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Hybrid Cars No Better than 'Intelligent' Cars
eldavojohn writes "There's no doubt been a lot of analysis done recently on energy consumption, especially on the road. Now, a study released today reveals that cars with traffic flow sensors built into them can perform just as efficiently as hybrids. The concept of an 'intelligent' car that communicates with the highway or other cars is an old idea, but the idea of them using sensors to anticipate braking could vastly reduce fossil fuel consumption. From the article, 'Under the US and European cycles, hybrid-matching fuel economy was reached with a look-ahead predictability of less than 60 seconds. If the predictability was boosted to 180 seconds, the newly-intelligent car was 33 percent more fuel-efficient than when it was unconverted.' Now, the real question will be whether or not you can convince consumers that the three minutes of coasting up to a red light or halted traffic is worth the 33 percent less gas and replacing your brake pads/cylinders less often."
I thought just "not excessively racing the engine" saves gas, i.e. using cruise control, coasting, etc. Can't we just teach people to do this now? If you have to push on the gas to pass someone, does the chip say "nope, too much gas"?
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But what aboout Hybrid Itelligent Cars being beter then Intelligent cars?
the two techs could easily be put together in the same car, and make something much more efficient.
34486853790
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What we really need are intelligent drivers. You know, the ones that don't drive 20 over the speed limit, don't tailgate, keep their cars in tune and the tires properly filled.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
Now, the real question will be whether or not you can convince consumers that the three minutes of coasting up to a red light or halted traffic is worth the 33 percent less gas and replacing your brake pads/cylinders less often." 33% is a lot of gas to be saved... that's the difference between a 4x4 and a toyota
Cue someone claiming that "real" environmentalists do/don't support hybrids/intelligent cars in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
From the tone of the post, it seems like they're making an argument against hybrid cars by showing that they're no more efficient than regular cars with this new tech... but why not just stop comparing the two and combine them? Shouldn't the title read "Hybrid Car Efficiency Improves Even More with new Technology?"
In my opinion, the chief function of hybrids has always been as a stepping stone. They're not great in and of themselves, and anything that merely reduces gasoline consumption rather than replacing it can be seen as something that prolongs oil dependence and all the problems associated with it. However, adoption of hybrids shows the big guys that the public is willing to invest in new and more efficient kinds of vehicles, and will hopefully fuel research into alternate energy sources.
u-bend
Since this system has no overall control agent, the cars are like a distributed computing network. Since most traffic is caused by faulty driving I welcome this kind of thing without hesitation.
God is real unless declared integer.
Yeah, so how long will it take to roll out these new, intelligent roads? And how much will it cost to maintain them?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
You don't need sophisticated sensors for this; in most situations, your vision alone is enough to give you 60 seconds of forewarning, or close to it, if you choose to drive "intelligently."
... the capability for "intelligence" is there, but people choose not to do it.
However, most people don't. They'll accelerate when they know there's a red light or stopped traffic in front of them, even though it just means they need to brake harder (and probably come to a complete stop, which they might have avoided by slowing down sooner); people follow too closely on highways and have to use their brakes, which really shouldn't be used for anything except emergencies (and the flashing of which screws up traffic behind them, because people think there's a problem); people mash down on the gas when they're just going to have to stop again in another 100 feet
Perhaps when gas costs more, people will choose to drive more efficiently.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm sure that the country would save quite a bit of gas if more drivers did what their drivers ed teacher said and "got the big picture". I'm amused, and saddened, by the drivers that shoot from red-light to red-light. So often, its plainly obvious from the color of the light and the queue of halted traffic, that there's no way that the light will turn green and traffic will move before these speed demon get to the intersection.
Their average velocity is no higher than any other driver, but they sure do burn a lot of fuel doing it.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I drive a Ford Focus 2007 sedan and in the first couple weeks I had the car I drove fairly sporty [e.g. speed limit all the time no coasting] and got about 13L/100Km in the city. I've spent the last week and a bit driving more carefully, that is, coasting to stops, using cruise control whenever possible, not accelerating as quickly to the next redlight. When I filled up yesterday I purchased 15L of fuel for 154Km of distance. or about 10L/100Km.
In yankee, I'm getting 23.6MPG now instead of 18.2MPG (both in city) for a boost of 29.7% more MPG. I still do the speed limit, I'm just not as heavy on the gas. And when I hit the speed limit I use cruise control where possible. I also don't keep constant speed when there is a red up ahead. Usually I'm doing 20-30 kph under the limit by time I have to brake. If this could be helped via a computer I'm all for it.
Obviously my "study" isn't really comprehensive. But given that i do the same 14Km route every day there aren't a lot of variables in the mix.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Next week's article should be: "'Intelligent' Hybrid Cars perform best"
Why does the 'Intelligent' car technology have to compete with hybrid car technology?
Here is a revolutionary thought... Why not use both together?
Most people like their car as a place where they still have some freedom and I don't think any of those people will like the idea of a car telling them how to accelerate and brake. If a hybrid car can save the same amount of fuel and still lets you drive the way YOU want, why even bother with that other option, anyway?
A year ago I decided to limit my speed to 60, and to start trying to anticipate traffic up ahead earlier and being more gingerly on the brakes. The theory was that fuel spent accellerating is wasted if you wind up wasting it on braking.
.. even my 'wetware' brain that is imprecise and subject to urges and impulses was able to make a measurable difference.
The same car (94 Saturn) started getting about 10% better gas mileage with the same commuting pattern. This was pretty consistent in both the summer and winter months.
Just a data point
Funny this study comes out right after congress imposed 35mpg limits for 2020.
Also funny how the concept of implementing traffic monitoring would be tasty for the current administration.
wait those aren't funny at all.
The article says they're not better, but don't claim they're worse either. Why does it matter to you, as a car owner, what makes your car more efficient. The bottomline is what counts, and if intelligent and hyrbids are both efficient, then great.
Also don't forget there are more reasons for hybrids to exist. We're not going to run on oil forever, and the effect it has on preparing the market for a chance shouldn't be downplayed. Plus, we have R & D and manifacturing/safety practices in the development of those cars won't go to waste, when "the time comes".
If anything, the real question isn't "why drive a hybrid when you can drive an intelligent car", but "where the heck are the intelligent hybrids?"...
convince consumers that the three minutes of coasting up to a red light or halted traffic is worth
You're not going to get there any faster anyway, so why waste gas and breaks if you can just coast? It's common sense.
I drive a lot for business, about 1500 miles / month in L.A and other parts of southern California. I have a conventional IC car, and driving carefully can save a significant amount of money, so I've tried to drive like TFA says...but this whole scheme does not take into account the guy behind you - the one who wants to rush up to that red light. They will honk, swerve in and out of traffic to get around you, and generally cause more trouble for you and surrounding drivers than it is worth.
First, the technologies aren't incompatible, competing technologies.
Second, the negative spin on hybrids is bizarre: that they—a widely available commercial technology—are "no better" than the tests suggest a proof-of-concept, not-yet-commercially-available technology might be if put into practical use is, well, a weird way of looking at things.
I mean, usually, that a presently available technology does just as well, with less specialized infrastructure, than a proof-of-concept isn't, even if they are directly competing, bad news for the existing technology, its bad news for the experimental alternative. "New, unproven technology offers no more than existing, popular technology" would be the usual way of looking at that.
Of course, they aren't competing technologies, there is no reason a hybrid couldn't benefit from being "intelligent" or vice-versa. Now, you might not get the full efficiency gains of each, since there is some overlap in their benefits vs. dumb non-hybrids, but you would expect more efficiency than either alone.
Dr. Evil: "Finally, I can do DoS attacks on the highway system without oil slicks or fake road signs. Muhahaha."
Why not employ these intelligent sensors in hybrid or RE vehicles for even more efficiency? The thought that employing these sensors in fossil fuel cars will let them compete with the RE vehicles seems a tad ridiculous ...
Staying one step ahead!
Yep, REAL environmentalists wants our pure electric car back!
Sounds to me like a peer-to-peer network. The RIAA will never let that happen.
Thank God for evolution.
The issue is not "economy". The issue is getting out of the slavery to petroleum derivative fuels.
"economic" "intelligent" cars dont matter shit in that regard. its same slavery, but a little bit less.
whereas a hybrid is a TRANSITIONARY phase from breaking free of the polluting and non renewable fuel slavery. Its worth gold as in that today's hybrids are tomorrows full electric/alternative cars.
get your facts straight, at least your logic straight before making a comparison and posting an article dammit.
Read radical news here
OK. This is great and all, and SHOULD be pursued.
However
Hybrids are deployable on an individual basis. I can but a Hybrid today, mix in with the existing traffic and infrastructure, and immediately get some benefit.
These "Intelligent" cars seem to assume a huge infrastructure update. They also/alternatively seem to require that everyone else upgrade their cars for me to see the benefit.
Like I said, I think that this concept could be a good thing, but from where I stand, it looks more like the "mission to mars" or the "hydrogen economy": a pie in the sky concept designed to kill off any practical partial solutions while everyone waits for nirvana.
When you say "'Intelligent' cars, a technology that's only exists as a protoype, are only as good has hybrid cars, a technology that exists today." it sounds so much less sensational.
Coordinate the damn traffic lights. Yes, maybe I do have a knack for triggering a red light when I drive up to it. But what I don't understand is why on major expressways (essentially freeways through urban areas with traffic lights), red lights are triggered when a single car comes to a stop at a small cross road. The net effect is that in order to get a single car across the road in less than 20 seconds, 10 cars have to come to a stop for 20 seconds.
Seriously, is it that hard to tie the road sensors to timing chips? It doesn't even have to be done on all roads - but anything labeled an expressway, as well as a major roads with known traffic patterns should all have coordinated lights at all times. Expressway cuts through residential areas for 3 miles? Have a green wave run one way in the morning and the other way in the evening. Major road intersects with expressway? All lights on that major road are timed according to the same mechanism, except the one that controls the intersection with the expressway. It's not perfect, but it doesn't have to be. Any improvement over the current idiocy of stopping 10 cars to prevent one car from idling for more than 20 seconds will result in a dramatic improvement in gas mileage.
How do I know? My car computer shows average gas mileage, as well as current. I can improve my gas mileage from 27 mpg to 32 mpg if I manage to coast through major roads at 45 mph, instead of having to stop at every friggin red light. All it takes is to have a timing chip control each light, program it according to traffic patterns and expected (or even desired!) speed of cars, and you're done. Instant improvement in gas mileage, and instant reduction in oil imports.
It boggles my mind how Europe had those things down pat 20 years ago, but here they still don't get the concept of a green wave on major roads.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
As others have already pointed out, hybrids could benefit from this too.
I have a prius. I have a 20+ mile commute one way. Yesterday I averaged 70.3 MPG for the trip home. I did this using manual "look ahead" and very carefully planning braking and coasting just to see how high I could get it. You can easily blow 10MPG with one bonehead maneuver from lack of attention but this manual concentration on mileage is probably as distracting as talking on a cell phone.
I'd welcome the technology in my prius or in my SUV. Both can benefit.
