I recently visited Stanley Sheinbaum. Back in the day, "Citizen Stan" was a Vietnam protester, a member of Daniel “Pentagon Papers” Ellsberg’s defense team, a US contact for PLO leader Yasir Arafat and the head of the police commission that forced Chief Darrel Gates to resign in the wake of the L.A. Riots. In other words, his liberal credentials are flawless. "You write about cars?" Stanley demanded. "Have you seen 'Who Killed the Electric Car?" Stanley's in his 80's, but he still has a team of Prius-driving people working for him. Obviously, Stan and his friends have their hearts in the right place vis-à-vis hybrids and saving the environment and all that, but where are their heads? Is there really a Detroit/Big Oil conspiracy working against high mileage passenger cars? Or are the electric/hydrogen/hybrid car supporters so enamored with their own politics they can’t hug the forest from the trees? Don't they understand that the power has to come from somewhere? Your thoughts?
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
Hybrid is a transition technology at best. It’s a hope that can stretch the existing fuel supply until an all-electric technology becomes viable (a la fuel cells).
Beyond that, it’s hype. Batteries do have a limited service life, however, and for hybrids it comes down to the classic question “Pay me now (at the pump), or pay me later (to replace the battery packs at @ $2500+).
I can’t wait to see what the greenies say when all those batteries have to be disposed of in say, 2010-2011.
What about BMW’s Steam System?
I’m really excited about that.
What is wrong with you people? whining about “the limited service life” of hybrid batteries” is like gloomily warning people that their timing belts, valves and crank bearing have “a limited service life.” Oh, boy, pay me now or pay me later when I have to replace the timing belt (on my Audi three times before the battery would give out, were it a Toyota hybrid).
Nothing is forever. Not even mahogany (as the contractor said when he applied an entire Brazilian rain forest to our enormous deck).
And no, you don’t “dispose of” batteries. You recycle them. They are specifically _designed_ to be easily recyclable.
How else would you characterize the misinformation that led to public hatred of the electric car? They’re neither slow, nor unreliable. They’re actually damn fast (acceleration wise). and a modern electric car can go between 200 and 250 miles on a charge. Unless you’re road tripping that’ll do you fine.
And yes the energy has to come from somewhere, but that somewhere could be (one day) solar, or wind, or fusion, or whatever.
Hard to have a (directly) wind powered car. Unless you put a sail on it.
This is a common problem throughout the environmental movement. They talk about switching cars, heating systems, and other things over to electricity or fuel cells or whatever – without ever giving any thought to where the power comes from to begin with. What, do they think there is an electricity fairy?
There is no possibility that it will become feasible in the forseeable future to replace fossil fuels for a significant portion of electricity needs with solar panels, windmills, or any of their other favorites. The only replacement for fossil fuels that is remotely technically feasible is nuclear power – and the so-called “environmental movement” fights any move in that direction tooth and nail.
I think they’re mostly getting off on that “holier/greener than thou” feeling. Anyone with real genuine concern for the environment would have taken the time to investigate the technical issues and discovered that nuclear is the only way out. When I see Greenpeace demonstrating in the streets with signs that say, “nuclear power now!” I might start to take them seriously.
I’m interested in seeing what Cap’n Farago and crew have to say about the Tesla…Anyone?
Did anyone see the “Smug” episode of South Park this past season where everyone was driving around with hybrid cars?
I think the idea is that we can get electricity here at home, through more efficent means than oil. I didn’t see the movie, but it’s pretty obvious that the electric car was killed by big oil and gm. There are plenty of home grown electric cars that were cheap to make and run well. There’s people who have converted Priuses to almost all-electric as well… this site has some good documentation (if you don’t mind the crunchy vibe) http://www.calcars.org/vehicles.html
I personally believe there has been so much information/disinformation spewed out in the last 30 or so years about how much oil exists, whether or not it is renewing itself, peak oil production, global warming, global cooling, etc., etc… that there is no clear ‘right’ decision on what to do.
(ooh, sorry, that was too long of a sentence.)
It’s (the tesla) damn sexy, first of all.
And what do we do with nuclear waste? And don’t say yukka mountain, that doesn’t even have the capacity to hold the waste we’ve already produced, let alone what we’d make in the future.
Transition??? ok.
So , if this whole peak Oil stuff is even partially true, and with it the unserviceable pension’s of old line industrial, and social security red ink, and twin deficit’s and……
ok , back to the point,
let’s just create 700hp rocket’s and SUPA suv’s for the youngster’s under 25, some thin tin hybrid crap for the middy’s(26-56) and make all the older folk who one the hydrocarbon game ride the real transition vehicle.. The bike.
I think this solution should cure many of our major problems, including estate tax issues.
don’t be so quick to say that there aren’t feasible options for electricity (although you’re right – nuclear is the most accesible). As human’s we are driven to create, and necessity is the mother of invention, meaning when the time comes, we will invent viable energy sources, hopefully before we have to, but definitely when we have to. there will be other Teslas in the future (the man, not the car).
First, after seeing “Who Killed the Electric Car”, it becomes obvious that endorsing fuel cells and endorsing electric cars are separate propositions. Using hydrogen to distribute power is a joke, delivering less than 20% of the input energy to the destination vehicle. (unless we can get bacteria to make it instead of electricity, then it could be good. that, however, is open.) I just saw Wally Rippel of Aerovironment give a great talk on power distribution at UCLA with all the math behind it – check it when his book comes out.
The main application of fuel cells for the last 30 years? Gemini, Apollo, the Space Shuttle and now I read – ta da – NASA is abandoning fuel cells for the Crew Exploration Vehicle and going with solar, like the Russians and Chinese. Nice non-endorsement.
You act as though battery disposal was an open research question, like nuclear waste.
Third, Oil changes alone at manufacturer intervals are $1000 per 100,000 miles, minimum (please, gearhead, everyone pays $29.99 at Jiffy Lube except you). So let’s talk about REAL “Total Cost of Ownership”. Please give us the total of all your maintenance receipts on the last vehicle you put 100,000 miles on – then we talk.
Fossil Fuel required – um, gee, I live in California, and I’m pricing out rooftop solar, and at $3/gallon, 30 mpg, one car solar is just about competitive – if I had two electric cars or was replacing a guzzler, the math tilts solar.
The Tesla electric car was unveiled this morning – when can we expect a review?
Keep up the good work, even though we know you like to troll us sometimes.
good enough for the governator is good enough for me!
http://news.com.com/2300-11386_3-6096355-9.html?tag=ne.gall.pg
(just kidding, but it does look pretty sick)
Where else could the power come from? Nuclear power may be our short-term option. While I don’t swallow the whole hype about nuclear, and I’m as concerned as anybody about spent fuel rods that last for 500,000 years, at least the technology exists right now and is carbon-emission free. It would work well in tandem with emission-free electric cars and may hold us until the next energy sources are fully developed. Over the long-term, nuclear as it exists now would be a disaster, but we need immediate action.
Speaking of immediate action, why is there never any discussion about conservation? What about lowering the highway speed limit again? What about a Federal bill that mandates telecommuting to work- if your employees can telecommute, they must? Why doesn’t anyone call this beast exactly what it is? We are in a full-blown fuel crisis, and crisis demands sacrifice. We can’t continue living the way we have for the last 60 years. Once the oil is gone, change will be forced upon us, and it will be brutal. I’m just stymied by the total lack of action here. Oh, wait, I know why- there’s still money to be made in oil.
ilex – please, not the highway speed limit…it’s the only place where it’s fun to drive anymore…the only place where skillful drivers have a chance to leave the droning commuters in the dust.
The first step, really, is to regulate the oil lobbyists, and force oil companies to put money into grants that fund alternative energy research.
“And what do we do with nuclear waste?”
Actually, the used reactor fuel can almost be totally recycled, but that is forbidden in the US (thanks again, Jimma) because there is the potential to extract weapons-grade material from the used fuel. So, now all of it goes into storage, whereas in Fwance, it is 98% recycled, and the leftovers take up a small amount of well-guarded space.
Nukes are the way to go.
