Pruis Discontinued

[AJones]

8 hours ago, BhxTrev said:

I’d have thought the Gen4 Prius was the ideal car to convert to an ev.

.....

If Toyota are to play catch up as far as evs are concerned, I reckon they couldn’t choose a better car than the Prius to to convert to an ev. What’s the saying, “If it ain’t bust don’t to fix it!”

Toyota went half-way there with the Prius Plug-in (aka Prius Prime) but while it's a very good car it does highlight some problems with the Prius design because accommodating the larger PHEV Battery resulted in a significant loss of boot space, in practice you couldn't make the Battery much bigger while retaining a useable boot.

I assume to turn it into an EV it would need some major re-engineering of the back-end to fit a larger Battery under the floor of the boot, or under the rear seats. Other manufacturers like Hyundai with their Ioniq seem to have a more flexible platform.

I'm surprised Toyota didn't have more success with the plug-in version, but the boot probably didn't help. 

[Cyker]

The thing is Toyota had a roadmap to EVs but not until 2040 or 2050 - They were caught out because the goalposts were shifted to 2030 and that royally messed up their plans.

They believed (As I do) that current EV tech, specifically batteries, are woefully inadequate and only useful for specific use-cases, not as a general replacement for ICE, so they were ploughing money into R&D to find alternatives or at least make batteries less bad, while leveraging their hybrid tech.

Now they're having to move things forward without the firmer technological foundations they'd been planning for so they're having to follow the trend of Giant Land Boat EV

[AJones]

9 minutes ago, Cyker said:

They believed (As I do) that current EV tech, specifically batteries, are woefully inadequate and only useful for specific use-cases, not as a general replacement for ICE, so they were ploughing money into R&D to find alternatives or at least make batteries less bad, while leveraging their hybrid tech.

Toyota simply misjudged the technology, lithium ion technology advanced quicker than they had expected, while their alternative of hydrogen fuel cells has not advanced beyond trial scale.

You get variations of this same story in lots of industries, companies focussing on one product or technology and missing the development of another, forced to pivot because they bet on the wrong horse.

9 minutes ago, Cyker said:

Now they're having to move things forward without the firmer technological foundations they'd been planning for so they're having to follow the trend of Giant Land Boat EV

Toyota are not forced to build huge SUV EVs, it's a business choice because those kind of models are the most profitable and sell well. Tesla didn't start with SUVs, it made the roadster and sleek saloon EVs, Hyundai made the Ioniq which is a sleek saloon model, VW make the ID3, MG make the MG5 estate car.

[BhxTrev]

7 minutes ago, AJones said:

Toyota simply misjudged the technology, lithium ion technology advanced quicker than they had expected, while their alternative of hydrogen fuel cells has not advanced beyond trial scale.

You get variations of this same story in lots of industries, companies focussing on one product or technology and missing the development of another, forced to pivot because they bet on the wrong horse.

Toyota are not forced to build huge SUV EVs, it's a business choice because those kind of models are the most profitable and sell well. Tesla didn't start with SUVs, it made the roadster and sleek saloon EVs, Hyundai made the Ioniq which is a sleek saloon model, VW make the ID3, MG make the MG5 estate car.

But the likes of me don’t want a huge SUV no matter what. I just want a Prius sized ev if that’s what I’m going to buy. The VW id3 looks attractive to me, though I’m still not ready to ditch my Prius at the moment.

Regarding an earlier post suggesting Toyota were working to 2040/50 for ev development I reckon by then I’ll be dead or certainly too old to be safe driving on today’s roads!

It’s now or the very near future older people like me are concerned with. Maybe Toyota have lost the plot!

[FROSTYBALLS]

Don't forget the bZ4X was produced in collaboration with Subaru which may have differing needs to Toyota. Plus with the bZ4X/Solterra, Toyota and Subaru are mainly targeting their two main markets - the US and Asia - rather than their third market, Europe.

[Cyker]

23 hours ago, AJones said:

Toyota simply misjudged the technology, lithium ion technology advanced quicker than they had expected, while their alternative of hydrogen fuel cells has not advanced beyond trial scale.

You get variations of this same story in lots of industries, companies focussing on one product or technology and missing the development of another, forced to pivot because they bet on the wrong horse.

