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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."
Modified Prius gets up to 180 Miles Per Gallon
The interesting thing about the new article is that there evidently now a company that will take your Prius, plus $12,000, and convert it into an all-electric car.
here is the funny part. I have an econo box from 1986 that kills the Prius and Honda hybrid gas mileage.
Geo metro 50Mpg average, when I drive all highway I get 58mpg
why does a "hybrid" get much less gas mileage than my old technology simple internal combustion engine with a CARBERATOR? something is very wrong with these hybrids.
80 mpg for the first 20 miles is great for the stay at home mom that drive to the store or around a little bit. the majority of the american public lives more than that from work. Granted in cities where during rush hour you spend a majority of that time at under 10mph or stopped and these hybrids make great use of that time. but having to buy a $25,000.00 hybrid plud add 80 hours of my time tinkering and voiding the warrenty so I can add another $3000.00 worth of parts to it to finally get a MPG rating that a hybrid should have already had really bothers me.
How about the fricking SMART CAR already availabe in canada and get's 60Mpg on it's own?
Hybrids are crap, utter crap until they get on their worst day 50mpg. Let's force the US to allow the importing of the smartcar.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I found it. The lighest one seems to be 185kg, way too heavy to put in a car wheel and maintain a reasonable ride.
Unfortunately, assuming 36 kWh per gallon of gasoline, and $.12 per kWh of electricity,
Wow, is it really that bad elsewhere in the country? On my last electric bill here in Maryland, I was paying $0.0585/kWh for electricity, and $0.0263/kWh for delivery... That's less than $0.08/kWh
30mpg in town, and 41 on the interstate.
An RV posted for sale on the bulletin board at work gets 2.5 miles per gallon. Also posted are lots of SUV's that get 10-12mpg in town and 18-20mpg on the interstate. That's why folks are dumping those gas hogs.
BUT, as the price of gasoline crosses $3.50 to 4.00/gal even my car will be too expensive to drive. I believe $3/gal will arrive before Christmas, and $4/gal by the next Christmas, if not sooner. Luckily, work is only 3.7 miles away and I have a nice bike.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
fuel economy is all well and fine.
just lemme know when they can pass bicycles on the road.We need some ft/lbs of torque here.
how bout them horses?
how bout a car people will WANT to drive on the highway? with accelleration and everything?like bigger than a breadbox so it can be seen by tractor trailer drivers.
good job on hacking the mileage tho.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
If they had hybrids that can store more electrical energy, and they can just be charged while they sit in the garage all night and be good for the next morning, I think that will be a 'good thing'.
In fact, the ENV is a fuel-cell powered motorbike, and it's coming to a store near you in 2006. It's expected to sell for $6000 to $8000, and runs for four hours with a top speed of 80 km/hour.
8 02_050802_fuelcellcycle.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0
Now let's go shopping for an equivalent electric motorcycle: http://www.electric-bikes.com/motorcys.htm
Hmm, see anything there with 320 km of range? They all seem to die after a maximum of 20-50 miles (32 to 80 km).
Of couse, no one I know has hydrogen to fill the ENV with, but I understand that you can buy a hydrogen generator that will fill the tank for 25 cents. Maybe these new-fangled fool cells aren't as far off as you think.
They even make a kick advertising it (as opposed to coal power generation). France comes to mind. So at 75%+ electricity generation is CERTAINLY less polluting if you count only ground+air type pollution. Even comparing radioactive pollution only it might win anyway (it is concentrated pollution in the case of a nuclear plant and not released widespread over earth, although it says there for a great deal longer time whereas other method like coal release a bit of radioactive element in atmosphere. A little bit albeit by the sheer tonnage of burned coal the little big get big...). In such country the vehicule shown is LESS polluting than your average car.
But then again this always comes down to the US not wanting to go away from their oil policy, isn't it ? By the way did you know than exxon announced the peak of oil for non-opec oil (60% world crude production)in 5 years ? This time this is not an ecological kook which announced it, but an oil company. Funny that nobody is reporting it that much in the press...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
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I know there are tax deductions and such for hybrid cars. I think I can understand why the politicians want Hydrogen. By looking at this page: http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgastaxes.asp these taxes are used for budgeting everything from road contruction to new projects. The politicians are worried where their sweet money is going to go if this caught on TOO FAST! They would have to get the money from somewhere else and this would mean increasing taxes to compensate the reduction of gas taxes. And Raising taxes does not get one re-elected! By having Hydrogen cars and refueling stations, they can still charge taxes on the refill and keep their current tax structure. This is the new age, you can never rely on only one thing such as this tax to keep everything balanced!
