Pure Electric Drive Range?

[fery]

Did anybody experience pure electric drive? What kind of range did you get?

I'm getting 2 miles drive on battery in bumper to bumper traffic (15 minute, no AC or heater) until engine starts charging the batteries. This is after driving in HWY for 10 miles.

Is this logical? just 2 miles?

Thanks

RX400h-2007-80Kmile

[Sash_RX400h]

Oh, boy, you are reading my mind :) - I had the same question in my mind and was going to post it , but you were first!

I get about the same range - ~2 miles or 15 minutes in bumper to bumper traffic.

It is 2008 RX400h with 31k miles on it.

I don't know if it is logical, but I was hoping for more...

[katzjamr]

What you describe is normal. The 400h was never designed to run for long periods on electric only. Since it is a 'luxury' suv, the idea was to have a vehicle that with the electric motors gives the V6 under the hood the power of a V8

, great acceleration, and at the same time an increase in mpg that is 50% better than other two ton SUV's in this class. Toyota felt that people wanted the traction battery to last the life of the car, so it was never allowed to fully charge or discharge, preserving the life of the battery. At the same time this car reduces emissions by 30%. So it is a balance, power, full options, hybrid capablitiy, reliability, and fewer emissions. It will take a breakthrough in battery technology or a different hybrid source of power to give you longer battery only driving. Correct me if i am wrong, the newest 450h allows the driver to select slower acceleration and some longer battery operation, but it is not a huge increase.

[rcomeau]

As said above, the RX was not designed to go long distance in electric mode. The main benefit of the electric motor is to allow the gas engine (ICE) to shut down as much as possible (coasting, short range level driving) and to use energy re-captured during braking (regen braking). The ICE is still the primary source of acceleration. The electric supplements it but does not replace it.

The Volt ias the next generation of the hybrid idea. The gas engine never touches the wheels. It just charges a battery when it is depleted. The Volt has a larger battery and more powerful electric motors. It does not have the same performance of the RX so it is unclear if that approach would be popular enough to be commercially viable at this point. I'd get one, but how many would? Time will tell...

[fery]

I know RX400h has around 1.3KWh of energy storage (battery) comparing to Volt (16KWh). The reason I asked is that, I have 85kmiles on my car and wonder if the batteries working fine or they need to be replaced? Comparing to Sash car with 31kmiles , I have same mileage, so Toyota is cleaver to keep the batteries OK till end of warranty I think.

I hope to see other people's experience in this regards.

Thanks

[RX400h]

Believe me, our batteries will last much, much longer than our warranties. I do suspect that Ford, who licenses Toyota's hybrid setup, is allowing its batteries to be discharged further in an effort to one-up Toyota hybrids of similar size. A good example is the Fusion hybrid vs the Camry hybrid. The Fusion will go further on battery power alone and will get better fuel mileage. The new Lincoln hybrid is similar in that it gets surprisingly good gas mileage for its weight. Most likely, its battery life, while greater than the car's warranty by quite a bit, is not going to be nearly as stellar as those in Toyota vehicles using the same NiMH batteries.

[rcomeau]

Believe me, our batteries will last much, much longer than our warranties. I do suspect that Ford, who licenses Toyota's hybrid setup, is allowing its batteries to be discharged further in an effort to one-up Toyota hybrids of similar size. A good example is the Fusion hybrid vs the Camry hybrid. The Fusion will go further on battery power alone and will get better fuel mileage. The new Lincoln hybrid is similar in that it gets surprisingly good gas mileage for its weight. Most likely, its battery life, while greater than the car's warranty by quite a bit, is not going to be nearly as stellar as those in Toyota vehicles using the same NiMH batteries.

Hi,

Sorry, but as a former Escape Hybrid owner, I have to comment here. A common misconception is that Ford licensed the technology from Toyota. This is not the case. Ford developed their hybrids at the same time, and Ford and Toyota came to an agreement to cross-licenced certain things to avoid unnecessary patent fights. I don't know if the electric ranges are comparable, but Ford also really babies their batteries so they would not have a lot of warranty replacements to do (and no one really knew how the batteries would hold up in real world use). The Escape cabs in NY and San Francisco proved that they held up very well indeed. Some went 500k miles and still had respectable EV capabilities.

[RX400h]

Well, now that I received my latest Consumer Reports magazine, I see that Ford vehicles really do NOT have an advantage when it comes to fuel mileage. The Fusion and Camry hybrids acheived the same average mileage (I think it is 36 MPG), so although Ford may have tweaked something to get the EPA numbers up substantially higher (41 city, 36 highway vs Camry's 31 city and 35 highway), the real world (at least via CR's testing) results show that there is no fuel economy advantage to buying a Fusion hybrid vs a Camry hybrid. Looking at the EPA numbers you would think that the Fusion is a much more economical vehicle.

Chevrolet pumped up the EPA numbers by designing in a CAGS (Computer-aided gear shifting) feature (Corvettes ad Camaros) that forces the transmission to shift from first to fourth gear after the engine is hot enough. Obviously, Ford isn't the only company to make the EPA numbers look better than what is achievable on the street.