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Toyota Going 100% Hybrid By 2020
autofan1 writes "Toyota's vice president in charge of powertrain development, Masatami Takimoto, has said cost cutting on the electric motor, battery and inverter were all showing positive results in reducing the costs of hybrid technology and that by the time Toyota's sales goal of one million hybrids annually is reached, it 'expect margins to be equal to gasoline cars.' Takimoto also made the bold claim that by 2020, hybrids will be the standard drivetrain and account for '100 percent' of Toyota's cars as they would be no more expensive to produce than a conventional vehicle."
...into the future.
At least they will beat out Fusion by 7 years.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
... they'll make a Dodge eCharger.
Isn't this a bit like the current market leader placing its eggs all in one (hybrid) basket? I welcome the rebel fighters willing to tackle the status quo. Hybrid is neat tech, but still. It isn't the be all, end all solution.
- - -
every bicycle is green
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Hopefully, they will also have either a battery recycling program or batteries that don't have such nasty stuff in them...
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
That's great, except that their new cash cow is trucks. I don't think Tundras are included in that prediction.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Oh-oh and In 25 years we'll have flying cars too. Personally I don't care about hybrids, I want Mr. Fusion power plant instead of a fuel tank.
You can't handle the truth.
I want my fusion in a AA size power cell I can use anywhere.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
I'd actually like to see them commit to alternative fuels more. "100% hybrid" isn't good enough for me. 100% hybrid by 2010 would be nice, with a move to embrace other fuels by 2020.
Of course, he didn't say gas hybrid. Diesel hybrids would be nice; and this doesn't exclude plug-in hybrids, which have more utility than pure electric vehicles. And, in some strange way, you could consider a fuel cell/battery car to be a hybrid, even though the actual drivetrain is 100% electric. But some pure electric vehicles would be nice (bring back the RAV4-EV!) as would other alternative fuels.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
My mom use to have one back in the 80's. After a decade she gave it to my grandfather to use on the farm, this thing still runs. If they can get that kind of reliability int a hybrid, more power to them. Looking forward to getting one.
Somehow, I'd hoped that 13 years from now we'd be all electric, or otherwise not tied permanently to OPEC's apron strings. Hybrids are a nice improvement, but they're not exactly flying cars or solar power.
I suppose in Car Industry terms, 13 years isn't all that far off. I suspect that a car model is perhaps 5 to 7 years in the making, or longer for a really radical redesign.
But to think that I'll be turning 50 and cars will still be burning plain old gasoline, with only a moderate improvement in performance over right now... that makes me depressed.
Well, according to the story from yesterday, I believe, the MPG of hybrids was actually incorrect, and was over-estimating the average MPG by more than 10mpg. Meaning the Prius not only looks pretty ugly, but it gets slightly better mileage than my Honda Civic which isn't hybrid. Plus, I don't have to worry about disposing of batteries ($$$) and replacing the batteries (more $$$).
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
But will it still burn gasoline?
"What the Japanese don't understand" is a hilarios way to start any sentence about automobiles. There are things that Japan has been getting right for over 20 years that GM still hasn't learned.
We've been working on batteries and efficient motors since the seventies. What makes Toyota think the technology will move in the next twelve years like it hasn't moved in the last thirty? Things don't usually happen that way.
I would really like to see Toyota build a car that is identical to a current hybrid and find the costs associated with the vehicle including:
1) The money saved in the design by not having the electrical engine, battery, extra alternator system
2) The added vehicle life (if any) by not having extra parts to fail.
3) A more realistic estimate of the gas money saved under the new, more realistic mileage ratings
4)The additional cost of disposing batteries from the hybrid upon the hybrids end
I feel that we still may have been too quick to jump on the bandwagon with hybrids. Air pollution is reduced overall, but the added cost of the electrical engine may not make up for the forgone cost of gas. Additionally, how good is it going to be to have a mound of spent batteries laying around in landfills?
Let's see some data before such a large move is made.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
GM today announced plans to begin planning the development of a new hybrid platform. A GM executive was quoted saying "Toyota has really got a jump on this whole 'hybrid' thing, but we're on it!" The new platform, due out in 13 years is expected to compete against the current Prius. Only time will tell if this risky endeavor will be a wise one.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Hybrids are only more efficient for certain forms of driving. For cruising at motorway speeds the hybrid is just extra weight lowering efficiency. Improvements in diesel engines might well outpace hybrid technology.
Why would anyone wants to do this? It actually doesn't make any sense. 100% of cars represents a lot of recycling and a lot of cost (and pollution) in expired and leaking batteries.
A hybrid can't make an engine more efficient. It just makes it more efficient over certain parts of the power band. Unless they redefine hybrid to mean starter-alternator with minimal power assist there are going to be a lot of cars that don't see any gain. Incidentally I do think every car will (and should) have a starter-alternator in that timescale.
Other improvements in engine technology are negating the need for a hybrid motor at all. Going back to the Honda Insight the original hybrid: it doubled the milage of a Civic. 35% was due to exotic materials, aerodynamics, reduced rolling resistance; 35% was due to a more efficient engine and the last 30% was due to the expensive hybrid drivetrain.
By all means hybrids should become more popular, even more popular than conventionally powered but full replacement is based more on dogma and marketing than sound engineering reasons.
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
stacks and stacks of the dead batteries from hybrid cars is better for our environment than emissions from conventional gas engines how?
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
I was kind of hoping we'd be past the use of fossil fuels in our cars by 2020, oh well.
The Farewell Tour II
If the other car manufacturers are smart, they'll build less fuel efficient cars. Then by 2020, there will be no more gas and Toyota's invesment in hybrids will be useless.
Badass Resumes
Look at how long it took to adopt fuel injection across the board. If I rememebr right, there were still carburetors on new cars into the early 90s. Electronic ignition, same deal. And how many GM engines are still overhead-valve with pushrods?
"Oh boy! Are we going to try something dangerous?"
Your assumption that hybrids are "dead weight" at highway speeds is wrong. I get my best hybrid mileage on the highway (often at or over 70 MPG). It doesn't have to be that way. A hybrid designed for torque rather than economy might now do any better than a standard engine at highway speeds, but a hybrid designed for economy rather than torque (like my Honda Insight) does.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
So Toyota will sell no all-electric or other "zero emissions" cars in 2020? No H2 or fuelcell vehicles? Hybrids are better than simple internal combustion engines, but not good enough. Has Toyota and the car industry just figured out that they can avoid the really big change away from gasoline just by getting us all to go "ooh, hybrids - that's good"?
--
make install -not war
I'm still waiting for my Mr. Fusion , that will enable me to power my vehicle on ordinary household garbage! After all, it's the only power source that's capable of generating the 1.21 Gigawatts of electricity necessary to run the Flux Capacitor in my DeLorean! ;-)
I can't help but comment on your sig. What is the environmental impact of your bike? Sure you're not burning gas but what about polutants from manufacturing and maintenance?
Just to add a bit of relevancy to the post, my point wasn't to say your bike is bad for the environment. It's not good either, although it is likely (a lot) better than a car.
Same goes for the hybrid. Sure they aren't the end all solution. I don't think (most) people expect it to be. But hey, improvement is good.
If you've ever driven Toyota you should know that it doesn't make cars, it makes lifeless soulless appliances, sort of fridges and sofas on wheals.
That's why going hybrid will not damage its qualities.
Sorry Toyota, in my 30s I'm not old enough to drive your vacuum cleaners
They should be going all hydrogen... Auto makers need to get their asses in gear and help out in mastering the hydrogen fuel cell. If people are concerned about the future they need to stop using fuel instead of just find more easily accessible stuff to burn.
marketing pieces. I think it was a GM executive who released a public statement that hybrids were bad because it distracted attention from the real future, hydrogen fuelcell vehicles. Oh, and he chose to release this the same week that Toyota invited the press to see the Prius built on the same productionline as 4 other cars. Not being custom built in some special production facility.
Go Toyota, show em how its done. Can you believe that the US had actually started working on hybrid vehicle in 1993? Yup, but good ole George Dubya Bush terminated government backing/involvement once he/Dick created the hydrogen program?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
...100 percent of toyota cars have flux capacitors.
You constantly struggle for self improvement - and it shows.
Hooray for bad Engrish on fortune cookies
...Japanese companies face little of this burden in Japan, where the government covers retirees' health care and pays a bigger share of workers' pensions. And then it goes into pensions: Toyota expected to pay out about $700 million in pension benefits in fiscal year 2006, which ended in March. That's less than a tenth of what G.M. expects to pay on its pensions this year. If you have to pay $1500+ more than the competition for pensions and health care of past workers, something has to give. Often it seems to be quality.W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
People are all over themselves to replace their old car with a hybrid, and their old bulbs with compact flouro's, thanks to Al Gore's propoganda machine (here's some fun, watch his 'documentary' and count how many times he says "if")
By 2020 the technology may be mature enough that I'd own one. Until then, it's a way costlier option for many of us who save money by maintaining their own vehicles.
And I guarantee my well-maintained Mustang will get better mileage than the banged-up Prius' I already see running around on half-inflated tires, alignment way off, etc, etc..
Imagine if this was really about the environment, and people just realized if they properly cared for, and properly drove, the vehicle they have now - even a Hummer - these scary emissions of the deadly toxin CO2 would be *greatly* curbed. As in, reduced past any lame energy savings based on mercury lightbulbs.
But hey, if everyone jerks their knees hard enough..
I hope CVTs and other technologys destroy the hybrid over the next decade. The real fuel savings magic will happen in the transmission, not the motor.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
50% gasoline engine-powered, 50% flintstones foot-powered? No thanks!
Really, though, Toyota is talking about margins here. In other words, profit. Well, hybrids cost quite a bit more than their "conventional" counterparts. So much more, in fact, that you need to own one for much longer than is typical in order to *break even* through fuel savings.
And, according to this report by CNW, hybrids aren't nearly as helpful when it comes to energy savings as one might like to think. Indeed, my Xterra is more energy-friendly than most hybrids based on that report....
Maybe by 2020 things will change. Or maybe not.
I like basketball!!1!
>>Is that erectric cars aren't the end-all, be all. In 12 years, hopefully they're will be a better, clean source of energy.
12 years would be awfully damn quick to come up with and implement an alternative to electric or fossil fuel driven cars. Look how slow progress has been so far.
On the other hand, if gas is $15/gallon, then I bet somebody will figure something out. Isn't the oil in the Mid-East going to run dry in 40 years or so?
GM, Chrysler and Ford announce that they'll transition to "thinking about possibly getting some of those battery-rechargey cars" into production by 2015.
In the 12 years to 2020, we can reduce the consumption of net carbon releaseing fuels and import fuels far more by conservation than by alternative energy. THere is no way we could provide 20% of our petroleum fuels from alternatives by 2020. But we could very plausibly increase fleet efficiency by more than 25%. Indeed this magnitude drop already happened in a very short time following the carter administration rules. (and we have given back some of those gains in the intervening years). Additionally, alternative fuels are not benign. They transform solid carbon into C02. They do produce waste during production. They may devestate crop lands or oceans. Coal mining is hardly benign. Nuclear power has it's risks. Moreover expenses have ot be considered. If we are spending 5% more on fuels to produce alternatives, then that's 5% less on other things like health care or social security. US products cost more so Our GDP also declines. Alternatives could harm life span, and standard of living. Conservation is thus far more attractive.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I read in "Smart Ass Mechanics" Magazine that Toyota is going to start putting in "regenerative windmills" on every vehicle to maximize efficiency during highway driving. When you car goes above 50mph a giant fan will deploy above you, capturing all of that wind energy that you'd otherwise lose and charging the batteries with it.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I think it makes a ton of sense. As the scale of production increases, the cost difference will drop. Depending on what happens this may be practically required at some point to meet emissions requirements while having good power. Still Toyota current has one big problem with hybrids: they can't make them fast enough. The Prius is selling faster than they can produce them, I don't know about the Camary and Highlander. On top of those, the Lexus SUV uses the Toyota system and I think Ford might on their hybrid SUV.
It's a neat technology. It's got better fuel efficiency, you can use a smaller engine for the same horsepower (since people only generally care about acceleration and don't need the extra power staying at speed), they can get energy back from brakes, etc. And since Toyota has said that they will release plug-in hybrids in the next few years (model year '09 I think) that will improve things more.
Plus a hybrid is a hybrid. They didn't say gasoline hybrids, they could be half-hydrogen or something else.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
agreed
soon, the entire world will be smelling their own farts...
Beware of the Leopard.
Toyota formerly claimed that they would be 100% hybrid by 2010. I can't find a citation now because they announced that they would be selling a diesel-electric hybrid by 2010 and the search results are now poisoned.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Switching to hybrid vehicles to reduce environmental damage is like switching to low-fat donuts to lose weight: It's technically less damaging, but you're better off reducing the amoung that you consume in general.
An in-hub motor would eliminate the axle, which is at least partially unsprung weight. It would also eliminate any center differential; often this too is unsprung weight. So the unsprung weight situation isn't definitely worse, and could sometimes be a bit better.
If unsprung weight really mattered, we'd mount the brakes inboard. The Hummer H1 and HMMWV are about the only vehicles to bother with this.
Fully independant power will do wonders for vehicle control, especially with active speed difference control on turns.
--> What is the environmental impact of your bike? Sure you're not burning gas but what about polutants from manufacturing and maintenance?
As a resident of Amsterdam, just moving towards a cyclist's based civic planning, with autos denigrated to a 2nd class status, well the streets are more available for the people to live in and enjoy. The space afforded is made larger. So while manufacturing the bike itself, plus the cycle paths have a cost, there are *huge* benefits due to improved land-useage, plus the preferred 'bio-fuels' consumed, (and where the money goes for the bio-fuel, etc. etc.).
OK, maybe all bikes are dark green, but I see your point.
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ride a bike next time, and we'll all breathe better.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
I want a plug-in hybrid that can do this cycle, with driver, passenger, and at least 500 lb of cargo:
- Start in the SF Bay area (elevation 10 ft) with a full charge and full tank.
- Take Altamont Pass (1007 ft)
- Cruise crosswise across the central valley
- Take highway 88 over Carson pass (8650 ft)
- Cut down 89 and cross Monitor pass (8314 ft)
- Descend to Antelope valley (5000 ft).
Then tank up, charge the battery from the windmill or power line over a couple nights, and go back.
The charge control should be smart:
Going east the car should use battery power at first, scavenge the power going down Altamot for the first part of the the trip across the central valley, arrive at Carson pass with the batteries near safe discharge (to avoid excessive gas consumption), scavenge power descending from Carson pass to use climbing through Monitor pass where it again arrives near safe discharge, and scavenge power on the short and steep descent to Antelope Valley for crusing there. With the scavenging and the mileage it should make the trip on a single tank with a margin of safety, despite the 5000 foot end-to-end climb and the 8650 ft bump near the end.
Going west it should be able to scavenge enough power coming down to the Sierras to get across the central valley with the engine off much of the way, arriving back in the Bay Area with non-trivial gas left in the tank, so if it misses getting a charge that night it can still do a 40-mile round-trip commute the next day without a pit stop.
All while maintaining the peppy performance needed to maintain freeway speeds and handle the traffic on the freeway legs of the trip and to quickly pass slow-moving traffic on the steep upgrades and short passing lanes of the Sierras.
When can I buy THAT car?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They already do this. Many recyclable car parts have a "core" charge. It works like a bottle or can deposit. You either bring in the old battery when you buy a new one, or you pay the core charge and get it refunded if you bring back the old battery. Simple.
Adding a more-powerful electric motor/generator (compared to a "starter-only" motor), battery pack, and control electronics will be free? I call pferd-merde (German-French combination denoting the output of the northbound end of a southbound equine).
Even if the smog controls cost more than now, you will still need to have them, so there's no significant savings on those. If a smaller hydrocarbon engine is used than the non-hybrid case there would be some reduction of catalyst mass, but not enough to pay for everything else. The overall drive train is still as massive (or more), so there's no savings there.
Given the extra environmental cost of the toxics-laden batteries, both in production and any recycling, hybrids are not even very "green". They can provide a small reduction in hydrocarbon fuel use IN THE VEHICLE, but what about the extra fuel used to create and move the additional components during manufacturing and when the worn-out battery packs have to be disposed/recycled?
Other than making some ignoramuses "feel good", and giving some chiselers a "bye" into the carpool lanes, hybrids are a sad joke on society. Get a diesel or a motorcycle or a Smart. My bike uses less fuel than a hybrid, and takes up less space on the road making EVERYONE's commute more fuel-efficient than if I had a hybrid.
If we just instituted a hefty "space tax" based on how may square meters a vehicle consumes on the road, any shift to smaller vehicles would accomplish more good than getting everyone into hybrids. When you really need to transport six people, then a single vehicle for all six would be a lower tax than six individual vehicles, but the extra space freed by converting the Tundras (581 cm long ) to Yaris (381 cm long) would make traffic flow better, wasting a lot less fuel.
"Additionally, alternative fuels are not benign."
I think this is an extremely important point. In the rush to limit the environmental damage caused by fossil fuels, it seems the environmental risks of some of the alternative fuel sources are being almost completely ignored. The potential environmental damage which widespread biofuel usage could cause is particularly scary.
Every single study has shown that the astronomical land requirements needed to produce biofuel crops on a scale for it to replace gas in the USA would require near enough all the existing farmland along with all the worlds remaining forests, rainforests and protected areas of nature (e.g. national parks) to be cleared and replaced with biofuel crops. The thought that this could be done in the name of the "saving the environment" is pretty baffling!
All hybrids by 2020 -- 13 years from now? While I'll admit I'm somewhat naïve and an optimist, I was hoping that by 2020, we'd be standardizing on hydrogen fuel cells and renewable energies and no longer keeping the corrupt and oppressive governments of the Middle East flush with American dollars, while turning Saskatewan into a farm belt with greenhouse gases. C'mon, we can do better than that. Howabout American automakers stepping up to the plate and bring the innovation back home like it once was?
please show me some hard numbers. otherwise you are no more convincing than the thing you are arguing against my friend.
Since Toyota is beating GM worldwide, I think it's safe to say that there are some things that American car makers don't understand about making cars. Namely, that the current trend is away from huge street boats, quality matters, and you can't compete when you can barely make a profit on the product you sell.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
GM (Chevy Silvarado and GMC Sierra) have had hybrid-powered full-size pickup trucks on the market since 2004.
13 years isn't a huge amount of time but enough for something completely new to come along.
I think there will be practical electric cars. No drivetrain to speak of. Hub mounted motors. And no batteries. Some sort of fuel cell probably. No way anyone wants to spend hours recharging. Filling up at the pump is too convenient.
My 30mpg '93 Ford Escort kicked the bucket a few weeks back, and I started looking for a replacement. I felt fortunate to find a 1994 Honda Civic VX. It had 133,000 miles, and was being sold by a lady who didn't want the standard transmission anymore due to degeneration of her knees. Just got back yesterday from a 4000 mile road trip, and if I exclude the sub-40mpg tanks that resulted from a bad sensor ("Lean Air Fuel", iirc, replaced before the return trip), we averaged 50mpg.
The Civic VX has Honda's economy engine, the VTEC-E. Whereas most engines are optimized for perfomance, this one is optimized for fuel economy. It's kind of gutless on normal driving, but has decent acceleration in 2nd and 3rd gear above 4000rpm - better than my escort, certainly.
If my 13-year old civic can get 52+mpg (best tank was 57mpg for 417 miles, before the sensor went bad), why does the fuel economy of all new cars suck? The only new cars rated at 50mpg or higher are fat hybrids (read that the new civic gained 500 pounds). Auto manufacturers could build a non-hybrid car with a 40 or 48 volt electrical system, and a starter/generator to stop the engine whenever it idles, and electric power brakes and Air Conditioning (essential in certain markets). After 13+ years of drivetrain development, the new Honda Fit should get at least 70mpg. Maybe someone can explain to me why it's only rated for 38 on the highway - what I got when my car was missing due to the bad sensor.
No, Hybrids and Ethanol and Hydrogen and Peak Oil and CO2-caused Global Warming are just meant to distract 'teh masses' ('us') from the fact that we're getting screwed by the 1% who own 70% or 90% of all wealth. Their auto companies only buld us cars that get crappy gas mileage, and now that we're all mostly dependant on the "everyone has their own car" philosophy of transportation, they jack the price of gasoline to squeeze the last little bit of wealth from the common peoples' wallets.
Hopefully someone will figure out cold fusion soon, and make the energy establishment ('big oil') obsolete.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Hasn't he noticed that hybrid sales are rapidly declining (even in the face of record gas prices). The truth is hybrids are not economically feasible due to the high cost (and rediculously high environmental cost) of batteries. There is no way to ever recover the cost difference. And with VW's new diesels getting better mileage than the hybrids, they're definately on they're way out.
I've always viewed hybrid as a sick joke that has been propogated as the only "workable solution" by the collusion of auto manufacturers, big oil and the US Gov't.
...ohh and the Zap-X is designed by Lotus, so it actually looks like a car you want to drive.
Take a look at ZapCar (pops)
The claimed performance statistics are a total of 644bhp from four in-wheel electric motors, a 350-mile single charge range, 155 mph top speed, 0-60 mph acceleration in 4.6 seconds and a 10 minute recharge time.
No word on when this car will come out, but the tech it's using is currently available, so it should be within the year.
Much sooner than this year 2020 BS. I can only hope ZapCar makes an impact so that this oil centric cabal will stop lying and start making electric cars a reality. Because they are lying, lying through their teeth.
They are going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming away from oil, which is why we will see years of Biodiesel and hybrid nonsense to come. And one way to drag them kicking and screaming is generating strong consumer demand for more cars like the Zap-X.
that we would not drive by 1985. And then in 1985, it was by turn of the century. Don't believe it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
my toyunda pious gets 4,000 miles per jiggawat.... THAAAANKS!
http://www.allabout-sp.net/?p=season10/1002
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
Just because its a hybrid doesn't mean the combustion engine is burning fossil fuels.
We recently discovered that several of our laptops have a "smart chip" in the battery that quite effectively prevents the battery from being used AT ALL once the "magic number" of charges has been hit. Let's say that the magic number is 1407. When you go to plug your laptop in for the 1408th time, it becomes a very nice paperweight. I'm just hoping that they don't do this to hybrid cars...
2 cents,
Queen B.
HDGary secures my bank
Im going to assume thats just crap their PR came out with.
Toyota just promised that by 2020 they will have killed hydrogen cars, all electric cars, diesel cars and by the sounds of it diesel hybrids and ethanol cars... and anything that crops up between now and then.
Ok... give that a second to be taken in.
Now I understand that hybrids get the best effeciancy in start-stop urban traffic. So if you have live in a rural area and use your car for towing things now and then, dont get a Toyota in the late 2010's. If you want a small compact urban car, well your best off going all electric as 2 engines simply wont fit... no Toyota for you.
Toyota make cars that sell AND make them money, not just cars that make them feel good and make money. If people dont want hybrids anymore, and they wont, toyota will ignore that little quote.
If you think carbon release is important, coal is by far the place to focus your concern. America generates more CO2 from burning coal to produce electrical power than all the CO2 generated from all transportation combined. A lot of change could be made in 12 years (without asking anyone to lower their standard of living) by simply replacing coal-burning power plants.
