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| Pretty it aint, but the Prius does signal a return to electric cars at Toyota |
IT is not just Shaun Abrahams who made a sharp U-turn this
month.
Toyota now says it can make electric cars that will last almost as
long as its internal combustion engines.
Koji Toyoshima, the chief engineer for the latest Prius, told
Reuters at the launch of the new Prius in the U.S. that the Japanese car giant
has now tamed the volatile lithium-ion battery technology to pack more power
safely at no significant extra cost.
Reuters quoted Toyoshima as saying: “Developing lithium-ion
batteries for both hybrids and plug-ins will enable us to also produce
all-electric cars in the future.”
Rivals like Tesla Motors and Nissan, who adopted lithium-ion
battery technology nearly a decade ago, will be very interested in Toyoshima’s
use of the little word “will”.
As a very conservative company, Toyota has to date preferred to
focus on hydrogen as a source of power, despite this boiling down (pun intented)
to making electricity to store hydrogen to make electricity, because of concerns
over the cost, size and unproven safety levels of batteries.
Reuters reports that lithium-ion batteries can be unstable and they
have been blamed for incendiary Samsung smartphones and smoking Dreamliner
airplanes.
Having Toyota endorse lithium-ion will be a fillip for the
developing technology and it gives the automaker the option to produce for an
all-electric passenger-car market, which it has avoided, preferring to put its
heft behind the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (FCVs).
Toyota says its Prius Prime, a soon-to-be-launched plug-in electric
version of the world’s top-selling petrol hybrid, will use lithium-ion batteries
with enough energy to make the car go about 60 kms when fully charged before the
petrol engine kicks in. Because of different methodology in measuring a car’s
electric mode range, the Prime’s 60 km range will be listed in the U.S. as
around 40 km.
“It’s a tall order to develop a lithium-ion car battery that can
perform reliably and safely for 10 years, or over hundreds of thousands of
kilometres,” said Toyoshima.
“We have double braced and triple braced our battery pack to make
sure they’re fail-safe ... It’s all about safety, safety, safety,” he
said.
Toyota’s confidence in its battery’s safety and stability comes
from improved control technology that monitors precisely the temperature and
condition of each of the 95 cells in its new battery pack.
Working with battery supplier Panasonic Corp, which also produces
Li-ion batteries for Tesla, Toyota has also improved the precision in battery
cell assembly, ensuring the battery chemistry is free of impurities.
Battery experts say increasingly sophisticated systems that can
track individual cell conditions are becoming closely held trade secrets.
Lower battery prices, which have fallen by about 60% in five years
to around $145 (R1 958) per kilowatt hour, have also enabled Toyota to develop
its more compact, efficient battery, while adding more sophisticated controls to
its battery pack, Toyoshima said.
Toyota declined to say more on its costs. — Reuters.