Why don’t we just invade all of the oil producing countries and take what is rightfully ours? Come on now, we’re the USA, if we can’t produce it, we just take it. And if we do produce it, we give the technology away.
A coupla more points in response to some comments above:
1. There are non-nuclear technologies that can be useful in limited, localized applications, solar heating being the best example. However, once you start talking about replacing a truly significant amount of power generation needs, say more than 10%, you run into big problems. You’d need literally hundreds of thousands of square miles of windmills and/or solar panels to put much of a dent in current electricity use, and that’s without any electric cars. Projects like that would take a staggering amount of energy to manufacture and maintain, before you even got a half kilowatt back out of it.
2. And, speaking about windmills and solar panels, how about the environmental impact of those? Environmentalists have conniptions over the prospect of an oil company building on a few acres in Alaska, but leveling four states’ worth of wilderness to put up solar panels is just fine? A recent proposal for a windmill farm in California was actually defeated by opposition from the Sierra Club, since they predicted that it would slaughter the local population of birds. And they’re right, it would. This phenomenon has been seen wherever they put up windmills. It’s not clear that non nuclear alternatives on the scale we’re talking about have a net advantage over fossil fuels at all, even just from an environmental standpoint.
3. Disposing safely of nuclear waste is indeed a big technical problem – it’s just a much more tractable problem than any other alternative we’re aware of. One suggestion, not currently used much because of the expense, is to melt it into big blocks of leaded glass and then dump them onto a tectonic plate border deep in the ocean. There the waste will be drawn down back into the earth’s mantle where it came from. This is just an example – the point is, waste disposal is a lot less difficult problem than the alternatives. The costs look more and more reasonable as the price of fossil fuels spirals upward…
Pardon me, all, for being a bit of a “nuclear zealot”, but these issues seem to get almost completely ignored as “environmentalists” wax poetic about “alternative energy sources”.
I guess it’s the libertarian in me that is always uneasy when people start talking about “the government should make so and so happen!” There’s this little thing called the free market that is far more nimble than government. When oil really does run low, you can bet that the energy companies will find alternatives. If they do not, then some younger, more nimble company will. All this E85 crap can be laid at the government’s feet: the taxpayer has been subsidizing Archer Daniels Midland to make ethanol since the 70s, at, as I understand it, greater cost in cash and energy than if they hadn’t made it at all. The EPA has been anti-diesel for years, not that I like pollution.
Government initiatives are a con: big flash to convince you Government is Doing Something, when all it is doing is spinning its wheels, wasting our money. ANWR drilling comes to mind instead of the possible oil deposits off the Atlantic coast, by law blocked from exploratory drilling.
If you can telecommute you can try to convince your employer it is a good idea. Or, here’s a thought, you can see if any of your coworkers want to carpool.
To quote an entertaining book, “the ghost of Chernobyl haunts the world.” If we could come up with two or three standardized designs to get some economy of scale, incorporating the most cost-effective safety features available, nuclear power would be the way to go. Unfortunately, people still think of them as horrible, evil devices that could contaminate the planet at any time, blissfully ignorant of the vast amounts of radioactive material that coal plants spew out every year. As for disposing of waste, breeder reactors would allow us to reprocess fuel, cutting down on the amount. Digging a big hole in the ground and dumping the rest in it, in some form like glass blocks or whatever, may not last forever but should be good enough for the foreseeable future. Whether global warming or global cooling or global staying the same happens, there are big stretches of the American west which are and will remain inhospitable for eons, perfect for our nuclear garbage. Bury it a thousand feet down or so, it’ll be fine. Or do you prefer spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and West Virginia mountains devoured to nothing?
We keep looking for one magic bullet that will end the gasoline problem. There isn’t one. There’s just a broad coalition of possible solutions which together could push down the price of getting around, or at least keep that price from rising so fast. Hybrids are one part of the solution. So is ethanol. Biodiesel and butanol, if they’re ever produced in sufficient quantities, will also be in the mix. There’s even a niche for full-on electric cars, though I’d imagine it’s a pretty small market.
The point is, no one of these solutions has to meet our transportation needs by itself. There’s even room for (gasp!) gasoline in the mix.
Neoncat: You make an excellent point. A pound of uranium fuel leaves you with pretty much a pound of radioactive waste – but since that pound can replace thousands of tons of coal, burning the energy-equivalent amount of coal actually releases *more* radioactivity! Another thing that is typically ignored in such discussions…
cant we just shoot radioactive waste into space…i mean there is plenty of room…
i think the immediate solution is diesel…then once electric cars get all the kinks worked out we will go to that. instead of making new types of power plants what if the current process was just made more efficient?
Batteries, wind, solar, magic knomes running around…its all realy irelevant to the solution? Hybrids aren’t a revolution, there are just a bridge to gap what we have now with the real coming transportation revolution. Everyone including tree huggers is so close to the real answers they can’t see them. The answer to our energy crisis isn’t a better car. Its the answer to the question: What is the most efficient way to move people around? If you can circumvent the need for everyone to jump into a car at the same time every morning and every evening, polution, global warming, smog, accidents, use of fossil fuels, and yes, even the ever popular “supporting terrorism” will decline dramaticaly. So the real hope is for the real revolution. Teleportation, suction tubes like in Futurama, or heck even conveyor belts rolling everywhere. The point is your average person thinks of the problem narrowly. Think big people!
Your name here: Yeah, we can shoot it into space. But what happens if the space shuttle carrying it all sorta…you know, explodes? Im not to crazy about strapping nuclear waste onto 3 2 stage rockets filled with oxygen and rubber. Challenger anyone?
Neon Cat, I used to think the market could take care of itself, say, 6 or 10 years ago. But now the market is directed by a plutocracy, the G8, and global big business, and our current administration has it’s fingers deep into all those pies. Free market, at a level that really matters, doesn’t exist these days. Any smaller, more nimble company that is worth it’s salt will be stamped out or co-opted. I’m a conspiracy theorist, though, so maybe I’m full of it. But I still think (new, via ’06/ ’08 elections) government is the only answer to the huge mess we are in right now.
Ronin, you are a jackrabbit start guy, aren’t you… admit it…
It is bizarre that anyone would buy into the absurd conspiracy theory of GM and “big oil”; but then a lot of people believe in a lot of idiotic conspiracy theories. It’s blatantly obvious that an electric car is wildly impractical, and that is why almost no one would buy one. I don’t believe for an instant that any “supporter” posting messages to this board would actually pay out real money for one. None of the brainwashed masses stumbling out of the theater after watching that dumb movie would spend $30,000 on an electic car either. Actual money has a way of clearing the head of nonsense.
An absolute prerequisite for a car to have value is that you can quickly refuel it at a service station. It’s a car, it needs to move from point A to B, that’s the whole point of it. You cannot do that with an electic car, which is why the electric car useless. That is intuitively obvious to most people.
To say that most daily commutes are within the 100 mile range of an electic car (no Stryker, nothing except some hyper-expensive exotic science experiment can currently do 200+ miles) ignores the fact that occasionally you DO have to drive further, a simple fact which fatally undermines the EC. Sorry, but that’s obviously true. Next time I make the 450 mile trip to visit my mother, I don’t expect it to take a week each way as I go 100 miles, then stay overnight in a hotel, ever step of the way. A weekend trip to some neighboring small town barbecue joint is too far for an elecric car. A single workday when I happen to have a couple of crosstown errands is too far for an electic car.
Oh, what if I forget to plug it in one night? Because I promise you I would, probably several times before I sell the car in disgust. Do I just call in sick the next day? What if some punk kid goes around at night unplugging cars? Hell, I would’ve done that one myself when I was in high school — what a laugh riot to ground an entire neighborhood for a day.
How do you plug it in, anyway? I’ve spent 99% of my adult life living where I park along curbs and in parking lots with no access to an outlet. Most people own houses? Well, most people use their garages as self-storage units and landfills and can’t get a car in there. Again the chorus: electric cars are useless.
BTW do we really have to point out that there are dozens of vehicle manufcturers, not a single one of which is in any way controlled by any oil company, that could make ECs if there were viable market? My last GM car was a Vega that I traded for firewood about 21 years ago, who cares what GM does or doesn’t do? SOME car companies actually are smart and competent — if there were a market, Toyota or Honda would take advantage of it. They want to make money, after all.