Nuclear power may have it's risks, but those risks are well studied, and even if every single American nuclear power plant had a Three mile Island style meltdown all in the same year, the collective environmental impact would still be less than normal coal usage. (And of course modern nuclear power plant designs make that kind of meltdown physically impossible.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
A tundra with a large generator can be used on job sites as well as providing power for 5th wheels, horse trailers, or even home power generators. How many folks could use a 20Kw generator at their home during a power outing during say a snow storm or a hurricane? In fact, I am amazed that Detroit is not jumping all over "serial" hybrids for use in delivery vehicles, semi trucks, and even buses.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
After owning a 2006 Prius for a little over a year, I can say that a hybrid is about more than just miles per gallon. Yes, the mpg is good but that isn't the only good thing about them. Some other good things:
1) The electric/hybrid drive is nicer to drive in traffic because the electric drive makes it pull away from a stop much more cleanly and strongly than a non-hybrid drive with no revving-up motor.
2) The wear-and-tear stuff like like brake pads, mufflers, batteries, starter motors, clutch, transmission, starter motor, etc. is either gone or morphed into a much longer lifespan due to reduced wear. The only significant maintenance items on the Prius are oil changes and tire replacement.
3) The battery gives you a backup power source. I've already managed to run out of gas and the battery lets you keep on going for a couple of more miles to the freeway exit which was very cool.
4) The car can run a lot of electrical gear (if you get an inexpensive inverter) if you go car camping since it is basically a very quiet, efficient 60 hp generator. Toyota should offer an inverter option and a built-in outlet plug on the side for RV owners who tow one behind the RV.
5) The Prius is very cheap to drive.
6) The Prius has a very nice interior space layout (for a small car) with much more legroom than is typical thanks to its small transverse motor.
Petroleum is a one time gift, and we are squandering it on a bunch of obese retards driving SUVs three blocks to go pick up a pack of smokes and a six pack of the piss they call beer. Every gallon of oil blown on an Escalade is a gallon that won't go to heat their grandkid's house in 30 years. Stupid myopic self-centered idiots.
Hybrid cars in 2020? What we need is NO CARS in 2020.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The vast majority of driving is done driving ALL over the interstates. The 80% of ppl never drive short 1-5 mile drives by your home or in the city using loads of stop signs and stop lights that the feds and insurance claims.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What else would they burn? If you say biodiesel or ethanol, I'll point out all the environmental problems with creating those. If you say hydrogen, I'll ask where that hydrogen is going to come from...
Chances are pretty good that in 2020 we'll STILL be burning/using fossil fuels for most everything.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
A quote for you:
"[A person...] on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. Equipped with this tool, [a person...] outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well. " --Ivan Illich, from his book "Energy and Equity"
Toyota Going 100% Hybrid, eh? Does that even have any meaning?
Can you imagine a Hybrid Harley? It would just sound like a golf cart taking off from the stoplight.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Well, according to the story from yesterday, I believe, the MPG of hybrids was actually incorrect, and was over-estimating the average MPG by more than 10mpg. Meaning the Prius not only looks pretty ugly, but it gets slightly better mileage than my Honda Civic which isn't hybrid.
It wasn't just hybrids; the mileage figures for all cars will be recalculated under the new test program. Your Civic will now have a lower MPG figure, too.
The inaccuracy had nothing to do with hybrids in particular; the EPA's test was off by about 15-20% for typical driving patterns. 20% is nothing on a "15MPG" Suburban, but it's huge on on a "60MPG" hybrid.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
IC engines in cars are hamstrung by the fact that they must have a useful RPM range of operation. This requirement comes from the way transmissions work - requiring that the engine change speed to change the speed of the vehicle.
Hybrids sidestep this issue. Just like a generator engine, a hybrid engine can (not sure if this is how the Prius currently works) be set to run at one specific RPM and tuned to do so much more efficiently than an engine in a typical car. Just like a generator, the engine would be turning a dynamo to create electricity to send to the motors driving the wheels.
Using this kind of system you can absolutely achieve better efficiency and reduced emissions, simply by using a hybrid.
Many of these advantages can also be achieved by the use of CVT transmissions, but that's another post.
All that money for health care and pensions has to come from somewhere... so I'm guessing taxes are higher in Japan? Would GM, Ford, et al. prefer to pay that same money to the government? Maybe they would; I'm just saying that there's no free lunch.
Cheers.
... more advanced fuel technolgy would have surfaced and 70MPG would be common. However the price of gas would have trippled rendering the technology worthless. Solution? Tele-commuting centers in sub-urban areas with a shuttle service.
TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs
Please detail the problems with using raceway ponds to grow algae as a feedstock for biodiesel and ethanol.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
One would assume that if the cost of parts went down, the overall cost would go down...
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
Mostly, that would be "don't pay too much in health care costs so that you can put an extra $1000 into each car".
Having covered GM in a finance class, feel free to read their SEC filings. You'll learn that ex-GM employees "own" more of GM than all the stockholders. That is, the debts to past employees exceed the market cap. As far as I'm aware, that is the one and only one company in the history of the planet to get into that situation. However, what isn't mentioned is that the Toyota workers for cars sold in the US are mostly American. I would guess that a greater percentage of US sold Toyotas are assembled in the US than GM vehicles. Though GM has "North American" plants in Canada and Mexico, placed there to avoid US based costs. The workers for Toyota here are given worse benefits than GM (unions and such) and are younger because the Toyota plants are newer, so there are fewer retirees.
But then, if GM got itself in a corner with benefits, one must ask why.
Learn to love Alaska
Am I the only one who read that title and had to stop and make sure that I read it right? It's not so very different from saying that a brand of potato chips uses "100% sunflower and canola oil to cook our chips".
I love NetHack.
...is a Hybrid drivetrain with an Ethanol or Biodiesel engine. The real issue isn't in that it will cost you $8 a gallon to drive to work, it's that farmers will be spending $8 a gallon on mechanized agriculture, driving up the overall cost of living.
Now with more sodium!!
While I agree that hybrids are a step in the right direction, I don't think they are the final word in alternative motors. What people don't take into account is all those damned batteries. Those batteries will have to be replaced/removed and recycled sooner or later. And if you should be a hybrid owner unfortunate enough to need battery replacement, know that they are not cheap. There go your gas savings. I also think that eventually, states will start charging some kind of eco tax on hybrid cars just like they do on LCDs (at least here in CA) to cover the cost of recycling. Not to mention that hybrid cars are $5 - $10000 more expensive than their combustion versions.
It just seems like hybrids just save you the cost on gas while shafting it to you on the front and back ends.
IMHO, the endgame is a motor that doesn't use LESS fossil fuels, it's one that uses NONE. I'm not talking about ethanol or vegetable oil either. It's not economical to produce either in the type of quantities necessary to supply everyone in the nation. I'm thinking more along the lines of hydrogen. Fuel cells, specifically. No combustion motor, just a nifty device that turns hydrogen into water and power.
-R
I like the idea of inboard brakes as well - I think I saw a custom porsche 550 replica that was built that way.
They tried that on a racing model Triumph GT-6, among several others in the 60s. When a half shaft broke at the hub during a race, sending the car from first place into an out of control roll, the driver went to his pit looking to literally beat the ass of the engineer responsible... Even now, certain model GT-6 racers are well-advised to ensure they have a good roll cage installed.
A hybrid drivetrain allows a vehicle to be built with a smaller engine, consuming less fuel. The engine only needs to be powerful enough to maintain cruising speed, where a regular engine would need to provide enough torque to accelerate from a stop as well.
I see what you're saying - a hybrid drivetrain should have no impact on steady state efficiency (highway cruising). However, a smaller engine with the throttle open will be more efficient than a larger engine running at half throttle, so a hybrid may come out ahead even in this context.
