Toyota Sticking With NiMH for Strong Hybrids in Near Term
11 June 2009
In a presentation on Toyota’s development of Li-ion batteries and plug-in hybrids at the Advanced Automotive Battery Conference 2009 (AABC), Akira Kuroda from the Hybrid Vehicle Material Engineering Division said that the company will stick with NiMH packs for its strong hybrids for the near term, although the plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle under development will use Li-ion packs.
Although Toyota has been working on Li-ion batteries for strong hybrids, and has had 126 Priuses equipped with Li-ion packs on the road for the past three years, NiMH cost performance wins compared to lithium for this application, Kuroda said. The results of the Li-ion testsing, he noted, are very promising.
Toyota has been able to bring down the cost of the NiMH pack in the Prius “dramatically”, he said.
The new Prius is in competition with the Honda Insight. The price of vehicles has been set low. We believe that cost must come down more to win the competition.
—Akira Kuroda
In general, Kuroda said, Toyota will use both NiMH and Li-ion systems going into the future, with the selection based on what is best suited for each vehicle system.
If I was in Toyota management, I would recommend that they make sure lithium does the job and has the lifespan before risking the brand reputation. You put them out in 1 million cars and now 5 years into an 8 year warranty you get lots of failures. Lots of liability and you have dinged the brand reputation that has taken decades to build...not worth it.
Posted by: SJC | 11 June 2009 at 04:25 PM
If anyone can pull this off it's the Japanese. They have excellent engineers who sweat the details leaving nothing to chance.
Posted by: Mannstein | 11 June 2009 at 07:25 PM
Li-ion batteries for transportation applications are still incredibly expensive, there is no reason to replace a proven technology with it until the benefits of the Li-ion battery outweighs the cost penalty.
Right now, from a performance perspective NiMH still was the edge; they are fast charging, safe, and last a very long time. The benefits of the Li-ion is that it has more capacity relative to a given mass.
Unless, Toyota is going to make a EV style car that has long-range on electrical charge alone there seems to be little benefit to change to an unproven technology.
Posted by: scaramanga | 11 June 2009 at 07:56 PM
Unfortunately Toyota back away fro Li-ion more than a year ago when they thought there was a safety issue. those issues have been addressed by others moving forward. Toyota will be playing catch up from here on - but that won't halt their market growth.
Posted by: sulleny | 12 June 2009 at 07:04 AM
@ sulleny
No they weren't, Toyota has been testing Li-ion batteries in the Vitz/Yaris and been selling them as leases since 2003. They will also have Li-ion batteries in the EV version of the iQ, not to mention the test run of Li-ion Priuses.
The issue is the price, the Prius is a mass-market product, even if its only $2,000 more then NiMH for the equivalent capacity that price needs to be justifies. However, right now, Li-ion batteries cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Posted by: scaramanga | 12 June 2009 at 07:21 AM