While I would never recommend a hybrid to anyone today, barring some other technological breakthrough I think it’s obvious that one day all cars will be hybrids. The cost and weight of batteries will go down while the energy density will go up, and batteries are really the only way to capture any of the tremendous amount of energy lost due to braking (flywheels would actually be a more efficient form of energy storage, but their weight and strong gyroscopic effect preclude their use in an automobile).
I’m also disappointed in Toyota for disabling the plug-in aspect of the Prius in the United States — there is simply no compelling reason for a hybrid to *not* have plug-in capability (the additional cost to allow it is negligible), and, irrelevant of whether electricity is more cost effective than gasoline today, it would at least provide a hedge in case the value equation shifts even further away from gas.
France not only recylces their waste, but those cheese-eating, surrender-monkeys are 75% nuclear and are working towards the full monty.
The real solution… which France is also spear-heading (we lost the fricking bid!) is fusion power. This will happen towards the end of my lifetime, but it should have happened 20 years back — our “do-nothing” government should have spear-headed a Manhattan Project style project to figure out a sustained, controllable fusion reaction.
You can drink what comes out of a fusion reactor.
MikeD2 writes:
>>This is a common problem throughout the environmental movement. They talk about switching cars, heating systems, and other things over to electricity or fuel cells or whatever – without ever giving any thought to where the power comes from to begin with. What, do they think there is an electricity fairy?
Environmentalists with any brain understand this, but at a local Democratic party cookout I came across a lady who insisted that a hybrid produced less greenhouse gas than a conventional car with mileage equivalent to the hybrid. It was something about the electricity, she said. Yes, she did think there was an electricity fairy.
Is there anybody who isn’t an environmentalist?
Is there really anyone in the world who wakes up thinking, “Air? Fuck air! I hate me some water, too?”
MikeD2 writes:
>>There is no possibility that it will become feasible in the forseeable future to replace fossil fuels for a significant portion of electricity needs with solar panels, windmills, or any of their other favorites. The only replacement for fossil fuels that is remotely technically feasible is nuclear power – and the so-called ???environmental movement??? fights any move in that direction tooth and nail.
On the other hand, this just isn’t true. Windmills are competitive in a lot of places. Denmark gets 20% of its electricity from wind, and if Ted Kennedy would get out of the way, hopefully Massachusetts will soon be getting a big chunk of its electricity–enough to supply most of the Cape and the Islands–from the Cape Wind project. Solar electricity will probably be competitive in the fairly near future.
On the other hand, the reason nuclear hasn’t gone anywhere in the US is that the utilities don’t want to touch it. Too expensive. But some environmentalists are now saying that we should not close off that option, even if it’s not all that promising.
And by the way, this year in the US for the first time, renewable sources will produce more energy than nuclear plants.
Finally, it is worth noting that electricity is actually a small percent of total energy use–about 10-15%, so nuclear is certainly no panacea.
I should have also pointed out that over the last 50-something years, the amount of money that has gone into R&D for renewables is MINUSCULE compared to what’s gone into nuclear R&D. If they had been even on equal footing, we’d probably have plenty of solar by now. The notion that nuclear is the only option is just as knee-jerk as the notion that we can wave a wand and have 100% solar in the next 20 yrs.
It’s also worth noting that the potential for conservation in this country is HUGE, and this is where the money needs to be spent first and foremost. Once the house or the car uses half as much energy as it did, the fuel goes twice as far.
Esoterica: Batteries will improve in the future, but there are chemical and physical limits to the available energy density; it can’t improve forever (just as gasoline engines can’t improve forever… but they’re practical now).
Jonny: “Environmentalist” has many meanings, and the common one is not “anyone that wants air and water”. If everyone’s an environmentalist, that’s grand, but then what do we call the people who want to make everyone cold and poor in order to keep the world exactly as it is now (or was in their idealised conception of the distant past) forever? Right now, typically, we call them “environmentalists”. (People who want clean air and water and to preserve nature as it stands now are called “conservationists”.)
Me, I think the problem (of fueling vehicles) will take care of itself over time as the price of fuel responds to supply and demand. But that’s doubtless because I’m a soulless bastard who’s read up on this strange thing called “economics”. (Gasoline itself was chosen as a fuel because it was a waste product of fractional distillation of fuel oil, used to kill lice. Because it was cheap and plentiful, in other words.)
Ilex writes:
What about lowering the highway speed limit again? What about a Federal bill that mandates telecommuting to work- if your employees can telecommute, they must? Why doesn???t anyone call this beast exactly what it is? We are in a full-blown fuel crisis, and crisis demands sacrifice. We can???t continue living the way we have for the last 60 years
Huge amounts of conservation can be accomplished without changing lifestyle. (We don’t need to lower the speed limit, and in fact, that could be counterproductive, as with lower speed limits there would be more cars on the road at any given time, snarling traffic in some places where it would have been moving before). Check out rmi.org.
The real solution??? which France is also spear-heading (we lost the fricking bid!) is fusion power. This will happen towards the end of my lifetime, but it should have happened 20 years back ??? our ???do-nothing??? government should have spear-headed a Manhattan Project style project to figure out a sustained, controllable fusion reaction.
Fusion has always been around the corner since Eisenhower. Yet, it’s nowhere near ready even for pilot demonstration. John Holdren, a plasma physicist (that’s what fusion is about), and one of the nation’s leading scientists, went into plasma physics more than 35 years ago because he hoped it would become a major source of energy. But it very quickly became clear to him that its prospects were dubious at best. And still are.
kevin – “no one will buy an electric car”…uh yeah they will. and it will start out in 2 car homes, where the electric will be used as a daily driver and grocery getter. then the power stations will come – they will start out as an additional ‘pump’ at regular gas stations. how do you think anything happens in this world? change comes little by little, until everything’s changed. people had cars before there were gas stations… they also had horses in case they had to go somewhere their gas wouldn’t take them! I don’t foresee any radical lifestyle change. just a gradual transition into better technology (as always). anybody ever read about Nikolas Tesla? the guy invented alternating current as a way to get electricity across long wires. it’s like people assume no one will ever invent anything better than what we have. there will be more efficient ways to generate electricity in the future. I’m not sure what that solution(s) will be, but I am sure that we will continue to act like humans and make things better and more efficient just like we always have.
The fuel is not running out were just at the edge in terms of the depth we can pump fuel at. once the technology develops and we can pump all the fuel we cant currently reach this so called energy crisis will be gone and forgotten but until then a solution would be to send our waste to france to recycle it as someone said they do before
Kevin writes:
What if some punk kid goes around at night unplugging cars? Hell, I would???ve done that one myself when I was in high school ??? what a laugh riot to ground an entire neighborhood for a day.
Thanks for the best laugh I’ve had all week. I might have done it too. But my guess is it will be easy to have some way to warn people if their car has been unplugged. Probably technologically much easier to deal with than computer viruses
As the proud owner of a 70 mile commute (round trip) I would love an electric car to drive three or four times a week.
Then, on Fridays, I could bust out the WRX and race the usual suspects. I really ought to do a rant on my commute, as I average 90mph… in Los Angeles County… I’m “friends” with a M5 and an M Coupe and every once in a while, I run into this Skyline…
Holy paranoia people! Conspiracies, cloak and dagger. Put down the science fiction novels and join the real world. A free market economy drives the real world.
I sell Toyota hybrids! How do you like me so far. I think hybrids are the most important auto technology since Henry Ford developed the assembly line.
They work, they save fuel and produce fewer emissions. How can that be bad? Because you are afraid of change? They recapture energy that would have been lost to heat and use it to charge a battery and drive the car! Hybrids are not the only solution, but one solution among many. Open your minds and ditch the paranoia!
the immediate future of personal transportation is not hard to imagine. when the price of a gallon of gas in the us hits $5 in the next year, the single blonde woman driving alone in the suburban will become an endangered species. hybrids will become cheaper and more efficient, and there will be more diesels. with a white house not filled with oil men, a more rational energy policy that would include nuclear, solar, wind, biomass, tidal-flow generation etc will be proposed, and public consciousness of the potential of various alternatives should make discussions like this one irrelevant.
