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."

Comments

Efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't efficiency call for a better designed vehicle, rather than just a different fuel source?

Re:Efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah well even that wouldn't work if they actually did some extra-urban driving in these things.

My Golf gets the same fuel efficiency on extra-urban as a Prius.

Re:Efficiency

[somersault]

Or, someone who thinks it's pointless to start with a friggin truck if you're trying to be fuel efficient..?

Think of all the excess weight in a truck that she just doesn't need (and then she goes and makes it heavier with extra motors and batteries).

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, and the amount of leakage she gets from her batteries and so on. Unless she just charges the batteries from the engine all the time, which to me would again seem more inefficient than just using the engine unless she's stopped in traffic a lot.

I do like the idea of electric vehicles btw, I just think a standard truck is a dumb place to start. Though the Ford F150 was the best selling vehicle in the US for 23 years, so in a way trucks are a good place to start - but not with current models IMO. They would need to make them lightweight (but still strong, obviously) to get the best efficiency. Electric motors have good torque too so they'd be good for hauling, as long as they have enough charge..

Re:Efficiency

[LackThereof]

she's just shifting the emissions to a power plant, which may end up being worse than burning fuel in her car

You're mistaken here, for the simple fact that internal combustion engines are horribly inefficient. You're lucky to get 20% efficiency out any car engine, most of the energy in the gasoline/diesel/ethanol is given off as waste heat.

Electric motors run closer to 90% efficiency, and most of our fossil-fuel power plants are pushing 40% efficiency now; some new natural-gas plants are even hitting 60%.

That's a big difference.

Re:Efficiency

[couchslug]

"Think of all the excess weight in a truck that she just doesn't need (and then she goes and makes it heavier with extra motors and batteries)."

A truck is only a bad place to start if you don't want a truck. A PHEV work truck could run all sorts of good stuff WITHOUT A SEPARATE GENERATOR. That goes a long way to paying for a conversion. I'd love to have one for a welding truck for obvious reasons.

Re:Efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from the fact that the converted truck is probably significantly heavier, you've forgotten that charging/discharging the batteries is far from 100% efficient - lead acid batteries are around 75%. All those factors combined may result in more pollution from the converted vehicle than the unconverted vehicle.

Re:Efficiency

[magarity]

Adding charging points to gas stations shouldn't be a big job technically, the only problem is politics and the lucrative oil business
 
Oy vey - you really missed it. The problem with adding charging points at gas station is hanging out at one for four hours waiting for your car to charge. Chargers are needed at places like parking garages so you can let it charge while at work or shopping at the mall, not service stations. The smart service station owner is looking at franchising insert-your-card-$x-per-kWh widgets in downtown parking lots.

Re:Efficiency

[somersault]

Hmm I spose so. Well what about swappable batteries? You could just sign up for a scheme where you swap your spent battery for ready charged batteries at a service station.

That would of course be quite the logistics challenge, getting the right amount of batteries for each location, and storing/charging them all. You're right, I missed it. Sorry for my idealism and slowness :D

Re:Efficiency

[somersault]

Depends if it's RWD or 4x4.. I usually think of big dumb American trucks as RWD. I'd want a proper Landrover/Rangerover with low gear ratios, a buggy, or maybe even something like a Hummer to get up mountains.

I doubt she'd drive up to the top of mountains anyway. She'd use a lift like everyone else, otherwise she'd have to go back up for the car or get someone to deliver it back down. And if she does really crazy wilderness stuff may just get a helicopter ride out rather than drive!

Re:Efficiency

[transporter_ii]

And as I'm sure others will point out, she's just shifting the emissions to a power plant

There is one other huge difference. With oil, we are getting the bulk of it from people who hate us and want to use the money they make from us, to build an army up and come over here and kill us.

With electricity, which granted isn't perfect, either, most of the fuel is being produced here in the United States and the money is a real benefit to our economy.

Transporter_ii

Re:Efficiency

[Retric]

Gas is a refined product that takes about as much energy to refine and transport as it provides your car.

Power plant's are far cleaner and more efficient than the IC engine in your car.

Electric powertrains are more efficient and longer lasting than transmissions.

