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High Efficiency Hybrid Car Planned For 2009
An anonymous reader writes "You may have heard some of the hype last month when California-based Aptera let out first word of its allegedly super fuel-efficient (and cheap) Typ-1 electric vehicle. A video test drive and gee-whiz specs breakdown at the Popular Mechanics site proves that this thing is for real. The plan is to have a vehicle that goes 120 miles on a single lithium-phosphate pack charge for 2008, with a 300-mpg model to follow by 2009. Aptera is also mentioned in Wired's new cover story as one of several early front-runners for the Automotive X Prize."
Read the articles. That what the links are for.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
It's an irrelevant question when we are talking (as we are) about a hybrid car, which runs on gasoline but uses electrical storage to modify how and when the gasoline engine runs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It has to have 3 wheels, so it can be classified as a motorcycle. Once you got to 4 wheels it is a car and is required to have airbags, crumple zones and seat belts, and a whole slew of safety features.
So the fact that is this not a car but a motorcycle I think they are labeling it wrong, A 300MPG Car???, nope a 300MPG enclosed bike is what it is. Heck my wife's scooter gets 70MPG.
The previous post talks about rain a snow? Do you ride a motorcycle in the snow. Nope, same goes for this.
RTFA?
In order to win the X-Prize, they must take into account the upstream (ie powerplant) green house gas production that it takes to power the car.
Aptera right now is 350 MPG, and estimated cost of $24-27k.
Thats pretty bad ass IMO
The problem with all these super fuel efficient cars is that they're too expensive for a second car, too small for a primary car and overall, they look like toys. I'm sure its a wonderful car to drive, but it can't (for most people) be a primary car. It would be great for a trip across town to pick up groceries or to commute to work, but you need something else as well that can hold more than two people and has much more cargo space. Even a shopping trip to more than a few stores can often fill up a whole trunk in a sedan, and that car looks like it has very little cargo space. Which then brings up the next problem - if its a second car most people can't afford to spend $30k on a second car that's only for commuting. If the price ever gets down to $10-15k, I'm sure plenty of people will buy, but until then, its just not affordable.
Finally, the last point, the car looks like its flimsy and just a toy. I wonder if they've done any crash testing on it. If a minor collision completely destroys the drag profile and requires $15k in repairs then insurance is going to be astronomical for the car. How sturdy are the body panels and how easily replaceable are they? How does it do in a collision with an 18-wheeler? It's going to be hard to convince (especially) Americans that a car like that is safer on the roads than an SUV.
I wish them luck, and maybe in a few generations it will be popular, but it's going to take a lot of work.
Coal power is an awful lot cleaner now than it was 100 years ago. It's not perfect, but the average coal plant produces *significantly* less pollution than the cars owned by the houses it powers.
And that's completely ignoring the fact that in California, the law requires that your power company provide you the option to buy "green" power: power produced by wind, solar, geothermal, or hydroelectric sources. It tends to be a little more expensive than normal power, but I'm guessing that the kind of person who wouldn't balk at buying a $30,000 car simply because it's electric (when you can get a *very* efficient gasoline car for less than half the price) probably wouldn't be all that concerned about an extra $0.02/kwh.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
I don't think irrelevant in either case. When someone asks for the MPG, they're asking for the fuel efficiency. In the hybrid case, where gasoline is its only external fuel, that should be simple to calculate. When it's "all electric", you take the fuel that powers that electricity -- using a representative number for the electricity generation -- and compare that to how much distance it gets you.
Though for the optimal apples-to-apples comparison, you might as well just take a given gasoline price and compute how much it costs to power one mile of travel for that price, vs. some existing car being used today.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
One of the problems with hybrid cars is the inability to obtain large format NiMH cells. The technology needed to produce these cells is patented, and the patent holder has declined to license it to anybody producing large format cells.
(I should mention for the conspiracy fans among us that the patent holder is Chevron).
Anybody who wants to build an electric car or hybrid car design that requires a large battery capacity can't use the safe and proven NiMH technology. This makes the plug-in hybrid, which needs more electrical storage than an ordinary hybrid, the domain of aftermarket kits only.
Lithium Phosphate, once it becomes economical to produce, might well make better hybrid, or even plug-in hybrid technology a commercial reality. While not quite as good as Li-ion, it's inherently safer and (if reports are to be beleived) superior in performance to NiMH.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Call me when the middle class can get a fuel effiecient car. If I have to decide between that and a $15,000 Corolla which gets 30 mpg. I would have to choose the Corolla becuase the extra $15,000 is the current equivilant of 5,000 gallons of gas or about 150,000 miles of driving. If I drove my Corolla 100,000 miles I would pay $25,000 (car + gas) if I drove the Typ-1 e 100,000 miles I would have paid $32,500. If I got the Typ-1 h I would pay 31,000 to go the same distance (assuming it costs $30,000).
