In the press release Toyota breakdowns cumulative sales by model, but forgot to show PiP sales.

Doing the math of Toyota's figures (total global sales less HEV sales by model) shows that 54,400 Prius Plug-in hybrids have been sold by the end of 2013 (of which 24,838 were sold in the U.S. - 45.6% of global sales). It is weird they did not make any fuss about passing the 50K milestone in 2013. It seems Toyota is really just focussing on conventional hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Not surprisingly, the Prius is now determined by Consumer Report to be have the least overall cost to own and operate of any new automobiles within 5 years of purchase, that edges out the smaller and cheaper Honda Fit. The world is now waking up to the money $avings of HEV's that I predicted here in GCC many years ago, in many heated debates with Kit P.

Even more money $avings will come from PHEV, a vehicle that will last for much longer time than an ICEV and will be far more reliable even with high mileage, in comparison to a comparable ICEV. A PHEV will be my next vehicular purchase, unless more H2 filling stations will be available in my local area.

FC range extenders appear to have a difficult value proposition. For almost all drivers the battery will cover 80% of the trips, so only 20% gasoline savings can be had with the fuel cell range extender. Fuel cells have a big size economy so a smaller version (serial generator rather than full hybrid drivetrain), would have higher cost/kWe. So the cost is higher and the gasoline savings are lower.

They will probably make more sense in non-plugin (smaller cheaper battery) serial hybrids. But even that seems bad value over battery plugin hybrid with a simple cheap gasoline generator that you can refuel in 120,000 stations in the USA today.

Early FCEVs do not really have to have very large capacity FCs. Many potential buyers seem to be satisfied with 300 Km combined E-FC range.

A much lighter (1500 - 2000 lbs max) more aerodynamic vehicle could be moved for 300+ Km at 100 kph with a small 10-15 kWh battery pack and a small 10-15 KW FC range extender? Larger, heavier truck-like vehicles would need 2X to 3X that.

A short stop every 3 hours or so could be enough to refill both the batteries and H2 tank.

Of course, the FC range extender could be removed, not installed, or turned off in warmer climate areas, when 5-5-5 batteries become available. People in cold weather areas may elect to keep the on-board FC unit, to benefit from extra range and to get free cabin heat.

@Harvey & A.C.R.,

FC-PHEV may be practical when the FC stack is still expensive, for example, at over $100/kW, while battery capable of 20 C discharge is not too expensive, at $200-400/kWh, or $10-20/kW of power, meaning that battery cost per kW is 1/10-1/5 the cost of FC.

So, a hypothetical luxury sporty FC-PHEV will have 200 kW of battery power using a 10-kWh battery pack with a 50-kW FC stack and an H2 tank good for about 200 miles, or about ~3kg, in order to keep the tank size down and preserving internal space. The smaller size of the tank and of the FC stack will make up for the presence of the large 10-kWh battery pack. So, this car be capable of 250 kW of maximum power, 200 kW from the battery, while 50 kW from the FC stack, or 336 hp, so it will accelerate pretty fast!

This will be more than twice as fast as the FCV offerings from Toyota, Honda, Huyndai, GM, M-B, VW, etc...and will permit the PHEV to be sold in the high-end luxury-sport market and is completely commercially competitive w/ high-end ICEV's, without any compromise. Otherwise, if a near-future FCV will be priced at above $50,000 and has only 100 kW of power, this will turn off a lot of high-end luxury buyers wanting a lot of power in a car!

While the owner will have the option to plug it in once a day for about nearly 30 miles of commute, or plug it in twice daily for about nearly 60 miles of AER, he/she can also elect to just run it solely w/ H2 at the filling station and fill it up every 7-10 days or so and not having to plug it in at all. In the latter case, the large battery pack is just to allow the car to sprint real fast while able to brake real fast and still able to capture most of the kinetic energy.

In A.C.R.'s prediction that H2 will be real expensive, then most owners will plug in the car twice daily to save on H2 cost.
In my prediction, that H2 will be inexpensive, then many owners will just fill it up at the pump, and this would be just as Ecologically-correct behavior, since low-cost H2 will be made from solar PV energy obtained locally in sunny areas.

This vehicle can make everyone happy. Perhaps Tesla will offer this type of FC-PHEV in the future in order to stay competitive in the game. Since Tesla will likely have to purchase the FC stack and H2 tank from a third party, a FC-PHEV will allow Tesla to keep the size of these down in order to maintain healthy profit margin, since the FC stack and the H2 tank will have to be purchased instead of made inhouse like Toyota, Honda FCV's...etc.

Perhaps the reason that Tesla has not offered a current ICE-PHEV because the integration of the ICE and the electric drive train in a parallel-serial architechture is quite difficult and will take a lot of R&D money and time. For that reason, Fisker offered only a serial ICE-PHEV hybrid (serial hybrid), but Fisker failed to deliver the efficiency because serial hybrid is a lot less efficient than a serial-parallel hybrid. I've predicted this during the development of the GM-Volt when the Volt was announced to have a pure serial hybrid drive train. Luckily for GM, who chose instead to later incorporate a parallel component to the Volt drive train and was able to maintain adequate degree of efficiency to the Volt.

In a FC-PHEV, the drive train is very simple and is purely electrical, so Tesla should not have any valid excuse not to offer a future FC-PHEV in the coming Model-X!

With 1 - 1/4 million hybrids/year and rising, this is a real success story or Toyota.

Hope that sales of their future PHEVs (with ICE or FC range extenders) and FCEVs will have the same sustained success.

Is Toyota waiting for 3-3-3 or 5-5-5 batteries to mass produce BEVs?

Davemart, there are many such studies on the web.

Here's an older one:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/28890l.pdf

Old so the figures aren't up to date, but still the relative cost between a 50 kWe and a 10 kWe system is about 2x $/kWe at the 10,000 units/year level.

NREL has done similar more recent studies that show similar economy of scale.

Once you get to much higher sales volumes the difference becomes less important, but you first have to get there... the first 1,000 cars will cost a lot more than 10,000.

The study from the EERE mentions that stationary applications are more economically attractive than cars to get hydrogen fuel cells into a good market share.