The hybrids today are not really hybrids. They are just fuel savers. True hybrids are cars that use 2 types of fuel such as the ford flex fuel. However the ethanol is not as good as other fuels that are out there. I have my car converted to run on hydrogen alone and can go 500-700miles without refilling the cylinders. We need to switch to electric, hydrogen, LNG, CNG, or something along those lines so we can cut off the middle east from U.S funds.
and for those that can't read what I wrote here it is in hex
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Hybrid cars are better than the typical cars. Now there's a prediction that "intelligent cars" will also be better than typical cars, as much better as are hybrids. So the correct headline is
"'Intelligent Cars' As Good As Hybrid Cars"
Otherwise the headline is about hybrids, which this story is not about. And it implies that hybrids aren't so good, as if not-so-good "intelligent cars" are their benchmark.
Plus, the research is only a single prediction of a complex system yet to be built, let alone tested, so a correct headline would be in the future tense, anyway.
--
make install -not war
This expectations of better efficiency are laughably unrealistic in the actual world. If your "smart" car starts to slow down because of traffic congestion out of sight ahead, how many "normal" cars (or even better, "normal" hybrid cars) are going to slow down behind you? Not as many as are going to pass you. Once they pull in front of you, that "slow down" calculation is going to need to adjust for more cars in front of you and slow down more, exacerbating the problem. Also, these efficiency increases only occur on "smart" roadways, which even in the most wired future will never be placed everywhere. This system would only approach the stated efficiencies if *every* car on the road used it and *every* road was made to be "smart". Frankly, I find the hybrid (and almost every other) approaches to improved automotive efficiency more realistic and less costly alternatives.
I have a honda insight, and since I've moved to Providence, RI, I've seen my fuel efficiency drop from an average of 70 miles per gallon per tank of gas (in Connecticut driving mostly on back roads at moderate speeds) to 60ish (mostly city driving) in Ann Arbor, to barely 45 mpg here in Rhode Island. I am convinced that it is mostly the fault of poor traffic planning here. I've never seen a city with worse timing for the lights. You will often get a green light only to be forced to stop 30-40 feet away at another light that turned red the very instant your light turned green (Benefit and Waterman/Angell anyone?)
with that said, i always did wonder how much of my great mileage in Connecticut was due to the fact that I could watch and keep track of my mpg. ie. would I see a similar increase in mileage in a non-hybrid car just by being able to monitor my driving efficiency?
Hybrid cars are sufficiently expensive that they can't be justified on the basis of fuel savings. Computing power, on the other hand, is dirt cheap. The 'intelligent' bits might add less than $1000 to the price of a car. That would be economic.
I saw an article recently that accounted for all the energy that went into making, driving and scrapping a hybrid car. The hybrid was actually worse in environmental terms than most other cars on the road, once you took everything into account.
There is no way of predicting that a tractor trailer is going to enter the freeway and then pull over three lanes of traffic slowing every one of them down. This claims that it can predict this 3 minutes in advance. At 60 mph, that's 3 miles! There are a lot of assumptions in this.
We will all put our vehicles in auto drive and let the computer handle it. You will have to program every trip into your auto driver and file the plan with the central computing system to make sure it's OK.
It makes a great headline but it is not very realistic.
This is a standard disruptive technology situation. When they first come out, disruptive tech items usually don't offer a clear immediate advantage. Like when hydraulics came out, compared to the cable operated equipment of the time they were expensive, underpowered, and overcomplicated. But the nascent technology of hydraulics was able to develop in leaps and bounds and eventually beat the cable operated stuff in all those areas, plus it added safety.
Hybrid transportation might be in that early phase where sure, it's not a slam dunk, but on the other hand, it's the _beginning_ of its development lifecycle compared to the non-hybrid options that are at an incremental improvement phase right now with over a hundred years of refinement under its belt.
I wouldn't write off hybrids just yet, there's a lot of 'low hanging fruit' still out there for the R&D organizations to pluck in terms of improvement. It's shortsighted to call the game just yet.
Well, except that I can actually buy a wool coat.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
While I assume that pricing of the sensor system is far cheaper, they really should have given us numbers. If it turns out that installing the sensor/computer costs $15,000, then hey, buy the Hybrid.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I think its funny when some dumb ass stuck behind me passes me, speeds up and then stops at the red light, and if I'm lucky it turns green before I even get there and I can avoid using my brakes at all.
Why do people race to get to the stop light. Now if its a stop sign where you will have to stop no matter what, the incentive to coast is slightly less since you will stop no matter what. And reaching the stop sign faster actually decreases the time to your destination.
In fact, in general I try to use my brakes as little as possible. If I see a car ahead of me braking I just take my foot off the gas. Usually it was only a momentary application of the brakes to let some one in or some one who is anal about staying below the speed limit. If the brake stays on I will apply my brake but most of the time it is a very short brake burst that I see so I win by not pressing my brakes.
The paper in the first link is just that - it's a paper. This is something that is THEORETICAL. Not something that is actual. It's like Hydrogen powered cars - until you can actually buy it, it is a bunch of hot air.
As for the second article, the notion of cars talking to eachother and the roads is great. That's not the world we live in yet though. This requires auto-makers to start adding this to their cars, as well as massive expensive modifications to the road system. Convincing every state, county, municipality, etc in the US to install this stuff would be very hard - especially since not everyone is a techie. Even if Congress were to mandate it, it would still take a long time to see it deployed.
These things are clearly future possibilities. They are not present options. There's a huge difference. It's fact versus fiction at this point. I think the way that this is presented makes it seem like you have a choice between these two, and that they are competing. This is not an either/or kind of thing. You could put the intelligent car technology in any vehicle - hybrid or not.
Sorry for being a troll. Seems like someone should point this out.
I'm all for more intelligence being used by regular people.
Well wouldn't smart hybrid cars be even MORE efficient?
...there are no intelligent cars down here.
Hybrid cars will work just by buying and using a hybrid vehicle.
Intelligent cars will work when a massive nationwide highway network is built and rolled out.
Sounds like hybrids are the way to go right now.
Hybrids do recoup their energy, mostly in the form of braking as well as driving a motor at a constant RPM (for true hybrids; not something like the Prius). The "intelligent" car is simply powering up slower (i.e. no lead foot). In terms of braking, you lose the energy regardless if you slow quickly or fast. All in all, a hybrid will save just like regular car will, but probably not quit so evident. More so, considering that a person who buys a hybrid most likely does not have a lead foot (as opposed to somebody who buys a Tesla or Porsche).
IOW, this would help the hybrid as well as the flow of traffic.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
AFAIK, that approach has been used for decades in many places in the US.
We can end our dependence on fossil fuels and solve the obesity problem in the U.S. in one fell stroke: ban automobiles and give everyone a bicycle.
Not to mention that road fatalities would drop to effectively zero.
I'm not saying...I'm just saying.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
After searching the web for the names of the researchers, I came empty handed. Australia's Intelligent Transport Systems do not have a link to the paper, Elsevier doesn't have the online article yet at ScienceDirect. This leaves the question on what they compared the intelligent systems against. It is possible that intelligent systems behave better (but under what kind of conditions?. It is stated that the cars used Australian driving cycle but what conditions those cycles represent. Was that under heavy traffic or on empty highways?). But the most important question is not answered, how the a hybrid with an intelligent system is going to behave. Since hybrids gain an important portion of their power from breaks, what would happen if an intelligent system reduced the amount of braking? In that case, would an intelligent system that promotes breaking would be more efficient? As I said I couldn't find the research paper but it seems like these questions are not answered.
...would love to see this implemented autonomously, just so's I could observe it and marvel at the principles of adaptive feedback control. Poetry in motion!
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
A lift kit on a duelly.....That's just going out of your way to waste money. You lose the towing capacity a duelly is intended for without gaining the serious off-road capability a regular 4x4 lifted truck would give.
But you do gain dramatically increased drag.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
The UK Ford Focus gets mileage like a Prius.
The US Ford Focus gets mileage like a Taurus.
They CAN DO THIS ANYWHERE.
They choose not to and claim it's too expensive or impossible.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The system knows when the light is going to change and what's around the corner. You may know some of that from experience, but you will never be as good as a system that really knows current conditions. Much to the ire of other people on the road, I already drive slowly. It helps but I doubt it helps by 33%.
A combination of smart roads and hybrids would be better still, but I'm not sure that I want to leave my driving to big brother.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I've owned a hybrid (a Honda Insight) for six years now. I've averaged about 62 MPG over the life of the car (about 104,000 miles now).
An intelligent car that can communicate with the road 60 seconds ahead would undoubtedly improve that number, as stop signs and red lights are probably the biggest drains on overall fuel economy. You gain some coming to a stop, but you always lose more getting back up to speed. The best mileage scenario, in my hybrid, at least, is continuous motion. I've averaged over 80 miles per gallon for hundreds of miles in the flats of North Carolina and the midwest when stops were few and could be anticipated well in advance.
Just having the detailed mile per gallon information in front of me as I drive (instantaneous, trip, overall, etc) is a big help in driving up mileage, as that boosts the drivers intelligence about the mileage implications of different driving behaviors.
Clearly this is not a question of intelligence and hybrid being alternatives. The combination would be best, and all cars should show detailed mileage information to drivers, if only so they can educate themselves about how to drive more efficiently.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
It depends on whether you want to get somewhere faster, or just get somewhere before someone else. If I drive quickly while everyone else drives efficiently, I can get ahead of other vehicles. This makes no difference on town, but on a freeway - especially a two( four) lane one - the ability to overtake a "platoon leader" as they aree called, can make a significant difference in the total travel time. I bill $120/hr when I'm on business, and on a fixed price job every 5 minutes I save in transportation allows me to spend $10 worth of time on another billable job. That may seem insignificant, but even moderate use of breaking platoons has saved me up to 30 minutes in a 4 hour trip, based on software estimates vs actual time-in-flight. The last time I did this, I arrived 30 minutes early and managed to complete a portion of a small project while waiting. (Yes, my computer is mounted in the car - thank's for asking). Was that $60 worth the extra gas I wasted? Financially, yes. At 16mpg instead of 18 (I'm guessing, but the EPA says my truck gets 18 and I get about 16.5 on the highway if I'm "in a hurry"), my 240 mile trip took me 1.2 gallons of gas extra, or about $3.25 in direct costs. Note that I generally do not travel above the threshold of enforcement (usu 7-9 mph above the posted limit), and I do not drive "agressively", and almost always maintain a 2 second distance when at speed. I also _always_ signal. It's a pet peeve of mine.
You're right that coasting is common sense, but only if (1) the extra time you might recoup is valuable (not true for some) and (2) you actually can reduce your time in transit, which is not always possible.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It's a shame when stories tout this or that tactic as 'just as good as a hybrid'. It gives the sense that hybrids are not what they're cracked up to be, as if you couldn't incorporate 'intelligence' in to a hybrid vehicle.
Kevin Fox
Once again, Older econobox cars, even current econoboxes from any country other than the USA get as good as or BETTER gas mileage than the current ovrengineered hybrids.
