Not really. I live in CT, and pay $0.125/kWh for electricity, plus a $0.125/kWh "delivery charge", so effectively pay $0.25/kWh for electricity.
Apparently you don't know what "US average" means. Just because your power company is holding you upside down by the ankles and shaking every penny out of your pockets, cartoon-style, doesn't change what the US national average is. Which is approximately 10 cents.
That can't stop you from suing. Look at Jonathan Lee Riches. This is a guy who sued the Guinness Book of World Records for listing him as the man who's filed the most lawsuits in the history of mankind.;) He's among others, he's sued Bill Belichick, George W. Bush, Martha Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Michael Vick, Steve Jobs, Perez Hilton, Somali pirates, Britney Spears, Benazir Bhutto, Pervez Musharraf, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party, the 13 tribes of Israel, Plato, Nostradamus, Che Guevara, James Hoffa, "Various Buddhist Monks", the Lincoln Memorial, the Eiffel Tower, the USS Cole, the book Mein Kampf, the Garden of Eden, the Roman Empire, the Appalachian Trail, Plymouth Rock, the Holy Grail, the dwarf planet Pluto, and the entire Three Mile Island.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't see the Prius even coping with these driving parameters for an extended period of time.
That's, sadly, the sort of inaccurate stereotype hybrids have to deal with. Electric drive is very powerful and durable. Steve Wozniak got ticketed for doing 104mph in his Prius.
In other words, the diesel produces more peak power, more low-rpm power, accelerates faster and gets better mileage while consuming less energy and weighing more.
1) That's only a 10% difference in CO2. 2) Where are you getting your numbers from? This paints a very different performance picture of the two, side-by-side, and give different numbers.
No, you pay for *8* kWh. How many ways do I have to phrase that you can only ever use up half of the pack, that the "40 mile range" is based on only using half of the pack?
1) Batteries are to *an engine* as coal is to oil. Get your analogy straight. 2) You don't "dig lithium out of the ground". Lithium is produced from playas and salars. You pump brine from just below the surface into evaporation ponds on the surface, and use selective crystalization to isolate the lithium salts from the other salts. 3) Lithium is cheap ($4-8/kg in LiCoO2 form), and not a huge percent of the weight of li-ion batteries. 4) The main price aspect to building automotive style li-ions is capital costs, not raw materials.
How do they plan to solve the stale gasoline issue when everyone uses 100% electric for months at a time? You know, gas does go bad after about 6 weeks.
The generator is programmed to use up the gasoline fast enough so that it won't go stale even if it's not necessary to get you to your destination. The energy isn't wasted, mind you -- it goes into the batteries, meaning you have to charge less. Last I heard, the generator was also programmed to come on enough in the winter to provide heat for the cabin.
2002 Jetta TDI: EPA rating was 42 city, 49 highway
Ah, you must have gotten the GLS sedan. Note that that is both a smaller and weaker car than the Prius. Although, reportedly, more fun to drive despite that, due to the handling.:) Toyota really should put more effort into the numb handling of the Prius; it's not inherent to being a hybrid, just the result of various design decisions they've made. It's gotten a lot better with the 2010 over the Gen 1 and 2, although there's still room for improvement.
Overall, the numbers are pretty damned close to my real-world experience driving the car 85,000 miles over 8 years.
As much as people like to rail against EPA numbers, if you go to their site where people can post their real-world experience numbers, you'll find that they average pretty close to the official ratings.
True, but recall that when I purchased the car Diesel was cheaper than gasoline. So I got better fuel mileage in a car that burned cheaper fuel.
If your issue is cost, then yes, it's fair to compare mpgs (a volumetric comparison), adjusted for price at the pump (note that the price at the pump when you buy is *not* the number you should use, since prices vary so much over time; you should average historical prices and then adjust them forward with projected inflation). But if your main concern is the environment or oil depletion, you want a gravimetric efficiency comparison. And of course, non-CO2 related pollution can't be compared at all by mpgs even adjusting for fuel density; you have to look up the pollution scores on each vehicle (the TDI does much worse than the Prius).
and burn used fryalator oil as my primary fuel.
Obviously that will only support a very limited number of users. On the whole, biofuels are pretty bad for the environment. Growing crops of any kind in general is pretty bad, when you look at the huge amounts of water it gobbles and land it consumes versus how much fuel it produces. You get dozens or even hundreds of times more vehicle miles per acre using solar thermal power to run EVs, for example, instead.
Still, I have to say, you seem to be taking a reasoned approach, and I commend you for that.
