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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."
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.
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!
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...
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.