perhaps you have never been to Europe or Asia where they actually have had subsidized transit for decades, and they have mass transit and electric cars and they work. It is only because our government has, through the complicity of fools like the above poster, subsidized the automotive industry and systematically destroyed passenger rail in many locations that we have the absolute mess we are in now. Places like Boston and Wash DC have trains that actually carry people around and these people don't use cars - places like Los Angeles used to have a great network of trains (many electric) and buses, but they were shut down and the right-of-ways purchased to prevent their being reinstated so that the population would buy cars, and then we subsidize public roads to the tune of billions per year.
Your data about electric cars is just plain wrong, and you know it. The turn of the century electric car, with lead acid batteries is not the same technology. You are among those who wish to destroy the nation by crippling us with pollution, paralyzingly high energy prices, and a population of uneducated drones fit only to flip burgers and sew shoes for off-shore companies. Why people like you want this future is beyond me, perhaps you can explain it to us all.
have you actually lost the ability to use that wonderful brain that god gave all of us? did you even read your words? "If it were feasible it would already be in the works" - in 1950, was your laptop "in the works"??? it was feasible, its existence proves its feasible, but it wasn't known until the technology matured.
if you drill domestically we will just ship our oil overseas - are you actually unaware that today the US is a net exporter of gasoline?
Fuel to make electricity for domestic electric cars comes predominantly from domestically produced natural gas.
Get your facts straight before you make wild claims.
Chris, you are getting downright loony. Roughly 1% of the electricity in the US is generated from oil, whether foreign or domestic:
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Man, if you're going to be lazy and ignorant, you should at least learn to keep your mouth shut until you wise up and stop looking like a fool. You've become ridiculous.
That is a major factor that the mfgrs, media, politicians, and greenie weenies seem to be ignoring.
According to
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Avg battery lifespan in electric vehicle applications Normal Car Starting Batteries: 3-12 months Marine Batteries: 1-6 years Golf Cart Batteries: 2-7 years AGM Deep Cycle: 4-7 years Gelled Deep Cycle: 2-5 years Ni-Cad Batteries: 1-20 years Ni-MH Batteries: 2-10 years LiFePO4 Batteries: 6-10 years
Nissan's cost for their Leaf elec car battery is $15,600 and this is not expected to come down.
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people like me who keep their cars for longer than this (I've had my Toyota PU for
28 years and the Ford Explorer for 19) would have this major replacement cost to look forward to again and again. Art
Since when the battery is run down it runs on the gas engine, yes, it can go cross country just like any IC vehicle.
But the Volt is not designed for x-country use. It is optimised for the large number of Americans who commute a dozen miles or so daily, who can charge it during off peak hours every night, but still offers a back-up plan so you never suffer the inability to go when you need to regardless of the charging time.
68% of Americans commute less than 15 miles one-way to work:
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In other words, the vast majority of those who drive to work can cover their trips on electricity only, with an all-electric (Nissan Leaf) or a plug-in hybrid (Chevy Volt).
Not that I have any irresistible urge to defend our resident mormon, but dayum, I don't think too many people knew that oil was just 1% of electricity generation -- less than renewables, according to that site. Dat was quite the eye-opener! Renewables are presumably wind, pv's, and hydro-electric. I'da thought hydro-electric would have been more. T Boone Pickens was trying to corner the market on nat gas, iirc.
Well, that's a good thing. It took less than 20 seconds to look it up and document it (although I knew the answer before I looked it up, because it's something that interests me and I keep up with it).
What grates me is that people will make these accusatory claims WITHOUT EVEN BOTHERING TO CHECK FIRST IF THEY'RE BEING STUPID!
I can't understand that. It's willful ignorance, topped by scapegoating and accusing others of malevolence, stupidity, or worse.
What makes someone do something so stupid? I'm still shaking my head.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not talking about making mistakes or just talking off the top of one's head. We all do that, a lot. The grating part is then taking those unchecked "facts" and accusing someone else of being ignorant or whatever. That's inexcusable. It's almost obscene.
Hydro is 6%. All other renewables are 4%.
I think he was trying to corner the wind, too. d8-)
If battery technology was sufficiently good, almost no one would be driving fuel powered cars. All that is needed is improve storage density and to speed up the charging process.
