’t stay at these depressed prices very long. Many observers reasonably predict that U.S. petrol prices finally settle out at an itchy but not-too-painful $2.50 to $3.00 the gallon. If so, the question becomes not how much you can buy but how well you can use it.
Any vehicle, and particularly heavy ones, are very fuel-inefficient at low speeds. Full hybrids, capable of actually moving the car from a stop without using the IC engine make a lot of sense, particularly in city/suburban traffic. Get up some speed from electrons, then bring in the petrol player to maintain headway; a small-ish engine can deliver some big m.p.g. numbers when run efficiently.
The “Sweet Jesus, we gotta’ have a hybrid” products from Detroit that use partial assist to aid in launching an already-overweight SUV are just another quick-patch, see-how-green-we-are solution. Much of the public is not fooled.
Sayin’ it don’t make it so, and F still equals MA.
If you got a lotta’ M, you still need big fuel flow to get that big A.
When these hasty hybrids don’t sell (for any number of reasons) the manufacturers scream, “See, we told you hybrids wouldn’t make it.” What they really mean is, “We can’t make one that sells.”
Although most new car buyers buy from the heart and not the head, it’s still horses for courses. Hybrid vehicles aren’t for everybody, but they are a horse for a very common course. Good hybrid power plants in sensibly sized vehicles will carve out a fair slice of the market for those who want or need them.
I think the nose-dive of hybrid sales is a temporary blip.
When the entire light-vehicle market is off 35%, hybrids have a 10%-15% price premium, gasoline prices have fallen by 2/3 in less than 9 months, and we’re in the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, it is not surprising that hybrid sales are down.
Ultimately, almost every vehicle on the road will be a hybrid of some sort, because the technology makes thermodynamic sense.
Two big sources of wasted energy in vehicle propulsion are 1) Kinetic energy lost to heat during braking, and 2) fuel consumption during light-duty operation, where 200+ hp engines are providing only 20 hp.
Hybrid technology captures part of that wasted kinetic energy, and allows it to be used under peak load operation (acceleration), so the primary engine can be smaller and more fuel-efficient.
Hybrid technologies can be expensive (e.g. Chevrolet Volt), or relatively cheap (e.g. Saturn Vue Hybrid, next-gen Honda Insight). We will probably see a mixture of different hybrid technologies optimized by application and price point.
JT nailed it. Hybrid market share is up even if sales are down, because the overall market is down much more.
The technology will become widespread simply because it makes sense to recoup some of the energy usually dissipated as heat by the brake rotors.
The entire battery issue is BS. NiMH batteries are fully recylable.
Toyota’s goal is to reduce the hybrid premium (cost) over a conventional ICE to $1500, but they’ve never suggested it could be parity to a conventional engine. Impossible, with the additional electric motor(s), generator(s), and batteries.
Until Fuel-Cells get to market, there should be no electrically powered vehicles. It is not the most efficient or “green” way to go. The added cost, weight, and toxicity (both manufacture and disposal) of the batteries and motors are counter to their stated objective. I’d like to see what a small, efficient diesel or gas motor would do in a Prius or Insight type vehicle. I’d bet the result would be pretty similar in REAL WORLD driving without the downside of both cost and compexity of a hybrid system. Plug-ins are no better unless the power comes from wind, solar, or nuclear power, either. That’s probably the most ineffiecient ground-ground expenditure of energy known to man. That said, for true city-dwellers who are willing to pay the actual additional costs to “save the earth” hybrids could be a nice solution to reduce oil consumption, but frankly only incrementally better than a good diesel right now.
What I’d like to see is that every municipal vehicle be converted to hybrid, or electric power as that would have more of an impact than forcing it upon the general public. I always smile to myself at the irony when I see a belching school bus or trash truck sitting next to a tax-break-getting Prius at a stop light. When the government at every level adopts this “technology” then I’d be okay with them using tax dollars (conditional bailouts) to force them upon me. Go ahead and label me a cave-man, but I enjoy the driving experience too much to endorse any sort of alternative available at this time, especially when their cradle-to-grave benefits are dubious at best.
MattVA:
“I’m having a hard time coming up with a scenario where a hybrid engine costs the same as a normal IC engine, because every hybrid will have all the costs of the IC engine, plus the hybrid components. I don’t see it like the direct inject vs. carburetor that no_slushbox mentioned, because the hybrid system is additive. It doesn’t replace anything, so unless the price of the hybrid components is zero, hybrids will always cost more.”
To a certain extent the hybrid technology is additive, but it will get cheap enough that it is barely noticeable. You don’t see people complaining that their cars cost too much because they have 5 speed automatics instead of three speed automatics.
However, in many ways hybrid systems are not additive, and will be able to replace more expensive systems.
Hybrid technology can give a cheaper to produce inline-4 the power of a V6 when that power is needed, replacing the need for a more expensive V6.
Already Lexus has given their V8 the power of a V12 with a hybrid system in the LS600h.
Hybrid technology can also give a FWD car AWD without the added structural modifications, the expense of a middle differential or clutch system and driveshaft, and the expense of a rear differential that is currently required to give a FWD car AWD.
Note that Honda claims the Insight’s hybrid premium is down to $2K, which is probably about right. At $2K, even at gas at $2/gallon, 15K miles a year at 40 vs 30 MPG is $250 a year, so an 8 year payout. At $4/gallon, its a 4 year payout. Which seems pretty reasonable if you keep your car.
