Well in 10-years we'll know which battery choice is works best. The benefit for the Li (15% smaller) does not sound too significant on the surface. Suspecting I go with cheaper NiW if I get a new car.
i think they are just using up the nimh supply commitment. li-on is already a proven winner and will be the future. will be interesting to see the price difference, but toyota will likely add options to the li-on cars to confuse the issue.
In the US, bisco is clearly right about the strategy. For example, the option I most want, blind spot monitors, is available only on the 4 and 4 Touring packages. I am likely to get a 4, even though traditionally I am a close-to-base-model buyer (e.g., currently a 2010 Prius II). BTW, how is Toyota dealing with the NiMH vs LiIon issue in non-Prius cars and SUVs?
i haven't seen li-on in anything else yet. maybe the limited rav4 ev? funny how it sounded like it was going to be optional, but now it's packaged.
With rare exceptions, common battery chemistries have a low ratio of active to inert chemicals. The bulk is made up of housing and non-reactive, conductors. The ratio improves by the cube over the surface area. So there was a mathematical reason why NiMH batteries were size limited for transportation. Bob Wilson
Lithium is used on the alpha (prius v, 7 seat) sold in Japan and Europe. I doubt it will be used on the Rav4 hybrid, Tesla lithum was used on rav4 ev.. I read a review that said for the US only the base 2 trim would be nimh, the rest will be lithium ion. Is this correct? That would probably lead to this 50%, which then looks like it is mainly there for recycling and manufacturing. The nimh recycling is established but toyota still needs to establish a lithium recycling program for the US and Europe, plus there is a lot of manufacturing capability for nimh that will need to be written off if they all go lithium. I was surprised that the system hp is now reported so much lower. Is this lower battery power, electronics, or is toyota using a different way to determine hp. tesla recently switched to a more realistic method and dropped hp on their D models to reflect what the system would do, maybe this is really just a specification of power change. Does anyone know? Dropping lithium to only 0.75 kwh was also suprising, but perhaps that can perform as well as a 1.3 kwh nimh.
the article is about prius, not alpha. i think you're correct. do they sell 50% package II/Two in the u.s.? wasn't the rav 4 ev sold in cali with lithium?
Its more than 50% for the II/Two in US for gen III. That's what I bought, because I wanted an aftermarket head unit, and any upgrade made you pay for the fairly bad upgrade when I bought my gen III in 2009. I think they have improved as expected in 7 years on the head unit ;-) I think upgraded IIs like the eco also come with lithium, so only the base II has nimh, but I'm not sure if autoblog had that right. Yas, I was thinking the new hybrid. The discountinued Rav4 ev used tesla/Panasonic lithium, that has a very different chemistry than this battery. This one probably is like the alpha which was not sold in the US. That chemistry is set for higher number of charge discharge cycles and higher power to energy. Thanks for the correction, I've updated my post.
I believe it's 50/50 worldwide mostly due to distribution. (some countries only getting NiMH, others getting the option of Li-Ion or NiMH) Total system horsepower is calculated differently for Gen 4, as agreed upon between all Japanese manufacturer. This could mean we'll see a change in hp ratings for next year (or if the agreement specifies only new models) for Camry, HiHy, CR-Z, RLX Sport Hybrid, RXh, CTh, ESh, GSh, LSh.
