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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."
TFA talks about cars getting up to 250MPG, this dude has a car that gets around 80. Am I missing something, or do you have to overclock it to 7Ghz to get that kind of mileage?
Build a better car that doesn't guzzle gas, and the oil industry will beat a path to your door, destroy the car, and kill you. Adios, Dude!
How ya like dat?
No where in the article does it state that he actually got 250MPG. It only alludes to the fact that "modders" can. What an awful skew of the facts.
HJ
This is a very cool mod, but with the turnaround time in the auto industry and the legal costs that acquiring the rights to use the guy's idea would entail, it may be decades before you see this in new hybrids...
-nick
I prefer the Quicktime format, myself.
My Greatest Heist - Muisc partly inspired by the unbeatable Qwantz
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.
Yeah, but with a large central power generation facility it's much easier to increase efficiency and clean up waste. A car's internal combustion engine will generate a LOT more pollution per unit of energy than a power plant.
Not to mention that electricity can also come from cleaner sources like hydro or nuclear or whatnot.
Although it gets 250 MPG, that's for the first 20 miles (in the case of Grebman). So he's only getting that killer mileage for short trips, and he's got to recharge in between trips.
It is not as if he's got something that gives him great mpg all the time.
But as the article points out, some have driving patterns like that.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Kind of bends the definition of "hybrid" a bit, at least as it's commonly used today in the commercial auto market.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
EDrive is the company making the LiIon plug-in Prius conversions.
Link
It's funny how that pesky electric car just won't die. Maybe because it really is a good solution for the majority of one's commuting. This one may still have an ICE in it, but it's only a matter of time before that is dispensed with.
And don't even talk about those "fool cells". Like nuclear fusion, fuel cell cars will always be 10 years away.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
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.
VW is selling 84 MPG vehicles since '99 http://www.usatoday.com/money/consumer/autos/marev iew/mauto497.htm
The problem is not really making a high MPG car, it is that people, especially in the US, don't want to buy them. Not even the best technology can make an energy efficient car handle like a porsche or sound like a truck.
Yes, but when you're talking about pollution and power generation, you also have to look at the issue of efficiency.
Combustion engines are horribly inefficient, burning an excessive amount of fuel. Power plants are far more efficient, and therefore less polluting -- especially nuclear plants.
Another thing to consider is the fact the power plant can be located far away from densely populated areas, as opposed to auto polution, which increases with population density.
electric motors are many magnitudes more efficent then combustion engines, thats why they are considered environmentaly friendly. distance to $ value on them is far higher. also, you can produce electricity in non polluting ways, granted the technology to do so in a method that could supply our needs is a little way off, it WILL get there. i believe mostly due to cost, america has it good with petrol prices, but the rest of the world is really hurting under high prices. people will factor in the saving the make on petrol when buying an electric car, once we can get them for $60k AUD i will definately consider one. another thing i wish makers of electric cars would do, is stop trying to make them look futurisic ffs. make a normal looking car i can drive without getting beaten up for it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
With the cost of oil rising, many Americans recently polled said that the price of gas is already or soon will cause them financial difficulties. I happen to be one of those people who has the unfortunate situation of driving 3000 miles per month to get back and forth from work. Even at 30MPG, that's 100 gallons x $2.50. $250 a month. Recently we were thinking about buying a new car to cut down on our gas bill, and found that there are very few choices when you want to get 45 MPG or better. In fact, there were a total of 3 cars, none of which appealed to us. 30 MPG is about the best you can get for a normal looking car in the $15,000 range. As more and more consumers begin to feel the crunch from rising gas prices, you will see demand skyrocket for vehicles that can go further on less. I expect guys like the one in this article have a great future ahead of them. The idiots who designed the Hummer H2, however, not so good.
LeoPolus Web Design: http://www.leopolus.com
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.
This is TOTAL bullshit. They could make something now, but they don't want to get their asses in gear to "capture" the new markets. They just stand to make more money the way things are now, which is doing nothing.
If one of them actually started doing it on a full-scale basis, you'd see everyone else jump into as well for fear of losing market share. Period.
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.
Don't you know? Battery power is free -- get with it ok? Hydrogen too. Perfectly clean.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I suspect - but have no proof - that the plug in option reduces some of the pollution per mile. The reason why I suspect this is that you have reduced the engine size and carry less of your fuel (part of which is at the power plant) Additionally the power plant should be able to run cleaner per Watt produced - they should have better polution reduction equipment.
This message was brought to you by "Lack of Sleep."
no, it won't run OSX86 ... but it will run on 76
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I do believe that the generators down at the power plant are in general more efficient than the engine in your car (though it's tricky to make an apples to apples comparison, as few power plants run on gasoline (though some probably do run on diesel)) but I suspect it's not a LOT more efficient.
Also, you were talking about `pollution per unit of energy' not efficiency, though in practice I suspect the two are just different ways of looking at the same thing -- after all, power plants will burn a given fuel in the same way that a car engine will, so the waste products will be the same. The power plant may be somewhat better maintained, however, and can have more things similar to a catalytic converters on a car.
And even if the power plant pollutes just as much as a car engine for a given amount of energy, there's another advantage -- the polution is generally produced away from the city, which helps keep the polution around the people who actually use the cars down.
That's certainly true. Alas, not much of the US's power comes from things like this.But I made the mistake of trying to patent my special water conversion carburator so a mole in the patent office turned me in.
I'm now in the Ford "dungeon" right now...I just got this 300 baud modem hacked up from paper clips and mouse droppings and the first site I got to was this "Slashdot"
Hey how are you all doing.... Frist Post?
I have heard all of my life of oil companies buying the rights to stuff like this to keep it off the market. I wonder if an "open source" type of atmosphere for inventions like this will help them actually see light of day? It is interesting to see things big money can't control.
It seems to me that if we had a choice between a car that never needed refueling and a car that used substance X, which just happened to be sold at the place that used to sell gas, the powers that be would push the latter, just because there needs to be these stores on the corner that sell something to make cars go. That's the way it has always been done, right?
Maybe someone will come up with MP3s for auto fuel and upset the way things are done. That's what needs to be done because the corps are only going to push technologies that have reoccurring revenue that benefits the system they thrive on.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
http://www.e-traction.com/TheWheel.htm
Put the motor in the hub. No drive train! AWD!
All I need is some big bucks to get a welding torch and put 4 in some old jalopy. (And some batteries..)
Anyone know what these things go for? They can use a lot of juice and put out a lot of power.
Cheers!
-b
You can make a hummer get better than 80 mpg. Not too far from my house is a hummer that gets better than 80 mpg, but it's also a hybrid.
It's a combination diesel-continental drift vehicle, and they fire it up maybe once in 10000 years.
Of course, if they power it up and use the vehicle to drive down the street, it's back down to 6 mpg.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
The inevitable smart-ass question of "Oh, but that electricity has to come from somewhere!!".
Consider this:
Energy content of gasoline: ~45 MJ/kg
Density of gasoline: 737 kg/m3
1 cubic meter = 264.172051 gallons, equals 2.79 MJ/gallon.
Now 1 kWh is exactly 3.6 MJ. Electricity costs (let's exaggerate) 30 cents per kWh.
What do you pay for gas?
Now add to that the facts that:
1) It is easier to clean up a handfull of power-plants than a millions cars distributed over the whole country.
2) Electricity doesn't have to come from fossil fuel sources
3) Even if it does, power plants still produce energy more efficiently than an automobile engine.
This guy should build mod kits for cars to increase oil usage. Even with the expense, *someone* would by them and with volume would come reduced cost.
Why am I a snob for wanting a car that is able to merge with big city traffic?
No, it won't run x86, but at least this article was
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
Bullshit.
In the article it doesn't show you the price (only alludes to the cost of the hybrid hardware inside it).
Hybrid cars are expensive and inconvient in areas that don't give you the ablity to easily recharge your battery.
This has nothing to do with the US either, so stop your bullshit America bashing. Does Europe suddenly only use hybrid cars?
You know, the suspension and the exhaust noise aren't really the reason that people turn away from energy efficient automobiles. It's the power
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Reporters trying to reach Ron Gremban for comment have had no success. Immediate family members report that Ron Gremban was last seen shortly after his comments and his family is concerned with his sudden dissapearance.
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.
I can get 250MPG.
Shift into neutral, and find a 250 mile stretch of downhill....
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
What about the batteries? Aren't most batteries toxic as hell? Isn't the manufacture and disposal of batteries a colossal headache? Am I really doing anything productive at all, trading a few gallons of Saudi crude for a lithium/ion toxic waste site? Somebody, please, set me straight. What do they do with the batteries?
Oh, and what if you live in a place with real winters? Last I heard, batteries die a quick and silent death in subzero conditions.
... I love the prius, could have bought one, but I didn't want to add up anymore debt nor raid my savings account to own it outright. This isn't to say I think it's a rip, far from it, really love those cars. BUT...
You can pick up an early 90s sentra for around 1500 bucks in decent condition and for about 400 bucks in after market parts, get it to 40mpg. I did just that. Just posting this because I know other people probably don't have the money, don't want the debt, or like me simply can't bring themselves to spend that much on a depreciating assett(aka, I'm a cheap bastard).
As someone else said, plugging it in doesn't count. That electricity may or may not come from environmentally friendly sources. Most likely, environmentally hostile sources like coal.
Furthermore, there's a lot more to it than simply sticking a bunch of batteries in the trunk. Some consumers use their trunks. Why do you think they put them in cars? Because they just happen to have a lot of extra room when they're done building the car?
Also, by adding all that weight, you're changing the dynamics of the car. For a dealer to sell a car modified like that, it now needs to go through safety tests.
There are a lot of people that think, "Oh geez, all the car manufacturers need to do is XYZ and we won't need gas anymore." I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's a lot more complex a problem than most people make it out to be. You have to build a car that's safe and a car consumers want to buy. Those aren't always easy things to accomplish when the source of power isn't in question. When you're trying a new source of power, it's a big additional question.
Sure, everyone could rely on hydrogen, except we don't have enough hydrogen fuel pumps yet. Not to mention, hydrogen is pretty expensive to produce right now and certainly there isn't infrastructure to produce it in the quantities necessary for a mass market.
It's not a simple problem and there isn't a simple solution.
Most major metropolitan areas have light rail systems, trains that are powered from overhead electric lines. Many of them probably also have a similar system for buses (San Fran does).
So here's a question...why not rig a contraption like in Back to the Future to hook into the power and then have "zero emmission" vehicles today?
Adding overhead powerline infrastructure would cost very little, given that virtually every street in the US is lined with power poles. IT would be a simple matter to put out some rails and run an line for buses and electric cars.
The only thing that stopped this from happening before was the lack of electric cars. Buses are built in large quantities to order for cities, and unless a good percentage of consumers would be willing to do the same, there would be no way to make the infrastructure costs worthwhile.
BUT...now we have a large and growing segment of the population driving electric cars. Hybrid cars are electric, even if they have a gas engine to power their electric motors.
So, why not figure out a way to make some kind of retractable antenna like a bumper car that can feed off existing light rail or bus power, then the need for gas is essentially only for country driving where infrastructure would cost to much.
Of course, who pays for power? The cities should. intially. That will help speed adoption the same way tax breaks and other financial incentives work. I see a lot of places that offer free or low-cost charging ports to encourage people to drive electric cars. Down the road, when the amount of vehicles using the power starts to add up, introduce some kind of "power meter" and bill and a very reasonable rate.
Also, for all of those who complain that cars that are powered off the electric grid are producing just as much of an emmissions problem as gas powered cars...that may be true now, but think about the future: which will be easier to police and regulate: a handful of large power plants or a million vehicles. I would much rather have every car in America sucking off the power grid, even if that means more coal and yes oil being burned to fill demand. Because after the cars are gone, then all eyes will be on the power companies and there's a lot few of them and they are a lot easier to bully than millions of angry drivers.
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
For power plants, there is also net energy lost converting the mechanical motion to electricity, and energy lost transmitting said electricity. Not to mention the energy lost putting the electricity into and out of the batteries, and the added weight of the batteries to the car.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Translation: I am insecure and need to compensate with my penis car.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
"Even if it does, power plants still produce energy more efficiently than an automobile engine."
Everything except natural gas (which is running out and expensive) is stuck below about 35% efficient. Coal power plants a bit more efficient than an engine, but once you factor in transmission losses and storage losses it doesn't really look that good. That, and coal is a very dirty source of power (eg it releases lots of particulates some of them radioactive). The only viable large scale alternative is nuclear, and it's not exactly cheap.
Also, the transmission infrastructure can't take a significant number of people doing this.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
not much of the US power comes from hydro or nuclear ?
r .htm
did you even bother to google before making such a stupid statement
"Today, nuclear power plants--the second largest source of electricity in the United States--supply about 20 percent of the nation's electricity each year."
http://www.nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=2&catid=106
http://lsa.colorado.edu/essence/texts/hydropowe
1 cubic meter = 264.17 gallons = 2.79 Kg or
125.5 MJ/gallon.
Just a *minor* math mistake, so 1 gallon is equal
to 34.7 kwh, so at 10cents/kwh that is $3.47,
which makes it about the same price as gasoline, when you remove the taxes from the gas and count
the inefficiency of a gas engine.
Let me tell you a secret, since you appear not to have travelled. In other countries, people drive much smaller cars than in the US. I thought the fact that USians like big cars was a given.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
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!
Assuming I had one of these cars, where would I plug it in? I park my car in a parking lot, not a private garage attached to a single-family house.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Electricity will be next to free within the next 10-30 years: Technological breakthrough article just a few days ago.
I'm suprised people aren't excited about this as I am. Solar panels never took off because the energy they produced didn't cover costs. This is more efficient and cheaper. They'll make money off their solar farms, then reinvest the money to create more solar farms, which allows them to reinvest even more money on even more solar farms. Its a cyclical process where somepeople are going to end up being in the top 100 richest people in the world. I'm so excited that I applied to their company and I'm trying to prototype out my own sterling engines. I figure that even if I can't be employed by them, nothing will stop me from running my own buisness.
God spoke to me.
"Translation: I am insecure and need to compensate with my penis car."
Translation: I'm envious of your ownership of the penis car.
"Derp de derp."
Hmm.. Your math is wrong. Assuming your numbers are correct:
45 MJ * 737 kg / 254 gals = 125 MJ per gallon
125 MJ per gallon = 34 kWh per gallon
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!
Last I checked hybrid cars had a BIG drawback . That is that the batteries cost more to replace than the car is worth and in disposing of them you have created more permanent pollution than otherwise would have occured with gasoline . Also purely electric cars don't "ELIMINATE" pollution . They just outsource it . I hope all the eco awareness groups feel happy knowing that instead of burning that icky evil polluting gasoline they are instead charging their cars with "clean" electricity . I might add that close to 90% of all the electricity in the US is generated by burning fossil fuel and coal . This process is just a TAD dirtier than running your car on premium unleaded (sarcasm ) . We of course live in a "see no evil hear no evil " society . If you can't see that power plant putting all those extra cubic tons of greenhouse gases and carcinogens into the air then it doesn't exist . Oh now lets get to my favorite part . Does anyone here have any idea what this kind of run up on battery production will do to the enviroment ? No ? Well let me tell you that producing all those lead / cadium batteries is EXTREMELY toxic and we can expect the toxic waste output of those factories to rise exponetially . SO in essence instead of us filling up at the pump with fossil fuel the power plants will need it instead . Also now the battery manufacturers will be generating more toxic waste . Oh an lets not forget that some of these "eco-friendly" vehicles have a life spand that ends with the lease . Imagine that , A whole car you can just throw away . So basically america just wants to not see the pollution . Maybe our next plan should be to buy another un-popular country and turn it into our garbage dump .
nuclear power accounts for a signifigant (20% of all power consumed) portion of the power generation here in the states. but gp has a point, america is bringing on between 1-4 nuclear plants online a year(mostly 1), and starting in 2009 we're going to be 'decomissioning' reactors, since even with a 'pro' nuclear president we can only manage 4 sites a year being suggested... there are going to be some serious issues when the old plants start shutting down. No one wants a nuclear plant in there back yards, hell most people don't even know we're still building 'new' reactors. The regulations are harsh for building new plants, but that's why even bringing new plants online we've had no major nuclear accidents in ages... still, if electric companies aren't willing to build new nuclear plants... we're going to be screwed big time starting in 2009. hell even with the 'new' reactors that have been approved, the number of reactors that are 'online' hasn't changed since 1997. that's what happens when you only build one new reactor for each old one that someone decides to 'shut down' for saftey/operating cost reasons. Frankly, we need a long term storage site, and we need new reactors getting approved in states that currently have no nuclear generating capacity, and we need companies to bring more reactors online than they're shutting down. we could be relying on nuclear for a lot more than 20% of our electrical needs, but without a long term storage facility to ship the nuclear waste to, you have to build plants in remote locations where you can also sink the waste into deep pools. if you didn't have to store 40 years of waste on site. and then continue to pay to maintain the containment of that waste. well, power companies would gladly build more plants if they just had a site they could ship the waste to.
and the government has spent a bundle picking a site, it might not be perfect, but they should just build there already so the nuclear waste can be stored miles and miles away from anyone else. instead of in the remote outlying regions of major population centers. in temporary underwater contaiers
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Second largest at 20% huh ... wow that's such a huge portion /sarcasm... And please, do tell. What is the percentage difference between the main source of power and nuclear power plants? and how small of a percentage do things like hydro, wind, and solar actually make up?
h tm
.. and being far more than any other renewable resource?
...) makes up the rest of power types, like solar and wind.) that means 45% total in renewable resources, leaving 55% for things like coal and natural gas.
It's also worth mentioning your last link is broken:
"How much electricity do we get from hydropower today? Quite a bit. Depending on whether the year has been wet or dry, hydro plants produce from eight to 10 percent of the electricity produced in this country (almost 8.5 percent in 1994), far more than any other renewable energy source."
http://lsa.colorado.edu/essence/texts/hydropower.
So, we have nuclear making 20% and hydro making 10%
To give a fair estimate (ie: I havent looked this up) we can assume 10-15% (And really I think that percentage number is far too high
No, I am not an English major. My posts are subject to typos and incorrect grammar. Do not expect perfection.
Sounds as if you didn't bother to read the article. Most of the issues you insinuate about are covered. Yes it's a trade off, but still to our advantage. [Everything but the battery replacement is discussed and this is not big an issue.]
The options are very much higher gasoline prices, and more wars. The next ones will require more bodies and cash from somewhere. Hence, are you of draft age? Are you ready to be part of our next noble adventures? Or do you have better things to do like talk politics, drive extravagent cars and chase the "good" life? Sounds nice, but there will be hell to pay for those outrageous indulgences.
Pay now or pay even more later.
I'm not sure where the problem is, but these two sources give the heat energy content of gasoline to be between 33 and 45 kWh per gallon.
The problem with batteries is that it takes roughly a thousand pounds of lead acid batteries to store the energy of one gallon of gasoline. More exotic batteries will only give incremental gains in storage capacity. Battery cars are a loser for all but the shortest trips.
It's not really the electricity that is the problem as others have just pointed out. The real problem is that batteries are a pretty nasty thing to dispose of. That needs to be factored in.
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?
It only works when you get your power from non-renewable sources. If he also buys green power from his utility, he is indeed reducing pollution.
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'.
"Electricity will be next to free within the next 10-30 years"
That's the funniest thing I've ever heard.
I'd like to say it's also the stupidest, but unfortunately you have some rather stiff competition on that front. Keep trying though.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
... and then what will our oil companies do???
Get into the powerplant business.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Another way of saving gas with a hybrid is using the pulse and glide method. Not always practical (especially for a full freeway) but it shows that when you are able to change your driving style you may be able to save a few extra bucks.
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
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.
However some hybrid models take that battery power and add it to the gas power that is produced to give an increase in horsepower. No gas is saved, but you get a faster more peppy vehicle.
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/
visit randi.org
Not everyone that likes fast cars is a polluting slob.
I like the environment and do my best to contribute to it's preservation, but please don't ask me to drive an 18 sec pussymobile.