The Smart get's 50mpg and with the turbo engine is quite a blast to drive. the toyota Vitz sold everywhere but the USA also get's about 44mpg and is a decent car to drive.
also the TCO of these cars is so much lower than a hybrid that your dollars per gallon spent are drastically lower. the Vitz can drive for 3 years at $3.50 a gallon for the price difference in the cheapest hybrid.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Human beings consume resources up to the limit of what is available unless they have to pay for it. Well we consume huge amounts of energy because it's cheaper than it has been ever before in history. If energy was expensive people would be very careful about how they used it, including buying more energy efficient devices.
Deleted
This is a totally irrelevant argument. The point is that there is technology that will help improve mileage by anticipating traffic conditions.
It has always seemed to me that the main goal of traffic control in the U.S. has always been keep people at or under the speed limit and never even remotely been about optimizing the efficiency and/or speed of traffic going from point A to point B.
Imagine more sensors per traffic light, further away from the traffic lights, and good heuristics algorithms to allow lights to better guess how to flow traffic while reducing braking and reaccelerating.
Sure it would be expensive to create an intelligent traffic control network that had these goals in mind, but it seems like the potential gain would be large. Shouldn't the government have *some environmental responsibility, instead of it all squarely resting on the shoulders of the 'good samaritan' ?
The "efficiency" of hybrids comes from two sources
- engine off while not producing power (no boost to hwy mileage, about 10-15% to city)
- regenerative breaking
You'd get the former from a combo, but almost nothing from the latter. An intellegent car with almost no battery storage would result in the maximum bang-for-the-buck.
BTW - I think those types of vehicles are known as mild hybrids or some such. The Chevy 1500 pickup truck hybrid is one example, and is a pretty small cost increase over the non-hybrid version ($1500, iirc). And as a bonus, it's got a pair of 120V/20A AC outlets in it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm a huge hybrid sceptic. The promises of intelligent driving, hi-tech monitoring of the combustion engine operation, alternative fuels and all-electric systems make the idea of hauling the weight of two engines and the batteries sound stupid. Already, a modern European diesel engine does the same mileage as a hybrid, on a similar car category.
There are a few places that do this, mostly in tourist areas. Ocean City, Maryland has a rolling green light timing that works very well. Here in Birmingham, US 280 is a prime example of a road in need of proper timing. With lights, it can take an hour to get 8 miles, without, it takes 8 minutes. If I drive during rush hour all week, I get 280 miles to a tank. If I drive all week when there is no traffic, 400+ miles to a tank. Just because of the traffic the lights cause to get small feeder road users onto the main road.
Intelligent autos are a good idea, but what about intelligent hybrids? Wouldn't they be 33% more efficient too if they coasted to a stop rather than using their electric motor to recharge the battery?
One of the important things about hybrids is that they are a bridge to the electric auto. In a couple of years we will see hybrids that we'll be able to plug into the wall, offering us a choice of whether we'll want to use Fossil Fuels or not.
The argument that you are just moving the smoking stack with the electric car does not hold water when it is examined: when you consider that power plants offer economy of scale, both in terms of environmental pollutants, in terms of cost of watt of energy produced. When current technologies are compared, 1 regular fossil fuel powered auto has about the same environmental impact as 12 electric powered cars.
We need Oil for other things than just as a cheap source of power. We use it to product all sorts of goods, and what will happen when we run out of it? We know it's environmental consequences are huge. It is time to start looking for other, cleaner, sustainable sources of power. I would say that from the little that I know, that we're about to make some huge technological advances with solar. But this still begs the question to me: Is oil not a important component part of Solar collectors, and electrical wiring (shielding). It just seems terribly wasteful to me to be simply burning Oil just to make power when there are other sources.
We have got to stop using Fossil Fuels. W
the hybrids usually have regenerative brakes so some of the energy which otherwise would be lost (yes, i know, converted to heat) because of such reckless driving is regained.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
Believe me, I've tried.
I often find myself in a half-mile back up of cars at a stop sign. I'm in a rural area that's quickly being developed and adequate traffic control devices (IOW, stop lights) haven't been installed everywhere. It's obvious as all hell that a perfectly reasonable way to get to the intersection is to just idle along. A gap will open in front of me then I'll idle through it. Before I get to the car in front of me, it will have again opened a gap and then stopped while I just idle smoothly along.
Sounds reasonable, right? Well, apparently not. I've had drivers behind me go into apoplectic fits, screaming and flipping me off, because I allowed a half-dozen car lengths to open ahead of me. I've had drivers pass me on the shoulder where there is no shoulder (I literally mean a two lane road with big, scary ditches on the sides) because they couldn't stand to see a gap in front of me. I've had drivers pull out of line, swerve in front of me, then watch their mirror as I idled up from behind and slam on the brakes as I approached, attempting to cause an accident that would be my fault. I hate to ascribe motives to people I don't know, but that seems to me to be just an attempt to "get" me for not driving like everybody else.
Hell, I've actually been stopped in a long line at a red light and had this happen. I was taught that you should stop far enough behind the car in front to see their rear tires on the ground. If they stall out, this gives you enough room to go around. Well, given the right combination of hood and bumper heights, this can also leave enough room in front to fit a small car. On three separate occasions over the past couple of years, I've had the car behind me whip out and pull in front of me (never *quite* fitting into the space) because I left too much room in front of me while we were ALL stopped at a light.
Nope, you can't drive steady in the U.S. It's apparently not allowed. You must floor the gas, roar up twenty feet, and slam on the brakes to stop every time someone in line in front of you clears the stop sign.
People are idiots. No wonder researchers tend to look for technological solutions to human problems.
The biggest cause of drivers driving at all sorts of crazy speeds, is that they are required -- if they want to optimally catch the most green lights.
On my drive home, some streets I have to drive 44mph (all these streets are 35mph speed limits), and the other main street is a combination of 25mph and 44 mph. Oh, and the timing of the lights seems to change based on time of day as well. I could drive the speed limit, but then I would miss several green lights and it would double my commute time.
I would be all for a computerized car speed and street light system *as long as* the light timing is optimized and variable based on actual traffic heading that direction. Maybe we could even get rid of traffic lights all together?
I drive a truck that gets 12mpg, but I only live a mile from work. In nice weather I can walk or ride my bike (and I do, though not too often as much of my work is "in the field").
Actually, my truck gets 12mpg _because_ I drive a mile to work, with 4 stopsigns, two speed bumps, and 4 (non-stopsign) 90 degree turns. My Honda only got 16mpg on the same track, and my wife's subaru managed a paltry 18 or 19. A hybrid would have been a big help, but there are few hybrids that can get me onto some of my job sites. *shrug*. An SVO/BioD version of the truck I drive would have cost me double (I have a good friend who has one). I like to be green, but I need to eat, too.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Long term, yes intelligent car networks will hopefully provide many benefits, and we should start planning for them. But hybrids can help us out now.
1. Put this tech on hybrids, instead of attacking them for only being as good as this tech.
2. Once you're at speed, all braking is loss (unless you have regenerative braking.) So coasting slooooooooooowly to a stop wastes no more energy than coasting right up to the stop and then stopping suddenly. It's harder on your brakes, but it doesn't waste your gasoline. I haven't seen any discussion of this, but I assume that with regenerative braking, you recover more energy from a rapid stop than a slow one since less energy is lost in rolling friction.
Now, the presumption in #2 is that you're not staying on the gas once you've seen that you have to stop for something ahead. Which also means that whenever you see you have to stop, you take your foot off the gas, in which case you'll always be coasting slooooooooowly to a stop.
So let's address the *actual* problems with traffic flow. If you're sitting at a stoplight and you start off, seeing that the next stoplight is red, to minimize your fuel usage you do lookahead driving and accelerate very slowly to the speed that will allow you to coast and stop at the next stoplight. By so doing, you piss off all the other people in traffic behind you, and since people don't like to do that, they don't accelerate that way. Also, when you're sloooooooooowly coasting to a stop, based on your energy management assumptions, a half-dozen cars who took off fast and are now in the other lane will pull into your lane, thus pushing your stop point well forwards and causing you to have accelerated to too high a speed. In other words: lookahead of whatever amount does no good when other people have other agenda and their plans change your future and negate your lookahead.
If *everyone* drove to maximize fuel efficiency then it'd be great technology. But if that was high-priority, everyone would be riding mass transportation or bicycles. Technology that presupposes massive changes in human behavior *against their interests* is, at best, cute.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Coordinate the damn traffic lights. Yes, maybe I do have a knack for triggering a red light when I drive up to it. But what I don't understand is why on major expressways (essentially freeways through urban areas with traffic lights), red lights are triggered when a single car comes to a stop at a small cross road. The net effect is that in order to get a single car across the road in less than 20 seconds, 10 cars have to come to a stop for 20 seconds.
Bad example. One way or another, it's going to stop the expressway to get that one car across it, and it was probably thought to just let it go as soon as possible. Problem with a street that sounds as busy as you make it out to me, people WILL end up having to stop at some point. In your example, if you let those 10 cars go through, another 10 will just end up behind it. Do you let that second group of 10 go through? Or make them stop at a red light? What about the next 10?
The only way that car could cross without affecting the main line is to have no cars on the main line, but that just won't happen. Timing the lights helps somewhat, but you have to get through at the start of the timing otherwise you'll still be stuck behind the wave of green lights that the timing creates.
Some cars today have the intelligent systems with sophisticated sensors, and advanced learning and anticipation algorithms. It's called a driver who pays attention to what he's doing and uses a little bit of careful thought. Probably asking to much of most people I guess..
The loophole around that deduction was if you had an E-light (economy) or U-light (for upshift), you could get a waiver from the mandatory deduction and hence report higher gas mileage for your model of car.
If you drive the E-light, it does feel like you are lugging the engine and putting more stress on the bearings, but the object of the gas mileage test was to shift in such a way as to optimize gas mileage, not engine life. I have driven with an E-light, and it is annoying because even if you know what you are doing, it keeps nagging you with flashes, but keep in mind that it has to do with government regs and is not a serious driving aid, although it can tell you how much upshifting the engineers had in mind.
The real problem is overpopulation. That and selling the American lifestyle to the Chinese, for example.
This was done where I live to anticipate commuting patterns. It works great for those who drive around the speed limit. For all the idiots who go faster, they just hit a lot of red lights while those who understand it hit all green lights.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
a) Hybrids aren't the end-all, be-all answer the oil industry wants us to think they are so that we'll at least keep using oil. But we already knew that. Incidentally, biodiesel won't be either. At least not in North America where we are using corn, instead of something more suitable like sugarcane, to produce it.
b) If this is such a huge benefit we should be putting it on hybrids (if we have to have them) rather than using it as a reason why we don't need them.
c) From the summary it sounds like more hype to confuse the masses and keep us from actually getting any progress.
The Farewell Tour II
...is more public transportation. A small group of people who's job it is to think intelligently about transportation rather than trying to change the minds of the entire populace is far more intelligent.
But of course, there's lots more money in cars and gasoline.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Why is this modded as "flamebait"? Damn sight true, if you ask me!
No one ever thinks any of this applies to them. It is always "the other guy" even in this forum. Everyone refers to teacing "them". " Can't people just learn to...." I garantee most of us here own at least one gas gussler but we love to complain about the price of gas.