A real motor in a real car will be doing very good to get 95% efficiency operating under real world conditions.
The power into and out of a battery cycle has much lower efficiency than that.
Then there is some loss in control circuity between the battery and motor.
And, since the motors aren't directly coupled to the wheels, there is drivetrain loss.
They would be doing good to get 60% wall plug to tire patch on the ground system efficency.
The whole 250 mpg claim is BS too. He could have just as well made the claim based on the batteries only distance and claimed infinity mpg. The guy's a huxster.
When you;re running the gas on household electricity you aren't paying any gas/diesel highway taxes. To make the comparison fair, and valid in the long run, compare it to running a diesel on home heating fuel with no road taxes.
peak or off-peak?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Per mile costs with gasoline at $2.44 a gallon would be 3 cents. I could live with that.
Put it this way, my normal daily round-trip commute is 4.8 miles. This means I'd use only a gallon of fuel every 16.7 days, or a total of 15 gallons of gas a year, just to get back and forth to work. Even with gas at $3.00 a gallon it'd be a whopping $45.00 for the year.
With other travel my total bill would probably be $200 or less. Can't argue much with that.
The question I have is why nobody has come up with a diesel hybrid. You have all these arguments that hybrids are no better than old-style diesels, which is true. The diesel engine is just a whole lot more efficient.
So, why not just make a diesel hybrid? Best of both worlds, and if you only need to tank up every 800 miles don't tell me you can't find find a gas station that sells it...
The issue with these modded Priuses is that they ruin the batteries draining them in this fashion.
:)
Personally, in my garage I have a car that runs on straight used frying oil which I get free from local resturants. Much cheaper and if I run out of veg oil I can run on diesel
Even more likely, it depends on the number of gasoline wholesalers in the area and how tight the gasoline market is kept there.
In a state like CA or NY, where wholesalers have been consolidated to 4-5 rather than 15-20, prices move twice a day. Gas is $2.70 in NY, $2.38 40 miles away in NJ. About $0.18 of that difference is tax, the rest is the gasoline market.
Notice that the old Standard Oil companies are getting together again and even foreign companies are merging... ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, BP-Amoco-Arco, etc. Less competition in oil production & refining = higher prices.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Your car uses a gallon when in neutral?
The diesel engine is just a whole lot more efficient.
Actually i'll agree with you on the new turbo diesels. Some of the 80s passanger autos with diesels were not all that much better than their gas counterparts, but i'm starting to see a remarkable improvement. On trucks or an SUV... no contest, always been an improvement in terms of efficency.
The big issue in America is that diesel = bad. It's been a long time since I looked up the issue but the Volkswagon turbo diesel according to the VW website couldn't be ordered in a handful of states most notably California. And the pesky issue of finding a place to fill up a diesel. You can find them... but they are typicaly further away than your local petrol only stataion.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
By the way, I've owned a CVT car for three and a half years. Don't know if you've driven one but it's a nifty experience. Once you learn what to expect from the transmission computer you can get a lot of control of the car's torque just through careful manipulation of the throttle.
I don't think I'll buy a non-CVT car again, so I'm looking forward to them being standard. The kind of driving I do makes manual sort of impractical, and conventional automatic can be very annoying.
I should say though that, at least from my understanding, CVT will never be quite as efficient as a manual when it comes to highway mileage. The pulley design makes slippage sort of inherent, and although for city mileage that's allieviated by the engine being kept at the most efficient RPM, for highway mileage that doesn't help as much. Still more efficient than a regular automatic, though.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Okay- I agree with the fact that the market will take care of it- but with more fuel efficient cars and new technology.
I'd rather see farmland in places like Ohio & Upstate NY be used as farmland, instead of being yet another place for asshats sick of citylife to throw up yet another cookie-cutter 4 bed/2.5 ba colonial on 1.2 acres.
We don't like the city asshats either, but on the other hand I am financially secure for the rest of my life because we sold my grandfathers farm for development.
And I am sure you would be glad to know that I get paid (YES PAID $$$) to actually NOT grow things on the farm I currently own. Isn't the gov't great!!!
And I hate to tell you, but most people buying these house on 1.2 acres can afford higher gas prices.
