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

[marcushnk]

You're obviously a Linux user...

Re:Efficiency

[TheThiefMaster]

That depends on how you measure efficiency.

In this case:
(electric+petrol) miles / (petrol only) gallons

The electric efficiency is being ignored completely, and the miles driven on electric power are being used to massively inflate the petrol efficiency.

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

[teridon]

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.

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

[CmdrGravy]

How about she uses a ski lift like everyone else, the lazy hussy.

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

[maxume]

Most of the oil that the U.S. consumes comes from the U.S., Canada and Mexico (Canada is our largest supplier by quite a bit); I don't think Canadians and Mexicans hate us, more just find us tiresome. Most of the rest of it comes from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, countries with which we have quite a bit of political friction, but I'm not sure that the people hate us (especially the majorities, there are certainly people in each country who are not USA #1 fan).

Source:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

Re:Efficiency

[Goaway]

That would be true if you were talking about gallons-per-mile figures. However, miles-per-gallon is different. A five-mile-per-gallon increase in fuel efficiency is, indeed, less in absolute terms if your fuel efficiency was already high.

To use the numbers given by the grandparent poster, the number of gallons used to drive 100 miles are:

20 mpg: 100 miles/20 mpg=5 gallons.
25 mpg: 100 miles/25 mpg=4 gallons.
Savings: 1 gallon.

50 mpg: 100 miles/50 mpg=2 gallons.
55 mpg: 100 miles/55 mpg=1.818 gallons.
Savings: 0.182 gallons.

The rest of the world tends to measure fuel efficiency as liters-per-100-kilometers for this reason.

Re:Efficiency

[Ihlosi]

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 [...]

... unless you bring a generator, of course. Bonus points for mounting it on top of the car.

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

[Rei]

Essentially every peer-reviewed study on the subject has shown that the energy that goes into building a car is dwarfed by the amount consumed in the vehicle's operating lifetime. 70% coal is a ridiculous number; coal power only makes up half our grid, and since both presidential candidates are promising cap & trade, that number is only going to drop. Electricity generation is not 60% efficient; fuel to AC in coal plants is about 35% in coal plants and about 45% in natural gas plants. The energy required to move coal by train is trivial compared to the energy in it; the US *average* for trains is 436 miles per gallon of diesel per ton of freight (a ton of coal contains 15-30GJ of energy, compared to 45MJ per gallon of diesel). Electric power transmission in the US averages 92.8% efficient. Li-ion batteries are nearly lossless. You, like many, left out charger and inverter losses. Chargers are usually 92-93% (rapid chargers, which can charge a battery pack in 5-30 minutes, depending on the type, are more like 90% efficient). Inverter and motor losses combined are usually 85-90% in normal driving conditions.

Re:Efficiency

[Rei]

It's hard not to talk down when you're making such elementary mistakes. For example, calling the Lupo a "~90mpg vehicle". Let us count the ways that's wrong:

1) That's per *Imperial* gallon, not US gallon. It's 78mpg per US gallon.
2) That's on the *NEDC*, not the revised EPA drivecycle. The NEDC uses lower accelerations and speeds. EPA ratings of equivalent vehicles generally get about 15% worse mileage than NEDC, so drop that to 68mpg.
3) That's *diesel*, not gasoline for which most Americans are most familiar with mpg figures. Diesel is, quite simply, a 15% denser fuel than gasoline. Per *unit mass* (i.e., per amount of petroleum or per unit CO2 pollution), that drops you down to 59mpg equivalent.
4) Not an equivalent car. You may argue that it's a "5 seater". Sure, if you can manage to cram five people into that thing. It's also underpowered, taking almost 13 seconds to do 0-60 (instead of 10 for a (much larger) Prius and 8 for the EV1). You can make almost any gasoline or diesel vehicle get better mileage by slashing its power output.
5) The Lupo swapped steel components for aluminum and magnesium ones. Directly, without replacing reinforcement. Sure, you can make any car get better mileage by reducing its crashworthiness. Not to mention the expense of aluminum and magnesium.

