The Volt uses electric motors I believe. There is a special extra transmission that engages at highway speeds to allow the generator to directly drive the car, but otherwise the electric motors are doing the job.
Funny, horses survive in the wild just fine on absolutely nothing but grass.
You 'can' spend money to stable a horse or you could just keep it on your own property...sort of like, you know, a car. Likewise, grass can feed them just fine.
As for horseshit, you really want to talk about emissions? That's the whole friggin problem with cars...the emissions.
With a hybrid you haven't, since you've been buying gas the whole time. Less gas for sure, but not $8K worth. And as to actual cost, you don't think car companies would be dropping the price to match that supposed cheaper 'actual' price?
The problem with hybrids in general is that when the battery dies you have to replace it, at least in Toyotas. Not so in the older Honda hybrid tech.
So you have a car that needs a $3-4K fix after 120,000 miles or somewhere there. The regular sedan likely keeps on going well past that given Toyota/Honda reliability.
The real savings are when you remove the ICE and transmission and use electric motors like the Volt does. As such current 'hybrids' have to pay the maintenance associated with those parts of the vehicles etc.
I had a 2003 Civic Hybrid and now have a 2012 Insight. My battery died at about 100k miles and I was able to drive it until 160k. In fact I'd still be driving it if Honda in their 'brilliance' didn't run the 'bad battery' code through the check engine light. Hence I couldn't get my emissions tested even though the engine is working fine. Sigh.
But I really noticed the benefits of the hybrid tech. higher mileage and higher horsepower at the same time:) Without the battery helping it was a wee bit underpowered as expected and the mileage dropped from mid 40s to 40 or so.
but they still use gas as well so they have the penalties of both. They are a stop gap measure until the general range/charge time issues of batteries are solved.
the 'next' step is more cars like Volts. Electric motors instead of ICEs and then use a generator to run the electric motors. It's more efficient anyway.
"Pure electric? Zero chance." Uh, electric doesn't mean battery powered it means it runs on electricity. The Chevy Volt is completely electric under 60 mph. Even when the battery runs out, it's still 'electric' via the gas generator. It runs on electricity. How it gets that electricity is up to you. You could put a 2nd battery pack in, or use hydrogen fuel cell, or propane as you suggest. Whatever, the important part is getting to electric propulsion so now your fuel can come from anything rather than 'only' a limited and polluting fossil fuel source.
Diesel-Electric locomotives are 'electric'. They get their electricity from diesel generators, but the motors are still 100% electric. Why? Because it's more efficient. The Volt is basically the same thing.
What needs to still improve is the technology for storing energy. Today the single best energy storage mechanism is fossil fuels. Unfortunately there are some significant draw backs to using this as a fuel source.
Also, you'll never get away from pollution completely because heat pollution will occur -- second law and all that.
Wait you're complaining about the heat pollution of 'electric' vehicles and implicitly saying internal COMBUSTION engines are better in this regard? wow.
The entire point of the article if you didn't bother to even read the summary was that IF you got your electricity from green, it made sense. Yet you're now claiming that the maintenance on the 'green' infrastructure stuff would be bad. Ever think that there's maintenance on the fossil fuel sources too?
Oh and fossil fuel sources have one other problem....'fuel'. Green sources don't pay for fuel generally speaking, because sunlight and wind are free.
well that's a downside to 'Politicians' and political parties not 'government':)
Besides if people really want they can still run for office themselves to solve the problems. And no it isn't easy, but it isn't supposed to be either.
It is in the nature of society to procrastinate. That's why we have governments so that we can push ourselves to do the things we'd rather not be bothered with until it's too late.
Nobody wants to pay higher gas prices, that's obvious. What society, and the vaunted free market, don't deal with is long term planning. If cheaper gas would be dwarfed by the cost of the consequences of using it in a linear and quick timeframe, we'd easily pay the higher price to make it cheaper in the long term.
When the return on investment is 50 years away, nobody is going to do that individually. But as a society we can move our government to do that so we all can benefit long term.
The federal highway system is both an example and a detriment. There was no financial justification for it. It was largely military thanks to Eisenhower's observations of the AutoBahn in Nazi Germany. Yet it became the single largest source of financial growth in our nations history. Now, the use of it, via fossil fuel vehicles, is going to radically change our environment with costs that will dwarf it's own rewards.
Was it wrong to create? Hardly, but if we aren't looking 50-100 years down the road we aren't going to see the roadblocks we're building for ourselves in time to avoid them.
Quite reasonable. I remember having a conversation with a gear head friend of mine on how he and his son had redone the brakes on his truck.
My thought is, well he's good at that, but if I tried it I would not want to be around said car on the road:) Yet there's no certification needed to pass, and frankly you'd have to drive the car (trailering it would make it too expensive) to get to the inspection station in the first place.
But yeah there are *many* things about our auto processes that are just amazing Rube Goldberg machines:)
'Environmental' options never will match current fossil fuel prices.
