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When Hybrids Do (And Don't) Make Sense
prostoalex writes "Recently NPR, CNN Money and Wall Street Journal Online have all dedicated some time and space to discussing hybrid vehicle pros and cons. It seems that hybrids do not make much financial sense if (a) you're buying after getting yourself into a debt with not really good interest on a car loan, (b) your battery requires replacement after being out of warranty, (c) your daily commute is not too long, so the price markup you pay for a hybrid does not translate into long-term gas savings." From the CNN article: "They may make a social statement you're interested in, but if you want to save money because of rising gas prices, you're heading down the wrong road, at least for now."
The main advantages of owning a hybrid now are that early adopters will drive the market to create a demand for innovation in the marketplace. The NPR discussion did point this out, but failed to hilight (at least some of) the reasons I have noted above, though I must admit I was too busy pay attention to the road on my *really long* commute to be sure that I didn't miss some of the speakers' points.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Maybe for some people, buying a car that pollutes less is about trying to harm our environment less so that we don't end up like LA rather than saving money or "making a statement".
I'd rather be lucky than good.
What would be the right 'road' to go down? (assuming that because of job or where you live cutting out driving altogether is unrealistic).
Several people have been charging their hybrid's batteries overnight from the AC mains, and for a situation where the commuting distance is short, this makes plenty of sense. You may never even have to start the engine, which will still of course be available for longer trips.
Google some basic concepts of capital budgeting like Internal Rate of Return or Net Present Value and figure out if a hybrid is the right financial decision for you. For me it was not.
Buy a diesel. And if it's hard or impossible in your region, petition your idiot politicians to loosen up the emissions regulations (diesel emissions, even on older diesels, are generally speaking a lot better than gas emissions, yet diesel's more highly regulated).
Better efficiency (often) than hybrids overall, it's good on highways too, and it's far more cost-effective, too.
Fuck it
http://www.kfor.com/Global/story.asp?s=3390503
/. but didn't get around to it.
Was reading about how this guy gets 120MPG. Was going to submit it to
Is the cost of a hybrid versus other ideas worth it? Anyone look into this freezing method?
a Kung Fu Monkey blog entry from a month ago said this:
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
If you wait until Jan. 1st of next year (in the US), the federal government will give you a fat tax credit with the purchase of a hybrid vehicle. This changes the financial equation considerably. My understanding is the tax credit won't cover the full incremental cost of moving up to a hybrid, but is usually more than half of it.
This is a great way to cut your fuel costs, assuming you use the AC mains on your neighbor's property.
two wheels
bicycles get incredible gas mileage...zero gallons of gas will run it forever!
in all seriousness, my 22 year old motorcycle gets better gas mileage than just about any car out there. properly tuned it gets somewhere between 45 and 50 mpg. newer smaller engine bikes (the little 250cc ninjas and stuff) get even better. i've heard of bikes getting around 70mpg
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
so then you calculate the real cost. say the civic gets 30mpg, and the prius 60mpg (this is really giving the prius to much credit, but just for the sake of discussion). say you spend $40/week in gas on the civic, you'd then spend $20/week on the prius. you save $20/week on gas with the prius. but, you paid $12,000 more for the prius. divide 10,000 by 20, and you get 500, which is the number of weeks you'd need to drive the prius to break even. 500 weeks ~ 9.61 years. now factor in the possible battery replacement.
i understand that at least part of this conclusion is based on the fact that the prius is in high demand, and therefore overpriced right now.
I read the WSJ article and the author was comparing buying a new Prius with keeping his old car (can you say Apples to Oranges). When you compare buying a new car (say a 2006 Honda Civic) with a Prius the comparison comes out more favorable for the Prius.
I ran my own numbers and found the Prius to be about $4100 more expensive, but with the $2000 tax credit and driving about 10,000miles/year you would break even in about 7.5 years assuming $3/gallon gas. Of course a bicycle is about $16400 less than the Honda and gas isn't an issue.
The Prius has a nice 8 year/100,000 mile warranty on the power train (batteries included) so you'd be OK with the Prius instead of the Honda. But you'd be rich with the bike.
My first car was a 1993 Honda Civic CX (Hatchback). Driving it modestly netted me ~60mpg.
I paid $12,000 (Canadian).
Today to find a car that get that kind of mileage will cost me $25k-$30k.
WTF is going on? Are economy cars the "next-big-price-gouge"?