The VW 1L car plays even more sleight of hand. In addition to the above:

1) It's not even on the NEDC like the Lupo; that number is for a *steady state 45mph*. Let me tell you, I can drive a 12 year old Saturn SL1, whose mpg rating when *new* would only be about 30mpg, at a steady state 45mph and get 45-50mpg or so. If you want an excellent way to BS your mileage figures, you've got one right there. In my personal opinion, the only commonly used way to BS mpg figures that's even more dishonest than that is what some PHEVs do where they assume you'll use electricity for X percent of your miles, then ignore the electricity in the mpg calculations.
2) They threw out even the most basic creature comforts like AC to get it as light as they did.
3) Even *the frame* is made out of magnesium. Magnesium makes aluminum look like steel in terms of strength. Again, if you want to throw safety out the door, you can lighten a car to almost nothing and then cheer its ridiculous numbers. They do use carbon fibre, which has a great strength to weight ratio, but only a tiny amount of it, and is no substitute for having a proper frame underneath.

You might as well cheer the 1000-mpg eco-racers while you're at it.

Don't come on here and expect me not to call you out on it when you act like the energy used to build a car is somehow comparable to the energy used in its operation. Don't expect me not to call you on it when you post ridiculous efficiency figures or act like it takes a proportionally significant amount of energy to haul bulk freight on rails. If you want to play up your credentials, *show them* by what you write.

Automakers never want hybrids to go mainstream

[FriendlyLurker]

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."

Re:Automakers never want hybrids to go mainstream

[Tuoqui]

If I had $109k... Tesla Motors Roadster.

Oh BTW, Tesla Motors is also planning on a 'family' type car in the $50k range soon if I remember one of their press releases correctly. Thats getting pretty close to the sweet spot for people to buy into electric car technology. As the price of oil and gasoline keeps going up, it will make more and more sense to buy a slightly more expensive car that you can fill up the charge on for a measly 12 cents.

All they need to do is use a less powerful engine that gets the 'family' type car to 80 MPH instead of the 125 MPH the Roadster gets to cut a portion of the costs.

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:Automakers never want hybrids to go mainstream

[shmlco]

"Plug-in hybrid and full-electric will require some changes in the national electricity grid...."

Fewer than you might think. A recent DOE study indicated that we could swap out 84% of the vehicles currently on the road and replace them with PHEVs using the existing infrastructure.

Re:Automakers never want hybrids to go mainstream

[Rogerborg]

I wonder how they will find a way to 'refuel' those batteries on long-haul trips.

You tow a generator.

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.

A start

[delirium of disorder]

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.

Re:A start

[evilviper]

removed the alternator and added a deep cycle battery.

That's a bit insane.

Batteries are meant to give you just enough power to reliably start the vehicle, for good reason. Batteries are horribly inefficient, and generating electricity on the fly is much better all-around.

Deep cycle batteries are expensive, large, heavy, etc., and no batteries last long when you're regularly charge/discharge cycling them.

And safety would be a serious problem. Your headlights will be substantially dimmer, and continue to dim throughout your drive, and would very likely drain your battery completely in perhaps 4 hours. Might not be a problem for summer-only vehicles, not too far outside the tropics, but horrible for most people.

I bet you could get comparable results, for very little money less money, by just putting a (heavy duty) diode with a 2-volt drop, on the alternator line. Then, it puts out 12V, and the battery is only maintained at about 50% charge capacity. Never any over-charging or wasted energy trickle charging.

For a bit more money (but far less than solar panels and a deep-cycle battery) you could REPLACE your alternator with a fixed-magnet generator, at least doubling electrical generation efficiency.

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.

Crash testing

[femto]

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.

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.

TWO BIG ENGINES? Really?

[shmlco]

"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.

But... Think of the children!

[Colin Smith]

If you have a truck, you'll be able to mow down a whole group rather than just the front rank!

 

A joke!

[louzerr]

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.

Re:Whole lot of stupidity

[Muad'Dave]

The idea behind plug-in hybrids is to make the electric motor the big engine and have a small gasoline motor who's only job is to charge the batteries when they get low.

I've always wondered if having a regular gasoline engine to turn the generator is as efficient as a small turbine. Supposedly turbines are most efficient at constant speed/load, which the generator would be. Anybody have any hard numbers?

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.

Re:Will we do nothing to escape the fantasy?

[reovirus1]

A lot of us already have. I've converted my crappy mountain bike to electric and have been commuting to work on it for the past year. It does 50km/hr without peddaling, uses batteries out of dewalt drill packs bought off of ebay for reasonable prices and a simple hub motor. It goes in the rain, through snow with studded tires and is much faster than driving my car in traffic to work. Costs 5 cents a charge. I save 5 bucks a day in gas and 25 bucks a day in parking. And I've got this stupid grin on my face most of the day because it really is so much damn fun! I can even pedal if I want and get some exercise.

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