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Another Stab At Sorting Hybrid Hype From Reality
Attila Dimedici writes "Eric Peters makes the case that hybrids have been over-hyped. His argument is that in order to sell people on hybrid cars, automakers have emphasized the energy efficiency of hybrids in ideal conditions and failed to tell people that in most ordinary driving conditions they will not come close to meeting the numbers given. He refers to a recent case where an individual has chosen to forego membership in a class action law suit and has instead chosen to go to small claims court. He suggests that there is a significant chance that she will win there and that this will open up all of the manufacturers of hybrid vehicles to similar lawsuits.
The article was on a rather partisan website, so I am curious what factors he has chosen to overemphasize to make his case. (Or what factors he has chosen to ignore to the same end.) I know that Slashdot has a large contingent of hybrid and EV supporters who are well educated on the subject (as well as a large contingent of those who are not so well educated)."
My wife and I both have hybrid cars (a prius and an insight) and we both consistently get mileage in the mid 40s.
Hybrids have been out for a long time. It appears to me that they are increasing in popularity in spite of the naysayers. Every single person that I know who has a hybrid (maybe a dozen) is pretty happy with the fuel economy. None have complained about having to fork over money for a new battery system yet. One could argue concerning the high manufacturing cost, but I think that that has come down enough relative to selling price to achieve parity with non-hybrid vehicles. The technology continues to evolve and any battery breakthroughs will make them even more attractive.
The article author claims, "To get a steady 40 MPG (let alone 50 MPG) out of any hybrid -- and I have driven all of them, extensively -- you must keep your speed under 50 MPH and treat the accelerator as if it were a Fabergé egg."
I happen to own a 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid, and the _very first time_ I drove it on the freeway at moderately consistent speeds at 60-65 MPH, I got over 40 mpg. I still do that routinely.
So, either he's lying that he has "driven all of them, extensively", or he's lying about what you need to do to get that mpg rating. Probably the former--it's easy to drive a few in a not-very-MPG-friendly way, get disgusted, and then overgeneralize. Easy, but not terribly forgivable for a journalist.
This is a good case for not mixing science and politics. There are certainly cases where hybrids function better (inner city, garbage trucks, buses etc). These work well because the type of driving for these scenarios is ideal for regenerative braking. This makes for a best case scenario for allowing the hybrid to recover energy and work at it's peak. These cases justify the environmental price of the hybrid because the environmental costs is offset by their use.
When you consider the environmental cost that a hybrid requires (the Prius is well documented on the Internet for what is required for it's battery packs) if your not using a hybrid in the right conditions you are arguably harming the environment. This is because you are exacting an environmental cost that is not repaid through your usage scenario.
My point is most consumers are better off getting a high efficiency gas or diesel engine car (Cruze, Jetta etc). Most consumers do not have a driving scenario that is ideal for a hybrid car. It has been decades since most people lived in core cities instead of suburbs or the country. The bottom line is that different technology is better suited for different drivers. One is not fundamentally better than the other in all cases.
People are letting politics try to dictate science, when science should always be free of politics and allowed to stand on it's own merits.
The problem is all people are asking is, "is it a hybrid?" The question they should be asking is, "How hybrid is it?"
Honda Civic Hybrid '06
Gas engine: 85 hp
Electric motor: 13 hp
Saturn Vue Hybrid '07
Gas engine: 170 hp
Electric motor: 15 hp
Toyota Prius '07
Gas engine: 76 hp
Electric motor: 67 hp
There are plenty of cars that were technically hybrids, but when I bought a hybrid in 2009, the Prius was the *only* one which got a significant amount of power from its electric system. The rest were basically just gasoline engines with a little toy electric motor duct taped to them. The '09 Civic Hybrid I tested was particularly bad: larger gas engine than a Prius, 1/4 as much electric power, so it gets worse mileage, and with so little horsepower you feel like you're putting your life on the line every time you take an on-ramp.
Look beyond the hybrid label, and check out the size of the electric power system. It matters.
Uh, yeah. But you can get the same in a non-hybrid coasting down as well...
