In a no gearbox serial electric transmission car, big high power torquey motors are needed for acceleration and hill climbing.
With good design these can have a very power to weight ratio,
infact better than ones in the Volt.

Note, In an IC car the gear box is allso a torque multiplier.

The Kw of the battery is not the limit on power output, but how many amps that can be pulled out of it, needs low internal resistance.

Example the 12volt starter battery in a car may only stores 750watts but the starter motor can deliver 5kw, the battery can do this for
0.75/5 hour i.e. not long.

Kw give you range not peak power. Range is limited by rolling resistance and overall wind drag. Lower these and the range goes up.

Weight just affects acceleration, very little else and on a good design 85% of the braking energy can be recovered and it makes little difference how hard you accelerate, the limit is wheel spin.

Same amount of power require (1/2mvSquared) no matter how quick you get up to cruise speed, infact an IC engine is best with throttle wide open as well. Less pumping losses.

Thats why the Volts is body is being reworked for a lower CD and may also come on special low rolling resistance tyres, as these are the things that will greatly affect the range.

The nice thing about the Volt is each system is seperate, motors, energy storage, on board power generation. Each can be optimised,
updated and changed to match which market it is being sold in.

Can’t do that on the Prius, to intergrated.

The Prius has always been a bit of a joke in Europe, as we have diesel cars that can do better, really just marketing by Toyota to look good and driven by the egocentric PC lot.

The Prius was the best that could be done 15 years ago and the concept is really past its sell by date. The Volt will be better but needs to be a little more radical, dump the inboard electric motors and mechanical brakes and go all electric, saves weight and space.

See this link and weep

http://www.pmlflightlink.com/archive/news_mini.html

This is what really can be achived with in wheel electric drive.
Makes the Volt look a bit old fashioned.

Spec 400 miles per charge, 900 miles using on board generator.
O to 60 mph 4.5 seconds, top 150 mph limited .

Volvo have a C30 in development based on this concept.

Thank You ThombDbhomb #101 for being the only reasonable relevent (to the post) comment on this thread. No offense intended for those reasonable non-relevent comments. Offense is intended to those dissing Lyle and his post.

This is HIS site dedicated to discussing the Volt, it’s development, and most importantly for prodding GM to produce the Volt. He does this in addition to being a doctor and family man. It’s ironic that Prius lovers would cast “bias” stones at Lyle from their own glass houses. The title of this post is a question, not a statement, and it is a very valid one at that.

Toyota’s official comments prior to the Volt were:
-they had no immediate plans to add plug-in capability and that the American public was not ready for plug-in vehicles.
-Li batteries were not ready for prime time

Now, this articles states that Li batteries and a plug are being considered. These changes may or may not have anything to do with the Volt, but posing the question is certainly valid based on prior history. Additionally Lyle gives due credit to the Prius in his comments. So, either the posters of detracting comments ingnored this or didn’t bother to read his post.

GM has acknowledged taking cues from Tesla and Toyota. Is it so unfathomable that Toyota is reacting to their competition? Large corporations take a lot of their direction from their competitiors, leading or lagging.

A higher energy battery and a plug is a good thing, regardless of where the impetus comes from. It’s telling, there weren’t many comments to this effect included with the stoning.

It strikes me as very likely that the induction motor could be entirely controlled and optimized by its own dedicated controller, which simplifies the central control algorithms.

Further, induction motors aren’t secret, either.