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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.
For all kinds of cars the energy efficiency is measured in ideal conditions and quite often is very far from what you get in real life.
Hybrids are probably overhyped, but I thought most educated consumers these days realized that they got the biggest efficiency gains in two types of driving: 1) lower-speed, stop-and-go city traffic, where they can mainly use the electric drivetrain, and sometimes turn off the engine entirely for brief periods; and 2) constant-speed highway travel, where they mainly use the gas engine, but one that can be made smaller due to being able to rely on the electric assist when needed. Yes, if you frequently accelerate at higher speeds, you'll use both the electric and gas engines and not save much. Do people not know this?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
in order to sell people on [x], [advertisers] have emphasized the [benefits] of [x] in ideal conditions and failed to tell people that in most ordinary [usage] they will not come close to meeting the [benefits advertised].
Sounds like advertising industry best practices to me.
We bought a Prius six years ago so my wife could use the carpool lanes for an hour-long commute through Los Angeles. We didn't get the EPA's mileage, but it's still double the mileage of our other car.
And once the batteries are depleted, the car can no longer shut down its gas engine...
That can't end well..
I have owned many hybrids including Honda Insight and Toyota Prius. I have always gotten more than the EPA estimated mileage in all of them. I also don't drive 40 miles an hour on the highway as suggested by the article. However, driving style does matter. My wife will get about 45 miles per gallon in her Prius because she has a lead foot and drives 80 mph and accellerates quickly. I will get 50 or more when I drive like a "normal" person.
My best friend is a toyota mechanic and he says that Prius's are brought in all of the time because they aren't getting the claimed mileage. But he'll go drive them and they are fine.
The real problem lies with the fact that the car constantly TELLS you how much you are getting. This is important because most people driving regular gas cars have no idea what mileage they are getting. Most people never get the EPA mileage in their cars but don't care because the car isn't constantly telling you what you are or are not getting. So it is likely the people suing Honda probably never got good mileage in their previous car either, but never noticed. They just fill up the tank when it is empty and go on with life.
A lot of people also don't realize a car's engine has to reach operating temperature before it will get good mileage, hybrid or not. So people who take short 5 or 10 minute trips don't get very good mileage.
People just need to learn to drive efficiently, if they want to consume less. You can't expect to just buy a Prius, drive like a mad man and burn like the EPA numbers. But, if you drive with a grain of salt, you CAN even exceed EPA numbers. A lot of hybrid drivers do that. In addition EPA numbers are just the results for a standardized set of tests, with some additional corrective factors. Depending on where you live, how's your commute, etc., you situation may approach more or less that scenario.
SeqBox
Since the EPA does the testing and approves the mileage figures, doesn't this shield the manufacturers from liability for inflated numbers? The EPA sets the testing criteria. I know that I never hit the estimated city mileage for my conventional car and never expected to, so I only use the published gas mileage numbers to see relative mileage between cars. I never thought I'd hit that number exactly.
That said, the Prius owners I know are quite happy with their 40mpg+ mileage and are close or even over the published mileage. Granted, it takes a difference in driving style to hit that number (for example, by maximizing regenerative braking), but most people that buy a Prius are willing to help it maximize their mileage.
I bought a 2011 Prius IV, and it works exactly as advertised. I drive about 15 minutes each way to work, about half highway and half road, and I get about 49 MPG, which is exactly what was advertised. The idea that you have to stay below 50MPH and never accelerate or go up hills is just silly (I live in Cincinnati, OH, which is fairly hilly as well). I have learned to not slam on the gas when I am taking off, but that is because it shows you your efficiency real time, so it's easy to see what you are doing to your mileage when you take of like a race car. Generally, I drive it like any other car, although the information it gives me allows me to drive a little better than I did in the past.
And I'm sorry, but no car will get the advertised gas mileage if you are going up mountains. This has nothing to do with hybrids and everything to do with that fact they don't take into account extreme driving conditions when they calculate mileage. This is actually the first car I have ever owned that gave me the gas mileage it advertised.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
While, like all cars, "your mileage may vary" compared to ideal testing conditions, hybrid cars do indeed improve gas mileage compared to similar non-hybrid cars (and you can see this clearly on cars that have both hybrid and non-hybrid versions).
Look, it's pretty simple. EPA tests (which show on the window sticker) are based on following speed limits, not accelerating like a bat out of hell, NOT using A/C, not letting a car warm up for 15 minutes during the winter, etc.
IF you follow the limits, IF you don't set the A/C to either broil steaks or freeze a turkey, IF you drive defensively and not looking to occupy the next hole in traffic, a Prius can pretty handily return 50-60 MPG tanks in a state like North Carolina. Terrain, temperature, and your own right foot will either make it higher or lower than that.
The same behaviors in something like a
If you're really interested in saving money (and not just being fashionable), then you just have to do the math. For example, paying an extra $10,000 for a hybrid option on a 250HP luxury car that gets 30MPG instead of the usual 25MPG is probably never going to pay back.
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
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.
A lot of articles talk about the "payback" of hybrid cars and often conclude that "It's not worth it". I don't buy that. I never see articles on the payback of getting leather seats or a bigger engine that improves acceleration. The fact that my Prius emits many tons less of CO2 into the atmosphere than most other cars gives me more satisfaction than do leather seats (which I also have).
>
If I had space to park two cars at my house, I'd have an electric one as a regular vehicle, but with certain transportation needs, I'm not able to find them in an electric vehicle yet and I can't afford the conversion costs.
If you live in a city, one option to having 2 cars might be to join a city car share program. If you rarely need the range of a gas powered engine, it could be a cost effective alternative to owning two cars. Plus you can choose the car that best meets your needs - take a sporty convertible for a weekend getaway with your wife, take a minivan on the long trip with the kids, take a pickup truck to the hardware store, etc.
http://www.zipcar.com/
http://www.citycarshare.org/
MPG promises are based on unrealistic/impossible human driving conditions. But what about automated driving conditions? Let's say for example that Honda worked with Google to develop a driving pattern that would guarantee a MPG as long as you kept your foot off the accelerator. As long as your not running late and don't need to rush, why not?
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.
Several people posted about what mpg they get with a hybrid, how many of those people have actually measured their mileage by dividing the number of miles they have driven by the number of gallons they have used? Or did they just use the number given by the cars computer? I do not know how the car calculates mpg, but I do know that the numbers given by several on board readouts are not necessarily accurate.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
We own a 8 year old Prius, we get slightly over 40 MPG, something the author claims is difficult. When the car was newer, we got over 42 MPG.
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.
We drive on freeways like everyone else, routinely driving 70-80 MPH. I'm not a lead-foot accelerator, but I drive like most people. I don't practice any exotic hyper-miling techniques.
There are also hills. Hybrids work best on a perfectly horizontal plane.
We also happen to live at the top of a large, steep hill (Berkeley Hills), which we go up and down every day. And yet we still get 40+ MPG, unpossible! The hybrid engine is great for recapturing some of the potential energy that would otherwise be lost.
I'd have an electric one as a regular vehicle
Better yet, buy a bicycle!
A bike is not always practical. Try commuting from Oakland to San Francisco on your bike (you can't take it on BART during commute hours).
The EPA defines how energy efficiency numbers are calculated, and those numbers have to be displayed on the car. The car companies could advertise a lower number, but there is no simple one number that tells the whole story, and you can't give a full technical report in a 30 ad. By all using the same system to determine the fuel efficiency at least the numbers are relatively meaningful even if the absolute value isn't directly true for all circumstances.