So the answer is. Yes, people can be taught to do the right thing. But. No, people will not apply those teachings to their own life because it doesnt apply to them. If only the other guy would do the right thing, it would be a much better place.
I'm not saying never turn the lights red - just turn them red after the proper time interval *on the expressway* has elapsed. What I see is
- stop at red light
- drive 200 yards
- stop at another red light because a car triggered the road sensors on the feeder road
- drive 200 yards
- stop again - etc. etc. etc.
The point is that you stop only once every couple of lights, not at every single intersection.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
There are energy inputs into the system (giving it the gas) and energy outputs (drag, having to hit the brakes for traffic). I can understand where slower highway speeds save gas (your aerodynamic TransAm with a way oversized engine and tall gearing is a special case). I can understand where anticipating lights, flowing with traffic, and trying to coast as much as possible saves gas (less brakes, more of energy inputs dissipated in drag of car instead of wasted in braking). But I never understood this business of granny driving on acceleration and obsessing about a low vacuum reading at all times as having anything to do with saving gas.
If you do readline-reving starts all the time, yes you will waste gas. The engined pushed to max power is somewhat less efficient than at about 60-70 percent load and 2000-2500 RPM, but a lot of the energy wastage of "jack rabbit starts" is that people who drive that way also tend to be on the brakes a lot too.
Perhaps the one reason for granny starts is that you can spend more time in the efficient power band doing slow accels and less time coasting. But if you accelerate a car keeping engine revs in the 2000-3000 band (at low manifold vacuum where the engine is producing power with low pumping loss), and try to coast at other times as much as possible, I don't see how you can improve upon that with any tricks.
Right. I grew up in Massachusetts, where the concept of timed traffic lights has exceeded the mental capacity of the DPW for as long as I can remember. At the moment, they seem to be all excited about installing sensor-driven lights that don't actually turn until someone pulls up. Brilliant! Screw the major highway! Joe Dufus on Mulberry Lane is waiting! Let's let everyone sit at interminable traffic lights, idling and polluting and wasting fuel! The concept of making Joe wait an extra-long time until an off-cycle seems to be too intellectually challenging.
I remember signs on the Fellsway West (Route 28) and on the Mystic Valley Parkway (Route 16) stating that the lights were deliberately NOT synchronized, as some kind of wacky traffic control measure. "Hey, don't take this road, the lights suck!" Gee, thanks. By the way, did you notice that it's a state fucking highway, and there's no other way to get there from here? Whose brilliant idea was this? So instead of cruising past Medford on the handy Route 16 bypass, traffic backs up from Winthrop Street all the way to Arlington. Hope you Medford residents are enjoying the exhaust fumes from the omnipresent line of idling traffic.
Now I live in Metro West (Framingham) and I get to enjoy the lack of light synchronization on Route 9. If they synchronized the lights, there would never be a backup on 9. Ever. There's simply not enough traffic. You'd be able to zip through the Natick Mall area without ever stopping. I also enjoy the favoritism given to local roads. Temple Street in Framingham, for example. Why should this rinky dink street have light priority over Route 9? Why should there be a back up every day that stretches for miles? It's ridiculous.
I have a memory, though. I can still remember driving down to New Jersey and experiencing the "green wave" on Route 1 through Edison. If you kept your speed steady, you never had to stop. Ever. It was like a dream. I had to pinch myself. I couldn't believe it.
Let's see, a three-minute coast to a stoplight. What a concept. Obviously, the authors have never driven in a metropolotan area!!! If you spent even 15 SECONDS coasting to a stop, you'd probably be shot by another enraged driver!
No, today's hybrids are actually hybrids - they combine an internal combustion engine with electric motors. I think the system is backwards, and ultimately we'll have electric motors powering the wheels and a small IC engine running a generator.
You are advocating a multi-fuel IC engine. Not a bad thing, as long as the source of the electricity to [charge your batteries/extract and store your hydrogen] is domestic and renewable. Running a LNG, coal, or oil-fired electric generation plant to provide the base energy does very little to relieve the economic pressure we're under, and is only marginally greener than burning fuel in an efficient IC engine (after transmission, battery, and conversion losses are figured in).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
True, diesel engines are very *fuel efficient*, but fuel efficiency isn't really the issue. The problem is pollution: your typical diesel engine produce about 20% more nitrous oxide (bad for the ozone) and roughly 100x more soot (bad for your lungs). In the USA, you can't even buy a new diesel car in certain states. The new diesels are getting better and bettter in this respect , but it's still worse than your typical gasoline car, and way worse than a gas-hybrid.
Also, keep in mind "hybrid" and "diesel" are not mutually exclusive approaches. You could easily create a hybrid-diesel system and see similar gains in fuel economy. Your VW Polo would get around 100mpg... but it still have the same pollution "footprint" as a Ford Excursion. That's the only reason why you don't see more car companies doing this.
Intelligent-hybrids
America always does it backwards...
The electric car is supposed to be first and hybrids to fill the gap for long distance and other areas of industry, etc...
80% of the population only needs an electric car.
The internal combustion engine community succeeded in killing the electric car for a very long period.
I for one look forward to the day when electrics are common.
As for the story? What a bunch of Tripe! Friggin idiots.
The mill is on fire and management is running around screaming about a bit of flour spilled in the corner of the shit house.
What a wonderful world it would be if EVERYONE in the entire world would, for just 30 seconds a day, think about how things could possibly be bettered. Everyone spends too much time worrying and wasting effort on things that cannot or will not change instead of progressively working toward better and more productive lives.
So much waste.
You! Yeah You, the one in that jacked up truck that's never seen dirt! Yes..... I'm well aware how fun it is to drive. I"m also aware of how much gas it eats. Do you have assets to pay for that or are you like the masses and pay for it with wages?
How much gas do you spend every year to haul around an extra 3500lbs of steel using a huge gas inefficient engine? Is your vanity really that shallow?
just one typical example of the waste minded public
Cars consume fuel inefficiently because the engine is burdened with an entire superstructure (tires, wheels, frame) to to haul one or two people butts around individually. There is nothing intelligent about this concept. Except for the auto manufacturers who continue to promote this profitable approach. The intelligent solution will come when a method is developed to maintain the concept of personal freedom while consolidating the power distribution. I have seen ideas for unpowered "cars" that attach to each other train-like, based on destination, and latch on to common powered pusher or puller units.
Hybrids? Bah! Intelligent cars? Bah! Drive a motorcycle. I have an early 90's model Yamaha that easily gets 70mpg. On some of the newer bikes, you can get 80 or 90. Some may have broken 100. Plus, you still get to race to the next light, stop, idle, and take off again like you do in your car! Now, imagine the mileage of an intelligent hybrid motorcycle.
:P
Alternate solution: don't ever leave the house. Perfect mileage! Let the pizza delivery guy worry about mileage.
-G
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
I don't know why people like you complain about that.
The obvious solution is to have two sets of plumbing. One for drinking water, and one for waste. The water in my toilet may as well be rainwater; it doesn't have to be freshwater. The hot water that I run the entire time I am shaving to keep the washcloth and blades warm could also be rainwater. I could wash my face with rainwater, as long as I have soap.
As long as we are using drinking-quality water to shit in, we are wasting. Asking a few people to turn off their faucets while they shave will never, ever, ever, ever, ever make up for this grand design defect in our municipalities.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I hardly ever use my bike at school. They're not allowed on sidewalks downtown, and the streets are filled with people driving way faster than is safe. That and there's too many hills. Fortunately, most of what I need to get to is within walking distance.
(IANAL)
the real question will be whether or not you can convince consumers that the three minutes of coasting up to a red light is worth the 33 percent less gas and replacing your brake pads/cylinders less often
I'm afraid even my grandmother would resort to road rage after being stuck behind some douchebag coasting to the stoplight 8 blocks ahead...
How about when they time the lights so you have to speed 15mph over the limit just to make the next light?
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
We have "personal rapid transit" and its called "cars."
Are you suggesting is installing train tracks to every house and business in america? And then people need to wait for a vehicle to pick them up? Or will they own their own? (like a car). Also, how will this system deal with passing, and avoiding obstacles, such as children running out on the tracks (which would now be everywhere, in your trasnportation "utopia").
If your main point was that it should be electric instead of fossil-fuel based, then I agree with you... but in regular cars and using our existing road system.
Value Added Network.
Why doesn't a company just combine several of these technologies into one car? A bio-diesel hybrid with intelligence sensors.
why not make a hybrid intelligent car... by this logic it should improve even further.. All jokes aside while this is semi informitive it is also semi obvious and stupid, not to mention short sighted. The same intelligence could be utilized by the hybrids and they would make similar benefits. Secondly its about as impractical as it gets. If you try driving like that in the city people will zip around you, and cut you off. Third, I question where this was performed. In a traffic light intensive city it really doesn't matter what you do, you're going to constantly hit red lights, and if you don't step on the gas when you get a green you might get more than just honks eventually.
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
If smart vehicles use less fossil fuels wouldn't smart hybrids use even less? It seems that this should be no reason to stop hybrid development.
Later on this year, Car owners will have the option to convert their older "Non Intelligent" vehicles into EV / Hybrids. The company is called Alternate Propulsion and the site can be seen here
I don't think ICE ( internal combustion Engine) intelligence is the answer. You either have to change human habits ( anyone who lives in New York City knows what I'm talking about), or build a car that is automatically intelligent, like when to shut off an engine, or when to use less gas in stop-and-go traffic. Hybrids already do this.
After reading this article you only have gains from these sensors if they were in every car and the control is given over to the computer. How would they implement this requiring it in every car? Can the government get that passed? Wouldn't this also require gps in every car and if so there is another slashdot article about how that isn't going so well in Europe. I don't know about you but I am not ready to give control of my car over to a computer, granted it could do the job better but I have never in my life experienced a human BSOD. I doubt we see this kind of Demolition Man like technology any time soon.
Do you have any idea how much mercury is released to the atmosphere to produce one lollipop?
...I'm sure someone will be along to calculate this in a minute or two
Car drives you!
Now, the real question will be whether or not you can convince consumers that the three minutes of coasting up to a red light or halted traffic is worth the 33 percent less gas and replacing your brake pads/cylinders less often.
All you have to do is make it so people who have this feature get an extra vote on Dancing With The Stars or American Idol. BOOYAH! Instant success.
If all cars on the freeway drove with this technology on a crowded freeway less cars would fit on the road and traffic would slow. It seems the results would be similar to the results if everyone actually left n car lengths between them and the car in front of them when going x miles/hour. It would be safer, but because of the huge buffers between the cars, significantly less cars would fit on the road. I am no traffic expert, but it seems to make sense, and I don't think anybody mentioned this. Traffic experts, please reply.
I've never had to replace my brake cylinders. Ever.
The timing is off on purpose. There's even an industry term for it: "Traffic Calming."
Traffic calming is how cities get neighborhood associations to stop fighting construction that could cause increased traffic. For example, the city may want to repave or expand the capacity of a critical roadway to improve overall traffic. However, the residents don't want more cars speeding through their neighborhood. So the city agrees to implement "traffic calming" measures to make the route unappealing (read: slow) to through traffic.