To put this in numerical perspective, a 3KW generator needs a 5HP engine. Ever drive a 40HP Volkswagen on long trips?
I had a 1978 Accord with 68 HP (51KW)
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It really would give the mileage shown on the graph. I averaged 36 to
38 locally and up to 44 on a trip from NH to Georgia. I was satisfied with its horsepower but it wouldn't sell now.
Yup, it is all true, as far as I can tell. A number of people have tried to parse the limited details GM has released. As best as they can figure, the car gets 26 MPG on the gas engine, which is pretty pitiful. Instead of creating a gas engine that could run a generator at some optimum speed and load at peak efficiency, they just put in a standard car engine that is WAYY too big for this purpose. It only needs to provide about 12 - 15 HP to keep up with the demands of level highway load. But, it is not a true hybrid. It is either a battery-electric car or a gasoline car with electric transmission, once the battery is depleted. I don't understand the logic on that. I drive a Honda Civic hybrid, that makes (nearly) best use of both functions all the time. It has a very weak gas engine that tries to stay in Atkinson cycle as much as possible, and a battery-motor drive for acceleration. I get 47 - 56 MPG depending on who drives it and the weather conditions.
When GM cites the economy in equivalent MPG, they always assume electricity is free - that's fraud right there! Now, electricity is MUCH cheaper most places than gasoline, but it isn't free.
Depending on the driver, the road conditions, etc. the 25 miles on battery is a little worse than others have gotten, but not way out of line.
If the Volt is not a scam, it comes pretty close! It might make a great test bed for somebody that wants to experiment with hacking one of these up to extend range with huge batteries and rip out the klunker gas engine. These might come up cheap on the market after owners find out it doesn't work like they expected.
I seem to have missed that 3KV figure/requirement, but Honda does make a 3000EU...
I have been in VW bugs half a dozen times in my life, never for more than ten minutes. I took a trip across the Oakland(?) Bay Bridge in
1968 in a VW ban when there were 40mph gusts at 90 degrees to us. We were anywhere from 30-45 degrees tilted the whole trip across. It scared the absolute crap out of me. I have never been in another VW van since then and don't intend to. Oh, I was hit by a low flying VW bug in '90 or so. It gave me a nastyass whiplash, dented my nose and forehead (even with the seatbelt on) and I've never forgiven the damned things or the people who drive VWs. They're just OFF. Feh!
So, no. I've never been in any VW for a long trip. But the gearing and torque are totally different in an EV.
Accords have always been spirited little beauts. Nice cars, Honda. I wouldn't buy a used one, though. Once they start on the downhill slide, they go like a rockslide.
-- Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. -- John Quincy Adams
Won't quite work. The typical US passenger car (presumably a smaller model) takes somewhere between 12 - 15 Hp to propel it at highway speed. Wind resistance goes up at the cube of speed, so slowing down even a little helps a lot. Our university did an extended-range hybrid some years ago with an 18-HP v-twin B&S lawnmower engine. The team leader installed electronic fuel injection on the engine to clean it up and reduce fuel consumption. The car was a donated Ford Taurus station wagon with manual transmission. After trying to figure out how to make a parallel hybrid for a while, they gave up and made it a serial hybrid, with the engine electrically coupled to the battery bus. The rules required 40 mile range on electric only, and able to run 40 MPH, I think, on the gas engine. I would have liked to get more test data on it, but they did achieve those requirements.
So, a little gas generator in the 2 - 3 KW class won't do it. Somewhere around 15 KW is going to be needed for continuous highway driving, assuming some losses here and there.
Of course, Honda with the Civic and Insight hybrids and Toyota with the Prius and clones have a BUNCH of tricks to help out. The use 0W5 oil for low engine losses, low rolling resistance tires, plastic panels under the entire car to cut wind drag on the underside, and so on.
The original 2-seat Insight got GREAT gas mileage with a
950 CC 3-cyl engine. I saw one on eBay that had a lifetime average of 87 MPG over 113K miles. They just photographed the dashboard display. So, IT CAN be done!
