Prius

Steve Firth · 2005-12-18T00:31:12+00:00

One of the local garages is a Toyota dealership. A bloke who works there told me they recently had a Prius in for warranty repairs (failed battery pack). They aren't allowed to touch the pack and had to call ina specialist from Toyota. He arrived and before removing the battery dressed from head to toe in a rubber suit, then put on a face shield and a face mask.He also required the mechanics in the shop to keep at least 20ft from the car during the removal of the battery. Apparently the batteries have been known to explode covering anyone in the area with caustic gel.Makes me glad I drive a nice safe petrol car.

Dec 18, 2005 22 Replies

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Tony Bryer 20 years ago

[PC Paul] :

Presumably there is a reason for not using a DC motor ?

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Andy Dingley 20 years ago

DC motors are horrible things - they need to pass a huge current through brushgear into the rotor. A polyphase AC motor is _much_ simpler mechanically (thus reliable) and electrically more efficient. With modern electronics it's also easy to build a variable frequency inverter to power it. Pretty much every large motor design these days is 3 (or more) phase AC with a dedicated inverter as its controller - even if they're powered by 3 phase AC to begin with.

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mrcheerful 20 years ago

Try just going to Toyota gb and looking for a brochure for a prius, that was how I got to the above link.

mrcheerful

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