Off the bat, they'll be starting at about $32k after government incentives. If you have any state or local incentives, you may well be able to get one for $30k or less, even on the first batch to roll out the door.
And yes, it does beat the heck out of the plug-in Prius -- not the least of why, unless you only drive at low speeds and accelerations, the plug-in Prius still burns gas on your everyday commute (just not as much), while the Volt doesn't.
After the tax credit, it will come in at about $32k.
Compared to a $16k Toyota Corolla you're spending about $19k more.
Similar performance to a Corolla, but a much nicer standard interior. If it were a pure gasoline car, it'd probably be about $18k. At $4/gal gasoline, the $14k difference would buy 3,500 gallons of gasoline, or 105k Corolla miles. Electricity averages about a third of the cost of gasoline, so raise that to 140k miles breakeven.
The average car on the road is about 9.5 years old (and growing), implying that the average expected lifespan of a vehicle on the road today is 19 years (and growing). The average driver drives 12,000 miles a year. Even the first-gen Volt would break even at 11 1/2 years.
Now, there are two additional arguments that need to be addressed here.
1) "But *I* won't keep the car that long; I'll sell it and get a new car long before then!" -- Operation costs are the prime driver of maintaining resale value in older cars; the same logic that makes a car a good buy for the original buyer equally applies to used-car buyers. Now, yes, depreciation is faster in the first several years than later on, so you'll take an extra hit on that. But that applies to *every* new car purchase.
2) "What about the time-value of money?" Absolutely, this needs to be taken into account. Overall, financially, buying a first-gen Volt and holding onto it would be roughly equivalent to buying a similar $18k gasoline sedan and holding onto it. But the normal sedan wouldn't give you the environmental benefits, the lower maintenance, the ability to charge from home (i.e., almost never needing to stop for gas!), and so forth.
No, it's not a car for everyone. But it doesn't need to be. They're only going to be making tens of thousands per year right off the bat.
8kWh to fully recharge the pack (it's a 16kWh pack, but only half of it gets used so that it lasts longer). At 90% net charging efficiency, and the US average of about $0.10/kWh, that's $0.89.
That, too, is an oversimplification. Torque and rpm are interchangeable by gearing. What you wrote is only accurate if you believe that gearing can't be different between different cars (which is silly).
Now, what really matters for acceleration is not so much peak horsepower (combined with appropriate gearing), but an integral of the horsepower curve. An engine with a narrow peak horsepower range may be outperformed by one with a lower peak horsepower but a broader range for it. Of course, the extent to which that matters depends in part on the transmission.
Diesel fouls sooner than gasoline. Good issue to raise, by the way; it doesn't affect most people either way, but some people leave their cars sitting for a long time, and it's a big deal for them.
So 10% less power and still heaver. Great. And don't pull out that torque garbage; torque and RPM are interchangeable just by choosing different gearing. Power and how broad the power bands are is what matters.
And no, diesels don't give you a 30% efficiency boost, as was pointed out to you elsewhere. They give you a 30% *mpg* boost, but half of that is due to using a denser fuel.
1) The replacement rate on hybrid battery packs is *extremely* low, and they're not that expensive any more. *New* Prius batteries cost $2,229 for the first-gen and $2,588 for the second-gen. Used packs can be bought for several hundred dollars. 2) Where are you getting "similar highway ratings"? The Jetta TDIs score just above 40mpg (depends on what year you got). 3) Diesel mpgs != gasoline mpgs. Diesel is a denser fuel, representing more oil per gallon and releasing more CO2 per gallon. The proper comparison is gravimetric, not volumetric.
If you bothered to actually look you'd find the diesels from Mercedes and BMW as well as Audi and VW all are quite clean these days.
Go ahead. Show me a single commercial SULEV diesel. Just one. I'm waiting.
Go ahead -- show me a single commercial diesel that has the interior space of a Prius and does 0-60 in no more than 10 seconds, but gets 89g/km CO2 NEDC and 60g/km on the 10-15. Or even close. Just one. I'm waiting.
Heck VW diesels keep winning the green vehicle awards over the hybrids.
2009 was the *first* time a diesel won the Green Car of the Year award, and there was only two hybrids in the competition -- the Saturn Vue Two-Mode and the Ford Fusion Hybrid. The Prius, which blows away the Jetta TDI's CO2 and other emissions ratings while having more interior room, wasn't nominated.