As long as you don't complain about gas prices, no matter how high they go, then you are welcome to drive your penis car as much as you want. The second you do start complaining about the cost of gas is the second you should have realized that buying a more efficient vehicle would have been the smart thing to do. You want to play, you gotta pay.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
hydrogen is not an alternative fuel.. it takes more energy to create hydrogen than you would gain from it's use in combustion engines.. often this is done with electricity.. which requires coal. Hemp, however, can be processed to produce 50% of it's mass in fuel. Maybe when the nation starts to plummet off the cliff of destitution because there is no oil, the politicians will FINALLY reclassify industrial hemp so it's not illegal.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
My Personal issue - is that most of the reviews of plugin hybrids state that you hve to use electricity coming from dirty power stations that still cause polution. I know in Aus that we have a choice where our power comes from - it just might cost a little more to get 100% green power. I think this is an important point that nobody seems to look at. just my 2c
Good luck on your inventing. I think I could make automotive AC that ran off the transmissions waste heat with a couple of stirling engines. Another thing I'll never get done.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'd love to see a hydrogen car, but hydrogen is an invisible gas. Additionally, hydrogen is lighter than air, so a hydrogen car would just float away. Or did you mean a car which uses hydrogen as fuel?
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There is (at least where I come from) a great deal of knowledge available on how cars pollute. However, I'm curious if anyone has been able to come up with a National "average amount of pollution per Kilowat-Hour" for our electrical power in the U.S., making sure they keep track of the real details beyond the power plants themselves. For example, is there any real data (not just "I heard...") on how much power is lost between the plant and the end user?
In other words, where is the information on what pollution price we pay when we consider the whole system of electrical distribution? Those windmills are great, but they don't support you power hungry, 10 servers-in-your-basement types, and so some average percentage of power must be burnt just combining electricity from multiple energy powerplants, including still-operational coal-burners.
Sincerely,
Tired of the partial stories.
Your calculations seem off.
That final figure of 34 kWh/gallon sounds about right, from memory.
Also electricity is rarely as expensive as 30c per kWh. It's closer to 10c (US) where I live.
Your argument is still correct. Electricity is far cheaper than gasoline to move a car, when all is considered.
2) Electricity doesn't have to come from fossil fuel sources
But the total energy consumed remains, at best, constant; and at the current demands for electricity we are already depending upon foreign oil and other fossil fuels to supply it.
I am pro electric car, but they are not a panacea.
KFG
It's 6,08$ per gallon, stop complaining :)
"They're like the hot rodders of yesterday who did everything to soup up their cars. It was all about horsepower and bling-bling, lots of chrome and accessories," said Cindy Knight
<ghetto>Oh no, she di'un!</ghetto>
I'm sorry. But, "bling-bling" is not the phrase that comes to mind when I think of old school muscle cars.
"Nuclear might not be exaclty cheap but it is cheap enough for the French to build it and even export. Germany, where environmental freaks lobbied against nuclear power plants years ago, now import a lot of their power from France. I think storing nuclear waste in a mountain in Nevada is worth cutting down on the emissions and also on dependency on foreign oil, if according to many it slows down the melting of the ice caps - even better."
I'm not saying it's impractical (clearly that's not the case), just that it's more expensive than coal, and for the purposes of the US we can pretty much assume it's coal. Ultimately nuclear power will be the way to go. It's the only thing that can scale as high as we care to take it and last indeffinitely. I think the future of portable power will be dominated by hydrogen or hydrocarbons produced in nuclear power plants.
This is just getting started. For example, Exxon recently announced that natural gas production in North America has peaked. The tar sands in Alberta rely on natural gas to provide additional hydrogen (the existing hydrocarbons are too heavy), so various companies are looking at producing hydrogen in nuclear reactors so they can continue production as natural gas gets more expensive.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Why do no manufacturers offer nice cars with even near the above mpg rates?
Electricity will be free
Please look up the term "capital costs", "amortize", "infrastructure", and "maintenance" before you comment on power ever again.
Next to my desk we have an Ire Extinguisher. Our boss is really assertive, so we like the idea of having it.
The 1950's called, they want their delusions back.
More importantly, the 1960's-1980's called and want to know where the hell their cheap power is.
English is easier said than done.
Say if it costs more/less then $1 one of us performs a humorous forfit and posts pictures (I'll take >$1 in expendable supplies and electricity at $.12/KWh). Feel free to suggest other terms.
I just realized I suggested a 'gentleman's wager' on slashdot...to an AC...Doh!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I have a car that I run on 100% bio-diesel. No conversion necessary. No foreign oil needed. Bio-diesel and regular diesel can be mixed so you can use the existing infrastructure to distribute. Only issue is that very old diesels may have natural rubber components in the fuel line that will have to be replaced. Plus bio-diesel produces very little pollution. Last time I bought it I payed $2.40 a gallon.
Have you heard of the the psychological term projection , Mr. P.?
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Outside of stunts like recharging the battery from the wall and claiming this improves the gas mileage, what is the advantage of a hybrid over a normal internal combustion engine? If you don't introduce external electrical energy, the electric battery and motor are only a storage device. All the energy is ultimately derived from gasoline. So how does the electic motor improve the energy efficiency of the internal combustion engine?7 6015
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Valve-timing_20_22t hrottle_22
One of the main real benefits of hybrid cars in freeway driving is that they have reduced throttle losses.
Honda has designed an engine which cleverly reduces throttle losses in a much less expensive way.
http://www.vtec.net/news/news-item?news_item_id=3
It's pretty easy to correct this article title:
Modded Hybrid Cars Get 250 Miles Per Gallon of Gasoline and Twenty Pounds of Coal
Next to my desk we have an Ire Extinguisher. Our boss is really assertive, so we like the idea of having it.
Cost is a relative term. If your energy costs are infinite, the cost of batteries is minuscule in comparison. These days we got used to the mentality that energy is dirt cheap, and the only cost is labor, human involvement, and the money spent on sales and promotion and R&D. A new reality is coming, where energy in itself will be worth something, unless we find a way to cheap energy, by, say, the guys playing at Cadarache get fusion to work somehow, and then we can go back to this idillic world where the cost of a product is the cost of the sales effort invested into it, because making it was dirt cheap, the robots worked for free. 80% retail markup? Try 99.98 to 99.99% markup. But ONLY if we find cheap energy.
...it's not worth it. You can get a non hybrid Civic for $14k that gets 32/38 milage. The hybrid Civic runs $6k more but gets 10mpg more. How many years does it take you to break even on the gas costs?
Without even doing any calculations, your result is obviously wrong.
First, if gasoline contains 45 MJ/kg then you would expect a gallon to contain MORE than 45 MJ, not LESS.
Second, if electric cars were really that cheap to run, you would expect them to be common. How many people do you know that have one?
If you work in science or engineering you should get in the habit of checking your results for plausibility. Every time.
-- Anonymous Pedant
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!
I have heard all my life of oil companies buying the rights to stuff like this
Is that before or after they murder the inventors and bribe politicians to keep the amazing world-changing secrets under wraps? After all, I'm applying for an "oil company hired gun" position, and want to know the process works.
I mean, after all, everyone knows that there are huge patent portfolios of incredible efficieny technology out there under oil industry control preventing hard working Americans from seing low costs and great efficiency. Hmm, perhaps I'd be better for the "USPTO-hacking-and-record-deleting" position that they're advertizing.
Next to my desk we have an Ire Extinguisher. Our boss is really assertive, so we like the idea of having it.
Ofcourse, US has a president fighting for oil. Why would he help hybrid car market to grow. Hybrid cars are not expensive because of manufacturing alone. If more people buy it, it mitigates the production cost. Simple macroeconomics 101.
They are, in fact, a LOT more efficient. An ICE in the modern car converts gasoline into kinetic energy with about 25% efficiency. The modern power plants exceed 60% efficiency in converting fuel (typically oil) into electricity.
The reason the ICE efficiency is so low is that there is considerable wasted energy in the form of heat. A power plant burns fuel to boil water to drive a turbine, so heat is in fact desirable.
The major environmental problem with electric vehicles isn't that electricity isn't necessarily cleaner, but that battery technology isn't there yet.
So while an electric car will likely run more efficiently and may generate less pollution (certainly less pollution where it's being operated, if not less when the electricity source is factored in), those huge banks of batteries will eventually need to be disposed of, resulting in a massive amount of toxic heavy metals to deal with.
Until battery technology can improve, or we develop a mass market system of recycling all those massive batteries, we might need to keep looking at alternatives to battery operated electric vehicles.
Once environmentalism embraces nuclear power, perhaps electric vehicles might become a real factor in clean transportation.
I don't know that this is all that profitable a mod. Sure you don't spend a lot on gas, but you've just up-fronted a crapload of moolah to get there. How long until it pays for itself?
Let's say the car is 5 times more efficient on gas (250:50 is about right). So for every 1 gallon run though this super-hybrid, you would have run 5 through the stock Prius. $3000 = roughly 1200 gallons at $2.50/gallon, which is roughly what gas costs at the moment.
At 50 stock miles/gallon, you get 60,000 miles for 1200 gallons of gas. So, in 60,000 stock miles, you'll have caught up in gas savings with what you've spent in batteries. Which is only about half the useful life of the car... but this doesn't take into account the finite lifespan of the batteries, which will probably need to be reconditioned or replaced every 4-5 years. Assuming normal driving habits of 10-15,000 miles per year, you might get 60,000 miles out of those batteries, but you might come up 20,000 miles short.
And the fuel economy advantage of hybrid cars is at its best if you are running a lot of short trips in city traffic, which is not the way to put on a lot of miles on the car. People who drive 20,000 mi+ per year tend to put in a very large proportion of those miles on the highway. But driving fewer miles is the BEST way to conserve energy there is, so driving more is actually counter-productive.
All in all, it's not a very good trade-off just yet. But, if gasoline keeps getting more expensive, the picture starts looking rosier. If we see sustained gas prices of $3-$4/gallon, this guy will be saving a lot of money, especially if he doesn't drive all that much.
But if the entire car is filled with batteries, how useful is it as a vehicle for taking you AND cargo?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Saying these cars get 250 MPG is like saying a car towed to the top of a mountain and released is able to travel for miles without burning a drop of fuel.
Charging the batteries is the equivalent of hauling the car up a large hill. You've raised the potential energy of the system. No big secret there. To claim you are getting more MPG is disingenuous at best, and outright fraud at worst.
What I'd like to know is what would the fuel economy of this vehicle be if he stopped playing his parlor tricks. With all that extra weight, he is probably seriously decreasing the true fuel economy of the vehicle. He claims he still gets the Prius average of 45 MPG when the added charge runs out. Has he run the vehicle without the nightly top ups in order to show this, or is he just guessing?
I'd like to point out that my Jetta TDI averages 45 MPG without fancy batteries, and more importantly gets 50 MPG at full highway speeds, ie 65-75 MPH. Additionally, I've run it without fossil fuel at all. Has our intrepid experimenter run his vehicle more than 300 miles in a day without a drop of fossil fuel? I think not.
Yes, there is a use for plug-in hybrids, but let's not resort to hyperbole to promote them.
Hey, jerk. The referenced article names a diesel engine, not a hybrid. And it does give a price, $17,000.
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The financial times had an article on fuel cells where it claimed that the estimated reserves of Platinum ( an essential fuel cell catalyst ) would last a decade - so fuel cells are completely stupid and unsustainable.
The FT man - money paper don't lie.
And there is only so much hydroelectric power to go around. Out of the total US energy consumption, 2.6% is generated by hydroelectric. You can bet most places that are feasible, are already dammed, all around the world. We could dam the Grand Canyon for another 0.0001%. Also, damming does have its environmental drawbacks, even if it doesn't fall into the pollution category. Even nukular energy provides the US 8% of its energy needs, but the rest, well, the remaining 90% is all fossil. Kyoto treaty anyone? Yeah, way to undermine our comfort, our American way of life, and our 8 mpg Hummers. Other nations of Earth, you don't understand, I NEEED that Hummer, otherwise what will my neighbour think of me, how would I compensate for my small penis size??
In addition to the previous replies mentioning that alternative or more efficient power sources can be used to produce electricity...
If you start using electricity from the grid for short range driving, and gasoline only for longer range driving, you're going to open up a lot of possibilities. A small LP or ethanol or hydrogen or who knows what future engine would make their use more economical. Sure, you might not be the most powerful vehicle, but you'll get where you need. Hell, if I got 250mpg, I wouldn't care if I was paying 10 bucks a gallon for fuel. At least if the initial car cost was about the same, that is.
I wish my university was cool enough to do something like this when I was there. /electrical engineer
Here in Denver, there's really only one way to go north-south if you're commuting very far. You have to share I-25 with the SUVs, the delivery trucks, and the long-haul truckers. Every year, I feel more like I'm taking my life in my hands when I take my Civic out there. When the guy (or idiot blond woman on her cell phone trying to drive 10 MPH faster than the traffic this past week) runs over me with their SUV, I'm going to get hurt a lot worse than they are.
Time to think hard about how to make telecommuting work, or how to live and work someplace much smaller.
My solution is to put everyone on motorcycles.
70-80mpg+ and decent accelleration. Plus the more SUVs you replace with Motorcycles the safer for everybody.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
People arguing semantics on the whole "where does the energy come from?!?!LOloLo!!" are complete jackasses. Doesnt matter where the energy came from as long as it is providing clean power.
People fail to realize that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only converted.
The same idiots argue that having batteries in your trunk automatically were made by some "dirty" power source is causing just as much harm. Im guessing the ratio of cars to power plants in the US is around 1:7500000
Hybrid cars are a GREAT way to reduce pollution.
Note that the car that got 250MPG was using Lithium-Ion batteries. I am not sure about clean-up differences between them and regular car batteries. I just know they're a bit more expensive than $3k
But even then, we still have losses from the transmission lines, losses from stepdown transformers, losses from battery storage, and losses from the (considerable) added battery weight in his car. If he actually calculated real numbers for all of this in his specific situation, he might find that he increased his emissions per mile by 10% and lost his trunk space in the process.
11*43+456^2
Some people want to modify their engines so that they burn the maximum amount of fuel possible in between eight and nine seconds...
Others want a vehicle that can make routine 3,000 mile trips.
Others want something practical for shopping and driving to an office job. Still others need a vehicle that can move a payload.
I'm really interested in the hybrids and alternative fuel vehicles. Haven't seen one yet that can take 8 adults and 400kg of gear from Tucson to Vancouver. Maybe that's a boundary case of requirements, but it doesn't seem uncommon in my world.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The 2004/2005 Toyota Prius is a mid-sized car and is _surprisingly_ large inside, seating 5 adults reasonably comfortably. We typically get 45-50 mpg, but the acceleration is good and the emissions are very low.
The hype about hybrids may be overblown, but in an apples-to-apples comparison, hybrid engines are seemingly better.
Just make the north half of the country uphill from east to west and the south half of the country downhill from east to west.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
When are these "environmentalists" going to realize that electricity costs money and isn't made from pixie dust? Charging batteries to make a car run used to work out to well over $3/gallon gasoline equivalent.
According to the DOE, in May of 2005 314.8 terawatthours of electricity was generated. Of this 50.7% came from coal, 19.9% came from nuclear, 16.4% came from natural gas, and 2.5% came from petroleum. So, I doubt this car is helping the environment.
Also, changing the definition of "MPG" is not the solution, either. When are the dumb-ass reporters going to realize that?
You do realize that that hybrid cars do not need to be recharged from an external source. They run on normal gasoline. And this certainly is an issue to do with the US. Your guys gasoline is artificially cheap due to government subsidizing ($3 a gallon is about 96 cents a litre in canada which is not cheap but it's not considered ridiculously expensive).
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.
Just like whatthe railroad industry did when they were threatened with new technology? And the harness and sattlemakers with the advent of the automobile? Please remove your tinfoil hat. And chew on it.
My blog
Plug in hybrids won't be a solution until the power grid isn't dependent on environmentally unsustainable power sources. Plug into solar/wind/etc yes, but plug into Coal/etc, nope.
I'm not sure if this is kosher on /. or not, but the OP brief is a direct ripoff of an MSN Money article of (almost) the same name. I know because I read the MSN article this morning.
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.
And now I notice the "Associated Press" icon, and that the Yahoo story (didn't RTFA) is the same, and MSN was just running a syndicated column. Oops.
I am NOT AGAINST hybrid technology, but right now I am not interested in buying a car due to their price. I for one, like to work on my own vehicles, and with all the computers onboard a hybrid, God Almighty wouldn't be able to repair one. Second, they are way too expensive. A VERY GOOD ALTERNATIVE IS ENHANCING TRADITIONAL INTERNAL COMBUSTION JUST LIKE THE CIVIC HX, A MPG SUPER HERO DOES. IT GETS 44 MPG YET PUTS OUT A GOOD 117 HP, AND COSTS A MERE 13K NEW! I say keep working on this new lean burn technology w/ direct injection THAT is the way of the future (plus you can actually work on it yourself!).
Cambridge, Mass. had (1970) and may still have a system of electric busses powered by overhead wires. It's really funny to see the driver jump out and reconnect the bus to the wires every time the connection breaks.
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Actually, you missed the point.
Our current model, where every individual drives 5-80 miles twice a day to work, shop, etc is unsustainable, period.
The long-term "fix" is to do what the Chinese are doing -- build sustainable cities where mass-transit and mixed use areas eliminate the need for most cars.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
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...
Why do you assume that "big money" is involved and that there's a conspiracy to keep ideas like this off the market? There could be many reasons not to push a technology like this, including:
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
The way it was explained to me:
When your electorate wakes up and realizes that pollution is actually BAD, and they're ready to legislate, its much easier to legislate something like "three power plands over there: comply with better emissions standards" than "hey you 400,000 civvies, please replace your car engines this year". Of course, this takes an idealistic view of government, that says its easier for the government to boss around a few corporations than the whole electorate.
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
How much trunk space does the average American need? Is it close to infinity?
Pulling a number out of my ass, I'd guess that 70% of driving Americans use an automobile daily just to get to work and pick up groceries on the way home.
Oops, sorry, I forgot that we're talking about *Americans* here. To the average stereotypical American, an automobile represents freedom, virility, toughness and social status.
As I posted a ways up "The same idiots argue that having batteries in your trunk automatically were made by some "dirty" power source is causing just as much harm. Im guessing the ratio of cars to power plants in the US is around 1:7500000"
Lets do some statistics - Their are a total of 2,776 power plants in the United States - Lets compare that with the estimated 1.9 million cars in the United States
The ratios between the different types of power plants goes as follows : Coal accounts for 43% of the energy in the US , Gas is 19% , Nuclear 14%, Renewable enery 12%, Petroleum 7%, Hydroelectric 3%
So anyways back on topic your saying that 63% of the US's power supply is made from dirty sources ( coal - gas and petrol ) is equivalent to 1.9 million cars, thats 1748 ( dirty ) power plants.
People that saying buying a fucking hybrid is a crime because they ASSUME that the energy created comes from dirty power sources ( might be the case in your area, might not ) are complete dumbasses.
Old batteries will be (and are being) recycled. It is one area where recycling is actually economically practical.
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And even if the power plant pollutes just as much as a car engine for a given amount of energy, there's another advantage -- the polution is generally produced away from the city, which helps keep the polution around the people who actually use the cars down.
A far worse problem not even looked at by bi-energy car buyers is the actual pollution generated by hybrid cars.
Them batteries are a heck of a problem to manufacture and dispose of. Altogether, hybrid cars may pollute less via their exhaust, but solid hard numbers of their real pollution output have not yet been studied.
You can list many types of loss, but they are all very small. For example, losses due to transmission and distribution are about 5%. Info http://www.energy.qld.gov.au/infosite/eff_trans_di st.html
Don't forget... the main reasin for higher fuel efficiency is to reduce emissions, not just general consumption. Carburetors have one big strike... they cannot achieve the emissions of a fuel injected vehicle.
EFI accounts for changes in oxygen content of the incoming air, and changes the amount of fuel injected to achieve a perfect stoichiometric balance of hydrocarbons and oxygen. This reduces harmful emissions.
A carburetor only regulates the amount of gas with respect to incoming air flow, using the venturi effect.
Carburetors went out of fashion because of more stringent emissions ratings. A toyota Echo may only get 40 MPG to your 50+ Geo, but the emissions are probably orders of magnitude higher in the Geo. That's the real technological improvement.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
My business partner has a couple of pure-electric RAV4s. He has a special hookup with the LA DWP to charge his cars during non-peak hours, for around 5 cents per kWh. Anybody driving an electric car every day would do the same thing.
So, using your numbers (except for your high electricity price) the electric car gets four times the miles/dollar as the gas car. Of course, the electric RAV4 only gets 100 of those miles per charge. Based on a month's driving and his electricity bill, we calculated that the electric RAV4 cost about 1 cent/mile in electricity.
