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New Speed Record For Hybrid Cars
prostoalex writes "According to CarPages, Toyota Prius set a new world record for hybrid vehicles. It 'set the mark at 130.794 mph on the three-mile short course using a standard Hybrid Synergy Drive power-train - a mixture of 1.5 litre petrol engine and an electric motor.'"
Where hybrid and pure electric cars really need to improve is the all important ability to get up to speed quickly and smoothly, and it doesn't appear that this car really addressed this critical issue.
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Thank you.
The fantastic acceleration that in line wheel electric drive can potentialy deliver would make for some very exciting racing.
The so-called 'hybrids' use nothing but 'conventional fuel', albeit in an unconventional manner. For marketing purposes, the manufacturers lead the public to believe that they derive part of their energy from combustion of petrol and part "from electricity", which is meaningless but impressive to the average consumer, who doesn't stop to ask why, if that is so, he is not having to charge up his car every night.
Our local newspaper recently published a glowing 'news story' (a regurgitation of marketing hype) written by a dreamy-eyed reporter who clearly believed that somehow there was a second energy source besides petrol involved. He even claimed that as long as a 'hybrid' was driven below a certain speed, it consumed no petrol (Lest I be flamed, let me make it clear that I am well aware that a 'hybrid' can switch its internal combustion engine on and off as needed while drawing current from the storage cells. The reporter's claim went far beyond that. If he were to be believed, we could all drive around for free the rest of our lives as long as we kept our speed under a certain threshold.)
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I know I was certainly sold on the TL because of the power, and I could see going with a hybrid so long as the performance were there.
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
It's either a typo , actually referring to 100% humdity (crikey!) or they mean the wet bulb temperature was nearly 100 degrees.
For those who say "WTF is wet bulb temp?" it goes like this:
You have two thermometers.
One has (typically) a sock/tube of cloth over it's sensing bulb that has the bottom of the tube in a bit of water, so that it's wet. It's the "wet bulb"
You also have a dry bulb. (i.e. a normal thermometer hanging out in the air)
Now, at 100% humidity, the wet bulb will be at the same temperature as the dry bulb, as the water on the wet bulb does not evaporate (as the air is already saturated). As the humidity decreases towards zero percent, the wet bulb will have a progressively lower temperature compared to the dry bulb, due to the cooling effect of the evaporating water. Look the two (wet and dry) temperatures up in a handy chart that someone has already calculated, and ta-da! Humidity in percent.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
...I'm sure this record will easily be crushed by the new Honda Accord hybrid. 240 hp 3.0L engine, plus electric motor, does 0-60 in under 7 seconds IIRC. With the speed limiter removed (and no other mods like ice cooling, ferchrissake), I'll bet it does 150 mph easy.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
amen, somebody please mod the above post up.
I read an article on here some time ago where somebody declared that a future depicted full of hydrogen powered vehicles was a "cruel hoax" and that hybrid cars were the best hope for the short to medium term. I can't comment of whether we'll ever be able to manufacture hydrogen in large enough quantites viably, but if you examine the facts, hybrid cars are the cruelest hoax that presents the car buyer today. Hybrid performance is awful in current models - that may improve with better battery technology (the electric motor is the easy part). However the gas mileage these things get is a joke. The Prius gets about 45mpg in realistic useage (based on the independent reviews I've read). That's worse than most european diesel cars get - diesel cars that have decent performance and aren't made of plastic in an attempt to compensate for the weight of lugging two complete power sources about all the time. Oh yes, and they're a helluva lot cheaper to make for the same reason.
That's not to say I'm a big fan of diesels before anyone starts laying into them and me for all the problems they have. My point is that the hybrid cars claim of being an enviromentally friendly choice is a joke when it gets worse mileage than cars Peugot were making 10 years ago. Still, if it lets the rich people who can afford them feel better that's OK, as long as everyone else realises they are just a PR effort on the part of car manufacturers to make it appear like they give a damn.
One of the UK motoring programs (5th gear) did an economy test of various cars and it did not do that well. You only get the benefit of the electric motor when in stop start traffic. Once moving the batteries are being charged and the petrol engine is being used. Round town as a shopping cart it was good, as a commuting vehicle it sucked.
That's the thing I don't understand about all these hybrids. The mileage sucks. I was getting 60 mpg on my Honda 20 years ago.
Perhaps you missed the part about it being 255hp. That's a good amount of power for an accord chasis, and great for a hybrid. It's probably a lot of fun to drive.
Your point is correct, fuel economy is going downwards... You could run a 3cyl subaru when they first hit the US, and get 70-80mpg, but it just had no power (hence the persistant negative stereotypes about Japanese cars being made out of tin-foil, etc.)
Tree-hugging liberal friends aside, most anyone I've mentioned a hybrid to usually fires back with the "it's got no power" or something of this sort. I think this is due to lingering memories of solar/electric car craze of the late 80's... I think Honda is aiming for practicality: make a car that doesn't "look" or "feel" like an electric car. It's just a normal car that uses less gas.
The average US car drives 15000 miles per year, so, an SUV which gets 20 MPG would use 750 gallons of fuel per year. The Prius at 55 MPG would use 272 gallons a year, so it would take pretty much exactly 2 years or 30000 miles to save the entire manufacturing energy cost of the car, even with your unlikely assumption that the Prius was replacing a perfectly good vehicle that was being scrapped just to save energy. Replace a car which gets 35 MPG, it would take 6 years/90 000 miles to make a net energy advantage, which is still within its working lifetime, and obviously assumes that the car it replaces would last 6 years longer than it does.
But kind of gas mileage did you get at 130 mph.
I thought the expected advantage of a hydrogen economy was that the manufacturing (or rather, refining) sources can be distributed instead of centralized? I mean, if the technology can be developed to split hydrogen from methane, seawater, vegetable oil... frankly, whatever is handy... then why bother having massive refineries like we do for oil? Why not just have every residence and business generating enough to meet their own needs, along with hydrogen filling stations on the highways for those on trips too long to carry their entire need in one (tank? can we call it that? even if the eventual technology ends up being a solid storage medium?)
Or maybe I'm reading your post wrong-- if you're saying that our current transportation infrastructure is based on a semi-centralized energy production system, but that we can move to a better system if & when hydrogen becomes practical, then I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge