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Plug-In Hybrids Aren't Coming, They're Here
Wired is running a story about the small but vocal, and growing, number of people who aren't waiting for automakers to deliver plug-in hybrids. They're shelling out big money to have already thrifty cars converted into full-on plug-in hybrids capable of triple-digit fuel economy. "The conversions aren't cheap, and top-of-the-line kits with lithium-ion batteries can set you back as much as $35,000. Even a kit with lead-acid batteries — the type under the hood of the car you drive now — starts at five grand. That explains why most converted plug-ins are in the motor pools of places like Southern California Edison... No more than 150 or so belong to people like [extreme skiing champion Alison] Gannett, who had her $30,000 Ford Escape converted in December. Yes, that's right. The conversion cost more than the truck."
Doesn't efficiency call for a better designed vehicle, rather than just a different fuel source?
From a previous article:
"Plug-in Hybrids May Not Go Mainstream, Toyota Says"
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/02/210250
translated (directly from the accounting department): "We have run the numbers, and the industry is set to lose X billions of dollars through lost part sales over the coming decades as the masses step from hybrids to full electric for that around-town runner.
No, we never want to help or see hybrids go mainstream, ever. Keep it all business as usual: hard to maintain combustion engines are expensive for the consumer and good for our bottom line. Furthermore, it essentially costs us nothing to FREELOAD the longer term consequences of combustion engines onto the environment and society as a whole, so it is a sound short term strategy to satisfy our immediate obligations to investors."
Through simple driving tweaks, many of these vehicles could make much better gas milage without costing a dime. And then if you NEEDED to spend money, there are much cheaper ways, up to and including whole engine swaps that are still cheaper and as efficiant or BETTER than converting to "hybrid." I just dont get the alure of hybrid, while its nice to be as free of gas as possible, responsible driving will go a lot further than a half battery power car ever would.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
A tiny number of wealthy people custom-retrofitting cars at uneconomical cost isn't really what advocates of plug-in hybrids have in mind, so I wouldn't say the concept is "here" yet.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I converted my POS gas car to a "mild" plug in hybrid: removed the alternator and added a deep cycle battery. I reduce the mechanical load on the engine by removing the alt. I have more power available for speed and acceleration and I get better mpg. I recharge the battery using solar and since I park outside at home and work, it gets plenty of time to charge. All the parts were originally for a full home solar system that I have yet to make space for, so there isn't any additional cost for the car conversion. Some data shows that you can get up to a 10% increase in efficiency by going alternatorless.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
There has to be a serious labor markup for SLA (lead acid) conversion being $5k
The motor and the controller are the most expensive parts, and you already have both of them in a hybrid. Perhaps the controller has to be replaced/augmented but there's some serious markup in a $5k price.
Granted SLA batteries have to be replaced annually and LiFePo4 would be every five years but the $35k price tag also stinks of incredible profiteering.
also, i'm not seeing the point of TFA - rich people can afford expensive status symbols? electric cars and plugin charging has been around for a decade or more in this form....
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Bicycle = Harley-Davidson?
The problem in Australia is that every model of car that gets registered must undergo a crash test, and significant modifications count a as new model. That rules out one off conversions. You have to build at least two and hand one over to the authorities to get totaled. An expensive exercise.
The result of removing the alternator in cars can be sub-optimal lighting, ignition and fuel injection when running on battery only. This even applies to Diesels nowadays - because the injection is controlled by the EMC. The general rule has to be, and I cannot recommend this too strongly, the manufacturer designed it that way for a reason, don't fuck with it.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
If we are going to accept an absurd pricetag for these bad boys, why not skip the dreaded battery idea entirely, and use SuperCaps instead? APowerCap [ http://www.apowercap.com/?pg=2&lang=eng&rand=81001670 ] (is just one brand that) offers supercaps with internal efficiency ratings of over 90%. (Meaning, more than 90% of the energy used in the charging process is able to be used in a useful manner.) This far exceeds the internal efficiency of even LiON battery packs. Additionally, these devices can reach full charge in a matter of seconds when provided with wall outlet power, and can do so safely without overheating. They can also deliver more charge, more quickly, and more efficiently than chemical batteries. From a technological point of view, they are just all around better, AND (Surprise) they even have a better energy density to weight ratio then LiON. Why even bother with batteries with this kind of budget, when there are FAR superior storage solutions?