Why are not all Standard cars getting 40+mpg?
We have more platics in our cars then we did 12 years ago. We have smarter computers that manage fuel consumption better.
If my company didn't require a car for my job, I would cycle to work everyday.
To recline is devine.
I love my recumbent!
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Hybrids would make sense for couriers and letter carriers most of all. All day driving, usually stop and go.
-nB
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AFAIK it's always more efficient to produce the electricty closer to where you consume it.
Efficient in terms of power, yes. But efficient in terms of pollution? No.
Which would you rather have: 100 million individual pollution sources, or 1000? Which do you think would be easier to maintain for pollution controls? Which do you think would be easier to improve to reduce emissions?
And of course, if you're only polluting from power plants, you can relocate the power plants to avoid smog.
You can help the enviroment far more with the same money. For example, for around $75 a year, several companies will buy pollution credits on your behalf, negating the emissions by your regular vehicle. In most states, the same amount of money can also be used to have your electricity come from "green" sources. Therefore, if you had two cars and a home, you could negate ALL of your primary emissions for about $225/year, which is far less than the cost of owning a hybrid.
Hybrids, at this point in time, are nothing but a wasteful political statement. There is almost no circumstance where they are socially beneficial, nor beneficial to the owner in any other respect than his or her ability to feel righteous.
When I bought my Prius, the price difference between a Corolla and a Prius (cars that are comparable except for the powertrain) was about $6,000. In 100,000 miles the corolla will burn about 4,000 gallons of gas; the Prius will burn about 2,000 gallons. Hence purchasing the Prius makes sense from a fuel-only standpoint at about $3.00/gallon. That price point seemed unlikely to happen when I bought the car and fuel was about $1.80/gallon in Colorado. Now that fuel is close to $2.80/gallon (and I'm 30,000 miles into that 100,000 mile amortization) it's doesn't seem so unlikely.
But in the debate over pricing most people forget the all-important motivating difference between up-front and marginal pricing. When each mile costs a lot, you tend not to drive as much as when you pay for them all up front! This is the reason I buy a ski pass every year: although I may or may not get my "money's worth" from the pass over the whole year, I'm more likely to ski more times with the pass -- it's a no-brainer to head up the mountain. That convenience, for me, makes the pass worthwhile.
Similarly, having a very fuel-efficient car makes it more likely that I'll actually use and enjoy the convenience of my car. If it cost me $50 every 200 or 250 miles, I might think more about hopping in the car -- but at $30 every 400 miles, I don't really think about the price of fuel when i'm deciding whether to zip off somewhere to go hiking.
Yup. I wish someone would make a hybrid diesel that focused tightly on aerodynamics and other efficiency factors. I drive about 50 miles per day, averaging 70mph. I'm running biodiesel in a New Beetle TDI, getting > 40 miles per gallon. Lately the biodiesel is cheaper than regular diesel (since its cost has stayed about the same over the last couple years), and it's better for the environment than regular diesel.
e lingsites/
To find biodiesel locations near you:
http://www.biodiesel.org/buyingbiodiesel/retailfu
include $sig;
1;
I suspect hybrid cars will never take off until the day that their TCO is lower than those of petrol or diesel. Environmental statements are all very well and good for the few, but impact requires the masses and the masses follow the money (that's not necessarily a bad thing; I do it too).
;o)
If petrol wasn't so ridiculously cheap, hybrid cars would make more sense financially. Financial sense leads to adoption. The tax $$$s might help the budget deficit too
...telling me a product isn't for me. People telling me why I shouldn't buy an iPod nano (you can't store all your music on it, a mini is better...) or a GBA Micro (It's too small, it doesn't play games you can't play on another console, it's too expensive...) and now hybrids. The fact is, there are billions of people in this world and they all live in different niches with different needs, economic constraints and tastes. For any of these products there are probably thousands or millions of people whose needs are satisfied by them. The same is true of /. comments. They are often of the form "this product is of no use" rather than "it doesn't satisfy my particular requirements".
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Since hybrids make use of regenerative breaking (capturing energy during breaking to recharge batteries) they tend to get very good milage in city driving when compared to other vehicles. However, on the Freeway where you're doing little stop&go (well, I suppose that depends on how bad traffic is where you are :) they don't make much sense.
Personally, I wish we could buy some of the smaller non-hybrid European or Asian cars here in the US. Many of these cars get 50+MPG without hybrid technology (no heavy, expensive batteries to carry around and replace). Cars in this category include the new Fiat Grande Punte and the SmartCar.