According to the wikipedia article this stuff is stable to temperatures of 18C, and the average temperature where it's found at is between 0C and 2C, so you temperature at the bottom of the ocean would need to rise by 16C. If it's hot enough that the ocean bottoms temperature has been raised 16C we're already screwed, as most crops would probably already be dead and most animal life as well.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
One thing you missed about electric engines... They have wayyyyy more tourque than a comparable weight V8 engine. Hell the telsa has soo much tourque that they haven't been able to find anything outside of a single gear transmission strong enough to handle it's power output.
You're behind the times. All the big fleet operators in the US are testing diesel electric hybrid trucks now(fedex,ups, coca cola, etc), and are going to be investing in them to expand their fleets as the older trucks wear out and get replaced, and two companies in england are shipping all electric trucks well into the multi ton delivery range. *Shipping*, as in normal, you can buy them right now. Cab companies all over are switching to hybrids from crown vics, and as soon as plugin hybrids start coming from the majors they will be using those. This stuff is not theoretical anymore, all these new drivetrains are hitting the market now and in 2008, the automotive industry is going through significant disruptive technology change *right now*. Over seas, in india and china, big moves to electric vehicles, several large companies shipping them in 2008. The range is plenty good enugh now, and will only get better the next few years, ton of battery breakthroughs this year, as in this car in the article, read about their battery tech. Rough analogy, electrics and hybrids are at a similar status as computers in say 92-3, and that was "good enough". Earlier adopters get the benefits, just like with computers. Heck, the prius has been out ten years now! And most of them still on the road, and most of them still running on the original battery packs!
You'll be seeing diesel electric drivetrains in normal cars and pickups real soon now. Real soon. Suburban guys and contractors are gonna eat them things up off the lots as soon as they hit. Same power as a big gas engine, twice the mileage, same towing capacity, double duty as the home or jobsite backup generator. Americans *like* pickups and SUVs, that style is *not* going away, that's where a big part of the market is, so plugin hybrids will be coming to a lot near you soon in pickup and SUV models. It might be the japanese have them first, but who knows, detroit is getting desperate and I bet there's some skunk works action going on there. They can be motivated at times to actually produce. The shareholder pressure and market pressure is now intense, that will have an effect.
Please go out and find Who killed the electrical car
According to that documentary, there already were "electric charge stations" all over the USA, until someone decided they didn't want to produce those cars anymore.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I know you wanted first post, so I don't blame you for not reading TFA. However, you got it 100% wrong. Better luck next first-post.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Our battery has a five-year life. You can go to 2,000 charge/recharge cycles. The lithium-ion battery in my ThinkPad is supposed to last for 500 charges, but in practice it's more like 200. So, moving to lithium-ferro phosphate is really cool because you don't have to spend additional money on periodic battery replacement costs, regardless of the environment.
Also, lithium-ferro phosphate is pretty environmen- tally friendly. Some early studies we did suggested that it possibly can decompose into fertilizer (with processing). Typically we think of batteries as environmentally bad, but there's some indication that lithium-ferro phosphate isn't that harmful. We haven't quite gone through all of the rigor on this, however, and it does require some processing to decompose it into fertilizer. Full article is here.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I personally wouldn't have modded you flamebait, but I can offer a suggestion for how to avoid it in the future (although no guarantees, odds are if your statement isn't popular you'll still get a troll or more likely an overrated mod). Whenever you make a claim that will require people to take action, particularly if it's an unpopular opinion it's critical to cite sources. Remember the burden is on you to prove your point, particularly in a crowd of geeks. Most of us are open to discussion, we just ask that everyone has some sort of credible backup to their claims, either through logic, or by citing some semi-credible source. Please, if you can provide some links to papers saying that a small climate change of a few degrees will be enough to release the methane trapped under the ocean, then by all means post it, I'd love to read it. Of course I may have missed the point of your comment, so if you're trying to say you missed a variable and came to the wrong conclusion just ignore me. Likewise if you're saying I missed something let me know.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Since it was shown by measurements temperature measurements. Measurements are observations, and observations are (the only things which, in scientific terms, are properly labelled as) facts.
Technically, the degree to which that warming is anthropogenic and, a fortiori, the degree to which it is associated with particular causes will always be a matter of theory, rather than fact, just as, e.g., evolution and gravitation are theories.
Nevertheless, many components of the relevant theory are rather well-tested.
