Slashdot Mirror
Toyota Unveils Plug-in Hybrid Prius
phlack writes "Toyota has announced a plug-in hybrid vehicle, based on their popular Prius. So far, it will only have a range of 8 miles on the battery (13km). They are going to test this vehicle on the public roads, apparently a first for the industry. From the article: 'Unlike earlier gasoline-electric hybrids, which run on a parallel system twinning battery power and a combustion engine, plug-in cars are designed to enable short trips powered entirely by the electric motor, using a battery that can be charged through an electric socket at home. Many environmental advocates see them as the best available technology to reduce gasoline consumption and global-warming greenhouse gas emissions, but engineers say battery technology is still insufficient to store enough energy for long-distance travel.'"
what is the environmental advantage of electricity for cars ? It's mostly made with fossil fuels. I've never understood this. Am I missing something ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5
Join the Free Software Foundation
How much electricity is needed to charge the sucker?
8 miles? under ideal conditions, flat road, no a/c ... very disappointing. Toyota's engineering is very good. If this is all such great engineers can manage, it shows that batteries have a long way to go.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The current 07 Prius will go about 2.5 miles on a full charge with the air conditioner off and level land...
-SenatorPerry
My round trip to work is 7.5 KM. A little too far to walk or bike (and not be too fragrant for my cow-irkers), but perfect for this little beastie. In fact, even though I live in one of the worlds sprawliest cities, it's still enough to get me one-way somewhere, and I can plug in there for the trip home. I'm sure this would be great for most people and their little jaunts to the grocery store, or to get a movie, or insert the blank here. The majority of driving is short little trips, and this fills the bill.
Of course, I'll still keep my bigger, gas fueled beast for when I have further to go, but this should be a real option for many people.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Only 8 miles??? http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectricca r/
This is out of my home town's paper:
http://www.t-g.com/story/1218203.html
http://www.t-g.com/story/1232246.html
Basically it is a car with no fuel and a self recharging battery and runs on a hydraulic pump system. They are getting a patent for it now, so they are trying to keep the details to a minimum. But they say from the fly wheel back the car is unchanged.
:wq
That's far enough for me. I'm already thinking I can snake a line out of my office. How long does it take to charge, that's the question for me, because that determines how long after I get home from the office I can go back out.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
8 miles? Licking the battery leads will jolt you 9.
Table-ized A.I.
And where do the batteries get the electricity to go those 2.5 miles?
Oh yeah, you put gas in the tank, and the engine will charge the battery, or you could put gas in the tank and drive it up a hill and brake all the way down. Either way it is powered by gasoline.
Get your $50k cash ready for the downpayment:
:)
http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php
100% Electric
0-60 in ~4 seconds
135 mpg equiv
Over 200 miles per charge
Less than 2 cents per mile
Now if they could get the price of this down to a reasonable level like a Honda Civic I'd buy it...and a buncha other people would too I'm sure. This would be an IDEAL car for me
Someone please explain to me why the Toyota chose the Prius to be its hybird? The prius is the ugliest car they make. It looks like a damn turtle with those tiny little wheels (you know, just like the wheels on a turtle).
Toyota makes Scion and the Scion Tc is a nice looking car in the same size range as the Prius. Why aren't they sticking batteries in that sucker??
don't any of you know about the tesla roadster?
http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php
its faster, quicker, prettier, has a better range, and doesn't have a gasoline or diesel engine at all!
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
Electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and damming rivers. Over 50% of the available energy is lost in generation and transmission inefficiencies. The storage medium, a battery, is a highly toxic item that adds so much weight to the vehicle that internal combustion only econoboxes with diesel engines (which can burn biofuels) get comparable mileage, without the polluting manufacturing and disposal issues attendant to the electric/hybrid car's battery.
So, what is the real benefit of the hybrid/electric car? Could it be more about fashion , kind of like those oil dripping gas guzzling, pollution spewing, 1960s VW buses I see with "Love your Mother" stickers on them, than reality?
There's a great "South Park" episode about this.
Most comments so far have dismissed the short battery-only range as mediocre; this article was even tagged "toy". The Toyota Plug-in HV isn't an electric only car. It's a hybrid. It can still go hundreds of miles a day like a regular car. Most of the miles on American's cars are from short day to day trips, not vacations. A plug in hybrid would mean that all those trips wouldn't require drivers to burn any gas (but would still allow them to take the occasional interstate drive).
Even if your daily commute is too significant to be made in electric-only mode (mine totals 40 miles and my employer won't let me recharge an EV at work), cutting some portion of the gas burning miles is still a major breakthrough. Running few power plants is more efficient than running millions of small engines to generate the same amount of energy. They physics of scale makes ICE cars look insanely wasteful. Electric cars aren't tied to any single fuel source--energy can come from coal, solar, wind, nuclear, etc. This makes EVs a great way to transition from a fossil fuel economy to any future power source. An all-electric car with lithium ion batteries and a several hundred mile range (at working class prices) would blow my mind. But I'm not going to complain if I can't have one yet. Plug-in hybrids may not be ideal, but they're a step in the right direction.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
The article says that they are using older style nicad batteries instead of standard lithium ion batteries... all tests of the plugin hybrid vehicles have been using the standard lithium ion batteries. why would they go with the older style batteries which are technically inferior to the current batteries?
Happens every year or so.
These are the types of idiots who take courses in 'Critical Thinking' but for whom high school physics is a mystery.
Good job there liberal arts schools. Real 'well rounded education' they're providing.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No wounder the smug clouds have been bad lately.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That's it in a nutshell. Maximum range will have to increase for me. How about if you go out at night, and then consider waiting at stop lights, etc?
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
Toyota's engineering is very good. Meet the 78MPH-top-speed, 120-miles-per-charge 1997-2003 Toyota RAV4 EV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV. I was passed by one this morning on the freeway, I felt so inferior in my comparatively gas guzzling Prius.
The batteries don't have a long way to go, they've just been forced out of the picture.
Not as much as gasoline, but we need to keep pushing the envelope forward.
It isn't enough to get rid of the gasoline engine. Batteries that have reached their EOL are a disposal problem.
Any technology that is distinguisable from magic is insufficently advanced
The amount of electricity needed is the same. The only difference is that you're getting the power from a plug rather than generating it using the gasoline engine in the Prius.
The difference is that the electricity you get from the plug is a whole lot cheaper and typically cleaner (depending on the source) than the electricity created from the from gasoline engine.
Wow, what a deal. All you need to do to drive for one cent per mile is spend $98,000 for a Tesla roadster.
I wonder, how many Teslas have ever been sold, and how many Toyotas were sold.... -last month?....
-------------
Here's a fun comparison:
The Tesla costs $98,000, does zero-60 in 4 seconds, and the battery pack lasts 100,000 miles.
The 2006 Chevy Corvette Z06 costs $65,000 and does zero-60 in ~3.6 seconds.
The EPA mileage is 16/26 city/highway (let's use an average of 20 mpg, in use?)....
And to drive 100,000 miles at 20 mpg will take about 5000 gallons of gas. At $3/gallon, that's $15,000 in fuel costs.
So for $20,000 less, a 2006 Corvette has a faster zero-60 time, a faster top speed, better resale value, and,,,,,, with an 18-gallon tank, it has a range of 360 miles, and can be refueled at any gas station.
Hmmmm,,,,, decisions, decisions.....
~
How Much CO2 Do Electric Cars Produce?
...Given the same assumptions about electric vehicles as in the American analysis above, electric cars in Canada could expect on average to cause CO2 emissions of 0.2*1.1*236 = 52 g/km to 0..3*1.1*236 = 78 g/km, compared to ICE emissions of 167 to 224 g/km.