It's basically yet another instance of NIMBY.
Bad example. One way or another, it's going to stop the expressway to get that one car across it, and it was probably thought to just let it go as soon as possible.
Err.. The point about not immediately stopping the expressway is that the longer you make the "one car" wait, the greater the chance that another car or two will join it. Then these two or three cars cross together. In that way you only stop the expressway once for two or three cars, instead of two or three times.
Another way to improve the sytem is to put traffic sensors much further up the expressway, and increase the amount of time the "one car" has to wait until you get a gap in the expressway traffic, or a time limit is reached. This would be difficult with a wave system, because the whole series of traffic lights on the expressway would have to be coordinated.
Timing the lights helps somewhat, but you have to get through at the start of the timing otherwise you'll still be stuck behind the wave of green lights that the timing creates.
In a wave system, if you are going the same direction as the waves, it makes no sense to talk about being stuck behind "the wave"... There isn't just one wave! If you are sufficiently slow, you simply slip onto the following wave.
If you took a hybrid which already has excellent mileage and added intelligent features to it, would it not outperform its intelligent-only counterparts? This article seems a little like another spin on "we don't need to stop using oil, look at what we can do with gasoline NOW!" The bottom line is that we need to stop dependence on oil. Period. Hybrids are a step in the right direction and their popularity has spurred on development of even better non-oil solutions.
Mandate a fuel efficiency meter in every new car and truck, and put it in a prominent place on the dashboard that is easy to read quickly without taking your eyes off the road for more than 2 seconds. Yes, it would add a small amount to the cost of the car, but it would pay for itself for people who use it to learn how their driving style affects their fuel efficiency.
STFU about slashdot bias.
Easy: No.
Let me elaborate: No f-ing way.
... an intelligent hybrid car !
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Here is a revolutionary thought... Why not use both together?
could be dimishing returns.
hybrids work by recapturing energy while stopping.
inteligent driving systems try to minimize stopping.
while they could be combined, it would be tricky to balance the driving technique to make the most out of both systems, being as they have almost opposite requirements for optimal use.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
There, I'm convinced! See how easy that was? But then, I don't usually go jetting fFrom one stoplight to the next; I will often coast several blocks, only tapping the pedals now and then in mid-town traffic. So I suppose I'm a rare breed already.
I recently started driving a stick-shift car, and I'm much more careful about the speedup/slow down thing, because there's less effort involved.
I've also started riding a motorcycle, and noticed the same thing.
When I get back into my automatic, I feel the urge to crank it, but I can sense the engine-work much better now, and I've seen my mileage go up without having to really do much. (That is, getting used to driving the stick got me used to the good habits already)
Whats better than a hybrid?
u gin_nation_g.html
o _wheels.html
Building a better hybrid.
In particular a plugin hybrid electric vehicle.
Or in this case a prius with a bigger battery.
(Although a fully electric car, with the bare minimum for a gasoline generator is more ideal)
This study found that in regions where electricity comes primarily from natural gas, a plugin hybrid puts up 3x less CO2 emmisions.
And in the least green region of the United States powered almost entirely by coal.
They found that the CO2 emmisions per mile were practically idential to a normal hybrid.
http://www.aceee.org/pubs/t061.htm
Whats more, we could replace 84% of the US fleet of cars with electric, and not need to build even 1 new power plant by leveraging downtime grid usage. (More fuel use, but no new infrastructure needed)
http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/2006/12/pl
Whats more, by having the distributed battery network stabalize the grid capacity.
We could actually make the grid far more reliable than it is today.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/17930/
http://news.com.com/2100-11392_3-6174672.html
And there's some pretty sexy electric cars on the way.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/electriccars.png
_
Cool part about all this?
You can get electricity from the grid at a cost similar to 50 cents a gallon.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/plugins
And it's the perfect, "flexible fuel", since electricity can come from practically anything.
Unlike Ethanol for instance, which might be even worse than gasoline in pollution.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/ethanol2
http://www.greyfalcon.net/ethanol3
And biodiesel, which could potentially make Indonesia/Malaysia put up more CO2 than China.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/biofuel
Best part about this from an environmental perspective, is that combines two big problems into one.
So all you have to do is green the grid, to green everything.
And that can readily be provided by printable solar panels
http://www.greyfalcon.net/pv
And geothermal using inexpensive super powered electric drilling motors
http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=1206
http://www.rasertech.com/media/movies/html/well_t
http://www.insidegreentech.com/node/1088
Chances are it would still work this way even with special chips. They're using that light as a floodgate. It decreases congestion on the highways, by letting on streams of 10-20 cars at a time. Otherwise the highway would get so backed up that traffic would stack up through the light and beyond.
People are very bad at figuring out the most efficient way to get through traffic. They think of the most efficient way for themselves which is almost always less efficient. We change lanes to try to speed up which slows us down. We take exits and then merge back in at the next one, which slows us down. Pretty much every move you can make in traffic slows all traffic down. If everyone left two car lengths in front of them in heavy traffic (which is counter-intuitive) I think we'd all be amazed at how fast we moved.
so why not combine the technology into intelligent hybrids?
They do (did?) that in Worcester too - the lights are explicitly timed so that the only way to get through one light and the next one is to speed. If you go the speed limit, you will get a red at every light.
The end result is, amazingly enough, everyone speeds, and many people run the red lights.
It's worse when the damned sensor lights are broken. Where I work, there's a sensor light that's supposed to trip a green for people leaving. It doesn't work, though, leaving you sitting there for about five minutes (OK, maybe closer to three minutes - the length of a pop song, at least). That's long enough to get people to run the light under the assumption that it'll simply never turn green.
Not that whichever local agency that handles the light cares, the red light in the left light has been burned out for a week or so now...
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
That doesn't even begin to make sense to me. I much prefer a crappy driver to be behind me than in front of me. If they're behind me, they have to catch me before they can fuck up my day. If they're in front of me, there are countless ways in which they can make my life miserable.
Funny thing, this: when I'm in my car behind the wheel, it already has this advanced predictive feature. By extension, my car has an IQ of 145, so it doesn't have to wait for technology to catch up.
BTW, exactly how is this a technology that competes directly with hybrid technology? Did it not occur to anyone that it would be perfectly feasible to design a hybrid vehicle with this predictive feature that would still be more fuel-efficient than a non-hybrid car with the same feature?
It would be interesting to see who sponsored the study? None of this matters until the oil industry looses the strangle hold that they have over the US government. Most small fuel efficient cars sold here today get about the same gas mileage as the hybrids that are sold today. This is done on purpose, not because of a limit to the technology. It is a fact that the hybrid technology is to the point that the only gas that they use is to charge the batteries, many here probably know this. Where is the Pluggable Hybrid? People need to stop wasting time on trying to change driving habits; this will not solve the problem. People still want those stupid SUV's, so stick a hybrid in them, make them pluggable, and let them drive! The point is we have the means let find the way!
Drive the speed limit
Blasphemer!!
"No better"? how about "can provide the same efficiency gains"? Surely you could slap
this on a hybrid and the decked out hybrid would be better than the decked out Camaro.
Were that I say, pancakes?
I grew up in a small town in Northern Virgina (which is now a big town.) I don't know if it's still the case, but the local Chamber of Commerce had petitioned the local gub'ment to time the lights on Rte. 123 to cause maximum congestion during rush hour. Their small-minded thinking was that the congestion would motivate folks to pull off the non-moving road and go shopping - a direct benefit to the local business community! Stupid? You betcha. The place was a parking lot. Everyone knew to avoid the area during rush hour. I can't see how *anyone* benefitted from that brain-dead plan. with the possible exception of the police force (lots of opportunity to cite "agressive" drivers.)
...If everyone bikes for trips under 5miles there won't be anyone left to appear on the weight loss reality TV shows!!!
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
Take that bitches!
I'll second that- I love my ScanGauge, but finding a good spot for it was not the easiest thing ever. Seeing 207 MPG is great fun even if it does only last a few seconds going downhill in neutral. Seeing the 2.6 as you start up a hill from a stop, not so much. I've started choosing the flatter route to work.
Do you know if they've dropped the plans for a USB interface so you could pull the info off and chart it on a computer? I'd been looking forward to that, but looking around their site now I'm not finding any mention.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
"Hybrid Cars No Better than 'Intelligent' Cars" implies they are mutually exclusive, or at least mutually antagonistic. Why not do both?
It has to do with what RPM you need to be at to achieve peak torque or peak HP.
Going uphill, if you speed up before the hill to a point where you get close to peak torque for most of the hill, and if you drive standard, also pick the optimal gear, you will get much better mileage than cruise control will give you. Cruise control tries to stay in the lowest gear possible going into the hill, then has to downshift and try to make up for it partway up the hill, whereas (esp. standard trans.) you can stay in the same gear and rpm range the whole way.
When on flat terrain, staying in the peak HP range is best. A good driver can judge that better than cruise control as well. But the hills are the place where cruise control is most inefficient.
Also, as others have stated, the "intelligent" technology could certainly be wedded to the "hybrid" technology. Every little bit helps.
So more or less, this technology is simply a forced adaptation of improved driving habits for people too lazy to do it themselves. It's just proof positive of the old axiom stated time and time again - changing your driving habits can improve mpg.
When you understand your disbelief in other gods, then you will understand my disbelief in yours.
I don't like his point that it's just as good because then I can simply just take that and say. What if Hybrid technology was mixed with "intelligent car" technology. It would only further increase a car's efficiency. Just because one has any kind of technology that helps them doesn't mean that they should rely wholly on that. I agree with the other posters about showing the MPG. If the MPG was showed it would allow the driver to test out different gas saving ideas and all of these things put together will raise fuel efficiency. So when I hear people saying that "well you shouldn't use this because this is better" but they are two different things that can be used together. I say why not use both?
Sheesh, most of the bozos out there apparently think a yellow light means speed up and that it's OK to turn right from the left lane (and vice versa) and you want to add roundabouts to the mix? ;-)
It'll never work where we currently have very few of them: at least half of the drivers would enter and not be able to find their way out again. Another quarter would decide at the last second that the exit they wanted was immediately to their right and cut across everyone's path in their hurry to make sure that they get to their Very Important haircut appointment. Some portion of the final quarter would be so busy talking on their cellphones they'd miss their "exit" at least once.
Traffic lights and stop signs may be slower on paper, but I wouldn't trust the average Bay Area driver to figure out a roundabout.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
"Can't we just teach people to set their thermostats a couple of degrees higher in the summer and lower in the winter to save electricity and gas?"
Because the power is already being generated and will dissipate as heat LOSS if we do
not USE it. No city has huge battery banks to actually STORE electricity. Once the
fossil fuels most places use for power are burnt, they are gone. The power is generated
continuously, not just in times of higher demand.
Water, on the other hand, CAN be conserved. We do have storage places for that.
Natural gas, we can conserve, but not for the same reasons as above.
Drafting is for weenies. I use a grappling hook.
