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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.'"
actually, it's the only hybrid ever entered. In fact, they had to convince the people to open a new category in order to allow the vehicle, because it has more than one 'engine'. IIRC, it may also have been because the other 'engine' (elec. motor) doesn't 'use conventional fuel'.
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This car was not exactly "standard", as the summary claims.
"An engineering group from Toyota Motorsport in the USA prepared the car by changing the gear ratios (4.32:1 to 3.2:1) and increasing the inverter voltage from 500 to 550 volts. A transmission cooling system was added to decrease the temperature of the inverter and electric motor to maximise efficiency. Ambient temperature on the salt flats was nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit with nearly 100 degrees humidity. Ice was added between runs to keep the system cool.
The interior of the car was stripped to save weight, a roll cage added for safety and the whole car lowered by five inches to improve the aerodynamics for this highly specialised record attempt. Even the 26 in front and 25 in rear tyres were made especially by Goodyear."
With that in mind, hybrids have a long way to go.
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An engineering group from Toyota Motorsport in the USA prepared the car by changing the gear ratios (4.32:1 to 3.2:1) and increasing the inverter voltage from 500 to 550 volts. A transmission cooling system was added to decrease the temperature of the inverter and electric motor to maximise efficiency. Ambient temperature on the salt flats was nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit with nearly 100 degrees humidity. Ice was added between runs to keep the system cool.
The interior of the car was stripped to save weight, a roll cage added for safety and the whole car lowered by five inches to improve the aerodynamics for this highly specialised record attempt. Even the 26 in front and 25 in rear tyres were made especially by Goodyear.
This can help crush myths (and not-so-myths) about Hybrids being slow and laggy.
Though they are not built for speed, most people would like to know that their car can easily go 80. Further, Hybrid racing is an interesting idea. Virtually all types of races are about getting good speed under certain limiting conditions... what an interesting limit to be up against.
What, did it go off a cliff?
Unknown host pong.
I was quite impressed. (The car, on the other hand, was shaking like mad and generally not happy about things.)
The Prius has a slightly smaller engine (1500 cc vs. 1600 cc) but the Rabbit didn't have an electric motor to help. Also, the Rabbit wasn't modified for speed in any manner, though it _did_ have a `Turbo' button on the dash. (When one pressed it, I pushed on the gas harder, creating a `Turbo' effect of sorts. Great times!)
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.
_____
Thank you.
230,197.44 Football Fields per hour! Note - American Unit Football Fields (why won't they switch over to the world football standard!)
acceleration off the line of a Hybrid is much higher than that of a gas only car. the reason is that it is done using the electric motor and EMs have much higher torque which translates into higher rates of acceleration.
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The fantastic acceleration that in line wheel electric drive can potentialy deliver would make for some very exciting racing.
Let's face it, cool car ideas come from people who love cars the way most /.ers love processor overclocking, water-cooling, and case mods. Convincing a wider audience that tweaking a hybrid will make it jump up and dance is never a bad idea.
Of course, as a side note, the industry's approach to hybrid autos is flat out wrong. Railroad trains are very efficient, well-proven hybrid designs: their diesel engines are always running at the most efficient level, and their momentum is provided entirely by electric motors. Tres spiffy.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
...will probably not have a problem meeting or beating this record when it hits the streets. Its got a 255hp V6 that gets 37/29 mpg (highway/city). 2005 Honda Accord Hybrid info
The car at the starting point, gas engine reved up and getting louder, charging up the electric system...
A slight yellow glow enveloping the car...
Rocks and dirt flying up in a whirlwind around it...
Driver screaming SUPER HYBRID SPEED WAVE!!! and darting off in a cloud of dust...
Um... this car was Japanese right?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Actually, that myth will likely be futher crushed with the release of a retrofittable hybrid electric vehicle kit, such as the one being developed by Ecolectric Technology (www.ecolectrictechnology.com). Then, you can take any vehicle, retrofit it to be hybrid electric, race it, and claim a new world record. The inherent increase in low-end torque (and thus acceleration) will probably make it as desirable a modification as turbochargers or superchargers on any performance vehicle.