However, batteries suck and until they are better Honda and your local mechanic are both stuck using the same crap. The idea that we need to spend a lot of time and money designing hybrids is wrong because all of them operate efficiently enough that there is little room for significant improvement. It's all about the batteries at this point.

Re:Efficiency

[Comboman]

It pains me that so many people drive cars larger than they really need, but consider this: A few mpg increase for a truck has much more impact than the same mpg increase in an already fuel-efficient vehicle.

For example, let's say a truck gets 20 mpg. After doing simple things like checking the tire air pressure, driving conservatively (slowly), etc, it might get 25 mpg -- that's a 25% increase.

But if you start with a car that already gets 50 mpg and you increase it to 55 mpg, that's only a 10% increase in efficiency.

You're just playing a math game by showing percentage improvement rather than absolute improvement. It's like saying a $1000 raise is a higher percentage of the income of a poor person than a rich person; so if your getting a raise, it's better to be poor.

If both vehicles drive the same number of miles per week, then a 5 mpg improvement will save them both the same amount of gasoline, the same amount of money and the same amount of carbon emissions. In every way that could possibly matter, the savings are the same.

Re:Efficiency

[cayenne8]

"Hmm I spose so. Well what about swappable batteries? You could just sign up for a scheme where you swap your spent battery for ready charged batteries at a service station.

That would of course be quite the logistics challenge, getting the right amount of batteries for each location, and storing/charging them all. You're right, I missed it. Sorry for my idealism and slowness :D"

I think we still are far off from using all electrics for a long time, till the top mileage increases to that of a current gas engine.

My nightmare is having an electric car during and evacuation for a hurricane. It is hard enough now to find gas to get out, not to mention if you screw up, and are in traffice for up to 20 hours (hot days with the AC running). You'd be stranded pretty badly in an electric car...not to mention, it might be hard to work the battery swap thing here since everyone would need one at once.

That doesn't even bring into account how would you travel when you come back home after a hurricane...look at Houston, there are STILL areas there without power. No electricity, no car...when you have a massive power outage, you can at least start to get gasoline back into the area for people to drive one...and to power their home generators.

This type of thing (evacuations) doesn't effect all of the nation, sure, but, just about every area of the US has some type of natural 'problems' whether it be tornados, rivers flooding, fires..etc...and all of these knock out power, which if everyone is on electic cars/trucks, would be a bad thing since they will stop too.

Re:Efficiency

[maxume]

You're right, I should have used $4 (brain fart).

Still, my point stands using 7,500 gallons of fuel to go 100,000 miles in an Escape (a still hilarious 13.33 mpg).

And yes, 13.333 mpg in an Escape is a ridiculous lowball. That people also drive Hummers has nothing to do with the conversion cost of an Escape. I mean, have you looked at the fuel consumption of a frigate? A bicycle is fantastic compared to that.

Re:Efficiency

[King_TJ]

This is exactly why it gets insane, quickly, trying to justify a particular type of energy usage as having "less overall environmental impact" than alternatives.

Yes, one can argue that refining gas and transporting it doubles the amount of energy it requires over simply what your car winds up using.

But one could also argue that electricity suffers the same fate, when you consider the losses due to resistance of transmission lines, step-down transformers, and losses incurred as energy is stored, short-term, in batteries before *finally* being used by a vehicle.

Then you *still* haven't factored in overall impact of such things as transmissions that wear out more quickly than electric powertrains, vs. batteries that wear out and have to be re-manufactured. (What chemicals go into that whole process, and how "clean" is it?)

Then you start wondering about the pollution levels of gasoline powered vehicles vs. electric cars, but have to balance that against pollution levels generated by the power plants generating the electricity. If they use nuclear power, how does THAT factor in, long-term, as far as ability to safely dispose of the radioactive waste? How much energy is used in transportation of the spent fuel rods and such?

Oh, and did we factor in groundwater pollution from leaking fuel tanks at gas stations, because that's probably an issue too? And how much gas is used driving to gas stations, JUST to fuel up a car, vs. electric cars that could recharge at home and save those trips?

See what I mean? Ultimately, I think the *only* sensible metric is figuring out which option costs you, the consumer, the least to go with.