"even if every single American nuclear power plant had a Three mile Island style meltdown all in the same year",
Do you know what happens in a Three mile Island meltdown? The core becomes so hot that it literally melts down through the earth. As it goes deeper and deeper, steam shoots out of the ground all around the power plant. Keep in mind this is radioactive steam that would kill you if you were to be in contact with it. This is for a radius of miles, not close in... I think the environment would cry a lot more if it was saturated with life killing doses of radiation for the next 10,000 years...
Here's a quote from a Time article outlining this phenonoman
"Though the accident was a type of core meltdown, the ultimate nuclear power nightmare, U.S. experts also called it a burnup. Meltdowns technically occur in reactors containing pools of water. When the water boils away, the molten core sinks into the earth in the so-called China syndrome, a term used by scientists, and popularized by the 1979 movie of the same name, that mordantly suggests that the radioactive mass might plunge all the way through the earth. The Chernobyl plant had no such pool, by contrast, and engineers expect the reactor to be consumed by intense heat."
article
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
You'd think that all of the improvements from car engines (electronic ignition, throttle-by-wire, fuel injection, etc.) would have made it into wide-scale use on airplanes... but the litigation-happy environment has really jacked up the costs, which means less people can afford to fly, and low production means adding innovations won't produce a return, because you won't sell enough of them. The vast majority of general-aviation engines are still carbureted with manual mixture adjustment, and are basically 60-year-old designs. It's hard to get all the "goodies" unless you fly a homebuilt.
Come to think of it, I know of few other industries which pride themselves on 60-year-old products.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Toyota's hybrid tech is not the be all end all solution, but it can be used with any other powersource, be it electric, combustion, fusion, matter-antimatter. It is a system that captures some energy you normally lose when engaging the brakes.
Possibly the most significant problem with wind power is its variability of availability. If you have a spot-pricing system for electricity, this means when it is windy, electricity is cheap, when it is not, electricity is expensive. If there were some system for economically storing the power, this would help a lot.
Now consider if a large proportion of the population have plug-in hybrids. All it takes is a little IT investment, and they can be mostly recharging when the power is cheap. While creating all of these rechargable batteries purely for smoothing the power availability from wind would (presumably) not be economic, these are pre-existing rechargable batteries already created for a different purpose.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Without adding flex-fuel capability to future hybrids, this is a minor improvement.
I'm all in favor of anything that realistically increases our ability to conserve or wean ourselves off fossil fuels, but given that it would cost around $25 apiece to add this option at the factory, not doing so is short-sighted at best.
~!J!
My real, actual Prius gets more than 50 MPG except when it's below 40 degrees out or it's wet/icy, which is about 9 months out of the year around here. Even then I get 45 MPG.
When will they wise up and use my idea for a wind-powered car?
You see, you replace the engine with a turbine, and that turbine charges a battery. All you do is charge the battery the first time, and that starts you going. when the wind flows through the turbine, it charges the battery, keeping you going.
It's brilliant! Really!
We're all going to die. i intend to deserve it.
I was just illustrating how the free market is not always level :) Personally I am not for letting the government take over health care.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
...that 100% of Toyota cars is not the same as 100% of all cars?
If for whatever reason someone knows that they will use the car almost always on the highway, and that hybrids aren't as efficient for that use, they don't HAVE to buy a toyota, you know.
GM was not very forward thinking - they were known as "Generous Motors", after all! Additionally, much of their obligations pre-dated the 401k-style pension system now in place in the US... it used to be defined-benefit plans and GM didn't bother funding them adequately. Then again, who knew that health care costs would rise so sharply?
The article that I linked actually discusses how the Japanese car makers handle the situation at their US plants - you are largely correct.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
With the trend of gas prices going up every year, it is more likely that hybrids will become more mainstream sooner.
I don't see how you could mistake "all intents and purposes" for "all intensive purposes"
They mean TWO DIFFERENT FUCKING THINGS
The first means: "all -- including the things you haven't considered yet"
The second means: "all the intensive things"
I MEAN WHAT THE FUCK. ARE YOU PEOPLE FUCKING DEAF AND DUMB?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
GM already has a transmissioun ready to go. It'll be out in the Tahoe soon, followed by other vehicles. It'll also be used by Chrysler, Mercedes, and BMW -- who chose GM's system over Toyota's. And as a transmission it's infinitely more intelligently designed than Toyota's system. Plus, it works at highway speeds -- hence its name: Two Mode Hybrid. You can check it out here: Two Mode Hybrid, via WIkipedia. Or you can simply check out a review at Edmunds Two Modes Better Than One. Of course, knowing that would require reading something other than Toyota's PR as though they actually made "automobiles" instead of "vehicular appliances". Or perhaps being able to, oh, use Google?
the stock stereos have bigger amplifiers, drivers and heatsinks that's accounting for the drop in milage.
Airbags are LIGHT. Traction control is a COMPUTER that by-wires the BRAKES. These kind of changes are minute compared to the ones that actually matter:
* CAD vs. human designed complex structures -- body panels, door hinge designs, dash/firewalls
* Unibody construction vs. body on frame
* Polycarbonate windshields
* Alloy wheels and vented 4-wheel disk brakes
* Crumple zones
etc... these are things that affect the composition, size and shape of the heavy/large components of the vehicle. And how they were designed and the material usage has changed a lot.
I mean, there were performance cars in the 80s that used a lot of the higher-tech techniques to reduce weight that are common in all cars now by the changing industry.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
"GM, Chrysler and Ford announce that they'll transition to "thinking about possibly getting some of those battery-rechargey cars" into production by 2015."
More like: "In the most recent bid to stave off bankruptcy, the remaining fragments of 'merkin motors (formed by the merger of GM, Chrysler, and Ford) announced today a new SUV for 2015, complete with passenger space for 35, and powered by a wood-burning external combustion engine. Rumors are that the new 65-ton SUV gets an impressive 5 A.F.B.P.M. (acres of forest burned per mile), and that "Canyonero" is the likely name of the behemoth. Shares dropped slightly on the news of the vehicle to a 3-month low of $0.01, following a 4-year high of $0.02 per share when K. T. "Rusty" Clown was named CEO of 'merkin motors. Mr. Clown's health problems were considered by analystis as "fictitious" and not detrimental to the job, at least in comparison to outgoing CEO Ruprecht Jameson, who after losing an impressive $10 billion (Approximately $9.9 Billion more than the net worth of 'merkin motors) cost shareholders a futher $20 billion when he deployed his golden parachute after doing a "heckuva job" according to the chairman of the board of directors."
There is hope, the laws they enacted these past few years have made it alot harder for the lawyers to make headway against the aviation companies. I've been reading about modern engines with all the trimmings as well even those that run on auto diesel or Jet-A. Man that would be great that instead of having a 100 hour engine inspections they could bump them out to 1000 or even more.
What they do not understand is:
1: High output engines and non-compact sized vehicles are not the exclusive territory of high end cars or large trucks. There are workable ways of having even a hybrid engine in a car that has performance and quality - that isnt a high end car.
These ways also can be done so without going to countries of the Far East, or to any "*AFTA" country.
2: You aren't fooling people by building in Kentucky what ends up looking like it still came from Kyoto. For the greater part, it has only been recently that they even asked the US on how car would be built.
The mistake here was the UAW not being specific enough in the 1980s so that Japan couldnt even try to circumvent imports. The best thing here would be to amend the Buy America law to account for this circumvention and consider it as eligible for tariffs, along with any manufacturer that uses "free" trade as a tax haven.
3: That econobox you try to push to people is still an econobox. Even if you load it with an undersized engine, and throw a bunch of shiny electronics in it, it is still an econobox. That amount of electronics could be well served to improve on performance of the engine and the quality of the components of the car. Instead of a Scion that has an Echo engine, you could have something affordable that is more than a display of Chinese electronics.
If they took the input of that to kind, the only thing I'd want to do is ask for the car to be debadged completely of the brand outside of country of origin. Then they'd have at least a fighting chance that I'd want to touch their hybrids.