Toyota are not forced to build huge SUV EVs, it's a business choice because those kind of models are the most profitable and sell well. Tesla didn't start with SUVs, it made the roadster and sleek saloon EVs, Hyundai made the Ioniq which is a sleek saloon model, VW make the ID3, MG make the MG5 estate car.

Almost all the non-SUV examples you give have terrible range or are massive - This is why almost every EV is some kind of SUV - They are almost forced to build giant massive land boat SUVs to get half-decent range with current Battery technology. Even the ID3 is a very large car, and the Model S is bigger than most estate cars yet doesn't have the load capacity.

And I don't think Toyota misjudged the pace of technology at all - Current Battery technology is still just as bad as they'd predicted it would be at this point which is why they'd planned on entering the EV market later, when technology had improved.

There're all these breakthroughs being announced that are claimed would revolutionize the EV market, but they're all at least 5-10 years out from being brought to market. Meanwhile we're stuck with essentially the same level of lithium Battery tech that we've had since we started using them in laptops.

All the 'improvements' in lithium battery tech in EVs so far have been about cramming bigger batteries in (Hence Giant Land Boats) and trimming safety margins - No real technological improvement aside from a percent or two.

If anything, lithium batteries are worse than when Tesla made the original Model S as we're moving away from cobolt, but the cobolt lithium cells had the highest energy density, esp. compared to the iron phosphate cells that seem increasingly to be the most popular chemistry.

23 hours ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

Don't forget the bZ4X was produced in collaboration with Subaru which may have differing needs to Toyota.

Good point, I'd forgotten about that! I just can't think of Subaru as an SUV company!! But their line has been going that way for a while now now that I think about it - Kinda sad when they have all that rally heritage which is falling by the wayside...

[Stopeter44]

9 hours ago, AJones said:

Hyundai made the Ioniq which is a sleek saloon model,

Sleek, maybe, but it's as bloated as an SUV in my eyes.

[Catlover]

Saw a headline yesterday, but didn’t have time to read it, that a business in China has done a breakthrough on Battery size/performance.

[Yugguy1970]

You keep describing them as bloated but the Corolla Cross is basically the same size as a Corolla Estate.  It's just taller.

I was parked next to a big Volvo estate at Sainsburys the other day.  Apart from height it was bigger than my RAV in every way.

Yes, a lot of the "premium" SUVs are stupidly massive but so far Toyota have avoided this, and they've avoided the daftness of coupe SUVs that waste their size with tiny windows and sloping rear lines.

[Cyker]

6 hours ago, Catlover said:

Saw a headline yesterday, but didn’t have time to read it, that a business in China has done a breakthrough on battery size/performance.

The problem is these are popping up every week it seems, but a lot of them seem to be just fishing for investors. I'll pay more attention when these miracle breakthroughs actually make it to market!

Heck we still haven't gotten solid-state batteries in the wild yet despite those having a big head-start on all these new lithium chemistries, not to mention sodium, aluminium, sulphur etc. batteries that are supposed to solve all the problems with lithium, cure world hunger, feed the cat etc.

 

[AJones]

20 hours ago, Cyker said:

Almost all the non-SUV examples you give have terrible range or are massive - This is why almost every EV is some kind of SUV - They are almost forced to build giant massive land boat SUVs to get half-decent range with current battery technology. Even the ID3 is a very large car, and the Model S is bigger than most estate cars yet doesn't have the load capacity.

Tesla M3 has plenty of range, MG5 isn't bad either, Nissan Leaf e+ is fine and none of these are SUVs. Peugeot/Vauxhall have fitted 50kWh of batteries into a e208 and the Corsa-e.

Car manufacturers are launching EV SUVs because they want to sell SUVs and because SUVs sell at better prices than smaller cars. 

20 hours ago, Cyker said:

There're all these breakthroughs being announced that are claimed would revolutionize the EV market, but they're all at least 5-10 years out from being brought to market. Meanwhile we're stuck with essentially the same level of lithium battery tech that we've had since we started using them in laptops.