Finally, good luck suing a company for false advertising when the numbers they are using are determined by government testing, not by the company.
Aside from the fact that someone is suing, there is nothing new here. Mr. Peters' just uses the lawsuit as an opportunity to bring up the standard criticisms of hybrids.
I think that the lawsuit is reaching. Honda was just quoting the EPA figure and YMMV has been the running joke about the EPA fuel economy numbers for years. Still, I am pretty sure that Honda doesn't want a precedent set here and will put up a fight.
NPR had a story on the woman's lawsuit in small claims court over the mileage she got with her Hybrid Civic. The problem with her complaint is that Honda is required to report mileage numbers achieved by the EPA in their driving tests, driving tests which are actually a little more stringent now than they used to be. Honda is not allowed to report any numbers other than the EPA numbers.
Also avoid the comments on this article. There are a lot of politically motivated folks who don't understand what mileage numbers mean, how reporting those numbers works, and who believe global warming is a myth. These are not people who will get along well with science and factual data. They're more the 'truthy' types.
I always thought the specs touted on hybrids was a "best case" scanario which exagerates reality. I'm going to hold out for my Mr. Fusion powered vehicle. Maybe Marty McFly will let me borrow his. http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Fusion_Industries :-)
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
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 specs are EPA fuel economy, which is actually a pretty decent system (disclaimer: I hate many things the EPA does, like diesel particulate filters, among other things). The BEST thing about EPA fuel economy ratings is that they're the same test across the board. Miles uphill/downhill/stop and go/air conditioning on/off/windows up/down/highway/slow speeds etc.
No one can expect to always get what the EPA rates a vehicle at.
Hybrids ARE overhyped, though. They are not the end-all cure-all of the fuel problems that the new Prius commercials try to show. We will see, as the cars begin breaking down, how large their actual carbon footprint is. As far as fuel economy, they aren't the best either. VW Jetta TDI's typically enjoy similar mileage as a Prius. A hybrid is a good vehicle used in city driving conditions, especially taxis.
Hybrids aren't great. But they are a good step in the right direction. I still think a hybrid Jetta TDI would be way better than a Prius could ever be, simply because its diesel engine alone is as efficient as the whole Prius power train.
Here in Europe, gasoline costs twice what it does in the US (which is only one reason why people tend to have smaller cars). I therefore suspect the extra costs may easily be amortized within the lifetime of the batteries, at least here. I used to own a Prius and although I didn't always reach the claimed mileage, the agreement between claimed and actual mileage was, in fact, better than I got with other (non-hybrid) cars.
Anyone who's been paying attention should know by now that the vast majority of hybrids on the market are pure marketing/greenwashing hype. They got a big early boost from the first hybrids to market, the original Prius and Insight, but very little since has lived up to the promise of those first two. If you look closely at those two cars, you'll quickly realize why -- they were designed from the ground up for fuel efficiency, and their hybrid motors were only a part of that strategy. The original Insight, for example, has a body made entirely from aluminum, with a minimized frontal area and vanishingly low coefficient of drag. In spite of its heavy battery pack, the Insight managed to be lighter than any other US-market car at the time. Its engine was a purpose-built, low-displacement 3-cylinder engine made with as much aluminum, magnesium and plastic as the designers could get away with. The electric motor was integrated into the flywheel, minimizing the extra weight of the hybrid system by allowing it to perform two functions simultaneously. The hybrid system helps, but the vast majority of the first-gen Insight's fuel efficiency comes from these things. Tuners have pulled the whole drivetrain out and replaced it with a 200-horsepower Civic Si engine, and still managed almost 50 miles per gallon out of the chassis!
From the above, it's pretty clear that hybrid drivetrains are just a piece of the fuel-efficiency puzzle -- yet ever since those first two cars hit the market, manufacturers have been tacking electric motors to otherwise ordinary cars and selling them to gullible consumers as the saviors of Earth. The electric motors are a little more efficient at low speeds, but everywhere else they're just additional dead weight that the gas engine has to drag around. Is it any surprise that these half-baked hybrids don't perform as advertised?
Basically, our manufacturing and technological world has become a moribund treadmill of innovation driven by consumer whimsy. In an effort to reinvigorate the stale metaphors of capitalism, environmentalism is being advanced as the reason why we might once again buy some new things: new cars, new light bulbs, new energy efficient gizmos in general. If only we could all become convinced that we really do need to buy some new things for this absolutely essential reason, the whole ponzi scheme of capitalism would be able to slouch along for another 20 or 30 years... but THEN WHAT? Colonize Mars and start the whole thing over again.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
As someone who regularly gets 55+ mpg on his Prius, I say this case is utter BS. I drive 100 miles round trip to work each day, mostly highway between Fort Worth and North Dallas. People in Dallas will not let you go 50 mph on the highway. My speed varies between 60 ~ 70 mph depending on traffic conditions. Sure, I get a little less mileage at 70, but so does everyone else on that road. And it's not like it requires some kind of advanced certification to get that mileage. I traded my 3/4 Chevy Duramax w/300+ hp and 500+ lbs of torque in on the Prius. My first tank, I got 52mpg.
Next thing you know, people will sue Remington since their gun won't hit the target, Fender since their guitar doesn't sound like David Gilmour, and Louisville Slugger because their bat doesn't hit home runs.
I have a 2004 Prius with almost 200,000 miles on it. I have a 70 mile per day commute, 60 freeway/10 city, in Southern California. I drive at normal freeway speeds (for California), and had the carpool sticker which was discontinued last July. In the carpool lane, I was able to average between 75 and 80MPH during my commute, which has a few hills, but nothing major (I-405 South from 55 to San Juan Capistrano and back).
I have been averaging about 48MPG on this commute since the day that I got the car.
I am by no means a hypermiler, but when my wife drives the car, she is lucky to get 40MPG in the city, since she has more of a lead foot than I do. On a long freeway trip at 80MPH, she can get about 45MPG. I can get a higher mileage if I drive slower (65MPH or below). In that case it goes above 50MPG. If I get caught in traffic on the freeway, the mileage improves (during stop and go traffic).
My previous car was a Plymouth Neon that got 24MPG, so my MPG has been doubled for the last ~200K miles. According to my rough calculations, at that mileage, I purchased about 4166 gallons of gasoline since February of 2004. If you figure an average price of $3 per gallon (which is really not that far off for Southern California since 2004), that is $12,500. If I was able to keep my old car (which was going to require extensive/expensive repairs in order to continue operation), I would have paid $12,500 more for gasoline over that same time period. So therefore, I have saved $12,500 so far. The premium that I paid for the Hybrid system was less than that, so it has more than paid for itself. I ordered a Prius with none of the extra options except the side-curtain airbags which are now standard, so I paid quite a bit less than the fully loaded Priuses that they were selling at the time.
Hopefully my next car can be a pure electric, if I can make my Prius last that long. Maybe a plug-in Prius or Chevy Volt would be a reasonable alternative. That carpool sticker saved me thousands of hours of time as well (over the years). I really miss it!
Every time I consider that option, I seem to see one of my two coworkers mangled by a commuter bike accident, and think: if that's the best plastic surgery can do, maybe I better be careful.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The writer also doesn't realize that he can get 100MPG+ while going down the hill
I am always disappointed that the real-time display in every car I have seen tops out "99.9". I know it is not meaningful, but it would be fun to see on more digit.