Here is the rub my friend- There are many people with a lot of $$$, and these people have 50K SUVs and 750K homes. A lot of intellectuals who went to great schools and feel intellectually superior to people who have big houses and cars, make 40-50K a year. They act like they hate the people with the 50K SUVs and and 750K homes because they pollute, when in actuality it is resentment that they feel smarter, yet have no $$$.
And we all would like to see more farmland used as farms. But with CAFTA, we are only going to see more produce from S America grown by people making 50 cents a day. And I personally know three farming families that had to sell the farm due to inheritance tax. 500 acres is worth way over the exemption.... Why do you think 99% of farmers are Republicans?
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
I'm an American living in Ireland and a proud owner of a Smart Fortwo convertible. While it's true that the scourge of the SUV fad hasnt hit here yet, mainly due to how they tax and insure vehicles here (by engine displacement), there's still no shortage of large vehicles with which I share the road. Yet I feel quite safe inside of it, it has better safety features as standard than most irish cars on the road.
And the gas mileage is sweeeeet. I drive it on my commute every day and I only need to fill up every 2.5 weeks, yes, weeks. And even though gas costs about $4.00 a gallon here (you Americans think you have it bad, hahahaha...) I still spend less on gas per month on that car than I do when I visit the USA with other cars. I was in New York City and Boston in the past few weeks and was disgusted by how many Hummer H2's were driving around. A Smart is the PERFECT city vehicle, and it's just ignorance to dismiss it because of it's sensible size.
Yup...
I imagine that your fuel efficiency is comparatively pretty good, because even though you're getting ~15mpg, you're moving 7 people (versus 2 cars with more mpg, but more stops if they have smaller gas tanks and more confusion, and also more traffic).
However, the problem isn't your family going on trips in an SUV. Most (relatively rational) people would agree that in your case, for that situation, it makes sense. What about when you aren't on trips, who uses it? Does someone use it to drive to the market every day, run errands, etc? That's where it starts to bother people.
Sig!
I had this same question a year or so ago, and as I recall, the following is the reason there are no diesel-electric hybrids. I may have part of this wrong, but I'm too tired to look it up again right now.
Gas-electric hybrids work well because electric motors are well-suited to low-RPM, high-torque situations and gas engines are most efficient when driven at some particular, relatively high, RPM. The electric motor is used at low speed and in stop and go situations, and the gas engine is used in the regime in which it is most efficient.
The sweet spot for diesel engines is in the lower-RPM, higher-torque regime, so a diesel-electric hybrid would have two engines that work well in city traffic, and none that works well on the freeway.
Again, look it up for yourself to verify the details.
In CA, yes, that's a conservative number...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Already available in the US.
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
Having said that, hybrid diesel for buses has been on market for a while, so hybrid diesel in passenger cars may not be too far off in markets that tolerate it...
I don't need an excuse -- I buy what I feel I need. If you can get by with a Vespa, good for you. If you feel the need to drive an H2 around, good for you. I don't give a flying shit.
I drive the SUV about 10,000 miles/year. $4/gallon gas will cost me about $2,000. No problem for me. Those who cannot afford gas will need to find new cars. The market will take care of it.
The real problem is that everything is moved via truck and made out of plastic. SUV or not, rising petroleum prices are going to cascade into everything else anyway.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
From the article:
Notice any similarity between the two? This is plagiarism. If you're a regular reader of
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
Did you know that Henry Ford designed car that was working on and made of products created out of cannabis, but his experimental plantations grown for several years were destoryed
Those hummers should not even be street legal. Look at where the bumper level will hit a normal car. I would rather get hit by a semi then a hummer. The semi is more likely to push you since the bumper is designed to hit as low as possible while the hummer is going to just run over you.
I also don't know why but some of the most dangerous driving I have seen was done in the largest suvs. Things like the hummer and those suburban things. I watched someone yesterday on the freeway change lanes right into one a smaller car was already occupying. The person swerved very quickly and avoided the accident but there is no reason it should have happened. The car would not have been in their blind spot it just seemed like they did not see it. My guess is that people in those larger vehicles are only looking at vehicles that they see as a threat, ie the same size or larger and so they are a far more serious threat to other vehicles on the road.
I know there are some legitimate reasons to have them. The mountain rescue service around here has hummers that they use for rescues but they should not be used for regular driving around.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Does someone use it to drive to the market every day, run errands, etc? That's where it starts to bother people.