I've got four more years left of warranty on my 2005 Prius. With a 12 mile commute each day, I'd go from filling the tank once a month to maybe once every six months with a plug-in kit. But at $9999 (the crash tested Hymotion kit), forget about it being cost effective, it's simply not within my means. It's sad that Toyota is waffling about a plug-in Prius; seems to me that they are underestimating the rethink of the two car family: the "urban" electric car for short commutes, and the "guzzler" for distance driving.
www.itjerk.com
"The problem with this method is that its carrying TWO BIG ENGINES so more weight means you have to be that much more efficient."
Think you'll not have to prove your point if you write BIG often enough, and CAPITALIZED, no less? Ah, well... Wiki says:
The Prius uses a 1.5 liter 4-cylinder "1NZ-FXE internal combustion engine (ICE) using the more efficient Atkinson cycle instead of the more powerful Otto cycle. Because of the availability of extra power from the electric motors for rapid acceleration the engine is sized SMALLER [all caps just for you] than usual for increased fuel efficiency and lowered emissions with acceptable acceleration."
Now, the Volt does what you propose, and uses the gasoline engine simply to recharge the batteries. As such, it should be much SMALLER. Let's see, it's... oh my, a 1.4 L 4-cylinder engine. Tenth of a liter difference? Doesn't sound that much smaller, now does it?
Huh. Well, also according to your theory the Prius is going to need a huge electric motor in addtion to the gas engine in order to cart around all of that extra weight. So... the Prius has a 30 kW (40 hp) electric motor, while the Volt, a pure series hybrid, has... a 111 kW (150 hp) electric motor.
Double huh.
See, the flaw in your reasoning lies in the fact that it takes X amount of power to propel a 2,000 lb vehicle at Y speed for Z distance. Once the battery gets low, the extra power in a PHEV has to come from somewhere. And it does, in the form of an engine powerful enough to recharge the battery while ALSO providing enough juice to keep things in motion.
Bottom line? A tensy, tiny 2-cycle lawnmower engine isn't going to cut it.
And the Volt needs an electric motor 3X larger because it's the only thing moving the car. The gasoline engine is just so much dead weight in that regard, UNLIKE in a Prius, where the engine can also kick in to help out when needed in a much more symbiotic relationship.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
If you have a truck, you'll be able to mow down a whole group rather than just the front rank!
Deleted
"Wired is running a story about the small but vocal, and growing, number of people...The conversions aren't cheap, and top-of-the-line kits with lithium-ion batteries can set you back as much as $35,000... No more than 150 or so belong to people like [extreme skiing champion Alison] Gannett, who had her $30,000 Ford Escape converted in December.
Apple is making cars now?
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
"Now that some people hafe felt the sting of a battery replacement..."
Ummm.... got facts to back that up? As far as I know they've not had to replace any out-of-warrenty. Nor have I seen any indication that the increased "complexity" has resulted in higher-than-normal repair bills, or a corresponding increase in consumer dissatisfaction.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
>> And as I'm sure others will point out, she's just shifting the emissions to a power plant, which may end up being worse than burning fuel in her car depending on the fuel the plant uses,
With Xcel In Minnesota you can specify wind source.
until the battery explodes!
She's green? And drives an SUV by herself? Why does this make no sense?
What she is, would be non-petroleum - but not "green". So she uses coal instead of petroleum ... both are damaging to the environment, both are in limited supply.
I would think she could get a Focus, or even a bicycle, for much less the cost of the hybrid plug-in. And then, she would actually be conserving!
Not green ... just gullible. $35,000 gullible.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
The fantasy that the American automobile is the penultimate mode of transportation will be our un-doing. The fact that we cannot imagine a world with less automobiles speaks volumes our selfishness and short-sightedness.
At this point in time, America needs to be investing in other means of transportation and starting to alternative living arrangements that include, moving closer to work, building public infrastructure to move you around besides the car (subway, train, bus, street car, walking, cycling) and have all of these system interconnected.
As we enter the decline of the age of oil, which side do you want to be on? Stuck on the freeway with no gas while the train goes by on its way to NYC?
We need to examine our motivations very closely here. Why are we so attached to the automobile. I think it might just come down to classism and racism. Why, you wouldn't want to have to associate with the blacks and the poor people would you?
Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
The fact that the CPU and the electronic peripherals will run down to 8V - which is necessary because of battery volt drop on cranking - is irrelevant. It is the lights and the actuators that are affected by reduced battery voltage. In fact, looking at the linked article, the guy admits that he does not run without an alternator after dark, which at least shows some element of self preservation.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I read about an interesting hybrid concept a while ago - it basically eliminated the transmission from the car to save weight. The car would use the (small) gasoline engine to charge the battery and drive the electric motors as long as the car was going below the normal highway crusising speed, and engage a clutch to directly power the wheels with the gasoline engine once the crusing speed was reached. Advantages were the lack of a transmission (= weight and space that can be used for batteries instead) while still being able to power the wheels directly (making use of the efficiency of the gasoline engine when cruising).