Well, if we are talking about hybrids, remember that they use vehicle inertia to recharge the batteries, not electricity out of a plug. Can you run a hybrid entirely on electricity? No. But it will stretch your fossil fuel.
I own a new Lexus RX400 H hybrid and I love it. It is fast and I average about 26.5 mpg, which is exactly twice what I got in my previous SUV, a Suburban. Another advantage is fewer emissions. People can disagree, but I believe that global warming is a fact. I live on the water and am nervously watching to see if the water is rising towards my porch. My hybrid is not only a very clean running car, but electric power plants don’t have to run more to keep it running. Fewer CO2 emissions. Less greenhouse effect.
As for battery life, mine are warranted for 8 years, long before which I will have moved on.
Hybrids are a temporary solution, which have potential for some time but are not a permanent (many decades) option.
The problem right now is everytime we find more efficient uses of energy, we just end up using more. Although cars nowadays are more efficient than ever-before, there are more on the roads than ever before, and people are driving more and more miles a year: net consumption increases.
The root of the problem, and therefore the solution, is consumption. Here’s the deal with energy: Every single form of energy we rely on (except nuclear and fusion) rely on solar energy one way or another: wind is created from changes in air pressure from heat from sunlight; sunlight warms water and causes it to evaporate, causing precipitation which may be harnessed for hydroelectric power; sunlight allows photosynthesis which grows vegetation (responsible for coal, wood, ethanol, food, and of course, over time, fossil fuels/hydrocarbons).
When you realize this, you have to consider that at all times, half of Earth is facing the sun, the other half is not… To approximate, the energy input of the planet is equal to the output (dispersion to space). That’s not quite true however, as over time the planet has accumulated “reserves” which we are now using when we burn fuels that are the result of energy accumulated eons ago.
The point? Eventually, whether it is in a decade, a century, or a millenia, we are going to hit a wall (empty those reserves), at which point we won’t be able to use any more energy than the planet receives, unless it’s by destroying atoms that make it up (and we probably aren’t going to be harnessing the power of nitrogen, oxygen or carbon atoms; my point is uranium is still a commodity). The only solution is going to be to limit consumption. As far as I am concerned, the sooner we accept conservation as a way of life, the longer we will be able to enjoy the “reserves” we are using. Honestly, anyone who thinks driving 4000lbs machines back and forth to work every day for generations is feasible, is out of their mind – it’s a spectacular waste of energy.
Regarding the progress of technology… Yes, it is something that will always have hope, however, technological progress doesn’t happen overnight, and doesn’t always keep pace with demand; when it doesn’t, people (countries, companies) will be fighting for ressources. Considering how unsmooth the transition from $2 to $3 gas has been, I find it stunning that some people actually think going to alternate energy sources will happen without resistance, problems, fighting, corruption, pain and regret.
As far as I’m concerned, everybody is arguing, but we’re still headed for a cliff. I really have no idea how far it is, no one really does. So, hybrid vehicles? Well regenerative braking is a nice idea, and it seems like batteries are a good way to store energy (sure environmentally they’re not perfect, but they are still recyclable), hybrids just delay the inevitable. To their credit, they do offer more hope and real-world improvement than any technology available to the public so far.
Globally, we’re not far from an oil shock. There was that attempted suicide bombing back in February of a Saudi oil facility, and that’s not the only big vulnerable one out there, not to mention at least half a dozen other events that could trigger a rapid rise in oil prices. As other posters have already mentioned, we’re going to have to consider lots of options if/when oil prices skyrocket, and it’s not going to be pretty.
That said, I agree with BP’s position on biofuels: use food crops for starving people, not for starving fuel tanks.
kablamo, hybrids may be a temporary solution, but something completely revolutionary will have to come along to displace them. I suggest that, instead, hybrids will likely have their roles switched in the future — as battery technology progresses (as it has dramatically already — in the past 3 years a NiMH “AA” cell has gone from 1800mAh to 2700mAh capacity), and as hybrids become plug-in capable, i believe that they will become primarily electric vehicles supplemented by a gasoline engine in case of the batteries dying while on the road (or as suggested above, in the case of a neighbor’s kid unplugging your car at night as a prank).
In other words, hybrids will be electric vehicles, just with a gasoline engine as a backup source. This would eliminate a HUGE reason why non-hybrid EV’s flopped, namely that people were worried about the car stranding them somewhere without a charging station.
Be sure to check out GM’s response to the movie here…
Who Ignored the Facts About the Electric Car
Executive Summary…
1. GM spent more than $1 billion developing the EV1 including significant sums on marketing and incentives to develop a mass market for it.
2. Only 800 vehicles were leased during a four-year period.
3. No other major automotive manufacturer is producing a pure electric vehicle for use on public roads and highways.
4. A waiting list of 5,000 only generated 50 people willing to follow through to a lease.
5. Because of low demand for the EV1, parts suppliers quit making replacement parts making future repair and safety of the vehicles difficult to nearly impossible.
Bear in mind, once there is a robust nuclear infrastructure in place that can generate basically unlimited electricity, almost all fossil fuel use can conceiveably be eliminated. For things where electricity just isn’t going to work properly (and cars may well turn out to be one of them, as indicated by some of the comments above; another one is probably going to be aviation engines), synthetic chemical fuels can be manufactured with nuclear-generated electric power. Nobody works much on chemical fuels now because it makes no sense to burn one type (petroleum) just to manufacture another type.
By the way, Denmark doesn’t really get anything like 20% of its electric power from wind (that’s a number that the system can hit sporadically during ideal conditions), nor has wind power ever come close to a reasonable economic break even. If one ignores the capital and maintenance costs, maybe, but it is still not a break-even just on the basis of energy input vs. output. Don’t forget the energy used to manufacture and maintain such equipment, and of course the non-trivial environmental impact.
Like solar power, windmills can sort of work as long as they are surrounded by a very reliable power infrastructure that can take over when it gets cloudy / the wind dies down. The bottom line is, solar and wind, unlike a nuclear or coal burning plant, do not have a controllable power output. You would have to build a vastly oversized system to match peak demand during nonideal conditions – and then the rest of the time you’d be emitting huge quantities of waste heat. It might actually worsen any global warming problem.
I care about the environment… but the only way you’d get me into a Prius is to shoot me and strap my corpse in quickly, before it got stiff. Even then, I’d want a paper bag…
According to the British motoring journalist with the sacred initials, there are many Diesel propositions on the market that exceed the hybrids in fuel consumption, performance and driving pleasure. The hybrid hype reminds me of the hydrogen hype in which hydrogen is presented as a power panacea, while it is only functions as a battery rather than being a power source. I expect initiatives like Loremo (loremo.com) to be more successful for the near future. This concept focusses on weigth reducuction and aerodynamics, which is expected to result in a fuel consumption of 1.5 l / 100 km (0.40 gal / 62,14 mi = 155 mi / gallon), rather than on alternative propulsion.
Just a few comments. esoterica: The Euro-spec and other market Prius does not have a plug-in facility. It has a “EV” button, which is what I am pretty certain you are thinking of. This allows maybe a mile of silent travel, over-riding the usual programming, and depletes the big battery. I “think” the reason that it is disabled in the US is because Toyota want to make absolutely certain that the battery pack lasts the life of the car, and with we Americans driving 20,000 miles per year on average, they needed to make sure not to deplete the battery too far, reducing its life to a Euro-standard 150,000 miles or so instead of US Toyota Corolla ability of 250,000 miles. (Due to TUV and MoT tests in Germany and UK, and equivalent tests elsewhere in Europe, cars are junked after 8-10 years when it becomes uneconomic to repair things in order to pass the super-stringient annual test – hence, cars are scrapped sooner – plus miles per year are fewer in Europe/UK).