Re:Efficiency

[Midnight Thunder]

Oy vey - you really missed it. The problem with adding charging points at gas station is hanging out at one for four hours waiting for your car to charge.

This is where more convenient energy transport solutions, such as Hydrogen become interesting. I call Hydrogen an 'energy transport' solution because you have to use electricity to produce it, and in turn you need something else to produce the electricity. Once you have the problems of storage and transportation sorted out then Hydrogen becomes viable, until then there are issues to sort out. In fact petrol succeeds because, despite its inefficiency, it is a convenient solution and this is where alternative energy sources for transportation need to work on, amongst other things.

If we decide to stick to the approach of charging cars directly, then the battery will have to change. The break though technology will be in ultra-capacitors, but there is still a lot of work to be done before it is a viable solution for use in transportation.

As to the people spending ridiculous amounts of money, with the conversion kits, I say "thank you" since it is by getting people experimenting that the technology will improve and come down in price. These are the early adopters that pay a fortune to save us late comers a fortune.

Re:Efficiency

[rrohbeck]

Ultimately, I think the *only* sensible metric is figuring out which option costs you, the consumer, the least to go with.

That would be correct if all the environmental impacts were internalized. As long as there is much that's not included in the price there are lots of tradeoffs in addition.

Re:Efficiency

[Rakishi]

Hydrogen cuts your efficiency by something like 60% and requires transport which pretty much kills any gains compared to just using gasoline.

Re:Efficiency

[raddan]

But even simple cost comparisons are not necessarily rational for the end-user. You really _do_ need to think about it. For example: in 1999, gasoline was about $1/gal where I lived, and the cost trend looked quite favorable for continued use of gasoline in the near future. Now, in 1999, it was no mystery that combustion engines were dirty and inefficient, but they _were_ reliable and cheap.

Fast forward to the past couple of years, and we're seen some extreme volatility in oil-- and thus gasoline-- prices. The degree of that volatility was unexpected to almost everybody except the very few people who were intimately familiar with the oil market.

And then there are the secondary effects of oil prices. Oil's steep prices almost certainly have a hand in the current global recession. While it was clear that the price of gasoline would affect the cost of goods as relating to the cost of shipping, it was less clear that cost-cutting on the part of consumers would cause enough of a market contraction to weaken _financial_ markets to their breaking point.

Beside that-- some people do care about the impact they make on their planet. While this may be an inconvenience to many who don't care, and may seem irrational from a cost perspective, I still think this is a valid reason for purchasing a fuel-efficient or alternative-fuel vehicle. Surely it is at least as rational (and probably more), as, say, buying a ticket to see your favorite sports team, or pursuing your video game hobby. My opinion is that the only reason earth-conscious products are not seen as cost-effective is because Earth is actually, itself, undervalued. Were the full cost of buying/using environmentally-unfriendly goods really revealed, I think we're have far more of them available to us. As it is, those costs (that we know of) are largely externalized.

We _know_ that we are going to pay a large future price for continued use of gasoline. It makes sense to wean ourselves off NOW. As for which one is the _best_, I can't honestly say. But we almost certainly know which ones are _better_.

Re:Efficiency

[CrimsonAvenger]

Also since the life of efficient battery is (currently) short, and their not dense. The efficiency of dense batteries (like lead acid) makes them almost the same cost as burning fuel, their is still not a reason to spend $35,000 except for pure vanity (or you own a power plant, so you pay no markup and no delivery loss through power lines.)

I really hate to be a grammar nazi, but there are three homonyms that are relevant here - "there", "their", and "they're". Not only did you use "their" incorrectly twice, but you used it to replace each of the others - the first one should have "they're", the second "there".

If you're going to be semiliterate, at least try to be consistent in your semiliteracy, or people might start to suspect you're closer to il- than semi-.

I'm not sure I'd call that being here

[Trepidity]

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.

what do you do with the batteries?

[timmarhy]

does this kind of conversion take into account the pollution generated by the production of all these batteries?

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....

Re:Whole lot of stupidity

[paul248]

Maybe you're just being short-sighted. If our goal is to eliminate our dependence on oil for transportation, then commercializing (partially) electric storage and drive systems is certainly a step in the right direction.