2 0CO2.html
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Electric%20Cars%20and%
It's not dead, it's just pining for a better battery.
You remind me of the people who said cars would never be practical, explaining that there were no gas stations, and that you didn't have to crank a horse to start it.
The Tesla is a carefully crafted, rare, high-tech, high performance ride, very early into the market, and it is priced accordingly. A corvette is an assembly line commodity produced in comparatively huge volume after literally decades of absorbing engineering costs and marketing costs. When the automakers get around to putting a comparable electric car into mass production, the niche the Tesla occupies will close (and the cachet of having a high performance, non-polluting car will go away because they will no longer be rare.) If you think the Tesla's price represents an accurate measure of the price in a competitive market, you're not paying enough attention to how industry works.
My point was that electric cars don't need to be either slow, or have an 8 mile range. The price is what, maybe 5x that of a Prius? That's not so far off, frankly. This is the beginning of the curve. Some of us see that clearly and are all about waiting a little; but others... are still looking at Corvettes.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Why not just add the ability to the Prius to charge the batteries from household AC, and a switch which tells the car to prefer battery power? I picture it going 7 miles before the gasoline engine starts to recharge the batteries. That would be very much more practical, but still allow people to pollute remotely and feel good about themselves when going on short trips.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Considering about 50% of US power comes from burning coal, I don't see how this is all that great...
I agree that coal is terrible... but your car engine is worse. Even a coal-powered power plant is far more efficient than a car engine. Plus, as grid power becomes more efficient and less polluting (say, by leaving coal for nuclear) those benefits would be passed on automatically to your car - your car engine will never experience such sudden increases in efficiency.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
In the Canadian prairies, many parking lots have plugs for each spot, which would mean you can charge up while at work, regardless of the time of year (if they don't switch'em off to stop the summer moochers :-)). We're mostly coal-fired electricity though, so it'd be purely an economic play...
They've had over 100 years to produce a battery that will go a lot further then 8 miles. We've had electric cars even before gasoline engines, and this is the best they can offer in 100 years? 8 miles? 8 miles won't do anything to lessen our dependence on oil. 200 miles on a charge will, 8 miles..what a joke...
I guess you missed the parent post!
as it is there are NO Priuses sold that plug in. People have modified theirs, and Toyota seems to think making a prototype is somehow newsworthy. This is not commercially available and wont be for years!
This sounds like they just added a charger and modified the engine/charge control algorithm to let the batteries go low before the engine starts, but didn't expand the battery pack - or even add the second pack that they built room for in the origina prius.
That's better than a home-made conversion. But it's not a serious "plug in hybrid" by a long shot.
Until it has enough battery and charge rate to scavenge the entire energy from going down:
- Altamont Pass to the central valley or Livermore,
- Donner Pass to Reno or Sacremento,
- Echo pass to Carson City or the Central Valley, and
- Monitor Pass to the Nevada High Desert or Silver Lake, then Carson Pass to the Central Valley.
it's just a toy.
Once it can handle those (and has a charge control that can be set to take advantage of it) you've got a car that can completely replace a gasoline-only vehicle for Northern Californians (and most of the rest of the country as well), with a performance and mileage improvement to justify the extra cost.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What about the Zap Car
The Xebra and Zap Truck get 25 Miles per charge
but since batteries aren't there yet I'd say the best choice is their "Trybrid" Obvio runs off of electric AND Ethanol (E-100), Gasoline, or Natural Gas. and gets over 40mpg.
BUT if the Zap X CrossOver ever gets produced (although very expensive) it's suppsed to get 350 miles per charge although I'll admit it doesn't sound realistic.. but they do have Lotus working with them on it.
----------
Trying to fix or change something only guarantees and perpetuates it's existence
>Over 50% of the available energy is lost in generation and transmission inefficiencies.
50% efficiency only sounds like a bad thing to people who don't know that their internal combustion engines are roughly twice as bad as that.
We can reduce funding for our enemies by switching from oil to coal.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This story is total corporate BS!!! As anyone who has seen the film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" can attest. http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectricca r/
...your local power company gets all of your energy from inefficient, weakly regulated coal power plants. I considered an electric lawnmower for my yard, but then discovered that it would cost me pretty much the same and pollute the environment to an equal extent. So why bother?
I'm as liberal as they come, but I'm also a cynical bastard. Hard to get excited about a car that goes 8 miles and ultimately pollutes as much as my car when it goes 8 miles. 'Cept it can go much further. On only one gallon of $4/gallon gas.
> The storage medium, a battery, is a highly toxic item...
Wrong-o Jim.
There are many options for battery tech. This particular car is using nickel-metal hydride batteries. That's not the most environmentally friendly solution but it's not 'highly toxic'. We know how to recycle these things.
Future verions will use Lithium-ion batteries. Those sure as hell aren't toxic.
How can you not know that batteries can be recycled? Do you live in a third world country or something where your government is to poor to provide a battery recycling program or something? Here is how it works, when your battery doesn't work anymore, you do not throw it in the forest or dump it in a lake. Instead, you put it in a some form of container, like this. When that container is full, it is then transported to a "battery recycling center" where the batteries are dismantled. The different alloys in the batteries are melted into their pure metallic form which are then extracted. The metals are then used to manufacture new batteries.
HTH
Football Odds
Here is an article about it on Toyota's own website.
1) The jump to electric power is a must, it's cleaner, easier to transport over long distances, and it can be produced many different ways. What we don't have yet, is a great way to store electricity in medium-sized quantities efficiently. Batteries just simply won't take us there, chemical storage is not the best solution. While Fuel cells may provide some relief, I'm not sure they will be optimal long-term.
Electric power is best stored as electric power, and that means that we need to continue to develop ultra-capacitors. While the density is not yet on par with the other two technologies, there is a lot of promising research being done to increase the density. In time it will become competitive with battery densities, but there are much greater advantages to using caps over batteries:
*Caps can be charged very quickly, and as the technology matures, we're becoming more efficient at discharging caps at variable rates while retaining high efficiency.
*Caps can be charged and discharged millions of times with little to no performance loss.
*Caps are very safe for the environment, and also safe to put on board a vehicle and hand-held electronics. No hazardous waste, no explosions, and most likely no chemical leaks, etc....
2) The gap from cars and planes needs to be made back to trains. Japan and Europe have a huge advantage over the US, and we need to invest some money in making smarter decisions. The bullet trains in Japan get groups of people from one place to another at very impressive rates, almost rivaling airfare speeds. When you think about the time it takes to go through security, board a plane, load it with cargo, take-off, get up to cruising speed, land, get off the plane, go through security and get back on the road, there is a lot of overhead.
Bullet trains can offer speeds up to 200 mph, and typically have much faster boarding and unloading times. A trip from San Antonio to Dallas could take an hour and a half, but Google maps tells me that it takes over 4 and a half hours via automobile. I think it would be tough to beat an hour and a half total time from the time you stepped foot in the airport in SA until the time you left DFW. Similarly, you could easily make it from Boston to DC in under 3 hours.
While I understand that planes can make these times currently, they do it on fossil fuels, and they are not efficient. Trains can use a lot less power to move people a lot more efficiently, and they can do it on electric power. Trains with caps on board could pick up charge at various stations, while the passengers load and unload, and then travel on cap power to the next station. Wind and solar power could be set up at these various stations to keep a steady supply of power waiting for the next train to arrive.
