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SDSU Students Create Sporty Hybrid Vehicle
Nevyan writes "SDSU Engineering students working in conjunction with real life designers create an electric hybrid vehicle that actually...well.. looks cool for all the right reasons. Participant in the Tour de Sol. I happened to see this vehicle on campus at SDSU and I want to buy one so badly." Njaneer.com has more information and photos - here's one to give you an idea of the size.
laff, thats the "riot" by thunder ranch.
not exactly but i assume its mods are for the hybrid part or it could be the riot 2 (thunder ranch is slow on putting things on their page)
-rev
Just a warning to all of my fellow South Dakota residence... in this case SDSU is not South Dakota State University in Brookings South Dakota, but sadly is in fact San Diego State University... blast those Californians taking all of our acronyms... in this world if you say SF or SD people think you mean San Francisco or San Diego... when will the world learn that they mean Sioux Falls and South Dakota instead! The FAA and Post Office agree with me... when will the rest of you?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Modern hybrid cars don't get plugged into electrical outlets. They use some sort of conservation strategy to burn gasoline in order to charge up a battery while you're driving, that way you run part of the time purely on electric power. Thus, you still fill it up with gas; just less often than normal. That's why you'll see hybrid cars advertising some big number of miles-per-gallon.
:))
So yeah, hybrids aren't as clean as a purely electrical or hydrogen fuel-cell car would be, but they have significantly less emissions-per-mile than a regular car simply because they burn less fuel over time.
(Note, I may be totally off about the battery charging thing. I don't know or claim to know how they work exactly, but I know that's the basic premise. Anyone with more details, please post. I'd like to know more but have never found myself motivated to go look
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
That's either one of the most common misconceptions about hybrid cars, or a magnificent troll. I'll answer it either way, just so somebody else isn't confused...
Current hybrids like the Prius, Insight, and Civic don't need external electric charging. Their batteries are very small, and store energy generated by braking or excess power from the gas engine if necessary. The economy comes from a couple of things:
1. You get back energy when you brake.
2. Your gas+electric motors combined are approximately the same power output as a traditional gas motor, but you can turn off part of a hybrid when you don't need it. So you've got the power you need for acceleration, but once you're cruising, the extra motor can cut out leaving you using less energy.
3. Your gas engine can shut off at stoplights, since your electric motor acts as the world's most kickass starter motor. (For example, the Prius' electric motor brings the gas engine to speed in less than one revolution)
4. Your electric motor doesn't waste power "idling".
At no point are you ever charging your battery with power generated from a power plant. They really are just more efficient than gas-only cars at the moment.
You don't have to charge the battery in a hybrid from an external source. Ever. Just put gas in. In fact, aggressive driving with lots of hard braking would charge it faster in current hybrids.
Honda has a sweet prototype called the DualNote that makes 400hp and gets 43mpg. I would certainly be in for that!! I'd be even happier at 200hp/86mpg, though. Something small and fun like a WRX that gets 86mpg would rule.
But with no back seat, how are you supposed to get laid???
All you looking at the performance and gas milage of this car, have a look at what powers it. Sure there's an electric motor which gives you the fast 0-60, but if you look at the specifications page, you'll notice that all that electricity is powered by a Volkswagen TDI diesel engine.
:-)
This is the 1.2 liter Lupo engine. Without the electric motor it gets 78 miles to the gallon anyway! Now while cars with this engine aren't sold in the US, one can purchase a Golf or Jetta with a slightly larger 1.9 liter TDI which makes 50 MPG, and generates between 90-115 HP. (with a torque peak of 155 lb. ft. @ 1900 rpm) 0-60 is a pathetic 10s, but 0-40 is a phenomenal ~4 seconds, which I find easily leaves a Subaru WRX or a BMW M3 in the dust.
(Yeah, that's me in my diesel Golf playing "the fast and the furious" on the streets of Boston twice a day.)
It's great to see one of these cars that actually looks cool, even if the models posing with the car don't.