I don't care if it bothers other people. They have no right to be in my busines, and neither does the government which you probably wish would regulate SUVs. Let me drive what I want and I wil let you drive what you want. I'm not complaining, why are you?
I am so damn tired of hearing this new liberal slashdot rhetoric. What happened to all the libertarians that used to congregate here?
Reminds me of the old Texas saying (I realize Bush doesn't adhere to this so piss off): Leave me the hell alone and I'll leave you the hell alone.
Ya'know, people can drive whatever they want. Great. Good for them. There's a family that lives down the street from me that owns a Ford Excursion. They have a lot of kids, need to get them around, need to lug stuff, fine. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit in their garage, and they have a very short driveway. When they park the vehicle, it occupies the entire driveway, plus the entire sidewalk, and nearly out to the street. It is, of course, illegal to park a vehicle so that it covers the sidewalk. Especially when you do it every day for years and have no plan to change it. During the winter when I was on crutches after knee surgery it was very difficult for me to get around them. Apparently nobody in my neighborhood will confront them about it because they don't want to be rude. Hah. They have every right to drive a huge car, but I wouldn't mind seeing them ticketed for parking illegally.
What I would love to see, however, is for them to realize that their arrangement is rude and try to come up with something less intrusive. I would also love to see people with tall vehicles of all types (minivans, SUVs, mail trucks, delivery vans, etc.) to avoid parking in parallel spaces very near intersections, because tall vehicles in these spaces obstruct the view of cross traffic. No reason to call the cops, I would just appreciate some courtesy. I would appreciate it if engineers designing SUVs that will drive a vast majority of their miles on congested roads designed the headlights with some concern for the other drivers on those roads. Some SUVs have unreasonably high headlights that shine directly into the rear- and side-view mirrors of regular cars and blind the drivers. Particularly these new high-intensity headlights. Perhaps if the high headlights provide the best visibility on dark rural roads, certain big vehicles need a city-driving headlight setting where the lights are aimed lower as well as normal and high-beams.
Personally SUVs don't bother me by themselves... however, their drivers should take it upon themselves to drive with caution and courtesy, knowing that large vehicles simply by virtue of their size can cause lots of problems in congested traffic. These aren't problems that can be solved by the government, but they are problems that require that drivers care if they bother other people.
However, the 4 stroke engines found on mowers and other outdoor power equipment are a major offender. As you say they "haven't even gone after the low-hanging fruit" for emissions.
All that said...my 15hp tractor eats my whole yard in about a half hour, allowing me to do it more often, so the grass clippings are smaller and easier for the lawn to be fertilized by, so I don't have to dump chemicals on it for it to look good, and the chemicals run off and pollute the pretty lake I see out my front windows. Well, in theory -- I just got the tractor, and I mostly wouldn't bother with the chemicals for a nice lawn...just too damned lazy.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Personally ever since I was like 12 and drove past my first oil refinery where they were 'flaring-off' all of those 'waste gases' I had wondered why cng and propane powered vehicles aren't more popular? A few years ago ford and chevy both had bi-fuel vehicles and considering the cost of gas these days, I just don't get why they aren't still moving down this path path of a dual-fuel concept (or is it just easier to continue to waste this additional source of fuel?).
Manual transmission - correct. you could buy automatics but they did not sell.
The metro sold very well for what it was, the problem is that you can not find many on the used market because the owners do not want to sell them and very few are in junkyards as well, but you see lots of them on the roads. Metro's have a huge following. if you used a synthetic oil in the engine they did not lose efficency at all as they aged. I have 2 one with 209,000 miles on it and the replacement that has 75,000 miles on it they BOTH get darn near the same gas mileage. (I used to have a honda insight, I sold it because it's SMALLER than a metro, less useable than a metro and has a cost of ownership in simply the maintaince department that is well over 5X the cost of maintaince of the Geo and honestly has no real history behind them.. nobody can tell me what they do when they hit 300,000 miles and 7 years of age. There are metros out there that are still runinning strong with over 300,000 miles on them. "built light" is a piece of FUD that was touted at the chevy dealers in order to deter people from buying the GEO line that was on the same lot. There was not a big markup on the cars so the sales people hated to sell them for a low commission. Coupled with the fact they were not advertised they did not sell well if you compare it to the top sellers of ford or chevy or gm, but for an import they did sell very well.