A hybrid McLaren might be pretty nice if you as me...
Might I be so bold as to ask...what did the emissions and fuel consumption look like while driving at 130mph?
You seem to be forgetting a very basic marketting effect: look at rally racing cars in europe these days: most cars entered are mom-and-pop 4-door sedans, or bargain basement 2-door econoboxes that are strategically souped up and modified for racing by the manufacturers themselves (if not simply a racing chassis with a fake body of the model in question).
That way, mom and pop's teenage son fresh out of getting the driver's license, and young adults, associate the shite econobox with the powerful race cars they see on TV and they buy it.
So guess what? hybrid manufacturers are doing the same. The least thing they want is for their vehicles to be associated with being a mature person's choice for economy and savings. So they race hybrids, even if it makes no sense, to make them sexy to young male drivers. Plain and simple.
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130.794 mph should be more than enough for everybody.
(ooops....did I say that?)
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But that's me.
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You should check these guys out...
The drag race pure electric cars/motorcycles...
http://www.nedra.com/
A stock Honda Accord Hybrid with 3.0L engine (255 HP) would fucking eat that. They won't even have to remove the interior, raise the voltage, or lower it 5 inches.
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I can see it now zipping across the salt flats, Dr. Banzai enables the overthruster and it's through the 8th dimension.
Make sure they check for Red Lectroids in the grill.
Does the marketing department have to defile everything an engineer creates?
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/
For Honda's hybrid systems, yes.
For Toyota's, no.
1. The powertrain is more efficient, and lighter, than a normal cars. (No complex transmission, just a simple Planetary gear.)
2. I know when I'm going down the freeway, I'm not going a perfectly constant 55 mph, nor am I travelling on a perfectly level road. (Only if your power load NEVER changes does the battery system not matter.) Quite often, I'm running on battery power alone, in fact, even at 60+ mph. (My record is going down a very slight incline, I accelerated from 61 to 63 mph on battery power alone. In my gas-only car, 'coasting' in neutral on the exact same stretch, the car settles at 56 mph.)
3. The entire 'hybrid' system adds less than 100 pounds of weight to the car, and from what I've read, the simpler transmission and engine (no alternator, no starter) actually saves about 100 pounds, so it ends up even.
I agree that setting a speed record in a hybrid is silly. But the hybrid components don't cause HARM, either.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Actually, all the articles I've ever read say that the battery *pack* (~100-200 D sized rechargeables) and motor add between 600 and 1000 pounds, depending on which car you're talking about. Furthermore, they said that the electric motor is there specifically for assisting the tiny engine during hard accels. They casually mention that it's also for maintaining speed while cruising so the engine can operate at most efficient RPM, and for regen braking, but they don't make as big a deal about that stuff.
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The electric motor is the only motor that drives the wheels - the gas engine runs a genset that generates the electric. When the car is stopped, the engine shuts down, when you go to drive (and thus use more current), the engine starts as needed.
Except that Ecolectric's product is vaporware, and their web site is full of unsubstantiated claims about performance / efficiency gains.
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.
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It could be a reference to the Dew point. The dew point is the temperature at which the current atmosphere would need to be cooled to for it to be saturated with water (e.g. 100% humidity).
Although, it's probably just someone being dumb. Just not NECESSARILY.
The electric motor is the only motor that drives the wheels - the gas engine runs a genset that generates the electric.
That's not how the Prius works. " the electric motor can power the car by itself, the gas engine can power the car by itself or they can power the car together." http://auto.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-car16.htm
Of course, I wasn't right either. The gas engine in the Prius is only 76 horsepower. The electric is 67 horsepower. In order to get maximum power, you've gotta run both engines at once.