The electric efficiency is being ignored completely, and the miles driven on electric power are being used to massively inflate the petrol efficiency.
With a plug-in hybrid, the 'plug-in' part is optional. The engine will still charge the battery. The difference with a plug-in hybrid is that if you DO plug it in, the internal combustion engine doesn't kick in until the battery gets low that's typically about 50 miles for most plug-in hybrids.
So, if you don't do the plug-in part, you'll get better mileage than IC, similar to a Prius. If you do the plug-in part, then, yeah, you're not counting the kW/h used, however, realize that it is far easier to turn the power plant into alternative engery (i.e., nuclear, wind, solar, water currents, etc.) than it is to turn the car into using alternative energy because the infrastructure changes need to happen only in one place.
My blog
Or, someone who thinks it's pointless to start with a friggin truck if you're trying to be fuel efficient..?
Your statement is logically correct and I agree with your sentiments but you are assuming fuel efficiency is the only goal here. A hybrid engine can increase fuel economy but it ALSO can increase horsepower. Think of it as putting a second motor into a car. Someone might do it to make their car faster rather than more efficient. Sure it's irresponsible and silly but pick up any issue of a magazine for sport compact car enthusiasts and you'll see equally useless car mods.
It's not necessarily an either/or proposition either. The Honda Accord Hybrid was for a time both the most powerful and most fuel efficient Accord Honda made from 2005-2007. Engineers can choose the trade off of performance versus economy they wish to make.
...or not much, anyway. I'm sure I read about a home hobbyist conversion back in the sixties, in Mechanix Illustrated or one of those magazines, under the headline "It's a Volts Wagon!"
Of course, when I Googled on that title, what I turned up was http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,924216,00.html>this 1980 Time Magazine story about a bunch of prototype electric cars being developed by big corporations.
They were, as they always are, just around the corner.
"The G & W power system, unveiled with much fanfare, is the latest step toward the return of the volts wagon. With gasoline heading toward $1.50 per gal., with the nation bent on reducing imports of OPEC oil, and with cleaner air high on Washington's list of priorities, the electric vehicle, or EV for short, is the focus of increasing scientific and marketing attention."
"A lot of time and money is being spent on these things. Electrics are no longer dowdy."
"Gulf & Western believes it has solved, or is on the verge of solving, most of the problems of the electric car. The company demonstrated three EVs near its Manhattan headquarters last week: the VW Rabbit and two Japanese-made vans, all powered by zinc-chloride Electric Engines."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I think my big concern is around discharge safety... forget about safety circuits and whatnot - what happens in an accident or whatever when the cap gets short-circuited? You've now got a much higher density of energy being discharged almost instantly. Batteries at least can't discharge their full load in such a short period of time.
It's the difference between being hit by a lightning bolt (capacitor) versus being cooked on a fire (battery)... both suck, but one you have no chance of reacting to before it's catastrophic.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Talk about weird timing. The ZENN car (Zero Emission No Noise) car has been making the news this weekend as they'll finally be starting to sell them in Canada. Its about time, considering the car is built here, but was only sold to the US and overseas.
21k$ fully loaded. Top speed of 40km/h with an 80 km range on a charge. Perfect for running errands in the city. I particularly like this blurb on their website. 280mpg. 100% Electric, the ZENN doesn't use any gasoline. A gallon of gas has an energy equivalent of 33.5kwh3. One gallon of gas provides the same energy as fully charging the ZENN about 7 times. This is an equivalent fuel economy of 7 x 40 miles = 280 mpg. (National Association of Fleet Administrators, www.nafa.org)
Rick Mercer Report on the car.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
Great - Not only has she needlessly contributed to pollution by replacing a perfectly good engine with another one, it'll take her about 1.5 Million miles to recoup that investmnet in petrol savings.
Alison, you are ONE DUMB BITCH
In many cases, it's a relatively simple matter of swapping the car's nickel-metal hydride battery for a lead acid or lithium-ion pack
What's ecological about that?
I don't understand in the article why you would want to replace your nickel-metal hydride battery for lead acid. It it just $$$ ?
I understand the swap for lithium-ion since it's more efficient, but why not just add some extra nickel-metal hydride batteries?