Also, you can 'simulate' a hybrid if you're willing to drive like an old geezer: Drive as if physics matters. Coast to red lights (why are people so much in a hurry to get to a red light?). Since starting and stopping are the main impacts on gas milage, you can learn to drive in such a way as to avoid stopping as much as possible. Sure, you're going to be driving much less aggressively, but it works. I'm getting 31MPG in city driving in an '87 Acura Integra which is rated at 26MPG in the city. Not only does it save on gas, it'll save on breaks as well.
Unless the heater in the Prius is somehow different from about every other vehicle's on the road, it cannot run on electricity. A car heater is run by blowing air over basically a small radiator (heater core) that the 190F engine coolant cycles through. If the Prius's engine shuts off, the water pump will probably stop and so will the heater.
If you wanted the Prius's heater to keep going when it is on battery power, get an electric water pump. Racing engines and a few others have electric water pumps versus the ordinary ones that are driven off the engine's accessory drive belt or serpentine belt. But this would only work if the engine was warmed up, otherwise you'd just be circulating cold coolant that is not warming up.
If I was both worried about heating up in the winter and also fuel economy, I'd just get a small car like a Focus, a Civic, or a Corolla. The little four-banger will get okay mileage, especially with a stick, it will heat up faster than a Prius, and that $5K you save in the purchase price will buy a LOT of gas.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Honda's hybrids all get better gas mileage on the highway than in the city:
I've been very happy with the Honda Insight that I bought in 2001.
It is a myth that switching to electricity would cause more pollution due to the nature of how the electricity is generated. Even taking into account that the energy comes from coal and the losses due to transmission, electric cars are still more fuel efficient (and thus cheaper and cleaner) than gasoline powered cars.
An interesting trend is that fuel economies tend to be set by the price of the fuel. In other words, car manufacturers only put the effort into improving efficiency when they need to, and that's when people won't take any more. US readers might not believe me on this one, but their fuel is cheap, at least when compared to European prices. And thus, lumbering goliaths (aka SUVs) are still a reasonable proposition. It astounds me when I look at the performance/economy figures for American cars. An example is the new Ford Mustang (a tasty looking car, BTW). The 4L model gets around 200bhp, and about 19/28mpg. My Fiat Coupe is comparible, but gets 260bhp from a 2L engine, and more than 50mpg outside town (I don't live in a city). Hybrids are only there to keep the PR good. Whats needed is a fundamental modernisation of US cars.
Give a man a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)
Busses in the Sacramento Metro area burn CNG. Basically a modified diesel design, low maintenance, ultra low emission fuel. Still, they could improve (I think) as it would take me 40-60 minutes to get to my job via bus, or 10-15 min by private vehicle. until the delta between the two gets smaller I'll drive my beater that gets just over 10mpg. Thanks.
-nB
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The price people pay for hybrids represents something of a guilt tax paid by the affluent. While they'll probably never recoup the price of the hybrid in gasoline savings, they will, in fact, be reducing their usage of the stuff, which is not a bad thing.
Prices will need to be no higher, preferably lower, than current car prices if hybrids or any other similar alternative technologies are to have a lasting environmental impact. Only the economically privileged can afford to spend more to use less energy.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
This is a very common misconception. Diesel fuel is denser than gasoline. When you correct for mileage per fuel mass or (even better) per carbon output, much of their advantage on paper fades.
Diesel engines are still slightly more efficient than typical gasoline engines, owing to the higher compression ratios used by the Diesel ignition process. The higher combustion temperatures, however, produce nitrogen oxides, which are a local pollutant. And of course a poorly tuned Diesel (or, often, just a cold one) generates a ton of particulate ("soot") emissions -- another local pollutant.
And remember that Diesels idle very inefficiently (they have bigger and heavier pistons, and a finicky ignition mechanism that can't be run as lean as gasoline), whereas a hybird will shut down the engine and idle with no emissions whatsoever (well, minus battery drain due to the air conditioner, etc...).
The best general advice that I've read is that a Diesel makes the best environmental choice for a long-haul vehicle that rarely idles, or for rural areas with little sensitivity to local pollution. They make rather poorer choices in the urban commute environment.
Disclaimer: I love my Prius, and it just smells better than the Diesels cars I've known.