More importantly, hybrids like the new Insight, Prius, and Fusion represent “future proof” cars. Currently, the battery technology is not here yet for plug-in hybrids. But may very well be there in 2-3 years.
Thus if gas prices stay low, you still come out equal or win on an Insight (with the bonus of it being a hatchback, when Honda doesn’t sell the civic hatch in the US) over 8 years.
But if gas prices go back up, you’re sitting pretty. And if battery technology improves, you swap the battery pack for a LiIon pack, and have your plug in hybrid.
The next car I get will be either the Insight, the 2010 Prius, or perhaps the Fusion hybrid.
MattVA wrote:
the hybrid system is additive. It doesn’t replace anything, so unless the price of the hybrid components is zero, hybrids will always cost more.
This is not strictly true. For example, in Honda’s IMA system, the electric motor/generator is 2″ thick unit located between the engine and the transmission. It replaces the flywheel, the starter motor, and the alternator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Motor_Assist
I suspect that the IMA units could be mass-produced and installed for about the same cost as the components they replace.
The rest of the hybrid system consists of some heavy-gauge cables to move the electrons around (cheap) and revised software for the powertrain controller (not very expensive).
That leaves the battery pack, which remains the major cost/weight penalty of hybrids.
@no_slushbox: non-hybrids Nissan Cube and Mazda Verisa (both JDM) have eAWD.
Hybrid cars’ market share went up from 2.2% in 2007 to 2.4%, bucking the trend is not a bad thing even if absolute numbers are down. Anyone have the numbers for diesel? I think it’s in the same ballpark, percent-wise.
I might be interested in the upcoming Insight if the transaction price would be a decent fraction below MSRP. I don’t know if the Mrs. would, as she’s not a fan of hatches and our next purchase would also be her car.
If we to come out from recession, the price of fuel will go up again and hybrids will be a necessity. I think Honda is doing the right thing by streamlining hybrid, i.e. making it less expensive and more car like in driving experience. When the price of gas will reach $3.50/gallon depends on your optimism: if you are optimistic and believe we’ll be out of recession in 2-3 years, then it is 3-4 years, if you are pessimist and believe that country into long recession winter, then add another year for spring to high gas prices.
Thanks Paul, text updated.
Paul Niedermeyer:
“Toyota’s goal is to reduce the hybrid premium (cost) over a conventional ICE to $1500, but they’ve never suggested it could be parity to a conventional engine. Impossible, with the additional electric motor(s), generator(s), and batteries.”
It might have actually already been cheaper for Lexus to develop and build the LS600h than to develop and build a brand new V12 just to achieve the same performance.
Even if it wasn’t at some point it will be. That will be parity with ICE.
Hybrid technology doesn’t have to be purely green, it can be something that boosts power and efficiency, like a turbo. That is how it was used, to the dismay of many greens, in the Accord V6 hybrid.
The buzz hasn’t abated. Hybrids have gained a hold on buying public that is deeper the pet rock or hula hoop could ever have hoped for. The system is not a fad. It’s a 3G premium now, but that’ll scale downward as more people opt for it, just like automatic transmissions. I also think the applications will improve. The Hybrid Altima, for example, loses half it’s trunk. Who wants to pay more that less? Once those flaws are designed away, the hybrids will look even better.
Toyotas HSD replaces the conventional transmission with an orbital gear (and the hybrid electrical motors), that has to be a significant savings.
Once the system has been finessed enough, you can probably ditch the normal starter (if not gone already) and starter battery.
Not enough to reach exact parity, but with a bit more cost reduction, you could get to the point where gas savings pay off in as little as two years. Then it becomes a clear economic advantage.
As far as hybrid sales down 10% down for the year. How does that compare with the car market as a whole? Sales of almost everything in the economy are down this year.
golf4me, I have a friend who had the original Insight. He said he got his best mileage ever when the integrated motor assist was effectively deactivated due to battery glitch. (I think the car was in a mode where it would start the gasoline engine with the motor, but wouldn’t use the motor during acceleration.) So, yeah, it turns out that a tiny, weak engine in a small, light, aerodynamic car can get fantastic mileage without any hybrid magic.
As for fuel cells (instead of batteries)… the technology is still very far from being practical: poor use of energy (efficiency), costs are OK for the space shuttle but doesn’t cut it in the real world, and longevity of the fuel cells in the real world.
Well, one thing to keep in mind is that if its off 10% compared to last year, that is pretty bad.
To go from waiting lists a mile long to down indicates that people fled from the Prius as soon as gas hit 2/gallon.
While there is no doubt that there was a demand spike for hybrids at $4/gal, the only reason demand is down for hybrids is that the entire market is down. The correlation to lower gas prices is, if not just plain incorrect, at least impossible to tease out of the much more massive market crash.
I think that auto buyers will start to learn what the airline industry just has – you cannot live your life (or run a business) if the cost of a critical material can swing wildly in price completely outside of your control. Airlines who didn’t hedge fuel prices got clobbered in the first half of ’08, and airlines that DID hedge fuel prices got clobbered in the 2nd half!
Car buyers realize they can’t buy a truck in January, trade it for a Prius in June, then trade THAT for a truck again in December, etc etc. The only way off the carnival ride is to reduce your dependence on gas. Either take the bus, ride a bike, or buy a more fuel efficient vehicle.
