Increase Range with Bigger Better Battery Instead of Bigger Fuek Tank?

[McCloud_Rainbow]

With all the talk about MPG, range anxiety and fuel tank capacity, why not look at the electric side of the Land Cruiser for improvement? Seems like solutions might be easier to find and implement and would provide more benefits than just a few more gallons of gas onboard. I was originally getting a Rivian R1S with its 450 mile electric range…until I realized I would have to sit at the charger for at least an hour to top up the batteries for full range. No thanks! Happy I bought the LC instead.

Here is my thesis…

• 1.87 kWh NiMH stock Land Cruiser traction battery - underpowered and old chemistry = lower range and less usage
• Tesla Powerwall 3 weighs 200 lbs and has a 13 kWh LiFePO4 battery in it and is about the size of the current LC battery
• Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries are great….they don’t overheat and explode like Li Ion batteries and I bet a LiFePO4 battery the size of the current LC NiMH battery would have 5x the capacity (8-10 kWh).

Why not replace the undersized LC battery with a higher capacity battery to improve electric range and overall range?

Of course, the LC computer would need to be adjusted to both recognize the higher capacity battery AND allow the LC to run on electric only at higher speeds (at least up to 25 mph for around town).

Side benefit of that bigger battery…that inverter would keep things going a lot longer than it does now! Maybe even add a plug in hybrid function too so the battery is always full and ready.

Toyota notoriously cheaps out on the traction batteries for platform stability and cost savings. Many people with older Priuses (Pri’i?) replace the OEM NiMH battery with a better Li Ion battery when the original dies.

Anyhow…no turnkey solution right now, but though I would get the hive mind creative juices flowing on this one.

 

[jayce]

Toyota spent a lot of money to engineer the LC the way it currently exists. Your idea is non trivial to implement.

For example, in order to efficiently utilize higher battery capacity to enable electric only mode, you need a sufficiently powerful electric motor. Given the over 5000 lb weight of the LC and current 65 hp electric motor, you can imagine trying to travel uphill or away from a stoplight on electric power only. It would be painful to say the least.

Also, someone will correct me if I’m wrong, the concern over limited range mainly comes into play when traveling off road. There aren’t going to be many electric chargers along the way in this scenario. If one is just talking about highway travel it’s easy enough to pull into a gas station every 200-300 miles and refill.

 

[Doggman1525]

The trick is making enough room for that much battery in a body on frame vehicle. Our full EV sedan weighs almost as much as the LCLC (only about 300lbs short) and that's for about 75 kWh worth of electrons and a realistic range between 175 and 200 miles. The BMW hybrid carries about 1/3rd of that storage, around 35 miles of range. The car is also in the same weight range but both carry a lot of that weight down low in their unit bodies with the car built around them so they are very solid in corners even at speed. They also both use Li not Ni as the cathode which has its own design requirements. The LC battery is less than 2 kWh, barely enough to mow my lawn in comparison.

My guess is that to engineer a battery sizeable enough and energy dense enough to really push the EC around you'd be losing feet, not inches of cargo space and that much weight above the waterline would not feel very stable.

That said if they could problem solve a plug-in hybrid solution that could run all electric for around town driving and just use gas at speed where it's more efficient I'd be all over that!

 

[TLC]

What you’re describing is the Jeep 4xe. It’s essentially the same drivetrain setup as the LC with a rechargeable, larger battery pack.

 

[Doggman1525]

What you’re describing is the Jeep 4xe. It’s essentially the same drivetrain setup as the LC with a rechargeable, larger battery pack.

Yes, essentially you are correct and that is how the jeep is marketed, though from my practical, albeit anecdotal experience (I'm less familiar with the design but my boss drives a Sahara 4xe, I ride shotgun frequently for work) the flying brick aesthetic of the jeep (as with the LC) translates fairly limited electric only range as soon as you are over 40mph. With a full battery once we're on the freeway there better be a pretty strong tail wind to get more than about 10 or 12 miles before the juice is gone and you are back to burning dead dinosaurs. Good enough for short errands close to home but for a presumed overlander or road tripper probably not and for practical purposes not that wildly different from the LC in terms of overall gas mileage - though I grant that having the option to go full electric or to plug in would be a nice-to-have even if not as useful in execution as it would appear.

To be useful as an electric 4x4 with range enough to really go anywhere I think you'd have to look at Rivian, assuming you'd have no qualms about taking a $110k+ ride into the back country. The R1T is like, 7000 pounds give or take? and not limited by a true body-on-frame design by virtue of its motor-at-the-axel layout, no transmission or drive shafts to worry about so able to load the giant battery between the rails, keeping the weight low and the vehicle maneuverable. Imagine with the LC, or the jeep, stuffing a fully grown horse into the cargo bay and driving through city traffic taking corners at 40mph. No thanks.

The mild hybrid design of the LC admittedly has its limitations but I think Toyota has been fairly honest about the purpose of boosting torque and shaving off mpg's around the margins.

 

[PACruiser]

Agreed. The I-Max was never intended to be the type of hybrid sytem many are envisioning when comparing to other vehicles. Rather, it supplements traditional power trains and AWD/4WD distribution systems to provide the best price/performance/fuel economy in this class.

I think a better example of what most are looking for is the BYD Shark plug-in hybrid. Keep in mind it still uses a CVT and 2nd electric motor to drive the rear axle.

BYD Launches its First Pickup Truck BYD SHARK in Mexico

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