The Jetta TDI's CO2 scores are better than average for a similar sized car but nothing exceptional (it's "mpg" numbers are high, but that's partly due to diesel's greater density). It's pollution scores are unimpressive. A mass-market SULEV diesel is still a long way away. And to get there will almost certainly involve some PITA features, such as urea injection or regularly-replaced particulate filters.
First off, "beating the fuel economy" is a grossly misleading metric. Diesel is about 15% denser than gasoline. So for each gallon in that "miles per gallon" figure, you're actually burning 15% more oil and releasing 15% more CO2.
Yes, they are more efficient, but not as efficient as a mpg comparison makes them out to be.
As for why they're not paired with hybrids, it's simple: diminishing returns. And mass and volume issues, too. And the fact that the smaller you make your diesel engine, the harder it becomes to pass US emissions req's. Modern diesels are a lot cleaner than old diesels, and are as clean or cleaner than old gasoline engines -- but gasoline engines have correspondingly cleaned up, too, and still easily beat modern diesels.
That's a lot better than the main article. The main article mainly just repeatedly criticizes the movie for daring to provide backstory (gasp!) and for Neytiri saying (a single time) that the reason she saved him was that he has "heart" -- never mind that it was a clear metaphor for bravery given that she just watched him get chased by an overgrown cat and jump off a waterfall.
Your link is a lot funnier, as it concisely harps on how much of an archetype this story is.
The vortex engine is not an entire power plant in and of itself. It is a chimney. A chimney that could potentially reach the entire height of the troposphere.
Now, on Earth, there's generally already an energy difference between the surface and the upper atmosphere; only rarely are the conditions just right for the planet to rapidly harness that potential energy difference, but when it does, we call it a "tornado" or a "hurricane" or similar. But you don't *have* to limit yourself to that free energy source. The greater the temperature, the more energy you can produce.
Your windmills are vertical and attached to a structure larger than the Burj Dubai. Mine are horizontal and radial, and connected to a relatively small structure.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. I live in CT, and pay $0.125/kWh for electricity, plus a $0.125/kWh "delivery charge", so effectively pay $0.25/kWh for electricity.
Apparently you don't know what "US average" means. Just because your power company is holding you upside down by the ankles and shaking every penny out of your pockets, cartoon-style, doesn't change what the US national average is. Which is approximately 10 cents.
That can't stop you from suing. Look at Jonathan Lee Riches. This is a guy who sued the Guinness Book of World Records for listing him as the man who's filed the most lawsuits in the history of mankind. ;) He's among others, he's sued Bill Belichick, George W. Bush, Martha Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Michael Vick, Steve Jobs, Perez Hilton, Somali pirates, Britney Spears, Benazir Bhutto, Pervez Musharraf, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party, the 13 tribes of Israel, Plato, Nostradamus, Che Guevara, James Hoffa, "Various Buddhist Monks", the Lincoln Memorial, the Eiffel Tower, the USS Cole, the book Mein Kampf, the Garden of Eden, the Roman Empire, the Appalachian Trail, Plymouth Rock, the Holy Grail, the dwarf planet Pluto, and the entire Three Mile Island.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't see the Prius even coping with these driving parameters for an extended period of time.
That's, sadly, the sort of inaccurate stereotype hybrids have to deal with. Electric drive is very powerful and durable. Steve Wozniak got ticketed for doing 104mph in his Prius.
In other words, the diesel produces more peak power, more low-rpm power, accelerates faster and gets better mileage while consuming less energy and weighing more.
1) That's only a 10% difference in CO2.
2) Where are you getting your numbers from? This paints a very different performance picture of the two, side-by-side, and give different numbers.
No, you pay for *8* kWh. How many ways do I have to phrase that you can only ever use up half of the pack, that the "40 mile range" is based on only using half of the pack?
1) Batteries are to *an engine* as coal is to oil. Get your analogy straight.
2) You don't "dig lithium out of the ground". Lithium is produced from playas and salars. You pump brine from just below the surface into evaporation ponds on the surface, and use selective crystalization to isolate the lithium salts from the other salts.
3) Lithium is cheap ($4-8/kg in LiCoO2 form), and not a huge percent of the weight of li-ion batteries.
4) The main price aspect to building automotive style li-ions is capital costs, not raw materials.
No, the GP is wrong. It has a 16kWh pack, but a 50% DoD (Depth of Discharge). I.e., only half that capacity is actually used (8kWh).
Agreed. Mileage once the battery is depleted, please?
I could try to dig up the article again, but the last one I saw on the subject, GM was citing a figure in vicinity of 42mpg.
