On Jul 19, 10:25*am, samjones <samjo...@worldnet.com> wrote:
> This year's so called third generation Prius was originally expected
> to deliver with lithium ion batteries. *They upgraded every subsystem
> except the batteries. I think lithium ion batteries are ready to go
> but some safety issues are lingering. *I'm guessing another year of
> safey testing and tweaking and we will be there. *Lithium ion
> batteries should boost the Prius (and the Insight) into the 70+ MPG
> range.

The 3rd gen Prius has a bigger NiMH battery but many were
hoping it would have been a Li-Ion battery all the same.
Toyota is testing the lithium ion batteries. The challenge is
more of a marketing issue. The way Toyota makes the battery
last over 15 years is that the battery is never allowed to
discharge over 66%. Given those restrictions the EV mode
range of a LiIon battery Prius is still pretty limited while
the cost is significantly high. It sounds like Toyota has the
heat dissipation problem licked but they are not getting any
significant performance or energy efficiency increase that
would justify the extra cost of LiIon batteries. To get any
significant increase in energy efficiency the Prius needs
to go on a diet - its too heavy.
..