Slashdot Mirror
The Hybrid Scooter
anthemaniac writes "Hybrid cars are all the rage. Now comes a hybrid scooter. It gets beyond ethanol and lots of batteries, though, running on a hydrogen fuel cell that charges a battery. During braking, energy is also harnessed. All this and speedy too, says inventor Crijn Bouman of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. For now, however, the prototype lacks one crucial component: the hydrogen fuel cell! It's coming, Bouman says. Yes, just like $5/gal gas..."
My best guess is that the Li battery shouldnt need to be all that big (capacity wise), if your running a fuel cell then you already have a very efficient way of making electricity on demand, so there is less need to store the energy in the Li batteries. It could allow for quick bursts of speed, and a reasonable choice for regenerative braking.
Storm
Here in Shanghai and everywhere in China, you can buy for an electric bicycle or scooter for less than $200 US dollars after some bargaining.
Electric bikes are spreading quickly since they do not require driver license and speed up the commuting. Their price make them affordable for a wide range of Chinese (and expats).
You get between 10 to 20 miles of autonomy depending of the brand/model which is good enough for most of the daily commuters and you still have the pedals in case of shortage of power.
What happens when a vehicle with a drunk driver collides with your vehicle?
.went off the road, turned upside down and died and shit.
Took my friend George three days to die. I got away with a broken collarbone, because I didn't get hit head on at 90 mph. Maybe 'cause the driver wasn't drunk, just an asshole.
On the other hand my next door neighbor went for a drive and didn't make it home alive. There was no other car even involved in the accident. No one knows why it happened. Wasn't drunk, doesn't appear to have been speeding. No skidmarks. Not a heart attack. Just. .
I've been hit three times in about as many hundred thousand miles. I'm still alive. Same number of arms, legs and heads that I used to have. Neat little dimple in my collarbone though. Fiddle nestles right into it so I don't need a shoulder pad for comfort. Every dark cloud I guess.
Life is uncertain, except for the fact that sooner or later it's going to end, even if you buckle up and refuse to shower. Maybe it means I'll have my geek card revoked, but I like to shower once a month or so, whether I need it or not. I'm willing to take the risk.
KFG
Then is it still "wrong" to drive an SUV instead of an Accord? (*waits for chorus of "yes" for all kinds of ridiculous reasons* - please, bring out the safety and bumper height arguments too!
Do you consider these ridiculous:
1/ Weight.
2/ Drag.
Regardless of how efficient your propulsion system, or how friendly the fuel and byproducts of making and running it are, the added weight and drag of an SUV means that more energy is required to run it.
Unless of course your energy source is charged from nothing but the likes of solar or wind power?
I'm happy to see a hybrid SUV, but only in the hands of people who actually need them.
You can disagree with the site, but the sources are another matter entirely. It's something to think about next time you see a jacked-up SUV with a super reenforced "brush guard" steel bar running across the front grille blowing through another STOP sign.
link
10. Traffic Safety Facts 1996: A Compilation of Motor Vehicle Crash Data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and the General Estimates System. DOT HS 808 649, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Transportation; National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; National Center for Statistics and Analysis, December, 1997. Chapter 3. page 64. table 37.
11. The Insurance Institute For Highway Safety - Feb.98 study and Nauss , Donald. April 5 1998. "Detroit Circles the Trucks; The big three defend sport-utilities and other hot sellers against an assault by regulators and environmentalists." Los Angeles Times. SectionD: Page 1.
There's no reason gas has to reach $5/gal. If America (and yes, it pretty much HAS to be America that leads here, no one else has that rare combination of extensive agricultural, vast industrial power, and a free market that's willing to work with the government on super-projects) were to get really serious about producing biopetrol and biodiesel, as well as radically scaling up its ethanol production capacity, this could be averted. America is a fantastic chunk of land for producing absolutely INCREDIBLE yeilds of a wide variety of crops. Grow the right crops and process the right parts of them, process all the sewage and other organic waste, augment it with wind and solar to power the agricultural industry and anything else that doesn't require portable fuel, and America might actually be able to get back into the position of having cheap fuels that are abundant enough to be exported to countries that weren't so progressive. Wouldn't that be nice? Exporting vast quantities of carbon-neutral gasohol and biodiesel fuels to China and India and getting rich(er) in the process? The technology already exists, the demand is there -- the market just needs some of the regulatory hurdles removed, some leadership, and a jolt to get the process underway.
A bit offtopic, but: SUVs get a bad rap in all of this, but if they were to run on biodiesel, ethanol, or even plain old natural gas, their contribution to global pollution would become neglible, and no one would ever have to settle for a vehicle that doesn't rollover during gentle turns ever again. SUVs are only a problem if
Yes, over here gas does cost $5/gallon. Well, used to. When it was cheap. Now it's more like $6.5/gal (1.3-1.4 EUR/l). (DISCLAIMER: if my math is correct.)
--js/fi--
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).
I'm reasonably certain that you'd be safer in most of the offerings from a certain swedish brand of cars recently bought by Ford than you'd ever be in an Escalade.
SUVs don't make you safe, it only makes you bigger and gives you more kinetic energy to get rid of. Sure, it'll trump a 1980s Ford Escort, but that's not because an SUV is safe, it's because the Escort is shitty. http://www.euroncap.com/ runs a good testing program and you might note that a Toyota Prius gets a better safety rating than a Jeep Grand Cherokee.
"because when it comes right down to it, they're safer. Sadly, the reason they're safer is they destroy anyone or anything not in an equivalent vehicle."