How do they plan to solve the stale gasoline issue when everyone uses 100% electric for months at a time? You know, gas does go bad after about 6 weeks.
The generator is programmed to use up the gasoline fast enough so that it won't go stale even if it's not necessary to get you to your destination. The energy isn't wasted, mind you -- it goes into the batteries, meaning you have to charge less. Last I heard, the generator was also programmed to come on enough in the winter to provide heat for the cabin.
All the replacements I've read about were in the $3600 range
Toyota cut their price in fall of 2008.
2002 Jetta TDI: EPA rating was 42 city, 49 highway
Ah, you must have gotten the GLS sedan. Note that that is both a smaller and weaker car than the Prius. Although, reportedly, more fun to drive despite that, due to the handling. :) Toyota really should put more effort into the numb handling of the Prius; it's not inherent to being a hybrid, just the result of various design decisions they've made. It's gotten a lot better with the 2010 over the Gen 1 and 2, although there's still room for improvement.
Overall, the numbers are pretty damned close to my real-world experience driving the car 85,000 miles over 8 years.
As much as people like to rail against EPA numbers, if you go to their site where people can post their real-world experience numbers, you'll find that they average pretty close to the official ratings.
True, but recall that when I purchased the car Diesel was cheaper than gasoline. So I got better fuel mileage in a car that burned cheaper fuel.
If your issue is cost, then yes, it's fair to compare mpgs (a volumetric comparison), adjusted for price at the pump (note that the price at the pump when you buy is *not* the number you should use, since prices vary so much over time; you should average historical prices and then adjust them forward with projected inflation). But if your main concern is the environment or oil depletion, you want a gravimetric efficiency comparison. And of course, non-CO2 related pollution can't be compared at all by mpgs even adjusting for fuel density; you have to look up the pollution scores on each vehicle (the TDI does much worse than the Prius).
and burn used fryalator oil as my primary fuel.
Obviously that will only support a very limited number of users. On the whole, biofuels are pretty bad for the environment. Growing crops of any kind in general is pretty bad, when you look at the huge amounts of water it gobbles and land it consumes versus how much fuel it produces. You get dozens or even hundreds of times more vehicle miles per acre using solar thermal power to run EVs, for example, instead.
Still, I have to say, you seem to be taking a reasoned approach, and I commend you for that.
Off the bat, they'll be starting at about $32k after government incentives. If you have any state or local incentives, you may well be able to get one for $30k or less, even on the first batch to roll out the door.
And yes, it does beat the heck out of the plug-in Prius -- not the least of why, unless you only drive at low speeds and accelerations, the plug-in Prius still burns gas on your everyday commute (just not as much), while the Volt doesn't.
OK, lets assume this car will cost ~$35k or so.
After the tax credit, it will come in at about $32k.
Compared to a $16k Toyota Corolla you're spending about $19k more.
Similar performance to a Corolla, but a much nicer standard interior. If it were a pure gasoline car, it'd probably be about $18k. At $4/gal gasoline, the $14k difference would buy 3,500 gallons of gasoline, or 105k Corolla miles. Electricity averages about a third of the cost of gasoline, so raise that to 140k miles breakeven.
The average car on the road is about 9.5 years old (and growing), implying that the average expected lifespan of a vehicle on the road today is 19 years (and growing). The average driver drives 12,000 miles a year. Even the first-gen Volt would break even at 11 1/2 years.
Now, there are two additional arguments that need to be addressed here.
1) "But *I* won't keep the car that long; I'll sell it and get a new car long before then!" -- Operation costs are the prime driver of maintaining resale value in older cars; the same logic that makes a car a good buy for the original buyer equally applies to used-car buyers. Now, yes, depreciation is faster in the first several years than later on, so you'll take an extra hit on that. But that applies to *every* new car purchase.
2) "What about the time-value of money?" Absolutely, this needs to be taken into account. Overall, financially, buying a first-gen Volt and holding onto it would be roughly equivalent to buying a similar $18k gasoline sedan and holding onto it. But the normal sedan wouldn't give you the environmental benefits, the lower maintenance, the ability to charge from home (i.e., almost never needing to stop for gas!), and so forth.
No, it's not a car for everyone. But it doesn't need to be. They're only going to be making tens of thousands per year right off the bat.
8kWh to fully recharge the pack (it's a 16kWh pack, but only half of it gets used so that it lasts longer). At 90% net charging efficiency, and the US average of about $0.10/kWh, that's $0.89.
Electric cars are cheap to run. :)
Translation: The Volt will really be out in 2011 and will sell for $39,999.98.