But on a practical note, having one of those computer displays can be motivating, in modifying your driving style, if one cares about mileage.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
it's normally the combination it's self that makes them ill suited on both sides, but the advantage of just having another option far outweighs how poor they can compete in it compared to a more specialist organism. This though is not the case with hybrid cars, while the volt is as far as the information i have a slightly better design compared to the Prius and and other's. gas motor connected to a generator which powers both the electric motor's and charges the batteries rather then a gas & electric motor side by side connected by planetary gears & chains to transfer/switch power(Prius and Honda hybrids..). both fail as the article states due to the laws of thermodynamics. to save fuel rather then make the car bigger and heavier by adding another motor and heavy batteries, they should make the car smaller and lighter. the real world mpg numbers of the much maligned smart fortwo match and exceed these real world numbers of the hybrids. replace the poor gas engine in it with a better diesel one and you can get close if not exceed the 'hyped' hybrid numbers. how is this possible?
1. few area's of the country need speeds in excess of 70-75 mph to keep with the flow of traffic and all semi's stay about 65 due to them being gps monitored and the driver's penalized pay wise for speeding. So having a car with a large engine that can go 140 or 150 is not only not needed but a waste, because of that a smaller engine will do the job just fine and will give you higher mpg.
2. make the car as light as possible by;
A. doing away with excess bodywork. taking the smart car and similar smaller cars for example, there is no need to hide the safety frame with another layer of steel or plastic, integrate it into the external design and look of the car.
B. take a page from the smart car and do away with the mostly metal exterior all together. Preferably in the easily replaceable panel system similar to what they have. not only will this make the car lighter but it will save YOU a ton of money. large dents in a normal car can cost up to and over 1200+ dollars to fix. it will take about 1500 dollars to replace all the panels on a smart car. a single panel is less then half the repair cost in the best case of a normal car. not to mention they resist hail damage and minor fender benders far better.
C. Do away with un-used internal space, not every car sold HAS to be able to haul 5 to 7 people. If a person needs a car that has to haul that amount they will get one, those that don't should not be forced to use cars that can. it's a waste and if such waste was eliminated the average fuel economy will easily reach the new car standards if not exceed them.
Has nearly everyone forgotten that the only mileage car makers are allowed to advertise are the EPA numbers? It is illegal for car companies to advertise their own mileage data even if they know the EPA value is wrong. You are free to consult independent testers like Consumer Reports or Road & Track etc. to get other info, but the manufacturers themselves can't say, "The EPA mileage is X, but we know you REALLY get Y (wink,wink)."
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I've read many reports of reporters on their test drives. Almost none of the drives were taken in conditions that many experience, such as on a sunny day with the temperature around 90 degrees F or below freezing. This also impairs performance and I think it is to a greater degree than for conventional cars. At low temperatures batteries may not charge or deliver the required power and it's not clear if the heaters are electric, that is power consuming, or not. At high ambient temperatures quite a bit of power is needed for the AC - another power drain.
I'm waiting for reports on battery failures and changes, too, as mentioned in another post here.
Nate
The electric motor can supplement the gas engine. So, it is very much like having a turbocharger. My Prius accelerates very nicely. Does it light up the tires? No. But, do I worry about pulling out in traffic. Absolutely not! The system just works.
Also, the gasoline engine is not the only thing that charges the batteries. Whenever you are coasting, the batteries are generally being charged by the electric motor which is functioning as a generator and is driven by the wheels and not the engine. I get the feeling that the author really doesn't understand how a hybrid works.
Also, the Volt is very different from most hybrids. And it also works exactly as it is advertised. You run off of electric until you can't. Then it runs off of the gasoline engine. It is not for everyone. If it doesn't work for an individual, it may be because they didn't do enough research before they bought it.
I can't speak for any hybrid owners, since I don't know any, but I bought a 2002 Acura RSX Type S new in early 2002. For those that may not be familiar with this car, it's essentially just a souped-up Honda Civic with a nicer interior. It's been a great car and is a blast to drive. It's roughly the same size as a Prius. Base price was about $22,500, or about $2k more than a base 2002 Prius. I don't know what the standard features and available options were on the Prius, but there wasn't too much to add to the Acura. An underbody kit, spoiler, and fog lights were about it. The car has been averaging about 30mpg, with the best I ever achieved being 39mpg on a road trip. Most of my driving is "surburban". Not stop-and-go like in a city, but not mostly highway, either.
Where I'm going with this is that the absolute costs for a 2002 Prius versus my RSX would not have been significantly different, especially spread out over the 10 years that I have owned my car. And on top of that, the RSX is *far* more enjoyable to drive than any Prius.
If you live in the city, than a hybrid can make a lot sense. A small diesel would get you almost as good mileage, with a lower up front cost and, probably, lower lifetime maintenance costs.
Do I think hybrids are here to stay? Of course! Do I think that they're over-hyped? Absolutely. For specific types of driving styles and habits, they *can* save you some money if you keep them long enough or put enough miles on them. In my particular case, I want to own a vehicle that I enjoy driving. I don't want a "supercar", but I do want a car than has some modicum of performance. The base hybrids that I've seen so far, for the most part, don't.
Just looking at current models, a 2012 Prius "Level 5" with a few options lists for about $33k. A Honda Civic sedan specced out roughly the same lists for about $24k. That's $9k in difference just to get a hybrid. You better keep it for a pretty long time or put a lot of miles on it to recoup that upfront cost. If you end up financing it, it's even worse, since you get to pay interest on that additional up-front cost, too.
The dry fish swims alone.
The main thing that the original article is ignoring is the fact that the advertised EPA mileage for all cars (not just hybrids) is measured under idealized conditions that are not particularly close to real-world driving conditions, and the rated mileage for most cars, hybrid or not, is usually substantially greater than the mileage that the average driver will achieve.
For instance: I once owned a Saturn (non hybrid) that was rated for around 40 MPG (I can't remember the exact number, but it was definitely in the 35 to 40 MPG region). However, when new I believe my actual mileage was under 30 MPG and over the life of the car it drifted downwards until I was generally getting less than 25MPG.
My next car was a Prius that was rated 60 MPG highway and 66 MPG city (the only car I ever saw that had a higher mileage rated for city; that was second generation). I typically got 40 MPG. I was using it for relatively short trips, which is worst case for the Prius. When my wife took it on longer trips with mostly highway driving, she would get around 47 MPG.
The point is, I was satisfied because the mileage was far better than the Saturn, even though the Prius had a much larger and more comfortable interior. It fell below the rated mileage, but not really worse in this respect than the Saturn, proportionately speaking.
Some new hybrid owners get upset about the car not getting the rated mileage; many of these owners don't seem to have actually measured the mileage that they were getting in their previous non-hybrid car and just assume that it was getting its rated mileage. So they'll say "this car isn't getting any better mileage than my own car!" but they are invariably comparing apples to oranges: actual mileage of the hybrid vs. rated mileage of the old car.
I agree that TFA seems biased and not too well informed. I kind of doubt a class action suit on this basis would succeed.
Nobody's ever been able to make a rotary or turbine engine that can match a reciprocating-piston engine for efficiency and reliability in a real world scenario. And it's not for lack of trying, either -- aerospace companies would kill to eke that kind of fuel efficiency out of their turbines, and Mazda worked for decades to make a rotary that doesn't burn fuel like a carb'ed big block and that doesn't require a complete teardown and rebuild every 100k miles or so. Yes, there are disadvantages to the piston design, but so far nothing else has managed to overcome the inherent advantages it has in efficiency of combustion. It may happen someday, but it hasn't happened yet.