Trains also offer safety over both cars and planes. There are much fewer accidents, as there are fewer drivers and more passengers. This is also an advantage in places like Europe where passengers can make their long trips while sleeping in a cabin at night. Imagine boarding a train in Denver at 10 PM and waking up the next morning in New York City with enough time to make an 8 AM meeting. Imagine paying prices similarly to taking a bus to get there.
I know that was a long comment, but I really think this could be promising if the government would tax gasoline more and start funding the construction of a better train transportation system. It would have to start out small, Boston to New York, DC to Philadelphia, Dallas to San Antonio, Atlanta to Miami, Chicago to Detroit. Eventually it could expand. For inner city travel we could use subway systems and buses.
Trains are affordable, efficient, clean, fast, safe, and versatile.
If knowing is half the battle, what is the other half?
There are two kinds of battery life that needs work. One is related to range.. The 8 mile or 250 mile debate. Often overlooked is the battery life in charge discharge cycles. The only reason the Prius doesn't have a dead battery every 1-2 years like a laptop battery or cell phone or business 2 way radio is because they don't deep cycle them in normal use. A Prius seldom has a battery under 50% or over 80% charged.
Heat, deep discharges, cell reversal, and overcharging is hard on batteries. The long range drivers do the worst.. Top the batteries off to get maximum range, run them till they go no more and repeat. Plan on buying new batteries every few years just like you do for your digital camera, MP3 player, cell phone, laptop, and other devices that get deep cycles often.
I think the Toyota 8 mile range is to extend the battery life to 10+ years. It is not for maximum driving range at a high cost.
The truth shall set you free!
It's the assumption of a "reasonable dielectric" that knocked you off your horse. That's where ultracaps have left the building. They're using altogether unreasonable dielectrics, and there is stuff on lab benches that is approaching battery levels right now.
Batteries have energy storage on the order of 1 MJ/kg. The numbers I quoted for the theoretical limits for capacitors are on the order of 1 MJ/kg. You aren't doing a very good job of disproving my point with your examples.
I assumed you had a magical dielectric with a dielectric constant of 1000 capable of supporting electric fields of 10 MV/m (capacitors are typically rated to half the breakdown voltage, so this means 20 MV/m). The best reported dielectrics I've heard of have constants of around 6000, but no breakdown information was provided (10+ MV/m is very hard to get).
Supercapacitors and ultracapacitors get their performance by using nanoporus materials to vastly improve surface area. Electric double-layer capacitors get their performance by using clever techniques to get a very uniform dielectric layer, which lets them work closer to maximum tolerances. No magic in either of these.
If you're claiming much more than 1 MJ/kg, provide citations, or it's vapour.
As other comments have said, first of all, coal comes from here (we don't need to fight wars to "maintain control" of it), and second of all, it's likely that during the life of your car the sources of electricity will change.
An acquaintance of mine converted his own vehicle into an electric only vehicle... He drives it to work every day.
For anyone interested, he has a site describing how he did his conversion here:
http://www.evhelp.com/
-Nate
>So, what is the real benefit of the hybrid/electric car?
Electrical power delivered to the customer generates two to three times less CO2 than buring gasoline/diesel generated from oil.
Might that be the point?
Making hydrogen results in a significant net loss of energy. After you've made it, transporting it is a huge problem because hydrogen likes to leak right through most "solid" materials. It has a very low energy density at one aatmosphere, so it has to be compressed to insane degrees to get any decent portability out of it. Both in tankers and/or pipelines and in the target vehicle. That also means fueling presents some serious issues.
Making hydrogen at STP is about 60% efficient. I've heard 80% claimed for dedicated plants. By comparison, an internal combustion engine is about 30% efficient. I remind you that supercapacitors and batteries aren't lossless either; internal resistance bites you hard at high currents, and equivalent series resistance of supercapacitors, especially, is quite high.
Hydrogen transport does have leakage, but leakage is only a serious problem if you're storing hydrogen for weeks before using it. Especially as you still wouldn't be able to store the equivalent of a full tank of gas with a hydrogen hybrid, you'll lose negligible amounts of hydrogen to diffusion.
Hydrogen does indeed have a storage density problem (it has to be stored as a compressed gas, which means a heavy cylinder for a relatively small amount of hydrogen). Still much better energy density than batteries or capacitors. My money's still on methane or methanol.
Ethanol has already caused corn prices to tweak all kinds of ways; not a good thing. At least at this point, that's a really bad side effect. Corn is a mega-important food crop. Ethanol is like gasoline, in that it must be delivered via tanker, at a hidden energy and pollution cost. It is carbon neutral, in that the carbon in the plant came from the atmosphere, and goes back to the atmosphere as exhaust.
I'm talking about methanol, not ethanol. If methane or methanol are adopted as fuels, they'll be strictly used as energy storage media, formed by burning waste hydrocarbons (chaff and other inedible plant parts) in a hydrogen atmosphere. Closed-loop systems could be built, too, but they tend to be too heavy and bulky to be worth putting into a car (CO2 is scrubbed and bound as a carbonate, then released by heating and reacted with hydrogen during recharge).
This means taking an efficiency hit vs. using hydrogen, but in return you get fuels that are much easier to handle and that can use existing infrastructure (natural gas pipelines for methane, liquid fuel transport network for methanol). You're still way, way ahead of batteries (the reaction that produces methane is quite efficient, and methanol only slightly trickier).
However, electrical vehicles can be 100% carbon negative, as a hydro plant, nuke plant, wind plant, tidal plant, geothermal plant, solar plant... none of them produce carbon at all.
This is still carbon-neutral, as no carbon goes into or out of any part of your system. With ethanol production or synthesized methane or methanol, you grow extra plants that would otherwise not be grown.
The last thing - but not the least - is that to get the most power to the ground, at the least cost, electric wins hands down. Electric motors today are easily manufactured to be lighter and provide better torque and power curves than any internal combustion engine ever made in even a slightly comparable size class.
Fuel cells use the same motors that a battery-powered car uses. The only difference is the delivery system. You could even use a gas turbine instead of a fuel cell, and still come out ahead (this is done for locomotives and ships all the time). In both cases, you don't have to worry about battery lifetime and disposal issues (the catalysts in fuel cells are much less nasty than the materials in most batteries).
NPR had a Science Friday interview on it a month or two ago.
I hate slashdot
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
And the real question is.... why doesn't some car company do essentially the above, except properly?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It's a new technology that looks promising.
http://www.theaircar.com/
OK, First off the whole idea of using a hydraulic motor in a car is not new. http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6098738-descript ion.html
Second, they don't make a claim that its "Perpetual motion", just that it doesn't have a gasoline engine.
What they are talking about is a battery powered electric motor driving a hydraulic pump which then drives the transmission and wheels. A variation of this was patented in 2000 (see link), but the basic concept has been around for much longer.
It works better when the hydraulic motor is bolted directly to the differential and there is a pressure tank in the system to recover energy when braking. The advantage of this kind of set up is the electric or combustion motor runs at a constant RMP/load setting, which is when they are most efficient. The combustion motor can also be a multi-fuel(gasoline, LPG, NG, ethanol, etc.) or diesel.
The guys in the articles or the writer just didn't mention that the batteries will need to be recharged eventually
They are making it sound like its "Free Energy", my bad.
But the idea of using a hydraulic/electric or combustion system does work.
Every time there is a post on this, we get a post on the glories of public transportation.
Now don't get me wrong - I love public transportation. I use it back and forth to work everyday.
I love inter-city trains. Love them. My experience of going to London from Paris, for example, on the chunnel was fantastic. Or going from Paris to Geneva by train - perfect. I love the TGV. My trip from Paris to Rome via plane, however, was certainly horrendous - now THAT is a long story.
