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Gas/Electric Hybrids, Air Cars in the News
hackshack writes "eCycle is developing a hybrid diesel / electric motorcycle designed to get 180 miles per gallon. The small diesel engine kicks in at speeds over 12mph, and the electric motor handles acceleration. Target retail price is $5,500. They've got a beta test program going as well. Now I can laugh at all those "gas-guzzling" Insight drivers as I zoom by!" Reader clen writes in about the Toyota Prius doing well in a road rally, and fishdan sent in a note about a pure-electric concept car called the Tango. And the air-powered car is getting a little more media attention, too.
I've had a Honda Civic Hybrid for about two months, 4,000 miles. I couldn't be more impressed.
It has enough pickup for the driving most people do. Its more comfortable than my Subaru Forrester, including more leg room. It handles well. Best of all, I average 50.8 miles to the gallon. Yes, there is a MPG gauge. It has a range of over 600 miles per tank of gas and is a Ultra Low Emmissions vehicle.
It charges its own batteries through regenerative breaking and cruising without depressing the gas pedel, e.g. going down hill. The electric engine kicks in for some extra horsepower when you drive uphill or are accelerating. The gas engine is only about 96 horsepower, but that is enought when you are driving a light car on level roads . I drive it through the Green Mountains and it performs very well. It can cruise at 70 mph or more on a highway very easily, though I find I downshift a little more in the Civic than my Forrester for some extra oumph.
I've added a Sirius Satellite radio, so now I can drive coast to coast on five tanks of gas while listening to the same radio station!!!!
Put your environmental money where your environmental mouth is and buy one! I believe congress has just pased a tax credit for people who buy a hybrid.
Go forth and be GREEN!!!!!!!!!!!!
A Diesel smart car can do 68mpg(US) which is around 86mpg(UK) IIRC. Top speed of 86mph, group 2 insurance and a doddle to park.
Ideal for running around town.
They won't be officially released in the US till 2004, but there are importers already planning to ship them. The cars themselves have been around for a few years in Europe and they are all over the place. Daimler are planning a Diesel/electric hybrid version of the car.
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In a car, changing gear and power delivery mid-corner isn't a problem, the car won't fall over or change line.
A bike, however needs completely predictable power delivery, if you change the power delivery on a bike mid-corner the line you're taking changes, you run wide or you fall into the corner. The rear tyre can also spin up. It's one of the reasons the new Honda VFR800 with VTEC is not doing so well (It's also as ugly as sin). The VTEC kicks in at around 7,000rpm and starts delivering more power.
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That's nice - 180 MPG is roughly equivalent to 80 km/l to the imperial-challenged crowd. But check out the 100 km/l car done by Volkswagen(yes, that's 100 km to the litre, or 235 MPG if you don't like SI units). I'm not affiliated with Volkswagen or anything - it's just cool technology.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Read the second page.
They elude to using the filters in the cars to filter the air in the city. ie: The compress dirty air, when it is released by the car it is filtered, thereby improving air quality over time. (On a side note, making drivers pay for cleaning the air (buying new filters) should put more pressue on the government to crack down on high pollution industries emmisions).
On a more practical note, the filter is used to increase the life of the engine by preventing high speed particles sand blasting the inside of the engine. I can't think of a reason for a chemical filter, and don't know if there is one, but they may also try to filter corrosive chemicals (acids, etc) suspended in the air.
Why?
High pressure containers can be designed to fail safely. Simply put, the majority of the tank is stronger then it needs to be, then create intention weaker "seams". This encourages the tank to tear itself apart rather than disintegrating.
Why is tearing good? Because as the tank tears, the hole get bigger and the trapped gas can expand through a larger hole thereby decreasing the relative pressure. Combined with a kevlar webbing around the tank, and protection in the floor of the vehicle, these tanks are probably safer than petrol cars, simply because you can't burn to death.
For an illustration of this tearing effect, the easiest search is +fireworks + flowerpot. or look for failed oxygen cylinders.