One thing I've noted in reading some of the comments so far, is that a lot of folks seem to be depending on the trip computer in the cars for their numbers. They are notoriously inaccurate (like 5-10 mpg high often, from what I've seen). If you really want to measure your fuel economy, start a log (there are some great apps for smart phones) and fill up completely at the same station and pump as often as possible. Record the fuel amount you fill up with, and the distances on the odometer. Then do the math. Over enough time, you'll get a pretty good, more accurate number for your average fuel economy. Then take into account the type of driving you do (city/highway) and how you drive (do you drive for economy or sport, etc.) and you can then start to compare to others who calculate the same way. Get enough of those stats and you start to see real-world mileage for a particular car model.
I drive an 89 Honda CRX, and I get better gas mileage than the people I know who drive hybrids. I also drive like a convict running from the cops. If my 23 year old car can get great gas mileage with the way I drive, I see no reason why newer cars can't. I see the hybrid fad as unnecessary more than anything else. It's just a way for auto manufacturers to squeeze more money out of people for something that isn't needed.
As long as the vechicle manufacturer computes MPG in compliance with EPA/NHTSA standards it is the sue happy moron in the wrong in every case. If you don't like how MPG is calculated bring that up with the fricking EPA.
If your car is defective (Bad battery...etc) bring it in and have it repaired.
For all kinds of cars the energy efficiency is measured in ideal conditions and quite often is very far from what you get in real life.
Wrong, for all kinds of cars, the energy efficiency is calculated. The numbers on the sticker (in the US, at least) are *not* measured numbers.
And those number are inaccurate to a degree. On a road trip I've seen a german designed car achieve 34-35 mpg highway versus its rated 29. The driver didn't trust the dashboard indicator regarding mpg so he did a manual check using two fills and miles traveled. 34-35 was confirmed. We guessed that the german engine was designed for peak efficiency somewhere above 55 mph (what US gov't tests use?). We were driving 65-70 mph when achieving the higher mileage.
GM's EV1 summarily crushed out of existence, literally, worked too well. The success of the EV1 ' plug-in model' drive by electrons thereafter was usurped by the ' hybrid model' as manufacturers reworked current profit platforms making petro-based vehicles into idiomatic expressions of efficiency, ecology and social consciousness. Reality bites making duped consumers into driving testaments to essentially dangerous corporate fictions. Hybrids are a bridge to a future for manufacturers to transition from a petro-economy. A hungry world that now must compete against billions of thirsty cars for grains to feed itself rather than pour down the tank in the name of ' reduced emissions' is bankrupt, starving and stranded by petroleum that has no solutions other than more of the same.
Only moving in a direction away from petroleum secures a world food supply, air supply and sustainable economies of security.
There's certainly hype, possibly too much, but the devil is in the details here.
Gasoline-based internal combustion engines get a theoretical maximum 30% efficiency in converting the heat of burning the fuel into work. (This is the major reason why the conventional direct-drive internal-combustion engine configuration requires a radiator -- that lost 70% is being dumped out of the car as waste heat, minus the small fraction that's used to heat the interior of the car in the winter.) Non-hybrid configurations also have to size the engine for the maximum power output it's expected to have to handle -- usually accelerating to highway speeds -- and there are numerous compromises in the engine design that make it able to rapidly change power output across a wide range of power demands, all of which make it somewhat less efficient to operate in the more or less steady-state output it's called on to deliver for highway cruising.
Generally, that engine sized for peak demand during highway acceleration and tuned to be able to go from idle to maximum power and then back down to cruising throttle power over very short time spans is going to be less than the theoretical 30% Otto-cycle efficiency most places in the power band. (And chances are it's tuned to deliver maximum efficiency under the parameters of the EPA mileage tests, which the manufacturers know as well as the EPA, so no, you'll never get those EPA numbers in actual day to day use.)
The reason the hybrid concept has as much potential as it does is that electric motors have a far higher efficiency in terms of translating electrical power into torque, particularly with switching mode AC motor controllers and other high efficiency tricks, and typical battery technologies are around 70% efficient (measured as discharge/charge energy ratio), and having a battery allows the engine to be sized much smaller and in most cases run at steady-state power output while the battery handles the peak demand, so, for certain driving styles and trip profiles, the hybrid has a significant advantage. Hybrids require smaller engines because all the engine has to do is maintain charge on the battery at or below a certain break-even speed dictated mostly by drag coefficient. But how much of a differece hybrid vs conventional makes for any given driver or any given set of daily driving routes is going to depend on a fairly large number of variables, and this is true for both hybrid and conventional platforms.
So it's more complicated than just "enough hype" vs "not enough"/"too much"..
Doesn't that depend a lot on your airconditioner, your airconditioner settings, how hot the day is and how fast you are travelling?
The whole point of hybrids is this (at least plug-in hybrids, which is the interesting kind):
For everyday commuting, the cars can run on electricity. This not only means no local air pollution in cities, but potentially much less CO2 emissions as well (because an electric motor is about four times more efficient than a typical gasoline engine). Total system emissions are about on par with ordinary gas cars even if electricity comes from crummy old coal plants, and will improve as we introduce more renewables in the electricity system. In countries with a lot of hydro, nuclear and renewables, this is a huge improvement over gas cars, even today.
Another really interesting aspect of plug-in hybrids is that their battery capacity can (in the future) be used as a distributed electricity reserve (or backup), so that we can integrate a lot more intermittent renewables (i.e solar and wind) into our electricity system than otherwise possible. This can work because very few cars run more than two hours per day, and idle the rest of the time. Of course, this requires a smart grid and flexible electricity prices for consumers, but it can be done. In effect, hybrids can help us closer to a CO2-free electricity system.
Its the future potential of hybrids which is fascinating - the hybrids of today are for enthusiasts. But we should be grateful to these early adopters for building the transport technology of the future.
I disagree. Although the younger crowd might stomp on the gas at every light, the adult crowd tends to outgrow such things
I wouldn't put so much weight on driver's age. When 16 and borrowing my grandfather's big and underpowered car I did not punch it, it was a futile thing to do. When my grandfather took a grandkid's overpowered car for a ride he punched it with a smile. I believe driving style is more a result of opportunity than age.
Whatever technology that starts beating petroleum based vehicles will simply be bought outright by the oil companies and licensed too every manufacturer. They aren't that sinister or stupid.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Models? The model is "the injectors are rated to flow this much fuel at 100% duty cycle" combined with "current duty cycle" and "measured speed" to calculate "usage per distance". The things that impact that are 1) inaccurate speed measurement (check your car with a GPS - it's probably reading a little fast) and 2) dirty / otherwise out-of-spec injectors (or possibly out of spec fuel pressure). There's no real "model inaccuracy" involved, so much as just error due to garbage in = garbage out. What the Mythbusters did was compare less precise sensors to more precise sensors, and declare that the less precise sensors were less precise. I wasn't shocked, but people who do less mechanic "stuff" probably were, so that's ultimately a good thing. :)
The sensors in your car are there to provide a pretty close estimate of engine behavior so the ECU can adjust things and stay fairly efficient. To be more precise requires way more expensive sensors and more expensive tuning, which makes cars more expensive. And people probably aren't willing to pay a whole lot more for a car that only gets an extra 2MPG. Race enthusiasts, however, are - so you see way more advanced engine management systems on high-dollar race cars, where a couple of HP (and probably slightly better fuel economy as a side effect) is actually justifiable.
Disclaimer: I own a 2007 Honda Civic hybrid.
