It's more efficient to take to a pump, transfer into a vehicle and burn on board than burn remotely with transmission loss then battery storage losses. EV gain vs hybrid isn't worth the tradeoffs. Popular to subsidize though.

The Leaf looks like every hatchback ever. That format remains a popular niche, just not amongst old men.

Wouldn't be happening without a government mandate

#9 | POSTED BY SNOOFY AT 2022-11-26 03:08 PM | FLAG:

When the Prius came out it had no government support anywhere. US subsidies were 7 years behind the first to market Japanese cars and 5 years behind Gen 2 global release.

"I can say 100 percent that Toyota received absolutely no support " no money, no grants " from the Japanese government for the development of the Prius," Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco said.

They can help, but government policies are not strictly necessary for automotive advances to come to market.

Maybe the Japanese government didn't support the development of the Prius but the US and and California sure did.

#27 | POSTED BY DONNERBOY AT 2022-11-27 12:52 PM | FLAG:

No. Toyota received no money from the US nor California to develop the Prius. US hybrid subsidies came 7 years later.

This thread is a bunch of people with zero industry knowledge but absolutely certainty how it works. It's tragic.

No, Toyota pricing it between the corolla and camry before subsidies existed is why it got popular.

Tragic is the description of your industry knowledge but it's par for the course from Musk worshippers.

#34 you worshipped Musk and wanted to work from him. Don't know when subsidies kicked in for hybrids. Think a $80k ASP battery car had to have subsidies to popularize lipo cars. It's not hubris, I have industry data you can't get. It's my job and you have been a long time fountain of Musk driven fake news.

But thankfully I get to wind down at the end of next year and never care about the automotive industry again. Greener pastures. Unless I take ford's offer to work on user experiences.

#40 | POSTED BY DONNERBOY AT 2022-11-28 10:53 AM | FLAG:

Stop trying to Google your way out of not knowing anything.

The Prius was developed with no subsidies from anybody, it's an internal Toyota project, and after market testing it sold well because it was priced correctly at the right time and was extremely suitable to fleet ops. Subsidies came half a decade later sold as consumer breaks but really to support commercial and state/city government fleet acquisitions. The customer demographic of the Prius don't need the subsidy, they were predominately upper & upper-middle class homeowners.

The actual battery car revolution was in China, taking trash 2 strokes off the street and replacing them with not nearly as bad coal charged, battery powered setups. The car that brought lipo cars to the US was after the one after the Tesla Roaster, the S. A car with an $89k ASP is not helped by subsidies as the buyers are on average in the top 10% of US incomes. Then came the Model 3 switch which cannibalized the high margin lines and was so backlogged it also did not need any subsidies. The top earners that would have bought an S bought the 3 instead. One of the few things true out of Musk is that they didn't actually need the subsidies and they ran out for Tesla early, and they don't get anymore because the batteries aren't union products thanks to the last round of legislation.

I can tell you all about lipos. I own many. I can assemble packs, cylindrical and prismatic. I have had to sit down and digest the research projects on stuff like using waste from leather processing to construct lipo anodes.

Your electric motor gets its power from a battery. The battery gets its power from... ? Except in edge cases in the US, it's a natural gas power plant. Our plants are not good on average and it will be awhile before they catch up. 30%ish thermal efficiency. The best, newest closed cycle turbines are on par with the thermal efficiency of the latest and greatest piston combustion engines. So the 30%ish plant loses to the lines, loses to battery storage losses, then loses 15% to the motor. The logistics of transport and rate of introduction of thermal efficiency increases for onboard power plants greatly favors hybrid powertrains over the next several decades in reality, just not politically.