I suggest you actually learn about the Geo/Suzuki a bit more, they are extremely well built for their cost, the engines themselves were pretty darn impressive in durability and lack of wear as the miles piled on. the little things had rack and pinion steering, they handle quite well, the 4cyl 4 door sedan would get on average 38mpg highway/city and had a notoriously reliable motor.
And I drive 75-80 in mine every single day, it handles as good as any other car (outside of a sports car) and adding the low rolling resistance tires from a honda insight (rubber was really close in size) drastically increased my gas mileage 4-5mpg on highway.
My daily commute on 696 in Detroit every day proves that these lightly built cars with only 55hp can certianly work well in highway traffic.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You don't necessarily have to get oil from dead dinosaurs.
:)
There are efforts going on to advance the technology of Thermal Depolymerization.
That's a ten dollar word for "oil from pretty much any biological waste" including turkey offal and medical waste (what they're using now.)
Doesn't do anything for greenhouse gasses or global warming, mind you, but as a solution to Foreign Oil Dependency, it sounds like an interesting concept.
And you can make the case that perhaps the car companies need to be getting behind this technology in order to make sure that there's a device that will consume all this lovely thermally depolymerized chicken crap.
But what do I know?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Until it makes economic sense to purchase one, people won't.
:). I get 46-47 mpg city (13mpg better than the best non-hybrid civic) and 49mpg highway (11mpg better). My numbers are from my real-world driving versus EPA on the other car, where'd you get the "1 mpg worse in highway" figure from?
I'm purchasing one in a few weeks (civic). I'm a person. And I'm not alone...89,000 americans have also taken the plunge.
While I realize it doesn't make economic sense (it will take me about 4 years to save enough on gas given how much I drive), I'm doing it because I'm an idealist: if I vote with my dollars that alternative vehicles are what I want, I hope that Honda will invest more R&D dollars in the technology (either hybrid or fuel cell) to make something even better down the road...
Especially when the hybrid version gets only ~6mpg more in city driving, and 1 mpg worse in highway, where I do half to three-quarters my driving.
I've been driving my friend's '04 civic hybrid a lot lately, since she has two of them
From what I recall, the Toyota Prius gets even better gas mileage than the civic (with the invention of CVT, standard shift is my guilty pleasure, I guess), and I know the Insight gets above 60mpg in real-world driving.
has currently unknown failure rate and repair costs is too much for a 'neat toy'.
The Honda Insight has been out since 2000, so the tech is 5 years old (technically 6 in "car years", since the 2000 model was introduced around this time of year in 1999). I haven't seen or heard about any problems with the motors (gas or electric), just a few recalls on the headlights and airbags and things that are typical with any car. I've got a friend with a 2000 Insight, she hasn't had anything odd go wrong in her 160,000 miles (a set of CV joints that cost $200 more total to replace has been the only major repair so far). Another pal has two civic hybrids, one from '03 (50k), one from '04(30k), and neither has had any issues. I think the "when something goes wrong" issue is kind of a moot point.
Peace,
Reid
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
The negative environmental impact of the batteries is never discussed. Current battery technology is miserable at best. The hybrid cars are just a way for the manufacturers to get some free ink and avoid the wrath of the fossil-fuel industry for promoting alternative, cleaner-burning fuels.
Gas for cars is produced as an integrated part of oil refining. The oil companies have invested billions and billions of dollars in distillation equipment and infrastructure that relies on gasoline being refined out of crude oil and sold. As long as we use oil for heating, lubrication and countless other things, gasoline will be part of process. If you mess with the supply and demand aspect of gasoline all other oil-based products will fluctuate madly. The refiners rely on revenues from gasoline to help pay for the process. The carbon chains that you burn on the way to work still have to be removed from crude to produce yet higher grades of petroleum products. Consider what happens if you turn those carbon chains into manufacturing waste or other less profitable products. All those plastic parts on your hybrid (including the battery cases) will shoot up in price.
Check out City CarShare. Rental vehicles stored in parking spots all over the city, available in timeslots as small as half an hour for only $4/hr peak, $2/hr off peak, plus $.44/mile which includes gas and comprehensive insurance. This is the way of the future. Bicycles, trains, or slidewalks(!) for normal people, rent a car for a few bucks the hour you need it each day, a truck for a little more on the day you need it each month.
Let's have him charge his batteries overnight using a gasoline generator that's rigged to automatically shut off when the batteries are fully charged. Then we can measure how much gasoline he's using to keep the thing running and get a _real_ number.