The complaint about the Civic hybrid is that the car was sold as achieving 48/51 mpg according to EPA estimates.
With normal driving (normal = the type of driving seen every day, exhibited by most drivers), it was not possible to get much closer than 10 mpg of those figures when the car was purchased.
Now, this hybrid has a power assist design (different to the Prius), which lends itself to easily draining the battery - climbing a hill, for example - and the battery only has a limited number of power/drain cycles before it needs replacing.
It turns out that the programming on these cars was initially set to provide more 'assist' - thus improving the published mpg figures - but that has led to premature failures of the battery, leading to many warranty replacements.
Honda's response to this design dilemma? Change the programming so that the power assist is much more frugal. This reduces the cycles on the battery which makes them last longer, but means that the car now averages about 30mpg, since you have less assist from the battery when you need it.
So now, instead of having a car that is somewhat better than the non-hybrid counterpart, it is about the same at best, and has few or none of the attractive attributes that Honda used to sell the car.
We are upset at being conned by Honda selling the car as a high-performing hybrid, and later effectively remove most of the benefits of the hybrid because their design doesn't work.
*Still* negative function...
And I'm getting 53-56 MPG at the injector and 50-52 MPG at the pump (lower due to evaporation) on mostly highway commutes.
The calculation done by the car's computer is stupid. The "averaging" which is done by the car in computing its average MPG figure is a time average of the instantaneous MPG value. It should, of course be a weighted average using the rate of fuel usage as weighting factor to give a proper MPG average over a certain number of gallons (your pump figure).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
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.
cheap ass.
Frankly, when I get 10 percent bigger wheels for it, I expect to hit near 50MPG on freeway. It's an old engine, throttle body delivery, with a simple mod or two to flatten out the timing advance system, allowing for more "sweet spot" time at cruise, with some small performance trade-off when driving at full driver demand.
I've had this car for way too many years, and total cost is about .12 per mile, inclusive of everything I've ever spent on it.
The ROI on Hybrids do not make sense at this time. Cool, if you want to early adopt and advance things, but not cool, if the goal was actually saving money on your driving.
If I could get new gears created at a cost that makes sense, I would skip the wheels and mod the rear end to put the torque curve more toward economy, stretching the gears out to make 5th cruise only, easily getting 50 MPG.
IMHO, hybrid cars suffer from complexity right now, and battery weight / performance metrics still are a bit too crappy to make any longer term sense. If we improve batteries, we can reduce complexity, significantly improving the hybrid value proposition. Still a ways off.
Maybe if we improve batteries in general, we could go with all electrics for many use cases too. Either is ok, and I could use either, given the value is really there. Today it isn't.
Blogging because I can...
Just wait for all these toxic Lithium batteries to start hitting landfills. There'll be a NIMBY backlash as bad as nuclear waste disposal. Then all these enviro-whackos will want to start suing all the automakers and spinning yarns of "conspiracy to hide the toxic potential" or some other nonsense. If we just let the market decide on the costs/benefits of these things instead of political correctness then these rolling toxic bombs would never get off the ground. It amazes me the level of gullibility that Leftists have for anything that "replaces oil" or whatever nonsense they spout. How do you think that electricity you charge your Lithium is generated? Since you fools won't let any nuclear plants get built, it all comes from coal and oil. All fool and his money are soon parted ...
What is it?
FRA: STFU GTFO
on both my motorcycle or my 4WD's economy, once taken over around 80KPH, ceases to deliver the sort of milage the manufacturers claim... the 4WD is rated at around 16 litres per hundred Klm for "highway driving" yet driven conservatively at the hwy limit of around 100 to 110KPH only delivers 19 to 20 litres per 100Klm, a considerable loss of "economy" over the marketing figures, my motorcycle (a 650 single) shows a smaller but still significant drop in economy once taken past 80KPH.
Also not sure where the writer lives that driving under 50MPH would result in "constantly impeding" one's "fellow drivers" but where I live the only time, on an average drive you'd get to do 80+ KPH (50 MPH) in any sort of car, would be for the split second before you ploughed in to the back of the car in front doing 60Kph or less (usually much much less, just like all the other cars in front of, and around, them).
My GPS readings for the last year show that (apart from occasional rural or off peak freeway driving) my total time spent over 80KPH was less than 2 hours of about 6000Klm worth of urban driving.
While I'm not convinced that current hybrids are viable when calculating purely personal economics just because they may (or may not) fit in with the driving requirements of one small stretch of the road doesn't mean they fail in a other markets. I could imagine the author would rather die than drive a Smart but in places like Rome and Tokyo these small kei cars and their slightly larger cousins are the most practical cars the road and yes I've bombed a 1.3liter generation 1 Nisan Cube up Hokunku Expressway 500Klm plus Kyoto to Niggata and have driven a Daiwoo Matiz much the same distance Perth to Geraldton so I know they are not perfect cars for open hwy driving but then again most, probably all, of the big full sized cars are as far from ideal urban commuters as you can get (short of a Hummer), which lets face it - what probably 90% of us spend 95% of our driving doing is slow stop start commuting.
Those EPA mileage figures were not dreamed up by Honda, they are a product of the US EPA. The EPA REQUIRES that the auto makers post these figures on the cars so customers can make an educated choice and hopefully buy a car that will use less fuel. Honda should name the US EPA as a co-defendant, or should counter sue them for damages.
Maybe instead of actually listing a car's MPG, those EPA stickers should be like the ones you see when you buy a washing machine or vacuum cleaner. These have a bar graph showing the range of electrical use that the class of products have with a "you are here" arrow. This would let car shoppers see what kind of fuel consumption a car will have in comparison with other cars in the same class without giving specific numbers.
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...
...because I hate giving pageviews to morons so that I can see what half-baked ideas they have.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZxS4pENaxJ0J:spectator.org/archives/2012/01/06/honda-civic-lesson/print+http://spectator.org/archives/2012/01/06/honda-civic-lesson
Of course, given that all the images and other resources still load, it probably still counts as a pageview as far as they're concerned.
That was indeed the primary design goal of the Prius.
GP is getting the advertised mileage because of the long trips. To get good mileage from a Prius it is critical to give it a full warmup, which takes a surprising amount of time.
I was under the impression MPG was not a major air quality factor ever since they invented the catalytic convertor. Am I mistaken?
Fix Your Own TV - RiddledTV.com Avoid the Landfill
keep your money and just quit driving like an idiot.
Have a look at the weight loss, financial independence, addiction cure and dozens of other "shiny objects" people are quite willing to buy in order to distract themselves from the truth. The hybrid hype (and it's all hype) is the same buying an technical solution to a behavioural problem.
Changing your own behaviour is hard, slow, and frankly, dull. The technical solution is quick, easy, and exciting, and for as little as $19.95* can be your TODAY!
2 of the cheapest cars you can buy, (one a 1998 model; the other a 2007) will get me 38-40MPG easily by just driving the speed limit, not stomping on the pedals, and not winding up the motor. Not hypermiling; just not driving like you're 16.
OK, so if you're driving a 500HP blown big-block classic 'Vette (or your preferred gasoline operated personality replacement) you're never going to get decent mileage. But, unless you actually need this sort of equipment for some purpose (you don't), this, too is a behavioral, not a technical issue.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I looked into the technology when hybrids were first becoming popular. I was concerned that starting and stopping the gas engine would result in heavy losses. Turns out not to be true. The type of engine used is very efficient at a constant RPM (which is where much of the gain is made) and doesn't appear to have a lot of starting cost.