Actually there have been a lot of studies that have shown the opposite, for example have a look at the chart on page three of this pdf. You'll see that in this study the amount of deaths of the primary driver per million sold is higher in SUV's than large cars, midsize cars, minivans and imported luxury cars. Compact & subcompact are worse for the primary driver - obviously tin cans with a motor don't handle accidents well! Pickup trucks are the second worst and I'm suprised they're not more similar to SUV's. The worst is sports cars, possibly a combination of the historically bad handling of american sports cars and the fact that 150-200mph on a suburban road is usualy a bad idea!
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
$5/gal gas? Wow that's cheap!
Here in the UK, it's already the equivalent of $7 per US gallon (97p/litre) or more. You guys don't know how good you've got it.
Mind you, the average "yank tank" probably uses more than double the fuel of the average European car. I think our average engine size is still under 1.6 litres in the UK.
So does Finland and many other nations around the world.
:-/. So I totally agree, except that 'amusing' might not be the exact words I'd use, 'pitiful' would be more appropriate. Considering the gasoline usage of an average American is almost three times more than the average American (as I've read sometime), it does annoy me the US keeps whining about gas prices...
I always found it rather amusing the way people in the US bitched about "high" fuel prices.
BOO HOO.
This morning here in Tampere,Finland the price was 1.42 EUR/l for 95 octane (6.843 USD/gal for SI-unit impaired).
Just FYI, in The Netherlands 95 octane already goes for over 1.50 EUR/litre. A full tank for my car (which needs 98 octane) costs almost 70 EUR
Australians are in a similar situation - fuel here is the equivalent of USD3.90/gal.
It's a 9 hour drive to the next largest population centre of 200,000 people. Forget rail/bus/air transport.
The most popular large sedans in Australia have 6 cylinder engines that get about 27-30mpg highway. V8's are becoming, well, not 'rare', but they're a lot less visible than they used to be. While there's plenty of large cars and 4WDs, but theres none so large as what I've seen in the states as 'common'. For example, there's one (1) F350 truck in my town of 25,000 people.
You're going to have to adapt. Your cars will shrink, they'll become more fuel-efficient and their total horsepower will reduce. But saying that, you'll still be driving them everywhere for a long time yet.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
However most of these guys who live outside the US would never learn the issues we are facing.
In Keene, NH for instance (which is a very small town), walking from local mall to the local Holiday Inn/mini-Walmart takes 45 mins. to 1 hour. By the local Monadnock Taxi it would cost $5.00 to cover the distance.
To those of you outside US, stop complaining about Gas prices. If you live in US, the so-called cheap Gas eats up a lot of money due to the distances involved.
And considering most of us still use Pontiac or an old Toyota, it costs a huge amount.
And you finnish guy, you don't know the distances we are talking about, OK???
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I think the battery is being used because they haven't gotten around ordering a hydrogen fuel cell from Hydrocell yet :)
--js/fi--
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).
To take an example, I had a job interview last week. It was about 40 miles away from my house, on the other side of the city (technically it was outside of the city, but in the greater metropolitan area, and only a couple of miles outside of the city proper). The round trip in my car (a relatively small car by US standards) would have cost me about $20 with the current gas prices (40 miles each way, 80 miles total, and it would have taken probably about 1/2 a tank of gas). Assuming I were to get that job, until I could find a place to live closer to where I would be working, I would have to spend $100/week in gas. That would end up being about 15% of my paycheck before taxes, or about 20% after taxes, just to get back and forth to work.
No small car, that I am aware of, would get that poor gas mileage. I have an '86 Olds Cutlass Cierra and had (until very recently) a '96 Ford Contour. BOTH of those, on an 80 mile trip, would have used just less than a quarter tank of gas. Both of those are 4 door sedans. Now, with the same two cars, I could have made it from my home in La Plata, MO to Omaha, NE (299 miles by the trip counter) and still had 1/4 a tank of gas left (and have done so on multiple occasions).
The only things I can think of for your car to only be able to go 80 miles on 1/2(!!!!) a tank of gas is that your car is in a rather bad state of disrepair, it has a huge fuel-hungry motor in it, you have a huge truck/suv (goes along with the huge motor suggestion) or you are grossly exaggerating your situation.
Yes, you were modded +5 insightful, and some of what you said might have been (specifically the parts about how the US is laid out), however if I had any points I'd have posted this as anon and THEN modded you overrated.
bork bork bork!
Yeah, but, European gas has always been sky high. Isn't most of that $8-9/gal over there taxes?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Not to be argumentative, but back in the day, most sports cars were 4-bangers. All of the original cheap British sports cars in the 50's and early 60's were 4-bangers, as were all early Porsches until the 911. Even now, many sports cars employ 4-cylinder motors (including the Mazda Miata, Toyota MR-Spyder, and Honda S2000). In fact, manufacturers trying to build more eco-friendly cars are embracing the philosophy of early sports cars (and the better current ones - e.g. Lotus Elise) -- make it lighter. The lighter a car, the more fuel efficient it can be. Further, the better it can stop, accelerate, and turn (see Newton's Laws of Motion). In any case, sports cars and eco-friendly are closer than you might think.
Oh, and to keep this on-topic to your post, I'm all about having a nimble vehicle that can avoid the collision in the first place. SUV's have their place, and I won't argue that they don't. However, like you, I prefer smaller cars.
-Turkey
I dont get it, why have a doubly complicated system, we all know that means more to go wrong, when a simple electric system would mean absolutely no gas consumption, and a very easy to maintain machine.
Like this:
http://www.gwev.com/wholevtelsco.html
http://www.e-cycle.ca/
Hi-energy battery tech:
http://www.a123systems.com/html/apps/trans.html