Ever wonder why you read about so and so achieving over 100mpg on a hybrid, HEV while Toyota proudly hails 50 + on their new Prius in the U.S.?
The gist is that gas consumption is a tricky thing to evaluate and all an entity like the EPA can do is estimate under a statically normal average use of any vehicle. Fine, but how come we hear about companies, such as AFS Trinity‘s vehicles that can get 150mpg and not see the same numbers with car maker’s HEV?
Technically speaking, calculating the right amount of batteries for the weight of any given car is finite science. If you put too much battery weight, you end up with a car that won’t go further and will need more energy to move its tonnage while decreasing the range. The trick is to find the right ratio between weight and range. According to a report from Carnegie Mellon researchers from The Tartan, testing the efficiency of large and small battery packs for plug-in hybrid vehicles, PHEV revealed that an electric vehicle, EV with a heavy battery pack requires 10% more energy per mile than a similar vehicle with a smaller battery pack.
The Ideal Situation. Depending on your style of driving and where you need to go, small PHEVs are ideal for urban commuters. They can save money by reducing gas consumption and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Considering 50% of car owners drive less than 20 miles a day, according to Carnegie Mellon’s Design Decisions Laboratory and 80% drive less than 40 miles, smaller PHEVs and EVs are clearly the way to go before we can have larger and longer range EVs.
In conclusion, consider that small PHEV battery packs cost around $3000 and the larger ones closer to $16,000 for lithium, the cost of a Toyota Prius battery pack is $1300 which makes financial sense for Toyota to build a profit while developing the car. Lastly, switching to a small PHEV could cost $1700 which makes the car owner save roughly $5400 in fuel over a 150,000-mile that makes up for the premium. The great paradigm is that the U.S. automobile makers have to wrestle with decades of “bigger is better” when actually, smaller is better.