The Prius arrangement (constant rpm engine charging batteries which provide variable speed and acceleration) works really efficiently in stop-and-go traffic. Where it falls down is constant high speeds over long periods of time. So for a commuter car in crosstown traffic, it excels. For a touring car, not so much. I think this might be the heart of many owners' complaints. Even with careful throttle usage, mileage drops like a dead bird on that 700 mile trip to grandma's
To owners of regular gas cars, hybrids are counterintuitive. My truck gets 17 to 19 MPG in town [1], 25 or better on the freeway if I don't change speed a lot and there aren't too many hills. A hybrid will tend to get its best mileage in town and mediocre-to-bad mileage on long freeway trips. This isn't a defect, it's how the technology works. You have to use the right tool for the job, and if the job is to spend the great majority of your time at freeway speeds, you need to pick a technology that works well under those conditions.
[1] The purpose of the truck is to haul large amounts of heavy or bulky stuff. My transportation of choice is motorcycle, which gets a little better gas mileage than a Prius. And is more fun. But won't carry four adults, unless they're really good at holding on.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
CVTs have not only been implemented on a number of popular cars, they are almost ubiquitous in some applications.
- Many of the Hybrids on the market either come standard with a CVT, or have it available as an option.
- Virtually every modern Scooter on the market is equipped with a CVT.
- Several motorcycles are available with a CVT (Aprilia Mana comes to mind,) although it hasn't caught on for marketing reasons.
- Several full sized cars are available with a CVT, or come equipped with one standard (Nissan Murano being the best known.)
Renault actually built and tested a CVT Formula 1 car, the FW15C, however it was banned before it ever saw competition.
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2007/05/03/banned-continuously-variable-transmission-cvt/
http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3966
>"I would have paid $12,500 more for gasoline over that same time period. So therefore, I have saved $12,500 so far."
Is that with or without the expense of replacing the batteries?
I'm currently getting an average of 390Wh/mile in my Volt. At this time, my full retail price for power to my house (total cost / KWh delivered) is about 8.5 cents per KWh. .085*.39 = 3.354 cents per mile. Even with charging and battery inefficiencies it's likely less than 4.5 cents per mile.
Plus, you can hammer the go pedal as hard as you like and it's basically silent except for tire and wind noise. That increases the 'pick-up' factor as most folks with conventionally-powered cars don't typically put the hammer down from light to light. I'd probably get better efficiency if I drove more like a Priuser, 390Wh/mi is fairly poor compared to a Leaf, but I wouldn't have as much fun.
And when I have a >80mi round trip for good barbecue, the gas motor will get me home afterwards. So I roll fully electric during the commute (both ways) for >80% of the mileage so far (closer to 90%) and gas power for longer road trips.
But then what can an individual do to correct the "mistake of how fucked up US city design is"?
Interestingly the 'start-stop' cycle you describe provides a thermodynamic advantage to the four stroke reciprocating engine over a turbine. Because the piston and valves get to be cooled off during the intake stroke they can tolerate higher combustion temperatures during the power stroke. Higher combustion temperature = higher thermodynamic efficiency. In a turbine the blades in the power section are continuously exposed to the hot gases of the combustion section which limits the maximum temperature the combustion can run at. Now there are a lot of other factors -- since the turbine has a separate compressor section from the power section, each can be optimized for its purpose, while a piston has to be a compromise, for example. Anyway, the whole issue of relative efficiencies between the different heat engines is a fascinating subject. I think everyone can agree that no one 50 years ago would have dreamed that piston engines could become as clean and efficient as they are now. As arcsimm points out in the earlier post no one has been able to improve on the reciprocating piston for the small, mobile installations of automobiles, not for lack of trying.
They're tested to the same standards as gas cars. You'll consume more gas going up hills just the same as in hybrids.
I mean common - did they really think the advertised 30mpg of a gas vehicle was accurate?
Partially. High MPG cars tend to be cleaner because they use less fuel. Diesels tend to have a lot more particles. But there are many other factors, including how new the car is and what kind of fuel it is using, and so forth. New Diesels with better fuels have a less particles. The Civic hybrid is an ultra low emission vehicle. That ultra low emission can be achieved even with lower mpg.
Temperature has a huge effect on my 2005 Prius mileage. Below about 40 (F), the engine runs longer to warm up the catalytic converter--and even more if you want heat. Below about 20, the mileage gets worse--perhaps because I really want heat and leave the engine running while I clear the windshield.
Above 50F, I consistently exceed the rated mileage -- and even during the summer with the AC I get 48+ mpg.
There is certainly an effect of the big mileage meter on improving your driving habits.
You aer ignoring the emissions produced while making the battery!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
between Riverside and LA on several occasions, a route that includes some long hills both up and down, and traffic moving along at 70-80 MPH when it moves and crawling at walking speed when it doesn't. I don't stomp the gas hard, but I don't hold up traffic or merge onto freeways at 40 mph either. I run the AC and the stereo, etc. I have consistently gotten >50 mpg as reported by the car's computer on such trips.
My wife reports that she never gets more than about 35 mpg, but she has a lead foot that only knows two positions- go fast and stop fast.
Even if there's a bicycle path on the road, you're still likely to get injured or killed by some stupid or inattentive driver. Having bicycles going ~10mph on the same road as cars going ~60mph is a bad idea. The only way bicycles will be practical in US cities is if they start building bike lanes that are physically separated from the roads, so there's no chance of bike/car accidents. But that won't work that great either because then a bunch of pedestrians will want to use these bike paths as walking paths, and bikes + pedestrians always results in bikers running into the pedestrians and the pedestrians complaining that the bicyclists ride too fast.
Agreed! These old cars are lighter and get great gas mileage. I have a 1992 Honda Civic VX. I paid an extra $1000 for a better gas sipping engine and that extra $1000 paid for itself many times over in great gas mileage. Great ROI! Today I get in the low 50s mpg during the summer and in the mid to upper 40s mpg during the winter.
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.
Air quality is bad around a big queue of stopped cars, unless the engines are stopped because they are hybrids.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I drive about 100 miles a day in a mix of good country roads and town traffic. I consistently get 50mpg+ or about 4.9 ltrs/100kms. It's a 2004 Prius and so the total savings in petrol over the life of the car balances out the extra initial cost. BUT you have to take the following things into account, I live in Australia and pay $1.40 a ltr for petrol, the car has done 280,000kms, which is a high figure for many cars, I travel at the speed of the surrounding traffic, so I could get better if I tried. I diesel also attracts a premium price here, and fuel prices are $1.50+ ltr, so there is no saving in buying a Diesel vs a hybrid.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I didn't buy a Prius because I expected positive ROI via reduced spending on gas. It is a great car (kind of like a sized-up Honda CRX), and by using less gas, I'm causing less environmental damage. That said, after applying the rebates available at the time (both federal and state), my Prius only ended up costing about $3000 more than a equivalent non-hybrid. And if I had my shit together, I would have gotten one of those "drive in the carpool lane" stickers, before they ran out.
Do away with un-used internal space, not every car sold HAS to be able to haul 5 to 7 people. If a person needs a car that has to haul that amount they will get one
One pattern I've seen is someone who most of the time needs to haul driver plus one passenger at most but occasionally needs to haul more people. People buy for what they can foresee that they will occasionally need. Should someone drive the big SUV or minivan all the time or buy two vehicles and keep them registered and insured?