When I used to live in Orange County (south of Los Angeles, for those of you that don't know), I rode around on a little 125cc Scooter about 6 months out of the year (summer-time). I spent about a dollar a week on gas. I'm not joking. (Although at today's prices, it would be about 2 or 3 dollars a week). It wasn't fast enough to go on the freeway, but on all the other streets it performed beautifully. It's nice being able to weave through nasty street traffic...and parking is always right outside the store. I reccommend a scooter or small engine motorcycle to everyone during the summer months.
I think, therefore I doh.
I've gone through four Canadian winters with my Honda Insight, and it has fared just fine, even with temperatures below -30 degrees Celsius. The fuel economy is noticeably worse in cold weather, but the same is true of any car.
The Honda Insight in brutally cold weather is still better for fuel economy than almost any non-hybrid in ideal driving weather.
The water pump in the Prius is already electric. The problem is, the coolant only stays hot for so long before it has to start the engine again to heat it back up. Mine has given me about 5 minutes of heat in cold (0-10 F) weather before it had to start the engine again. (This only applies to stop and go, where the engine has a chance to shut off.) Obviously running the engine a lot in stop and go traffic affects the gas mileage a bit in that car, but the lowest my weekly average has ever been is 45mpg (combined city/highway, my drive to work is about 50% of each). That's still better than the best my old Contour ever got under the best circumstances (37mpg). In summer I normally average 55-58mpg. So yes, cold weather does drop the gas mileage, but even under the worst conditions it's better than most standard cars. The only non-diesel that comes to mind that can achieve 45mpg is the Geo Metro. I normally get around 45-50mpg on the highway.
Any modern (second half of the '90s onward) VW turbo diesel will give you mileage on a par with the hybrids, and you can run biodiesel or petrodiesel, or a mix. One of the new Beetles or a Golf can get upwards of 50MPG. The Jettas are not a lot worse, and neither are the Passats.
;-)
I know 2 people with Honda hybrids - a Civic and the little 2-door one (Insight?). The Civic gets in the low 40s MPG-wise, and the other one is around 50. Another person I know with a Jetta TDI gets mileage comparable to the Civic Hybrid, on biodiesel.
And unlike petro-anything, biodiesel will only come down in price as distributed production (not "energy industry" controlled production) increases. Then there's the comfort factor of a technology that's been around the block, as opposed to a rather kludgy hack that puts a bunch of battery acid travelling 65+ MPH two and a half feet from the back of your head while you're strapped into a nifty compactable container.
BTW - if you're in the Southeast US and looking to sell a reasonably-late-model Jetta or Golf TDI, I'm in the market.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
What I can't figure out is: why not make a straight diesel-electric hybrid? No transmission, just diesel-->generator-->motors + batteries. The diesel wouldn't have to be nearly as powerful as, say, a TDI, because the batteries could handle short peak loads, then recharge during cruising/coasting/braking. The diesel could run continuosly at it's peak efficiency, as long as power was demanded. The cars would cost far less to produce, without the need for a transmission. It seems to me that such a car would be cheaper, faster, more fuel efficient, and more reliable.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Seems obvous to me...it's also the same reason that auto manufacturers almost completely stopped trying to create mainstream pure electricity cars...
Because the auto manufacturers, as a whole, are in bed with the oil companies.
There are higher profit margins on gasoline than diesel, so the oil companies want cars in America to use gasoline, not diesel.
Although a diesel-electric hybrid is a great idea, it'll never happen for that reason alone.
I have a VW Diesel Golf.
It holds four adults such that a one hour drive is not uncomfortable but I wouldn't go cross-country.
I get 600 miles to a 13 gallon tank of gas.
It holds all my scuba gear without dropping the seats.
Now if I could get Bio-Diesel it would be damn near perfect! No sulfur, very clean, biodegradable fuel and the Oil Cronies don't get a friggin' dime.
while motorcycles ARE inherently more dangerous and more difficult to operate than cars (ie. they offer little or no protection in a crash, must be balanced, etc.) the common perception that they are "dramatically more dangerous than cars" is just plain misinformation.
m ot/motorcycle/00-NHT-212-motorcycle/toc.html
feel free to check out the comprehensive study published by the national highway traffic safety administration here:http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/pedbi
the basics: learn how to ride properly, wear a good helmet (full face, DOT and SNELL approved), obey the speed and traffic laws, don't drink and drive, remain aware of your surroundings and the other drivers around you. follow these basic rules and you probably won't get into a serious accident. if you're pulling wheelies on the highway at 95 mph while drunk and not wearing a helmet on the first day you get your license, you've got the life expectency of a jellyfish in a blast furnace (to steal a phrase from terry pratchett).
for a great deal of riders "going down" involves a twisted ankle and scraping up one of your farings after slipping on a patch of gravel at an intersection, not blasting into a guard rail at 80 mph.
