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GM Working on Feasible Electric Car
WindBourne writes "While Ford wants to simply offer cosmetic changes to automobiles interiors and exteriors, General Motors has finally gotten the message about electric autos. They are about to introduce the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid which gets 40 Miles on a charge, but has a generator that can keep the auto going up to 640 miles range. From a styling POV, it is not a tesla, but it is also not a focus or a pinto. From the Rocky article: 'GM did not release cost estimates but said they recognize the Volt's price will have to be competitive. Company Vice Chairman Robert Lutz said in a statement that more than half of Americans live less than 20 miles from their workplace and could go to work and back on a single charge.'"
Also coming from GM in model year 2008 is the full hybrid GMT900 truck platform [1, 2, . This encompasses the Chevy Tahoe and Suburban, the GMC Yukon and Yukon XL, and the Cadillac Escalade and Escalade ESV, among others. The hybrid uses the GM/DaimlerChrysler Advanced Hybrid System 2.
The hybrids will feature:
- 5.3L FlexFuel Vortec V8 (able to run using E85, a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline)
- Active Fuel Management (AFM)/Displacement on Demand (DOD), disabling cylinders as needed for cruising
- Two 30kW electric motors inside of the same physical space as the normal automatic transmission
- A continuously variable automatic transmission
- Conventional 110VAC power outlets on board
- Hybrid system derived from the advanced system on already in use on GM's Allison transit buses
This advanced hybrid system, while not plug-in, will be offered on all model year 2008 GM full size SUVs, as well as pickups and fleet vehicles. The expected fuel economy gain is 30% over today's figures on the gasoline/FlexFuel-only AFM variant, approaching 30mpg for city driving. That's a damned good improvement. And when used with FlexFuel, they're using less fossil fuels - even including the fully burdened fossil fuel costs of ethanol - than Prius and Civic hybrid drivers, in addition to contributing to lower overall greenhouse gas emissions. As the process efficiency increases over the next few years, these numbers will improve.
Whether or not one likes or dislikes SUVs, or thinks people should be able to be told what types of vehicles they should or shouldn't be driving, or think subjective judgments can be simplistically made about what other people "need" or don't need, it's still an excellent step forward. While the Volt is very interesting (conspiracy theorists: think of some way the Volt is really still a GM plot to "keep electric vehicles down" or to assist big oil) and using centralized power generation and leveraging the existing electric grid and production capacity is a necessary step to the future, the full hybrid SUVs will be one of the big things that people buy in the short term, not to mention being one of the major things - if not the thing - that may make or break GM in the next decade.
Who Ignored the Facts About the Electric Car?
GM's EV1 -- Who Killed Common Sense?
GM officials stressed that development of the battery pack is critical to the concept vehicle reaching showrooms, and the technology likely won't be available until 2010 or 2012.
So it's due in 3 to 5 years - assuming GM doesn't change its commitment to the project, and that the battery pack development goes as well as it's hoped to.
Is this actually true? I would like to ask Mr. Lutz for a cite or three to back this assertion.
It seems reasonable at first blush, after all, unless you just LOVE sitting in your car idling down the freeway for hours a day, you probably want to live somewhere close to work. The average distance from home to work in Los Angeles is 8.2 miles (pdf), which includes claims that this is "consistent" with census data (except that it looks like the Census doesn't report distance, they report travel time) and compares with other metropolitan areas. This (another pdf) says that the average first job for people going off welfare is 6.5 miles away. This PDF claims that work causes people to drive an average of 12 miles per day. This site says that over 1/3 of workers in the 100 largest cities drive more than 10 miles to work.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
While Ford wants to simply offer cosmetic changes to automobiles interiors and exteriors
= /20060104/FREE/60103014/1115
Ford is showing a 65mpg diesel hybrid - with supplemental solar power, no less. I'm not sure why 50mpg hybrids from GM are a revelation but a 65mpg diesel hybrid from Ford is "cosmetic", but there you go.
http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID
They don't have to. The idea is you have a turbine that can be switched on or off to charge the batteries. This turbine is in no way hooked to the drive train. The car then runs purly in electrical mode all the time. The turbine can be run at peak efficiency.
And yes running all electric this way is actually very efficient, several modders have disconnected the drive train on their prius and showed gas miliage improvements.
I really doubt it. Why?
* Prius and Civic hybrids get 55 and 50 MPG combined, respectively. The 2007 Yukon XL 1500 2WD gets 15/21 gas, 12/16 ethanol. The 2007 Suburban 1500 2WD gets 15/21 gas, 12/16 ethanol. Even give 'em 30% gain and they're nowhere near Prius and Civic.
* As for the petroleum content of American made ethanol: given that petroleum is used all over the refining process (from fertilizer to transportation), and given that a gallon of gasoline has 124,000 BTU of energy but the net gain in a gallon of ethanol is a mere 20,000 to 40,000 BTU you get to use 6 gallons of E100 for the fossil fuel cost of 3 to 5 gallons of E0 (gasoline). Let's use the 40,000 BTU number: by using ethanol you can use 4 gallons at the "carbon gasoline cost" of 3 gallons of gas.