I'd love to see an excellent train system implemented across the U.S. It could not compete with air travel speeds as far as the journey goes, but the obvious upsides - less sensitivity to weather conditions, likely fewere hassles in security (although security in the chunnel wasn't too unlike airport security), and arriving right in the middle of the city you're visiting are big advantages that mitigate much of that.
However, the problem is with what you casually wave your hand and dismiss at the end - the need for inner city travel.
I live in Provo, UT right now. Public transportation here is actually fairly good - so long as you live in an area with a reasonably dense population. It's a college town, and I'm a student, and even though I bought a house on the outskirs I'm still exactly a 12 minute walk from a bus that provides me with an 8 minute ride to work. Not bad at all.
But let's say I wanted to visit my brother in Las Vegas (I don't have a brother in Las Vegas, nor have I ever been, but whatever). It's a 6 hour drive or, probably, a 45 minute flight from Salt Lake International. I'd probably drive, of course - given that it takes 45 minutes to drive to Salt Lake from here, 2 hours to check in and wait, and then another hour or so for the flight, plus cost, I'd just drive it. But what if there was a high speed train that goes through Provo and would wisk me to Vegas at a fare only a little above gas prices? I'd still drive it. Why? I would have no way to get around on the other end unless I wanted to rent a car or unless the city of Las Vegas wakes up and decides it's going to have a massive transit system that works across the entire city and its suburbs. I would need to study bus routes - often arcane, difficult, and changed by detours, run only once every half hour or so, etc. I would need to pay a fare, which will not necessarily be competitive with my own fuel costs. I lose the ability to make stops along the way where I want to, if I so desire. I also lose cargo space back (unless I want to pay extra, likely), so I'm limited in what I can take.
I LOVE trains and mass transit. I love Europe for this reason among many. But America just isn't set up for it yet. Maybe some day, when we've reached the high population densities of European countries we will be able to do it. But for now, trains just seem like spending an awful lot of money to support non-existent systems. It's a chicken and egg problem, I realize, but it's a problem nonetheless.
Oh wait, my bad. The EV-1 went 100-150 miles on a single charge.
Not the same thing at all. My mistake.
I still think the chevy volt seems like a better idea.
Here on slashdot, one of the most geeky sites around, people saw "Plug-In Hybrid", and "range on batteries 8 miles", and made all sorts of comments about how it's a toy if it only has 8 mile range -- ignoring the fact that it's still a hybrid and still has several hundred miles range, on fuel.
That's slashdot geeks. They're having trouble seeing that it's a hybrid, which also happens to have a plug.
Now imagine how few normal people would have understood, if Toyota had released a plug-in hybrid to begin with. "What, it gets 8 miles?"
They had to release new technology with exactly the same interface (pour gasoline, press pedal) so people would understand that "Prius = same as before but more efficient". Once everybody's OK with that, they can make interface changes for bigger gains (you can plug it in if you want).
you can retro fit your prius now for 10,000 and go about 50 miles
Vapor? Perhaps. But I think we're about to find out. EEStor, a company backed by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, claims a specific energy of about 280 watt hours per kilogram, compared with around 120 watt hours per kilogram for lithium-ion and 32 watt hours per kilogram for lead-acid gel batteries. They say this is in a UC with dielectric strengths from 1000 to 3500 volts; the underlying technology has something to do with barium-titanate powders, and yes, I am hand-waving, that's all I know about it. Jim Miller, vice president of advanced transportation technologies at Maxwell Technologies (a competing maker of ultracaps) and an ultracap expert who spent 18 years doing engineering work at Ford Motors, said "I have no doubt you can develop that kind of material, and the mechanism that gives you the energy storage is clear" which I doubt you would catch him saying if the technology were not as described. He also says a number of doubtful things about the physical stability of ceramics in automotive applications, worries about the low temperature range (which is just FUD... my darned BATTERY needs a heater where I live - temperature low problems are solved off the shelf.) Anyway, when a competitor says "yeah, this is real technology", I'm inclined to go, ok, it's real, then. EEStor has said this tech will be shipping this year - 2007 - as an energy supply system for an electric vehicle. This isn't my claim; this is theirs. So we'll both wait and see.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No, you're not. You're being sarcastic.
Running few power plants is more efficient than running millions of small engines to generate the same amount of energy.
I doubt it, unless the power plant is nuclear or solar etc. If you're burning fossil fuels to make the electricity, which do you think is more efficient: a car which turns chemical energy directly into kinetic energy, or a car which starts by converting that same fuel first to electricty at the power plant, then transmitting it many miles, then converting it to chemical energy in the battery, then converting that back to electricity, and then using that electricity to produce kinetic energy? Don't forget to factor in the increased weight you have to lug around, and all the energy consumed in manufacturing the car itself.
I'm all for reducing pollution, but if electric cars are running off the power grid, aren't they _worse_ than gas cars?
Considering that it's easier to build/retrofit "Carbon Capture and Processing" to large exhausts (Like, say, power plants) than it is to add to small exhausts (Like, for example, cars), even coal-fired powerplants are more efficient than petrol-based ones.
And given that generating electricity from coal is around 30-50% efficient (More with gassification) and electric motors are 80-95% efficient (Compared to 25% or less for petrol-based engines), it means a net win for electric vehicles.
Add to that technologies like PML's "Pancake" motors (see here for details, and here for a practical solution, a true "Hybrid" that weighs 20kg more (in total, batteries, motors and all) than it's ICE counterpart) and the Electric Car (or the Electric hybrid (Why has no-one come up with an Electric/BioDiesel hybrid yet? Aren't Diesel generators the best for efficiency, as they run constantly at their (narrow) highest efficiency band?) in the "Need more range" area) has a great future.
And let's not talk about Hydrogen. It's more expensive (both monetarily and environmentally) to produce, more expensive to transport, takes more space to store, has considerably less energy density, and is not likely to improve any faster than other systems already around (EV, PHEV, BioDiesel etc), which makes Hydrogen more of a damp squib than the "Next Big Thing", no matter how the car companies (GM, Toyota) and the oil companies (Shell, BP, Exxon/Texaco/Esso) would like us to think so.
No. Ultracaps can discharge and charge at hundreds of times the rate of batteries without heating at all; if they had a high series resistance, they'd heat up or outright explode. They have a relatively high leakage rate, or at least, some of the technologies do - you must have confused that with the series resistance, which is essentially non-existent.
That isn't what appears to be happening. Existing production is being diverted, and prices are going up. Just check corn futures; it's as plain as day. But your presumption is wrong anyway; because you are assuming that "extra" plants are grown; Where, and what do they replace? Arid spots with no plants? Buildings or roads? Not likely. They'll be grown in fields, most likely replacing other, less profitable crops (that is what we're seeing right now, BTW.) If weeds can't grow, neither can corn. So of course, they replace other plants. Even if they are just replacing weeds, which is the best case because it doesn't screw up other food crop balances, still, they are other plants that would not have been converted into atmospheric carbon dioxide, but which were already involved in scrubbing it from the atmosphere. So in the end, you are taking in carbon and the releasing it; you would have just been taking it in if you had used the plants for food or just left the lot to weeds. Electric systems produce no CO2, and therefore they clearly win on this basis. You're right that technically, this is an actual carbon neutral system; but if you want to go there, then corn can't be, it is carbon positive as soon as you burn it because if you had not burned it, there would be less CO2 in the air.
