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Plug-In Hybrids Aren't Coming, They're Here
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Oct 06, 2008 03:11 AM
from the fiull-'er-up dept.
from the fiull-'er-up dept.
Wired is running a story about the small but vocal, and growing, number of people who aren't waiting for automakers to deliver plug-in hybrids. They're shelling out big money to have already thrifty cars converted into full-on plug-in hybrids capable of triple-digit fuel economy. "The conversions aren't cheap, and top-of-the-line kits with lithium-ion batteries can set you back as much as $35,000. Even a kit with lead-acid batteries — the type under the hood of the car you drive now — starts at five grand. That explains why most converted plug-ins are in the motor pools of places like Southern California Edison... No more than 150 or so belong to people like [extreme skiing champion Alison] Gannett, who had her $30,000 Ford Escape converted in December. Yes, that's right. The conversion cost more than the truck."
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Efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't efficiency call for a better designed vehicle, rather than just a different fuel source?
Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Funny)
You're obviously a Linux user...
Parent
Re:Efficiency (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, someone who thinks it's pointless to start with a friggin truck if you're trying to be fuel efficient..?
Think of all the excess weight in a truck that she just doesn't need (and then she goes and makes it heavier with extra motors and batteries).
And as I'm sure others will point out, she's just shifting the emissions to a power plant, which may end up being worse than burning fuel in her car depending on the fuel the plant uses, and the amount of leakage she gets from her batteries and so on. Unless she just charges the batteries from the engine all the time, which to me would again seem more inefficient than just using the engine unless she's stopped in traffic a lot.
I do like the idea of electric vehicles btw, I just think a standard truck is a dumb place to start. Though the Ford F150 was the best selling vehicle in the US for 23 years, so in a way trucks are a good place to start - but not with current models IMO. They would need to make them lightweight (but still strong, obviously) to get the best efficiency. Electric motors have good torque too so they'd be good for hauling, as long as they have enough charge..
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Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
she's just shifting the emissions to a power plant, which may end up being worse than burning fuel in her car
You're mistaken here, for the simple fact that internal combustion engines are horribly inefficient. You're lucky to get 20% efficiency out any car engine, most of the energy in the gasoline/diesel/ethanol is given off as waste heat.
Electric motors run closer to 90% efficiency, and most of our fossil-fuel power plants are pushing 40% efficiency now; some new natural-gas plants are even hitting 60%.
That's a big difference.
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Re:Efficiency (Score:4, Interesting)
Well according to environmental group ACEEE.org, an EV1 car is no more clean than a Prius or Civic Hybrid. (On a hundred-point scale, they score 52, 53, and 51 respectively.) So the grandparent poster was correct that simply switching to electric does not automatically create a cleaner car.
As for ICE efficiency, Toyota says their Prius gasoline engine achieves 40% and Volkswagen determined their 3-cylinder Lupo diesel engines are at 50%.
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Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
Essentially every peer-reviewed study on the subject has shown that the energy that goes into building a car is dwarfed by the amount consumed in the vehicle's operating lifetime. 70% coal is a ridiculous number; coal power only makes up half our grid, and since both presidential candidates are promising cap & trade, that number is only going to drop. Electricity generation is not 60% efficient; fuel to AC in coal plants is about 35% in coal plants and about 45% in natural gas plants. The energy required to move coal by train is trivial compared to the energy in it; the US *average* for trains is 436 miles per gallon of diesel per ton of freight (a ton of coal contains 15-30GJ of energy, compared to 45MJ per gallon of diesel). Electric power transmission in the US averages 92.8% efficient. Li-ion batteries are nearly lossless. You, like many, left out charger and inverter losses. Chargers are usually 92-93% (rapid chargers, which can charge a battery pack in 5-30 minutes, depending on the type, are more like 90% efficient). Inverter and motor losses combined are usually 85-90% in normal driving conditions.
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Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
It's hard not to talk down when you're making such elementary mistakes. For example, calling the Lupo a "~90mpg vehicle". Let us count the ways that's wrong:
1) That's per *Imperial* gallon, not US gallon. It's 78mpg per US gallon.
2) That's on the *NEDC*, not the revised EPA drivecycle. The NEDC uses lower accelerations and speeds. EPA ratings of equivalent vehicles generally get about 15% worse mileage than NEDC, so drop that to 68mpg.
3) That's *diesel*, not gasoline for which most Americans are most familiar with mpg figures. Diesel is, quite simply, a 15% denser fuel than gasoline. Per *unit mass* (i.e., per amount of petroleum or per unit CO2 pollution), that drops you down to 59mpg equivalent.
4) Not an equivalent car. You may argue that it's a "5 seater". Sure, if you can manage to cram five people into that thing. It's also underpowered, taking almost 13 seconds to do 0-60 (instead of 10 for a (much larger) Prius and 8 for the EV1). You can make almost any gasoline or diesel vehicle get better mileage by slashing its power output.
5) The Lupo swapped steel components for aluminum and magnesium ones. Directly, without replacing reinforcement. Sure, you can make any car get better mileage by reducing its crashworthiness. Not to mention the expense of aluminum and magnesium.