I’m a real car guy like most of us here, and I also have a Prius, as many of you know. I bought the car for many reasons, but had I not bought it, I’d have bought a luxury V6 mid-sized barge obtaining 20 mpg and costing the same. Therefore, my 45-50 mpg in real life has more than paid for itself immediately, and as gas prices go up up up (did you think the trend was going to be down?) it becomes that much more “common sensical”.
I also subscribe to Green Car Journal, and just got my latest mag. In it, Stanford Ovshinsky (a modern-day Edison), “just” the man who invented the Nickel-metal-hydride batteries, was interviewed. NiMH batteries, by the way, are what make my Prius, cell phone and lap top practical, among other things, like my Braun electric shaver which only needs charging every two weeks instead of daily…
Ovshinsky was asked how far are we from a hydrogen economy?
He responded, essentially, with the fact that we could have one “right away” but must “have a complete loop starting with the sun generating electricity, storing it in a battery, having hydrogen made from the solar energy, and storing it…” (and he advocates solid storage of hydrogen instead of compressing it or freezing it into liquid). “With our multi-junction devicices, or solar cells, there’s inherently enough voltage to break apart water and get hydrogen, so you can get hydrogen directly by electrolysis.”
He also states “We’re talking about changing the world, and changing the world so you don’t have to plug into coal or fossil fuel. You actually plug into the first element made in the universe…. It’s kind of neat and cool to think about the fact that you’re plugging into the beginning of the universe with hydrogen.”
“Every country must have an industrial base. The only way you can do that is by building new industries of great value that make a difference in the world and that can provide better jobs. I think that’s a very necessary social resolve for what we’re doing, and that’s why we say we are changing the world for the better.”
In the same issue, a Prius converted to run on hydrogen (surprise!) via its internal combustion engine, works out to be cheaper (at this time) than a fuel cell car.
I believe that we could move forward and re-energize our society (pun intended) if we, the people, took control of our political processes again. I most certainly do NOT think this is possible while voting for Democrats or for Republicans. Einstein once said “One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different outcome.” So, let’s stop being insane and elect people of a different stripe to REPRESENT us rather than run the country for the benefit of the few.
The only way to do that IMHO is to reflect upon what has gone wrong (socialism/handouts for the rich – such as Archer-Daniels-Midland, and poor, but paid for by the middle), lack of attention to the US Constitution, allowing/encouraging massive corporations which are inherently less flexible, globalism instead of concentrating on one nation (ours) and minding our own dang business here at home, and therefore a total lack of intelligent thinking and ability to remove ourselves from, essentially, slavery under our enemies (OPEC).
Perhaps (?) voting Libertarian if you are willing to put up with the social costs and human costs of legalized drugs, or voting Constitution party, may help “we the people” to take back our nation, as our Founders intended. (I used to vote Libertarian, then I grew up. Now I vote Constitution party – still known as the US Taxpayer Party here in Michigan).
Applogies, the hyperlink went south on the first attempt.
‘Horizon’ is a well respected documentary produced by the BBC. They broadcast an episode “Chernobyl’s ‘nuclear nightmares\'” see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5173310.stm last week about nuclear power and chernobyl with some “double-take” results: death toll from the accident: 56. And radiation can activate genes that fight cancer. So as we heat the planet, and reduce the background radiation, we are making ourselves more susceptible to cancer! Solution: Nuclear power for everyone! I highly reccomend reading the linked article.
On another note, I remember a lecturer telling me that solar cells take far more energy to manufacture than they are ever likely to generate. Hardly a sustainable energy economy.
Back on Topic, Excellent point, igor. I couldn’t beleive the lousy fuel economy you get out of current Hybrids – buy an engine with less than 300hp and 4litres, and then look at your gas milage: whaddaya know, I didn’t need all that equine shove afterall! But as pointed out on the audi diesel discussion, once fuel prices in the US reach levels as they are here in the UK (ie ~$6.50 / usgal) V6s become the new V8, and 4 pots will be the standard. Now I’m a speedfreak too, and appreciate some accellerative kick, but hoonage is very possible in small light cars. In fact in the past (over many beers) I’ve argued that it takes more skill to drive a less powerful car quickly, since you have less resource to draw upon. I always mentally doff my hat to a Citroen saxo 1.0l hammering through town at 70mph.
Anyone who voluntarily dealt with Yassar Arafat has no credibility on any issue, anywhere, at any time.
Having said that, the answer has been staring us in the face since Fermi built the first nuclear reactor during WWII. There is almost limitless power waiting to be used which has energy densities that expose solar and wind as nothing but cruel jokes. Safety concerns are, at best, misinformed, and nuclear waste can be practically elminated by using breeder reactors. France has obtained their electricity with nuclear power for decades, and if not for non-scientific and non-engineering barriers manufactured by Mr. Sheinbaum and those who share his view of the world, we would have long ago done the same.
ilex,
As something of a conspiracy theorist myself, I find it amusing that your solution to the problem of the current administration, G8, et cetera is… more government intervention. Unless your hope is for people to become so frustrated with those who think they are the elite that they rise up and strangle then with their own neckties. In that case, very clever…
WhatEverJustCrashIt,
Um, you may not have noticed, but the people on this site generally *like* cars. It isn’t just about transportation, it is about the freedom to go places and have fun while doing so. Most people consider public transportation a last resort. Given the choice between sweating my ass off as traffic creeps across Staten Island or sweating my ass off waiting to ride the subway (where I can also be jostled by crowds, hear screaming babies and given the touch by beggars) I prefer to drive, thank you.
Glenn Arlt
“Perhaps (?) voting Libertarian if you are willing to put up with the social costs and human costs of legalized drugs, or voting Constitution party, may help ???we the people??? to take back our nation, as our Founders intended. (I used to vote Libertarian, then I grew up. Now I vote Constitution party – still known as the US Taxpayer Party here in Michigan).”
Darn those Libs, with their icky ideas about freedom and personal responsibility and minding your own damn business. Me, I don’t always vote Lib (I like to vote against Republicans too much) but I sincerely hope that I never “grow up” and vote for the Constitution/Taxpayer/”Sticking your nose into other people’s business despite the Bill of Rights Party”
What bothers me about the current Hybrid Hype is that there seems to be an assumption among the uninformed that all hybrids get better mileage in all conditions compared to all nonhybrids. This isn’t even close to being true. There are plenty of non-hybrid cars that get mileage in the 30-40 range city and highway, and some hybrids that can barely break 25 in the city (which I can also get from my very non-hybrid, AWD Subaru.)
The other thing that’s often missing from public discussion on hybrids is the fact that they owe their great MPG figures to the energy stored up by regenerative braking – which means that on the highway, where you aren’t braking very much, MPG figures will be much lower. Now, how many of us only drive in the city? If 90% of your driving is stop-and-go city driving, then a hybrid might make sense but if you live in a rural state where much of your driving will be on long stretches of highway, a hybrid might actually get worse mpg than a non-hybrid, and you’ve got all those concerns about batteries, etc, that non-hybrids don’t have!
From having lived in Europe for a couple of years and traveling around much of the world, I know that diesels are extremely common everywhere outside the US. Currently there are only a few vehicles with small diesel engines available in the US but as our fuel prices soar to European levels, I keep hoping that some far-seeing manufacturer will do what they have to do to get their small diesels to comply with US emissions laws so we can see them here. IMO diesel is a much superior solution to our energy needs.
As for other technologies, I’m not that worried. There will always be money to be made in finding an alternative fuel source that is viable and renewable, and as long as there is money to be made, someone will find a way to make it.
Oh, and one additional note: As far back as the 1950s, some US military trucks had “multifuel” engines that could run on gasoline or diesel. I’m not well versed on that technology, but surely with 50 years of development, somebody must be able to come up with something similar in a car-size that is cost effective and efficient, right?
Martinjmpr, the answer to “Now, how many of us drive only in the city?” is, “How many of us drive only on the highway?”
There are a LOT of stoplights in my town and they’re inefficient (fully signaled left turns, mostly, and all the freeway interchanges are diamonds or folded diamonds). The “green time” for any approach is nowhere near 50%. On a 1.4 mile trip (both Target and the grocery store are within that range), I will typically stop 4 times and wait 3 to 4 minutes at 6 signals. I drive a car that’s rated 34mpg, City, and I typically get 25-28mpg with it, although I normally drive to maximize fuel economy.