Of course, the car was very expensive, and the batteries will probably need to be replaced after (say) 80,000 miles at a cost of (say) $10,000, so that drives the cost/mile up considerably -- but battery technology is getting better, pretty fast.
But right now, at least, the cost of energy for getting vehicles down the road is significantly cheaper using electricity vs gasoline. It's probably an historical oddity that won't last -- as many forms of energy are fungible.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Good Idea,
A slightly more interesting way might be to embed coils in the roadway. Receiving coils would be placed in varius parts of your car.
When you drive over a coil, an alternating current would be switched on. A resulting alternating current will be generated in the cars coils. This would add charge to the battery.
Actually I am quite secure down in that area after my latest shipment of penis pills. And I thought all spam was bad.
Not to mention useless in areas with long stretches of straight road. People seem to gloss over the fact that the electric part is really more of a performance assist than anything else. (I once heard the Prius described as a "4-cylinder car with 6-cylinder performance") The advantage of hybrids is twofold: regenerative braking and more efficient use of engine time - it can run at high RPM even at low speed because the KE isn't wasted it's stored in the battery.
i.e. hybrids are ideal in crowded areas with curvy roads - like Europe - and less useful in sparsly populated areas with straight high-speed roads like much of the US.
with one BIG caveat:
We live in an energy driven economy. More than anything else, the cost of fuel is factored into the cost of everything else. It is therefore not unreasonable to use price as a proxy for 'energy used in the production of.' It is useful to look at the amortized cost of the vehicles compared to similar performing non-hybrid vehicles. The more expensive one either took more fuel to make or uses more fuel to operate, but over the useful lifetime the more expensive one is also more "polluting." Right now, in the US, the hybrids are more expensive. The gap is closing as manufacturing improves, but it's not quite "there" yet.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
45 * 737 / 264.172051 == 2.79?
It fails the common sense as someone already pointed out.
Using ~125 as the answer and trusting the rest of your numbers for no apparent reason.
So a gallon of gas equivalent woud be: $3.50, at 10c/kWh which is less than I pay for electricity.
Last time I bought gas it was significantly cheaper than that.
Of course there's the efficiency of internal combustion engines versus that of power plants and batteries and electric motors, but that's a different issue.
Fast cars can be efficient too.
I get about 26mpg highway which is fairly good for a V8.
Sure I could have gotten one with 40mph highway with half the power, but that doesn't really work for me. And I never complain about gas. I have to go places regardless of how much it costs. If I don't work then I will have way less than whatever I would have saved on gas by not going to work.
That's a diesel car, which has more energy per gallon than gasoline, I don't recall if it's 30% or 60%.
It got 84 mpg only when driven in special conditions, not according to tests specifications. It's normal millage is 70mpg.
One of the things that makes a car economic its it weight. How lower is the mass of the car less energy you need to move it.
The car weight is related to the car size, the thickness of the stell used, to security features (stronger bars in specific locations) and acessories (air conditioning, power steering and extra doors).
Americans would refuse to buy small cars or cars with thinner materials, which may be viewed as lower quality material. Indeed, it's cheaper material, but if is damaged it's also cheaper to buy a replacement.
They also have more security needs, since trucks (read SUVs) driven like sport cars are everywhere in the US.
Other thing that saves fuel are small engines. Since they have smaller parts and most of the time the power of big a engine isn't needed, specially in stop-and-go traffic.
But americans want their cars fast on hills as they're on plane surface and to go 0-60 in 8 seconds.
Also small engines would require a light car, like the mentioned above.
That's why those cars aren't on the US market.
That also avoid new technology to be developed. Because many substitute technologies, like (ethanol) fuel cells, that could be applied to european (1.2liter 900kg) or brazilian (1.0 liter 800kg) cars aren't developed by american companies that have american cars in mind (at least 1.6liter 1100kg).
Where can I find this 'Penis Car' ?
Stop referring to 'the honda hybrid' as if there is only 1. There is the Civic, the Accord (performance and fuel efficiency), and the first Hybrid sold in the US, the Honda Insight.
In my Insight, I get 65mpg, tooling around time or driving the highway. Many owners who have a lighter foot get even better mileage.
Don't be fooled to thinking that the Prius or Civic Hybrid are the forerunners of fuel efficiency.
And the damn Geo Metro can't get up a hill, hate to try and get that up Pike's Peak.
"The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly" - Touchstone,Shakespeare's "As You Like It"
The wind turbine is debatable.
Has anyone seen an alternative engine or engines worth putting in older cars to save money on fuel?
I've got a 90 lincoln towncar that is in excellent shape other than the engine, and I'm toying with the idea of putting a new or rebuilt engine in it.
Now if I could somehow find a drop in replacement V-6 diesel that would be a reasonable compromise I might consider it. With a diesel engine you could use biodiesel I suppose, and as long as the v-6 wasn't too small should give adequate performance. I certainly wouldn't get 50MPG, but given the size of those cars that is no suprise. It should be more reasonable though, and maybe a sane alternative to a new car.
Of course changing from gas to diesel would be a mess, yet it might be an interesting project. I suppose the best bet is just to sell it and buy something smaller, but at 6'4" legroom is appreciated.
Why?
- Charging while driving during the day.
- Charging as long as car is parked in sun
- No need to plug car in for advantage.
- No fossil fuels are burned.
I'm willing to guess that some people who live in sunny locations and drive short distances could use little or no gas at all.The only problem might be the cost of a solar panel, and fitting it on the Prius in such a way that it doesn't generate drag.
Also, you have to keep the panel clean for best performance.
Our current model, where every individual drives 5-80 miles twice a day to work, shop, etc is unsustainable, period.
Huh? Of course it is sustainable. Maybe not with internal combustion engines, one of the most innefecient motors around. But why not with Euro type diesels running on Biodiesel? Or cars like in the article, running on solar.
The long-term "fix" is to do what the Chinese are doing -- build sustainable cities where mass-transit and mixed use areas eliminate the need for most cars. Yeah- China is an enviornmentalists dream... That won't work in the US. A lot of us hate city life. I live in the country, and am not moving because some lefties think I should. And look at NYC- the average New Yorker produces 6 lbs of garbage a day- the national average is 4. So much so that New York exports trash to Ohio and Pennsylvania to our landfills.
There is no chance of knocking down all the US and starting over, and people like having their own vehicles- thats not going to change. The technology is there for clean vehicles- we just need to implement it. The problem with your statement, is that it will NEVER happen- we are not going to do theb city thing in the US. What will happen is that we will get sustainable personal vehicles. There are houses up here in northern Ohio that run 100% on solar, and we aren't teh sunniest place.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
If I remember right, the big auto manufacturers killed off as many electric rails as they could. They used tactics that even Micosoft would envy. Even the big railroads were affected. Someone had developed an electric engine for long hauls of heavy loads. I believe Ford developed a deisel engine and then priced it so low that the electric engine manufacturer went out of business. This was all helped to some degree by some congress critters they had on a leash. Don't remember specific details much past that. I just remember that they killed the public transit system in LA so that the city would buy more of their deisel busses. Better for the stockholders and all that.
I'd imagine something simular would happen if you tried to do this on a big scale. One of the big manufacturers would cry, "Whoa is me" and someone in Government would step in and mandate some sort of open contract to evaluate the various technology. Low and behold, the big manufacturer has the advantage on price and gets the job. Sorry about electric concept guys, gotta serve the CEO...er....taxpayer and spend their money wisely.
When I'm feeling down, I like to whistle. It makes the neighbor's dog run to the end of his chain and gag himself.
A gallon of gas weighing 60-70 grams?
In this case there are roughtly 3 kilos of weight in a gallon of gas, and 45MJ a peice. equaling a startling 2.79 MJ total... Wait a frickin minute. Your looking for something in the 100-150 MJ range.
Now going conservative here. $3.00/gal 100 MJ= 33 MJ / dollar.. Then change the gas to power at 20% efficiency and you are looking at 7 MJ/ dollar. At you conservative estimate your looking about 12 MJ / dollar. So we're in a similar ballpark for money factor. We havent Talked about charging losses yet either, so there are some other losses on the electric side.
Devils advocate time:
1) The millions of batteries arent really all that fun to clean up.
2) The Electricity will be coming from COAL, unless your looking for a pebble bed (nuke) reactor in your back yard.
3) Production is efficient, but the distribution is where the power gets sucked down.
Still I think electric is great. We need good clean power, and hydrogen is still in the stupid phase right now. If we can get a good clean battery solution we'd be set.
Storm
As a straight male, I find the idea of climbing into an '18-second pussy-mobile' rather more enticing than any kind of 'penis car'....
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The drivetrain and auxillary systems (A/C, alternator) in a car sap as much as 30% of the engine's actual output.
Your engine's transmission has an "overhead" that accounts for a suprisingly large amount of power producted by the engine. In 4WD/AWD vehicles, the transfer case claims yet more power.
Power plants by comparison are very simple: produce steam to spin a turbine. Producing steam is straightforward and can be a 90+% efficient process. (Even home heating boilers can be 85% efficient)
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
What I don't get about hybrids is why anyone thinks that they solve a problem. Your still using the same fuel, at moderately similar rates of comparable standard engines (VW TDI, Honda Civic, etc..). It seems that it would make more sense to use the engine for power generation only, and rely on the electric motor for all movement. Running like this would allow the fuel engine be tweaked for optimal conditions, and possibly moved over to something LPG, or similar "clean" fuel. Till then, buy more Hummers and SUVs, because nothing is going to change until it has to.
--WooooHoooo--
Unless I've gone retarded, I recall my uncle owned 2 volkswagon diesel cars that were from the 70's that got 80mpg. People are focusing on getting gasoline to the 80mpg point where they should focus on getting an easier fuel source such as diesel or biodiesel working. If they could do it in the 70's in a mass produced car, why not now?
But I could just be retarded
Don't worry, mate, that's easily fixed.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I take it that means you've rejected my hypothesis?
Bummer. I was kinda looking forward to the Fairydust Economy. Just think happy, happy thoughts and yell, "Heeeeeeere Tink!"
KFG
It's not a reason, it's a FACT. In order for a car to be driven in the US, it must first meet strict safety regulations. If it doesn't, then you can't drive it on public roads (you can on a private racetrack however). The only way you can drive a car nowdays that does NOT meet the current safety guidelines is if you drive on older vehicle that has been "grandfathered" into the system.
Basically, when you buy a car a good percentage goes into the design of a car to make sure it meets these current safety guidelines. I'm not sure to the exact amount, but I've been told it's about 20% of the MSRP when you purchase the car. That ammount covers the R&D and certification requirement that the US government requires.
And remember....it's for the CHILDREN.....BLAHhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Life is not for the lazy.
But perhaps the best solution is getting your local government to support mixed use zoning. New Urbanism is a great start, but not if these end up as islands in a sea of suburbia -- you'd just end up driving to get to them, sort of like a Universal Studio's City Walk. Relaxation of zoning and land-use laws in suburban areas would help even more. The ability to open a cafe on the corner of your subdivision -- or even in your own house -- would be a great way to create more local services that obviate the need for driving.
I believe the correct phrase is "Woe is me". Google
The market will take care of you.
As it continues to become more expensive to commute, people like you will either go broke commuting, or find a way to make a living locally.
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.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
And people still wonder why I drive around in my Yugo.
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.
It's called a Corvette. Most racing buff that I know think it's the most phalic design that you can get in a sports car.
Life is not for the lazy.
I think there might be some diesel hybrids in europe. The problem is that in the US, diesel fuel has traditionally been very dirty crap, and you need to meet CA emision standards. 2006 marks the year of mandated low sulfur diesel, so we might see more diesels on the road and some hybrid diesel options.
Diesel has more energy per galon than gasoline, so it gets better milage. IMHO, the biggest advantage diesel has is that it's a bit more flexible than gas -- there's several options for sources of biodiesel, so if one thing doesn't work out, we're not screwed.
Also from the toyota website...
Eventually, the batteries will go to lithium hydride, but the price and the technology isn't there yet, but is coming soon. But don't let anyone bother you with actual information, it's just to controversial to leave information in amatuer handsIf you haven't noticed, that un-popular country that america is using as a garbage dump is china (with all that "wonderful" toxic used computer equipment that americans seem to be fond of using).
...about three guys driving a Toyota Prius non-stop for 48 hrs last weekend, in Pittsburgh, while trying to get 100 miles per gallon using one tank of gas. They used a gas-saving technique called pulse and glide, "a form of coasting that involves releasing the gas pedal, then pressing it slightly again to disengage the electric motors" according to this article.
They actually ended up doing better than they had hoped and got 110 MPG.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
Yeeessss we do
-L
Don't Panic.
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
The problem with ceramic engines is they crack. Sooner or later, they will crack. While the idea has been tossed around for use in Formula-1 racecar engines, the laws of physics gets into the way.
Note: Cermaic and metal expand and contract at different rate. Also, you can never have just a pure Ceramic block and moving parts.
Life is not for the lazy.
Doesn't biodiesel come at least partially from petroleum? I'd like to see the OPs data showing what he really gets, not the digested data he's giving out.
Vancouver, BC up in Canada has an extensive system of overhead lines for the electric trolleys which have been in operation since 1948.
Trolley History
When I was a kid the diesel buses were always the "Stinky Buses".
"Translation: I'm envious of your ownership of the penis car."
Translation: I own one of those penis cars.
I prefer the Jetta (and other VW) TDI diesels. They get about the same mileage, but work fine with biodiesel. That's hawt.
"$3 a gallon is about 96 cents a litre in canada which is not cheap but it's not considered ridiculously expensive"
Yes, 96 cents/litre is most certainly ridiculously expensive. I paid 92.3 this afternoon and am pissed off about it. Ten years ago it was 49.9 and I remember by dad complaining about that.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I used to have a 1988 Citroën CX 25DTR, 2.5 litre turbodiesel - in no way an econobox. That used to easily get 50mpg, although if you were towing (used to haul dead Yank Tanks about on trailers with it) or went over about 90mph you could just as easily get it below 40mpg.
The phrase you want is "They get a kick out of it". Also your sig be "grammar". Hope that helps.
Interesting
For all you saps who bought into the hype. I don't believe they factored in the cost of replacing your drive system after 6 years, or the fact that your car will technologically obsolete in 3. (and don't even *try* to tell me my H1 is gonna obsolete in 20 years)
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
Frist Post?
/. fan.
Somehow I doubt the Senator is a
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
No, but unfortunately it seems large, fuel ineffecient vehicles are the only ones that have enough passenger room for large people. Why car-makers haven't adapted, I don't know. Perhaps they make so much on SUVs they don't want overweight customers to have a cheaper option.
City buses around here all switched to natural gas a few years ago.
I hope so. Concrete has always been the better material. We can only hope asphalt prices increase enough to make concrete the material of choice for roads.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
On the topic of city bus-lines: fortunately, I think cities will have the clout and incentive to invest alternative technologies and the advantage of being able to apply them to their whole fleet (some buses in my area already run bio-diesel which will also start to become more attractive as gas gets more expensive.) Furthermore, as more people use public transport, cities can start offering better service with money from the extra fares collected.
I recently calculated the total I spent on gas in a month (July, 2005: $66.07) and compared it against the price of a one month metro-area bus pass ($64) and that is with me mostly commuting to and from work by bike! It seems to me that we can't be too far off from the point where Americans will seriously consider alternatives to using personal cars for their daily commute to work.
2^5
Good for you -- at least you benefited from the exploding value of your land.
I had some friends who loved their land, which had been in the family since the Dutch days. They basically went broke paying ursurious property taxes until eventually they had to sell -- and even then got screwed because the new suburbanites, anxious to preserve "the rural character" of the area, raised the minimum size of a subdivision to 10 acres.
I really believe that the way we do things is fundamentally flawed - you cannot devalue your currency and export industry for 40 years without consequence.
At some point, the billions spent on maintaining thousands of interstates and hundreds of thousands of bridges, the massive army, etc will become too onerous, and I think you'll see the suburban model fail when that happens.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I would like to get something a little better on gas than my sports sedan but I don't want to purchace and license a 200 MPH, $9,000 motorcycle and I am not quite willing to peddle my trek 14mph to work every day. I am looking for a happy in between like a motorized, gear assist bicycle and I am willing to bet that such a 4 HP beast would put even the prius to shame and save me about $2,0000. I know the obvious answer is probably "scooter" but quite honestly the ones I have seen just don't look stable over 35 mph. They are all also about half as tall as my bicycle. There must be better options than welding an engine mount to my trek or going all out "motorcycle".
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
""Translation: I am insecure and need to compensate with my penis car."
Translation: I'm envious of your ownership of the penis car."
Translation: I too own a penis car, and need to make people who are more secure than me to feel they need one too.
[Although I'm sure you were just joking like I am; I hope.]
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Smart Cars ARE designed to meet current US safety guidlines! In fact, they WILL be selling them here in a year or so.
See, here's the funny thing: surprisingly enough, when they make these small cars they take that into account and make them safe despite it. I drive a Hyundai Accent, and the thing has so many safety features it's not even funny: front airbags, side airbags, crumple zones, side-impact door beams, etc.
I saw a thing a while back comparing a Mini to a F-150 by crashing them head-on into each other. Guess which driver would be less injured? The MINI driver! You know why? Because the passenger compartment of the Mini is designed to maintain its structural integrity in a crash. The front of the thing was completely flat, but the passenger compartment was completely intact. The driver of the truck, on the other hand, would have massive damage to his legs because the footwell crushed in completely. Incidentally, the Mini looked worse, but both vehicles were totaled (the truck was folded in half at the joint between the cab and the bed).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Good point- but RE the suburban model failing- Northern Ohio is interesting- Cleveland, Youngstown and Akron Proper are dead. Almost all the business is in the suburbs now. There are several suburbs 15-20 miles out from Cleveland are in the suburbs. Progressive Ins, Aleris Aluminum etc are in Cleveland Suburbs. A lot of people live in the suburbs, but a few miles from their jobs. Sort of interesting- almost like the suburbs are the new cities.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Cars sold in Europe are rated for safety using the Euro NCAP system. If you check out the tables you'll see that in terms of crash protection the Smart MCC scores the same as a 2002 Jeep Cherokee. In terms of what it does to a pedestrian when it hits it the Smart is safer.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
No power plant is 90+% efficient at converting energy from fossil fuels into electricity. I don't want to hear about heat -- I'm talking electricity. Ultimately, a power plant or a car both use some sort of heat engine to convert heat into mechanical energy, and heat engines are inefficient. A power plant may very well have a somewhat more efficient one, however.
If all you care about is burning fuel to make something hot, being 90+% efficient isn't difficult, as 100% of the energy is released in the form of heat -- the complication is in making sure that the heat goes where you want it.
But if you want to make something go with this energy, it gets much harder. I don't think heat engines (be they internal combustion engines, turbines, steam engines, whatever) get much over 50% efficient, and even that would be really good.
This is where fuel cells could really be good -- if we could convert gasoline into electricity without a heat engine, the process could possibly be much more efficient.
Apparantly it wasn't really clear what I meant when I talked about the efficiency of a car engine, because several people have now lectured me about the various places where energy is lost in a car. Well guys, guess what -- eventually ALL the energy is lost in a car to friction somewhere -- in the engine, drive-train, wheels, air resistance -- somewhere. Unless it drives up hill anyways, as that will store some energy as gravitational potential energy. Exactly how much of the energy is `wasted' depends on how you define waste.
I was talking about the engine itself, converting fossil fuel into mechanical energy. If you replace the engine of a gas car with an electric motor, you'll have all the same losses (except for the alternator (not directly, anyways), maybe no water pump, etc.)
I have serious doubts about burning a gallon of gasoline down at the power plant, powering a generator, transferring that electricity into your house, charging a battery, then discharging that battery into a motor being more efficient than just burning that gallon of gas in the engine in your car.
Motors and generators are quite efficient if done properly, and not much energy is lost in power lines, but batteries definately don't give out as much power as they were charged with, especially if quickly charged. Add up all those losses, and I suspect it's just more efficient to power your car with fossil fuel in the tank and a gas engine under the hood.
(Now, if you have abundant non-fossil fuel power available, like hydroelectric or nuclear, then things are totally different.)
One thing that can improve the overall efficiency of a power plant over a car engine is cogeneration which is using the waste heat generated by a heat engine to heat homes and the like. But that's not what we've been discussing ...