No, in fact, whether there is an increase over the history of measurements in global temperatures is not hotly debated.
There is little serious scientific debate over whether or not the current warming trend is substantially influenced by anthropogenic factors, especially greenhouse gas emissions. There is some debate over the precise degree, and whether other, non-anthropogenic, factors in net reinforce the warming trend or run counter to it (IIRC, the best current evidence is that the net of non-anthropogenic factors favors cooling for the last several decades despite observed continued warming, and that anthropogenic factors are, therefore, responsible for more than all of the observed warming. But there is certainly some debate about that, and some reasonably believe that anthropogenic factors explain less than all of the observed warming.)
We have a pretty good idea of which natural phenomena have major influences, though there are some gaps and some legitimate dispute about the exact contribution of each.We can't even change the course of a single thunderstorm yet, so reversing change to the climate globally seems like an exercise in futility, doesn't it?)
Its often easier to control an aggregate than the individual events that make it up. That's how (e.g.) casinos manage to operate at a profit: they don't have to control the outcome of a single spin of the roulette wheel to control the long-term payoff. Similarly, the ability to control individual weather events and the ability to influence climate are two completely different things, and the inability to do the former says nothing about ability to do the latter.
Actually, we have a pretty good idea of the degree of influence of "solar forcing" over the recent portion of the warming trend.
We actually have a pretty good idea, here, too, that they mostly contribute to cooling in the short term, and global activity isn't overall enough to do much for long-term warming, barring a major eruption of either a giant caldera volcano (like Yellowstone) or flood basalt volcano (like the Columbia River Basalt group), none of which have occurred in (several times longer than the length of) recorded history.
If it didn't, it would certainly change what constitutes pollution. Lots of greenhouse gases aren't really "pollutants" in any other sense (they don't have negative effects other than their contribution to warming at the levels they are likely to be found without controls.) "Pollution" is defined by harmful effects.
I mentioned thist stuff here, a little later in the thread.
Note that I didn't mention the Aptera at all - I talked about electric vehicles, but no specific company or model. It could be a Tesla Volt - while it has similar cargo capacity is at least guarenteed to be a fun ride(if you're into that).
Probably even safer too.
As for the design, as another person noted, it's extreme streamlining to reduce air friction. You see this sort of stuff anytime you see extreme efficiency vehicles.
The EV1 was a more conventional design, as are any number of other attempts.
I doubt electrics will have enough torque to go over rocky terrain or through mud. Though, I suppose this is fine. It will just relegate the electric car to a commute car.
In a torque contest an electric motor of similar HP will slaughter most diesel engines, much less gasoline models.
The only thing holding back electric vehicles is the power source - batteries are simply too expensive and don't hold enough power.
I don't read AC A human right
Midsize cars, large cars, minivans, and import luxury cars are all statistically safer for the driver than an SUV. Subcompacts are more dangerous for the driver, but because SUVs and pickups are more than twice as likely to kill someone else in an accident, that's only because of all the SUVs on the road. Obviously SUVs and trucks have their place, but the exemption in fuel efficiency standards for them should be removed, and they should be taxed like any gas guzzler.
The point, though, is that you can drive a midsize car, and you're just as safe as you would be in an SUV, and you're not putting the OTHER drivers at risk to get your safety. If you *really* want to be safe, then you want an import luxury car or a minivan, both of which are also significantly safer for other drivers than SUVs.
Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab study on safety.
The above responses, I think, are over-complicating the assessment. The calculation should be as simple as work performed/energy consumed. There's probably an official reference somewhere, but I quickly found this page mentioning 125,000,000 joules in a gallon of fuel.
This page on the Powertrain & Energy tab says that the 10e (electric model) uses a 10Kwh battery pack.
1 joule is 1 watt/second. So we take 10,000 watt-hours, multiply by 3600 (# seconds per hour) to get 36,000,000 joules total energy put in. So.... if a gallon of fuel is 125,000,000 joules, then we charged up with the equivalent energy of 0.288 gallons of fuel.
With a total range of 120 miles on 0.288 gallons of fuel it comes out to 428MPG. This is inexact obviously; I don't see what they're claiming for MPG on the electric model (though I'm sure it's less), but any difference could be accounted for in losses and/or margins of error such as actual versus listed capacity of the storage pack. If, for example, the battery pack actually holds 11Kwh instead of 10Kwh, the number drops to 378MPG. The point is that this CAN be calculated in terms of equivalency to gasoline based on the amount of potential energy in a gallon of gas.
That's the best I can come up with imperically off the top of my head. I'm without a doubt though that using the price of fuel versus the price of electricity to make this determination is not the way to go.