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
That's Dino-Diesel. Check out Bio-Diesel. It's much cleaner then Diesel but not well supported by the Oil Industry.
"Unless the heater in the Prius is somehow different from about every other vehicle's on the road, it cannot run on electricity. A car heater is run by blowing air over basically a small radiator (heater core) that the 190F engine coolant cycles through. If the Prius's engine shuts off, the water pump will probably stop and so will the heater. "
Err ... no.. The Prius's Heater is quite different.. (IMHO ... Far
Superior). .
Machine Design 2004 Toyota Prius
"After 1,500 miles of driving in some of the coldest January temperatures on record, I'd summarize the 2004 Toyota Prius as a quiet, roomy car that happens to have a hybrid drivetrain and an excellent heater. Quick heat is no fluke. The Prius stores some coolant in an insulated reservoir when it shuts down. Later, when restarted, the stillhot coolant circulates into the engine primarily to reduce emissions, but an additional benefit is near-instant heat. This is one of several unusual features on this car.";
All freight locomotives and many passenger locomotives are diesel-electrics. A diesel engine spins a generator that generates power for electric motors, and those motors alone drive the vehicle. So there's already a huge diesel-electric market in the U.S.
The actual reason there are few diesels in the U.S. is due to our strict environmental controls; they are lax for trucks but strict for cars, so there were no diesel cars here for a long time until VW's new TDi.
The reason there are no diesel-electric hybrids is because all the hybrids are being created by Japanese manufacturers, and they create gasoline cars. German manufacturers like diesel, and indeed they are creating many diesel cars, and there are even plans for some of them to create diesel-electric hybrids, though they're still largely reluctant to embrace hybrids. They seem to view hybrids as Japanese and diesel as European, which is stupid -- both are good technologies.
~CGameProgrammer( );
I saw the research papers from a project just like this that was done some 10+ years ago by a really huge automotive company in America. The problem is people.
The design was Engine to Generator to Batteries to Electric Motor. In a sense the batteries were not much more than really huge capacitors across the leads to balance out high demand use.
It also used regenerative braking to regain power.
If you drove like a typical driver who would jack rabbit the starts and slam the brakes then the massive amount of current you are pushing into and out of the batteries will create so much heat. The tests were abandoned shortly after they managed to explode a number of the batteries by doing this.
That's why they don't do this.
If there was a current limited control on the entire engine system then it would work very well. But you would have to risk selling vehicles that don't do 0-60 in
Until the society as a whole is willing to put up with less zoom-zoom performance and more economical and environmental considerations these concepts have no chance..
That's crap, as are the above comments that chime in about actual savings, true mileage etc, without considering what americans pay for cars, how much gas we consume, etc.
Here are some actual facts:
The average price PAID for a car in the US is about 26 grand. The best selling cars in the US are the Ford F-150, and the Chevy Silverado--gas guzzlers, with MSRPs that start at about 10 grand more.
My parents have a 2003 model prius, which they paid 21 grand for (and the MSRP is still about that). Granted, you can't haul wood in the thing, but it fits 4 adults quite comfortably, has no trouble doing 85 on the highway if need be, and while not a performance hound, it's a fun little drive.
As far as mileage, they put about 12-15,000 miles on it every year, and regularly drive it in both suburbia and on regular 2-3 hour hauls; they also take a couple 7-8 drives hour per year. My father, bless him, has kept a journal of the car's mileage the entire time (along with his other cars), and depending on who is driving--a huge factor, mind you--he has an overall average mileage of 43.7 MPG. (When my leadfoot mother drives, it drops as low as 32 MPG, usually 35 or so, and my dad regularly gets 50-plus MPG, but mostly because he's a passive driver.) That's a sampling of over 2.5 years of driving (and the 2004 model apparently gets better mileage, is bigger, and has a more powerful engine).
Now, compared with his buick century, which remarkably gets 22 MPG on a good day, and that's substantial. He admitted the first year he bought the Prius that he was only realizing $600 gas savings per year, but now that gas has more than doubled in price since then (and not going to get better any time soon), he's sitting pretty. The government kicked in a nice retroactive tax break for him as well.