I used to have a 1988 Chevy Sprint (carbed 1.0L, 3 cylinder with automatic transmission). The car was dangerously underpowered (~50 hp), but if you gave it about a minute or two you could reach it's maximum speed of about 135 kph (83 mph). Obviously better accelleration could be had with a 5 speed, weight reduction and some engine tuning. Using something like a 30 shot of nitrous might not be a bad idea for easing merges onto freeways as well.
In the US the '87? - '88 (MK1 series) of the Chevy Sprint and Suzuki Forsa were briefly available with a fuel injected, turbocharged, 1.0L 3 cylinder engine. These vehicles stock, put out a much healthier 80 hp. These little cars can be frighteningly quick with some engine mods and the boost turned up.
Divide by zero hurts my brain.
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.
artificially cheap due to government subsidizing
It's more along the lines of 'not taxing as much' than subsidizing.
I don't read AC A human right
Sadly, the whole Stirling engine thing is going to fail. This plan is backed by the Bush administration and Governor Schwarzeneggar. They aren't exactly worried about the future. They are worried about the here and now of their constituents (read energy corporations) pocketbooks. The choice to go with the Stirling engine was made so that they could proclaim loudly to their subjects (that would be anyone who voted for them and those of us being dragged kicking and screaming), "Look! We care about the environment and alternative energy! We sunk a lot of money into our friend's, err... I mean these reputable Sitrling Engine making companies to make the world's largest solar collector!! So you environmentalist commie wackos can sit and spin"!!!!
After the world's largest solar collector fails to produce electricity in an economical manner and electric customers wind up paying the same rates they always have, future (five to ten years from now) repugnican/conservative juntas can then proclaim loudly, "See!!! Solar doesn't work!!! We need Nuke-u-lar reactors everywhere!!! It's the only way because everything else is drying up"!!! Then we wind up with a ton of poorly run, poorly maintained (Thanks to the likes of First Energy Corp) nuclear (BTW it's pronounced Nuke-Lee-Are) power plants waiting to Chernobyl us all to death. Welcome to the future Decimated States of America. What can I say? I'm PROUD TO BE UNAMERICAN!!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Nuclear reactors are on many Navy bases (subs and ships). No public outcry or concern. If you try to build a nuclear power plant in those same areas, everyone would complain.
;)
People are afraid of the unknown. I used to work as a nuclear operator. They can build a plant in my current area and I would not complain.
I'm sure the plant owners would give out Potassium Iodide to the home owners in the area just it was needed. If your kidneys are healthy, you'll be fine.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
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...
Gremban, an electrical engineer and committed environmentalist
Apparently, he escaped from wherever it is that they put environmentalists.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
D'oh ... Nobody has called me on it yet, but in my last paragraph I made a braino in dimensional analysis and put MNm/S when I meant to say MNm.
As to the guy who got his flame on about the energy content analysis. Did you fail to read the very next paragraph before replying?
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
The cost to dig up and then bury the cables would be prohibitive. It wouldn't take a crew very long to attach something to poles and run a wire, but the idea of trenching asphault, then burying the wire, then grading and paving...that would shut down roads for days.
Plus. let's say the coil breaks, how hard will it be to find that break? To dig up and fix?
Sadly, it has to be above ground, and because it's live voltage it has to be waaaaay above ground. It's ugly and messy and stupid, but that's really the best way to get it done.
Ironically, most building codes require cables to be buried now, so this plan would actually backfire in newer housing tracks and planned developments. Thanksfully your batteries should hold out as you drive from downtown to your tract home.
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
18 seconds is a very short amount of time in that context!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Every car out there has a large lead-acid
battery that gets replaced every 5 years or so.
Compare this to nickel-metal Hydride cells that are rated to last 10 years. Nickel's a much friendlier metal to recycle than Lead. The reason Ni-Cd are not used is the Cadmium is a toxic heavy metal.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
The single largest problem with the Prius is that it is so quiet that pedestrians and bicyclists don't hear it.
:)
Not a problem if you blast some rap music at 110 decibels.
(not that I'd do such a thing, that might be illegal)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Here's the calculation. to move a prius shaped car down the road at 55 MPH takes about 30 Horse power or about 22.4 kilowatts. In a realistic car with conversion losses more like 30Kilowatts is needed. If you are changing speed a lot then add even more.
30 kilowatts is 108 MegaJoules per hour. if you drove your car just four hours between filling stations that would be over 400 megajoules to replenish. if you wanted to fill that car up in less than a minute that would mean a power draw of 7.2 megawatts. You are not going to see that sort of power line going to filling stations around town.
Or to put it another way, if the typical filling station has more than a car a minute, regardless of how long it takes to fill it up then you need a power line bigger than that.
And if you want to argue that you would not drive four hours between fill=ups then all that changes in the calculation is that more people are doing more frequenty fill ups. the net demand is still the same.
So the only practical way to refill an electric car is overnight. but if the whole town is jsacked in overnight then a town the size of LA would be drawing peta-watts of power over the grid. Which is not going to happen.
If you did manage to delvier that there are going to be massive losses i the delivery process. So forget it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
So, for all my sarcasm your estimates weren't far wrong.
There's more to it than that. Anyone remember Thorstein Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption? The basic idea, for those who haven't, is that when unnecessary overconsumption is socially sanctioned -- that is, when it becomes fashionable -- then the normal laws of supply and demands are, if not suspended altogether, then greatly modified.
There is no consumer pressure to make fuel-efficient cars because the very inefficiency and extravagance of the modern SUV is what is really being purchased by design. People want wasteful, expensive vehicles because they are fashion statements. They say, "Look at me! I have assloads of discretionary income." An Armani suit is manifestly inferior to jeans and a denim work shirt in purely practical terms, but no one buys Armani because it's practical. A twenty-dollar digital watch is a functionally better watch than a fancy Rolex, but people aren't buying Rolexes because of their chronographic accuracy.
If you want to reduce the waste of resources, you have two options: make efficiency hipper than waste, or require efficiency through regulation. To wait for simple market forces to correct the situation is to wait in vain: viewed through a purely economic lens, the market is working correctly. It is delivering what people want, which is waste.
Energy-efficiency is primarily a social problem, and only secondarily a technological or economic problem. Oh sure, in the long term, energy-efficiency is a survival problem for the human race, but humans are not very good at long-term decision-making.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Flame? That wasn't a flame.
Afraid so. Compilation aborts at the first error.
1. I didn't get my license until I was 23, and then it was because my evil Evil EVIL ex-wife demanded that I learn how to drive. So I bludgered about in her POS Mercury Bobcat and got my license. The Bobcat (mercifully) self-destructed a few years later. So: first: DON'T DRIVE unless you have some psycho harpy bitch chewing you a new final voluntary sphincter (cuz it feels good, at first... nemmind...)
2. I didn't own a car of my own until I was 27. A 1972 Chevy Nova. Got horrible mileage, but no one fucked with me over a parking space. It was olive green and nicknamed the Urban Assault Vehicle. After I put it into a guard rail doing about 95 dodging a fucking DEER in Pennsylvania (long story) I sold the parts for what I paid for the car - $425.
3. I moved across the country after that and didn't own another car of my own for almost 5 years. When I did get one, it was an old Honda Civic wagon I bought for $800. I sold it a few years later to my sister for $700.
4. In 1999 I bought my present vehicle, a 1991 Toyota Corolla. It gets about 27 mpg on the highway and about 19 in the city. It's old and dying and there is NO way it's going to pass Smog next month, so the State will take it off my hands for $1000.
After that, I won't own a car, and I hope to never have to own another. If I DO buy another car, it will likely be an old used Geo Metro or an old Rabbit Diesel so I can run it on vegetable oil.
If you REALLY want to do the Earth a BIG FAT FAVOUR DON'T buy a car. And if you do, buy a gas sipping used car. Why?
1. The energy that went into making the car (which is about equal to the amount of energy the damn thing will consume) has already been spent.
2. Buying a new car means that at your behest and convenience a lot of energy was spent making this energy sucking device.
3. NOT using a car at all, or renting them when you need them, means that you have organised your life in such a way that they are no longer of use to you. And THAT is a good thing - I am convinced that Suburbia will prove to be the single most wasteful expense of resources the human species has ever endured.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. So LIVE THE FUTURE NOW. Get rid of your car. Move to a small (or even not so small) city that has decent public transport and RIDE A FUCKING BICYCLE. It rains where you live? Well, DRESS FOR IT or TAKE A TRAIN. In the town where you live, agitate for light rail, trolleys and suchlike.
Make it happen. Hybrids are NOT a solution - they are just a less (and not very less) heinous face on a cancerous blight. The solution is energy curtailment and population reduction. I say, "Live it, or live with it.
It's a bit like having bees live inside your head, but it's a really good BUZZ.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I have a similar question: why hasn't anyone come out with a gas-turbine hybrid? Weren't there some jet cars in the 50's that were ultimately scrapped because, although they were fast and fuel efficient, the had crappy low-end torque and took a while to spool up? Aren't gas-turbines significantly more efficient than IC engines? Coupling that with a low-RPM high-torque electric sounds ideal. Also on the plus side, those engines could burn anything -- I remember hearing the engineers tried scotch and perfume and they both worked fine.
They'll want to buy them when gas hits $5 a gallon.
No, thats when people will switch to smaller cars again (like station wagons).
At $10, people start to shift to smaller cars still and even a few consider motorcycles.
At $15 people think about possibly not living a hour or two drive away from work.
At $20 the average US Consumer will possibly, just possibly, begin to consider a diesel vehicle - but won't tell anyone what they bought.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There should be one coming to the US market this year:
http://www.hybridcars.com/ram.html
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.
"I don't believe in an oil-based transportation system!
:P
I don't believe in an oil-based transportation system!
I don't believe..."
Darn, too many oil company execs clapping their hands.
Next to my desk we have an Ire Extinguisher. Our boss is really assertive, so we like the idea of having it.
for my wind powered car pantent to go through.
Basically the idea is you strap on a big windmill to the roof of the car, and as the car moves, electricity is produced, thus moving the car.
The added bonus is that you get free meals from all the birds that get caught up.
Care to sample some Pigeon Pie anyone?
Do what I say, cuz I said it.
-Meatwad
More like just "demand."
It has been shown that people will pay the current prices for electricity. Will it go down from that just because costs go down? Highly unlikely. Only in competitive markets do prices go down with costs. The energy market is not competitive.
see the thing is our internal combustion engine is an extremely inefficent piece of tech. (if you can call it that) by making most of the inefficiency and pollution gather at one place (the power plant) you can better control it and reduce it.
Calm down people, its a religion not an operating system.
That's expensive? Fuck. I'm paying $1.21/lt here in Melbourne, Australia.. and only a good 6 or so years ago do I remember it being 60-70c/lt. Sucks.
There are some 200 Million cars in the U.S. alone.
I drive a 1995 Honda Nighthawk 750, which gets ~50mpg. Why drag around all that extra weight when you don't have too? The problem in America is that everybody seems to need to "validate" themselves with 8mpg SUVs. Go ahead and drive one of those, I'll laugh at you when I'm getting 250 miles from 5 gallons of gas and you can't even get from one gas station to the next before burning that much.
On longer drives when I'm really riding the guages, I've managed to average slightly over 80mpg over more than an hour in my 2000 Honda Insight. And that's this year, not when it was new. I'll admit that's way better than 'city' driving, when it drops down to 55-60 mpg when I'm going up hills, stopping, going down hills, stopping, and never getting to keep any decent kinetic energy. Still, this didn't require any overnight charging or multi-grand modifications.
I was pasting from the wrong source cause was tired, anyways that further proves my fucking point and arguement.
This is a BIG point that a lot of "environmentalist" people seem to miss, it takes ~20 years to recoop the investment in energy it takes to produce these solar panels, not including the cleanup of waste materials produced... Possibly in the future when the actual eff. numbers rise above the ~20-something percent of crystaline SiO2 (which is the hardest, and most expensive, to make) panels, especially with the possibilities nanomaterials are presenting will these be a true alternative
drunk chemists
Or, if that's too much exercise, how about an electric scooter? Top speed 30mph, range of maybe 30 miles, costs you 15 cents to recharge from flat.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I don't disagree with the spirit of your idea, but I think line powered electric passenger cars are bit unfeasable. I think a better implementation would be to have some kind of ground based, inductive charging system to extend the range of battery powered electric vehicles. This could be implemented a few ways:
Divide by zero hurts my brain.
Sounds like what you need to do is realize that the way your cities are constructed is untenable. The current modus operandi for personal transportation (not transportation of a group of people, or a set of materials) is broken.
"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."
Shit. I live 2.5 miles from where I work. The entire city fits within a 20 mile radius, and this is a city of 300,000 people. What is wrong with your cities that they are so big and sprawly? Why are residential zones kept so far away from commercial zones (rather than mingled) to discourage alternative transportation?
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
TDI diesel hybrids? This seems like a logical next step, and yet no one seems to be talking about them. WTF?
+++ATH0
...just wait 'til I get my flubber recipe perfected...
"I hope so. Concrete has always been the better material. We can only hope asphalt prices increase enough to make concrete the material of choice for roads."
I hate tryign to see year old white/yellow paint lines on concrete, even when they put a tar backing (that fades all to easy)
Now if thye could make a black concrete that doesn't fade, or is at least easy to dye.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
http://www.brittijn.nl/
Saxonette Luxus: A normal bike with a small 30cc engine (2 ci). Up to 200 mpg. A bit slow though, only 24 kph (15 mph). But still faster than most cars in city driving.
Or http://www.madass.nl/
MaddAss 125cc: Scary, fast, fun
ULEV cars are cleaner than any coal plant. Clean internal combustion engines are a solved problem. Even in "problem cities", emissions from 2-stroke engines (lawnmowers mostly) actually contribute more to air pollution problems than passenger cars. Too bad about the minor safety issue with electric lawnmowers, but gas lawnmowers haven't even gone after the low-hanging fruit as far as emissions.
There's really no point in trying to make cleaner car prototypes, as you can already buy a car fom most manufacturers that's amazingly clean. Other internal combustion engines, however, don't even do the simplest things to reduce emissions.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm guessing by that price you are either in Alberta or Southern Ontario. Most provinces are already over 96 cents and several are selling at over a dollar.
You get a nice tax break every year for owning a new one.
I thought that the advantage of gas turbines was power to weight ratio, not fuel efficiency.
Actually, the proof on this is pretty strait forward, and lets simplify it, use gasoline both in the vehicle, and in the power plant, ignoring the economies of using less refined fuels (coal) in the power plant.
The internal combustion engine runs on a compression/expansion cycle. A standard 4 cycle gasoline engine uses the Otto cycle (suck,squeeze,bang,blow). Energy flows in as gasoline/air mixture, which is then compressed, and ignited. The ignition triggers expansion and heat, the cylinders/pistons are arranged to extract a bunch of the energy from the explosion in the form of longitudinal motion, which is converted into torque on the crankshaft. 35% of the input energy is then used to feed the compression cycle for the next cylinder, 30% is dissipated as waste heat, and about 35% ends up on the shaft as useable torque to drive the system. Overall the cycle is about 35% efficient. The cycle is modified to a constant flow system in a turbine engine (the Brayton cycle), and modern turbines run about 40% efficient. Axial flow turbines with high bypass can approach 45% efficiency.
Contrast that to a typical large scale power plant, which uses an external combustion cycle. combustion chambers are designed so that approximately 90% of the energy in the input fuel ends up in the heated medium, usually a boiler, and about 10% actually disappears up the chimmney as waste heat. The resultant steam is then fed to a turbine that extracts about 80% of the energy into useable mechanical form, which is converted at an efficiency of approximately 98% into electricity. these numbers reflect power plants that are typical, they are 10 to 20 years old in design, modern designs do much better, but the typical result is an efficiency of about 72% in the conversion to electricity for current operating coal plants 10 to 20 years old.
As you can see, it's actually quite simple, the internal combustion engine uses a lot of it's energy to keep itself in a sustainable cycle, its used up on the compression stroke. The energy used by a large scale external combustion engine to sustain it's cycle is inconsequential (a few conveyor belts and some lights). The net result, all that energy used by compression in the car, is available for conversion to output in the power plant. Even if they were both burning gasoline, the power plant would win by a factor of 2 on efficiency. Now factor in the cheaper fuels a power plant can use, it doesn't need a highly refined fuel, works just fine on coal, or on bunker crude (unrefined oil). the external combustion system now gains both in terms of efficiency, and cost, because of the less expensive fuel. Putting in a fuel that's half the price per MJ as the gas in a car, and then converting it at twice the efficiency, you end up with energy available at the output for 1/4 the cost of that obtained on the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine. And that is exactly the reason we have an electrical grid infrastructure, and dont all run our homes on gas fired generators.
In terms of the pollution per unit energy as your were looking to compare, you must factor more than just the emissions from the internal combustion engine into the equation. On the internal combustion side, factor in the emissions from combustion, and the emissions from the refining process where the crude is refined to gasoline. On the coal side, factor in the emissions at the mine site, and at the power plant, and now, you have a valid comparison, and you'll find that they are similar in terms of emissions per unit energy burned, so, the external combustion cycle wins by a factor of 2 when it's measured in terms of emissions per unit energy produced. Ofc, all of this changes somewhat when you factor in the scrubbers in the coal plant chimney, and the internal combustion engine lack thereof, the coal plant becomes an even bigger winner, on a first rub, but, in reality, the scrubbers just remo
Fast cars can be efficient too.
I'll agree with that - for three years I had a Regal GS, and got about 23 mpg city/28 mpg highway with it. Not bad for a four-door sedan that had enough torque to yank the steering wheel out of your hands if you didn't have a real firm grip on it when you romped on the throttle.
By comparison, the brand-new (400 km on the odometer) diesel Opel Vectra that I rented while in France this year got about 30 mpg on the highway, and had *nowhere* near the power the Regal did. It wasn't slow, but merging into highway traffic was more of a chore. It was a substantially smaller car, but the fuel economy wasn't substantially higher.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Hybrid cars are a GREAT way to reduce pollution
Compared to what? A ULEV car produces less pollution than the equivalent electrical power from my wall, and that's ignoring the pollution associated with the extra batteries in TFA.
Take a look at the pollution from lawnmowers and other 2-stroke engines. Cars are amazingly clean these days, but lawnmowers are as bad as they were in the 60s. There are better places to focus your attention.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
While hybrids are a step in the right direction, there is something that every owner of a gasoline powered vehicle can do to reduce their fuel costs, and reduce the emissions their car produces.
Convert your vehicle to propane. Propane is currently half the cost of gasoline, and when combusted, produces dramatically few emissions than gasoline or diesel. People may argue that propane has slightly less energy than gasoline, while this is true, the higher octane rating of propane (110) allows you to compensate for this by advancing your engine's timing, increasing it's compression ratio, or upping the boost (if turbocharged). Because propane is clean burning, your oil stays cleaner longer, and your engine will have a longer lifespan as well. Most conversion are dual-fuel, which switch back to gasoline, should the propane run out. Propane conversion is becoming popular in Europe, and there are a number of modern propane systems on the market that work with today's fuel injected engines.
Propane is a byproduct of the refining of methane and natural gas. In many parts of the petroleum industry, propane is regarded as a nuisance to be flared rather than harvested. Currently more propane is generated that there is demand for it, causing it's price to be proportionally lower than other fuels. As much of the methane and natural gas refining is done in North America, consumption of propane over gasoline keeps more money out of the hands of foreign oil producers that are known for sponsoring terrorism.
Although propane is still a fossil fuel, and won't end our dependancy on oil, propane is widely available commercially (unlike pie-in-the-sky fuelcell or hydrogen schemes), and nearly all gasoline engines can be converted to run on it right now. Most people recover the cost of conversion with the first few monts of use. Also most propane vehicles fetch a higher price when sold on the used market.
Divide by zero hurts my brain.
Then get a motorcycle. You can easily get one (a Kawasaki klr 650 for example) that will get over 60 MPG and still do 0-60 in under 6 seconds. Plus once you start riding motorcycles you'll just hate cars (both driving them and the all the ones driven by everyone else)anyway.
what sig?
On trucks or an SUV... no contest, always been an improvement in terms of efficency.
Absolutely, but it takes a long to reach a break-even point when the diesel is a $5000 option, and only available on a 3/4 ton chassis that by itself may add another several thousand dollars to the price. I would love to have gotten a diesel in my truck, but it just wasn't worth the premium.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
...Maybe someone will come up with MP3s for auto fuel and upset the way things are done...