So, lets do the math: 30% fuel efficiency gain on 15/21 (we'll pretend that we should be working off of their gasoline and not ethanol numbers) gets us to 19.5/27.3. But, don't forget about the "4 for the cost of 3" -- so the carbon release would be equivalent to a car that gets 26/36.4. Now, sure this is back of the envelope, but I've been really generous -- giving the full 30% on the gasoline numbers (not the ethanol numbers), and giving the very highest estimate for BTU increase.
We're still at 26/36.4 mpg for the GM SUVs vs 50 or 55 mpg for the Civic and Prius hybrids. You're still off by a factor of 2, sport.
I hope this isn't more GM vaporware. I hope this stuff works, and sells. I hope ethanol improvements increase that 40,000 BTU gain. I hope the 30% efficiency gains are just the beginning.
But even with those gains, (telecommute / walk / bike) > (bus / train / subway / carpool) > (high mpg) > (mid mpg) > (SUV) in terms of mpg, roughly speaking.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Don't forget there's also the question of 'Who has the most to gain?'. If you think about it a moment, you realize that SUVs, being larger vehicles than a car, stand to save a larger amount of gasoline than a small car. Going from 12mpg to 30 mpg will save more gasoline than 30 to 40 mpg. The larger vehicle also has more space to put the necessary equipment because many of the parts will be about the same size whether it's in a Honda civic or Ford Escape. Oh, and electric motors tend to be more efficient the larger they are, so you can gain a few percentage points there. Add in the systems end up costing less as a percentage of the cost of the vehicle as a whole, and I wonder why they didn't come out with hybrid SUVs sooner.
Basically, it actually makes more sense to put hybrid systems into SUV's than compact cars. It's part of the reason that locomotives have been effectivly hybrids for years(major reason is the elimination of the transmission, of course).
I don't read AC A human right
I've been riding motorcycles for 12 years and I've never owned or personally seen a motorcycle that got worse than 35mpg. Most bikes for the US market get somewhere in the range of 40-45mpg. So, either you're doing a horrible job of reading motorcycle specs or you're some sort of incompetent big-oil astroturfer. Your assertion might be true if you limit your search to highly modified huge touring cruisers or racebikes driven by ham-fisted idiots, but even then...
(numbers are from the manufacturer's website, motorcycle.com, or my own personal experience).
All Harley Davidson Sportster 883's are rated 50-55mpg. There are a lot of models in there.
Sportster 1200's models are rated 40-50mpg depending on the exact model.
Evolution engine models are rated right around 40mpg, a smooth hand on the throttle will keep you around 43mpg (personal experience).
Most of the Buell line up (highly modified Sportster 1200 engine) is rated around 45mpg.
600cc Hondas will get better than 40mpg, up to 45mpg depending on how you ride (personal experience). This includes 600f4i, 600rr, and 599.
The Honda Goldwing 1500 is rated at 42mpg. The one I personally know of routinely gets 45mpg. This is a huge luxury tourer.
My wife's Honda Rebel 250 gets 60-65mpg depending on which roads she takes on her commute.
The Suzuki DL-650 is rated at 55mpg and will get almost 60mpg (personal experience).
Suzuki DL-1000 is rated at 45mpg.
Suzuki Hayabusa 1300 is rated at 35mpg and is able to do 200+ mph off the showroom floor. This is the most ridiculously overpowered sportbike on the market.
You should also visit India or anywhere in southeast Asia, where the motorcycles are 80-150cc and the scooters are 50cc. Most of those motorcycles handily exceed 100mpg. The scooters approach 200mpg. In order to achieve these mileage numbers, keeping an average speed at or below 45km/h and shutting off the engine at stoplights becomes important.
The only motorcycle I've heard of that might do as badly as 25mpg is the Boss Hoss. But then they strapped a small-block chevy V8 into a motorcycle as some symbol of excess, so what do you expect.
Ummmm, yeah. That's why all of the new high-efficiency vehicles are using huge displacement V8's. Don't know what you're smoking, but (1) motorcycles get substantially better mileage than anything but non-diesel cars and (2) it's fundamentally due to the smaller quantity of air/fuel mixture burned per mile. Which directly equates to geared displacement. Small engines can be just as efficient per cc as large engines, and ultimately, having the smallest displacement ticking over per mile results in the highest efficiency.
The only actual efficency argument for cars and against motorcycles is that the aerodynamics of a well designed car can trounce the aerodynamics of the best designed motorcycles. So at high speeds, cars begin to catch up to bikes on the efficiency curve. However, for 99.9% of day-to-day driving, the speeds are low enough that the motorcycle mass advantage is much more important than the car's aerodynamic advantage (somewhere around 100-120mph a 600cc sportbike may have the same mileage as a sports car at the same speed). As a result of this reality, I spend about $4 a week on gasoline while being able to pull away from 95% of the cars on the road. My wife spends about $2.50 a week on gasoline and can pull away from 75% of the cars on the road.
Please choose to inform yourself before continuing this conversation.
Ross