And I don't give it a secoond thought. While I don't know what particular type of tank they're using here, I'd guess it's a carbon-fiber wrapped tank. They're actually pretty resilient - crushing damage isn't going to do much, as whatever pressure you manage to put on the side of the tank is going to be small compared to the 4500 PSI pushing back from the inside. Really the only likely way to fracture one is with some sort of piercing damage, and if that happens there's no shrapnel, the tank just kind of tears apart leaving you with a bunch of un-wound carbon fiber. You obviously wouldn't want this to happen right next to your ear, but other than that, as long as the passengers are separated from the tanks, safety shouldn't be an issue.
paintball
The so-called "Big Dirty" power grid is far more efficient and polutes less than any small motor does. Even in a ultra super clean vehical like the Prius (which I own) you get much higher levels of polution for the amount of energy you produce from the fuel you directly use than the least clean coal burning plants. Using compressed natural gas in a more conventional engine really wouldn't make a difference in this regard. And frankly there are many natural gas fired electrical plants already.
The simple fact of the matter is that large power plants are 60-80% efficient at extracting the energy out of fuels, while the power plant in a vehical is 5-10% efficient. In fact, most of the fuel economy in electric and hybrid cars comes from the regenerative braking system taking the energy that is lost in a conventional car and storing it for when you accelerate again.
Of course, once we get fuel cells that actually work then that won't be true anymore, because the catalytic buring of the fuel inside a fuel cell is at 90-95% efficiency.
At that point compressed natural gas would be a great choice.
Duc's are slooooow.... Unless you're with WSB and can replace the bike with all of the race parts (read: $8,000 rims, $80,000 forks, $6,000 rear shock, back-cut trans, mill'd head, krio'd coils, etc...)
0-60 in 2 secs on a Duc? Good luck on a dry clutch.
Duc's look great and sound nice but, almost any modern 600cc inline 4 will pass it on one wheel. Guys who can't handle cruzing speeds of 160+ but want non-riders to think they're cool ride Duc'ies.
Correct. I have a Mercedes C200 that was converted to LPG. Got no grant, but hey.
;-)
/just/ going to be approaching the economy of a regular American car. :-(
It works out about 6.9p (about 10.5 cents) per mile in the Merc now on LPG.. whereas my Corsa 1.2l works out at about 9.6p (about 15 cents) per mile.. so I can drive a 2 litre Merc for cheaper than a 1.2l Corsa
Of course, the fact that fuel is three to four times more expensive in Europe means that even a 100mpg car is only
mogorific carpentry experiments
Perhaps it isn't "nobody wants electric cars", but not enough people want them to make them economically feasable to produce, or at least not enough people are willing to pay what they really cost, and GM isn't willing to sell them at a loss (who can blame them). I personally don't want an electric car because I am unconvinced that they are really better for the environment. Unless your power comes from a truly clean source (and that means wind or solar, even hydro has environmental downsides because damming up rivers does affect the environment), then they aren't zero emissions, let alone zero environmental impact. Even ignoring tailpipe emissions, manufacturing and disposing of all those batteries isn't without environmental impact, since they generally contain hazardous chemicals and/or heavy metals.
Frankly though, I don't want an electric car because even with subsidies they don't make economic sense for me. For that matter even hybrids don't make economic sense, since according to my estimates you've got to drive something like a Prius about 180,000 miles before the gas savings make up the difference in price between it and the Echo. That completely ignores maintenance costs, and my guess is that the Echo will be far cheaper to maintain, making it unlikely that a Prius will ever be as cheap to operate as an Echo. And by the way, the Echo is a nicer car to drive. And for what its worth, little cars like the current hybrids don't really suit my needs very well, let alone completely, so they'd be at best a 2nd or third car in my household, and further limiting any supposed economic or environmental advantage. And electric cars are even less pracical for my needs than hybrids.
So quit trying to make GM out to be the bad guy. They built EV1's and lost money on every one of them. The eco nuts didn't put their money where their mouth was and buy enough of them to make it profitable.