Re:Automakers never want hybrids to go mainstream

[Anonymous Coward]

It's this attitude that will kill most of the major car companies in the end. Smaller companies are starting to compete and they are willing to simply make a profit off the sale of the car itself and not depend on parts. The larger car companies are dinosaurs that are loosing the ability to compete since they are locked into an obsolete business model. They have a monopoly right now but that is going to shift fast. The people that can aford to shift to the higher priced electrics will much as early adopters in electronics which will fund the smaller companies to produce more afordable cars for the masses. There are far fewer parts in an electric so once battery costs drop they can be competitive and even have the potential to be cheaper. City dwellers can save a bundle since for the cost of a couple of tanks of gas a year they can drive all year. You may see some large cities even go all electric to fight pollution. It won't happen overnight but electrics will take over a big piece of the market one day and hybrids will eventually outsell gasoline cars.

This is not a good idea

[Kupfernigk]

In fact under running conditions cars are optimised to run with the standard charging voltage of 13.6V. As a result, the wiring systems are designed to allow a volt drop of up to 10%, because this is cheaper (less copper...). Boats, which spend most of their time running on battery, have their electrical systems designed for a volt drop of no more than 3% - on mine the critical circuits, refrigerator and C/H, are designed for a volt drop of 1%.

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.

Re:Automakers never want hybrids to go mainstream

[FriendlyLurker]

Keep in mind, that hydrids still have a combustion engine, that's why they call it a hybrid and not an electric car.
Adding extra parts (generator, batteries, electric motor) only makes the car more complex, harder to service and more expensive.

This assumes your not running on electric for most of the day and are actually using the combustion. There are a few sources around that claim to demonstrate that most drivers are not traveling far from home - i.e. electric will do the job even if the car is hybrid. Which leads to the original point I was make in my post above: "as the masses step from hybrids to full electric". Its a short leap from a hybrid to full electric, especially when the consumer see's that they are not using the combustion for around-town, so why pay more to lug such a heavy inefficient piece of metal on those around-town trips? Just make the second household car a full electric == lost part sales, so big Auto does not want Hybrid stepping stones.

Re:Crash testing

[ishmaelflood]

You talk bollocks.

One-off conversions are signed off by engineers.

Re:Why the absurd fixation on batteries?

[srjh]

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?

Huh? Your link doesn't give a value for the energy density of Lithium Ion, only for the "Best UC on the market", and their own supercap is at about 9 Wh/kg. Lithium ion? 160 Wh/kg.

How is something that can fully charge in a few seconds with at most a few kW going to provide a usable charge over several hours for a car?

Re:Whole lot of stupidity

[falcon5768]

except if your REALLY trying to reach that goal you would not be making a HYBRID engine. Your still using gas, there is no going around that fact. And as I pointed out your likely still using MORE gas than many various ways you can make a non-hybrid powertrain use less. You can try to play with MPG figures all you want with your hybrids, but I can still see a 20 year old Geo that gets better gas milage than a hybrid prius or insight without the useless weight of a electric motor, and I can still see trucks out there that make better gas milage than their hybrid versions as long as the driver knows how to actually drive and not pump the gas as hard as possible.

Not necessarily shifting emmissions

[Organic Brain Damage]

>> 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.

And the lights, and the steering, and the aircon?

[Kupfernigk]

Enough with the sarcasm already. Perhaps I'm technical because I have actually worked in vehicle R&D and know something about it?

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.

Re:Why the absurd fixation on batteries?

[gmarsh]

They don't have better energy density. 160Wh/Kg for LiOn beats the pants off anything in production by Maxwell Technologies. EEStor claims ridiculously high energy density in their ultracapacitors, but I'm skeptical for now until their technology leaves the lab.

Another thing is, batteries tend to keep their voltage as you discharge them - a LiOn cell may drop from 4 to 3.5V from full to 10% charge. Capacitor voltage is set by E=0.5CV^2 - an ultracapacitor charged to 2V will be down to 1V at 25% charge.

Pulling "usable" energy (reasonably constant voltage) out of ultracapacitors requires wide-input-range switching power supplies. These require larger inductors, bigger transformer cores, etc. and are less efficient than narrow range SMPS. The charging circuitry for ultracapacitors will also be less efficient than LiOn charging circuitry for the same reason.