People are already being charged with evading road tax in the UK if they're caught powering their diesel cars with vegetable oil or homebrew biodiesel.
Divide by zero hurts my brain.
It appears to be a fallacy though cos there are more cars than ever, proving that the world won't end when the US pays the same price for gas as the rest of the world.
However, in europe it did lead to normal production cars that get 60-70mpg (ie Citroens), without any hybrid bullshit.
SUV's occupy a public space. Surely you can't be such a complete, selfish ass as to consider the public roads and our atmosphere to be "your business."
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
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
I don't know about veggie oil, but I'd consider it a great improvement if we could get our fuel from plants (probably genetically modified) that we grew in the US, Europe, China, India...basically anyplace other than the Middle East.
Burning such fuel would, of course, put CO2 into the atmosphere, but only the the CO2 that had been pulled out of the atmosphere to grow the plant to begin with.
But the best part would be making the Middle East less "strategic".
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
For the rest of the world,
250 miles per gallon = 0.94 liters par 100km.
That needed to be said.
why wait 10 years for the oil to get too pricy? heighten the taxes on gas to a European level and people will be forced to drive smaller cars/electrical cars etc right now.
I think the main problem with this is that the power generated by a solar panel the size of a Prius roof would be on the order of milliwatts. The main battery of a Prius would take far more 'oomph' to charge than the panel could provide.
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/gridable-hybri ds/
Is there a reason your family needs to be so large? How about something more earth friendly like, 4? You know, replace yourself and then stop? 4 fit very nicely in any eco-box auto - been there and done that and it works.
Every human added to the world uses resources - your family is a case in point. You have 7 in the group so your house must be bigger and you need a monster SUV to take everyone for trips. Fewer folks = less demand on the environment = good.
Do you REALLY need to haul around a boat to have fun? Boats are uber-gas hogs so now you're driving a monster truck and hauling a gas guzzling , pollution (air and noise) spewing recreational vehicle out into the wilderness where peace and quiet should be what we seek. How about a couple of canoes/kayaks and a couple of tents - might that work? Might you not have some fun doing that also and teach your kids it's possible to have fun without making quite such a big footprint?
Sorry, big car is 'valid' for your case just isn't working out for me.
Having said that, it is certainly your right to have as large a family as you want, buy whatever toys you need, and live your life by your definitions. Eventually, resources will dry up and we'll be forced to make hard decisions where hard isn't what to pay for gas.
Sounds like that vehicle will go as far on a full tank, as it does on a completely empty tank. Amazing!
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
Diesel/hybrid, or better yet, bio-diesel/hybrid is IMHO the way to go. Current generation turbo-diesel engines, like the VW TDI, can attain better than 50 MPG on the highway. There is no reason why a TDI/hybrid engine couldn't get 60 or 70 MPG combined driving. Many states (especially CA) require low sulpher diesel fuel in order to meet emmissions standards -- a bio-diesel blend (B-80) would meet those standards (I believe).
One of the features of diesel engines in general is that their maximum power band is at far lower RPMs than gasoline engines. The power, efficiency, and emmissions can be tuned for a very narrow RPM range. In fact, diesel engines are preferred when it comes to such applications as stationary emergency generators. Syncronous AC generators (USA) prefer 1800 RPMs (or 3600 RPMs) for 3 cycle 60 Hertz power output. It would be possible to have a vehicle that not only used a diesel engine to charge onboard batteries, but also to provide emergency/remote AC power for natural disasters or for camping, etc.
TDI/hybrid vehicles using bio-diesel (B-80 or B-100) would also drastically reduce dependence upon petroleum imported from politically unstable regions of the world, as well as improve the income of farmers/agribusiness. The recent USA focus on H2 (hydrogen) technology relies upon stripping H2 from coal or petroleum currently, since electrolysis of H2O (water) is too expensive until many more nuclear power plants go on-line. More nuclear power plants, due to long term storage of high-level radioactive waste, isn't environmentally (or long term economically) sound. No proponent of nuclear energy, or the politicians they own, will ever directly address the long term (50,000 year plus) cost of maintaining nuclear waste -- rather than even attempt to calculate those costs, they ignore them - which makes nuclear energy "cheap".
Unfortunately, the USA is more likely to see a corporation like General Electric offer a TDI/hybrid automobile (scaled down from their diesel locomotives) than General Motors or Ford.
Just a curiousity, as I've been discussion this with various people...
How many times a year do you go on vacation, and for how long? Do you save more in being able to move more people over the cost of gas... or would you do better to have an efficient vehicle that moves your family in normal instances, and rent an SUV on the 2-3 weeks of holidays per year (this is assuming 2-3 weeks of holidays, although with relatives I'd be lucky to start sane for one).
Lots of things have valid, practical reasons for their existance... but that doesn't mean the majority of people are using them for said practical reasons.
You're right, motorcycles aren't for carrying several people at once, but during weekday mornings, how many vehicles only have one person in them?
Motorcycles are no good in the rain/snow and certain terrain.
I've only had my motorcycle for a month or so now but I can tell you that I am much more aware of bikers on the road. Also in many ways riding a bike is safer than a car in the sense that you are much more aware of everything around you. Goofing off is a great way to lose control and lose your life and you'll always have to worry about other drivers unfortunately.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
80 MPG for the first 20 miles, until the battery assist runs down? This is crap, the car doesn't really get 80 MPG at all. The guy has to charge it up from wall power, necessitating the consumption of fossil fuels elsewhere to send him the electricity (OK not all electric power is fossil, but the point is still valid). If you add up the energy created elsewhere to charge his batteries, as you should, you'll see that it requires *more* energy than if he had just burned gas in his engine instead. Perhaps that's why the article states it's not yet cost efficient. As soon as we have an extremely low-cost and ubiquitous source of electric power, then this "invention" will be meaningful. But then you can just rip out the gas engine and tank run on electricity and make this whole bunch of BS moot.
What a stupid article.
I was recently involved in an accident with a semi-truck at 70 mph. I was driving a 1995 Honda Civic and it handled like a pro. My wife and I walked away without a scratch, and I was even able to drive the car up the exit ramp so that it could be towed away.
My wife and I feel that if we had been driving an SUV, it most likely would have rolled over when we went down the median. Of course, this is pure conjecture.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Bah . . . this won't be the same class of hybrid as is a Prius or Highlander etc., and it'll get *maybe* 10 to 15% better mileage than the standard Ram diesel. Daimler Chrysler is simply using its selective cylinder technology to shut down two or more cylinders under cruising conditions where they're not really needed. The technology has been available on high-end Mercedes models for years. I believe you can get a regular gas-powered Ram with this technology right now. But it's a move in the right direction, I suppose.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar/clean_energy_payb ack.html
But what would they know?
As someone else said, plugging it in doesn't count. That electricity may or may not come from environmentally friendly sources. Most likely, environmentally hostile sources like coal.
-1 Overrated
Some consumers use their trunks. Why do you think they put them in cars? Because they just happen to have a lot of extra room when they're done building the car?
+1 Funny
Also, by adding all that weight, you're changing the dynamics of the car. For a dealer to sell a car modified like that, it now needs to go through safety tests.
-1 Overrated
Sure, everyone could rely on hydrogen, except we don't have enough hydrogen fuel pumps yet. Not to mention, hydrogen is pretty expensive to produce right now and certainly there isn't infrastructure to produce it in the quantities necessary for a mass market.
+1 Informative
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Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
I feel the article (at least the slashdot blurb) is a bit misleading. The Prius batteries store energy, they don't create energy. And every bit of energy they store comes from the gasoline engine -- yes, even the regenerative braking is just capturing energy that originally came from gasoline. The aparent gain with the Prius is that some of this energy is wasted in a conventional car. That, combined with other basic efficiency features (light, low drag tires, aerodynamic, etc) are why it gets good mileage.
Increasing the battery size only makes sense if under normal usage the Prius runs out of storage room for capturing energy. But it doesn't. Only very rarely have I seen my Prius battery be totally full. On those very rare occasions, then yes, a larger battery would have allowed me to capture a little more energy. But I would imagine the weight of the batteries would offset this small, rare gain.
I think the main thing to realize about Hybrids, which is why their EPA ratings are so inaccurately high, is that they can achieve incredibly high mileage for short periods of time. My meter only goes up to 100 mpg, but I've achieved that for five minute stretches (and not just going down hill). Still, my lifetime average is ~42mpg.
Think of it like this: it's a gasoline car with an energy cache system. Like any caching system you can get amazing performance when you have a cache hit -- but in the real world you don't always have a cache hit, so you have to test it in a way that will simulate the real-world challenges, causing hits and misses.
Specifically in this article, he talks about getting 80 MPG for shorter trips. The 250 number is from an unrelated concept car for which they give no details... I'll believe that when I can buy it. He gets this 80 MPG average by plugging into the wall and thus relying more on the electrical side for the first 20 miles or so until that boost wears out.
Yes, that will work, except that now you're powering the car with coal most likely, and wasting energy as it is lost in the transmission lines and whatnot. I haven't done a formal study but this has to be even worse than gasoline for polution?
(If you're electricity comes from nuclear, solar, or wind, well, then that might be cool.)
People need to learn the difference between energy sources (fossil fuel, nuclear, solar.) and energy storage mediums (batteries, hydrogen, etc).
Speaking of which, has anyone determined which one biodiesel is?
Anyways, just my thoughts. I love my Prius and recommend it as a great car that gets excellent mileage. But it is not the savior of the world.
Cheers.
Doesn't using electrical charges from the wall actually burn more greenhouse gases, due to lossage of power at various steps (lines, during charging, electrical motor) before it is turned into motion? While a power plant could emit less pollutants, reducing CO2, etc. isn't one of them as it is the primary product of the combustion.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I've heard this claim before, but can you actually provide any sort of proof to back it up? I suspect you can't, but I'd like to be proven wrong.
Simple. You have zero cold starts where the engine runs highly inefficient. The rpm is allways spot on at the optimum operating point (max efficiency). There is also an 'economy of scale' issue but I don't have the link to prove it. Anyway that's two points for the power plant.
In addition the power plant is stationary and can therefore be fitted with much bigger filters, catalysts etc than a car. This gives an advantage in sulfur and particle emmisions. That's and additional point for the power plant.
I'd say the power plant beats pretty much any car you can come up with.
TCAP-Abort
On the other hand, it would be simple as hell to embed eighteen bricks in the chassis of any SUV you care to name. Nobody would notice the difference--except that you have to plug your SUV in every night.
Thermodynamic efficiency of the Prius engine maxes out at 37%, and is above 30% for its entire operating range.
What's the overall efficiency of electricity delivered from coal at the power station to the wall socket? Ain't 30%.
I noticed this quote from TFA:
"They're like the hot rodders of yesterday who did everything to soup up their cars. It was all about horsepower and bling-bling, lots of chrome and accessories," said Cindy Knight, a Toyota spokeswoman. "Maybe the hot rodders of tomorrow are the people who want to get in there and see what they can do about increasing fuel economy."
The spokeswoman has been talking to marketing too much and engineering too little. IIRC, the hot rodders of yesterday didn't use the term "bling-bling"... maybe Toyota needs to stop hiring their spokespersons directly from hip-hop internships.
Besides, I rather hear from the companies actual engineers saying something like, "(we) are the people who want to get in there and see what (we) can do about increasing fuel economy."
I8-D
Though not a car obviously, there's also the ENV1 bike ( http://www.envbike.com/ )reported here before, using hydrogen fuel cells, emitting water and electricity. there are still environmental issues over the hydrogen production in the first place but it still seems much better than oil. I hadn't untill just the other day heard about the GM EN1 also (though I beleive this was just electric)? "Even today's superclean hybrid cars are still polluters--their electric batteries are recharged by small gas engines. But up until 2003, you could lease a true zero-emission electric car from General Motors: the EV1. It was a science-fiction car of the first order, and it looked it--all swoopy lines and space-egg aerodynamics. None were made available for sale. When the leases on the EV1s expired, GM recalled the cars, over the ardent objections of many of the lessees, who protested, begged, and lobbied GM to let them buy their vehicles. GM would not relent, and, citing concerns over liability and parts availability, even took to crushing some of these high-tech marvels to keep them off the road." source: cnet's top 10 things we miss http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6259955-1.html?ta g=txt
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.
What risk is there in US $.05 coins? They don't contain nickel--if they did, melting them down would get you more than $.05. Moreover, they'd be magnetic, like iron and cobalt. Try sticking a nickel to a magnet--it doesn't work.
As you patently can't do the maths, given a brick is about 3x4x9 inches, eighteen bricks is 3.2.2.3.3.3.3.2 inches = 2^3.3^5 = 6.cuberoot(9) inches cubed. That's a little over a cubic foot.
Hardly a trunk full, even in a Prius!
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Seems to me Opel uses a simpler solution Eco speedster
instead of weighting the car down with batteries try to make it as light as possible and use a very efficient diesel engine.Quote some numbers please. "Doesn't really look that good" is meaningless.
Then look up coal gasification on Google.
Deleted
"Third time in this article I've seen someone make this mistake. It's an epidemic."
It's not an epidemic. It's denial.
I keep hearing people overestimate the efficiency of your typical car. 15% is more realistic for a good one, you might just get 25% efficiency out of a Diesel VW Lupo or Smart Car while traveling at a constant speed below 50mph on a motorway without traffic. Well... you know how likely that is.
Deleted
Nuclear energy suffers another problem besides the waste storage. There's only a limited amount of uranium fuel left and it will last for about 50 to 100 years. So fission energy can only be short term solution, though I agree that it's a better one than fossil energy.
:w!q
Diesel has more energy per galon than gasoline, so it gets better milage.
I think it is actually just a result of the higher compression ratios. The actual energy content of diesel isn't all that different (in terms of kcal/gallon).
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?).
For the once or twice per year you actually use a suburban to transport seven people, rent one. For the other 364 days that you commute in it alone, drive something more responsible. You will save a lot of money.
Perhaps SlashDot could avoid a whole heapin steamin barrel of embarrasment if they'd just not blindly go with whatever some journalist has written . Most journalists don't have a clue about anything scientific. Why spread the misconceptions even further afield?
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.
Toyota should offer higher milage options at the dealer. The tradeoff obviously is a smaller truck or say no back seat. BTW, gas in Atlanta is at $2.70 for regular now. My next car will definitely be a hybrid.
http://www.askthevoid.com
That hybrid civic gets a heck of alot more built in features than the 14k regular civic. You can really compare then equally. You have to at least go to the LX model with front side airbags to draw a comparison. Which is around $16k. The EX, which the hybrid share some features with runs about $18k. Certainly the hybrid is still more expensive, but comparing to other models with similar features make s it more reasonable.
As far as the over-active sense of entitlement, I think that's the parents who can't stomach the idea of driving a station wagon. Hate to tell ya, folks, but most SUVs these days have 8" ground clearance and soft-ass suspensions and probably can't deal well with potholes. You're not fooling anyone, it's as pathetic as a combover. Embrace the inner soccer mom - after you spit out the 7th puppy, that's what you are.
The biggest problem today with diesel engines is the large production of soot. In about a year soot filters will be forced by law here in The Netherlands, mainly due to health issues. I live in Rotterdam, in the middle of the Meuse and Rhine river delta which is one of the most dust polluted areas worldwide. This is mainly caused by diesel trucks, cars and ships and heavy industry. But soot filters are expected to make a significant difference.
Before buying a diesel or diesel hybrid: ask for a soot filter!
Longer Explanation: One of the issues with this is the nature of a diesel engine. Diesels do not use spark plugs, but rely on the heat of the cylinder, combined with the heat generated by compressing the fuel-air mixture to produce combustion. When the engine is cold, small heated coils (glow plugs, like toaster wires sort of) add the needed ignition. This often means that a colder diesel engine takes some time to start. This is also why semis typically don't shut down their engines when they stop momentarily. This might be very problematic for a hybrid, where the diesel engine could be totally cold, then immediately needed due to demand.
Another explanation of diesel engines
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Current research is looking into other methods using either polycrystalline silicon or nanocrystalline TiO2, the latter being sensitized by dyes that capture visible light. These materials are getting a lot closer to prime time, and being much less energy intensive to make, will have a much shorter energy break-even. Efficiency is significantly lower, though.
So, why don't you rent the SUV/Minivan for the once a year vacation instead of wasting gas for the entire year? Oh, you have to carpool 7 kids around? Buy two cars...and you and your wife can split the morning car routine. Assuming that your not driving a *real* truck, like a Ford F150, your whole SUV argument is bunk, in my book. And if you really do need a heavy-duty truck to tow your boat around...you've got more $$$ than I got. I find it interesting that interest in hybrid vehicles has only increased since gas has gotten to be $2.50 a gallon...just wait till its $4 or $5 ...thanks G.W.B.!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
.
A Jetson's sound module that changes pitch with accel/decel.
If I could come up with an onomatopoeia for the Jetson's car noise, I'd put it here.
is also a Civic - specifically, the hybrid. Just to bring all of this back "on topic". :)
It also occurs to me that some people might point out that the driver of the semi-truck not only managed to escape unharmed, but her truck was also in relatively good condition as well. My response to that would be that if we both had been driving semi-trucks, this would most likely not have been the case.
Oh, and in this case, the driver of the semi also wandered into my lane, and another driver (who was a witness) says he saw her on a cell phone. What's sad/amusing to me, is that in this picture that my wife took of the car, you can see another (smaller) truck driver on his cell phone, rubber-necking at our accident, while towing stuff behind him!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
We'll see who's fucking themselves when gas costs $5/gallon, family members start getting drafted into the army or killed due to increased terrorist attacks on american soil.
Then there are the thorium reserves, which outstrip uranium.
Fission power would be enough for hundreds, possibly thousands of years of consumption, if properly developed.
Unless my math has an error, it sounds as if it could already be cost competitive.
First of all, I assume that electricity costs anywhere from 2-15 cents per kilowatt hour.
A 25mpg car running for one hour at 50 mph goes 50 miles and therefore uses up 2 gallons of fuel, which at roughly $3 a gallon costs $6.
Assume that the 25mpg car needs 50 horsepower to keep the car moving at 50 mph. Using the units command supplied standard with Linux I find that 50 horsepower is 37.285 kilowatt. So if 37kW were needed to do the same thing for an hour using an electric, the electricity would cost you:
37kW*.15 = $5.55 in a place where electricity costs 15 cents per kW*h.
37kW*.10 = $3.70 in a place where electricity costs 10 cents per kW*h.
37kW*.05 = $1.86 in a place where electricity costs 5c/kW*h.
37kW*.02 = $0.75 in a place where electricity costs 2c/kW*h (probably off-peak, and that's approximately the cost of wind-generated power IIRC.)
All of those sound attractive compared to $6 for two gallons (and rising).
Of course, for this to be a real comparison, a lot of other things would have to be taken into consideration, such as engine efficiency, battery efficiency, electric motor efficiency, transmission line versus fuel transport efficiency, weight considerations, the need to make separate trips to gas/petrol stations whereas electrics charge at home, regenerated braking energy, spills and evaporation, etc...
Rationing in the US will have very little effect on prices. The fact is that when I buy a gallon of gas, I'm taking from the same supply pool as my next-door-neighbor, the chinese military and truck drivers in europe.
In any event, it's just the wrong thing to do -- when prices go up, the people who use the gas will be the ones who value it the most: a man who needs the gas to go to the hospital will pay more for it than the man who needs it to go water-skiing.
I see no evidence for your assertion that high prices bankrupt gas stations, but have seen several articles that say that gas stations are doing very well.
You can't compare the WWII situation to today's: the world market was completely different than it is today. The gas rationing of the 1970s has been shown to do more harm than good -- because of the rationing, people topped off their cars whenever they got a chance, creating an enormous "rolling reserve" of gas: before, the average tank was 1/2 full; during rationing it was 3/4 full -- multiply the 2-3 gallons by 30 million cars, and that's a lot of gas.
Stations should not run out of gas if you let the market set the price for gas -- when they do, that means that the price is too low.
I tend to agree - what the world needs is more manufacturers that listen to what consumers want but i reckon calling people who argue on where energy comes from jackasses is tad harsh... regardless that energy is only converted, where it converted FROM is important! HYBRIDS rock - now PLEASE CAN WE HAVE SOME MORE! Toyota is doing a great job... but can't keep up with demand here in aus, and not all toyota dealers can even show you a prius, only selected "prius dealers" - or so i was told by my local one.