"I've been saying this among friends for a while... the only reason that these early electric and hybrid cars all look like ass! "
Arrrrggggghhh!!! Finish the sentence! What is this supposed to mean?
-Tyler
Vacuums really make my blood boil.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Are those doors or drive-in-movie trays? What is that, like 3 less inches you have to step over to get out? I say save money on hinges and go dukes of hazzard style.
c-hack.com |
Which is smaller and has fewer residents than South Dakota... home of (you guessed it) wheat, barley, durum, sunflowers, and canola. 36 B-52's, some air refueling tankers, 150 Minuteman ICBMs.
My roommate's from there... I quote "North Dakota? Heh... not much going on there. Heck, the largest city in North Dakota is less than half the size of Lubbock, Texas".
This vehicle is a hybrid, meaning that they couldn't go electric all the way.
And since it only has two seats, you too get to experience the "Art of Compromise", and you too can't "go" all the way.
Like a heroin addict gone to methadone instead of quitting cold turkey. Like a red meat eater only eating chicken and fish instead of going vegan. Like a virgin, touched for the very first time....
No wait... that's right.. You don't get laid. All you get is Road Head. Behold the art of compromise!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I'm at Cornell, and several of my close friends are involved with the FutureTruck competition (http://www.hev.cornell.edu). Very very cool stuff - They've made a Ford Explorer with a Miata engine (turbocharged) and electric motor. Much more practical than yet another sporty car (which I think has been done better...witness the EV1, for instance).
Go Cornell! Competition starts Monday! Go Big Red!
ls:
(A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore?
Firstly, why use a dual engine design? couldn't the gas engine simply be used to power a generator? it being more effiecent to tune a engine to run at a constant RPM. Just have a large electric motor and a small gas motor.
First of all, large electric motor => large batteries => expensive, heavy and takes a lot of space => not suitable for a normal-looking (or in this case, great looking) car. Because if it didn't have large batteries, the range would be very limited - the small gas engine would not be sufficient to keep the battery charged. This depends on HOW small we're talking here, but if it needs to be large enough to basically deliver all the power for the electric motor, it would be wiser, energy-wise, to forego the generator and have the gas engine run the wheels directly, since even the best generators have noticeable losses of energy.
Second, the idea is to have the two engines do what they each do best. The electric motor keeps it humming along the highways at cruise speed (where little power is needed), and the fuel one delivers the power to accelerate (where more power is needed). So you get the best from both worlds.
Finally, Why use petrol and not natural gas or some other alternative fuel, If you make the tank the standard size then you should be able to get around the "not having enough gas stations problem" which holds these types of fuel back? Since you aren't constantly filling the thing up.
The idea seems to be that using ordinary fuel will speed acceptance. No Joe Sixpack will want a natural gas engine if he THINKS there's not going to be a gas station within range wherever he goes. The hybrid car presented in the article is really just another fuel burner with a really impressive miles/gallon figure, so there is nothing more to worry about than what to do with the gas money saved :-)
Personally, I can't wait for this type of car to reach my country, where fuel is $1/liter. If only they'll put this style of engine in a more usable size car (say, one that can hold my family of soon-to-be 5 persons) and still reap the benefits of a hybrid engine. No wonder my country is the place in the world where 33 km/l VW Lupos are most popular :-)
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Getting slightly off topic here, but I would point out that the vehicle is using at least four point seat belts. I have no doubt that the desingers are very concerned about the safety of this vehicle. It is also a test vehicle rather than a prototype.
At the other end of this is the fact that percieved safety on the part of the driver has an inverse ration to the results of colisions. i.e. if the driver percieves the vehicle as safe, the results of accidents the driver is in are worse.
One way to think about it is how much more attention would you pay to the environment you are driving in, if you were told that the air-bag electronics were wired to a couple of sticks of dynamite under your seat. As long as you prevented yourself from being in an accident, you would survive.
-Rusty
You never know...