All I know is:
– In Japan, they suddenly are falling over each other forming battery joint ventures an alliances. TTAC reported
– Today, my broker called me and wanted to know who will be the battery supplier for the Volt. I couldn’t tell him with certainty, but gave him all the pertinent URLs from the greencar blog
– I then pointed out the dismal sales.
– He answered “but take a look at the xom call buying in April and the trading patterns of xle (good proxy for the energy sector) June 72 calls.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about and don’t want to know.
They think oil is oversold and will at least go to higher. Gaza and the fact that the Russians just turned off the gas tap to Europe don’t help.
Will all that move a lot of hybrids? I don’t think so, at least not in the short term. But someone is clearly preparing for batteries being used for more than starting a car.
I’m not sure if hybrids as we currently know them have a long future, but without a doubt high MPG vehicles have a very promising future.
The cold hard fact is that we are not discovering vast new deposits of oil, and what is being found is very expensive and difficult to extract. Established supergiant fields like Mexico’s Cantarell and the North Sea are in sharp decline. Ridiculously low oil prices is putting development of the Alberta oil sands and deep water gulf oil on the skids. Pretty soon supply is going to outpace demand, even with further demand destruction, and the price is going to spike. It’s just a matter of time.
Diesel is not the panacea that people like to think it is. Mostly because you can only refine a certain amount of the stuff from a barrel of oil. From there it’s far more important to use that fuel for agriculture and shipping and heavy construction. We are not going to become a nation driving Jetta TDI’s in the future. That said there still will be the gasoline by product from diesel and jet fuel refining which has little practical use outside of the internal combustion engine.
Biofuels, used french fry oil, hydrogen and all other alt fuels have not either the volume or technology to fuel our vehicle fleet yet. So, for the given time I think gas/electric hybrids in one form or another are our future, bar none.
They will be available from Toyota and Honda. Whether the D3 will have enough sense to continue with the technology or not is anyone’s guess. I can’t see why the D3 shouldn’t be able to get in on this market (assuming they survive) but I wouldn’t be suprised if they don’t make any real effort and just let their hybrids languish.
Gas will be going up. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives. The Chinese and Indians have not suddenly given up on wanting a higher standard of living. They want cars, A/C in their homes, central heating in the winter, etc. etc. World wide demand for fossil fuels is going to go up. If you believe otherwise, please back your theory by running out and buying a full sized V8 powered pickup.
People have already mentioned good reasons for having hybrids, and another one to add to the list is that a hybrid can easily be built to run in full electric mode when that is desireable. Some of us can get by easily with a fully electric car M-F. On the weekend we can turn the switch back to hybrid, in case we want to go somewhere hundreds of miles away.
The Prius is not a particularly expensive vehicle, and the Insight will be cheaper still.
Suggesting that hybrids are a passing fad puts one in the same catagory with those who doubted the usefulness of fire and the wheel.
One thing that has not made a lot of sense is putting the hybrid technology on a huge SUV. If someone was worried about fuel consumption they wouldn’t be looking at SUVs to begin with. Ditto if they are “green minded”. I suspect that once again the Japanese understand America better than the Americans do.
Hybrid powertrains are this decade’s take on “How to wring more efficiency out of a given powertrain”. People who naysay it are probably the same people who pooh-pooh’ed fuel injection, variable valve timing or the ECU as too complex and likely to cause the Death of the Small Mechanic.
Meanwhile, I’ve seen two Priuses on the lift at my local shop. Yes, he doesn’t screw with the HSD, but he hasn’t had to, either. He can still do the bulk of the work that most people will go to a mechanic for (oil, brakes, suspension, tires, the various hoses and clamps that go “sproing!”).
Hybrid tech as a green solution is definitely a fad. When you think about it, on a purely thermodynamic basis, the only real advantage hybrids have in actual efficiency is recovering power back into the system via braking. Otherwise, you are actually getting slightly less efficient watt-for-watt of power generated by the ICE getting to the wheels because you’ve introduced another imperfect medium to move that power to the wheels (mechanical efficencies notwithstanding). I would suspect most the efficiencies that get a Prius good mileage (especially on the freeway) have much more to do with that tiny Atkinson motor and the excellent aero of the Prius – not the hybrid bits – especially when you factor the weight penalty of those batteries you’ve got to lug around.
I do think a hybrid powertrain makes more sense in something like the Accord V6 Hybrid. Electric motors have some great benefits, especially in the amount of constant torque they produce, and the absolute control you have over that torque at any time. Its why locomotoves are hybrids, you’d just melt the wheels on those trains trying to grab the rail for traction with a clutch. Small displacement motors that run hot are thermodynamically more efficient than a big displacement motor running cooler, but they make no torque. An S2000 with a “mild” (mass <150kg) hybrid drive featuring discreet electric control of each wheel would be a hoot to drive with all that twist plus that ICE.
Another potential here is turbines. Turbines run with outrageous efficiency, but usually only in a very narrow band of RPM, mass-flow, and temparature. They’re efficiency dogs outside of the strict operating regime they were designed for. But with a serial-hybrid setup powered by a turbine spinning a generator you largely eliminate the problem of the turbine running out of spec, it just delivers a steady stream of electrons to the hybrid powertrain. Start-stop would just be spool down to idle or spool up for power output. Otherwise, turbines have some real advantages over reciprocators. They don’t need a cooling system, you can run just about any fuel you want in them, higher power-to-weight (though with a generator bolted on, that might not be true). The weight penalty of the batteries and electric motors would be alleviated somewhat by not needing an alternator, transmission, or differential (power control electronics get heavy and expensive quick though, what with all that copper!). You also can control the thermochemistry of combustion so much better in a steady-state heat cycle that you can fine-tune the emissions assay to where you don’t need a catalytic back-end. That elimination of catalysts for exhaust control alone would cover that $1500 Toyota posits for a hybrid margin over an ICE.