There is a cottage industry springing up with guys selling battery rebuilding services and also the parts and instructions to rebuild your OWN hybrid batteries for WAYY less than the factory rebuilds. In many cases you can fix a seriously bad battery by replacing 2 to 5 cells for about $100 - 150. So, when the extended battery warranty runs out, there are options besides a VERY expensive total replacement.
First, you DON'T have to stop and charge the thing via electricity before getting going again. You fill the gas tank and go. So, that part WAS false.
The electric rates cited were really bogus for anyplace in the continental US. Maybe if you are on an island with only Diesel- generated power from barged-in fuel, maybe. So, those cost calcs were bogus.
But, MUCH of the rest of that article WAS true. Even the snopes rebuttal says basically you are NOT SUPPOSED to drive it long distances. Well, you can, but it just isn't efficient that way. The electric range is about what others have reported from test drives.
Right, they need a MUCH smaller, lighter engine that is optimized for peak efficiency, not jack rabbit starts. Then, they need to turn it into a full, cooperative hybrid, so the engine runs when needed to maintain the battery charge, and the battery can be used for acceleration.
In the meantime, I drive a Honda Civic Hybrid. It uses gas all the time, but I get 47 - 56 MPG in mixed driving every day. If everybody already had these, we could cut our gas consumption in half!
(Drag equals coefficient of drag times gas density times velocity squared times frontal area over two)
Where the cube factor comes into play is in the *power* required as velocity increases. This is because you're moving farther in a given amount of time, which requires more work in that amount of time. So the drag is the relative velocities squared, and you multiply that result by the relative rate of doing work, and you wind up with a cube relationship.
I'm never very good at explaining these things. I hope that gets through the static.
An example: Neglecting other forms of drag, if a car requires 10 hp at
Yeah, that would be the ideal fix. That smaller engine would likely be much quieter and lighter, too. But is the air conditioning system the reason for the larger, auto-style engine?
The Camry hybrid gets 43/39 and they're extremely nice cars to begin with. Toyota has two winners in its midst. They're just $2-3k more than the basic cardboard Prius (the car most enjoyed by ascetics.)
-- Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. -- John Quincy Adams
Jon, I think you misunderstand the configuration of the Chevy Volt. It is a serial hybrid, not a parallel hybrid like your Civic. It doesn't matter how large or small the engine is in the Volt. It won't accelerate any faster, except perhaps with a nearly-dead battery, because the engine has no mechanical connection to the wheels -- again, unlike your parallel-hybrid Civic (or Prius, or whatever). The Volt runs on the electric motor only. The engine just charges the battery. That's how a serial hybrid works.
Serial hybrids are theoretically more efficient for the plug-in hybrid configuration. Parallel hybrids are the way to go when the battery is just a booster and a sort of fill-in for the mechanically connected gas engine, as on your Civic. The two cars are based on essentially different power/driveline concepts.
Parellel hybrids shine in stop-and-go city traffic. On the highway, the battery and electric motor are mostly dead weight, although you get a compensating benefit (more than compensating, in the better parallel-hybrid examples) by using a smaller gas engine than you would have without the battery boost for acceleration and hill climbing. Also, the pseudo-Atkinson cycle engine used in the Prius, and maybe in your Civic, is slightly more efficient than a conventional Otto-cycle engine. An Atkinson-cycle engine is too unresponsive to use in a car without the electric motor to step in when you step on the gas and expect things to happen right now.
Serial hybrids shine when you have a fair percentage of short trips -- under 30 miles or so in the case of the Volt -- and you don't need to switch the gas engine on at all. As I pointed out in an earlier message, the sruveys show that 68% percent of the commuters in the US travel less than 30 miles round-trip each day.
These serial hybrids are the future for plug-in configurations. Parallel hybrids are an interim step that makes sense now for many people as long as battery costs are so high. Eventually, they'll be replaced with serial hybrids when everyone starts demanding the plug-in capabililty. To make a parallel-hybrid a plug-in, you need the same large battery capacity as the Volt, and you're then dragging around a lot of driveline components that you don't really need once you have all-electric, plug-in capability.
They're two different ideas. The Prius/Civic is a waystop on the way to plug-ins. The Volt is a little bit ahead of its time, because batteries still cost too much and the range probably needs to be 50 miles to reach the needs of a larger segment of the driving public. But the Volt is where we're headed, and every car manufacturer knows it.
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