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Modded Hybrid Cars Get Up to 250 MPG
artemis67 writes "Politicians and automakers say a car that can both reduce greenhouse gases and free America from its reliance on foreign oil is years or even decades away. Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage. It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an 80-miles-per-gallon secret -- a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries that boosts the car's high mileage with an extra electrical charge so it can burn even less fuel. Gremban, an electrical engineer and committed environmentalist, spent several months and $3,000 tinkering with his car."
"University of California, Davis engineering professor Andy Frank built a plug-in hybrid from the ground up in 1972 and has since built seven others, one of which gets up to 250 mpg. They were converted from non-hybrids, including a Ford Taurus and Chevrolet Suburban."
By this reasoning, I could build a car that has a little 1 horse power engine and a big bank of batteries which are charged by plugging it in at night. I could claim 1000 mpg, but that doesn't actually mean that my car is more efficient than any other car.
I agree that this may be useful, sort of more of a middle-ground between hybrids and electric cars, but really they should stop making mpg claims.
I've built electric cars. (college solar car team).
... but he gets power from the wall, which had to come from somewhere.
This car does not get 80 mpg. It uses 1 gallon of gas for every 80 miles it travels
Although large power plants may be able to make electricity more efficiently, he has to deal with transmission losses, and then storage losses from the inefficiency of battery storage. And he has the extra weight of 18 more batteries.
The only advantage wall-plugs do on electric vehicles is move where they're poluting -- it moves to the power plant, instead of the point of use.
Billing any of these cars as '250mpg' unless gallons of gasoline is the only input to the system is a disservice to everyone.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Politicians and automakers say a car that can both reduce greenhouse gases and free America from its reliance on foreign oil is years or even decades away. Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage. It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an 80-miles-per-gallon secret -- a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries.
And as the average American wants a big SUV and certainly isn't going to accept downgrading to something the size of a Prius and losing all of their trunk space to 18 brick sized batteries, it looks like the politicians and auto makers are correct.
In 1904 or whenever it was, two guys managed to invent a plane that, yes, technically could fly. A full hundred years later, why don't we all have our own planes or flying cars? Because, for the average person, they're totally impractical - they simply cost too much and have too many trade-offs for the benefits gained.
A Prius stacked full of batteries with no trunk space is exactly the same: Sure, you can do it. But that doesn't mean everyone in America is going to rush out and get one.
The theory is that it'll take years or decades to reach the point where it is practical for the masses. And that theory remains true.
Ask for a refund on your high school education, as they failed to deliver.
737 kg/m3 divided by 264.17 is the number of kilograms per gallon of gasoline. Multiplying the 2.79kg that a gallon of gasoline weighs by the net energy content of 44 MJ/kg gives you 122 MJ per gallon of gasoline, or the equivalent of 34 kWh of electricity.
I pay about USD 20 cents per kWh of electricity with tax, so the electrical equivalent for a gallon of gasoline would be about USD 6.80. Or, I can buy gasoline at about USD 2.15.
The more interesting question is: For each of those joules combusted in the engine, how many of them make it to the rubber/road interface (according to one FAQ about 0.2) and for each of the joules my ersatz-electric car pulls out of the wall socket, how many of THEM make it into the rubber/road interface (according to another FAQ about 0.6). Of course regen braking lets me use some of those joules over and over again, how much of which is highly dependent on driving conditions.
So, it turns out that the utility-electric-sourced car is about $11.30 per mega-newton-meter/second at the road surface, while the gasoline car is at about $10.75 - although it would not take very much regeneration at ALL to push that to the other side of the equation.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
So, have you ever driven a Prius? I have, for the past four years. I don't have trouble with city traffic, or with highway traffic. It is the easiest driving car that I have ever owned.
Last Monday I put on 280 miles at 70 mph, and got 49.5 mpg. Sure, I got passed by a few Suburbans, but I passed a bunch, too. Our Prius is quite sensitive to who is driving it; I get significantly better milage than my wife. Also, in winter the milage drops substantially (colder battery? alcohol in the gas?).
It's true that the cost of the hybrid is such that it is hard to make a strong argument for buying a hybrid on strict economic grounds. However the estupidass US automakers have been so distracted with making ever larger SUVs that I simply couldn't bear to give them a dime when we needed a new car several years ago.
Look: my Prius is not a sports car, obviously. I'm not going to haul a horse trailer over Snoqualmie Pass with it. But it is really ignorant to describe these hybrids as lemons. They are extremely good at what they are designed to be good at, and that turns out to be just about 95 percent of all my family's driving needs. My Prius is comfortable, thrifty, fun to drive, and interesting to drive.
The single largest problem with the Prius is that it is so quiet that pedestrians and bicyclists don't hear it.
That said, I would never buy a Prius myself. There are better cars for the price (and similar cars for much less), and there are many better ways to help the environment then by purchasing a new car.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Third time in this article I've seen someone make this mistake. It's an epidemic.
The gasoline powered car is only 25% efficient so although you pay $2.15/gallon you only use a quarter of the energy. Electric motors are very efficient so you don't need 1:1 energy equivalent with gasoline. The "electrical equivalent for a gallon of gasoline" is actually closer to $1.50, using your figures.
Not to mention that the Metro is manual transmission (automatic sucks efficiency, and will until continuously variable transmission becomes standard), and only was rated as 45 MPG highway (which was lowered to 35 MPG). The earlier engines were 55 hp, while the latter was 70. Both engines were famous for getting worse efficiency as they aged due to vibration because of the light construction.
For comparison, my lawnmower has six horsepower.
better ways to help the environment than by purchasing a new car
Excellent point. Many environmentalists fail to factor in production into their calculations. Steel is made by burning coke in with your iron ore. Aluminium is an incredibly energy-consuming electrolysis process. Plastics, well, they're non-biodegradable and made from petroleum. Copper is a particularly polluting metal to mine. And lets not even get into things like batteries.
If *I* needed a new car, I'd probably choose a hybrid. However, to run out and get something new because it's more efficient often ignores the big picture. Complex physical devices often have polluting activity involved in production at least somewhat related to cost.
Next to my desk we have an Ire Extinguisher. Our boss is really assertive, so we like the idea of having it.
There should be one coming to the US market this year:
http://www.hybridcars.com/ram.html