My 1980ish VW Rabbit 1.8L deisel got 50-60mpg. It had an extended fuel tank, that allowed me to go over 1 month between fillups (and that was while doing DELIVERY jobs in high school)!
The ironic part about the prius story is that it requires electicity from the utility company to charge, and that is being generated by burnig fuel oil, or even worse coal in the majority of the county. So the owner is probably causing more environmental damage with his prius than if he just had a biodeisel, solar or hydrogen card. (oops, hydrogen takes massive energy inputs to produce...more coal and oil).
When world production falls by a few percent, American gasoline prices will jump to European levels and stay there. At that point the hybrid will pay off much faster (even ignoring lower maintenance and less time wasted at filling stations) and the resale value will make the owners look very shrewd.
What do you mean, doesn't do anything worth a damn? Whatever he charges those batteries with, it's going to use only a trivial amount of oil (maybe hauling coal to a powerplant, or wind-turbine parts to a wind farm). He could charge them with a solar panel if he wanted to.The batteries he used were lead-acid units sold for electric bicycles. If you look at the price of batteries, it seems likely that a unit built in volume might cost only about $200 to $300 (quite a bit less than the NiMH battery which comes with the car). Lead-acid batteries do wear out, but they are the most-recycled product in the USA. If you can get off-peak rates for charging at night, you'll pay a small fraction of what gasoline would cost for the same driving and replace most of the first few mile's worth of gas with coal, natural gas, hydro, wind and nuclear. Natural gas is getting scarce, but the rest are 100% domestic and not about to go away.
Hybrids are just smart. The plug-in hybrid is insurance.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Hybrid cars are an illusion much like the slight of hand used by a magician to trick you to look somewhere else.
/
Look at the new cars on the market. We are looking at buying a Mazda as an example.
Mazda 3 - economy car 34 mpg
Mazda 6 - family car 30 mpg
RX-8 - sports 24 mpg
Miata - sports 28 mpg
Or look here
http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/gasmileage
for a list of he highest gas mileage cars for 2004.
Other than a few cars (and very pricey ones at that for the car itself) this is just pathetic. What is keeping the car companies from producing higher mpg's on the economy car line? Or any line for that matter?
The car world has been stuck at 30 and the mid 30's for the last 35 years or longer. That is the real crime here.
You always see stories of people with cars getting 80, 100 or more mpg. Why this will never become reality has nothing to do with technology or trying to be environmentally responsible.
We are all being duped. The governments (and automobile industrys) hand is truly quicker than the eye.
Well I will tell you why. And to preface I will say that the wife and I are getting a TDI Diesel Jetta tp replace her celica, but keeping my 2001 Montero.
In the 1980s american car makers released diesel engines in the us. They were converted gas engines, they leaked, diesel was high, ruined your driveways, would not start on mildly cold days, and sound like sherman tanks. They were a half ass attempt.
My grandfather had a diesel car and truck, my dad kept degreasers in the garage for whenever he parked in the driveway.
Basically they left a bad taste in the consumer mouth.
In europe they kept developing, refining, testing, and developing diesel engines from the ground up. And they are great.
As an experiment we took a recent family trip which ran from Ocala Florida(where my parents live) Jacksonville(where we live) down lo new orleans and then to Houma Louisiana(where I am from from) and we went in the Montero. 23 on highway abdout 19 in city. But we marked off the stations we stopped out to gas up. All but 2 had
diesel, so diesel is availible and this week we are getting our TDI, which will become our trip and daily commuter car. The montero will remain, because it is a solid vehicle, and when can haul stuff around when we need too.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Damn right. If you look at the statistics you'll see that minivans have more cargo space than SUVs, as well as being safer and more fuel efficient.
The in-laws have a minivan; the sister-in-law has a Ford Expedition. When we're visiting and we need to haul six people plus luggage, we sure as hell don't try to do it in the SUV.
Sheesh, the level of denial of SUV drivers is amazing.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Nice, but Prius uses the Atkinson cycle. How does that affect the figures?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
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.
Making a claim such as "80 mpg" with a "plug-in" Prius is somewhat disingenuous. How many Kilowatt hours are you using to charge the battery and how much is that costing you? Electric cars are definitely less expensive to "fuel" but part of that comes from not having to pay the gasoliene tax.
Assuming I use 15 gallons a week now driving 52 miles round-trip to and from work, that's about $150.00 a month. I'd have to drive the same route for five years to break even. If gas prices went up another dollar a gallon, that cuts the payback to three and half years. If I lived in LA the math would be different.
And that's assuming the car doesn't need any other maintenance. New batteries, a clutch, transmission, or brakes.
I'm going to wait until next summer, let the hybrid technology improve a little more and get a Honda hybrid. Cash in on the subsidy and when the warranty expires toss a plug-in kit in there.
Assuming gas prices don't go down or keep trending up, over the lifetime of the car the payback will be worth it.
My ideal car would be a hybrid diesel. A plug-in package and grease car kit and you could tell the Saudis to cram their oil right up their hairy hind end.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Believe it or not, silver spoon boy, we hate you for the SUV, not the money. I have a nice house and enough money, thanks.
Oh, we also hate you 'cause you're a fucking prick, but we wouldn't have known that if you hadn't posted.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
For arguments sake, say you average 25 MPG in your non-SUV and travel 12,000 miles per year, spending USD 1,200 here and USD 2,880 in the GB. If electric costs USD 1.50/Gal (USD 720/yr), and you kept the car for four years, you'd only save USD 480 here and USD 2,160 in the GB.
Clearly, the savings of going electric here in the US aren't great enough for most people to sacrifice driving range, performance and convenience yet. So, while I would like to feel good about doing my part to reduce energy consumption, I don't see that out-weighing the pleasure of driving an S4.
But can it play Doom3?
Considering the Prius is about a third the weight of the average SUV, I think you mean closer to 50 bricks. Also, you might be better off embedding them in the windows instead.
Hmmm... Sorry to make you mad. I come from a farming family and I get a bit irrational when it comes to the whole farm issue.
My main point is that there is a lot of "Do as I say, not as I do" going around.
Silver spoon boy? When people started moving out from the city, an acre or land became worth what 100 acres used to be- and the new residents demanded services and taxes shot up. The land the farm was on became worth so much that the property taxes were more than the farm could ever produce. So we had to sell it. I am sorry if that makes me silver spoon boy, but what would you do with a windfall like that? Would you have given it all away, just to not be a "silver spoon boy?"
I love being called a prick by people who I don't know- it makes me laugh, because I get along well with 99.9% of the people I meet, so I am guessing you and I would get along well if we ever met my friend...
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
"Quote some numbers please. "Doesn't really look that good" is meaningless."
Coal generation is about 35% efficient, transmission losses can be up to about 20% or so, battery storage is around 60% efficient, electric motors are around 66% efficient, so 0.35 * 0.80 * 0.60 * 0.66 = 0.11.
Cars are what, about 25% efficient at converting the energy into work?
"Then look up coal gasification on Google."
Coal gassification doesn't make up a majority of the electricity generated in the US. When we're talking about electricity generation, traditional coal can be taken to be the majority.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I'm 38 years old and have owned at least a dozen lawnmowers from cheap residential push mowers to a 62" commercial zero turn mower. I have never seen a two stroke mower are these common in Europe? Two stroke engines do not have to be big polluters, new 2 stroke outboards are actually cleaner than their four stroke counter parts. Four stroke outboards and weed eaters are catching on for their quiet operation and use of use (no mixing).
Indecision is the key to flexibility.
Nothing as far as I know. However, I regularly plug my vehicles in from ~Dec 1 until ~March 31 every winter (using block heater for those cold nights make the engine SOOOO much happier).
Or at least, not any time soon.
... why won't solar cars ever come into real use? They're not strong enough to pass crash safety tests. They draw at most 2kW. That results in major weight stripping -- they weigh at most 700lbs with a driver in them. They also reduce the cross section ... maybe 0.5 to 1 m^2 ... which means it has about the visibility of a motorcycle (worse, as they're so low to the ground).
One of the most feasible design for a solar car that I've seen was the TNE III, from Team New England. The folks who run Sunrayce (GM) specifically changed the rules after 1995, to make sure that the design, or anything resembling it, wasn't allowed again.
What was different about their design? They didn't keep the solar panels in a charging configuration while the vehicle was in motion. They would charge up, pack up the array, then race for the finish line. If they ran out of power, they'd have to stop, unpack the array, then sit and charge for a while.
Besides that their car was one of the only ones with trunk space (although, it was filled with the solar array), their design gave more space to the driver compartment. Provided it's used for simple commuting (office, home, charge, repeat), their design makes perfect sense.
Now
Combined with a Suburban or a semi, whose driver isn't paying attention, and it's a death trap on wheels.
The only way that I see fully electric vehicles really coming into their own is in a controled environment where they're not mixing with larger vehicles. (planned cities, golf courses, etc.)
I'm personally for planned cities -- visit a town like Venice, and you'll see that it's perfectly possible to get around without owning a vehicle, so long as they're a little bit of public transit Think about how much cleaner New York could be if people couldn't bring vehicles in from outside, and there were only delivery vehicles, mass transit, and taxis.
I would actually expect alternative fuels, most likely oil, but not necessarily petroleum based, to be the most likely candidate for the next generation -- biodiesel, or byproducts from trash digestion or biomass recycling.
I'd say that the car companies realize that people are willing to pay a premium for more environmentally friendly cars (just like they used to be able to sell 'agressive' looking cars, more comfortable rides, 'luxury', or carrying capacity), but they have to weigh that against making sure it's reliable. They could go bankrupt from lemon laws if they don't make sure they're rock solid, and aren't hazardous to their passengers.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
For those of us who live in the City, and commute to the suburban industrial parks (that are so increasingly popular), I don't have a garage, and as a consequence, no outlet to plug-in such a vehicle. While I'd love to not be spending $35 every week to fill the tanks of my 26.7mpg Subaru Outback Sport, this is unfortunately not a solution for me!
I would think that a turbine/electric hybrid would be the most useful in my case -- where are they? It's such a simple concept. I don't need a hybrid SUV , I need a practical and safe commuter vehicle, that handles my dumpster-diving habit, and the occasional day-long trips across states.
I seriously sometimes hate being outside the sales demographic, it makes TV, food, music, movies, and cars always a puzzle!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
The work this fellow has done on his car does nothing to improve the fuel efficiency of his car. He is simply drawing more of the energy to drive the car from his houshold electrical supply. That electricity still had to be produced somewhere, and has its own set of inefficiencies associated with production. A typical 100 HP engine will consume 1 gallon of gas in 1/2 hour. 1 HP is roughly 800 watts. That means that one gallon of gas is roughly 40 killowatt hours. Todays electric prices ( here where I live ) are roughly $0.07 / killowatt hour. That means that for every gallon of gas he saves by using his house power, it would cost him $2.80 here in my town. Not much of a savings since gas costs about $2.60 / gallon...
The real advantage is that as the price of gas increases, the cost of electricity does not really change much. Also, in an oil crisis, countries that do not rely on oil for electricity (france) would still be able to operate their cars without interruption. So the real advantage this guy has is that when the next oil scare happens and you have to stand in line for three hours for each gallon of gas, he will be laughing as he spends his sundays relaxing instead of standing in line.
-=geoskd
www.geoskd.com
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
It's worth noting that nuclear waste, although not air pollution, is still pollution. Nuclear power is not "clean" then, but it doesn't pollute the air much.
Let's see Ron leave the balmy clime of Corte Madera, California, and drive his batteried-up Prius and head north and east this winter. The problems with standard electrics remains-- as the temperature drops, so does the range of the vehicle. At 32F, the range is cut by 90%. At 0F, the battery is depleted after 10 minutes. This is why the GM/Saturn electric was never offered outside of SoCal. This is also why Hybrids are succeding in North Eastern US cities--and Canada.
I also hope that Mr. Gremban doesn't have an inadvertant crash test of his haxored Prius, with all those extra batteries in the trunk. My favorite experimental car battery design was molten sulfur--it did solve the low-ambient temp problem, but would have been a disaster to deal with after a smashup on the interstate.
And while Gremban isn't a total moron, Wolsey and Gaffney (quoted in the article as endorsing the concept) most certainly are.
---
For those not in "The land of the metric free", 250 MPG is about 1L/100km.
There are a lot of reasons. One of the ways that you get a fuel economy boost in gal-electric is because you turn off the engine a lot of the time. You don't do that with diesel; it is bad.
Diesel is not easy to start. If the engine is cold, you need to heat the block to make it work. It uses a different ignition method.
Diesel engines are very inefficient when they are first started. It requires a lot of fuel to turn one on. This sort of eliminates the design of a hybrid from working.
If you fix both those things, then the diesel-electric is a great thing.
There are no legitimate reasons to have them as commuter vehicles, unless you're a careless asshole. Like you said, they just don't care about other people on the road -- their car is big, and that's it.
I am not sure of what to do about assholeism on the highway. As a commuter in a Subaru, I see these people as accidents waiting to happen -- no turn signal, not paying attention to the lines in the road, not paying attention to the existance of other vehicles in their paths.
These people just don't care -- but how do we stop them? I think mandatory driving tests every couple of years may work. You must drive for an hour or two with your friend, and an instructor in the back seat, and have your license yanked for a period of time for each violation.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
This is all true in theory. But in practice its a whole different ballgame, unless you live in alaska or something. The efficiency of engines drop a lot due to things like knocking etc. the theoretical efficiency is supposed to be 35% or thereabouts, but in reality one only gets anywhere from 15%-30% depending on how modern the car is/where it runs/how its run etc. I was talking about the ICE in a car btw.
Calm down people, its a religion not an operating system.
he/she/it writes wise words.
On thing that is also rarely mentioned is that a conventional houses electrical systems are nowhere near adequate enough to meet this power demand. Say I want to dump 10 gallons worth of petrol in the form of electricity into my car's batteries. At the above energy densities that is 340kWh! In the UK, a standard plug will only be rated to supply 13amps at 240V = ~3kW. It would take about 4.5 days to charge at this capacity. For the sake of simplicity, I've ignored all the losses incurred along the way. Beat me down if you wish.
As you point out, the buses have no storage. This is the same for San Fran and it seems like a terrible oversight in design. Even having just five minutes worth of power storage would give the driver enough time to make it to the next stop and then reconnect the poles. Instead, I can't count the times that buses jumped the lines turning a corner, fouling traffic in two directions for several minutes while the driver frantically tried to reconnect them. Stupid stupid design.
Cars don't have that problem. All electric cars are battery based (unlike bumper cars at amusement parks). So, it really wouldn't be a problem for an electric vehicle to not maintain a permanent connection. A car with a pole could make an attempt to connect to the power, and if the car needed to break away to pass another car, or pull into a driveway or go somewhere the lines aren't, no problem. Should the vehicle run out of charge "off the lines" then if it was a hybrid, gas would fill in.
The point is that while driving around in the city, a car would probably be able to tap in on all of the major routes, and stretch a poor battery capacity enough to make it work. Batteries would be most likely charged a lot faster than they are discharged, so it's possible that just brushing a line for a couple minutes or while stopped at a light would be enough to give the car another 20-30 minutes of driving, especially if the battery was low and "hungry" for charging.
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
5 kids?
Its good to know that the religious ideology of hundreds of years ago still lives on!!!
Proctor and Gamble must LOVE you!
You are right however, doing the calculations based on the energy content of the gasoline is the wrong way to do it. You want to do the calculations based on the energy *output* of each type of motor, but even that is not quite accurate, since a well designed electric system does not require a transmission
It is no accident that the worlds faster RC (read as toy ) car is an electric car. With no transmission, this toy car was able to reach a top speed of 104 MPH and had sufficient low end acceleration to handle well on the race track as well. ICE's require a transmission because at low RPM they have almost no torque, and at high RPM they explode. This means that they have only a very narrow effective operational range. To extend this, transmissions are added to vehicles that use them. An electric motor however has a similar torque at almost all speeds of operation. like the ICE, electrics will fail at high RPM, but unlike the ICE that speed is much much higher for an electric motor. ICE's typically die at around 6500 RPM (10,000 RPM for race vehicles). Electric motors range anywhere from 20,000 RPM to 100,000 RPM before failure.
-=geoskd
www.geoskd.com
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Sure you can do this. You just need electricty. This has to come from somewhere - so if you build 1000 nukes - about 1GWe (GW equivalent) - then you can eliminate all coal, all oil and all alternatives and produce 100% of the USA energy needs - all from Uranium.
And while you are at it maybe you want to revist the Integral Fast Reactor that Clinton shut down - designed by Argonne labs by 1994 because then there is 6000 years of fuel already mined and processed and sitting around and its called "spent" uranium and "depleted" uranium. Oh... and what of all the Thorium?
But - how many years for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve? Decades is my guess.
I'm getting 250mph out of my SUV for the first few feet as well. Every morning, I get out and push to get the car rolling, then hop in and coast as long as possible until I start the engine.
Of course, I realize that I'm just displacing the energy consumption from the gasoline fired ICE to the metabolic unit in my gut, but it feels more efficient and I've been eating my Wheaties every morning so...
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
Any engine that relies on compression, will never approach the efficiency available from external combustion, its inherent in the process. Some of the input energy is used for compression, so, it's just not available as mechanical output.
2-stroke or 4-stroke, lawnmowers (and leaf blower and etc) have no pollution controls at all. Per dollar spent, you'd get about 1000 times as much result going after lawn care eqipment as cars.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I don't have any numbers to offer, but just consider the design constraints.
For example, car engines have to deliver rapid acceleration. They have to be lightweight. They have to be cheap. Power plants are stationary, so weight is not a concern. They don't need to accelerate under load, and since they have a very long planned lifetime, a very different tradeoff can be made between capital cost and operating efficiency.
Power plants can be tuned for maximum efficiency under specified conditions. Car engines have to deliver high performance under a much wider range of conditions, which makes many aspects of their design less efficient.
That said, power plants are not perfectly efficient. For example, as others have noted, losses will be incurred in electrical generation, transmission, and transformation. There will be further losses if storage is involved, and if not, there's always the challenge of handling peak loads on the power grid.
I once visited some friends in Scotland who have retired to an old farming estate. About a hundred years ago, the former owner had dammed one of the becks, built a power house, and installed a generator. With the massive stone building, cast iron turbine, porcelain insulators, giant knife switches, exposed wire, and water dripping everywhere, it was quite something to behold.
It must have been a significant investment, but must also have been considered worthwhile in its day. My point is that both technology and economics play into the equation. Local stationary power generation was once the best deal going, and probably still is under some conditions.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
And then if you're powering an electric car, you'll need to reduce that 50% efficiency by a number of factors -- loss due to transmission lines, internal resistance of the battery, self-discharge of the battery, loss in the motor that powers your electric car, etc. (I do believe the small losses in the generator at the power plant are included in the 50% figure.) That wasn't my original point, but if you want electric cars because they're more efficient (i.e. use less fuel, create less pollution) then you need to take these factors into account. Most of these factors are relatively small, except for losses in the batteries themselves, but added up they do become substantial.
And also having a heavy bank of batteries in your car further increases energy usage. An electric motor that can generate a certain amount of power generally weighs less than the equivilent IC engine, but when you include the batteries needed to power it for an hour or two the total weight is much greater than that of the IC engine and it's fuel tank. (Which is why IC engines are still used in R/C planes. Electric planes have certainly taken off for many many reasons, but for the highest performance planes, they're still gas or glow powered. If batteries ever improve enough that you can get similar energy density to a glow engine at similar costs, the only people who will still be flying glow is those who do it because 1) they don't want to replace what they have and 2) they like the noise and smell.)
As for pollution, most power plants burn coal, which creates even more nasty pollution than gasoline. But yes, they also have more scrubbers and such to clean up the pollution. But what happens to the junk the scrub out of the smokestacks? It's still pollution, even if it doesnt' go into the air.
In any event, you've made some good arguments (ones that I was already aware of, mind you), but you still haven't provided anything that could be called `proof'. I was sort of hoping that somebody had done a scientific study that I wasn't aware of, and that the power plants were at least twice as efficient as car engines ...
Although I'd probably qualify them as more hippie than geek, there's Arcosanti, Arizona, not to mention most European cities that have been in existance since before automobiles were invented. I'm personally partial to Dubrovnik, Croatia.
One of the big things to remember in city living is that space is at a premium -- give up the 4 bedroom houses and 3 bathrooms. When you carry most of the things you buy, rather than just drop them in the back of your SUV, you're not likely to do as much impulse buying. And changing out your furniture every year is more difficult when you also have to consider both delivery of the new stuff, and disposal of what you currently have.