Of course you get into the cost of the turbine, but no one really knows what that is because no one has ever tried to mass-produce and sell gas turbines. And while turbines are incredibly reliable (thousands of hours between overhauls) in their present applications, don’t know how well they hold up with the soccer-mom maintenance and operational considerations taken into account. But I do think turbines could be an efficiency breakthrough of sorts for cars with a good execution of a serial-hybrid powertrain.
I’m no fan of hybrids, but if I were in the market for a new appliance, I’d be looking at the Prius and the Insight, because I suspect that over the 8-12 years I’d probably keep the thing, gas prices will go up and mostly stay up.
For most of last year I was pretty much against hybrids. None of the 5 people I know who own a Prius have managed to match the official MPG figures at any time – one guy said it was impossible to get an average MPG to match the claimed values.
A couple of them fell into the trap of accepting what the MPG computer of their Prius said until they measured it brim-to-brim and found they got about 45 MPG (Imperial) which is where a diesel would be. So I would crow at them and then blow them away with my 300lb/ft torque and 50+ MPG fuel economy.
East soot lemmings, truly this hybrid nonsense is a fad.
The problem was and is that Diesel cars of the same cost in Europe (remember a Prius in the UK sells for ~18K GBP – which used to be 36K USD last summer…) and you could buy a larger TDCi Mondeo for less and get about the same or even better MPG in the real world. The official figures would be similar or even favour the Prius, but not the real world.
(as a side note most Petrol engines in Europe fail to meet the official figures in the real world – see Mitsubishi’s GDi and Honda’s VTEC-E engines for worked examples)
Still that 45 MPG is not a bad figure for an automatic – in that you don’t have to shift manually – with quite good in gear times, and in average driving by real people – not mega-milers.
So time to reconsider, maybe even backtrack.
Having thought about it more I can see a future where hybrid is more developed and begins to work well with whatever other power source you need – diesel, petrol, hydrogen, giant clockwork spring, rubber bands or the flux converter.
Configuring the Hybrid tech and the conventional in different patterns for different uses is perhaps the key.
For example a larger car more used for longer distances could make use of a long-legged petrol, diesel or hydrogen engine with battery/leccy tech for in town or when the throttle is floored at speed. That way the “conventional” engine could be smaller and more economical – maybe that 2.5 V6 is not required if you have batteries helping. Which is pretty much how the Prius gets away with only 1.5 litres.
So cruising at 70 would have the smaller engine ticking over at say 2,500 rpm or less with the electric motors “helping” on the hills or when passing and regenerating on the downhill parts or when overrunning. The batteries would not need so much charge (less use) and so could be lighter.
A similar sized car used in the urban environment (e.g. a Taxi) could use larger batteries and a smaller engine.
Smaller cars used for more local journeys could happily live with smaller (say even 0.8 or 0.6 litre units) and have the same performance as the average 1.4-1.6 litre ones do now. Even with no gears.
What about performance cars, we are petrol/soot-heads after all ?
Well the leccy tech could be tuned to discharge more quickly for more punch (Tesla anyone ?) but would also run-out more quickly requiring more input from the “conventional” engine to recharge or keep it going. So bigger batteries and bigger motors and more thirst and more cost.
Although I can see a future where pretty much most performance cars will top out at 100-120 at most, but getting there much, much more quickly than today’s ones do. The good thing is that the performance will be more accessible, but yes I still enjoy the idea of someone finding out that a Countach lifts like a bas**ard at 150+
So to answer the original question – I don’t think they are done yet by a long way. We have to compare a Commodore 64 of 1984 to a modern “quad core” PC for roughly the same cash price to see where technology can take us in a relatively short space of time.
As for the Prius itself (and the Lexus, Civic Hybrids) – they have been designed mainly for the US market. More specific models will be required elsewhere and at lower cost. With fuel so expensive in Europe and elsewhere the $1500 is still a little high a premium.
They also pander to our conventional view of what a car should be and how it should look. It will be interesting when someone comes up with how the future car should be. The Prius is close but its layout may not be the most optimal in terms of space use vs mechanical requirements. That will come when someone thinks of a car as different as the original Mini, Citroen DS etc.
But they will come along.
He answered “but take a look at the xom call buying in April and the trading patterns of xle (good proxy for the energy sector) June 72 calls.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about and don’t want to know
He’s basically saying that oil prices are going to go up.
Traders are betting big that it’s going back up to about $60 or so, and they’re storing oil with that expectation. I’m inclined to agree with them, and I think that the guys who are calling for $25-30 oil are overshooting the downside.
That probably means gas is going to end up somewhere around $2.50-3.00 by this year or next. This should be good for Toyota and Honda, relatively speaking, and not so good for those companies who just borrowed a lot of money from the American taxpayer.
Otherwise, you are actually getting slightly less efficient watt-for-watt of power generated by the ICE getting to the wheels because you’ve introduced another imperfect medium to move that power to the wheels (mechanical efficencies notwithstanding).
Not really. The beauty of systems like Toyota’s HSD is that it can boost engine power (for passing) without using more fuel, supplant it completely (under light load), or use the ICE alone when it’s most efficient to do so (at wide-open throttle).