Hybrids aren't all about pure fuel economy. They're also about pollution. If you do a lot of city driving, you will pollute less. In your roommate's example, the 38 mpg city compares to between 55 and 60 mpg city. So for the driving that most people do(city driving) the Prius gets about 1.5 times the mpg and pollutes less as well. The EPA rates the Prius at 60 mpg. The 55 was from a blog.
The rest of your comments sound an awful lot like fud.
I thought the electric motor only kicked in when you didn't need much power.
Actualy, the electric motor combo (there are two in a Prius) are used as a transmission. This eliminates all friction parts in the transmission and hydraulic parts. Nothing shifts ever, even reverse. I expect the electric motors to have much less troubles than a typical transmission with it's torque converter, bands, clutches, shifters, fluid hoses, cooling...
In a nutshell, the electric motors are used all the time. The car won't go without them to deliver the engine torque. Sometimes they take extra power from batteries to help acceleration and sometimes they dump extra power generated back into the batteries.
Do some research on the Synergy drive the car uses. The mechanical transmission is simply a planetary gear pancaked in-between the two motor/generators. This makes the mechanical part of the transmission very compact and light.
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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.
Actually, even with the V8, the recent Camaro/Firebird get decent mileage. Ours is a 2000 Camaro Z28 (not the SS), only 305HP. Daily mileage about 20-21MPG. Highway driving, gets 24-25, but in smooth, medium-speed driving, we've hit 26 (cruising behind a loaded U-Haul for a few hours at 65).
That's 305HP, 24-25MPG, with an automatic. In the convertible version (heavier than the hardtop). Drive conservatively in a hardtop, with the 6-speed manual, you can beat that. But I never can drive conservatively with the 6-speed cars...
By comparison: I drove a 1995 Pontiac Sunfire GT for several years. Half the horspower / torque, about 800-lbs less weight. It got slightly better mileage. Slightly. But the V8's way more fun.
For everybody arguing over diesels vs. hybrids I'd suggest reading the frugalympics comparison test by Car and Driver. Jetta TDI vs. Prius vs. Civic Hybrid vs. Toyota Echo. Some interesting results there.
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.
Actually, in a hybrid, you get *better* mileage in stop-and-go driving, because the brakes help to charge the battery.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
My Insight can go 115 mph. And this is stock without being stripped, having a roll cage, or any other modifications.
It has a 995 cc 3 cylinder gas engine putting out about 63 hp. In series it has a 13 hp electric engine. Because the 2 engines have different hp/rpm curves, it puts out 68 hp. But it only weighs 1850 pounds.
The car goes 0-60 in 10.5 seconds, has really good handling, and drives kind of like a go kart. The only real bad thing is there isn't much sound insulation, so there is a fair amount of road noise.
But even going 90 mph, it can still click off about 50 mpg. At 45 mph, you can get it into 'lean burn' mode and get a bit over 100 mpg.
It's a really good commuter car, has a lifetime mileage of 56 mpg (would be a lot higher if I drove a bit more conservatively and didn't live in a hilly area).
Also, there are some electric cars that go 0-60 in 3.6 seconds IIRC.
One of the things that always has me kinda scratching my head is why nobody's making a diesel hybrid.
It would seem that with diesel's natual tendancy towards lower engine RPMs (and with most diesel engines delivering peak torque around 2500 RPM), it would make a natural fit towards a design like Toyota's (generating power which is applied to the wheels by electric motors).
In fact, that is how railroad locomotives work.
Plus, there are all kinds of advantages to using a diesel engine, including the fact that the raw materials for diesel fuel need not just be petroleum.. diesel fuel has been engineered from coal and vegetable oil, and can theoretically (although I personally haven't seen practicle examples) be made from methane.
If VW can make a turbodiesel New Beetle that can average 40-50MPG out of just swapping the gasoline engine for a diesel one, what could they do if they engineered a smaller diesel + electric motor combo?