For the right kind of trip, hybrids make a lot of sense. For multi-car families, buying one hybrid and using it for the trips to which it is best suited is probably very much a winning proposition.
NeonCat93,
Yeah. You’re right. I don’t *like* cars. I love them. The err of your thinking is apparent. If everyone is commuting in a different way, rendering vehicular transportation less nessasary, would not the streets be empty? If the roads are free of those that drive because they have to, and not because they want to, would they not be safer? Can we dream of the day we can statisticaly prove that the roadways are safer and get the BAC limit nocked back down to something reasonable? Has anyone even thought about an easier time parking? The implications of a world were less people drive is positive for us pistonheads. Think about it another way: if most cars are designed for the least common denomenator, and the mass populous is removed from the equation; that would mean the auto industry would be building cars for the new common denomenator…piston heads. How cool would that be?
The electric cars GM were trying to sell were doomed fromt he beginning.
I would buy and drive and eletric car in a heart beat, but it must have 4 things:
1. A real world 200 mile range. This mean up hills with the AC on. My commute may be only 90 miles a day, but it also has a 3,000 feet elevation change.
2. A 100,000 mile battery warrenty.
3. A price tag Under $25,000. No, I am not willing to lease the car.
4. A decient size. Make it big enough that I don’t feel like a rabbit amongst the wolves when I am driving down the interstate.
When the electric car finally arrives, I don’t think it will come out of detroit. I will more than likely come come from some one like the guys at Tesla Motor, whom are not tied to the old ways of doing buisness.
MikeD2 writes:
>>By the way, Denmark doesn???t really get anything like 20% of its electric power from wind (that???s a number that the system can hit sporadically during ideal conditions), nor has wind power ever come close to a reasonable economic break even. If one ignores the capital and maintenance costs, maybe, but it is still not a break-even just on the basis of energy input vs. output. Don???t forget the energy used to manufacture and maintain such equipment, and of course the non-trivial environmental impact.
I’m pretty sure that 20% is average output. But nuclear is the one with the really high capital and maintenance costs. That’s why there haven’t been any new ones ordered in 30 years!!! Meanwhile, wind power is growing quite fast in the US and around the world.
There are also mining costs, and environmental impact of mining, terrorism risks (for example, fly a plane into a nuclear plant, etc), the risk involved with waste storage (more terrorism possibilities among other things), the potential for aggravating nuclear proliferation. The environmental impact of solar/wind is utterly trivial compared with the much much greater environmental and sociopolitical impacts of nuclear plants.
>>Like solar power, windmills can sort of work as long as they are surrounded by a very reliable power infrastructure that can take over when it gets cloudy / the wind dies down. The bottom line is, solar and wind, unlike a nuclear or coal burning plant, do not have a controllable power output. You would have to build a vastly oversized system to match peak demand during nonideal conditions – and then the rest of the time you???d be emitting huge quantities of waste heat. It might actually worsen any global warming problem.
A widely dispersed system of solar, wind, biomass and natural gas fueled electric power generation would be plenty reliable. You would have plants scattered around every state. For that matter, you would probably be storing some of the energy thus produced as hydrogen, and hydrogen powered fuel cell cars (I’m now looking a couple of decades intot he future) could be plugged into the grid when not in use, so cars would be fuel storage devices among other things. (Of course you’d have to keep those delinquent teenaged unpluggers away.)
MikeD2 writes:
2. And, speaking about windmills and solar panels, how about the environmental impact of those? Environmentalists have conniptions over the prospect of an oil company building on a few acres in Alaska, but leveling four states??? worth of wilderness to put up solar panels is just fine? A recent proposal for a windmill farm in California was actually defeated by opposition from the Sierra Club, since they predicted that it would slaughter the local population of birds. And they???re right, it would. This phenomenon has been seen wherever they put up windmills. It???s not clear that non nuclear alternatives on the scale we???re talking about have a net advantage over fossil fuels at all, even just from an environmental standpoint.
Windmills and solar panels will be quite dispersed. My roof is big enough that once solar electric comes down in price, I could probably supply my own electricity, and have some to sell back into the grid. Solar electric cells will undoubtedly go on top of a lot of commercial buildings as well, maybe in median strips on interstates, use your imagination. They’re not like nuclear plants in that you can put them in small amounts in dispersed locations all over the place. You don’t need to knock down a forest to have a big solar plant.
The bird problem is true in some areas with windmills but not in other areas, including Nantucket Sound where hopefully the Cape Wind project will soon be built. It is not hard to figure out for any given site whether bird deaths will be a problem or not. Mass Audubon is quite supportive of the project, and as I said earlier this one project would supply most of the electricity for the Cape and the Islands.
Martinjmpr: I don’t think regen braking is what gets hybrids better economy in the city. For the most part the improved mileage is a result of the motor switching off at traffic lights and not wasting gas while idling. And most hybrids will creep forward under battery power only – a great feature in a traffic jam – only starting the IC engine at a certain road speed.
OTOH, the regen braking is what charges the battery to allow this mode of operation, so I suppose ultimately you are right. This would be the benefit of being able to plug in the battery — extending the electric-only range of the vehicle.
But you are correct in that highway mileage is no better than any comparable IC vehicle. The electric assist will give it a little more shove than would be typical from such a small displacement, low-power engine, but that’s all.
kablamo writes:
>>>The point? Eventually, whether it is in a decade, a century, or a millenia, we are going to hit a wall (empty those reserves), at which point we won???t be able to use any more energy than the planet receives, unless it???s by destroying atoms that make it up (and we probably aren???t going to be harnessing the power of nitrogen, oxygen or carbon atoms; my point is uranium is still a commodity). The only solution is going to be to limit consumption. As far as I am concerned, the sooner we accept conservation as a way of life, the longer we will be able to enjoy the ???reserves??? we are using. Honestly, anyone who thinks driving 4000lbs machines back and forth to work every day for generations is feasible, is out of their mind – it???s a spectacular waste of energy.
A quibble with something I pretty much agree with: we won’t hit a wall, because as oil prices rise, other sources of energy become competitive (this is why we’re hearing so much about ethanol these days). But the risk of global heating is a definite wall. The way we are going, the planet will be 20 degrees hotter and civilization will be kaput by the end of the century. Just three degrees of warming will throw agriculture into a tailspin.
One problem that doesn’t much get talked about: overpopulation. The US, which has the biggest per capita production of greenhouse gases, in the ’90s grew by the equivalent of four New Jerseys a decade. That rate of growth has increased this decade. All that bodes ill for the future of driving. 90% of population growth this decade is due to mass immigration (it was about 75% in the 1990s).
[i]kevin – *no one will buy an electric car*???uh yeah they will. and it will start out in 2 car homes, where the electric will be used as a daily driver and grocery getter. then the power stations will come – they will start out as an additional ???pump??? at regular gas stations.[/i]
Look, if in the future battery technology is improved such that EVs will behave like gasoline cars, and you can recharge in a few minutes at the pump, then fine — that mitigates the problem, and electric cars would be a viable choice. But that’s emphatically not the case now, and no gas station would install an electric charger any time soon because no one is going to camp out there for 6 hours to “refuel” — doesn’t make sense. And that is the state of today’s technology.
I wouldn’t know about any “Detroit/Big Oil” conspiracy regarding the electric car, but some do believe that “Detroit/Big Oil” conspired to kill the electric trolley systems that were prevalent in many US cities before 1950.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
dean, no, it’s definitely the regen that nets the hybrid most of its gains. Shutting down the engine at a stoplight adds some economy, but if that were the primary efficiency, why go to all the trouble and expense of adding the hybrid system when you could instead just switch to a 42V starter and electric accessories?
Keep in mind that as much energy as it takes to accelerate to a given speed, normal (non-regen) braking just throws away in heat.
Hello Folks; my first post here. I’m one of those who’s fascinated by the GM Deathwatch series.