Neither will fossil fuels as with any limited resource as it is used up, the price is only going up.
Now factor in the cost of global warming due to all that CO2 being released. It's a cost that will be realized many many years after it is actually introduced. Do you wait for that to happen or do you start to try and mitigate it now while there is still decades of time before the really bad stuff happens?
Or it's proven that the coal industry has better lobbyists than the automotive industry. Without comparisons for cost, efficiencies and quite a few other issues simply that we've reduced cars more doesn't mean it's 'easier'.
The point with hybrids, or more correctly, full electrics, is that they *can* be made clean by converting the electrical source.
You can't ever make a gasoline car 'green' because it uses fossil fuels, period. Electrics only use fossil fuels as long as the power source does. Bio-diesel is an interesting idea but what I've read says it can't scale to replace current gasoline usage. It will still have a place for some applications but it can't be the majority fuel source.
Of course I did just read about a plant that converts plastics to usable crude oil too, so even some of our current waste products might become useful fuel stores too. (Don't know how this compares 'green' wise)
I think his point is the production hybrids are fine because they are built and made by large corporations with at least some incentive not to build death traps (anymore anyway).
Likewise, emergency responders will have a basic idea of how hybrid cars are put together and where the dangerous stuff is. If it's a self made car, you really can't be sure of what is where.
"I mean, why he put the batteries in the A Pillar I'll never know...and sadly neither will that Jaws of Life operator..."
You wouldn't consider the original cost of the civic unless he did this with a brand new car. Since it was likely through most of its useful life prior to conversion. you would only use the value he could have gotten for resale at time of conversion.
CO2 emissions from cars have been reduced? Highly doubtful. Sources please? Anyway the number of actual cars has gone up significantly eating up an savings you might find.
Now, certainly cars get better mileage thus reducing the amount of gas they use, but the amount of CO2 produced by each gallon of gas used is still quite the same as before.
Slashdot Mirror
The Volt uses electric motors I believe. There is a special extra transmission that engages at highway speeds to allow the generator to directly drive the car, but otherwise the electric motors are doing the job.
linky with pictures of the gearings
Exactly :) You can use whatever fuel source you have available.
Funny, horses survive in the wild just fine on absolutely nothing but grass.
You 'can' spend money to stable a horse or you could just keep it on your own property...sort of like, you know, a car. Likewise, grass can feed them just fine.
As for horseshit, you really want to talk about emissions? That's the whole friggin problem with cars...the emissions.
So you're saying a diesel electric locomotive isn't moving entirely by electric power? You might want to look that up...
'Electric' means the propulsion. Where you get that electricity is open to however you provide it.
If you want to argue otherwise, then batteries are electric, they're chemical.
Are you sure every word ever written was meant to be taken completely literally?
Cost of a new horse....grass.
Cost of new car in 1900? quite a bit higher...
With a hybrid you haven't, since you've been buying gas the whole time. Less gas for sure, but not $8K worth. And as to actual cost, you don't think car companies would be dropping the price to match that supposed cheaper 'actual' price?
The problem with hybrids in general is that when the battery dies you have to replace it, at least in Toyotas. Not so in the older Honda hybrid tech.
:) Without the battery helping it was a wee bit underpowered as expected and the mileage dropped from mid 40s to 40 or so.
So you have a car that needs a $3-4K fix after 120,000 miles or somewhere there. The regular sedan likely keeps on going well past that given Toyota/Honda reliability.
The real savings are when you remove the ICE and transmission and use electric motors like the Volt does. As such current 'hybrids' have to pay the maintenance associated with those parts of the vehicles etc.
I had a 2003 Civic Hybrid and now have a 2012 Insight. My battery died at about 100k miles and I was able to drive it until 160k. In fact I'd still be driving it if Honda in their 'brilliance' didn't run the 'bad battery' code through the check engine light. Hence I couldn't get my emissions tested even though the engine is working fine. Sigh.
But I really noticed the benefits of the hybrid tech. higher mileage and higher horsepower at the same time
but they still use gas as well so they have the penalties of both. They are a stop gap measure until the general range/charge time issues of batteries are solved.
the 'next' step is more cars like Volts. Electric motors instead of ICEs and then use a generator to run the electric motors. It's more efficient anyway.
you know what? Cars were infinitely more expensive to build than horses were...guess we should get rid of the car then.
'bonehead' - great name, you do it proud.
"Pure electric? Zero chance." Uh, electric doesn't mean battery powered it means it runs on electricity. The Chevy Volt is completely electric under 60 mph. Even when the battery runs out, it's still 'electric' via the gas generator. It runs on electricity. How it gets that electricity is up to you. You could put a 2nd battery pack in, or use hydrogen fuel cell, or propane as you suggest. Whatever, the important part is getting to electric propulsion so now your fuel can come from anything rather than 'only' a limited and polluting fossil fuel source.
Diesel-Electric locomotives are 'electric'. They get their electricity from diesel generators, but the motors are still 100% electric. Why? Because it's more efficient. The Volt is basically the same thing.