Seriously what kind of magic motorbike do you ride, I have a bog standard, 4 cylinder 600 cc non super sport of 2000 vintage and barely get 45mpg. My old 500cc twin got close to 60mpg at a constant 70mph ish with alot of motorway commuting. So please let me know what bike you have that does a constant 70mpg because i could sure as hell use one for my 280 mile a week commute.
an intrested biker
I own a 2007 Prius. IMHO, you're correct about the regenerative braking not being the big money maker in the vehicle. It's the hybrid train switching off the engine when you're on the freeway on slight declines.
It's got a screen that shows your energy consumption, including the net gains from the regenerative braking, and I watch it fairly closely as I drive. If you're on a slight decline, the car gets around 75mpg with the gas engine providing minimal torque. The scale maxes at 100 when the engine shuts off, and that'll happen on the freeway sometimes too. Occasionally I can drive the thing on a non-flat road under 35mph it'll switch to all electric as well. On slight incline, it's about 20-25mpg, depending on if I'm trying to accelerate. A round trip averages out to around 50mpg, and that's what I'm seeing. My average is 52mpg.
As for the regenerative braking, the display will show you how much energy you net in a five minute period by a collection of little green "leaves". For every 50 watt-hours, you get a green leaf. Usually I net a half of one in a five minute period. That's not much at all. Best I've done is 4 I think, and I was coasting downhill a lot on that 5 minute segment.
So a really good five minute drive will net you three leaves, or about 150w/h. If we do the math on that, here's how that breaks down. (no pun intended)
A gasoline engine is about 20% efficient. A gallon of gas holds 115,000 BTUs, which is 33.69Kwh. A car will make use of about 20% of that, so a gallon of gasoline will provide you with 6.738Kwh, or 6378wh. Those three leaves add up to 2.35% of a gallon of gas. With gas at $3/gallon, those three leaves save you $3 * 2.35% = 7 cents.
Nope, not much money there. The big savings is when the thing coasts or nearly coasts on the freeway. That's why the smart-car idea that makes you coast a lot produces similar savings. No surprises there.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The City of Los Angeles ATSAC system does this.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
You know what the motorcycle helmet is for? It's to keep the head intact for identification.
Ba-dum-bump.
I have tested with a mileage meter. 25% better mileage when coasting to stop lights.
High RPM, fast acceleration also save gas because it is the cyclical speed up and coast down that gets 25% improved mileage.
As usual, the drawback is the State. Some cop is more likely to give you a ticket if you speed up slow down to save mileage. Every good mileage trick, the State will jump in and prevent you. Like not raising auto insurance rates for 2 vehicles over 1. One high mileage commuter eg motorcycle and a separate vacation guzzler truck.
Nope the State will tax and punish good behavior.
Score & Karma: SASA: Slashdot Approval Seekers Anonymous
>> You can get electricity from the grid at a cost similar
e rgyresourcetables.htm)
t ent)
_ engine#Engine_Efficiency)
>> to 50 cents a gallon.
where am i wrong?
50c of electricity ~= 3kwh ~= 10,000 btu (http://www.uwsp.edu/CNR/wcee/keep/Mod1/Whatis/en
1 gallon of regular gas = 125,000 btu
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Energy_con
I assume an electric or hybrid gasoline-electric car uses the electric energy more efficiently. 20% seems like a real-world value for ICE
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion
and even if we grant electric drive a 100% efficiency that's only 5:1, pretty far from the 12:1 implied above.
working back the other way,
125,000 btu * (1/5 of that needed for optimal electric drive) = 25000 btu equivalent needed
25000 btu / 3412 = 7.33 kwh
7.33 kwh * 0.16c/kwh (rough avg in my area) = $1.17
in the long run lost fuel taxes of about $0.40/gallon will need to be made up for, so I get $1.57/gallon. That's actually not bad in these days of $3/gallon gasoline, but significantly different from your 50c/gallon number.
i'd say that makes them better. that and not requiring a bunch of other similarly equipped cars on the road and local sensor infrastructure to make them work properly.
Seriously? I mean, i know it's impossible to retro-fix existing society; but it just seems that when building new homes, it makes sense to take advantage of the natural rainfall.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
In downtown Austin they purposefully uncooridinate the traffic lights because they do not want downtown to be a throughfare. Instead they want slow traffic that makes the area pedestrian friendly so that businesses get more customers. Although the effect on me was that I never wanted to go downtown. Austin is weird.
Instant milleage based on road speed and fuel injector duty cycle. I bought the car for $4000! It's great. If I drive 65 on the highway I can get 30MPG!
Blar.
I mean, msot country in EU have a 300%-400% tax on petroleum (80%+ of the price is tax for 20%- gas price). It does not seem to stop much people driving, despite having a dense common transport grid too...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
so maybe the real invention here is a dashboard MPG display showing many different MPG ratings( average, running total, current, etc ) AND has a CPM( Cost per Mile ) calculation which is wirelessly updated with the current fuel price when you fill up at the pump. ;-) We'd never get the filling stations to go for that but it could be easily input at the filling station manually too.
This would go a LONG way toward getting people to stop driving up to the bumper of the car ahead of it and stop accelerating to the stop sign or street light. And it'll not cost an extra $2000+ they current hybrid systems cost.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Many towns I've lived in have the lights timed... They figure the time it takes for you to go from a standing start to the speedlimit and then know when you reach the next light. Pretty much, as long as you drive the speedlimit, (ignoring the idiots ahead of you) and stay on the same road, you should hit all green lights. If you turn onto a major side street, you will have to stop at the next light, but then when it turns green, just go the speedlimit and you should hit green the whole way. Of course getting idiots to stop tailgating you because they want to do 55 in a 35 zone is another issue. Maybe its just the west coast? Also, look into traffic circles. They are heavily used in Europe, and a few east coast cities. I know that the west coast is starting to look at them too. Push you local planning commission to investigate them as an idea..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Where I live in San Diego, it's not uncommon at certain times of the day to see 8 out of 10 cars on the freeway doing 80+ mph. Most of the cars are pretty nice and do have MPG gauges. If their cars are like mine, and I'm sure most of them are, their MPG is far worse when going 85 instead of 60. We've got the most expensive gas prices in the continental US here, and people still don't care. Less time on the road for them is better than paying less for gas and helping the environment.
For example, driving north on the 15 freeway through Escondido at 10 PM on a friday night. A majority of the cars on the road are headed to Vegas, the mountains, the desert, basically somewhere far away from SD. These people waited until traffic subsided so they left late, and don't want to be driving all night. Many of them can save an hour of travel time by driving 85 instead of 65, even though they may use an extra $10-$20 in gas.
I'd like to see that option explored with very small direct-injection two strokes, which should be a great way to further decrease weight and improve efficiency.
Perhaps that is a step in the right direction, but I would like to see gas turbine/electric hybrids, and no transmission at all. The idea is that the turbine powers a generator, charges the batteries, and does nothing else. I can't imagine that with today's technology, we're still using inefficient Rube Goldberg-styled piston-based engines in our ground vehicles. It's that silly.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
(IANAL)
It's possible it's the West Coast, though I haven't seen much of it in PA either. NYC is pretty much hopeless anyway.
:)
Thanks for teh suggestion to push the local planning commission... though I don't know how much they'll like a cheap renter giving them suggestions on what to do with their commission.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
With everyone else on the road letting their cars drive for them, it'll be a WHOLE lot easier for me to cut traffic! [evil grin]
There's lots of things that could be implemented that woudl save more resources than having everyone with a regular car replcing it with a hybrid... even if the cost of making the hybrid was the same. Improved public transport that's posh enough to attract yuppies. Telecommuting and other distributed workplace models. Cooperative commuting schemes like carpools. Building better cities and suburbs to reduce the need for commuting. And you know what... you can do all of these things *and* use higher efficiency engines!
Who came up with this cockamamie headline?
...while I pass you.
--
Franklin
In places where the weather can have an effect on safe speed, there are often different limits posted to reflect.
Apart from that, everything you just said was a) wrong b) moronic.
The speed limits ARE artificially low, the weather is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT as to what the speed limit means, except that it can be revised DOWNWARD by the police if necessary (i.e. exceeding safe speed for the conditions). I don't know why you posted your idiotic opinion, but it's wrong. 60 means 60 means 60, and exceeding may be safe, but it's still illegal.
Yay for idiots like you who say profoundly stupid shit. Do you realize you're stupid or ae you too stupid to know how stupid you are?
The problem is AFAIK stoplights have sensors that can only detect cars when they are stopped. Timing can only help so much (especially when you consider trying to time lights on perpendicular or diagonal streets). Stoplights have no idea about the 10 cars that are going to be crossing the intersection 10 seconds from now; they can only see the one car waiting. If stoplights had better sensors they could make better decisions. What they really need are cameras that can see cars as they approach; unfortunately this is a hard problem in computer vision.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I'm amused, and saddened, by the drivers that shoot from red-light to red-light.
Not to denigrate your comment in any way, but what would be even better is if they didn't have to shoot from red-light to red-light - if the lights were properly synchronized they could just drive and not have to brake.
We have such traffic jams around here in spots where if the lights were just synchronized nobody would be talking about widening the roads, to create large transient parking lots.
I can't figure out if it's just *so* much harder than it seems, if it's hard to implement (not more expensive than widening a road) or if there are just too few people who know how to do it. Any insight there from the readership appreciated.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Theoretically whenever you need to use the breaks or accelerate you use up more gas. So you can save gas by easing off the pedal instead or by using hills to accelerate that's what the smart cars are effectively doing with sensors. How about intelligent hybrids and smart drivers ;) ?
After all, if there's a Taco meter, it's only fair.
Sean
Cheap gas is why MPG hasn't gone up. And gas is being kept at an artificially low price by the "defense subsidy": we're using general tax revenue to pay for an enormous defense force, a main function of which is to maintain stability in the middle east. If motorists had to pay a gas tax to fund the portion of the defense budget devoted to USCENTCOM (plus other oil producing areas such as Nigeria, Indonesia, Venezuela, etc... but CENTCOM is by far the biggest), you'd see prices that reflected the actual costs of providing gasoline, and MPGs would go up in a big hurry.
Considering that the gasoline engine in a Prius is *horribly* designed, and can produce only 75KW @ 5000 rpm.
If they wre really mechanically- and eco- minded, they would have put in a 1 or 2 cylinder diesel instead of a far heavier, and far less efficient (Screw MPG, I'm talking mechanical efficiency: 75W of work, not electricity, @ 5000 rpm really is inefficient for a 6 cylinder gasoline engine) 6 cylinder gasoline engine. Considering that a diesel engine can convert approx. 25% of the enrgey in diesel fuel into work, and a gasoline engine is capable approx. 12%, you would think they would have thought of this.
Anyone who has spent time working with diesels will tell you they are longer lasting, and more mechanically efficient engines.
What's more is that the diesel engine could provide more low end output for hills and loads, would last much, much longer than a gasoline engine, and would put out more work per pound of engine weight, at a lower rpm, than the weak 6 cylinder engine the Prius has. The gasoline engine the Prius has can barely generate enough work to carry 5 people up the hill to my house, and have had to listen to it's owner complain about it.
