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Prius battery...

Created August 12, 2004, at 11:15 am by Anonymous

Hey, I have a correction to the below statements from your latest
newsletter:

"A hybrid car uses a conventional lead acid battery for all the same
reasons that a conventional car uses one. But a hybrid car also has a
rechargeable battery, which is constructed quite differently. It is what
is called a deep cycle battery. The internal construction of the battery
will allow it to be fully discharged and recharged over and over again.
It is very similar to a battery used in electric vehicles (EV) such as
GM's EV1 or a golf cart or new-fangled electric personal scooters. The
difference is that electric vehicles need a lot of stored energy since
the stored electrical energy is the only fuel the vehicle has to make it
move down the road.

These batteries are very large and heavy. For an example the battery
pack in the Electric Ranger battery build by Ford in the late 1990s was
1600 pounds. These batteries carried a serious amount of energy. Most of
these battery packs are a series of smaller batteries connected together
in a series array that adds up to a higher voltage.

The hybrid car uses a mixture of today's gasoline engine and the
battery found in electric vehicles. The hybrid battery has evolved a
generation or two since the EV days. Because a hybrid also uses a gas
engine, the size of the battery is not as large as a pure EV battery. On
vehicles such as the Honda Civic and Insight, and the Toyota Prius, the
hybrid battery voltages are 300 volts or greater. "

>From what I've read and learned about my '04 Prius the hybrid
'traction' battery is NiMH (nickel metal hydride). This is 202 volts.
Now, it's true there is a 'standard' 12-volt lead-acid battery. It's
used to run lights, stereo, some computer components, etc. It is not in
any way used to crank the engine. That is what the 202 volt NiMH
battery is for. And in the new '04 version of the Prius, there's an
inverter that takes that 202 DC voltage and steps it up to 500 AC volts
to turn the 50 kW electric motor. If I'm mistaken on any of these
accunts, please let me know, I want to learn! I love my Prius and all
it's technology, I just want to clarify the info. Thanks for keeping up
the newsletter.