I think GM’s 2Mode can do this, too, but I haven’t read up recently. The whole point of a good hybrid system (and not a big starter with regen-braking like GM BAS or Honda IMA) is to use the most efficient energy source available, depending on the circumstance.
I would suspect most the efficiencies that get a Prius good mileage (especially on the freeway) have much more to do with that tiny Atkinson motor and the excellent aero of the Prius – not the hybrid bits – especially when you factor the weight penalty of those batteries you’ve got to lug around.
You’re ignoring cars like the Altima Hybrid (no Atkinson), and to a lesser degree, the Camry, Escape, Highlander and RX, all of which get better highway mileage than their conventional, four-cylinder counterparts.
I do think a hybrid powertrain makes more sense in something like the Accord V6 Hybrid. Electric motors have some great benefits, especially in the amount of constant torque they produce, and the absolute control you have over that torque at any time.
Which is precisely what the Prius does, although you’re confusing “torque” with efficiency. And the Prius (and other, advanced hybrids) does it better. It could do it with any powertrain, though it makes cost sense to use a low-emissions Atkinson-cycle version of an existing powerplant.
You’re also over-crediting Honda’s IMA, which as implemented in the Accord is basically an electric turbocharger that helps turn the crankshaft instead of blowing air—in fact, a turbocharged four is probably a better idea. In Honda’s implementation, the hybrid drive did nothing save for boost performance with a lower penalty under load. It had no real ability to optimize efficiency, save for regen braking, which is what you’re claiming the Prius does alone, which is wrong.
I guess what I don’t understand about your post is that you’re calling the Prius a fad that doesn’t really do much, technically, then coming up with examples of good implementations of hybrid technology, which are precisely what the Prius does anyway.
I get the decided impression that you just don’t like the Prius?
A car for most people is a long term commitment. Very few (if any) people are going to follow daily (hourly?!) oil futures and run out to buy the vehicle that corresponds to the instantaneous cost of gas.
It would appear, from consumer behavior of the last 10 years, that given cheap gas consumers prefer big HP and big vehicles. However, the gas price spike this summer gave people a taste of what they are in for ($150 fill ups) if gas prices get high, and behavior from the first 6 months of 2008 indicate consumers will prefer fuel economy in that case.
So, someone buying a new vehicle today will have to make a 3 – 5 year bet on gas price trends. Many, though not all, will now think twice about commiting themselves to low mpg vehicles.
As for whether hybrid is the RIGHT technology, who knows, but the advantage is that it is relatively cheap and easy to integrate into existing vehicle architectures and fuel/ parts/ service infrastructure. The time for hydrogen, turbines, or Mr Fusion may come, but hybrid as a bridge technology, at least, is here to stay.
@CarnotCycle :
I would suspect most the efficiencies that get a Prius good mileage (especially on the freeway) have much more to do with that tiny Atkinson motor and the excellent aero of the Prius
I have real world experience with commuting in a 1.6L convential car and a Prius Hybrid. In heavy Boston traffic, the Prius blows the other car away when it comes to fuel consumption. In a conventional car when you’re creeping along for 30 minutes to an hour in stop and go traffic, the engine is sucking down fuel the entire time and pumping out pollutants. That’s not the case with the Prius. The ICE is off most of the time and you’re not burning nearly as much fuel.
Hybrids really shine in extremely heavy traffic. Critics need to drive one at rush hour in Southern California, Boston, NYC, or other cities that have nightmare traffic. That’s where you really see a difference.
All the talk about physics and thermal dynamics is all well and good, but there’s also a large political component here…not even bothering to argue the social and environmental aspects. As the people of the Balkans and parts of Europe are finding out, it sucks when someone else controls the pipeline. It’s a lesson we haven’t learned real well over the past 30 years, but it impacts us more frequently and more severely each time. As someone above mentioned, we’ve got to get off that roller coaster.
We are slowly developing the political will to make changes, the engineering know-how is following along. The hybrid engine is a (improving) tool in the toolbox.
Fad or not, with the coming CAFE standards I think we will see more hybrids and not fewer. At some point, in some classes of cars, there will only be hybrids available. Barring any new tricks that can be coaxed out of an ICE only drivetrain, of course.
I see the hybrid premium as basically partial insurance against rising gas prices — and it is pretty cost effective insurance, at that.
At today’s rather low gas prices, you’re still almost breaking even over the life of the car when you buy the hybrid — so the “insurance premium” (hybrid premium minus lifetime savings) is low to begin with, perhaps zero. Gas prices could fall further, which would increase the effective size of the insurance premium, but that is limited by the absolute size of the hybrid premium iteslf — if gas became free, the highest amount you’d be out would be the hybrid premium.
On the flip side, recent events have shown that there is extreme volatility in petroleum prices. Thus, the insurance pays out in the event gas prices go back to $3 or $4 per gallon (or more). In that case, a hybrid would generate thousands of dollars of savings over several years.
Basically, from a prospective point of view, you are putting up $2000 or so extra dollars now, and expect with a very high degree of probability to recoup at least that much savings over the life of the car. You would also expect with a somewhat lower (but still high) degree of probability that you would recoup a whole lot more than your initial investment as savings over the years. You would also expect, with fairly low probability, that gas prices could stay very low over the next ten years, meaning you recoup substantially less than your costs — but in no event are you out more than your initial $2000.