And if you fool with the gearing between the engine and the electrical generator that charges the batteries, you could probably meet the amount of electricity generated per revolution than the gasoline engine can, since diesels put out more low-end torque, which, with the corret gearing ratios, would allow for a faster generator speed, and thus, more electricity.
Of course, mechanical power output would depent on the number of cylinders, cylinder size, and electrical generation would depend on gear ratio. A three cylinder turbo diesel would probably do it.
If Toyota put any thought into it, a diesel-engined Prius would blow away the current gasoline-engined models, especially with the reduced engine weight, engine size, and fuel costs. Engine value would stay pretty much the same over use. The ultimate hybrid would be a biodiesel- powered Prius.
Of course, this is all off the top of my head. I'm not knocking the Prius, I'm just questioning why they use a large 6 cylinder gas engine, instead of a smaller, more efficient diesel engine.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I've heard some pretty extreme statements about plug-in hybrids--stuff like when running of electric only the cost is the equivalent of cents per gallon, and that under "daily" short trip conditions they never use any gas. Anyone have real experience with this stuff?
I realize batteries are the current issue, but like everything else, as soon as you sell a few, the manufacturing cost will plummet and the efficiency will rise.
These two technologies nicely dovetail, don't they? Especially since one of the concerns of the intelligent cars is premature brake pad wear, where a hybrid would instead just save up power.
... all of the energy produced by a hybrid car's engine comes from the gasoline it burns; it's battery and electric motors simply help it to use its fuel more efficiently. However, the internal combustion engine of the average automobile is notoriously inefficient, converting only about 20% of the fuel that it burns into usable kinetic energy. That goes for hybrids just the same as any other car. Therefore, it should be possible to produce a non-hybrid car that is more fuel-efficient than a hybrid, just as long it's superior engine efficiently can make up the difference. On the other hand, if you were to combine such an efficient engine with hybrid technology, you should always end up with a more fuel-efficient automobile.
I find this interesting as they claim this car gets 28 city/35 highway. So I get the low end with a mix of both city and highway driving. I'm not too surprised as I think they determine mpg with the vehicle in a wind-tunnel.
Trains: the only form of mass transit!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Or, if you're in a bad mood, you can use this piece of wisdom to see how bad a traffic jam you can produce. Hah.
..don't panic
This kind of speculative, impractical research is no doubt costing millions and yet there is no possibility of it every happening in any human society in the next 1000 years but I can go down the street and buy a hybrid (well, there's a waiting list) or build my own with current technology and tools.
Some guy on the radio was trashing biodiesel as not good enough, we need ultra-light hydrogen fuel-cell powered go-karts to survive, no doubt with this built in fantasy intelligence, of course. Shouldn't he know since he's such a blowhard expert? One can pour biodiesel into millions of existing diesel engines and even gas turbines that use today's technology, tools and modern agricultural techonogy, when the oil crisis comes, who will manufacture the fantasy go karts?
Then why not an "intelligent" hybrid? All the advantages of the intelligent car, plus regenerative braking when you're driving somewhere where there isn't much traffic?
So.. now the next obvious step is (should be) adding this look-ahead technology to hybrid cars and see what the fuel savings look like.
Think about it: hybrids don't save that much energy on the highway. Where they really win is in stop and go. I've heard of some hybrid trucks that only use the electric for accelerating, and rely on the gas 100% for maintaining speed.
So you combine both and you suddenly have fuel savings for in town stop-and-go as well as fuel savings for highway driving. Sounds like a win to me.
Nathan Friedly
I know here in CA you can't get them. Because none of them meet the smog requirements. In Europe they seem to more about the C02 output.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/8426/
This should give you the numbers you want, and AFAIK is compatible with a huge number of cars. I am buying one for my [wife's] Accord Euro Luxury soon.
ISO certified == THX certified
Excellent point. However, I strive to be an efficient driver. For example, internal combustion engines are most efficient at peak output, generally somewhere near wide open throttle. In recognition of that fact, when I reach the stop sign, I stop. (Sidebar - Actually stopping at the stop sign is apparently very unexpected behavior and I've been rear-ended a couple of times and nearly rear-ended more times than I can count.) Then I go - hard. I accelerate very briskly (my dear old mother says I obviously think I'm at the drag strip) to my target speed then hit the cruise control. After all, once you're up to speed, keeping a steady throttle improves efficiency, so I use my cruise control extensively. In fact, I'll use my cruise control to keep a steady throttle for as little as a couple of blocks.
By driving like this, I average over 22 miles per gallon in a full-size Mercury Grand Marquis, an old-school design with a big V-8. Occasionally, I'll break 24 mpg.
It never really occurred to me that people would try to anticipate how I drive in moving traffic based on how I drive in (virtually) stopped traffic. Seems like apples and oranges to me.
Live and learn. Thanks for the insight.
The famous "Traffic Waves" essay:
m l
http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.ht
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
this manual concentration on mileage is probably as distracting as talking on a cell phone
No. Most of the battle is paying close attention to the car(s) in front of you, and immediately taking your foot off the gas as soon as you notice any deceleration up ahead. And then you continue to pay close attention, so you can judge whether coasting alone will be enough to avert a collision with the guy ahead of you. (Coasting: good for mileage. Braking a conventional car: terrible for mileage. Braking a hybrid: bad for mileage, but not as bad as braking a conventional car, because regenerative braking recovers some of the energy.)
If everyone did this, accident rates would plummet.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
It's particularly satisfying when I begin coasting far from the red light, while the guy in the next lane blows past me, then screeches to a halt at the light.
And then, due to my well-timed approach, I still have 10-15 mph of undissipated kinetic energy at the time the light turns green, and I can blow past him.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
that all large prisons hold innocent people.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I've been driving an Insight as my commuter vehicle for over 2 years. I think that if there were an ;-)
instant milage readout in all cars, people who cared about money draining from their wallet would
very quickly adjust their driving habits. I cringe when the instant mpg meter goes below 50
I heard on the radio that some insurers *are* offering discounts for hybrid drivers, specifically for
the reason you suggest--they drive less aggressively.
We see these stories all the time.
"Hybrid cars are no better than intelligent cars".
Excellent work with the automation system. Now let's put this intelligent autopilot in a hybrid car and see what we can get.
"Hybrids are no better than a modern turbodiesel"
Excellent work with the diesel engine development. Now let's build a turbodiesel hybrid. With intelligent autopilot.
The technologies aren't mutually exclusive. They don't have to be compared against each other. They can be combined for even better results.
Of course, the law of diminishing returns applies. An intelligent turbodiesel hybrid may only be a couple of percent more efficient than an intelligent spark ignition hybrid. But as a research tool and technology demonstration, why don't we hear of anybody building such a thing?
I suppose it would be politically incorrect to introduce a chart of driver types ordered by coefficient of stupidity.
Quite often, as I perfectly time my "coasting" up to the change of the light from red to green, I see the roid-gater who passed me fifteen seconds earlier at a complete stop in the lane beside me. The roid-gater then hammers on the gas, accelerates madly, makes several abrupt lane changes, passes me again on an open stretch of road, and the cycle repeats when the roid-gater comes to a complete stop again at the next red light he didn't anticipate.
Eventually the roid-gater catches a green light by the laws of chance and zooms off into the distance, but I often spot him again at the service station with a hose in one hand and an overpriced vat of corn syrup in the other to replenish the mental and emotional energy drained by all those abrupt lane changes and implied "pull over or die" roid-gater death moves.
No-one ever coasts three minutes to a traffic light. The only time a driver has three minutes to study an upcoming traffic light is when the driver is already stopped at a red light. Coasting time is usefully limited to half a minute. Anything longer than that, you were coming to a stop anyway.
There are many situations where you can't see far enough down the road to anticipate anything regardless and our traffic lights (in North America) are rather stupidly designed so that when you finally do catch sight of the signal state, you still can't figure out your phase relationship precisely enough to make the correct decision. I've heard that some lights in Shanghai illuminate in a progression of concentric squares to indicate time remaining. I no longer doubt the Chinese will take over the world.
The painful situation is approaching a stale green light at highway speed knowing you are a little too far to make it. Do you hammer on the gas and risk the three-second 60 to zero bonk stop if you judged it badly, or brazen through the stale amber with a cop-attractive engine whine while someone's grandmother contemplates finally making that right turn as you blow through her focal plane, or sheepishly coast into toward a green light that hasn't changed yet? Sitting at a red light you could have made it through wastes more gas than speeding up to make the cycle, but not as much gas as speeding up and not making it, which is still less than speeding up, making it through, then plowing into another vehicle (gasoline cost in units of replacement vehicles).
There are distinct loss terms from driving too fast (quadratic drag term, compensated by getting where you want to go by the time you wanted to get there), not supplying enough gas at low RPM (engines run most efficiently at low RPM with the throttle wide-open), supplying too much gas at high RPM, idling in congestion that could have been avoided, and just about any use of the brake pedal (mildly compensated, at best, by the increased life expectancy of the truly stupid who share the roadway).
It takes a lot of anticipation to keep yourself within the efficient zones, at very little cost of not getting there as fast as the idiot next to you, but some loss of opportunity to demonstrate your true virility. In America, guns equal freedom, cars equal virility. For most of the drivers out there, it's not about getting from A to B, it's all about achieving personal expression through a two ton shell of metal.
It supposedly gets 38/47 MPG, while the conventional gas Jetta gets 24/31. I've heard they're not available in all states, though. The TDI increases the price by about $5k, and I ran the numbers and figured out that I'd have to drive about 100k miles to make the difference in price worth it.
Why does this have to be an either/or situation? Why can't a hybrid car have lookahead capability as well? For example, it might use the capability to determine whether it is worthwhile to start the engine when running on battery power. If it's open road and green lights, then start the engine in preparation to accelerate. If it's two miles of brake lights, only start the engine if the charge state justifies it. Also, if it's all assholes-to-elbows as far as the eye can see, eliminate the 15 mph threshold for starting the engine. Even if the car exceeds 15 mph, it won't be for very long.
(I don't know if 15 mph is common to most hybrids, only that it's what the Prius does.)
I would also like to see the "smart car" recommend getting off the freeway when it's truly a good idea (as opposed to just exchanging slow-and-go for red lights), or even say "Hey aren't you hungry? It might be a good time to pull off and get a sandwich and a soda because it's going to be a long trip home." The source of motive power is completely irrelevant here of course.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
WHY can't I have a true-electric wall chargeable vehicle with an SVO-compatible diesel engine for on-road recharging with intelligent powertrain and Charge/MPG readout in the dash? WHY aren't CAFE standards raised to require more efficient vehicles?
Oh yeah, because big oil = energy monopoly = big money = well funded lobbyists = politial pwnage.
Silly me.
~!J!
On the other hand...
Downtown cores should have traffic lights that favour pedestrian traffic. At the moment I'm fortunate to live and work in a downtown area and the traffic light timing seems to be designed to make me wait at almost every street crossing while walking to work.
