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.'"

Comments

The FASTEST...erm...

[Sensible Clod]

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'.

Re:The FASTEST...erm...

[skywire]

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.)

Re:The FASTEST...erm...

[ph43drus]

The parent is right that the cars only get their energy from gasoline. However, there is a deeper efficiency story here that just isn't as quick and easy a sound bite as "getting your car's energy from two sources---gas and electricity"---which is an awful marketroid half-truth.

Anyway, to clarify on hybrids:

The efficiency story goes like this: your normally car engine sucks as far as efficiency is concerned. This is because they have to operate over a wide range of speed and power requirements. Eg. from just taking off from a dead stop to running up a hill at 70mph or more. A spark engine can get to be about 30% efficient (this is from memory, it might even be up to 40%, I'd have to go look it up, and I'm feeling lazy ;). But anyway, the point is, that because of the requirements put on the spark engine in a car, it has to be designed for maximum power output, and this means for most driving the highest efficiency a car engine can attain is 20% (this would be for a tiny Japanese car which is engineered for fuel efficiency, like a Toyota Tercel or Honda Civic, other cars, like most SUVs, perform worse).

The trick with the hybrids like the Prius is that they have the battery+electric motor to supplement the gas engine. So, the designers can do something important: they can pick a median power output (much below maximum required power output), and design the spark engine to be maximally efficient for that power output. This allows them to get the 30-40% efficiency out of the gas engine mentioned above. The hybrid only ever runs the gas engine at this power output. If this is too much, the electric motor run the wheels. If this is too little, the motor and the engine drive the wheels. If the batteries are getting low, the gas engine drives the electric motor to charge the batteries. When braking, part of the axel motion is used to drive the electric motor and charge the batteries (reclaiming some of the energy already expended to be reused---this is the regenerative braking that others have mentioned). Note: the designers at Toyota and Honda have taken advantage of the fact that an electric motor and generator are merely the same device, which one it functions as depends on which end the energy comes in, so there is no separate generator. (And if it occurs to you that the clutching system would be complicated because of this, you're right.)

As far as being able to charge up your hybrid, there are some experimental models with that feature. You might eventually be able to do that; so if you just drive around town, you'd only rarely have to fill your tank (however, this feature requires that the bank of batteries is bigger, and 50% of the electricity in the US comes from coal, so the pollution/energy expenditure could end up being worse off the wall charge, depending on where your power comes from ;).

Jeff

130.794 mph

[k4_pacific]

What, did it go off a cliff?

I can picture it now....

[Duncan3]

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?

Re:OOOOH WOW

[Infinityis]

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...