Note that I am ignoring the initial cost of such a vehicle, both the financial cost to create it and the environmental cost to create the components that go into it. Those two factors are probably enough to render these vehicles pointless, but that's a debate not worth having until the costs of operation are shown to be better than traditional gasoline-powered cars.
That doesn't even take into account issues such as running the heater in cold climates, reliability in cold weather (cold-starting an engine once a day is hard enough in some months in a large portion of the world; doing so ten times on one drive is going to become Russian roulette and will ruin the engine in the process), survivability if you end up stuck in a snowbank, and other safety issues that nobody's really talking about because the only people who think this is currently a consumer-viable idea are yuppies in California.
If a hybrid has a gasoline motor which charges a set of batteries, one must be able to ascertain at which voltage and amperage the batteries are being charged at through the use of a volt ohm meter.
Why, then, can't one simply use a matched battery charger to charge the hybrid's batteries over night, or while in an adequate parking garage? Perhaps mounting this charger in the trunk?
Am I missing something? Seems to me it would be rather easy to convert a hybrid into a hybrid with plug in.
In 1980, they had no idea how hard it would be to create a workable battery technology that would store enough power, and use widely available resources. No conspiracy theory is needed.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
"A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 70% percent of the U.S. light-duty vehicle (LDV) fleet, if they were plug-in hybrid electrics. (Note: an earlier version of this release referenced 84% capacity based on LDV fleet classification that excluded vans)."
Looks like they went and changed one of the numbers on me. Oh well, 70% is still a respectable number.
http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.asp?id=204
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I'd like to convert my 150cc scooter. Even though I walk to work, I'd like to reclaim the 1.5 gallon gas tank area for grocery storage.
Yeah, right. Something with an 8L V8 engine needs more horsepower.
Who said anything about need? This is 100% about want, not need.
Also, adding all that stuff also adds _weight_ to the vehicle.
Yes it does if you or I do it. Not necessarily if it is done by the engineers at Ford.
Why put a second motor into the the car and add a whole additional bunch of points of failure when you can simply put in a bigger engine? It makes no sense.
Who said anything about being sensible? Almost nobody who does serious horsepower modifications is doing it to be sensible. Hell buying a huge honking V8 powered pickup as a daily driver isn't sensible to begin with. The Ford F150 has been the best selling vehicle in the US for over 20 years and only a small fraction of the buyers actually need a vehicle that big and powerful.
There is nothing wrong with experimenting with car modifications in the same way there is nothing wrong with experimenting with computer modifications. Not always practical but occasionally useful and usually educational.
Someone might do it to make their car faster rather than more efficient.
Someone who's very dumb and has zero clue about engineering.
Or someone who is very smart and has way too much clue about engineering. Nobody is claiming it is practical or sensible. But it is interesting and would be a pretty fun project for an engineer with time and money on his hands.
It makes plenty of sense economically, but we Americans do not understand amortization of costs. Two examples: cell phones and electric cars. In the former case, people feel they are getting a great deal on a free phone but in fact the carrier is merely splitting the cost over the term of your contract (this is the principal reason for contracts and the early-termination fee, I think). In the latter case, you pay a large sum up front, but consider that gas costs about $4 a gallon, so let's consider a more reasonable example:
Chevy Malibu = $20,000
Gas for 36K miles over 3 years (standard lease term) = (36000 / 22-30 mpg) * 4 = $4800 - $6500
Converted Chevy Malibu (aka "Volt") = $27,000 - $30,000
Electricity to power, assuming no fuel and 40 miles / 16 kWh charge = $1440 (= $.10/kWh)
So the Volt has a higher TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), but not by much. Extending this to 8 years, the expected warranty life of the Volt, the TCO becomes:
Malibu = $ 32,800 - $37,000
Volt = $ 33,840
So even if fuel prices stay low (they won't), you are only paying a slight premium for the Volt over the life of the vehicle. We can only assume that electric cars will become cheaper over time as well, whereas the gas guzzler really won't, bringing greater price parity.
So using the above numbers, is it worth $125/year to cut emissions and dependence on foreign oil? I think so! You can easily save $125/year in energy costs by switching to CFL's, putting better insulation on your hot water heater and in your attic, and making your next file/print server a VIA-based Mini-ITX system.
And don't say SUV, as V still stands for Vehicle and the question would be unanswered.
Perhaps mini-van, [fat]wagon?
Unfortunately, that won't work in California, the nation's most populous state.
This past year, a study was done that said if 5% of California's cars converted to Electric, the State's electric grid couldn't handle it.