The VW 1L car plays even more sleight of hand. In addition to the above:
1) It's not even on the NEDC like the Lupo; that number is for a *steady state 45mph*. Let me tell you, I can drive a 12 year old Saturn SL1, whose mpg rating when *new* would only be about 30mpg, at a steady state 45mph and get 45-50mpg or so. If you want an excellent way to BS your mileage figures, you've got one right there. In my personal opinion, the only commonly used way to BS mpg figures that's even more dishonest than that is what some PHEVs do where they assume you'll use electricity for X percent of your miles, then ignore the electricity in the mpg calculations.
2) They threw out even the most basic creature comforts like AC to get it as light as they did.
3) Even *the frame* is made out of magnesium. Magnesium makes aluminum look like steel in terms of strength. Again, if you want to throw safety out the door, you can lighten a car to almost nothing and then cheer its ridiculous numbers. They do use carbon fibre, which has a great strength to weight ratio, but only a tiny amount of it, and is no substitute for having a proper frame underneath.
You might as well cheer the 1000-mpg eco-racers while you're at it.
Don't come on here and expect me not to call you out on it when you act like the energy used to build a car is somehow comparable to the energy used in its operation. Don't expect me not to call you on it when you post ridiculous efficiency figures or act like it takes a proportionally significant amount of energy to haul bulk freight on rails. If you want to play up your credentials, *show them* by what you write.
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Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
Adding charging points to gas stations shouldn't be a big job technically, the only problem is politics and the lucrative oil business
Oy vey - you really missed it. The problem with adding charging points at gas station is hanging out at one for four hours waiting for your car to charge. Chargers are needed at places like parking garages so you can let it charge while at work or shopping at the mall, not service stations. The smart service station owner is looking at franchising insert-your-card-$x-per-kWh widgets in downtown parking lots.
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Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Think of all the excess weight in a truck that she just doesn't need (and then she goes and makes it heavier with extra motors and batteries)."
A truck is only a bad place to start if you don't want a truck. A PHEV work truck could run all sorts of good stuff WITHOUT A SEPARATE GENERATOR. That goes a long way to paying for a conversion. I'd love to have one for a welding truck for obvious reasons.
Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Interesting)
It pains me that so many people drive cars larger than they really need, but consider this: A few mpg increase for a truck has much more impact than the same mpg increase in an already fuel-efficient vehicle.
For example, let's say a truck gets 20 mpg. After doing simple things like checking the tire air pressure, driving conservatively (slowly), etc, it might get 25 mpg -- that's a 25% increase.
But if you start with a car that already gets 50 mpg and you increase it to 55 mpg, that's only a 10% increase in efficiency.
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Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
You're just playing a math game by showing percentage improvement rather than absolute improvement. It's like saying a $1000 raise is a higher percentage of the income of a poor person than a rich person; so if your getting a raise, it's better to be poor.
If both vehicles drive the same number of miles per week, then a 5 mpg improvement will save them both the same amount of gasoline, the same amount of money and the same amount of carbon emissions. In every way that could possibly matter, the savings are the same.
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Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
That would be true if you were talking about gallons-per-mile figures. However, miles-per-gallon is different. A five-mile-per-gallon increase in fuel efficiency is, indeed, less in absolute terms if your fuel efficiency was already high.
To use the numbers given by the grandparent poster, the number of gallons used to drive 100 miles are:
20 mpg: 100 miles/20 mpg=5 gallons.
25 mpg: 100 miles/25 mpg=4 gallons.
Savings: 1 gallon.
50 mpg: 100 miles/50 mpg=2 gallons.
55 mpg: 100 miles/55 mpg=1.818 gallons.
Savings: 0.182 gallons.
The rest of the world tends to measure fuel efficiency as liters-per-100-kilometers for this reason.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I would have thought a flatbed truck was the ideal starting point at th moment; batteries are still bulky, so just raising the bed of the truck by a foot to fit in a palette of batteries underneath seems like the best use of space.
But... Think of the children! (Score:5, Funny)
If you have a truck, you'll be able to mow down a whole group rather than just the front rank!
Parent
Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
There is one other huge difference. With oil, we are getting the bulk of it from people who hate us and want to use the money they make from us, to build an army up and come over here and kill us.
With electricity, which granted isn't perfect, either, most of the fuel is being produced here in the United States and the money is a real benefit to our economy.
Transporter_ii
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Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the oil that the U.S. consumes comes from the U.S., Canada and Mexico (Canada is our largest supplier by quite a bit); I don't think Canadians and Mexicans hate us, more just find us tiresome. Most of the rest of it comes from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, countries with which we have quite a bit of political friction, but I'm not sure that the people hate us (especially the majorities, there are certainly people in each country who are not USA #1 fan).
Source:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html [doe.gov]
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Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Funny)
How about she uses a ski lift like everyone else, the lazy hussy.
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Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
Power plant's are far cleaner and more efficient than the IC engine in your car.