Where are you getting 2011 from? Just the other day, they were talking about moving the launch date *up*.
You're right about price, though -- albeit, that's before the $7.5k from Uncle Sam and any local/state incentives you may have.
Last I heard, they were talking about shipping it with a 10-year, 100,000 mile warranty.
That, too, is an oversimplification. Torque and rpm are interchangeable by gearing. What you wrote is only accurate if you believe that gearing can't be different between different cars (which is silly).
Now, what really matters for acceleration is not so much peak horsepower (combined with appropriate gearing), but an integral of the horsepower curve. An engine with a narrow peak horsepower range may be outperformed by one with a lower peak horsepower but a broader range for it. Of course, the extent to which that matters depends in part on the transmission.
Diesel fouls sooner than gasoline. Good issue to raise, by the way; it doesn't affect most people either way, but some people leave their cars sitting for a long time, and it's a big deal for them.
So 10% less power and still heaver. Great. And don't pull out that torque garbage; torque and RPM are interchangeable just by choosing different gearing. Power and how broad the power bands are is what matters.
And no, diesels don't give you a 30% efficiency boost, as was pointed out to you elsewhere. They give you a 30% *mpg* boost, but half of that is due to using a denser fuel.
1) The replacement rate on hybrid battery packs is *extremely* low, and they're not that expensive any more. *New* Prius batteries cost $2,229 for the first-gen and $2,588 for the second-gen. Used packs can be bought for several hundred dollars.
2) Where are you getting "similar highway ratings"? The Jetta TDIs score just above 40mpg (depends on what year you got).
3) Diesel mpgs != gasoline mpgs. Diesel is a denser fuel, representing more oil per gallon and releasing more CO2 per gallon. The proper comparison is gravimetric, not volumetric.
If you bothered to actually look you'd find the diesels from Mercedes and BMW as well as Audi and VW all are quite clean these days.
Go ahead. Show me a single commercial SULEV diesel. Just one. I'm waiting.
Go ahead -- show me a single commercial diesel that has the interior space of a Prius and does 0-60 in no more than 10 seconds, but gets 89g/km CO2 NEDC and 60g/km on the 10-15. Or even close. Just one. I'm waiting.
Heck VW diesels keep winning the green vehicle awards over the hybrids.
2009 was the *first* time a diesel won the Green Car of the Year award, and there was only two hybrids in the competition -- the Saturn Vue Two-Mode and the Ford Fusion Hybrid. The Prius, which blows away the Jetta TDI's CO2 and other emissions ratings while having more interior room, wasn't nominated.
The Jetta TDI's CO2 scores are better than average for a similar sized car but nothing exceptional (it's "mpg" numbers are high, but that's partly due to diesel's greater density). It's pollution scores are unimpressive. A mass-market SULEV diesel is still a long way away. And to get there will almost certainly involve some PITA features, such as urea injection or regularly-replaced particulate filters.
First off, "beating the fuel economy" is a grossly misleading metric. Diesel is about 15% denser than gasoline. So for each gallon in that "miles per gallon" figure, you're actually burning 15% more oil and releasing 15% more CO2.
Yes, they are more efficient, but not as efficient as a mpg comparison makes them out to be.
As for why they're not paired with hybrids, it's simple: diminishing returns. And mass and volume issues, too. And the fact that the smaller you make your diesel engine, the harder it becomes to pass US emissions req's. Modern diesels are a lot cleaner than old diesels, and are as clean or cleaner than old gasoline engines -- but gasoline engines have correspondingly cleaned up, too, and still easily beat modern diesels.
That's a lot better than the main article. The main article mainly just repeatedly criticizes the movie for daring to provide backstory (gasp!) and for Neytiri saying (a single time) that the reason she saved him was that he has "heart" -- never mind that it was a clear metaphor for bravery given that she just watched him get chased by an overgrown cat and jump off a waterfall.
Your link is a lot funnier, as it concisely harps on how much of an archetype this story is.
The vortex engine is not an entire power plant in and of itself. It is a chimney. A chimney that could potentially reach the entire height of the troposphere.
Now, on Earth, there's generally already an energy difference between the surface and the upper atmosphere; only rarely are the conditions just right for the planet to rapidly harness that potential energy difference, but when it does, we call it a "tornado" or a "hurricane" or similar. But you don't *have* to limit yourself to that free energy source. The greater the temperature, the more energy you can produce.
Your windmills are vertical and attached to a structure larger than the Burj Dubai.
Mine are horizontal and radial, and connected to a relatively small structure.