I am a former Mazda, BMW, and Corvette owner. I’ve owned other cars too, but I am a two-seater, open-top roadster fan. Balls-to-the-walls, pedal-to-the-metal, wind in my face, and all that. All “catch-me-copper RED”. And only one traffic citation in nearly 20 years.
I currently have a 2004 Prius. 36,000 miles, and I love it.
I will explain the divergence of those first two paragraphs some other time. For now, however; I have a few facts to offer about hybrids, or more specifically about the Prius, just to dispel some popular misconceptions, many of which I’ve seen throught this thread and in other threads here on TTAC.
1. The batteries are Nickel Metal Hydride. They are designed to be recycled.
2. Toyota has been making the Prius for about 9 years now. The battery packs aren’t just dying. The nay-sayers love to point to battery replacement, but it just has not been a problem in real life.
“2” above is so because of the design of Toyota’s hybrid system. The computer does all it can to avoid overcharging and deep-discharging the battery system. Overcharging and deep-discharging is what shortens battery life. If done regularly, it will kill any battery, regardles of battery type. The Toyota system tries to keep the state-of-charge (SOC) around 50% to 60%, and unless something is BROKEN, the computer will do everything it can to avoid charging to levels greater than 80% or lower than 40%.
If I recall correctly, the warranty on the Prius’ hybrid components is good for 100,000 miles, or 150,000 miles in California. Toyota has been making the Prius since 1997 or so. Nine years. It’s not “bleeding edge” technology. I have not read of problems with the batteries having to be replaced.
3. Toyota’s system does NOT only recharge the battery by regenerative braking. It also uses the planetary gear system (also called “Hybrid Synergy Drive, or “HSD”) to allow the internal combustion engine to drive the wheels AND/OR to provide torque for one of the motor-generators. The computer makes these decisions. And the transition from gasoline to electric and back again is very smooth, almost undetectable to my passengers.
4. Toyota’s system can move the car by the electric motor (MG2) only.
5. Toyota’s system can move the car by the internal combustion engine (ICE) only.
6. Toyota’s system can move the car by both electricity and gasoline at the same time.
7. Toyota’s system can stop the ICE at traffic lights. The air conditioner still runs, because it uses it’s own electric motor and draws energy from the hybrid battery. I live in Florida, so of course a good air conditioner is important to me.
8. The Toyota system can turn on the ICE if the hybrid battery’s SOC falls below the desired range. This doesn’t happen with my car very often, but it does work well. So if I’m stuck in traffic or waiting for a train to pass, the computer can still start the ICE to begin generating electricity to prevent deep-discharge of the battery.
9. All energy for the Toyota system ultimately comes from gasoline. The hybrid components are simply there to capture energy that might otherwise be converted into heat energy before being lost. Under moderate acceleration, the Prius can convert up to 28% of the ICE’s torque to electricity for later use. This is energy that might otherwise have gone to waste. When stepping on the brake pedal, the regeneration feature will convert the inertia of the car and contents into electrical energy, again for storage for later use.
10. The Toyota Prius is being used for taxi cabs and police cars. It’s not a high-speed vehicle per se, but it’s working out very well for this self-avowed sportscar driver. The Prius’ good gas mileage and low emissions (PZEV, or “Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle”) makes it ideal for campus police departments, security teams, or community outreach programs, or for people like me.
11. I’ve observed that there’s a lot of hype with the idea of a “plug-in” hybrid. There’s even a group that will convert your Prius into such a plug-in vehicle for a rather princely sum.
However, with Toyota’s system, creating a “plug-in” hybrid is problematic on several fronts:
— a “plug-in” hybrid will certainly cost more to manufacture. I’ve heard figures of $20,000 and upward. Over and above the cost of the car, that is.
— a “plug-in” is likely to encourage overcharging and deep-discharging, which will shorten the life expectancy of the NiMH battery pack or any auxiliary battery packs that might be added as part of the “plug-in” conversion.
— We invalidate the measurement of “mileage.” How do you calculate “miles per gallon of gasoline” when you are also using so many kilowatts of power at night? All you’ve done is offset your personal fuel source with a municipal fuel source, and along the way, you’ve convinced yourself that you are “saving” resources.
I submit to you that we need a CONSISTENT FORM OF MEASUREMENT for energy usage, or else the consumer is left disadvantaged.
Okay, I’ve blabbed on and on too much for my first post. Sorry about that! But hey, the question did end with “what do you think?”
Esoterica & Dean,
IIRC, not all hybrids shut off the IC motor when it’s unneeded. The Toyotas do, not sure about the Hondas. Other hybrids simply use the hybrid motor to add HP to an otherwise anemic IC engine.
ZoomZoom, you’re ignoring two salient points:
1) just because it’s “designed for recycling” doesn’t mean enough incentives exist so that it will be recycled. I mean, Volvo designs their cars and labels all their parts so 85% of the entire car can be recycled, but will it be?
2) Despite your laundry list of features that allow a hybrid to attain higher fuel economy (and BTW, I don’t think anyone was saying that regen is the only way a hybrid recharges its batteries, just the primary way it attains its efficiencies), a contemporary hybrid powertrain still has no significant advantages over, and is dramatically more expensive than, a contemporary diesel.
Also, why do you think a plug-in hybrid would be so much more expensive? The charging circuitry is already there so essentially all it would need is a big AC-DC converter. And no one’s claiming that electricity is free energy, but in most areas, electricity would provide more miles/dollar than gasoline. Also, even coal power plants produce power more efficiently than automobiles — coal power plants run at about 40% efficiency, while cars are only about 20-25% efficient.
I don’t think birds are much of an issue for windmills. First, if a bird hits a windmill, the windmills will survive, as in Windmill 1, Bird 0. Second, if the windmill is turning so fast that a bird can’t see it, it’ll probably be a quick and painless death; sad, but, oh well…
Tree huggers…
I feel like a complete jerk. I love the winged critters. I actually have bird feeders in my yard and I enjoy watching the little guys fighting with the squirrels for supremacy.
In the meantime…there’s also something to be said for extending a car’s service life. It takes a lot of energy to build one, so the longer it runs the better the return on the investment. And it’s cheaper to buy used; I’m pretty sure that, after spending close to $27K on my Maxima, I’m not gonna do that ever again. I’m on the hunt for a Park Avenue, which is a total land yacht, but a great ride.
God, I love cars.
There are cars you want to love, but just can’t. They seem “right” on the surface: right size, look, gas mileage, whatever. But they become the wrong car once you drive them. The Prius is one of those cars for me. Behind the wheel, it felt like a cross between a rolling video game and something George Jetson might own. I had touted the Prius to my wife for months as our next car. One short test drive silenced my advocacy.
This time, I’m keeping my mouth shut. But top on my list is the 4 door Golf GTI which I have driven (A3 version) and like. It may not get great gas mileage, but certainly gets good gas mileage and is one hell of a lot more fun to drive than the Prius will ever be, no matter how many generations the car evolves thru. If VW ever puts a diesel in the GTI, it could be perfect alternative to the Prius and automotive equivalent of purgatory.
David Holzman – Yes I agree completely; I misspoke when talked about hitting a wall, although it might seem like one at the time, there will clearly be a progression away from oil as an energy source at some point.
On the merits of hybrids:
I find it really, really sad that a lot of people whom I can only generalize as narrow-minded and old-fashioned are so pessimistic about hybrids. It’s clear that they are just spouting every negative headline they’ve ever seen about hybrids, whinning about battery durability and pollution, mileage that’s less than advertised, quality problems, etc.
The thing is – everyone I know that has a hybrid, everyone I see online, almost every piece of feedback about them…owners are satisfied! Even if EPA estimates aren’t met (honestly, those were *never* accurate, ever), mileage is still decidedly good, reliability for such a technologically progressive machine seems at least average, and I haven’t heard of any widespread issues with batteries (actually I haven’t heard of any, at all).
I’d have to say after the 5 years hybrids have been on the market in NA (almost 10 in Japan), they seem to be holding up fairly well and have lots of potential. Like others have said, stick a hybrid powertrain on a diesel or a hydrogen (or E85 if you so wish) engine and I can see vehicles easily getting 100mpg with very low or non-existent emissions. There is clearly potential still.