There are all of these useless tips "you have to keep the manifold vacuum high because if the vacuum is low, you are burning a lot of gas." Of course you are burning more gas when you add power -- if you never added power, you would never go anywhere. The question is to have the driving skill in traffic to add power wisely -- never accelerate like crazy when you know you have to step on the brakes right away, and if you add power, you want the engine to be in an efficient power band, which is actually at low manifold vacuum and lower engine revs.
Now for most production cars, the peak fuel economy will be at a somewhat higher manifold vacuum than wide-open-throttle -- Harry Ricardo commented that since cars are usually operated at part load, it is better to design the engine with higher compression ratio for the fuel you are using so that a little bit of manifold vacuum is required to prevent spark knock, and at wide open throttle, you retard the spark and operate a little bit less efficiently. If you have ever seen an RPM vs MAP engine map, there is an island of maximum fuel efficiency in the mid RPM range somewhat below but not much below wide open throttle.
But that does not mean for max fuel economy you need to be out there blocking traffic watching a vacuum (or a fuel flow gauge) that you accelerate so slowly that the gauge never comes out of the "green." That kind of driving is just plain sillyness.
In an ideal world, with no friction, it would take no energy to get from point A to point B, assuming they were at the same gravitational potential (height).
In this frictionless scenario, the ordinary old 'dumb' car spends all of its energy accelerating, and burns off all of its kinetic energy as heat while braking.
The hybrid car recoups as much kinetic energy as it can through regenerative braking... if it was 100% efficient it would get all of its energy back for the next acceleration cycle.
This "intelligent" car spends its energy accelerating, and relies on regular friction without braking to decelerate as much as possible... obviously it wouldn't be much better than the 'dumb' car in this scenario.
Add friction, and basically the only thing that separates the dumb car and the intelligent car is that the intelligent car tries to avoid braking, mostly by avoiding coming to a full stop at traffic lights, but also probably by spending a lot longer coasting to full stops when required. Slower = less air resistance.
The hybrid car can still start and stop relatively fast, and depending upon how efficient its regenerative braking is, won't be at a loss.
But obviously you want an intelligent hybrid.
I especially like the idea of PRT over tubes rather than tracks; pneumatic, maglev, whatever. That'd be way-cool. Getting one in place however might be easier in a brand new town than doing a retrofit. Tubes also mitigate the issue of stray obstacles e.g. children.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
From HybridFocus.org:
Sigh...
Of course, no mention of how much more fuel efficient a hybrid car with this technology would be. The hyperbolic comparison that makes them seem mutually exclusive is much more newsworthy. In other words, yes-- this is a promising technology. However, it's something that can be used side by side with hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles, or fuel cell cars. To compare them as if they were mutually exclusive is just plain irresponsible journalism.
jrjBlog
Here in California there are laws against that. In a 3- ( or more ) lane freeway, they must stay in the rightmost two lanes. And on a 2-lane road they can only use the left lane for passing.
Oh, that's the law here too -- it's just that every cop has a trucker in the family, so good luck getting that one enforced :-/
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Instead of debating whether or not hybrid cars or "intelligent" cars are more efficient, and whether or not laws/mpg gauges/etc. will make people get better mileage on their cars, why don't we make an "intelligent" hybrid car with a mileage indicator and enact some laws encouraging more fuel efficient driving, all at the same time? All of these things probably do make cars more efficient, but instead of comparing and contrasting them, perhaps we should be working towards combining these technologies together to create a car that's even more fuel efficient. Or perhaps we shouldn't be focusing as much on cars at all and focus on improving/subsidizing our mass transit systems and encouraging biking/walking, since these could potentially save more fuel than "intelligent" or hybrid cars ever will.
> the next light (40 or 50 yards ahead) is about to turn yellow ...from what colour? In the UK, turning to (only) yellow, means the next colour is red, ie stop. I'd guess it's different in other countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light
Max.
I've seen better fuel economy by not driving the speed limit. The speed limit is set based on nearby conditions not what will get you the best fuel economy. It's not possible use them to do that. In many cars picking up 5MPH allows you to drop a gear and run at lower RPM thus using less fuel.
Re: fast accelerations
I've seen a slight increase in testing fast starts versus slow starts.
Re; lift kits and accessories
Again outside of weight this won't affect anything significantly - except on hybrids. Roll your windows up and you'll get better results. Shed twenty pounds of fat and you'll get better fuel economy improvement than racks and lift kits. Lift kits only add some weight and have no impact on aerodynamics (unless you are talking about turning a sports car into a massive 4WD monster). The aerodynamics of the underside of a car is pretty much set - it sucks.
If you want intelligent drivers you must get people to actually think and experiment. Repeating age-old platitudes that are not true or not effective won't do it.
Go ahead, try some experiments, keep records, learn what really affects your economy.
Rule #1 avoid slowing down.
Learn how to safely take corners at speed. Slowing from 30 to 5-10 to turn a corner kills mileage. Most cars can take most corners at 2-3 times what people do take them at. Watch ahead to see what is going on, learn to anticipate your speed change requirements.
Drive thrus? Shut the car off. If you idle for about 6 seconds you just consumed as much fuel as it takes to start modern (last decade and a half) engines. Yup, 6 seconds.
There are few blanket statements on improving mileage. Chief among them is "move less mass". A heavy but aerodynamic car can and will get less economy than a lightweight brick shaped one. Aerodynamics has little effect until you get to freeway speeds.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
If you really knew the cost per mile, many people would think twice about commuting long distances. In Australia, the ATO (tax office) rates for business travel is AUD0.66/km,. You have to realise that the tax office is not a benevolent organisation, so it must be pretty close to the actual cost. I calculate that fuel is less than 30% or less of true car ownership costs (that is obviously dependent on distance driven per year).
I didn't expect so many responses, let alone something practical I could actually use.
Quack, quack.
Additionally, if every municipality under 200,000 population (roughly) would turn their side street red lights to blinking reds and the main road went to blinking yellows, I would never EVER have to stop in the middle of the night on an empty street and wait 3 minutes for the light to change.
Keep carrying on about fuel efficiency and public transportation if you'd like, but don't forget the real problem is the stupid red lights everywhere that are making 15 minute commutes take 35 minutes.
Yes, it would be unfair to impose such taxes overnight; people should be given time to adjust by phasing them in over a period of year.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Digital signatures.
:-)
Require all traffic information messages to be signed using your car's private key, which is registered to your licence plate number. Also send the car's public key, signed by the DMV.
Other cars would be required to check for message authenticity by requesting a copy of public keys when it receives a signature it can't verify, then checking it against a copy of the DMV's public key to verify whether the car's keys are in fact authentic.
On abuse, all traffic messages are digitally signed, so finding the source of the fraudulent transmissions is trivial.
All of this is trivial to automate, the technology is fairly cheap, especially considering the cost of the rest of the system, and can be verified in a fraction of a second. It's the exact same technology used to verify the authenticity of web sites using SSL -- ever had to wait around for one of those checks to happen?
Might it be hacked? Not likely. Public key cryptography is a proven technology. The largest known vulnerability is if the DMV's private key were leaked. This isn't some kind of DRM red herring -- unlike with DRM, as an attacker you don't have control of the hardware verifying the keys in the first place. So you could hack your own car to accept fraudulent signatures, but that wouldn't really give you any advantages, now would it.
Suitably, my captcha was details.
There are three issues here. Automatic car control, traffic management, driver information.
Automatic car (and truck) control is uber-cruise control. The car picks speed (accelerate and brake) and can turn left and right automatically. Economy on highways comes from drafting in a train, and letting the driver do something else, like read or eat breakfast. Currently cars do not have these features. Legislation can add the electronic wiring and plug for later addition of computer "brain" that communicates with an intelligent vehicle network, we can future proof cars rolling off assembly lines today. When a metro region or state implements the network, consumers can purchase the computer brain. Without saturation, meaning nation wide legislation requiring every car to have intelligent vehicle network capabilities, regions that should use this technology (e.g. LA, New York, Atlanta, DC), will have to look at HOV lanes as a place to actually use this.
Traffic management helps smart and stupid cars move more easily. This can be simple such as New York City does not charge tolls for cars leaving Manhattan, but does charge for cars entering. This can quickly fall victim to local politics or poor planning. Correctly timiing lights to help distant commuters only makes traffic worse, and does not improve urban densities that can help make the economics of pedestrians, bicycles, and mass transit systems (buses, light rail, rail).
Driver information can be solved today with cell phones and low voltage radio. Better information helps drivers make good decisions, such as should I commute everyday at 8am, 8:15am, 8:30am or what. Should a driver go highway or back roads? Is there an accident or construction? Telling transport users (drivers and riders) exactly what do, or what to expect, before hand and dynamically would greatly improve predictability of commutes and transport. Most of these things can be solved with a cell phone, E911, traffic cameras, and overhead surveillance. Collecting the information is the hard part. For road users this is very complex, because intention must be collected before hand. Did a driver stop at a gas station, or was stuck in traffic? Ditto coffee, and dry cleaner. Was a driver in a hurry or driving slow while talking on the phone? Precision is extremely hard to collect to provide accurate information. But information distribution, especially in map form would be very powerful. Providing explorable information to home buyers would also be very powerful.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's the same here, but it works out to giving you about two and a half seconds to get through the next intersection. Unless you accelerate really quick, you won't make it before it goes red.
(IANAL)
Tubes are undesirable for a large number of reasons. The first and most obvious is that they would cost vastly more to build than a simple concrete rail with a metal pad on the top for durability. The second is that if there is a serious breakdown, getting out is difficult. The concepts call for one vehicle to be able to push another, but it's still a sketchy idea. Pneumatic is impractical, seals are a problem. It just makes more sense to not use a tube.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Does anyone know the status/disposition of heads up display in automobiles? It'd make dangerous things like dialing a phone or watching the in-dash dvd player a little less... well, dangerous.
Apart from the obvious benefits of themeing your display and getting to pretend we're fighter pilots.
Note: This sig contains nine S's, nine I's and five O's which... means absolutely nothing.
i also try to let them past, on a multi-lane limited access highway, as quickly as possible, but 4 some reason they seem 2 b upset when i do so with a 1/2g lane-change;-)
but on a 2lane road, if i can't pull over, i'll simply slow down until their following distance is safe (2sec headway) then they can easily get around;-)
the tailgating u r referring to is "platooning" aka drafting 4 u nascar fans;-) but unless u r a nascar driver, it requires autopilot, which another poster calls PRT.
but the liability issues in our litigious culture won't let that happen:-(
the intelligent cruise control is the 1st step in a partial implementation; the next step is road-vehicle comms.
are g-force junkies, getting their jollies just like riding a roller coaster...aka: boy-racers;-}
1993 Yamaha Virago. V-Twin, 750cc. I'm no expert, but it's my understanding that more cylinders == worse mileage, at least in an overly simplified manner. So, your 4-cylinder is practically a car. If you want super amazing mileage, drive a go-cart that runs on a lawn-mower engine, perhaps. You'll go slow as hell, but save tons of gas.
:)
I know a few people who have newer cruiser-style bikes that reliably get 80mpg. I guess a lot of it also depends on the bore size, as well, since that changes where you get your power...either taking off, or cruising. But again, I really don't know that much about it.
-G
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.