Once you assign best-guess numbers to the actual values and probabilities of each case, you can come up with a nominal cost/benefit number, along with some confidence intervals and ranges of possibilities.
If you are after a complete hedge, you’d then consider the following: You’d estimate how much fuel you will use over the life of you new car, both if it was a hybrid and if it was not. You’d then go to the futures market and price out delivery of the fuel in both cases, spaced out over the life of the car. If the total present excess cost of all your fuel contracts for the conventional car — the amount by which is was higher than the hybrid fuel costs — was more than the hybrid premium, you’d buy the hybrid, buy all your fuel in advance, and save exactly that excess. If you were planning on selling your car before its useful life was over, you’d have to guess as to resale values at the point of trading it in. It is my impression that hybrids hold their resale value very well, but that is a huge complication. You could always wait and see — be willing to sell the car if the resale value was high, but also willing to hold it through the end if the resale value remained low.
Personally, I admit that this discussion is somewhat academic. I drive around a 15 year old Panther platform Ford with 180k miles and have no immediate plans to replace it. Even when gas prices were high over the summer, it made sense to me to pay at the pump, rather than pay at the dealership. I’ll replace the car when (if?) it ever dies — probably with some sort of hybrid.
Not really. The beauty of systems like Toyota’s HSD is that it can boost engine power (for passing) without using more fuel, supplant it completely (under light load), or use the ICE alone when it’s most efficient to do so (at wide-open throttle).
What I am talking about here is the thermodynamic efficiency. Prius realizes some efficiencies via judicious use of those watts when they are needed, and not generating watts when they are just being wasted. However compared to a regular ICE powertrain, the watts the Prius uses via the electric side of its powertrain (when it uses them) reach the road with slightly less thermodynamic efficiency because you put one more thing in the loop (the battery). That’s what I am saying there.
You’re ignoring cars like the Altima Hybrid (no Atkinson), and to a lesser degree, the Camry, Escape, Highlander and RX, all of which get better highway mileage than their conventional, four-cylinder counterparts.
If you took the Altima hybrid for example, ditched the hybrid components and therefore the associated mass, gave it the slippery C/D of the Prius, and ran the motor as an Atkinson cycle, you’d get very close to the same mileage as the Altima Hybrid – if not slightly better – in all but the most congested stop-and-go traffic situations. Oh, and for cruising down the highway at 70, the “Atkinson-Aero” Altima would totally blow the hybrid Altima away on fuel mileage.
I guess what I don’t understand about your post is that you’re calling the Prius a fad that doesn’t really do much, technically, then coming up with examples of good implementations of hybrid technology, which are precisely what the Prius does anyway.
I get the decided impression that you just don’t like the Prius?
Actually I like the Prius as a car, and as indicated, I dig hybrid tech. I had a chance to drive a 2007 example for two weeks straight as a rental in (where else?) Silicon Valley when I was there on business this year. Its fun to try and get your mileage up via the info-panel feedback. Also, the Prius doesn’t accelerate very fast, but it sure feels faster because of the aforementioned torque of its electric bits. But as a “green” technology, especially for a car you might use outside of an urban environment, it is a fad. People buy those things for a fashion statement every bit as much as for any kind of fuel-efficiency advantage. The genius of the Prius is they’ve got a car that you can advertise to the world your green cred, without totally compromising the utility of the vehicle (see Honda Insight). Like other posters have noted, a typical Euro-diesel hatch gets better mileage while making more power for less installed weight in the car. As a matter of fact, the Prius was designed not for enviro-petro-conscience reasons, but to comply with California’s now-defunct Zero Emission Mandate. The Prius technically matched the loopholes and regs of that mandate barely and that’s where the hybrid motivation for Toyota came from.
If oil prices go up in the current economy,Hybrids still wont sell!
Why?
Too expensive.
with what most consumers are going throught now if gas prices GO UP,Do you REALLY think that they will have the additional funds to purchase a car of limited value for the extra price???
Most consumers will buy used,limit trips,and sacrifice size,before they pay for “what happens after 5 years? technology, that’s slow,unknown and expensive.
Americans are funny like that….
AND THANK GOD WE ARE!!!!
IMO, hybrid technology must become more common. As oil prices rise, hybrid technologies will make increasing fiscal sense. I certainly have more faith in a proven technology than I do in the development of a hydrogen based engine or bio-fuels, neither of which makes any sense at this time.
@ JT, Thank you for your post.
To many of the usual suspects who do the ROI equations as arguments for not spending money upfront, can we see your back of the envelope calc on the resale performance?
If you’ve selected an optioned out model with an engine “upgrade” you would expect more on the exit trade-out, no? All things being equal if you go in with $3000 dollars extra expense (like if you choose a V8 model over a V6 model) you’re going to expect to come out with a percentage of that back on the resale. In a more ‘normal’ market that’s what happens.
I’d argue, that Hybrid car resale might actually hold up BETTER if fuel rises over the next 3-5 years. They’ll be desirable used cars for many.
Our company has a “fleet” of 10 Camry Hybrids in various offices in the US, and they have been very reliable, delivered on their economy promise and resale values have held up. Our guys expect them to have been less expensive to have owned than a regular Camry.
– Toyota has said repeatedly, that Hybrid systems for them are profitable, since the second gen Prius.