It may have other benefits, by providing extra incentives to select items that will last, as opposed to whatever's cheapest.
Starting from scratch is the easiest way to reduce the dependancy on automobiles, but some places are trying to implement disincentives (London w/ a toll for entering the city, Athens w/ restrictions on which cars can enter the town based on their license places). Unfortunately, some don't have the intended results -- in Greece, people would just get a second car, so they had one w/ and odd licenses, and one even.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Oh, wow. Sarcasm. And a whiff of troll. But I'll bite.
I have young children. We drive a car, it gets better mileage than a minivan. The children, my wife, and the stroller do not all fit in the cabin. The stroller goes in the trunk. If we're going shopping, that's where whatever groceries we buy go.
Just cause your single and have not a care in the world doesn't mean the rest of us don't need our trunks. The rest of us are trying to balance the family and being socially/environmentally responsible, but at this stage hybrids like this AREN'T the answer. I'd need a SUV size vehicle to accomodate my family, and that would ruin the cost savings. I'll stick to my 30+ MPG saturn, thanks.
-everphilski-
There's something else to consider here. Most cars, all mass market ones I'm aware of, use mechanical transmission. No, I'm not confusing manual vs automatic. The have been significant improvements in electrical drive systems. According to a few Discovery Channel shows, apparently a large percentage of the really big trucks us electrical generation by diesal generators, and then have independent electrical motors to drive the wheels. I believe the Navy is/was more or less proposing the same thing on the DD-21 class of destroyers. I also read recently that Bose, yes the same guys who make the speakers, are making an electrical(technically electro-mechanical) shock asorbers to replace the hydrolic ones we all use now. Okay so what's my point? My point is that these mechanical transmission systems while effective are heavier than they need to be. We could replace them in cars with the electrical systems that the heavy equipment manufacturers have already done; as I believe the technology has matured enough to reach the smaller sizes that cars require. Even in the big ugly SUV that so many folks hate, it would be a significant improvment. I'm not sure here, but I think it would help.
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
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.
That's the byline: "Written by Advertising". Don't believe everything you read, especially if it comes from a web site with an obvious axe to grind.
It doesn't pass the sniff test to me. Death threats against the inventor won't work: information wants to be free and they can't kill everybody who comes up with the idea.
More to the point, compressed air isn't an energy source, it's just a fuel medium, like hydrogen or electricity. The energy still comes from somewhere. His car is energy-efficient only if the means of producing compressed air are efficient, and I'm not convinced of the energy budget here. Compressing air evolves a lot of waste heat, which is currently just discarded. And unless you're planning to compress it at a factory and sent out tubes of compressed air, it's going to be hard to use that waste heat at a local level.
Maybe this is ultimately brilliant, but it sounds to me more like a man trying to attract attention with spurious "death threats" than somebody who's really improved the state of the art. I could be wrong. If he's right, we'll find out some day, even if they kill him. If he's wrong... well, all we'll have is people who read press releases claiming that he's being suppressed.
The isotope of Uranium currently used in commercial reactors is U-235, which constitutes about 0.7% of all naturally occuring Uranium. Other types of reactors can use the remaining 99.3% of Uranium or the much more common Thorium as fuel.
Integral fast reactors produce much less waste because they burn the fuel more completely. They're not even close to waste-free, but their waste isotopes are shorter lived, and the long-term radioactive waste produced (reactor structure etc) is much smaller in quantity. Pebble bed reactors produce their waste contained in nigh-indestructible (usually silicon carbide?) pebbles that are easier to dispose of safely.
There's thousands of years of fuel, even at substantially increased demand.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
This stuff about hybrids etc. is all nice and dandy, but is the oil really running out?
I remember as a kid they said all the oil would be gone by 2000, but like it's 2005 and there still seems to be lots of oil about. Well, now they say 2010-2020. Guess by 2010 they'll be saying 2030-2040
The Chinese are importing lots and lots of oil so the worlds output is increasing all the time, yet the price has not gone proportionally up in comparison...
Car companies are selling car with worse and worse fuel usage figures, i.e. SUVs. Western governments are adding lots of "safety" regulations that make cars so much heavier, again using more fuel. Western governments have invented new taxes for CO2 usage; governments only ever seem to tax rising trends, so they expect that to increase. People have to work and hence consume more to pay for these increased taxes.
If the fuel was really running out would our rulers do stuff to actually increase consumption?
Oil running out? Nah, doesn't stack up.
threadeds blog
Look, the biggest factor to "wearing out the roads faster" has practically nothing to do with people driving around SUVs, and MUCH more to do with big 18-wheelers and the ones with double trailers attached. If a vehicle the size of a Suburban or even a Cadillac Escalade can do physical damage to our paved roads and highways, then we're really in trouble when the UPS or FedEx guy comes around, aren't we?
(Maybe you better stop ordering anything mail order, huh?)
At least here in the midwest, the REAL culprit for wearing out roads is ice and snow, and the rock salt they put down to combat it each winter..... but I digress.
The real point is, all of this SUV hatred is completely misplaced, and completely ignores people's rights to purchase and use whichever product they'd prefer to own. If you use an SUV and it gets poor gas mileage, then you purchase more gas - which is taxed at quite a high rate, so you *do* contribute more than others to funding govt. programs. Since SUVs generally aren't especially cheap vehicles, you ALSO get socked wtih high "personal property taxes" for the life of ownership in some states.
As for myself, I actually still have a 1985 Pontiac station wagon, which was a hand-me-down from my folks, who only used it for a few vacation trips and kept it garaged all the time. It's still in excellent shape. But my other vehicle is a Mitsubishi Montero Sport SUV, and you know what? That wagon gets FAR worse gas mileage than the SUV does. My friend used to drive around a small van that got worse gas mileage than my SUV does, too. Yet these environmentalist assholes who run around dumping paint on people's SUVs and so forth seem to think a station wagon or van is "more accpetable".
Whatever.... In any case, the trend is moving away from buying SUVs anyway. The problem is, whenever a vehicle is discovered as very useful for taking kids around to school and such, it eventually gets labeled a "soccer mom" vehicle and becomes "uncool" to own. That's why you saw everyone go from station wagons to minivans, and from minivans to SUVs. Now, SUVs are "uncool" - so I don't know what's next? Chrysler is trying to bring back the station wagon in a re-invented form, so maybe it's coming full circle?
I do believe that the generators down at the power plant are in general more efficient than the engine in your car (...) but I suspect it's not a LOT more efficient.
(...) after all, power plants will burn a given fuel in the same way that a car engine will, so the waste products will be the same (...)
You were moderated insighful for this howler? You must have a very large family...
Borrowing a phrase, your post is so wrong it's not even wrong.
Google is your friend, ask him.
Or it was a great troll?
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
I was wrong about the isotopes of Uranium used. Forget about that part...
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Why not form a stirling engine to the engine and exhaust system to the alternator to get more electrical juice out of this sucker??? http://www.lunarstudio.com/
Architectural Renderings
4 yr payoff for solar cells that can have a 10+yr lifespan is pretty good IMHO.
The main thing is the final net payout. Solar is >1 today. It is practical. The next step is whether it is sufficiently desirable. As the net payout number continues to rise, solar and solar/wind setups will begin to dominate over combustion based generation.
Wind is already >1 net payout, but the cost is biased to more maintenance over time which is a problem for many deployments.
Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.
Having to truck around offspring is another matter. I know from experience.
Have you seen this thing? Its a friggin' golf cart. There are a few of them in my neighbourhood, every time I park next to one I have this urge to tip the bloody thing over.
Rolling coffin. A motorcycle would be safer. At least on a bike you can usually jump off before you hit.
That would be unnecessarily pesimistic but still far more honest than his claims.
FasTracks will be your friend, it sounds like.
A decent solar panel will also set you back anywhere between $50k and $500k.
In yen, maybe. You can get a decent panel for a couple hundred bucks.
*sigh* back to work...
Wrong number of cars, but otherwise the point stands. Cars that are powered by the grid can always run about as cleanly as the grid. You can phase out coal, gas, and oil plants and replace them gradually, whereas upgrading a car is generally an all-or-nothing affair. And anyway, as power plants go, even the dirtiest coal-burning power source is still an order of magnitude cleaner and more efficient than a fleet of cars generating an equivalent amount of electricity. And there are many clean power sources that can be hooked up to the grid but are not portable (large-scale solar, tidal, wind, geothermal, hydro, etc, etc).
Electric and H2 cars appeal to my professional sense as a programmer. Their modularity is extreme compared to a IC engine. You can run an electric car off of old-school lead-acid batteries. Or replace them with lithium-ion or whatever, and nothing else about the car needs to change. And of course the batteries don't care where you got the electricity from in the first place. Likewise a fuel cell doesn't care how you store the H2 (compressed, liquid, metal hydride) or where you got it from (made from oil, broken up from water using algae or electricity, generated on the fly in the car from solar panels, whatever). You can mix and match solutions that are optimum for your needs, and whatever part is lacking in efficiency or cleanliness can be replaced or upgraded without having to make drastic changes to the rest of the system.
Dyolf Knip
have you looked in the mirror?
/. is packet to the gills with jealous little losers. People who are so bound up in class envy that they turn it into vile hatred of anyone who obviously doesn't live like they do.
I see hatred, class envy, and general jealousy.
New trucks have for some time had their bumpers lowered so that the impact zone will be more survivable for non-SUVs.
I think the part that offends me the most is your view that their family size is not warranted? Should we just invoke an enviro-fascist state and invoke rules stating how many kids you can have, what you can drive, how much you can drive, how much you can use your homes AC, what foodstuffs you can buy, or where you can live?
It is vindictive hate mongers like you that are far worse for society than someone driving a suburban. Your post is only insightful as
If your so damned worried about Mr. Suburban then I suggest you move close to where you work so you don't have to see them on the road. After all you want to do your part to protect the environment and have a safer existance, right?
Your the type who will rail on this guy one moment and then rail on someone else who happens to meet the solutions for the first. In other words, no one elses actions are ever going to be good enough for you unless they have less that you.
Whatever, just get off your "I'm the center of the fucking universe" soapbox and join the real world.
Karma to BURN.... damn this place isn't full of insightful ideas, it is full of selfish inane ideas.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I get even better mileage in my plug-in hybrid!
I force mine to run purely on battery until the batteries run down, then switch to the regular gas/hybrid system.
I only drive it a couple miles per day, never running down the batteries!
I get INFINITE MPG!
The only draw back is having to drain out the stale gas once per year or so.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
The Prius and Insight are parallel hybirds. The engine driveshaft directly drives the wheels. In a serial hybrid, only the electric motor drives the wheels. This way, the engine can be specifically engineered to run the generator in its most fuel efficient part of its operation envelope.
First they brought you poor spelling. . .
Then they brought you poor grammar. . .
And no, prepare yourselves for -
*drumroll*
A POOR GRASP OF BASIC THERMODYNAMICS!
If you still think a hydrogen powered vehicle is a good idea, you've been listening to the media and ignoring all the issues. First, hydrogen is simply a temporary energy storage. It is not a primary energy source, but rather is produced by elctrolysis of water or by reducing Natural Gas. Electrolysis is very expensive, so hydrogen is usually made from Nat Gas. In both cases, the energy content of the H2 produced is far less than the energy of the materials and energy used to produce it. Plus there is that little problem of Hydrogen having a very poor energy/weight ratio.
Ethanol is a great gasoline additive to reduce emissions, but if you crunch the numbers head to head against biodiesel as a supplemental or replacement fuel, at least in this country where we can't grow sugar cane, biodiesel wins.
0 .html
As stricter sulfur limits phase in for fossil diesel over the next few years, you'll see the SULEV/PZEV manufacturing market respond with diesel/electric hybrids... one of the reasons why Toyota's 2004 and later hybrid drivetrain was made to be interchangible. Current levels of sulfur prevent this by making emissions control technology too expensive.
At that point biodiesel will experience a surge since most of the factors that make diesels unpopular in the "clean burning" crowd will no longer be valid -- and most any diesel will take biodiesel straight or mixed with fossil diesel without any mods or adjustments. The whole market is just waiting and gearing up for the time when those diesel sulfur limits take effect in the U.S.
http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,66949,0
Someone had to do it.
From what I can determine, the best power plants are about 60% more efficient than the best automotive engines. I'm not sure that qualifies as A LOT all in caps, but it is substantial. But when you factor in the losses in the motor, transmission lines, charger and batteries, I suspect the net benefit to electric cars powered by fossil fuel powered power plants is extremely small.
And if your power plant burns diesel fuel, and your car engine burns diesel fuel, the general method that it's converted into mechanical energy will be similar. The power plant may use a slightly different engine, but the general heat engine principals will remain, and the waste products will be the same as well. (The power plant may be able to filter them better, however.)
(Most fossil fuel power plants are powered by coal. Not many coal powered cars, so an apples to apples comparison is difficult. There are some diesel powered power plants, however, especially in the smaller ones.)
I'd love to hear some more typical values of the efficiencies involved, if you can provide some. Please do give some citations rather than just presenting some figures.
I'd really like to see how it performs w/o being plugged in overnight. After all, when you plug into an outlet, that power has to be created by some form of burning fossil fuels. Storing that power just so you can say you get higher fuel economy is cheating.
If I filled an 18-wheeler chock full of batteries. Then, charged them to capacity, I bet I could easily clear 1000 MPG for a short distance, but what would that prove (besides quintupling my electric bill)
Jesus freaking christ (or any other mythological creature of your choice), just rent an SUV for your trips. Fewer would have to be manufactured, reducing the polution caused in building your gas hogs.
A couple of sedans will get your family to dinner if you want all 7 together. Worst case, a minivan for the around town use by the family and a fuel efficient work car for whoever has to drive further for their job.
It's how my wife and I move a family of 8 around. If we want dinner out, there are plenty of nice places between my work and home, so we meet there after I get off work to have enough room to move the family about. For our occassional date out alone (relatives provide the babysitting), we just use my car.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
stop being a fag(british for ciggarette asshole)
You laugh, but a family member, who grew up in Nicaragua, had a similar experience. There was a certain town in the mountains where to get there from any other place was ALL uphill and to get out of there and go somewhere else it was ALL downhill. No stops, no big intersections, just road.
r get it features where it has what I can only describe as a MPG-ometer, showing you gas usage right underneath the tachometer (8 MPG to 40 MPG), as well as an onboard computer that calculates overall mileage (I'm at about 23 MPG since I last reset it years ago). Well, when it was new, it was always nice to play around and try to get the most miles out of the tank. Currently I get maybe 300 mi. per fillup. I once used the devices above to get about 400 mi. for the fillup, and I was doing the same kind of work-commute, odd-weekend-chores roundabouts. Too bad for me, since I am irresponsible and love to accelerate quickly, so I got tired of it after the first time of having a half week of constant observation of dials and doodas to make sure I got my money's worth.
Some of the taxi drivers during that time (mid-70's, think high gas prices), after getting past the town limits and sections with traffic, would turn off the car, put it in neutral, and coast the rest of the way. It wasn't quite 250 miles (maybe 20-30), but they went a good stretch without using gas, so their mileage was X/0 MPG.
My car has one of those really-cool-when-it's-new-but-later-you-mostly-fo
Now I work from home so I fill up once every 10 days or so.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I just don't trust other people on the road enough to have my primary mode of transportation not have me surrounded by steel. I know quite a few people killed on cycles by the "other guy", either backing out without looking or blowing stop signs etc.
I know what you mean. Almost 9 years ago while riding my bike, pedal power, I was hit by someone driving one of those appartment mover vans and while I was in a coma the docs told my family it'd be a miracle if I lived. NOT!!! Now I'm a TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury suvivor. Witnesses to the accident said the driver who hit me was weaving all over the road and didn't stop when he hit, that some had to chase him down the road and force him to stop. He was a diabetic and supposely had a seizer while driving. Come to find out that he fled one state because the state issued an arrest warrant for him and that he had caused two similar accidents previously as well as had been hospitalised twice.
At the tyme of the accident I typically rode my bike about 100 miles a week but would put in 200+ during a week every few weeks. I rode it to school, work, shopping, and recreation. In the nine years since I don't know if I rode as much as 200 miles altogether.
FalconShould there be a Law?
See How Much Cleaner than a Gasoline Car is a PHEV Charged from the Dirty (Coal) Grid?
In addition, the ULEV rating does not take into account all the costs associated with getting the gasoline into the ULEV car.
Has anyone tried putting some solar panels on the roof of a hybrid to increase the mileage?
A decent solar panel will also set you back anywhere between $50k and $500k. And even with a $500k panel, one gets only 3-4kW out of it under best circumstances, barely enough to sustain an effort in the 4-5HP area.
I don't know where you got those numbers but solar panels are a lot cheaper than that. Doing a real quick google I found this:
Isofoton 150W 24 volt 25 amp solar panels for $675.00 each or 4 for $2,600.00. Using $2,600 for four panels 20 panels wired in series will generate 3kw for $13,000.
That's nowhere near $50k you said for one panel. Having said that, it's cheaper and easier to conserve. One way to conserve is by changing light bulbs to CFL, compact floresent lights, they use 1/4 of what "regular" incandecent lights do and provide just as much lighting. That's what I use, 12 and 15 watt CFLs that illuminate as much as 60 and 75 watt incandecent light bulbs. LED light bulbs use even less energy. There are LED light bulbs that use less than 10% of the energy an incandecent and still provide as much light.
FalconShould there be a Law?
One thing that people seem to forget with Batteries. THEY ARE TOXIC WASTE!! From Car Batteries down to your everyday AA battery. A quote from http://www.cawrecycles.org/ "Virtually all household batteries, including rechargeable and one-time use (alkaline) batteries, contain hazardous materials and their disposal in landfill is prohibited. As many as 300 million batteries are landfilled in California each year."
Yeap! My injury, a TBI, is permanent. That is until neurology makes significant advanced, which is one reason I support stem cell research. You recall those antidrug commercials with eggs, showing scrambled eggs or eggs in a frying pan a commentator says "This is your brain on drug"? Well my brain are those scrambled and fried eggs. I suffer from bad memory amoung other things. At the tyme of the accident I was in college majoring in Computer Engineering. If I were to continue with that I'd have to retake a lot of classes and learning is a lot harder now. I used to tutor but now I need tutors. However while I'm back in school I don't want continue with CE, at least just CE. Instead I want to get work on a multidisiplinary degree where I can combine different fields of study.
FalconShould there be a Law?
there are government subsidy programs for hybrids I believe.
Yeap, the energy bill that ended up on Bush's desk contains tax credits to consumers who buy hydrids. These credits range from $1,700 to $3,000. And I think some states offer tax credits as well.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm not sure where you get your figures from. I work in the electricity power industry, and as a rule of thumb, a coal-fired plant operator will be doing very well indeed if they manage to get 35% efficiency out of it. 32-33% is more usual. I suspect you missed out the thermal efficiency of converting heat to motion, where you are limited by thermodynamics to approx 50% (off the top of my head). Of course, that's still much better than an internal combustion engine, so your not wrong in your conclusion.
A combined-cycle gas turbine by contrast can get close to 60% if I remember correctly. (But I think you were talking about open-cycle which is indeed very inefficient.)
If I was at work right now, I could check these figures, but I don't think they are too far out.
Incidently, here in the UK, it is the CCGTs (and nukes) that provide the base load. CCGTs are actually very poor at load-following because they have little stored energy to draw on. A coal plant on the other hand can ramp up load very quickly just by opening up the steam valves. The pressure starts to drop in the boiler, but there's plenty of time to increase the firing rate before it becomes a problem. Most load-following and two-shifting is now done by coal.
(One other point - of the 550MW of a typical unit, 50MW of that is lost to power auxiliary plant - a bit more than a few conveyor belts and lights. The feedwater pump on its own is responsible for a significant portion of that.)
I'd love to hear some more typical values of the efficiencies involved, if you can provide some. Please do give some citations rather than just presenting some figures.
Why should I do your homework?
What is this, the old Tom Sawyer's fence trick?
Some good samaritans have already given you some reasons, so I'll not repeat them.
You sound like an intelligent guy, and unusual here, polite (even if a little testy). I'm sure that you can think of five or ten advantages of power plants over car engines by yourself in a few minutes, but I'd bet that you can't find one inverse example.
And that without taking in account that car engines are very, very rarely well mantained.