Hmm. Interesting. I don't know a whole lot about this. What is the lifetime of a fuel cell before it needs service, replacement, etc.? An ultracap typically allows for many millions of full charge / discharge cycles. So if you fully charged and discharged a system each day (call it 300 miles a day of driving) and lowballed to one million cycles, you'd get a million days of lifetime out of the cell, or about two thousand, seven hundred years of lifetime without any kind of service on the ultracaps whatsoever. Basically, they're install and forget until the car is junked, and then they can be moved to your next vehicle. How do fuel cells stack up to that?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Well if they are going to start doing this why not bring back electric cars like the EV1 but the car and oil industries may not like that ohnoes
Look, I like the environment. I like to recycle. I like high efficiency bulbs. I like to attend local river cleanups. I like to walk for short trips. I like to ride my bicycle for slightly longer ones. But do you know what else I like? I like the way my boxer beats at idle. I like the gentle growl when I feather the clutch. I like running through my gears. I like the way my turbo whines at 6 grand. You can have my internal combustion engine when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
"So, what is the real benefit of the hybrid/electric car?"
Gas is (currently) $3 a gallon. The equivalent amount of electricity to go the same distance on battery power alone costs $1. Plus, that power could come from solar, wind, hydro, tidal, or some other renewable source, and during off-peak hours from a nuclear, coal or gas-fired plant. As could the power needed to manufacture said car and battery (don't assume worse case on that side).
Not to mention that every gallon of gasoline not burned in some car's engine is oil that didn't have to be pumped up out of the ground in an unstable country thousands of miles away, shipped halfway across the globe, refined, and re-transported to our local gas station. Kind of makes "line losses" seem insignificant, doesn't it?
Finally, if enough people use 'em and in the process cut our petroleum needs significantly, it could mean that in the future your son or your daughter may not have to die for an oil well.
Are you done being smug?
"battery, is a highly toxic item that adds so much weight to the vehicle"
Couldn't let this one go. The current battery weight in a Prius is 45kg or... 100 lbs. Vehicle weight is 2,921 lbs. And BTW, a 16 gallon gas tank in a conventional vehicle adds 100 lbs of weight when full as well, so a Prius 12 gallon tank effectively drops 24 lbs out of the battery weight, while giving the Prius a range of about 600 miles vs. a more conventional vehicle's 300 mile range.
"There's a great "South Park" episode about this."
Which undoubtedly explains where your facts came from...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
a study found people buy hybrids to show they care about the enviorment. A hybrid civic still looks like a civic, however a Prius is unmistakably a hybrid from the ground up. Part of the appear of owning a hybrid is your "image" or at least that is what one study found why people prefered the Hybrid Prius to other Hybrids out there.
These numbers include the 1,000 miles I went with a bad lean-air fuel sensor, knocking my mileage from 50+mpg to <40mpg, and the sticking brake caliper that knocked 700 miles down to 42mpg (from the previous 51mpg). I've gotten better than 100mpg going downhill, and maybe 50mpg coming back (for a round-trip of 74 mpg). Still trying to figure out what's hindering my city mileage - I think the one brake caliper is still sticking, as I did my own caliper rebuilds, and the one seal came in a box that looked like it had been sitting on the shelf for 10 years.
The '92-'95 used lean burn to achieve such high mileage figures. The one drawback is that lean-burning engines emit more nitrous oxides... I suspect that the U.S. spec '96-'00 Civic HX did not use lean-burn, as the fuel economy tanked to 43mpg hwy. But the Japanese Civic HX did, and in combination with an infinitely-variable CVT transmission, allegedly got 70mpg.
The '99 Insight 5-spd had lean burn, and was rated for (and fully capable of) 70mpg highway. The '99 Insight CVT did NOT have lean burn and was rated for 56mpg hwy. Later, the Honda Civic Hybrid came equiped with catalytic converters for the nitrous oxides, allowing it to be a super-duper-low-emission vehicle (unlike the Insight 5-spd)... But the 2003 civic was only rated for 51mpg. ?
There ought to be several non-hybrid 60-70mpg cars available today. IMHO, the automakers would rather work with the oil companies to screw us all, than lighten our dependence on teh petroleum.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
how useless is this thing. i could do a 13km ride on my push bike for nothing, and the bike costs a 20th that this stupid car costs. in traffic i bet i could beat the fucking car to.
solve the storage problem with electric cars, then come back to me. and if anyone cry's about lithium ion batteries being the answer, i'll slap them, because they still suck.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Here is a plugin hybrid that uses electricity and/or food to power it.
I've found it myself: http://www.impactlab.com/modules.php?name=News&fil e=article&sid=11001
And I Quote "Through a study by CNW Marketing called "Dust to Dust," the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.
The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it. ".
(The article mentions more cars, so go read it. If it is true, that not yet verified of course)
After some searching, I already have to conclude that article is probably false. Just see the notes at the end of the article already by a guest contributor.
or 50x that of the (fully functional) used car on the road. 40 years time, I have no doubts cars will be largely electric. That's pretty far off. This "sane" person that knows electric will be practical, is naturally practically minded. I have to get to work most days, including Monday to make the money that allows me to buy another conventional car, so forgive me for rolling my eyes. It's easy enough to call others short-sighted when you set the marker at "delusional".
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Some contries, for example Sweden, gets 98% of its electricity from Hydro power and Nuclear power. Norway gets most of its energy from Hydro power. France get more electricity from nuclear power than any other country in the world. Those countries would benefit enormously with electric cars.
In china they plan to build a thousand nuclear reactors until 2050, they will probably also have a better nuclear-to-fossil fuel ratio at that time than the USA.
I think it really is time for the US to start building a lot of nuclear power plants and replace all your dirty coal and oil fired plants.
Ask for a shower, explain that you want to cycle in, it's good for you, you'll be more healthy and fit so take less sick days off so it'll be better for your boss.
You could mention it being good for the planet but of course like most places it's likely your boss will look at you like you're some kind of acid crazed hippy and refuse to consider the idea. Which is commonplace, and why we're so screwed up on the planet right now. I'll bet your boss would be more interested in shelling out 30,000 for tarmac for half a dozen new parking places than plumbing in a shower facility. I got to admit I am lucky, I work at a university where they do provide showers, and being open to ideas actually back you for cycling. We even can claim a mileage rate for cycling places for busines, in the same way that car drivers get their rate.
Give it a go though, you might get lucky, and hey, even if you manage to cycle for four weeks either side of the hot/cold weather, well your body will love you for doing that 2 months a year cycling. That'll be a few hundred kilometres working your body out rather than sitting on yer backside eating doughnuts!
Good on you for considering the hybrid car as well. If we all do our bit we'll hit the tipping point eventually. Heck, even this discussion wouldn't have happened 30 years ago.
It's only a hybrid if it's both gas and battery powered. If it only has a battery, then surely it's not a hybrid?
Zen tips: Pay attention. Don't take it personally. Believe nothing.
In this house, we always...
(Simpsons...)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This movie is a must-see for anyone interested in this.
Funny... I'm a physicist who wishes more people took courses in critical thinking.
Sorry for being rude here on /.,
but I'd just like to say a big F**K YOU to those trying to find a pseudo-technical solution in order not to change any of their filthy habits.
You want to be able to look at your children without being ashamed of the environment you left them?
Forget about algae-powered airplanes, electric/hybrid cars, economic light bulbs or black background Google, they wont help you lowering your greenhouse gases emissions, at least not significantly, and could sometimes create other environmental hazard (just like dams or nuclear power plants...).
Instead, consider not using your car at all, take a walk, ride your bike, take the train/bus or share a car with your neighbor. Stop taking a 1-hour flight to go shopping, stop eating fruits/vegetables coming from Togo/NZ/Chile, get your house isolated, turn your 3 testing servers with 3 different linux/BSD flavors off, and think twice before buying a technical gadget described as "A+++ Environmentally friendly" that you won't even use in 6 months.