Overall the technology has improved significantly in the space of a few years, typical EV Battery sizes have increased significantly with most now 50+kWh, with many now 70 or 80 kWh providing over 200+ miles of range. Rapid charge rates have increased sharply, making long distance driving possible with short charging stops. And prices are coming down, there's reasonable new EVs now available for prices similar to conventional cars and hybrids. 

What we don't have yet unfortunately is enough of them trickling down into the used market at affordable prices, that's a few years away.

[Cyker]

I'll grant the the Model 3 isn't an SUV, but it is a very large car, in terms of foot-print if nothing else; The rest can't get even close to 300 miles even in optimal conditions, and under sub-optimal conditions struggle to even reach 200.

I'm not sure what you mean about increased to 50kWh - Most EVs had packs around 50kWh at the beginning of when I started looking at them and the Wh/kg or /L haven't improved much if at all - The bigger capacities have just been had by adding more cells which adds weight and requires a bigger car which naturally gravitates to Giant Land Boat SUVs.

When they can fit 120kWh into a Zoe then I'll agree we've had some Battery advancement, but in real terms the gains in the last 5-10 years have been tiny.

I will say where there have been gains is in the cost - The price of lithium cells has come down dramatically over the past decade, but that's more a factor of industrial mass production. The actual cells themselves haven't improved significantly.

For me faster chargers are irrelevant - I don't ever want to have to stop to charge the car; I want to stop because I need to stretch my legs, eat and/or pee (Not all at the same time tho'!  ) and current chargers are more than 'fast' enough to put in decent charge while I attend to such things.

What they need to work on is keeping the chargers working - At the moment most of the fastest chargers can't operate at their highest charging rates, and that's if they're working at all. One of the biggest complaints I hear from EV owners is how unreliable the charging network is - You effectively loose 25% of your range because you have to keep it in hand in case your planned charger isn't working or is in use and you have to drive around looking for an alternative.

For 99% of my journeys I want the car to be able to do it without requiring me to use a public charger, just what I can charge up at home (Assuming I have a home by then!) as that is one of the tangible benefits of having an EV. If I have to use public chargers regularly that is a net loss as it's wasting even more of my time than going to a petrol station at the moment. (Well, unless they do what I said before about mass-deploying them to supermarket and shopping centre car parks)

I feel we're still very much in the infancy of EV's - I have a set of requirements, but current EV's are moving away from them as the technology just isn't there to build what I want. But that's okay, I can wait - The Mk4's running costs are low enough an EV wouldn't really benefit me financially, certainly not enough to offset the cost difference.

We're in a time of unprecedented flux right now and I feel I need to just ride it out for the next few years and see where things fall!

 

[AJones]

32 minutes ago, Cyker said:

I'm not sure what you mean about increased to 50kWh - Most EVs had packs around 50kWh at the beginning of when I started looking at them and the Wh/kg or /L haven't improved much if at all - The bigger capacities have just been had by adding more cells which adds weight and requires a bigger car which naturally gravitates to Giant Land Boat SUVs.

Go back 10 years and the affordable EVs like the Nissan Leaf had 24kWh, the i-MiEV had 16kWh, it was only really premium EVs like the Tesla Roadster that had 50kWh.

The Leaf e+ is now at over 60kWh and it is still a regular sized hatchback so Nissan managed to increase the  Battery capacity by 2.5X without turning it into a SUV.

32 minutes ago, Cyker said:

When they can fit 120kWh into a Zoe then I'll agree we've had some battery advancement, but in real terms the gains in the last 5-10 years have been tiny.

I practice I doubt you'll see a model like that for a long while because a little car will get near 4 miles/kWh, so 120kWh of Battery capacity would provide over 400 miles of range, but most people don't buy little cars for long distance driving. No one drives a car like that for 5+ hours non stop. The manufacturer would sell more by having a smaller Battery and selling it for a lower price.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Shall we get back to the topic subject - 'Prius Discontinued'.

[Yugguy1970]

Er, yes it has been, let's move on  😀

It is no longer on the list of new cars on the Toyota UK website.

 

[TonyHSD]

I don’t mind it’s not available for sale as new anymore but there are very few available as used, it seems people like them and hold on them for long, plus Prius is still a king of the car business, taxi, delivery, commuting. 😉👌

[TonyHSD]

Here some fresh news about upcoming Prius or just a rumours. 👍