Aren't you playing Devil's advocate?
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
if it's feasible, i think you should seriously consider taking the time to do a little work on your driveway. i've lived in a few spots in rural, hill-country vermont, i've lived way off the road in south texas, and i currently live way way out in the bush in alaska...
yeah, some people have trucks, and when you're really "out in the country" those people tend to need them for one reason or another. but there are also plenty of people driving honda civics, etc., "out in the country". you'd be surprised where a decent car can go on a daily basis without sustaining damage. part of it is learning to drive sensibly. the other really important part is gravel.
part of the reason the geo is "unsafe": other people's choices. (it's definitely not the best car out there, those things have some problems.) but just think about this: it *shouldn't* be that unsafe to drive a vehicle that's optimal on a pvaed road on that same paved road, right? i don't want my purchasing decisions to be informed by an arms race with my neighbors, and i refuse to let that happen even if it means taking my life in my hands. i want the *freedom* that making decisions for myself gives me, that's what we all want. the issue is that some people's decisions affect more people rather than less, and so those decisions should be subject to greater scrutiny and greater criticism. make sense?
so you might fall into the minority of truck owners that actually need the truck. just try to step back from the argument if that's the case, nobody's going to take away your vehicle. you might take shit for it that you don't deserve - and in that case, i suggest you take a stand against the people who do deserve it. if you do that, even with just a bumper sticker, i think you'll find that most (if not all) of the people giving you shit before are now more likely to give you a pat on the back.
it's just that there are so many idiot-sheep out there, it's easy to lose track of the fact that some hummer drivers might not be. it's especially easy when your car goes home to the backcountry and their hummer goes home to a big house in the burbs.
it's all about appropriate technology.
[|]
Don't forget hydroelectric. I pay about 4.6 cents per kWh (or about $0.061/kWh this month if you count taxes and fees) thanks to Grand Coulee Dam. It rearranges the landscape a little, but it doesn't pollute, and it's renewable as long as water keeps obeying the laws of physics.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Oh, and see if you can downgrade to a smaller sized garbage can for pickup, that IS the advantage of recycle, if it wasn't for recycle my family would have well over 3 huge trash cans every other week of garbage to throw out.
But does it save you money by reducing the amount of trash you have? Do you pay the same no matter how much trash you have or do you pay by weight or volumn? Do you pay or do you get paid for recycling? Personally I prefer and try to recycle as much as I can, after I reduce what I can, but I don't believe I should have to pay to recycle. If anything I should be paid to recycle. I recall as a kid I used to walk along the sides of roads collecting trash and recyclables, the trash I'd throwaway and the glass, cans, and such I'd take down to a recycling place and get paid by weight. I see no reason I should have to pay to recycle.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Any act not done for money is an act of voluntarily enslaving yourself
What, you don't have any hobbies you don't get paid for? I guess you get paid for /.ing then.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Hydro is one of the alternatives that works now, but conditions have to be good for it to work. Most of the places where conditions are good are already in use.
It helps, but it won't scale much higher than it is and it's not even a majority now.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
If everyone who already owns a car got rid of it and replaced it with a hybrid car, the cars would cost $100,000, China would consume all the world's oil and fill the atmosphere with sulfur making the new cars, and Japan would invent something better than hybrid cars, leaving u.s. in prehistory again.
Most of the cost in a hybrid car is the petroleum and coal required to mine the iron, lithium, manganese, copper, aluminum, cast the iron, weld the steel, melt the plastics, synthesize the battery dielectrics, and paint it. Then in 5 years the Lithium Manganese battery has to be replaced.
So when you junk your current car and pay China $20,000 to build a hybrid car, you're consuming $20,000 of oil and coal and saying you're not because you're buying a finished product.
Unfortunately, despite the parallel universe over at ap.org, China counts just as much on the energy scoreboard as u.s.. whether you burn oil h.e.r.e. or pay China to burn it there.
Then you're in favor of adding a "consumption" tax to account for the real cost of products. Add on a tax per pound for garbage, but allow free drop off of recyclables. Add on extra gas taxes. Add on disposal taxes on sale of anything that poses specific problems (e.g. CRTs).
Yeap! I'm very much in favor of a consumption tax (sales tax on nonessential items) and user fees. And pollution taxes. Get rid of income taxes!!! Well except maybe for those who make 100, 1000, or maybe 10,000 tyme what the lowest paid fulltime worker in a business makes. But at least in the USA if government were to follow the limits put on it by the USA Constitution then there wouldn't be this perceived need for high taxes.
The free market won't do it, but those are real costs that a "rational" person would pay (unless it is voluntary, thus allowing freeloaders).
A true free market would do it, however there isn't a true free market. What exists today is the corporate aristocracy Thomas Jefferson warned of and which Adam Smith and Thomas Paine would of railed against.
FalconShould there be a Law?
4 years isn't long in power generation. Coal powerstations probably don't pay off for 10 years, and they have a much more energy dense fuel, and they usually get it for free.
:)
The fastest pay off is probably wind, and that is still 6 months. The problem is people who want everything now (or at least within 3 years). A bit of future planning goes a long way
The problem with telling people to wait until a better tech comes along is that it is always going to be better in the future. I presume you haven't bought a computer yet either...
(Yes, I am quite aware of TiDye panels - I was at the first presentation of the technology, developed in Canberra)
I'm not going to try to argue that people have "no right to be angry" about practically anything. That's patently ridiculous, since emotions are a basic part of being human.
But "nobody is seeking to ban SUVs"? Are you sure about that? I'd call the environmentalist actions of the folks on the west coast who were smearing human feces on the door handles of every SUV they found parked in a lot, or dumping cans of paint on them pretty darn close. Groups like Greenpeace have continually battled with auto-makers to try to convince them to stop building SUVs too. They've done their best to bad-mouth them and get a boycott going on their purchase.
Who are these people to profess to know better than I as an SUV owner what *my* needs are for a vehicle? And not only that, but the people getting "offended" by seeing SUVs in service probably need to educate themselves a little bit more on the "big picture".
At least the typical SUV driver is doing something useful with his/her vehicle when you see him/her driving around. Meanwhile, we have literally hundreds of auto races held each year with cars much less fuel eficient than any SUV, not to mention burning through brakes, tires, and everything else at an incredibly fast rate - and you don't see anyone picketing out in front of the Indy or NASCAR races, do you? This is, technically, a needless waste of precious resources for nothing more than entertainment purposes.
My point is, it's all relative.... And if someone gets enough enjoyment and perceived usefulness out of driving their SUV that only gets >18 MPG, well - so be it. As I said before, they're being taxed proportionally higher than anyone driving a more fuel efficient car or truck anyway.
"People" do not want underpowered small and annoying hybrid cars.
Hybrid cars enter the fast lane
By Holly Hubbard Preston International Herald Tribune
SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 2005
Mark Cappellano, a vintner in the Napa Valley of northern California, waited eight months for his new car, a 2004 Toyota Prius. After he took delivery of the car, which runs on a hybrid system incorporating a gas engine and an electric motor, Cappellano drove it to Los Angeles and back - a round trip of more than 800 miles, or 1,280 kilometers.
Gas Prices Soar; Drivers Look For Alternatives
Hybrid Cars Are Not Only Solution
...
The Prius still has a waiting list, and the newest Toyota hybrid, the Highlander SUV, is catching on, too.
...
Even though the hybrids are getting a lot of press, drivers are getting more interested in conventional cars that get good gas mileage.
Toyota plans 10 new hybrid vehicles; sets long-term 1 mln-unit sales target
TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan (AFX) - Toyota Motor Co said it is developing on 10 new hybrid vehicles, after the segment saw strong sales in the US market.
Two years after it was introduced, Toyota's hugely successful Prius still has a waiting list and some buyers are waiting more than six months for delivery.
These are just some of the results I got when I news googled hybrids sales "waiting list". There are people lining up to have their names added to waiting lists for hybrids. While not every one is looking at hybrid some are also looking at convential cars that get good mileage.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Terrible idea. Being light grey (rather than black) is one of concrete's advantages. It would be far smarter to simply make lines on the road much darker.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Long term, single-crystal silicon probably isn't a winner.
(Yes, I am quite aware of TiDye panels - I was at the first presentation of the technology, developed in Canberra)
Hate to tell you, they didn't come up with the idea of dye-sensitized TiO2 solar cells.
nmb: having reread my response to you I think I owe you an apology for making a personal attack, especially with regard to your kids. I could've said everything of substance I wanted to say without being so mean spirited, especially since your post in no way deserved such a response. So, while I disagree with what you said, I really shouldn't have said it the way I did and I'm sorry.
Some people say "wear a helmet". Well almost all of the paramedics I know basically call those "brain buckets".
All of the docs and therapists I saw that said anything about wearing a helmet said one wouldn't of had helped me at all as I wasn't even hit in the head. I had just left campus after class and was wearing my backpack, and the side view mirror of the van hit my backpack which sent me flying. The injury to my brain was caused by the sudden force of being hit then hitting the ground which caused the brain to move violently as well as swell much like shaking a soda or beer bottle or can.
Do I want to be a vegetable the rest of my life? Hell no. So I will keep the majority of my biking offroad
My sister told me that after I came out of the coma I screamed at everyone to just let me die. And I still wish they had, almost 9 years later. I love liberty, being active, and intelligence so much and would rather be dead than loose them. Though I love being off road, having loved scuba diving (and cliff diving), camping and hiking, and rock clinbing I wasn't into offroad bike riding. I was more into road racing and touring.
By the way, good luck with your pursuit of a degree and it is amazing to me that you are a TBI survivor and are accomplishing your goals you have mentioned. I wish you the best of luck.
Thanks. I'm a bit stubborn, which is why I lived according to my therapists and can't see living if I don't have goals and strive to achieve them. It's been a real struggle to keep going though. I've been put on probation and was almost suspended in college, not because my gpa wasn't high enough but because I audited and repeated too many classes. When I was put on suspension my counselor helped me with an appeal. Though I don't know why it was accepted it may of been because I had one more class to take to finish the degree at the community college I was attending, Java II which I took this spring. Knowing I was going to need help for it I talked to my counselor and she sent me to another counselor in the tutoring office before classes started. He spent several weeks trying to get a tutor for me but wasn't able to find one. I also talked to the professor the first day of class and though he tried to help he couldn't find anyone either. The professor never gave us our grades for assignments, quizs, or tests so I didn't know how I was doing in class and I didn't get my grade after the finals though he sent me email saying because I didn't meet all the requirements for the final he gave me 50% on it. It required someone using a webpage to submit a form then for the server to access an MS Acess database and generate a webpage based on the data, it was for a marina business to keep track of boats, customers, docks, services, and slips. Because I don't have Access or had access to it I couldn't test my programs to make sure they worked.
Now I'm planning on transfering to a local university and want to meet handicapped as well as other counselors before I apply for admission. Because I'm concerned about being admitted I want to get my application as good as I can, I'm concerned about being on probation and having to appeal suspension.
Falcon
Quality of life is more important than quantity of life.
Should there be a Law?
You forgot to mention all the environmental evils inherent in large scale cattle ranching. Each deer hunted that prevents a beef purchase makes you that much more of a treehugging longhair.
Hunting, yes. Bravo! However you sterotype doesn't always fit. Though it's not as long as I'd like it others say my hair is long and I've been called a hippy, been known to hug a tree and care about the environment. However I also love hunting, especially venison, wild boar, and gator tail.
Shush, don't let my secret out.
FalconShould there be a Law?
A Spectrum is actually made by Isuzu like the later Storm. Isuzu cars have a very good reputation for gas mileage.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
I'd love to see the refs for that.
In Australia the 4 stroke mower is the exception rather than the norm. Are there studies showing the opposite elsewhere?
Wolja Future Tombstone: Shit happened then I died
That was originally done by Cadillac and generally considered to be a bad idea.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
That said, for most people the path you have taken is the better one and I thought hard about just getting a corolla instead. In the end the coolness factor of the hybrid won out for me.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Great, so he's "saving fuel" by having all those batteries in there... NOT.
Batteries ARE NO DIFFERENT than petroleum: they're stored chemical potential energy, which is released when you react it.
In the case of petroleum, when you react - burn - it, its byproducts are just gone as vapor and you have to fill up the tank with more of the stuff to keep driving. In the case of batteries, when you react them they can be "recharged" by using energy from another source to reverse the chemical reaction and "reset" the potential stored energy. However, the energy required to recharge them is MORE than you get back out when you react them again, and that energy has to come from SOMEWHERE. That somewhere is an electrical generation plant burning fossil fuel to create electricity!
In short, he's in fact using MORE fuel now with those batteries to drive his car the same distance, rather than less, because recharging batteries takes more energy than it returns and that energy is coming from even more fossil fuels being burned elsewhere. The only difference is that he's not burning it all directly himself now, and so foolishly thinks he's doing productive.
What a short-sighted idiot.
If you REALLY want to do the Earth a BIG FAT FAVOUR go and recycle your body by disposing of yourself using a tree branch and a piece of rope made of natural, recyclable fibers. And, for Gaia's sake, don't procreate before you do!
Past 4 years? Every system I know of is older than 4 years, and gives good service (I know lots of people in the bush with RAPS).
:)
re TiDye, AFAIK sta were the first to market. There is a difference between a prototype and a commercial product. Anyway, whoever invented or makes money, I don't care, I just want them to be ubiquitous
I would really like one that got a 0-62 of say 8 seconds. This should be do-able with a nice powerful electric motor and allowing it to drain more power in the acceleration phase, one up to speed it should be able to cruise using a comparable amount of energy.
Bio-fuels would seem to be the way forwards as they are virtualy carbon nutral (alowing for processing). On a side note NPower in the UK is running an experiment where they pay farmers to grow willow which is made into a fule that can be burnt in an existing coal fire station.
Finaly is it me or are many (not all but especialy batter-only)of the eco-consept cars so gay looking even gay people would not drive them due to it looking too overtly gay.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
smart cars are available in US from ZAP: http://zapworld.com/
Cylinder shutdown was poorly done in the day of carbeurators and purely mechanical control systems.
It's done much better in the days of computer controlled electronic ignition and fuel control. Cadillac has been doing it since the early 90's in their Northstar engine's "limp-home" mode. Honda has been doing it for a few years with their Japanese market Inspire (US Accord) to boost highway mpg, cruising on 3 cylinders instead of 6. The new V6 Hybrid Accord uses this method as well.
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
An (electrical) engine for each wheel? Less weight but, what if one of them fails in a highway? Not necessary a big failure, just a wire that is not ok.
The best way to beat the terroist threat yet, without a shot fired. No money, no guns. Need to start a grassroots letter writing campaign to Detroit and let them know that the next car you buy will be a plug-in hybrid and you hope it will be American. If they receive enough e-mails they will not be able to ignore.
It seems everyone is speaking about electric cars, but what about alcohol instead of gas? Less toxic (water+CO2), renewable and (maybe) as cheap as gas or electricity. It doesn't need to be "scotch quality" ;-) just as pure as needed. And it can be any kind of alcohol.
Is there some problem with this engines?
cajones = drawers
Maybe you wanted to say cOjones.
That's a good question, and I have a couple of points to address it. First of all, they use these things in on industrial size trucks and equipment, so they must have addressed that issue already. Secondly, we're talking about torque. Currently, most cars already have a limited slip differential. You know the saying, "moving power from the wheels that slip to the wheels that grip." This would be the same thing, and the "dead" motor would simply coast. Certainly, they would not make the wires in question easily broken. Currently, there is a ton of wiring in cars that don't fail easily. Hydrolics have been replaced in aircraft since the late 70s with the F-16, and the success there has been folowed in other aircraft. Another point is that the power brakes on your car, all cars, use a fairly fragile hose that one leak will make useless. One nick in the hose, and no brakes in the whole system; hence the emergency break, which is a steel cable backup for the hydrolics. My last point is that the electric cars like the EV-1 by GM, I think, have used this exact design. The big three have already addressed this issue. Having all 4 wheels have the motor would prevent the failure of one to cause a catastrophy. Even then, the loss of the electric load that one dead motor would represent would be noticible by the system, and then a smart designer could design the system to react to it.
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
Technology won't get anywhere with more fuel efficient cars until taxes for road maintenance are collected differently. Even a simple doubling of fuel economy cuts the revenue in half for road maintenance.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
A couple of years back I purchased a 1979 Full-Size Bronco with a 400M-block engine (400ci, or 6.6L) - the thing sucks gas down like there is no tommorow, you can watch the gauge drop as you drive. I suppose when it was made, this wasn't a big issue. It has a 25 gallon tank on it, gets maybe 10-12mpg on a good day. The thing runs solid - I bought it for the four-wheel drive capability. I sit here wondering if I am going to be able to get the rest of it fixed and actually do some four-wheelin' (it needs a ton of suspension work, plus some steering issues need to be corrected, before I am willing to take it out on a trail) - or whether by the time I do get it done, it will cost me over $100.00 to fill the tank up...
Even if it does, I bought it for occasional off-road fun only, so gas would have to get up to about $8.00 a gallon before I would really be jittery on fueling it up...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
You have a 5-minute commute, and you drive? That's just sick.
Had a Storm, myself. Well, actually my wife had it before we met. We had two carseats in the back of that thing (pop the hatchback to buckle the kids in!).
To the point: Seems like average gas mileage was about 30 in that thing, but we certainly didn't drive with an aim to conserve gas.
A great little car. Would've taken us all out in an accident, but it was a great little car.
Still have one (for better or for worse). Actually, the worst thing about it is the price of dealer parts for it. It's too bad GM stopped selling the Storm. I heard a conspiracy theory once that stated GM's reason for discontinuing the Storm as that it was outselling all of GM's domestic coupes combined during the years it was offered. It'd be really sad if that were true.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
Interesting. Thank you for the clarification.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
Let us just say that the domestic tranquility saved by not pressing the point far exceeds the satisfaction I might gain by instructing my beloved in my magnificent hybrid milage management skills.
This is a fairly well-known hoax.
I'm responding mostly to keep track of this post. Thank you for posting this, very informative!
All of the enginewow links are on this page: http://www.newpath4.com/a2_environmentalclimateeng inecarbodydesigndoesnotusegasolinedieselcrudeoilhy drogenbanksofheavypoisonousbatteriesahenryfordkind ofnopollutionengine.htm and my Challenge to the Nations is here: http://www.newpath4.com/opec_crude_oil_dilemma_or_ opportunity.htm . But in a nutshell, my challenge is for various countries, companies, nations, corporate execs, to figure ways to make money on the new ecological/environmentally friendly inventions we now have... which is meant to include the thought also... that inventors shouldn't be snubbed or "locked out" just because they don't work under a company logo. The United States Patent and Trademark people should have something set up for lower fees to encourage and help the independent, non-grant$ inventor. I guess the GOVERNMENT shouldn't really want to be GUILTY OF DISCRIMINATION, especially since discrimination hurts everyone. The USPTO needs to widen the doors, put up some wheelchair ramps so someone besides Philip Morris can apply for a patent. Well, anyway, it sounded real good when I wrote it. Thanks for checking my links.
Ever see a Diesel Locomotive?
Gas turbines are super efficient when they're running and the vehicle (whether it be a Jet, Car, Tank, or Locomotive) is moving at a constant speed however they're extremely inefficient when they idle and when their speed is varied. Since locomotives often spend quite a bit of time idling while waiting for signals, they'd be consuming a ton of fuel.
If diesel engines don't work well on freeways, then why does every single truck have a diesel engine?
I think you are about 10 years out of date. Here in the UK, I drive a Renault Clio 1.5 dCi (diesel). There is no delay starting the engine from cold, even on the coldest winter days. Technology has moved forwards.
They've been fixed. No longer do modern diesels have to heat up the cylinder block before they can start. The 1.5 dCi engine of my 4 year old Renault Clio starts as soon as I insert the key even on the coldest day of winter. On my regular 7 mile commute to work, I get 68 miles to the (UK) gallon, which is pretty much on par with the official figures for the car. (I don't call that 'very inefficient'.)
From what I understand, they have reduced the time needed by starting the glow plugs when you unlock the door so that by the time you get in, etc. it should be ready to go. I haven't had it through a winter yet, so I can't comment on any starting lag when cold.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
To be fair, my car has the same light, but it seems to make no difference whether I wait for it to go out or not. I can confirm though that the glow plugs don't come on when you unlock the door (not in the Renault anyway).
Basically, I think common rail diesels don't need to heat up the cylinder, but I'm no expert.