Now if they would stop trying to drive their US division into the ground (and perhaps work WITH and not against their workers), they could use their Asia division profits to drive out Toyota, and reopen some US factories as well. Besides, if they could make fuel efficiency and performance mix without it being a high ticket item - they certainly have the chance to do it here.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Oops, meant that last paragraph to refer to GM, Ford and Chrysler.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The real win of hybrids isn't the drivetrain, it's rengenerative braking. Storing kinetic energy rather than dissipating it as heat is an obvious efficiency win, since you're presumably going to stop moving at some point.
Another big win - especially for a "plug-in hybrid" with batteries capable of holding a lot more than a couple stops worth of energy - is recovering the POTENTIAL energy of altitude when descending hills or mountains. That's a bloody lot of energy. (Ask anybody who tried to ride their brakes down a few miles of 6% grade and had them heat up, fade, and let his vehicle run away.)
You even get an advantage on the upslope - because mountains are lumpy, so it's not uphill all the way to the divide. There will be lots of miles where you're temporarily going down, letting a hybrid recover energy to get you up part of the next, higher, climb while the engine-only car burns it heating the brakes or the air and then has to make more kinetic energy out of more fuel.
The place where a hybrid is at a disadvantage is on a long, fast run down a level road. Then, once it's depleted its battery, it's burning fuel to fight friction just like a non-hybrid.
But even there it's not all bad for the hybrid. Yes the batteries and electric transmission means more weight to carry and more resulting friction. But that's partly offset by being able to have a smaller, lighter engine (because the electric system helps out on peak loads). And the smaller, lighter engine is working closer to its peak efficiency, which means that it burns less fuel than the non-hybrid's big, heavy, loafing engine to fight the same air resistance.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This study has been thoroughly debunked. The simplest debunking is just pointing out their skewed assumption that a Hummer will be driven for 300,000 miles, but a Prius will only be driven for 100,000. They then also assume that the Prius will just be thrown into a landfill, disregarding the fact that the car is about 95% recyclable, including the entire battery pack.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
So Toyota will sell no all-electric or other "zero emissions" cars in 2020?
If they make a "plug-in hybrid" (a hybrid with enlarged electric storage and a recharger connection) they can run engine-off on a daily commute, only firing up for long, out-of-city, trips.
That's zero emissions where it counts (on the bulk of the crowded city driving) without sacrificing range.
And at current gas prices it's better than a 4:1 cost savings on fuel, too.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That sort of trip cycle offers no advantage for a plug-in hybrid.
True for an ordinary hybrid, but NOT for a plug-in hybrid.
An ordinary hybrid has a very limited amount of power storage. It can save up the power from a couple stops from speed to get started again. But that's about it. Take it down a mountain slope and after a couple hundred feet of lost altitude its batteries are full and it has to start throwing away energy by braking, just like a non-hybrid.
A plug in hybrid, on the other hand, has enough electric energy storage to go several tens of miles on the flat against freeway-speed wind resistance. That's also enough to go up a couple thousand feet of elevation. And that means it can recover the energy from going DOWN a couple thousand feet of elevation and use it to drive on the level for tens of miles, or go up the first couple thousand feet (less inefficiency) on the way to the next pass.
Going down and up hills has the same energy recovery issue as stopping and restarting - only bigger. Put in a big enough battery pack to handle it and a hybrid gets the same advantage in mountains as it does in stop-and-go on the level. "Plug-in hybrid" is another way to say "big battery pack".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Just curious: Why is there always a "goatse" first post? Is someone using a Bot to do it or something? Isn't there a way to fix this? :-/
N/T
That's a meltdown, all right, but Three Mile Island was a joke by comparison. There was some core melting, but it never left the containment vessel. I think the total radiation released to the atmosphere was something like 20 curies of iodine (1 curie will give a radiation dose of ~1 REM from a distance of 1 meter. Radiation doses lower than 5 REM per year are thought not to cause any significant risk of cancer, and radiation poisoning levels are in hundreds of REM. Just for comparison.)
I operated pressurized water reactors when I was in the US Navy, and I'm convinced that a properly trained staff is more than capable of safely handling any potential incident involving one. While TMI and Chernobyl were disasters, the lessons learned are carried on.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
they announced a hybrid light truck based on their new gasoline/enriched uranium powertrain.
Who knows, but maybe the slashdot developers should just make a script that gives -1000 karma to anyone who posts a goatse link, and -1000000 karma to anyone that posts a sneaky goatse link.
{shaking head} This is all well and good, except that most of Toyota's North American product is produced in Cambridge, ON, the NUMA plant in California and their Texas manufacturing facilities. They're expecting to have 100% "Toyota" production for North America IN North America by about 2010.
The domestic problems are more systemic than health care costs. Union strife, inefficient plants, plant sprawl, poor designs, overburdened support (warranty) costs due to poor initial quality, etc. Much of the domestic product is also produced in foreign countries (Mexico, South Africa, South Korea) which, again, provides extremely cheap labour, virtually no health care overhead and massive tax benefits in the hosting third world nations.
It goes deeper even into the smaller details. Toyota actively encourages a healthier lifestyle for their workers, requiring the Cambridge employees to maintain a membership (free, BTW) for themselves and their family, to the on-site health club. They provide healthy, balanced meals in the cafeteria. Domestic plants, by contrast, offer the likes of pizza, fried foods, etc. in their cafeterias and the exersize plans include the long walk to the bar across the road for beer and wings on lunch break.
Because domestic workers, by and large, do one thing and one thing only (weld door seams, install windshields, etc.) for years on end, and because of the environment in which they work, they have no real pride of ownership in their product. In a Japanese run plant, after a certain number of years each and every employee can claim to have built an entire car - every single component assembled. They work in teams, they get a regular change of scenery so there's less doldrum, less stress, and better productivity.
Domestic workers are chastised for stopping the production line. Their profitability is measured in dollars/minute of line time. Japanese product workers are encouraged to stop the line if they spot a defect. As I said; pride of ownership.
Domestic workers have "pride" in domestic products under a union and propaganda inspired sense of self preservation, but it's a false notion. I live near, and for several years lived and worked in a plant town and saw the Good 'Ol Boys driving around with their "Buy Domestic - Save Our Jobs" plate frames on their vehicles. Many (most) of which were built in third world countries for dollars a day!
Except that he figured his car to be totaled for sure a friend of mine was considering buying one and installing it on the plate of his Corolla. 100% assembled by Ontario born and bred workers in Cambridge!
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
There's some hypermiler article I read a few months back that said it's not just the engine technology that needs to change - if car manufacturers would install the insta-read MPG gauges in all the cars (not just hybrids) and get people to pay attention to the graphs, then you'll see (some) drivers working to improve their MPG simply because they have the instant feedback. Turns driving into a video game.
I'd rather my car just dribbled a little petrol out the side wouldnt you?
I realise that the Prius doesnt have a LiPo battery, but I dont think that future hybrids will be as tame. I have never seen a Prius on the street here in Invercargill but from what I understand they are hardly the most manly of cars. I think that hybrid makers should focus on a Jaguar E Type kind of car rather than some soccer "mom" kind of thing. We all know that Hybrids can let loose, and do so efficiently without wasting oil, without emissions etc so why not push for that? I know what I would want to drive.
---
You should assume that by 100% of cars, he meant 100% of gasoline/diesel cars. I suspect by 2020 the need to Toyota (and other manifacturers) to produce pure electric vehicles will become apparent. As well as vehicles with other fuels.
Pure electric vehicles are especially efficient and suitable for city driving.
by 2020 all new cars should be non-hybrid, but complete electric, comeon, it's about 13 years away..
I think a lot of it is higher expectations. As you say, look at what people expect in their cars now compared to 40 or 50 years ago. Plus there's air conditioning, armchair like seats, wider, bigger everything. People drove long distances 50 years ago, people commuted ten miles to work 50 years ago, but they didn't expect to haul all the weight, or need to drive in a pick up truck when they wanted to buy a pint of milk. I've been on holiday round Europe doing thousands of miles in a 15 year old 1 litre Peugeot hatchback - it sits at 70mph quite happily with two people and their camping gear, it pulls itself out of muddy fields no problem, does a lot more than 25 miles per gallon.