So for those who say it's too expensive--you already pay more. For those who say the mileage sucks--you likely get half as much. And it's still virtually emission-free.
Righteous indeed.
One point people miss is that the designers of the Prius, at least, were pursuing low emissions with fuel economy being a nice side effect.
When the exhaust system is cold, there's a tradeoff between fuel economy and emission control. The car's software chooses emission control. Drive a Prius for 15 minutes and look at the central display's bar graph of fuel economy over time. It looks like a staicase, where each 5-minute average is much higher than the one before. Until you get the catalytic converter fully warmed up(*) you won't see the advertised mileage. In a five or ten minute commute you can even get a Prius to average less than 40 mpg.
(*) The car's software is so determined to keep the catalytic converter at its most effective temperature that it will start the gas engine even if the car is stopped and the battery is charged, just to keep the catalytic converter warm.
If all your trips are under 10-15 minutes then buy a Prius for the reliability, comfort, or low pollution -- you won't get the gas mileage.
>I don't think the battery is supposed to last 10 years.
Toyota's currently saying "life of the car", whatever they mean by that. They're confident enough to warranty the Prius battery for 8 years or 100,000 miles.
Until there are 10-year-old Priuses we'll have to make do with lab tests and high-cycle cars. Toyota claims to have put batteries through a simulated 150,000 miles on the bench with only minor performance loss. More realistically, Yellow Cab in Vancouver BC put a Prius into taxi service (if you didn't know, generally the worst thing you can do to a car) and racked up 200,000 miles on the factory drivetrain before Toyota bought it back for study.
Your eyebrows *should* be going up. The NiMH batteries in our toys seldom get past a few hundred cycles or a few years. The difference seems to be fanatically conservative charge control by the car's software.
Good point about regenerative braking. But wait, there's more.
Gas engines have one speed and power setting where they're most efficient. This setting is almost certainly not identical to your freeway cruising speed. A hybrid can cycle the gas engine between most-efficient and turned-off using the battery to keep your speed constant.
Good point about driving technique too. Another way to put it is that every time you hit the brakes in a 20th-century car you have just pumped oil from a war zone and burned it to heat your brake linings.
I recently spent 3+ years in Hybred research. Here generally are the facts.
Hybreds fit well with two use conditions. (1)Extremely regular stop and go like some city commutes and like a route driver for UPS or similar. (2)Extremely regular high speed long duration driving. The rest of the conditions they sink fast. Essentially the problems arise because batteries are maxed at about 9% thermal efficiency. The hybrid functions well where the engine power curves may be maximized against what would otherwise be a questionable driving use of the energy. The high speed driving is because the engine is at a low power setting in that condition. It is better to turn it on and off and set the generation engine at high power settings. The route driver is advantaged because the engine may be turned off automatically and on by demand with the power set to the high setting at the peak of the power curve.
If I haven't confused you yet, batteries suck. That is an understatement. There are several media that are better than the batteries we use in such vehicles but they have yet to be applied. My best advice on the whole issue is that generally Hybreds are good test beds for other technology. In most uses they are impractical devices as now presented. It should be noted that most modern trains and mine vehicles are hybreds. These are in use the precise cases I noted above. (Route drivers and long distance runners) My advice would be to wait for the fuel reformer/fuel cell technology it has the best of all worlds. It fits all conditions, operates at the top of the efficiency curve in all use conditions, can be scaled and is durable. Best of all this oncoming tech is almost here.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
What statement do you really make by buying a car? I presume you think the statement is "you care". But about what? Technology? Fashion? The future? The economy? Some carmaker's bottom line? The promise of a great new world? The environment? If it costs you more than other options producing similar mileage then you're not making a very good statement that you're saving resources.
Turbines have several advantages over piston engines: ...)
- less noise (almost none)
- much better efficiency (double IIRC)
- can burn anything (vegetable oil, natural gas, jet fuel
- less pollution (they burn better IIRC)
They also have issues that make it impractical for regular cars:
- must turn very fast to achieve the best efficiency
- short range of usable speeds
- high temperature (requires expensive materials)
Those issues (except the last one) are automagically solved when the turbine is connected to an alternator instead of a car transmission.
So why not just build a turbine-electric hybrid? The efficiency would be way above any existing car.