– Hybrids are not “more complex” in an engineering sense. Every component of a hybrid is similar to a conventional car, the added components are batteries and an electric motor/generator, both extremely reliable components also. The outcome has been that hybrid versions have a higher reliability than their non-hybrid counterpart. (Camry, Highlander are able to be directly compared, but numbers are unfortunately internal).
– The upcoming Mercedes Hybrid is more “inline” replacing the starter motor, alternator and flywheel. Everything else is pretty similar, but fuel saving is quite good. Electric assist in acceleration and of course regeneration on braking. I think more of this approach might be common. They intend it for all sorts of trucks too.
– It’s a different segment, but go out and drive the Lexus GS450h. That car is “fun”, but don’t expect an E90 M3 to be under your arse.
– Diesel hybrid in cars is unlikely, as the weight penalty compared to Atkinson cycle petrol actually gets you backwards on MPG/CO2.
As a general comment people, especially to our US friends: please try to think further into the future.
Yes, once again, the likely supply vs. demand price for oil is in the 60 to 80 range. Unless the economy continues in the doldrums, it will go back up there.
The key to hybrid future is for car makers to just install it in all their cars without making a big deal about it. Remember when “FUEL INJECTION” or “DOHC 16V” was plastered over cars everywhere?
You don’t see that anymore, hybrid needs to be like that.
Batteries are recyclable yes, but are they recyclable into batteries again?
CarnotCycle wrote:
the watts the Prius uses via the electric side of its powertrain (when it uses them) reach the road with slightly less thermodynamic efficiency because you put one more thing in the loop (the battery). That’s what I am saying there.
That is true, but the majority of those watts are from regenerative braking, which a conventional ICE drivetrain simply wastes heating the brake rotors and pads. Zero watts is zero watts, regardless of efficiency.
If you took the Altima hybrid for example, ditched the hybrid components and therefore the associated mass, gave it the slippery C/D of the Prius, and ran the motor as an Atkinson cycle, you’d get very close to the same mileage as the Altima Hybrid…
True, but Atkinson cycle engines are torque-deprived dogs. If you put a less-powerful more-efficient ICE in any vehicle, you’ll get better fuel economy. The only thing you give up is performance (which I actually advocate, but it is factor that must be considered)
Hybrid technology need not preclude other efficiency measures. In fact, it allows greater flexibility in matching fuel/energy sources to needs.
@ Carnotcycle
As a matter of fact, the Prius was designed not for enviro-petro-conscience reasons, but to comply with California’s now-defunct Zero Emission Mandate.
This is absolutely not true. The first generation model did not even come to US shores.
Toyota people (who I have spoken with at length) in the best traditions of once great US innovation, saw an opportunity and took it. The opportunity was to carve out a segment for energy regeneration in cars which fit nicely with a rising oil price future. Their hybrid solution (which is still full of the usual automotive engineering/economic compromises) happens to be an elegant approach.
They could have used flywheel energy storage (don’t laugh – look it up), but that set of compromises are worse.
Toyota hybrid may have helped secure the future of the company. That is what the Detroit apologists and hybrid contrarians seem to hate most, which is just sad.
the Prius was designed not for enviro-petro-conscience reasons, but to comply with California’s now-defunct Zero Emission Mandate.
That’s incorrect. That’s what the GM EV-1 was for. (More to the point, the EV-1 was intended to get California to drop the standard, which it did.)
Toyota had an electric version of the RAV4 to deal with the ZEV issue. It, too, stopped making them as soon as they got the chance when the ZEV requirement was cut.
The Prius was first launched in Japan. It’s an ideal car for a country with congested cities, scarce parking and expensive gas. They built it for the same reason that they make most of their other cars, to make money.
davey49:
“The key to hybrid future is for car makers to just install it in all their cars without making a big deal about it. Remember when “FUEL INJECTION” or “DOHC 16V” was plastered over cars everywhere?”
BMW still seems to think fuel injection is impressive, i.e. 335″i”.
This is absolutely not true. The first generation model did not even come to US shores
That’s incorrect. That’s what the GM EV-1 was for. (More to the point, the EV-1 was intended to get California to drop the standard, which it did.)
Appears I’m totally wrong on this one. Oops. That’s one of the reasons I come to this site I guess.
True, but Atkinson cycle engines are torque-deprived dogs. If you put a less-powerful more-efficient ICE in any vehicle, you’ll get better fuel economy. The only thing you give up is performance (which I actually advocate, but it is factor that must be considered)
That’s what I’m saying about the Prius. If you were to swap a normal Otto cycle in the Prius, even of the same power output, you would lose a significant fraction of your fuel efficiency, at least relative to a normal hybrid-less system. I think a lot of the fuel efficiency of the Prius is attributable to its low drag and efficient operating cycle heat engine, not its electrical bits as much as most people seem to think.
The Prius is a good car in a dense urban environment, and the electric bits become quite beneficial the more the operating environment is like that. If you spend a good amount of drive time wafting however, at some point the electric bits become more parasitic mass than efficiency-enhancers. It is interesting to think, but the better battery tech gets the less and less you need a heat motor on-board at all. At some point hybrid-electrics are going to be squeezed between those two extremes of the driving environment.
Again, I’m not a hybrid hater or even a Prius hater. But I do think the Prius is a fashion trend more than a “green” solution, and that social perception drives its sales more than its actual technology, at least here in the USA. I also believe relative to what that approach offers (parallel hybrid) is a narrow and over time receding band of operating condition where it is the ideal approach efficiency-wise.