I think a lot of the big car issue is down to status and luxury (plus cheap gas). People want to sit in a new-ish auto, big fat armchairs with air conditioning and a huge motor roaring because it makes them feel like the big man. I think in the USA it's also because gas is still cheap compared to other car markets - we're paying close to 6 dollars a gallon in Europe and I am not sure about the Asian market.
It's not that there's any free lunch, but Americans pay more per capita in taxes to health care than the Japanese do in both public and private costs combined.
The United States has the Hummer of health care systems.
Doling out engines at Analog Speed? So each 4 years it gets to be a vote-buying political football? Imagine that. New engines piece-mealed out to The Public so they get a new technology from their spigot, with "the water" turned on just enough to stop you from DYING IN THEIR DESERT SO YOU CAN KEEP PAYING FOR 15 SUCCESSIVE ENGINE SYSTEMS INSTEAD OF ONE OR TWO? http://www.newpath4.com/666politicalmerchantgiftce rtificatewaroftheworld2007earthdaycitizenlosersorg odskingdomwinners.htm
Hhmmm. That's not a bad plan, if you're rich and own some Toyota stock. Wow, dodged another bullet. Thank god I don't own any Yucko American automaker stock. Oh well. Time for another shameless link plug > http://tinyurl.com/34wgs9 even though I know SlashDot html syntax prevents search engine spiders from following & cataloguing. I guess I'm incorrigible, just an old thirsty American Navajo desert rat. {Ratting out the political shakedowns politicians work against good Christian folk.}
Signed,
The Desert Rat
http://www.newpath4.com/40yearstolife.htm
....
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
I always assumed that it was just my city that did this. I'm glad (in a bitter, mean-spirited way) to hear that other cities operate so insanely as well. Misery insists on company.
But when they're going to bring that to latinamerica?... Or 100% in America?...
ghostbar page.
The way things are going, we'll be needing Skidoos, not trucks or SUVs.
Its not that hard to believe that large equipment uses electric motors. Almost all diesel railroad engines end up powering generators that run huge electric motors.
. htm
http://travel.howstuffworks.com/diesel-locomotive
Basically, the larger the work that needs to be done , the better it is to have the most torque at zero RPMs. Electric motors excel at such behavior.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
First off I think they mean 100% of their inventory for sale in North America and EU countries. I don't see them selling hybrids in Kinshaha or Tehran or Kuala Lampur or Beijing.
Second, even for the US I don't see fat stupid greedy Americans trading in their F-250s for a hybrid truck. You might as well call them homosexual Islamic terrorist devil worshipers. Now while your typical redneck probably doesn't drive a Tundra today, you have to figure that by 2020 the sum total of all of Detroit's output will be 1200hp 4mpg $200,000 "Man-Van" SUV's. This will leave the market open to everyone else.
In either case I just don't see the American market spending a dime to reallocate what it honestly believes is its god-given right to be stupid and wasteful. Even $10/gal gas won't change that. After all in EU countries like France where gas has always been incredibly pricey it hasn't caused anyone to drive less or drive slower. So it's not going to happen here.
Don't worry, according to the I, Robot movie (and book?) we'll all be in electric cars that drive themselves in perfectly organized mega-highways by 2035. I can't wait for that! ;)
Did you read the article that I linked?
Yes, the problems of the big 3 extend beyond health care and pension costs, though many of the problems you describe are in the past. However, the fact remains that GM, for instance, pays out 10x as much per car on pensions as Toyota and over $1000 more per car than Toyota on health benefits. This money is going to come from somewhere. Maybe it is quality, maybe it is worker health memberships... whatever, the point is that Toyota will be a healthier organization as long as it is run well and has lower overhead per car.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Wake me up in 2018 when this might be "news". If the target were 2010 or 2012, I might care.
I've had three cars so far, a Ford Tempo, Honda Accord wagon, and a Toyota Yaris. The Ford was a piece of shit. I was heartbroken that American quality was so borked. The Honda I bought from a family member and was a damned dependable car. The only reason why I got rid of it was it had 250k miles on it and was starting to require all sorts of expensive repairs that added up to a down payment. The Yaris is a great little car. I'm getting 32mpg with my driving patterns, some people get up to 40 if they do a lot of open highway driving. A lot of thought was put into the fit and polish of the car, even though it's an entry-level vehicle and doesn't have a lot of $$$ padding built into it for the dealers and manufacturer.
When you get right down to it, the problem with American industry is the "fuck you, jack, I got mine" approach. Japanese engineers are no better than American engineers, the difference is that they're allowed to do their job properly. IBM claims they're adopting Toyota's LEAN manufacturing process but, as pointed out in other threads on Slashdot, they aren't. The stand-out quote was along the lines of "LEAN is about doing more with what you have but IBM is about doing less with a whole lot less people."
You will not motivate your employees by telling them that every step towards increased automation is a step towards decreased headcount. You motivate them by showing that boring no-brainer work is automated and they get to move on to another position within the company where they can employ their brains.
It's not that American executives are too stupid to understand this concept, they just don't give a shit. American business is about making the numbers for the next quarter and getting the bonus. So what if that involves cutting the company to the bone and destroying all long-term prospects of survival and propserity, we're talking the next quarter, not the next decade! But you know what they say, that goose may give you a golden egg once a day but I bet that sucker is full of gold inside!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I bought a new car last year and really wanted a hybrid. The Prius base price at $22K was too expensive for me and I ended up getting a cheap $14K Hyundai. If Toyota made a Corolla Hybrid in the $15K range, I would trade in my car tomorrow. The Corolla already gets around 40 MPG highway, I could imagine it would get at least 50 MPG highway if it were hybrid. Right now, there doesn't seem to be any hybrids for budget buyers like myself.
HTH
Yeah, I've noticed that. What gives, people? It makes absolutely no financial sense to turn over cars that quickly. It was a real head-scratcher for me in threads arguing about how long it takes a hybrid to pay for itself vs. another car. For my yearly driving distance and current car, a Prius would pay off in about five years at $2.30/gallon if I had made that choice when both cars were new, and it baffled me that people weren't reaching similar conclusions... until I realized they thought of a car's lifetime as about three years.
I've never owned a car less than eight, and I hadn't realized I was atypical. Sadly, I chose a non-hybrid car despite the math based on worries about reliability that have proven unfounded. It's a good car, but seven years in and well above $2.30 a gallon, I would have saved a ton of money.
It certainly can, although not in the way you're thinking. A hybrid system is a split engine that allows part of your total engine capacity to shut off when unneeded. If you have a hypothetical 100hp gas engine vs. an 80hp gas engine w/ 20hp electric motor... at freeway speeds you'll just be running your 80hp engine. And since weight is relatively unimportant when cruising (compared to when accelerating), a few hundred pounds of extra doodads isn't gonna hurt much.
Cylinder deactivation has similar advantages, too.
You mean other than the fact that it is just an idea and nobody has actually proven the method to be (cost) effective at producing biodiesel, ethanol, OR hydrogen? I won't criticize something that doesn't exist.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
You get an "I" for "Ignorance". In A Look Back at the U.S. Department of Energy's Aquatic Species Program you can read about how the US Federal government did tests that show that without using cultured strains of algae, in a raceway-type pond, they are not only able to grow algae economically (the study indicated that it would become economical solely for reasons of increases in fuel costs before diesel fuel reached $3 per gallon, and was not dependent on other reductions of cost) but they can also capture up to 80% of the CO2 output of a coal or oil-powered power plant at the same time, which dramatically increases the rate at which algae was grown.
Now, please criticize.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Toyota has the patents, and now has the plans to dominate. Think: hybrids are just electric cars with gasoline engines. When batteries and capacitors become cheap and can do the entire job, the cars are ready for them. Minimum fuss.
