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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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.
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.
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
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!
"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."
Ask for a refund on your high school education, as they failed to deliver.
737 kg/m3 divided by 264.17 is the number of kilograms per gallon of gasoline. Multiplying the 2.79kg that a gallon of gasoline weighs by the net energy content of 44 MJ/kg gives you 122 MJ per gallon of gasoline, or the equivalent of 34 kWh of electricity.
I pay about USD 20 cents per kWh of electricity with tax, so the electrical equivalent for a gallon of gasoline would be about USD 6.80. Or, I can buy gasoline at about USD 2.15.
The more interesting question is: For each of those joules combusted in the engine, how many of them make it to the rubber/road interface (according to one FAQ about 0.2) and for each of the joules my ersatz-electric car pulls out of the wall socket, how many of THEM make it into the rubber/road interface (according to another FAQ about 0.6). Of course regen braking lets me use some of those joules over and over again, how much of which is highly dependent on driving conditions.
So, it turns out that the utility-electric-sourced car is about $11.30 per mega-newton-meter/second at the road surface, while the gasoline car is at about $10.75 - although it would not take very much regeneration at ALL to push that to the other side of the equation.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
So, have you ever driven a Prius? I have, for the past four years. I don't have trouble with city traffic, or with highway traffic. It is the easiest driving car that I have ever owned.
Last Monday I put on 280 miles at 70 mph, and got 49.5 mpg. Sure, I got passed by a few Suburbans, but I passed a bunch, too. Our Prius is quite sensitive to who is driving it; I get significantly better milage than my wife. Also, in winter the milage drops substantially (colder battery? alcohol in the gas?).
It's true that the cost of the hybrid is such that it is hard to make a strong argument for buying a hybrid on strict economic grounds. However the estupidass US automakers have been so distracted with making ever larger SUVs that I simply couldn't bear to give them a dime when we needed a new car several years ago.
Look: my Prius is not a sports car, obviously. I'm not going to haul a horse trailer over Snoqualmie Pass with it. But it is really ignorant to describe these hybrids as lemons. They are extremely good at what they are designed to be good at, and that turns out to be just about 95 percent of all my family's driving needs. My Prius is comfortable, thrifty, fun to drive, and interesting to drive.
The single largest problem with the Prius is that it is so quiet that pedestrians and bicyclists don't hear it.
...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?
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.
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.
A motorcycle on the other hand is quite different. When you lay a motorcycle on it's side, there's a hundred pounds of human flesh and blood acting as a wear plate, before you scratch the paint on the motorcycle. The human rider is directly exposed to the energy of the impact, a very efficient transfer of energy.
As an extra side bonus, when humans act as wear plates to protect the motorcycle, they are also helping with the culling process, improving the gene pool. I always get a big grin on my face when I see a big dumb biker riding down the road, jeans and a t-shirt, no helmet. Nature will always prevail, the culling process is natural in that scenario. The only real problem these days is the sneaking up of license ages. If they keep letting it sneak up higher, pretty soon, the culling process wont be able to take effect until AFTER those folks have propogated the genes that contain utter stupidity. But I have faith in nature, it'll find another vector around this problem....
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...
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.
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
My understanding is that smartcars pass US safety standards just fine (they actually have pretty good safety features and perform better than a lot of standard US cars in crash tests). The issue is more to do with emission standards. It's not that they have particularly bad emissions, in fact a major study ranked the smartcar's tailpipe the least polluting in the world, ahead of more than 1,200 cars. It's just that it doesn't mean particulars of the US standard. Apparently the engine can converted so that it does, but Smart claims that would force the price above the $US14,000 mark they aim at.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
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.
It doesn't just piss you off, it really really pisses me off...and I live in Texas.
I wish I could just purchase a car without all of that extra safety shit and roll the dice on whether or not I survive. In return, I get a car with a huge discount. But noooooooo, the Big Government wont give me that option. So I must pay the "safety tax"
Life is not for the lazy.
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.
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."
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.