I also believe more and more that turbines could be a big thing in hybrid cycles. Pure electric is more efficient but not as energy-dense as a piston heat engine. Turbines are better heat engines (ideally) than piston engines, but they are not as efficient over a wide operating range. If electric and turbine teamed up on the piston engine however, that could be a winner.
@ CarnotCycle
electric and turbine teamed up on the piston engine however, that could be a winner
Now you’re talking, Amercians would go for a CNG gas turbine electric bat-mobile wouldn’t they?
There are turbine generator sets available that are AMAZINGLY small for their power output and weight. We’re talking small forklift pallet size, a bit bigger than a Honda gen-set you might take on the RV.
…..but there are problems there too.
One of the problems with a turbine electric unit for automotive (as I understand it) is the rotational speed; they absolutely hate to change directions, and act like a gyroscope. The direction changes put huge loads to the turbine shaft bearings.
So unfortunately, you will only see turbine electric in ships or locomotives, or completely stationary.
The problem with a turbine electric unit for automotive (as I understand it) is the rotational speed; they absolutely hate to change directions, and act like a gyroscope. The direction changes put huge loads to the turbine shaft bearings.
That’s an interesting observation, and could impact handling dynamics; but it must be solvable. Look at an F-16 fly around. Seems to stay together nice, and that is one big jet motor with a ton of angular momentum in its compressor. Same deal with the motor in the M1 Abrams tank. Lycoming turbine powered, under tremendous load throwing 68 tons over rough terrain at forty miles an hour. Turbine is getting bounced around pretty good in that environment and it seems to work (there’s a vehicle that could benefit from a turbo-electric setup vs. its turbomechanical setup, in which the tranny breaks ALL THE TIME).
If you really can’t tolerate gyroscopic tendencies, and have enough clearance, you can also orient the turbine so its axis of rotation is vertical relative to the car.
@ CarnotCycle
No doubt there are solutions as in the examples you provide but at what cost in weight and service interval.
I believe the M1 Abrams has an engine exchange program under way specifically to address durability issues and economy. One of the features of the M1 is the ability swap the engine very quickly (I think that’s right).
In aircraft the engine RPM is lower than most people think. The General Electric F110 has an RPM limit of 10,000rpm and it’s a BIG unit yes, but clearly there are trade-offs in ultimate turning radius for fighter aircraft that you can’t have with a car.
Small turbines would be very high RPM.
I can’t find it right now, but there was a company with an example turbine-electric powerplant but I’m fairly sure it was DOA.
In aircraft the engine RPM is lower than most people think. The General Electric F110 has an RPM limit of 10,000rpm and it’s a BIG unit yes, but clearly there are trade-offs in ultimate turning radius for fighter aircraft that you can’t have with a car.
The actual compressor RPM is a multiple of that although I forget exact limits (~40,000RPM, I think). The RPM limit on the F110 you refer to is the fan RPM. All modern turbofans and most turbojets are dual-spooled.
Compact turbines used in RC airplanes have single-spool combined centrifugal-axial setups that spin at 100,000 RPM. The limits associated with RPM in these engines is related to the speed of sound at the tips of the blades, kinda like cavitation with a boat’s prop in the water limits RPM.
And yes Abrams motors are on for replacement and depot maintenance, but remember these are vehicles being operated in the most punishing of environments (talk about “urban driving” in Baghdad and 120 degree desert dust-cloud wafting) for years on end in a combat environment. Not bad given the circumstances, really.
@ CarnotCycle
(Sorry – off topic).
Those small RC engines are amazing.
A friend has a 10hp marine gas turbine that he says weighs about 20lbs in one of his (bigger) RC models (he’s a nutter though).
factotum :
I’d like to know what the hell we’re going to do with all of the batteries.
This argument again? We’re going to recycle them. Just like we do with all the batteries in non-hybrid cars.
Thanks for sticking up for the TRUTH, Factotum. The battery fear, created by those who don’t understand the system (and don’t care to learn) is really getting ridiculous; and I say this after having had my Prius for nearly 5 years now. People are just QUIVVERING in fear over the batteries and the high voltage. Sheesh.
Bytor :
Toyotas HSD replaces the conventional transmission with an orbital gear (and the hybrid electrical motors), that has to be a significant savings.
Correct, there is no transmission in the Prius. The HSD consists of a planetary gearset that fits in the palm of your hand.
Once the system has been finessed enough, you can probably ditch the normal starter (if not gone already) and starter battery.
Already gone. The Toyota system consists of two “motor/generators”.
MG1 is the smaller motor/generator. When being a motor, he is responsible for starting the ICE. The computer allows the ICE to free-spin (no fuel/air and no compression). MG1 spins the ICE up to 1000 RPM. With no compression resistance, this takes less than a second. Once the ICE is up to speed, the computer lights the fire.
When being a generator, MG1 is converting “extra” engine torque (up to 28% I think) into electricity for storage into the battery pack.
MG2 is the bigger motor/generator. This one, when being a motor, provides drive assist. It’s also capable of moving the car without assistance from the gasoline engine. When being a generator, MG2 provides braking resistance, and converts rotational energy (from the drive wheel(s)) into electrical energy for storage into the battery.
One additional note: In addition to savings of transmission work (because one does not exist in the Prius), there’s also less wear-and-tear of the braking system (see my MG2 notes above). There are Prius taxi cabs that have gone over 120,000 miles or more without needing brake work.
Hard stops do use the brakes, but normal driving use them less.