If you've been following California's electrical problems (remember Enron?), you might have heard that its electrical grid is described as fragile. This puts it in perspective. And clearly it has to change.
Post vehicle.
etc etc.
Deleted
Hear! Hear!
Add this: Converting your car to electricity eliminates a point-source of pollution. If you moved all of your transportation's emissions back to the power plant, we can deal with them better. (The pollution controls at the power plant are better than the ones on your car: they don't get bumped around, have more consistent operating conditions, etc.)
Now if EVERYONE did this, we might get enough concentration that we could actually DO something with it. Problem is, our pollution's too diffuse to be exploited.
Consider: district heating. "Neighborhood" generators can be a way to exploit the waste heat.
Carbon sequestration: this still remains a sham-dance IMHO, but maybe we can pull it off when we've got enough stack-emissions in one place. Sure not putting an Einstein-Szilard fridge on your car's tailpipe to catch the CO2.
So mod the parent up. It's as simple as this: convert the energy as few times as possible (how did that gas get into your tank?) and concentrate the pollution where you can hopefully get some value from it.
This is all a waste of time and money. If everyone makes this move, the electrical grid will collapse under the load of all these vehicles charging. The infrastructure will never be there to support this. Especially now that the U.S. is basically bankrupt.
And the Picken's Plan is more like Picken's Pipe Dream.
Someone needs to come up with better ideas, it's as simple as that.
Apparently, you think engineers are magicians who can magically make the law of conservation of mass disappear. Well, I am an engineer, and let me tell you, we're subject to the same physics that everyone else is.
I'm an engineer too. Congratulations. Would you like a medal or a chest to pin it on? Apparently you think that the engineers at Ford are incapable of removing material from the vehicle or are too stupid for it to occur to them. Interesting how you seem to understand this concept and yet can't seem to grasp that weight removal might occur to someone else as well.
No. If they want to make their car faster and go this route, they're dumb. Period
So someone is stupid because he uses some new, still developing technology to improve the performance of a vehicle instead of an already developed proven technology? Remind me not to hire you for my R&D department. I would have called that creative or experimental, possibly wasteful, silly, or maybe even innovative, but apparently there is some special definition of stupid only known to you.
I'm pretty sure someone who even considers hybridizing a vehicle is well aware that supercharging, turbocharging, or even engine swaps are an option. So that leads to the inevitable conclusion that there were other factors involved in their decision. Just because you or I wouldn't do it is irrelevant and it doesn't make them stupid. Wasteful maybe but not stupid.
People who hate us have oil, and there's nothing we can do to change that. Even if we stopped using oil entirely tomorrow, the only thing that would change is the people who hate us would get less money from China, and China (who hates us) would spend less money on oil.
So it's a wash.
The only way to reduce the amount of money sent to people who hate us is to get less people to hate us.
paintball
I know the guy who runs Patriotic Motors in Spokane, Washington. He does full electric plug-in conversions of existing vehicles. (Not hybrid... electric only.) I have seen one of his rigs (a converted SUV), and it's pretty sweet.
If you reduce by 5mpg you get 5 more miles for the one gallon. If you drive 50 miles a day, that's 10 gallons. That costs 10 gallons whether you were at 5 mpg or 50 mpg to start with.
Percent means squat unless you have a HUGE demand for only the big inefficient cars.
I've seen the same thing. In order for a second vehicle to be 'worth it' from a strictly economical point of view, it's not only going to have to save it's loan payments, it's also going to have to save the insurance and taxes.
Even looking at a 20mpg vehicle vs a 40mpg one, at $4/gallon, 40k miles.
That'd be $4k savings a year. That's $333.33/month. We'll call the depreciation and maintenance even - the lower mileage vehicle is likely the more expensive one, but it's being driven less, so it'll keep it's value up more. But the more you drive the cheaper vehicle, the more it'll depreciate.
Let's say the big vehicle is $40k, and the small one $20k. We don't really care about the cost of the large vehicle, we assume it's a must. At $20k@5% for a 5 year loan, the monthly payment is going to be $377.42. Even if we figure it's only going to be $400/year to insure and title, we've already broke our goal - $4,529 a year in annual payments. We end up being almost $1k in the hole per year until the 5th year is up.
Buy a used $10k vehicle and we'll save $1,335 a year, but that involves the downside of driving an old beater when you have that nice big new vehicle in the driveway.
I don't read AC A human right
It's sad that Toyota is waffling about a plug-in Prius; seems to me that they are underestimating the rethink of the two car family: the "urban" electric car for short commutes, and the "guzzler" for distance driving.