I had a Prius, and regularly got 48mpg with it. I now have had a Leaf for about 9 months, with about 5400 miles on it, or about 600 miles/month. Compared with my 48mpg Prius, with gas at $3.50/gal (a little high at the moment, but low for much of that 9 months, and it'll be there again by late spring), that's a savings of about $30/month in fuel costs ($44 for gas vs $15 for electricity at 4mpk and $0.10/kWh). With the difference in payments on the Prius (which was $450 vs $400 for the Leaf), I'm saving $80/month with the Leaf...
From TFA: "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."
This is just bullsh*t. I've got a 2006 Prius that gets a very consistent 44 mpg on every tankfull with a combination of city and highway driving. We drive it just like any other of our cars and it's driven by old, middle-aged, and teen drivers and has 114k on the clock. If the Prius suddenly started getting 35 mpg, I'd assume something was very wrong with it (like one of the cylinders was not firing or an injector was clogged) and take it in to the dealer for a checkup.
I only get my driving licence a year ago (I am 41 year old), so I don't have years of history driving cars. From the beginning I drive about half of the time a conventional manual car and half of the time a Prius III. To me the conventional manual car look like a obsolete crap compared to the Prius experience. The most interesting observation I made about myself driving the two cars, is that the Prius give to me a completely different feedback on the energy used for the propulsion.
It's far more easy to drive the Prius in a efficient way that the conventional manual car. In a conventional manual car, the noise of the engine depend almost only on the speed for a given gears ratio, and this noise is almost linear on the speed. Accelerating a such car without changing the gears ratio make just a bit more noise. This give the false feedback that accelerating is a cheap operation, from the energy point of view. On the Prius, the engine is almost silent at stable speed. But when you accelerate it, you immediately notice the engine noise due to his effort to deliver the energy required to accelerate the car. As soon as you finish the acceleration, the engine return almost silent.
The feedback is very different and give you a more correct information of the real energy it take to the engine to respond to you driving style. With such a good feedback, I take a few days to drive a Prius in a efficient way. But it have taken me months to learn how to drive the conventional manual car in a efficient way. This is possible, but you have to be far more attentive on what you do, especially with the gears ratio. Interestingly, as more as I successfully drive efficiently the conventional manual car, as more his engine make noise like the Prius do automatically.
Unfortunately, since the Prius don't have a fixed set of gears ratio but a extremely efficient planetary gears with a couple of electrical motor and associated computed that continuously use the best possible settings, it's not possible to match his performance with a manual gears boxes, and I think with most of the automatic gears boxes. In a city, the electrical propulsion and the computed management of the energy of the Prius in way too advanced to get anything close with a manual gears box. In a standard way with a stable speed you get some chance to get something comparable to the Prius, but it's easy to make mistake. On a highway, it's just impossible to match the Prius because of the lack of gears ratios on the conventional manual car would permit to lower the engine speed (I have a standard 5 ratios box).
This is why more and more new cars get 6 or even 7 gears ratios. But you have to be attentive on how you use them to get a good result. The whole point of the Prius is that all is automatic. You don't have to worry, not only you will automatically get a better consumption because of the technology that continually use the best setting, but the engine noise feedback make it more easy to drive in a efficient way.
From an engineer point of view, I think that the most advanced part of the Prius is his planetary gears system without a fixed ratio. His ability to adjust the ratio without discontinuity give many advantages: the computer can many time par second fine tune the ratio to set the combustion engine at his lower possible rate (if not disabling it completely is case no power is required or stored electrical energy is enough) and there is no need anymore for a clutch with the associated quick change of the combustion engine speed. This give a far more linear and precise system that is more easy to manage in a efficient way with a computer. Now to get this planetary gears system working this way, with the additional requirement that you want to be able to recycle breaking energy, you end up with a couple of electrical motors/generators in both the internal gear and in the external gear of the planetary system. There is different possible configurations, like those used on the Lexus range, but the basic structure is the same: you need a coupl
Apples and oranges. Your calculations forget you've bought a new car. You need to compare new hybrid car against new non-hybrid car to determine if the hybrid option was worthwhile.
Okay, I just got a major WTF. I wanted to know how my car compares to all those super-eco-friendly hybrids you people are talking about, and entered into Google "45 miles per gallon in liters per 100 km".
So, you see, my 2007 VW Touran http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touran, being arguably bigger and more comfortable than a Prius, does a constant 39 MPG with its 1.9 TDI engine when I don't care about mileage. When I make longer trips or try to save some fuel (because it's much more expensive over here in Germany, we pay $ 7.20 per gallon for Diesel), I can easily bring it to 45 MPG, and I am pretty sure it's possible to get it to up to 48 using all those mileage tricks that drive everybody mad and clog up the streets.
So WTF. My huge car has the same mileage as your hybrids, and unlike the hybrids it doesn't come with additional boxes full of toxic chemicals (read: batteries) that become an environmental problem at the car's EOL.
You see, I'm not trying to be a cynic, but until 10 minutes ago I was feeling bad for not being able to afford a hybrid. Now I wonder if they're just some kind of nerd bait.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
The calibration of the fuel flow at the injectors probably isn't that accurate, if the pump says one thing and the car's computer an other, i'd expect the pump to be more accurate.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
While emissions and amount of fuel burned are correlated, they're not fixed ratios. For example, if not all the fuel is burned, there will be less CO2 and more hydrocarbons in the emissions. And if it uses a lean mixture to make sure that all the fuel gets burned, that increases the NOx emissions. Running in the engine's most efficient band makes it run hotter, also increasing NOx - but exhaust gas recirculation is used on many engines to dilute the fuel/air mixture with something that doesn't burn, cooling it down and reducing NOx. Additionally, the catalytic converter design varies by vehicle, and its performance will also affect the emissions. CO and hydrocarbon emissions are increased in cases of incomplete combustion.
The Prius was definitely primarily designed to have low emissions; good fuel economy is a byproduct of that. For example, the engine won't shut off (even if you're stopped) until it has warmed itself and the catalytic converter. This helps reduce emissions, but increases fuel consumption, especially in cold climates in the winter. (Extra power is produced that just charges the battery - losing some percentage of efficiency that it would not if the engine were powering the wheels instead.)
Or we're _really_ going to have to sue Toyota for gaming the mpg indicator.
"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. "
Seems like nonsense. To get an average summed FIFTY on something like a 400 mile three-day weekend trip last year of city, 2-lane, and Freeway with the Prius, I _did_ do 55 and play at driving to the hybrid's strengths. To average _below_ 40, it'd have to be below zero F with SNOW TIRES and over 60 mph. Mid- to upper- 40s on the freeway for hundreds of miles just this New Year's in not-so-warm Minnesota going a legal 70. With the snow tires.
The emissions are not significantly more than they are for producing batteries on non-hybrid cars. That's one of the reasons the Russians and the Chinese are teaming up to produce batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles en mass.
I agree, the computer on my car that takes into account the vehicle speed and input from the injectors basically matches what what I calculate when I fill up at the pump. I reset the trip odometer and one of the mpg averages each time and have been doing that for years. The only vehicle where I think I might see evaporative losses would be on my Jeep but then that will sit unused for extended periods of time and even then I wouldn't think it would be 5%.
Time to offend someone
Hopefully my next car can be a pure electric, if I can make my Prius last that long. Maybe a plug-in Prius or Chevy Volt would be a reasonable alternative. That carpool sticker saved me thousands of hours of time as well (over the years). I really miss it!
You do realize that those thousands of hours translate into increased fuel savings, right?