Any other "technical solution" is just a crapload of lame excuses and will only enable rich people to think they did everything right for the atmosphere, while Britons/Chinese/Indians are under flood, and South Europa/Africa/ Latin America are dying from droughts.
Please mod me down, it won't stop me from lowering my carbon footprint by applying what I proposed in the 3rd paragraph : I can assure you it feels damn good, and I won't be ashamed to tell my children that, at least, I tried to do my best not to leave them a cradle of filth.
...if you live in a somewhat flat city. Unfortunately, that's not my case.
I like the part where the inventor says it'll go much farther on $3 of hydraulic fluid than a regular car would on $3 of gas. Hydraulic motors shouldn't consume their fluid idiot.
It would be interesting if they gave details of how they fooled the reporter into thinking there was no motor and what was actually driving the truck. Or did they actually go to the trouble of putting in a hydraulic motor with a top speed of 10mph and a range of probably 2 miles?
Looks like our comments are going unnoticed. GM is way ahead of Toyota here. They're already talking bio-diesel. Unfortunately it's only a concept car still. But this is the way to go. I'm very surprised nobody's picked up on it, especially here. Eh...
What?
This article in Electronic Design Magazine is on electric and hybrid vehicles in general, and prominently features lots of details on the Tesla Roadster.
It's also got a ~300 mile range on a full charge, and has a top speed of ~130 MPH, which it can do in reverse.
And its starting list price is $92K, not $98K...
The article also states that they are working on a four-door sedan that they expect to release in 2010 for "about half the price of the roadster."
The Roadster happens to be their first production vehicle. I'd expect it to be expensive. They have a lot of custom parts in that car, and they have to recoup all of the costs associated with custom tooling. If they design future models to reuse those parts (which they'd be stupid not to) that's a significant savings. Which is evidenced by the announcement that the sedan will be half the cost.
right.. battery technology is insufficient to the task.
Sure, you've refined the statement-- but the fact is- the original had no flaws whatsoever..
why gosh- I CAN buy a jetpack and fly to the supermarket, but it's very damn expensive....
so-- jetpack technology, or moellers air car- still aren't "sufficient to the task" and yes- it's almost ALWAYS money....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
You could forego the Corvette option and get a Camaro, instead. Those things can become mobile three-story defense platforms, with a sense of humor.
Informatus Technologicus
The Reva from India boasts of 50 Miles range with top speed of 50 MPH and cost per Mile of 2 Cents. It can carry two folks only though. I guess if they can just improve the battery to get to 100 Miles and top speed to 100 as well, I think it will become very viable to own one. Of course, the car is very small and flimsy but I guess those things can be improved over time.
http://www.revaindia.com/worldwidegallery.htm
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
My commute to work is about 15min. and 10Km/7mi single trip, half country road(50mph), half city (35mph), with about 6 stops on average due to red lights, intersections, etc.
;-)
Let us assume I can get by with one charge at work and one charge at home - basically the ideal case for this car.
Fuel costs for a car with the equivalent mileage of Prius (50mpg?), where I live:
app. 1 USD per 10km/7mi.
That would translate into savings of 500USD per year (250 work-days) on fuel.
Costs:
Electricity per trip : 15min * 10kW = 2.5kWh
At a cost of 0.2USD per kWh(low residential rate), each trip costs me (or my employer) 0.5USD, so the overall savings per year are only 250USD.
For this, we have the following extra cost:
- Extra cost for hybrid Prius: 3000USD
- Price for charging equipment at employer: 1000 USD per converted parking space
(rolling out an extension cord across the parking lot is *not* an option
- Price for charging equipment at home: 500USD
(I do not have a garage, but need to park on the street. A heavy-Duty extension cord and a special outlet with
electric fuses may be an option if the parking spaces on the street adjacent to the lot I live on are not occupied)
So it is more than 15 years before I can get an return on my investment of 4500USD, not considering interest rates.
It is also highly doubtful if the batteries will survive 15 years and 4000 charging cycles.
So economically, electric vehicles converted from normal vehicles as an "afterthought" do not make sense economically.
But even if I was ready to spend more money for a clean environment, the following problems remain:
- I have to bugger my employer to install charging facilities
- I have to spend to spend five minutes each day in rain, heat or darkness hooking up the charger.
Would You buy a car that had to stop at a gas station during every trip to or from work?
This does not mean that I think electric vehicles are a bad idea, or that you should not get one of the early, imperfect ones if you do not mind the extra cost and hassle, but that some real effort must be put into the development of CO2-emission saving alternatives to personal transportation everybody can afford.
To this end, the only thing I see that is practical and not wasteful on economic resources is really high tax on gas.
Why not tax gas at $10 per gallon and provide free healthcare for every citizen in return?
I read something a few years ago about spinning up a whole bunch of crazy composite ceramic flywheels under the hood and then tapping their kinetic energy. Of course, a 300lb flywheel spinning at 150,000rpm could do some damage in an accident.
Googled a bit, found this: http://www.allpar.com/model/patriot.html
With the first link, the chain is forged.
That's a meaningless comparison. The internal combustion engine efficiency figure is for the entire cycle - fuel to usable power. Your hydrogen number ignores the efficiency of producing the energy to produce the hydrogen and the efficiency of converting that hydrogen to usable power.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Let me just say that I've been wanting an electric car for years, if only to finally say to my American and European friends:
YES! Those damn plug-ins ARE in fact for our electric cars! Now shut up about it!
Sadly, southern Alberta doesn't seem to have many plug-in parking spots. So it's only the colder parts of the prairies that will be able to make this joke.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The source of electricity MAY change in the next 30-40 years, not in the 3-4 year life of most people's cars.
It's actually not a "hybrid".
The term "hybrid" means that a car has multiple sources of power delivery -- for example, both a battery and a gasoline engine.
Because the car only has one source of power (the battery), the term "hybrid" does not apply.
Interestingly, this confusion in terminology is very new. As little as 10 years ago, most people would have (correctly) used the term "electric car" to refer to this vehicle.
The term "electric car" was so firmly entrenched in the public's mind that the auto industry had to (correctly) start using the new word "hybrid" to refer to the new breed of dual-power-source cars that emerged after the original "electric car" era.
I find it fascinating that in such an amazingly short time, people who use the English language professionaly have evidently forgotten what the word "hybrid" means, and are now applying it inappropriately.
Of course, from a marketing perspective, the phrase "electric car" emits the musty odor of yesteryear, and must be updated for the new millennium. The term "plug-in car" could serve nicely for this purpose. But the term "plug-in hybrid" must be reserved only for hybrid cards that can ALSO be plugged into an electric outlet to supplement the gasoline power.
I just got through walking 7+ miles (mainly for exercise) and the last time I looked I didn't have to plug myself in. What does this car provide me with that my feet do not? (Other than increased opportunities to damage my body at high velocities and hundreds of dollars a month in payments for an automobile loan and car insurance).
If you want to go someplace faster buy a bike.
The real question is, how are they going to tax it? A car driving on a public road and not paying a gasoline tax. In Fascist America, the jack-booted thugs are going to stomp someone over that. My guess is, that's the real reason it is only getting 8 miles on a full charge, when other people are building stuff that gets twice that out of their garages. Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Silicon dioxide used in gate insulators has a breakdown in excess of 500 MV/m. Alas, the dielectric constant is rather low.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
> Yes, the Tesla is also 98k+. Toyota is not interested in making
> a car that only Jay Leno can afford.