I think that it's more along the lines that those $10k+ conversion kits aren't more than 50% more expensive than doing it at the factory, especially when you consider warranty periods and requirements that conversion kits can ignore but auto manufacturers can't.
Basically, the engineers are coming up with numbers that aren't making economical sense for enough customers to be worth it. They probably have some sort of 'gold standard' listing of requirements, and the engineers can't make the range, durability, and charging time while still meeting cost limits.
Sadly, Hybrids still don't make economic sense for most people. Double battery capacity while halving the price, and we'd be in business.
I don't read AC A human right
>she's just shifting the emissions to a power plant,
Correct, insightful, but it's still a good idea.
The power plant doesn't have to be optimized for variable output, low weight, or small size. It can have full-time people attending the pollution controls. The powerplant's smokestack isn't in the middle of a city a few feet from pedestrians.
I can't give you a cite, so take with your favorite grain of salt, but I've seen claims that by the time you take efficiency into account an electric car results in fewer greenhouse emissions than a gasoline car even if the electricity comes from coal.
To expand, I remember a story about a car in Leno's garage. At this point, it's around a hundred years old, but it's a 100% EV.
Originally intended for women, it has things like a makeup kit & mirror built in. Only has a few miles range, but is so dead silent that Leno's wife likes to use it to go looking at wildlife - it doesn't scare them.
Here we are.
EV's have as long of a history as IC vehicles - perhaps even longer! Steam engines predate both by a bit, but have fallen out of usage. It's just that in the course of history, EV's couldn't keep up, cost or feature wise, with the Otto cycle except in special circumstances - sealed buildings worried about exhaust, for example. Of course, after re-reading the article, I'm tempted to build a steam car again. ;)
The electric motor is mature, efficient, and durable. The only problem remaining is the energy storage system. If somebody could come up with a battery that holds twice as much power at half the cost, I figure we'd swap the percentages of electric and gasoline vehicles inside of a decade. Gasoline/diesel would be the special purpose.
I don't read AC A human right
Well, no. On the Honda Civic hybrid, the electric motor replaces the flywheel -- you know, that big, heavy piece of metal necessary on an internal combustion engine to make it rotate smoothly? In addition, the size of the engine is reduced from the normal Civic 1.6 liter engine to a 1 liter engine because it has electric boost to make up the difference (this is where the fuel savings come from). In short, relative to all the other unnecessary crap the civic is carrying around with it, the Integrated Motor Assist adds little weight. For 2008, the curb weight is 2877 lbs for the hybrid, 2751.4 lbs for the standard sedan. That extra 125 pounds is probably mostly the weight of the additional battery pack.
The biggest problem i have seen so far is the response of dealerships. walk in and talk to them about when they are going to get in a plug in what ever and see what responce you get they all try to convince you its not worth it. and they take any angle they can get. They want you to buy Gas so that you'll be back often. Stupid thing is, they should be convincing you to buy a plug in, and banck on that Large purchace of a new battey in 5-8 years. speaking of which,, what will that cost people in 5 years..s say in a Plug in Vue
>no batteries last long when you're regularly charge/discharge cycling them.
(quibble)
Batteries can last a long time in the face of repeated charge/discharge cycles. One approach is to design the battery for it, choosing materials and accepting extra weight. Forklift batteries are an example of batteries that will take many cycles.
The other approach is to limit depth of discharge. There's an impressive sharp drop in battery durability if you regularly discharge below 50% capacity. The reason a Prius main battery can last 200,000 miles (proven on the road) is that it never deep-cycles.
(/quibble)
1. Up to half of the US has electricity that comes from carbon-neutral or low-impact US-sourced energy supplies - hydroelectric (Northwest and Northeast), nuclear fission (ignoring the mining process), solar, tidal, and geothermal - all of which can be stored in batteries during low-demand times for more efficient energy usage.
2. The largest percentage of vehicles on the road will be USED cars, especially in a recession, and the most efficient thing to do is convert existing low-mpg vehicles in areas with cheap electricity (e.g. Pacific NW) and high gasoline/diesel prices - especially corporate vehicles and commuter vehicles which spend most of the day resting in one to three locations.
3. Every dollar not shipped overseas to the Bush/binLaden terrorists in Saudi Arabia and other mideastern countries is a dollar spent in America rebuilding the nation, and cutting al-Qaeda's supply lines of money and troops from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
Sweet.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'll just stick to my almost 30 year old PRODUCTION electric car... a 1980 Comuta-Car. It works just fine, thank you, even on 1980 technology, although I am about to update it to more modern controller electronics. And my 1975 CitiCar frame will be a rolling testbed for my new engine design that I am developing.