What needs to still improve is the technology for storing energy. Today the single best energy storage mechanism is fossil fuels. Unfortunately there are some significant draw backs to using this as a fuel source.
Also, you'll never get away from pollution completely because heat pollution will occur -- second law and all that.
Wait you're complaining about the heat pollution of 'electric' vehicles and implicitly saying internal COMBUSTION engines are better in this regard? wow.
The entire point of the article if you didn't bother to even read the summary was that IF you got your electricity from green, it made sense. Yet you're now claiming that the maintenance on the 'green' infrastructure stuff would be bad. Ever think that there's maintenance on the fossil fuel sources too?
Oh and fossil fuel sources have one other problem....'fuel'. Green sources don't pay for fuel generally speaking, because sunlight and wind are free.
If you reduce emissions per vehicle by 30% but increase vehicles by 50% you haven't 'reduced' anything...
well that's a downside to 'Politicians' and political parties not 'government' :)
Besides if people really want they can still run for office themselves to solve the problems. And no it isn't easy, but it isn't supposed to be either.
It is in the nature of society to procrastinate. That's why we have governments so that we can push ourselves to do the things we'd rather not be bothered with until it's too late.
Nobody wants to pay higher gas prices, that's obvious. What society, and the vaunted free market, don't deal with is long term planning. If cheaper gas would be dwarfed by the cost of the consequences of using it in a linear and quick timeframe, we'd easily pay the higher price to make it cheaper in the long term.
When the return on investment is 50 years away, nobody is going to do that individually. But as a society we can move our government to do that so we all can benefit long term.
The federal highway system is both an example and a detriment. There was no financial justification for it. It was largely military thanks to Eisenhower's observations of the AutoBahn in Nazi Germany. Yet it became the single largest source of financial growth in our nations history. Now, the use of it, via fossil fuel vehicles, is going to radically change our environment with costs that will dwarf it's own rewards.
Was it wrong to create? Hardly, but if we aren't looking 50-100 years down the road we aren't going to see the roadblocks we're building for ourselves in time to avoid them.
That 'somebody' would be the poster :) Since this thread started with CO2 and he changed it to just 'CO'.
So yeah I assumed he was talking CO2.
Quite reasonable. I remember having a conversation with a gear head friend of mine on how he and his son had redone the brakes on his truck.
:) Yet there's no certification needed to pass, and frankly you'd have to drive the car (trailering it would make it too expensive) to get to the inspection station in the first place.
:)
My thought is, well he's good at that, but if I tried it I would not want to be around said car on the road
But yeah there are *many* things about our auto processes that are just amazing Rube Goldberg machines
'Environmental' options never will match current fossil fuel prices.
Neither will fossil fuels as with any limited resource as it is used up, the price is only going up.
Now factor in the cost of global warming due to all that CO2 being released. It's a cost that will be realized many many years after it is actually introduced. Do you wait for that to happen or do you start to try and mitigate it now while there is still decades of time before the really bad stuff happens?
Or it's proven that the coal industry has better lobbyists than the automotive industry. Without comparisons for cost, efficiencies and quite a few other issues simply that we've reduced cars more doesn't mean it's 'easier'.
:)
It certainly isn't a bad thing to reduce both
Fair enough, OP did say 'CO', my brain just assumed CO2 since that what's this thread started with :)
It should be simple enough for amateur builders to do the same.
'should be' being the operative word. You willing to bet, quite literally, your life on that?
The point with hybrids, or more correctly, full electrics, is that they *can* be made clean by converting the electrical source.
You can't ever make a gasoline car 'green' because it uses fossil fuels, period. Electrics only use fossil fuels as long as the power source does. Bio-diesel is an interesting idea but what I've read says it can't scale to replace current gasoline usage. It will still have a place for some applications but it can't be the majority fuel source.
Of course I did just read about a plant that converts plastics to usable crude oil too, so even some of our current waste products might become useful fuel stores too. (Don't know how this compares 'green' wise)
I think his point is the production hybrids are fine because they are built and made by large corporations with at least some incentive not to build death traps (anymore anyway).
Likewise, emergency responders will have a basic idea of how hybrid cars are put together and where the dangerous stuff is. If it's a self made car, you really can't be sure of what is where.
"I mean, why he put the batteries in the A Pillar I'll never know...and sadly neither will that Jaws of Life operator..."
You wouldn't consider the original cost of the civic unless he did this with a brand new car. Since it was likely through most of its useful life prior to conversion. you would only use the value he could have gotten for resale at time of conversion.
CO2 emissions from cars have been reduced? Highly doubtful. Sources please? Anyway the number of actual cars has gone up significantly eating up an savings you might find.
Now, certainly cars get better mileage thus reducing the amount of gas they use, but the amount of CO2 produced by each gallon of gas used is still quite the same as before.
Why do I wonder if the 'Feds' couldn't figure out that there was simply a Linux CD in the computer that was auto-booting...