The Tesla Roadster is the starting point, not the final goal. They are making their first car a high-end sports car because they can compete in that market with a low-volume pure electric vehicle.
Their next vehicle will be a sports sedan produced in higher volumes, and built in the US, for introduction in 2009. Their next vehicle will be even lower price and higher volume.
It's difficult to create a car company from scratch. It's a complex business and has to be both high volume and incredibly efficient to compete with the big car makers. That sort of business doesn't get built overnight, or even in just a couple of years.
Tesla in on the right track. While the big car makers are wasting time fooling around with hybrid cars that have no range because they carry around a heavy gas engine, Tesla is showing that a pure electric can built with a great driving range, way more than you need for anything less than an interstate road trip.
I can't wait to get a pure electric vehicle for many reasons.
- Much better power plant to road efficiency, with far less pollution than a gas engine.
- No more wasted time making trips to the gas station. Just like a cell phone, you plug it in at night and it's charged in the morning.
- By charging overnight, you leverage otherwise unused power plant capacity.
- No more oil changes. No muffler replacements. No timing belt. The only regular maintenance will be tires and brakes, and the brakes last longer because of regenerative braking.
- No waiting for the engine to warm up so the heater will work.
If batteries/caps are that good and cheap as to allow for a totally electric car, than putting one in a solar powered home would be a no-brainer.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I agree with you on that point.
However, we can reduce pollution as well, by switching to Biofuels, without the attendant environmental consequences of the batteries, elimination of vehicles that suit American lifestyles, and massive upgrades to our electrical grid.
High density corn production is fertilizer and mineral intensive, which causes polution and soil depletion, respectively. Perhaps a good tradeoff, but not a free ride.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Not so much because of their storage capacity limit, but because the process of converting electrical energy into chemical energy (charge the battery) and the process of converting chemical energy into electrical energy (use the battery) is not extremely efficient. Somewhere from 70%-85% each way, depending on the battery technology employed. We CAN do rather better than that, with kinetic energy storage.
Something like 95% conversion efficiency is routine for electric motors/generators, between electrical and mechanical energy. If you are deliberately designing a short-range vehical, then flywheels can fill the bill MUCH better than batteries. They even weigh less, too.
On the other hand the Corvette, like many sports cars, are notoriously unreliable and you'll spend thousands fixing it to keep it going for 100K miles. I don't know much about the Telsa, but if it's like most other electric cars, there is simply not as much stuff to break or to even have to maintain, hence it's probably pretty reliable.
I just contacted GM Canada to let them know they have lost a future customer. Pointed out the following links to them: Who Killed the Electric Car: GM and Chevron, Sony Pictures.
~ awaiting spiritual enlightenment ~
I have a garage full of Riyobi 18v with an army of batteries . . .
*sigh*
hawk
OK, first off: why is a purely electric vehicle being described as a hybrid?
Second: Why are we still hyping the hybrid cars?
I have had a Prius for a little over two years, and driven over 40k miles. The fuel economy is considerably less than that of a comparable diesel (Audi A3 estate). Yes, the car is safe, and fairly economical for a petrol car, but it's not fantastic. It is exempt from congestion charging as the government are trying to encourage fuel efficiency, but I rarely drive into London. The annual car tax is minimal. However, all in all, it would have been far cheaper to buy a diesel car, whose manufacture would have had less environmental impact, and whose fuel efficiency would be better.
The oversimplistic eat-food-from-a-4-mile-radius fad returns.
In many cases, to grow the produce that you are accustomed to, lots of energy has to be spent on warming greenhouses and transporting water.
Oceanliners can transport food at incredibly loss energy costs. They burn cheap fuel slowly, and carry unbelievable amounts of stuff. They're really big boats.
It's just some stupid food craze to sell books to rich mothers, along with "organically grown" veges.
Don't be sucked in.
... who thinks about slapping this type of electric-only vehicle with a solar energy system? Even if it only charges on it rather than using it as a direct source of energy for propulsion. Maybe even throw in a hydrogen fuel cell for good measure? Maybe as a backup? Dunno.
Here's another fun comparison:
The Tesla costs $98,000, does 0-60 in 4 seconds, has a curb weight of 2500 lbs, gets the equivalent of roughly 135 mpg and is a *zero-emissions vehicle*
The 2007 Porsche 911 GT3 RS costs $123,000, also does 0-60 in 4 seconds, has a curb weight of 3030 lbs, gets about 20 mpg and emits all the usual pollutants.
So for $35,000 less, the Tesla outperforms the GT3 RS (due to the drastically lower curb weight), gets about 7 times better "gas mileage", is far more reliable (due to the simplicity of an electric motor vs. an ICE), can be recharged at home in about 3.5 hours, is far more environmentally friendly, and helps to reduce our dependancy on foreign oil.
As far as resale value is concerned, the 911 will rapidly decrease in value as it reaches 100K miles (since an ICE and conventional transmission will eventually require a full rebuild or replacement). The Tesla, OTOH, requires a new battery pack every 100K miles, but is otherwise good to go for much longer than the Porsche without major problems. So I would expect the resale value to hold up just fine.
hmmm.... decisions decisions....
Now, the above comparison is totally arbitrary as I'm selectively highlighting certain features of these two vehicles and ignoring others, just as you did. I picked the Porsche based on the same criteria you used (similar 0-60 drag time). I could have compared the Tesla to a number of Ferrari's or Lamborgini's, which would have made the Tesla look like a supercar-killer that just happens to be a ZEV.
What's important about the Tesla is that it proves that a practical (i.e. street-legal, decent range, quick recharge time, reliable, etc.) and insanely high-performance 100% electric vehicle can be built *today* that can actually compete in the auto enthusiast market. This is an incredible achievement with far-reaching implications and it's a shame if you can't see that.
I also have to mention that you are definitely not in the target market for a Tesla roadster, so your evaluation of the car needs to be seen in that light. If you were in the target market, you would have known enough to compare the Tesla with a similarly performing car instead of the Z06. The most obvious example would be the Lotus Elise (or the Exige) upon which it is based and, believe me, there simply aren't many (if any) potential sports car buyers out there losing sleep trying to decide between a Z06 and an Elise. They are almost at opposite ends of the performance spectrum.
8 miles to a charge. Wasn't GM getting 180 miles to a charge on the EV back in the 90's. This country is a joke. Run by Big Oil no matter how you look at it. No wonder everyone hates us.
Most of the electricity in the US is generated by burning coal. Its worse than burning gas in a car!
My post was more to show that Jay Leno isn't the only one who will afford these cars.
-- Boycott Shell
I thought "hybrids" referred to cars that use mixed energy sources, such as gas/electric, or diesel/electric. This car seems to run on electricity only, so why is it called a hybrid?
What was once true, is no longer so
The 2006 Chevy Corvette Z06 costs $65,000 and does zero-60 in ~3.6 seconds.
Uh, no. the stock Corvette z06 does it in 4.6 seconds.
Also, you can search on google and/or youtube for videos documenting what happens when you drag race a Tesla and a Corvette. Actually, I've seen videos on youtube of *homebuilt* electric conversions smoking Corvettes on the 1/4 mile.
There are in fact, very few production cars (and by "production" I mean cars built by Lotus, Lamborgini, and Porsche) that can do better than the Tesla on the 1/4 mile. They all cost roughly as much as a Tesla roadster, or more.
Another of your calculations is off, coincidentally. You forget that at least half of the miles you put on a car are in city driving, so your fuel costs will go up accordingly. That $5,000 gap in TCO is therefore smaller, and maybe even nonexistent.