ZoomZoom, nice first post and comments. Of course, I own a 2005 Prius, and have lived outside the US where you can drive – um – a tad faster than here and actually live to talk about it (OK, Great Britain, if you want to know). In the UK, closing speeds in passing maneuvers are 150 mph plus, on two lane roads, with 1/2 second to spare. Yet the death rate per 1000 miles is significantly lower than the US. (The reason is – good training of drivers, compared to terrible training of drivers in the US).
So, when I had to get my wife to Detroit Airport to fly to the UK and had a 5 hour drive to make in 3 hours 20 minutes, we were able to do so with the extra safety margin of my prior driving experience. My largest concern was the increasingly incompetent Michigan drivers who have no clue about driving safely at ANY speed, driving alongside me near Detroit at 95 plus (their normal speeds).
Therefore, I agree fully with you that the Prius is actually a good performance car. Peformance is not “just” 0-60, however 0-60 in 9.7 seconds (per Motor Trend) is about what a normal, mid-sized V8 automatic family car would do in the mid-1960’s, whether it was a Chevrolet Malibu, Ford Fairlane, Dodge Coronet or Rambler Classic.
The Prius is a very capable car in every aspect, and so safe that my horrendously high insurance premiums (not because of MY driving, but because I live in Michigan) actually came down when I replaced a 2002 car which did not have so much safety equipment.
Hi, esoterica. Sorry about the double post, gang.
It’s becoming obvious to me (and possibly others here) that no matter what evidences are placed in front of you about the hybrid scene, you have some further (or repeated) objection to the hybrid vehicle, for some reason.
Let’s look at it another way. Had the original automobile been an electric and gasoline hybrid, in the 1890’s, and in the 1990’s, a company had come up with a means of bypassing the hybrid (i.e. invented a manual transmission and clutch, say), resulting in an efficiency 1/2 as good as the conventional hybrid vehicle, how well do you suppose such a car might sell, all other things being equal?
As for “why would plug in hybrids cost so much more” – well, it has to do with the cost of NiCad batteries (and a far larger number of them) versus NiMH batteries. It’s simple economics.
As for recycling, again, I repeat – when Ford Motor Company started buying up “junk yards” in the US, it was found that over 90% of them were profitable. Whereas, neither Ford nor GM nor some 40% of their dealers are at present profitable. My point is – every “junk yard man” knows how to read, and Toyota have been sending bulletins out explaining about how to safety dis-assemble the hybrids (as have Honda, and Ford, I’m sure) – plus I know Toyota are reminding them – there is a $300 bounty on the battery.
Now, my buddy is a body man and at his body shop, they just throw away catalytic convertors (on virtually every car since 1975) when, say, a car is “ass-packed” (as he so colorfully puts it) and bends the exhaust system which requires an entire replacement. They just toss out the PLATINUM filled catalysts, which could be recycled. The catalysts go to the LAND FILL.
Platinum is what, $1100 an OUNCE right now? No smart owners at salvage yards would toss the catalysts away, partner. So much for your argument about not recycling.
As for highway mileage, and someones comment that hybrids are “no better on the highway than are conventional cars” – I strenously beg to differ and offer up my own Prius experiences. How about 63 MPG on several occasions, on a 40-45 mile run (no, it is NOT down hill, rather up & down, on 55 mph 2-lane roads) in my Prius driving between 35 (in towns, the speed limit) and 60 on the highway? Last Friday evening, we made the journey and the car did “only” 56 MPG on that journey, but I used the cruise as I was tired. The AC was on at least for some of the 3-4 times I’d done the same journey and obtained 63 mpg, I might add.
The Prius is super-efficient on the highway, often obtaining at least 50 mpg, or about 22 mpg better than our other mid-sized V6 non-hybrid car can obtain, largely due to the Atkinson cycle engine, and aerodynamic efficiency.
The hybrid is really a city car; that’s where it achieves not only the best mileage, because much of the time, hybrids such as the Toyota or Ford and Lincoln-Mercury vehicles, run solely on electric power. That also means that the emissions are lower there.
For places such as Mexico City, Los Angeles and Bjeing (sic), hybrids really should be a third of more of the vehicle mix. It may come to that.
The first hybrid car was conceived by Dr. Porsche, over a hundred years ago. The former Chrysler Corporation briefly entertained the idea of building a hybrid racecar to run at the 24 Hours of LeMans in 1995. (Why they dropped the idea is for someone else to explain.)
In 1993, Professor Michael Seal, then head of the Vehicle Design Institure at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA noted that there is no such thing as a “totally clean” electric car, noting in his presentation at an electric vehicle conference at the University of Washington, that there’s always a generating plant way in back of the (purely) electric car.
The only hybrid most of the people I know who are long-time electric car enthusiasts support is the plug-in hybrid. Hybrids are no pancea for all the problems afflicting this country and the world, as a result of our dependence on petroleum in the Middle East to fuel our cars, trucks and the very economy itself – compact discs, are also a petroleum-based product. But they won’t hurt while we look around for other solutions, such as hydrogen powered fuel cells, or possibly something not yet on the horizon.
zoomzoom writes:
I am a former Mazda, BMW, and Corvette owner. I???ve owned other cars too, but I am a two-seater, open-top roadster fan. Balls-to-the-walls, pedal-to-the-metal, wind in my face, and all that. All ???catch-me-copper RED???. And only one traffic citation in nearly 20 years.
I want to know how you avoided citations all those years. Do you actually obey the speed limit in the BMWs and Corvettes? (With a screen name like zoomzoom I doubt it.)
Are you expert at spotting freeway flyers before you pass them, as they hide behind the bushes by the side of the road?
Do you always have state of the art radar detectors?
What else??? Help your fellow car nuts!
The Prius is super-efficient on the highway, often obtaining at least 50 mpg, or about 22 mpg better than our other mid-sized V6 non-hybrid car can obtain, largely due to the Atkinson cycle engine, and aerodynamic efficiency.
I thought the reason was that the ICE on the Prius is much less powerful than that on a typical car, therefore operating at a higher % of its maximum output at highway speeds, and therefore operating more efficiently, since ICEs are most efficient at high output.
We often look to technological solutions to our problems. Attaining better fuel economy is one of those KISS issues.
I want a car that achieves good fuel economy, but I don’t want increased (expen$ive replacement part$) complexity. Automakers can do it, but they won’t, because a non-sexy solution won’t garner the “green buzz” that hybrids/fuel cells/etc do.
Here’s Fred’s 4 point plan:
1) WEIGHT: Keep the lard off automakers! There is no reason automakers can’t come up with a 2,200 pound, 100 cu. ft. interior, sedan. Use aluminum or composites. A lower weight car allows use of a smaller engine. The added cost of light weight components will be partially balanced out my the lower cost of a smaller engine.
2) AERODYNAMICS: A sleek body adds little to no extra cost.
3) EFFICIENT ENGINES/TRANSMISSIONS: Within a class of cars with similar power/weight/performance, certain cars achieve far better fuel economy than others. Some manufacturers pay attention to efficiency more than others. PAY MORE ATTENTION! 5 or 6 speed automatics will gain the average driver another 5-10% improvement in economy.
4) IDLE-STOP: Have AC driven by electric motor powered by oversized conventional battery.
mfaulkner,
You may believe that “global warming” is a fact, as do many others, but that does not make it so. Yes, the earth is getting warmer, but it has done this in the past. We have about 100-150 years of RELIABLE temperature data, but the earth is 4.5 billion years old according to scientists. So we have temperature data for 0.000003% of the earth’s life and we expect to be able to predict what will happen based on that???
The same folks screaming about “global warming” now are some of the same people who were screaming about “global cooling” in the 70s. So, 30 years ago, human activity lowered temperatures, but now it is raising temperatures. Wow!
What it boils down to is the temperature models are flawed and have never been able to accurately predict future weather patterns. Translation: no one knows what the weather will do in 2050.
I concur that the earth is currently getting warmer, I just don’t think that it has ALL been caused by humans. I’m not even sure we have had any discernible effect. There is NOT a consensus of scientific opinion on this matter. Trust me, Al Gore just needs attention.