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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)."
"None have complained about having to fork over money for a new battery system yet." Just forked over $3K for a new battery pack on a 2002 Prius. Expect no more than 10 years. The wave of battery failures is just starting.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think there's a tendency to stomp on the gas for anyone whose time value exceeds their gas cost. I can cut an average of over 5 minutes per day off my commute by stomping the gas. Call that 2 hours per month. Does it cost me an extra $240 / month in gas an maintenance? No.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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!
The only way your GTI gets 31 mpg is if the stoplight in question is at the top of the mountain and you coast the rest of the way down. Sheesh! You're not going by what you see while cruising on the highway up on the trip computer, right? (BTW, 'trip computers' are notoriously bad from what I've seen. If you go to forums for a particular car and look at what the trip computer folks are reporting, vs. the people who really measure, you can often see a 5-10 mpg difference, with the trip computer almost always reading high.) GTI's typically run in the 16-22 mpg range, depending on how driven and type of driving from what I've seen.
You're correct however, about the TDIs. Our Jetta TDI has averaged 34.58 mpg over about the last 1.5 years in mostly city driving (measured by filling the tank at the same station and pump most of the time, and recording the amount of fuel and distance traveled each time... not quite as accurate as some methods, but much better than the trip computer.... and over that long of time, it starts to become pretty accurate.) We've never really taken a true highway trip. The closest we came is a trip through the mountains where we got 41 mpg for a tank. I know the TDIs are capable of much better in true highway situations.
Which if you think about it is pretty pathetic. Diesel cars have been able to get that for years. There are definitely places like Minnesota where diesel is a lot less realistic, but hybrids aren't going to make much sense there either as batteries don't like the cold any more than diesel does.
Agreed, mid-40s in miles per US gallon is pathetic indeed. I drive a diesel Mercedes C stationwagon (similar in size to the Prius V), and average at least 55mpg (US gallons) in our usual mix of driving, which encompasses comparable distances of highway, rural dirt road, suburban, and urban driving. In summer it usually gets better than 60mpg, mostly because the road conditions are less likely to be nasty. The car is almost 9 years old, and has about 320000km on the clock.
Incidentally, I live in central Finland, which has winters not dissimilar to those of Minnesota (been there, in summer and winter and in the transitions between them). Relatively modern diesel cars are quite OK in such climates; the filling stations change the diesel mix for winter to account for the cold.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
If I'm home 5 minutes earlier, I can walk my dog for an hour and five minutes. Or play with my kid 5 minutes longer. My commute is not anywhere near my top 10 list of things to enjoy.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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...
I have ADD and drive my manual transmission just fine, you insensitive clod!
Sheesh. So much garbage in one post.
So, I drive a Toyota Prius. It does get that good gas mileage advertised on the sticker. Yes, I do floor it from time to time. Yeah, some of the time I drive like I'm carrying eggs to the Czar, but I did that with the car I had before this one, too. Mostly, I just DRIVE THE CAR.
In no particular order:
1. The Prius does implement a CVT. It's electric, not with belts, and it doesn't slip. Power in vs. power out is no better or worse than a standard automatic, or maybe even a manual. Advantage: It allows the engine to spin at its most efficient spot for the power required.
2. The Prius's engine isn't, technically, an Otto cycle engine. It's Atkinson. Atkinson's have better fuel efficiency than an Otto, but they got lousy torque. Oh - look at that: There's a couple of electric motors in the drive train! These>do have torque, and lots of it. So, maybe this car doesn't leave rubber strips behind it when it gets floored. On the other hand, neither did my old Civic. Or the VW I had back in the day. On the straight and level this engine pulls 55 mpg at 65 mph, better at slower, worse at faster.
3. So, up and down? The engine on the 2010+ Prius has about the same horsepower as any car its size, so there's no trouble climbing hills. Yep, you do get less gas mileage when doing so. But, when you're going downhill, the Prius isn't shy about cutting off the fuel to the engine and dumping some energy into the battery. Yep, you only get some 30% of the energy back after taking all the losses in the electronics into account - but that's better than the 0% with a conventional car.
4. Braking. After the round trip through the batteries/electronics you get 30% of the energy from the stop. That's still better than the 0% that a conventional car gets.
In general, hybrid cars are just getting started. A good deal of the losses in a hybrid have to do with the silicon MOSFET transistors in the inverters that take energy out of/put energy back into/ the electric motors on a hybrid. In the near term silicon carbide transistors are coming. They have less RDSon (less resistance), switch faster, and can tolerate much higher temperatures than silicon. So, there's better electrical efficiency right off, hence cooling requirements are less, and, with the higher temperature tolerance, the transistors don't have to kept as cool. Therefore, the energy required to move all that cooling fluid around the inverters gets reduced by large double-digit percentages and the weight of the additional cooling gear also goes away. 70 mpg, anyone?
If you want to point fingers at idiots, then point them at the engineers and marketing people at other car manufacturers who, when faced with the Prius, built cars with stupid little electric motors bolted in the same place where one would put a starter motor, rigged said motor to give a bit of a power boost on acceleration, resulting in "Not Much Change", then had the gall to call such cars "hybrids". Even when the blame things got worse gas mileage than their non "hybrid" brethren.
If you want to have real fun, think about the gas mileage on a Toyota-style hybrid diesel. 90 mpg, anyone?
Remember: It's not just the more efficient Atkinson engine and battery combination. It's the energy recovery and the ability to go medium to short distances on battery alone with the engine off. The Prius really was a break-through. Everybody else is just playing catch-up.
The one in a Prius does very well. The old style belt and variable pulleys are not what I consider long life. The planetary gear set in a Prius with the pair of motor generators to implement a CVT has reduced the weight and complexity of a transmission to the point where all friction components (clutches, bands brakes) are eliminated along with all hydraulics. All mechanical shifting is gone. It has no clutches or gears that engage or disengage. This is true from freeway speeds forward to reverse. The only mechanical part that is shifted is the park cog.
I have over 160K miles on mine. At 100K I changed plugs. Other than that, it has needed only normal oil changes and such. With regenerative braking, it is still on it's original brakes. For a zero breakdown car with no mechanical issues, I have no complaints. The milage is less then the EPA estimate, but it is way ahead of any other car I owned. My lifetime average MPG is 45.3.
I have no reason to sue the manufacture for this. All cars by all manufactures did not do as well as the EPA estimates in 2002. Hybrids are no exception.
Never changing any belts, alternators, water pumps, brakes bulbs, etc in a decade of commuting is a great trade off. I have had to change the small 12 volt battery a couple of times, ~5 year intervals, and tires about every 60K is not a problem.
The gas savings over my old car with 160K of driving is considerable. The cost savings in maintenance is a bonus. Not meeting EPA guidelines on MPG, not a surprise for city traffic. Stoplights and traffic kills millage. I'm impressed it does as well as it does.
The truth shall set you free!