The American executives are still muttering about hippies and horsepower. They just aren't getting it.
I'd take what you said and downgrade TMI even further. It was only a public relations and commercial disaster. As you say, radioactive emissions from the plant were negligible, and bridging from what else has been said, lower than radioactive emissions from a coal-fired power plant.
That TMI happened right about the same time as "The China Syndrome" is unfortunate and in fact masks the point that in both "disasters" there was no real disaster. In neither case did anything make significant physical progress toward China, nor was there significant radioactive release. For that matter, "The China Syndrome" worst-cased the mistakes. The only thing preventing the scenario from seeming unreasonably unrealistic were the operations failures leading to Chernobyl.
I got the impression that the reason US power plants are pressurized water designs was because the US government wanted to increase the industrial base for that type, to benefit the Navy. Otherwise commercial power plants might well have settled on a safer, simpler, more fail-safe reactor type. Any thoughts?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Again, I won't criticize something that doesn't exist. From the study:
"Thus, though the technology faces many R&D hurdles before it can be practicable, it is clear that resource limitations are not an argument against the technology."
You don't seem to get what "proven the method to be cost effective" means. A study that shows the idea to be *promising* does not mean it is proven. It still faces "many R&D hurdles." Proven means that you can show a real-world example of the technology in action and turning a profit (or at least breaking even.)
If I had a dime for every promising idea that never made it into production, I'd be rich.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Exactly, the issue IS fossile fuels and my point is that we most likely will NOT be off them by 2020. You don't care about that?
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I think Japan does understand US motors, probably better than the big three automakers. Toyota (1st Quarter of 07) has outsold GM in # of autos The 07 Camry is : American Designed American Built Has higher percentage of American content than any comparable offering by the big three 2007 Motor Trend Car of the year Toyota has also made a profit where all of the big three have posted losses for first quarter I don't know how much proof you need. The points you make may have been valid 10-15 years ago but the auto market has changed since then. BTW Toyota US division has very happy workers, Toyota offers lifetime employment and hasn't laid anyone off since the 50's.
Hybrid this liberals!
Global warm that socialists!
I would go further than "most likely" to say "obviously". But, if it was your point, that's not what you said.
"Don't care"? I wouldn't say that, any more than I "don't care" that I won't be completely out of debt tomorrow morning. I care about the pace of reduction of dependence on fossil fuels and our amount of greenhouse gas emissions; while I'd certainly like to be completely off of them by 2020 (or even 2008), I don't expect either is realistic, and I'm not going to go running around screaming because of that.
I'm ex-Navy, and probably brainwashed on the matter, but I really can't see how a PWR isn't fail-safe, unless you take extraordinary measures to defeat it, such as in TMI (the operators didn't understand the nature of the casualty, and ended up discharging large amounts of coolant and securing coolant pumps, which aggravated the casualty well beyond what would have happened The operational failures at TMI weren't just mistakes, they showed a fundamental lack of knowledge of plant conditions). As long as coolant flow is maintained (via natural circulation if necessary) decay heat can be eliminated via losses to ambient, and water's high negative temperature coefficient of reactivity prevents a positive feedback situation like in Chernobyl. Like any other nuclear reactor, though, it requires quite a bit of training to know what is going on and react accordingly.
As for the prevalence of PWRs in the US, bear in mind that most of the operating professionals are Navy-trained, and a huge body of knowledge exists on that reactor type due to the dozen surface ships and hundreds of submarines that have operated PWRs. (There was one liquid sodium cooled vessel, the second USS Seawolf (SSN-575), but it proved unfeasible).
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
Increased weight leads to increased rolling resistance. This is due to the demands of a stronger drive train (with bigger bearings) and more wheel flexation (a large contributor to mechanical losses.)
I hear a lot about "pebble bed" and other such reactors that have no catastrophic fail mechanisms, even if the operators walk away from the place. (Even if Homer Simpson really was the only guy in the control room.)
The training is a good point. Military pilots frequently wind up as airline pilots, so it makes sense that the same thing would happen with nuclear power plants.
I was a submarine fan as a kid, and some of that has stuck through adulthood. I've been on the USS Cod in Cleveland, OH, whatever the WWII sub is at Fall River, MA, and the Nautilus. But my favorite museum sub is the Albacore, in Portsmouth, ME. A high school friend was on the Glennard P Lipscomb.
Do you know of any other more modern submarine museums? The Nautilus was too crowded (with tourists) and too chopped up, and the WWII subs are too beaten up, which is why the Albacore is my favorite. Still, I'd like to see what a more modern (but still decommissioned) nuclear sub is like.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
That's why I emphasized "relative to cost". You can mechanically afford a standard-sized cabin with effective torque and range provided you use the right amount of batteries. But the cost of these batteries is high relative to a mass-produced drivetrain.
.5) * (.8 / .2) = 8
By making the vehicle lighter you can get away with less required stored energy and the batteries don't push the price too far above a luxury compact.
I mean --- I'm not saying we'll never get there. But right now hybrids are cost-effective because you don't need nearly as many batteries, and you can throw in a cheap, light engine that is not intended to direct drive, but is geared only for electricity production.
Also: it's not like you don't pay for the KWh to juice your car. It's about 8 times cheaper* than gas but at the same time, if your vehicle has the same range and power of the car you're trying to replace, then you're paying that upfront cost that you have to wait 5 years or more before it breaks even.
*8 times cheaper than gas: ICE hybrid drivetrains are about 20% efficiency, while full electric cars have about 80% efficiency. Cost per kWh is 5 cents for residential wall power. Gasoline has 33 kWh/gal, and at $3.20/gal that's 10 cents a kWh. (.10 /
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
As far as pebble bed reactors go, so far I've heard a lot of good things about them. I think it'll take some time and research before they go into widespread production, though.
I think the Nautilus is the only nuclear submarine museum out there. Most of the Skipjacks/Permits/Sturgeons are razor blades now, along with the early 688 class subs. Naval Reactors is a bit skittish on the whole open to the public thing for security reasons.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
Pebble bed reactors are a simple way to demonstrate that a reactor can be made very fail safe, and they're also great for fule management and storing of spent fuel. However, I here there are actually better modern designs along the same principle (must be cooled to generate power, use a coolant that can't become radioactive) that are safer, just harder to describe.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Three Mile Island was not the horror story you describe. The release was quite minor, and no one was injured. TMI was also a worst-case American reactor failure - the operators actually took significant steps to make the problem worse than if they had done nothing. Modern reactor designs are far safer, and simply cannot melt down.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Seriously, if you are going to commute to work on the bicycle, I hope you can manage your stench.
Some work places offer showers, but those are very few (it's not often you'll find an office building with showers, plus how clean are they?)
Whatever happened to telecommuting? This is the day of Skype and affordable videoconferencing. If your tech support calls can be handled overseas in India, why do you need to bike to work?
I did a submarine search while/after posting, and Nautilus is the only one, at least currently. There is another designated to become a museum in either Tennessee or Kentucky, but that project hasn't moved forward. There are several sails on display, but that's about it. There is one other post-Nautilus, Albacore-hull sub, I believe in Oregon, but it's a diesel-electric. (I didn't know they made any of those, past the Albacore proof-of-concept.)
As a side note, my family and I like the veteran-run museums - we've been to a few of them, now. The two I can name at the moment are the Albacore Museum in Portsmouth, NH and Warbirds, in Florida near KSC. They're great, and run by dedicated people.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
If you're ever in South Carolina, give Patriots Point a try. It's a WWII carrier & sub, and most of the vets running it are top notch.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
Nuclear might be a solution. Unfortunately no nuclear power plant has ever been truly profitable (if you take away government subsidies in construction, fuel, etc.)
I never claimed TMI was a horror story. I was just pointing out that a "melt down" is when the core literally "melts down" through the earth. Also, I wholeheartedly agree that newer designs, such as pebble bed reactors, are much safer...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
Yeh, right. 2020 is when the effects of peak oil are going to stall the car industry.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1