In short, people who had older vehicles were subsidizing your fuel economy with their time and (lack of) fuel economy. I hope you enjoyed it.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Yes, and as long as you're not non-bottled drinking water (in the 3rd world, or wherever your battery packs get discarded/recycled), you can have a guilt-free vehicle existence. :)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
"IMHO, hybrid cars suffer from complexity right now, and battery weight / performance metrics still are a bit too crappy to make any longer term sense. If we improve batteries, we can reduce complexity, significantly improving the hybrid value proposition. Still a ways off."
Do you actually own a hybrid? I have less problems with my hybrid than I do with my conventional car.
You sound like you work for an oil company.
Thing is, those outside of europe probably don't realise (because you treat diesel as being for trucks), but a VW Golf diesel will get the same or better economy as a hybrid in the real world, without dealing with the manufacture (environmentally very unfriendly)/disposal of expensive batteries, being gutless to drive or dealing with the maintenance of 2 powertrains.
They pull pretty hard, too.
Sure, regenerative braking in a hybrid is a good idea, and theory perhaps they are superior. In the real world, the execution of them currently sucks, and a decent diesel is just as economical without any of the drawbacks.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Turbine? Maybe. Rotary? No, the combustion chamber shape is horrible. They make good power for displacement, but the economy is shocking.
I think what you really want is fuel cell tech.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I do not work for an oil company.
I do not own a hybrid car, but people close to me do. I've had some quality behind the wheel time and cost metrics because of that.
My preference would be we move well away from oil. It is time, and that time can't come quickly enough!
Alcohol would work nicely too. Brazil does that, having some where near 40 percent of it's cars running on alcohol.
When I can get an electric car that is a net gain, I'll gladly drive one. Hoping they sort things out soon.
At this time, hybrid cars are not the money saver people believe they are. They might not ever be! All electric, or alternative fuel may well prove out to be the best option. I don't know and eagerly await new tech to evaluate.
For me, the ROI on the hybrid doesn't warrant buying one. If I were in a different scenario, I would consider one just to support the overall advancement of transportation tech, but I'm not.
Lots of people buy them to save money, and that's not going to be a favorable experience in many cases, which should explain my post nicely enough now.
Having sorted that out, you do know I can counter with snide stuff right?
Do you actually DRIVE your hybrid?
How long have you had it?
I've owned mine since 120K miles or so, over a period of 15 years. .12 / mile inclusive. Cheap ass and very efficient.
It would be a smart wager to say you won't see the same cost metric over a similar period with similar mileage, which was the secondary point of my post.
Blogging because I can...
First, Hybrids are NOT EVs. Period. They are HYBRIDS. Quit trying to lump them in together.
Second, there are 2 types of hybrids. Parallel and Serial. Parallel is what ALL of the car (and SUV) are. They make ZERO sense. Why? Because you very the engine speed all over. Basically, you take a normal car/SUV and add a complex transmission, and then add a motor (which functions as generator) and a small set of batteries and expect to get increased milage. In a city, it MIGHT get you some. But not 10K worth.
HOWEVER, A serial hybrid makes GREAT sense for large SUV/Trucks/Commercial systems. Why? Because an engine is hooked to a generator which charges the battery at a SET SPEED. IOW, you run your engine at the best RPM possible. You remove the complex transmission and give a simple one. This drives the batteries and motor that turns the wheels. Where is this current used at? Diesel Trains. All diesel trains are based on the same set-up. And the reason is that they are EFFICIENT FOR LARGE SYSTEMS. But not for small cars.
Cars should be either fully EV or Fully gas. It should not be a hybrid car. The ONLY reason for doing a hybrid car, is for the bean counters.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Hopefully my next car can be a pure electric, if I can make my Prius last that long. Maybe a plug-in Prius or Chevy Volt would be a reasonable alternative. That carpool sticker saved me thousands of hours of time as well (over the years). I really miss it!
Unless you can charge at work, there aren't any EVs on the market I would suggest for 70 miles of freeway driving. The LEAF is EPA rated at 73 miles / charge which would be cutting it a bit close unless you limit speed on the freeway. Charging at work would make this a non-issue.
The Volt will be available with AT-PZEV compliance soon (current models don't qualify) that will get you into the carpool line and should get you about half your daily commute on electricity and about 40 mpg on the other half.
The Plug-in Prius will also be shipping soon and will be eligible for the carpool stickers. This has 15 mi EV range (though is limited in EV power so acts like a regular Prius on steroids at high speeds and high load demands) and gets basically the same fuel economy as a regular Prius after that.
Both the Volt and Prius plug-in will benefit if you can charge at work, too - the Volt has a chance of making nearly your whole trip on electrons if you do so.
The only other EV coming soon that would have sufficient range for reliable 70mi / day freeway commuting is the Tesla Model S - but that will cost you quite a bit of money.
Disclaimer: I own a Nissan LEAF and a Prius
I bought a Prius for the ultra low emissions rating. The hybrid design does not merely reduce fuel consumption through the electric motor's torque efficiency and regenerative braking, it also allows the gasoline engine run cycle to be optimized for lower emissions. Result: Lessened threat to children and grandparents with respiratory problems in my city.
I don't exceed the speed limit, and I've never run anyone off the road.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
You misunderstand the situation.
Honda changed the programming of the engine long after the cars were sold which cut 10mpg+ off the existing mileage. This was to reduce the warranty costs to Honda of a design defect that caused the batteries to fail prematurely. If the EPA tests were repeated with the new programming the old numbers would be too high by ~10-20mpg. As fuel consumption per mile is the inverse of mpg, users driving normally are using 20-60% more fuel than expected (closer to 60%).
Honda is required to test car models substantially as they are sold; Honda is not in compliance with EPA / DOT regulations and consumer protection laws when it changes software in this way. As many customers reported that the cars were getting 10mpg less than advertised even when new, which is well outside the usual variation from the EPA estimates for other cars, it also seems possible that the original EPA testing was done on a car that was not substantially the same as what customers bought, even before the software change dropped an additional 10mpg off the efficiency.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
It's even more illegal for the manufacturer to change the engine software long after purchase to use 20-60% more fuel, as Honda did. That's why they are getting sued.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Well, Mistral has aircraft rotaries that get 0.42-0.51 lb/hp-hr specific fuel consumption, which is comparable to other aircraft engines that get about 0.4 -0.5 lb/hp-hr. Their planned diesel/Jet-A rotary should have even better efficiency. They do that at around 2000 RPM / 80% of rated power, too, which should reduce wear a great deal. The weight isn't as low as one would expect for a rotary - 1.17 - 1.46 lb/peak hp, depending on model, but this may be a sign of robust construction. Better seal materials and designs have also made rotaries much more reliable than they used to be.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
I ride an electric bicycle for commuting to work. This is not a solution for everyone and is not a replacement for a car, but it is incredibly efficient. If you live in a city that is sympathetic to cyclists (bike paths) and live close enough to ride at 35 kph then this is the best possible solution. I pay less then 2 cents per day in fuel costs (electricity). I know I've been measuring it for years now. I've travelled more then 11,000 km on this vehicle in 2 years. I can ride to neighbouring cities to visit with friends no problems. It is no more dangerous then cycling alone and there are no complaints from pedestrians. The fuel efficiency and almost $0 maintenance cannot be beat. It puts all electric cars and hybrids to shame in terms of savings in money and energy and it is about 100 times cheaper then buying a bus pass every month. I do believe all electric cars are the future, but right now they are definitely overpriced and the included combustion engine will make sure ur ongoing maintenance costs remain high enough to justify the existing high monthly leasing price the car companies depend on.