And my 1975 CitiCar frame will be a rolling testbed for my new engine design that I am developing.
Make a note, that is an ELECTRIC ENGINE not a GASOLINE ENGINE or ELECTRIC MOTOR...
Whenever you can't disprove something, make it encompass so many other items that it becomes incomprehensible without the services of a complete auditing team. Then extend it just a little to include data that you probably can never collect.
We saw this with TCO studies that tried their hardest to show that Linux might not be cheaper than $800 per seat licenses of Windows. While many people saved money by switching (Sherwin Williams, Fender Gituars, etc.) most complained about the intangible losses that they couldn't prove which justified their non-action.
We saw this with global warming. Most argued about specific point data that didn't follow the average (hint there's outliers in every interesting data set), argued that costs would never be calculable for the issue, and built a model of "let's wait and see" which justified their non-action.
We're seeing this with electric (or semi-electric) vehicles. It should be enough to note that we will mostly be charging the cars during non-peak hours, when the grid's capacity is most likely to meet the demand. It should be enough to note that for the same amount of used energy, the electric company can provide it to us cheaper than the gasoline distribution chain. It should be enough to note that at least a dozen ways in which the vehicles are cheaper to maintain offset the initial costs of not having a mass market's cost structure.
Instead, we have to calculate the exact dollar of every line man, telephone pole, coal miner's life insurance plan, etc, ad infinitum. I'll give you a hint: The power company already does this, and it's called your electric bill, which is still cheaper than your gasoline bill.
Just because you don't have it itemized doesn't mean it's more expensive.
For those that enjoy these sort of games, have you even considered the operational costs of the thousands of oil tankers? How about the costs of all those oil platforms? How about the costs of the fire policies on those platforms? etc... ad infinitum.
Prove to me that my electric bill will be higher than my gas bill, and I'll go with the parent poster's observation. It is the only sensible metric. And oddly enough, it should include all of those "other" costs, because if it didn't the company would be out-of-business before you know it.
At least that's what my GF tells me.
I know it's been hotly debated, but some argue that Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage. I know others have tried to debunk this claim, but I am not convinced either way. A lot of the reactions to this argument sound very emotional. Science is supposed to be dispassionate.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
During evacuations, the owners of electric and (even more so) hybrid cars are much better off than drivers of gasoline cars. This isn't theory, this is actual results from real evacuations.
In real evacuations (as opposed to thought experiments) the people who get stranded are the ones whose cars run out of gas in the long lines of people attempting to flee the area. No US city or region has the highway capacity to allow rapid egress of everyone's private vehicle, so during the run-up to Katrina (for one example) people with gas engines were running out of gas while stuck on the highway, but the hybrids and EVs burn zero energy at standstill and run super-efficiently in stop-and-go traffic.
All results to date indicate the absolute best vehicle to have during an evacuation is a Toyota Prius... or a helicopter.
It has been tried before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car
Apparently turbines are a maintenance nightmare and the 2,000F degree exhaust can cause problems. Perhaps these would work much better in a hybrid setup, and I'm guessing some of the other problems could be worked around with newer materials or technology.
WHAT is this car that gets 50mpg!!?
They might eventually come out with a cheaper sports car, but that's not currently on their table. They wouldn't be able to make money at the $75k price point at this time for a sports car.
I don't read AC A human right
Let's imagine an alternate universe in which the car was never invented. Instead, personal ownership of horses is at an all time high. Nearly everyone owns one (or two), and suburbia is filled with front-attached two or three horse stables. There's a feed store on most major corners. Unfortunately, there's trouble in this imaginary equine paradise. America has long since outstripped its ability to feed the 300 million horses that roam the highways and byways. Instead, the nation increasingly turns to foreign sources for feed. Initially, prices are low, but eventually America finds itself competing with developing nations. The price of oats and horse licks shoots into the stratosphere. Horse dealers and tack suppliers are in a panic. The American way of life is in jeopardy.
The major horse breeding companies embark on ambitious programs to genetically engineer exotic horses that eat less feed, or that are capable of eating unusual waste byproducts. They eventually hit upon a magical recipe that requires a complicated and expensive manufacturing process. Because it's so expensive (and because the American way of life is at stake) they invest billions of dollars in R&D and politicians spread the word about how this alternative feed will save the great nation from catastrophe and reliance on foreign grains....