But a conventional car doesn't regenerate gas in the tank on downhills to help you get over the next hill, while a hybrid will recharge the battery.
The Slashdot community is for the most part logically and scientifically oriented. We believe in the scientific method, and an understanding of the universe built on an accumulation of experiments built on logical and testable explanations for empirical data, observable phenomena and so forth. And in many fields of endeavor, there can be general agreement about things. For example, it's accepted almost by consensus that the nearest know star is the Sun, and that the next nearest known stars are the three in the Alpha Centauri system. Aside from a handful of cranks like Gene "Time Cube" Ray, virtually everyone accepts this. If somehow we found a star nearer than the Centauri ones, which was too faint to notice before, or right next to a much brighter star and unnoticed or whatnot, if the measurements were good and clear enough, I'm sure soon again everyone would be in agreement that this new star was the next closest one to the earth. It is far away, affects little here, and there's no reason for people to argue over it.
On the other hand, ExxonMobil is the most profitable company in the country. It made $30 billion in profits last year, off of $354 billion in revenues. It is #2 on the Fortune 500 after Wal-Mart (which had more revenues, but about half the profits in 2011). Chevron and ConocoPhillips are #3 and #4 on the list.
If hybrid cars were effective, that would dent the revenues of these three companies whose revenues were collectively three quarters of a trillion dollars. Does anyone think that this fact might possibly, conceivably hurt the objectivity of an article, released in a very partisan political magazine like the American Spectator?
Honestly, it doesn't even warrant attention, other than debunking. These types of articles belong in actually objective magazines like Consumer Reports or something, which could tell you which hybrids were good or weren't. Just from anecdotal evidence, people I know with hybrids have been telling me they are spending less at the pump. Which is exactly what worries magazines like American Spectator, which work to protect monopoly capitalism over actual economic growth in capitalism. We see these forces at battle all the time - the RIAA and MPAA want to go from a world where friends lent records to one another to one where that is impossible. The oil companies want us stuck on oil reserves until they run out and junky old gas-burning cars - and this also hurts industry, which would be helped by cheaper energy. AT&T and Verizon are more concerned with preserving their monopolies than having a growing wired and wireless network. Karl Marx said capitalism starts out as a progressive force, economically and socially, but eventually tends to get more and more mucked up in defensively protecting trusts and monopoly instead of smashing shibboleths to allow growth and scientific advancement. I'd say there's plenty of evidence around nowadays that he was right about that.
The instantaneous fuel efficiency gauge one finds in vehicles is not a good source of feedback on driving styling. The reason is that it takes the current speed of the car and the current throttle position to compute the MPGs. Naturally when you accelerate from a dead stop, such a gauge will suggest that accelerating faster is less efficient at a given moment. Moreover, when you brake the gauge often tells you that are being very efficient.
Both of those indications couldn't be more wrong. Even with regenerative breaking, the least efficient activity is applying the brakes. Whether you leap from a dead stop or crawl out of it also does not make a big difference--indeed the peak efficiency of a gasoline engine happens around 4500 RPM. That equates to a pretty quick start and acceleration.
The most efficient driving style is always to accelerate quickly to your 'cruising' speed and then hold the speed constant. One of the reason quick acceleration has a bad reputation is that people frequently accelerate to speed well above their average speed, then break, then repeat. Its a mistake to put the blame on the quick acceleration, its irregularity that's costly.
People conveniently forget the air-quality benefits of hybrids. There's a huge lifetime difference that can be quantified in health improvement (healthcare cost reductions), lifestyle improvement, etc.
It's not all about the MPG.
Uh, one would think that if a hybrid vehicle's gas mileage is roughly the same as a conventional vehicle, they both produce the same emissions from burning the same amount of fuel...
Crowd into sardine can high density housing alongside a rapid transit corridor, of course, like the overlord city planners intend. If you want to see a tree go to a fucking park on your day off and look at one. Above all, remember this: Obey!
In theory, because hybrids use a gas engine that runs at a constant speed, it's more efficient and pollutes less.
Table-ized A.I.