That, sir, is why you need a hybridized El Camino.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
How many years would it take to learn how to spell "hybrid"? ;)
As a Toyota Prius hybrid owner, I did the math before buying. Turned out that gas would have to be $5.50/gal for over 4 years before I would turn a profit compared to a regular car with the same features (not including the current tax break).
BUT, I was a pharma rep for a couple years and I thought it would be a great statement to try and 'undo' some of the pollution I caused in that worthless job, driving around all day (approx 1000 miles/wk).
Then there is the geek factor. The car is geek. So deliciously geek. It can run completely quietly, which I refer to as "Ninja Mode" or "Stealth Mode". Everyone that has a Prius has a Ninja Mode story. Usually involving old ladies not paying attention in parking lots. Another nice thing is that I don't have to fill it up much. Actually, right now, I fill it up around once every 4 weeks.
And there's nothing more fun than pulling into a gas station, realizing that the guy next to you in the Hummer is about to hit $60 worth of gas, dropping only $2 on gas into the car, and driving off as it you've got a full tank. (of course, gas up down the road)
I can't speak for mine vehicles, but for locomotives this is balderdash. Only a small number of locomotives are hybrids, you can google for "green goat" to read about those. I've run one, it's weird compared to a diesel-electric, but quiet. Doesn't have much oomph, needed a conventional diesel electic to help pull.
Most "modern" locomotives (the ones that are still in daily use date from the 50's on up) are diesel electric. When they use the electric traction motors for braking, the resulting electricity is burned off in a grid, and this is called dynamic braking, as opposed to using the brake shoes around the wheels for braking.
Tha batteries used in most locomotives serve the same purpose as a battery in a conventional car or truck (starting, powering accessories and lights, etc.)
If you spent 3 years researching hybrids, why can't you spell them?
Tall, wide tires. Cars are much bigger. Engines are much more powerful. And cars have many more safety features on there. Safety features add weight.
And just so you know, plastic weighs more than metal much of the time. For example, the plastic panels on Saturns add significant weight. Basically plastic just isn't as strong under much except impact, so it adds a lot of weight when you make it thick enough to have the characteristics you need.
Think of it this way, look at a race car. Weight matters a lot on race cars. Do race cars have a lot of plastic on them? Even in places where strength doesn't matter (like inside), metal is used in preference to plastic, fiberglass in preference to metal and carbon fiber in preference to fiberglass.
And for those who are skeptical about the 60mpg, Canadian gallons are 25% larger than American ones. So that's 48mpg US, not odd for that car. The Geo Metro XFi got 55mpg US (highway), or 69mpg Imperial (Canadian).
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Knowing that in about 10 years, let's assume, the expensive battery on the Prius is going to need to be replaced, it's my feeling that the used market for this form of hybrid is going to have a near-zero dollar value. You may even have to pay people to dispose of the things properly. Who wants a car that if working, would have a used value of $2-$3k, but needs a $2-$3k battery to be replaced?
I'm sure the carmakers have thought of this. For example, if the battery does die and you don't replace it, will the gas engine simply stay running and it will just get worse mileage? Battery costs may well go way down in ten years, as well. This just stays on the back of my mind about hybrids. I would love to have a used one in five or ten years, especially if this problem were solved. And this is the market that'll really get the mass penetration imo...
Posted by yintercept - "...science...[is] the study of the 'divine creation.' "
...I really do hope the US hits $6+ soon
Guys its for your own good, everyone else manages. Once the US is forced into alternative cars they will start to make more sense, the industry just needs that boost to get things like battery advances and incentives for hydrogen stations (if that's the best way) and charging places. If I was in the US right now I wouldn't even consider buying a car that couldn't at least plow through a bull. They need fuel prices to go through the roof so people will start changing the cars they buy.
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When calculating the environmental impact of a Prius, don't forget to include the fact that new cars use oil and power before the first time that they're even fired up. It takes gas to get the factory workers to work, to power the machinery it takes electric which is usually coal, it takes energy to get the designers' computers to work, it takes energy to get the designers to work...blah blah blah A used car has already made that impact, a new car is basically buying a NEW environmental disaster.
The IEEE Spectrum magasine also ran a story recently on hybrids.
They focused on so-called plug-in hybrids, the modified stock hybrids such as the Prius with larger batteries, allowing them to be run on electrical power alone for, say urban conditions. Here's a link.
--cros13
I thought those were hybrids? ;)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?