Sounds insane, doesn't it? The research money would be far better spent investing in steam trains or even pie-in-the-sky revolutionary devices such as the automobile, but everyone is fixated on the horse feed shortage and cannot see beyond the current world with its suburban horse problems.
IEEE Spectrum covered these conversions months ago.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Some of the biggest gains for the cheapest cost come from reworking the accessories. When a car goes 60MPH rather than 30MPH, the accessories that are engine powered go up by a factor of two ot more. These are the power steering pump, power brakes and A/C. In the older days this included the cooling system fan, but most modern vehicles use an electric brushless DC fan for that. This application used 8 times the power when the engine ran twice as fast.
First you should take out the two inefficient electric devices, the alternators and the starter motor. These two are horribly inefficient as the starter rarely gets above 50% and the alternator tops out at 32% (40% for the alternator and 80% for belt drive). Fit these with a single brushless DC motor/generator tied to the crankshaft using a helical gear (cuts down on the noise and is smaller for the same amount of power). It usually uses an electronic DC buck/boost converter to battery voltage (13.8-14.2V on most modern cars although there is talk of this switching to 48-50V in the near future) and a electronic speed control for starting the engine (ICE). This costs less than $250 installed for a 1-2KW motor/generator. Its efficiency is above 90% in both uses. As the typical car uses between 40 and 60 AMPs at speed, this translates to a usage of at least 3HP while the engine is running. The DC brushless motor would need about 1HP to do the same job. That saves about 2HP or between 0.2 to 0.3 gallons of gas every hour. Since a 30MPG car uses 2GPH at 60MPH, that simple change saves 12.5% of the gas used increasing MPG to 34.3MPG. Using the average speed of a vehicle which is about 45MPH, a car being driven the standard 15K miles at the average 25MPG, uses 600 gallons originally and 517 gallons after the change. That is a annual savings of $275 using current $3.30/gal prices here. Thus this minor change pays itself back in less than one year.
The next is the power steering pump which is hardest to use running very slow and gets easier as the car speeds up. Thus it is designed and built for idle speeds. Running it at freeway speeds where the engine runs 3 times as fast uses 3+ times more power than is needed at that speed. Tying an electric DC brushless motor to pump only when the reservoir pressure drops below the set point, reduces the load by a magnitude at least plus makes it last far longer to boot (less pressure on bearings and turns only when needed). It uses about 1/2HP at idle and 1.5 to 2.0HP at highway speeds. That means the electric motor would need less than 30 AMPs at a stop to boost turning wheels to less than 10 AMPs at speeds over 30MPH. Since most people drive turning the steering wheel quite infreqently, less than 2 AMPs would be used on average. That translates to 1/25th of a HP or a savings of 0.15-0.20GPH. Again using the 15K miles estandard above, that translates to 58 gallons saved annually or $186. The 375W DC brushless motor and ESC costs about $60 plus about $15 to install. That is a payback of 0.4 years.
The power brakes runs off a vacuum from the manifold. Again braking mostly occurs with the engine idling (except where hybrids and plugins are used). This can be done using a DC brushless motor, a vacuum pump and a reservoir with a one way valve (exhaust only). The vacuum pump only needs to run when air has leaked into the reservoir losing enough vacuum. The seals are extremely good in autos so this only needs to run every hour or so for 10-20 seconds. Again a 375W DC brushless motor, the ESC, the pump, the valve and reservoir costs about $100 with about $20 for installation. The savings for this are tiny, but the fact that the engine doesn't need to run to make it work saves quite a bit. Most engines idle about 5 to 10% of the time using about 0.25 to 0.5 GPH. Removing 50% of that saves about 5 to 10 gallons a year for a savings of $24 a year. This has long payback of 5 years, but must be done for any electric drive system to work (losing power brakes is unacceptable to most people).
Last
Hmmmmm, and here I once took my shoelaces, tied them into a loop, and cinched the knots as tightly as I could between the crankshaft pulley and the water pump pulley. As you're guessing, the fanbelt that drove the water pump had broken. You can drive for awhile without an alternator or power steering, but driving without a water pump to cool the engine is not a winning proposition (unless you have plenty of time to let the engine cool down with periodic stops). Another good trick is to run the heater, which is a nice little radiator to bleed heat out the engine. All of this got me to a Checker Auto Parts or NAPA, somesuch, and a new fanbelt. (Now I keep one in the trunk).
Honest, I would have tried a purple bungee cord if I'd had any! And you know, whatever that dental floss is made of is really strong ... has anyone checked that stuff out for an orbital elevator?
Grins,
Dave Small
Thanks for posting those numbers. What can we conclude from them?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.