Moreover, I'd like to see you fill your tank in your garage. Or at work. You *can* fuel up a Tesla anywhere you like. They're called electrical outlets, and they exist in far more locations than there are gas stations.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
then why are you measuring your commute in kilometers?
just curious...
Why are so many people getting this wrong? The article is not particularly clear, no, but it does NOT say that this is an electric-only vehicle!!
In fact, it says quite clearly that this is a PLUG-IN HYBRID. The writers referred to it as a hybrid because Toyota calls it a hybrid. Toyota's own specs say that it has a gasoline engine! Jesus, people, learn to fucking read!
How do you not know how much energy recycling a battery takes? Sure, it's better than dumping it in a landfill, but it takes a non-trivial amount of energy to heat the batteries.
If the process were like standard auto batteries (which don't require heating), then there wouldn't be a problem.
In regards to people saying that there could be alternative fuel sources such as wind, solar, etc. as alternatives to fossil fuels, people have been saying that for years, but there's always one problem (at least in the U.S.), and that's that wherever the government or some corporation tries to build the facilities for clean power generation, someone makes up a lame excuse like it's "unsightly" (see for example this page , which describes the difficulty Cape Cod is having in building a wind farm). Even environmental groups such as the Audobon society have opposed plans to build them in some cases, though admittedly the Audobon society had given its support to the Cape Wind project. I do hope, though, that eventually the higher gas prices and other energy prices (for example, in Connecticut, UI is planning on raising their rates by this year), not to mention the security threats posed by dependence on foreign oil, will force people to reconsider.
Auto batteries indeed require heating to smelt the lead, after the case is broken and removed.
Using our large, centrally located power producing units to power vehicles is indeed a step in the right direction. Really no matter what state you are in, the regulated energy community (and before you get cute, that's everyone) has the belt on in terms of certain types of emissions. In the US, CO2 equivalents aren't one of them yet, but eventually we know they will be. Mobile sources? Fat chance. States and the federal EPA will do a LOT more before they start to really approach regulating mobile sources, and really, we don't even do such a good job of quantifying their impact even now. Regulators and other stakeholders regard it as a lose-lose situation, and I'm guessing most people, not just the lobbyist funded out of Detroit, would fight it even more than just upping the CAFE standards. I'm of the opinion that it's grossly unfair in some ways, partly because it allows individual consumers to continue to consume and pollute at levels at which they are not forced to pay attention. Very few people consider the individual impact they have from one day of work commuting. One week? One year? Vacations included? What does your whole metro area contribute--really? Because right now the quantifying that can really just be a lot of handwaving, and so far, we as citizen consumers have been fine with that.
People are working on them. Biggest problem Ive heard is they are deafeningly noisey.
Gas engines produce CO2 etc during the running of the engine but reprocessing the engine is relatively straight forward. The CO2 can be offset by growing more trees/algae etc.
Reprocessing heavy metals and lithium etc is far more challenging and leads to far longer term environmental issues.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Supercapacitors could be even better, since they have a nearly 100% efficiency. Of course, that technology is still fairly novel, but with superior efficiency and no moving parts, they could beat flywheels all to hell as far as automobiles go.
Unlike you eastern US people, most of the power in the West is from wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear.
We can't help it if you slackers still use global warming gas creating coal for power.
For example, where I live in Seattle, I pay to get 100 percent green power, which pays to build more wind turbines. If you go up to Canada, most electricity in BC, Quebec, Ontario, and many other places is entirely hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar based.
Vermont and Florida and Maine have a lot of wind, hydro, tidal, solar, and nuclear power too.
Action speaks louder than words.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
that is with the battery packs they have. Most plug-in hybrids use NiMH and other battery technology and can get a range of 300 miles on a charge.
I expect the production models will have different battery packs.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Electric energy is best stored in whatever medium delivers the best combination of cost, density, and efficiency. Right now, that means batteries. Ultracapacitors are indeed promising, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. They still need to get orders of magnitude better before they can compete with batteries.
Actually, when you have solar or wind power, which can vary, it's best to store it in:
a. vehicle battery packs (plug-in hybrids) which can turn on when excess power is needed to store then;
b. water pumped up to storage tanks (which is why wind turbines frequently are used to pump water into water towers and up to cachement dams to run flywheel turbines for electricity generation when it is needed;
c. fuel cells (split into component parts from water supply).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That is not exactly true. Much of the electricity is bought from the midwest. Remember Enron and the energy crisis in CA? CA, for example, is only 34% wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear... Although the dirtiest coal plants are east-ish. Texas produces the most calo-electricty and is the dirtiest state.
I'm sorry, what I said is true.
We have something like 13 major hydro dams in BC and more in WA. We provide a lot of the power for CA.
In fact, Enron cheated our local utilities by out of our power being sold at a fair price and we recently run in a suit by Puget Power against them.
They are building three new treaty dams in BC - one at Waneta literally half a mile north of the border in BC - and I know where most of that electricity goes, because I used to work in that industry as a power engineer and even did a TV show on energy for BC cable that went province-wide.
Seattle owns it's own hydro dams, and a few more. As well as a heck of a lot of wind turbines in this state.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Regardless of whether or not all of a given person's electricity is coming from green sources or not, using electricity to power your vehicle most definitely *IS* a cleaner solution. Even assuming 100% coal power, and taking into account transmission losses, your total energy use is half that of using gasoline (~26% for coal w/ transmission losses, 12% for ICE), even before you take into account the energy used to supply the gasoline in the first place. The reduction in pollution released to the atmosphere is potentially even greater (50% - 80% depending on whose numbers you are using). Slap a solar cell on your roof for point generation, and you are that much further along.
In general you are correct. Using electricity is less harmful in general than using gasoline, which is shipped here and then refined. And your points on the actual conversion loss are also pretty spot on for the different sources.
Additionally, by disconnecting the energy source (gasoline in a standard car) from the usage point, the effects of pollution can be located in areas where it causes less damage - e.g. instead of a haze-filled LA sky, you could have a clearer sky there and then put the pollution underground or run through filters as is done by scrubbers on smelters. C02 and C0 can both be run thru H20 with minimal impact, for example, and the resulting byproducts are useful in certain chemical products if done properly.
But putting a solar cell on the roof of your car is not always a good idea - it adds mass to the vehicle. Better to put the solar cells on the roof of your building at both work and home and have those generate electricity instead.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
> Most plug-in hybrids use NiMH and other battery technology and can get a range of 300 miles on a charge.
:)
I seriously doubt that... but I'm too lazy to look it up, so I'm going to pull the skeptic card and say "you made the claim, the burden of proof is on you."
You like teaching critical thinking as a course?
If it comes naturally you don't need a course, if it doesn't all you get are people following a cookbook. (Where does his funding come from? What is his perspective?) Usually colored by the philosophy of the teacher. Few have the insight to think critically about their critical thinking teachers perspective.
I'd drop it from all liberal art curricula and add more math and science. Their course work needs some serious rounding out. I'd like to see 'inventors' of perpetual motion mocked in the media (unless they've produced extraordinary proof to back their extraordinary claim). Ain't going to happen.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You are actually in a better position than most to exploit MicroHP, solar, wind, etc.
Where I live we get 75%+ from renewables so for me to do my own solar etc makes little sense- it makes sense for me to convert my car to biodiesel (zero net carbon since it all came from the air to begin with, and money to local farmers instead of to the Saudis and Bushbuddies) or electric.
But if you are getting most of your electricity from fossil, it makes more sense for you to look at ways to get electricity from other sources rather than increase the electricity you buy from the "utility" (quotes because what is the long term utility, really of using fossil fuels)