Electric powertrains are more efficient and longer lasting than transmissions.
However, batteries suck and until they are better Honda and your local mechanic are both stuck using the same crap. The idea that we need to spend a lot of time and money designing hybrids is wrong because all of them operate efficiently enough that there is little room for significant improvement. It's all about the batteries at this point.
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Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why it gets insane, quickly, trying to justify a particular type of energy usage as having "less overall environmental impact" than alternatives.
Yes, one can argue that refining gas and transporting it doubles the amount of energy it requires over simply what your car winds up using.
But one could also argue that electricity suffers the same fate, when you consider the losses due to resistance of transmission lines, step-down transformers, and losses incurred as energy is stored, short-term, in batteries before *finally* being used by a vehicle.
Then you *still* haven't factored in overall impact of such things as transmissions that wear out more quickly than electric powertrains, vs. batteries that wear out and have to be re-manufactured. (What chemicals go into that whole process, and how "clean" is it?)
Then you start wondering about the pollution levels of gasoline powered vehicles vs. electric cars, but have to balance that against pollution levels generated by the power plants generating the electricity. If they use nuclear power, how does THAT factor in, long-term, as far as ability to safely dispose of the radioactive waste? How much energy is used in transportation of the spent fuel rods and such?
Oh, and did we factor in groundwater pollution from leaking fuel tanks at gas stations, because that's probably an issue too? And how much gas is used driving to gas stations, JUST to fuel up a car, vs. electric cars that could recharge at home and save those trips?
See what I mean? Ultimately, I think the *only* sensible metric is figuring out which option costs you, the consumer, the least to go with.
Parent
Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
That depends on how you measure efficiency.
In this case:
(electric+petrol) miles / (petrol only) gallons
The electric efficiency is being ignored completely, and the miles driven on electric power are being used to massively inflate the petrol efficiency.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah well even that wouldn't work if they actually did some extra-urban driving in these things.
My Golf gets the same fuel efficiency on extra-urban as a Prius.
Automakers never want hybrids to go mainstream (Score:5, Informative)
From a previous article:
"Plug-in Hybrids May Not Go Mainstream, Toyota Says"
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/02/210250 [slashdot.org]
translated (directly from the accounting department): "We have run the numbers, and the industry is set to lose X billions of dollars through lost part sales over the coming decades as the masses step from hybrids to full electric for that around-town runner.
No, we never want to help or see hybrids go mainstream, ever. Keep it all business as usual: hard to maintain combustion engines are expensive for the consumer and good for our bottom line. Furthermore, it essentially costs us nothing to FREELOAD the longer term consequences of combustion engines onto the environment and society as a whole, so it is a sound short term strategy to satisfy our immediate obligations to investors."
Re:Automakers never want hybrids to go mainstream (Score:5, Informative)
If I had $109k... Tesla Motors Roadster [teslamotors.com].
Oh BTW, Tesla Motors is also planning on a 'family' type car in the $50k range soon if I remember one of their press releases correctly. Thats getting pretty close to the sweet spot for people to buy into electric car technology. As the price of oil and gasoline keeps going up, it will make more and more sense to buy a slightly more expensive car that you can fill up the charge on for a measly 12 cents.
All they need to do is use a less powerful engine that gets the 'family' type car to 80 MPH instead of the 125 MPH the Roadster gets to cut a portion of the costs.
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Re:Automakers never want hybrids to go mainstream (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind, that hydrids still have a combustion engine, that's why they call it a hybrid and not an electric car.
Adding extra parts (generator, batteries, electric motor) only makes the car more complex, harder to service and more expensive.
This assumes your not running on electric for most of the day and are actually using the combustion. There are a few sources around that claim to demonstrate that most drivers are not traveling far from home - i.e. electric will do the job even if the car is hybrid. Which leads to the original point I was make in my post above: "as the masses step from hybrids to full electric". Its a short leap from a hybrid to full electric, especially when the consumer see's that they are not using the combustion for around-town, so why pay more to lug such a heavy inefficient piece of metal on those around-town trips? Just make the second household car a full electric == lost part sales, so big Auto does not want Hybrid stepping stones.
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Re:Automakers never want hybrids to go mainstream (Score:5, Informative)
"Plug-in hybrid and full-electric will require some changes in the national electricity grid...."
Fewer than you might think. A recent DOE study indicated that we could swap out 84% of the vehicles currently on the road and replace them with PHEVs using the existing infrastructure.
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Re:Automakers never want hybrids to go mainstream (Score:5, Informative)
You tow a generator. [evmaine.org]
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't say they required more service, it's just that when they require service, it's more complex than your everyday gas engine check-up.
From whay I see, Toyota is very busy training mechanics to service the hybrids, but not every garage keeps up with the times as quickly as the rest.
Now that gas prices have soared everybody want a hybrid but, a few years ago, you couldn't give them away with a pack of Cheerios.
Now that some people hafe felt the sting of a battery replacement (not helped by car dealers t
I'm not sure I'd call that being here (Score:5, Insightful)
A tiny number of wealthy people custom-retrofitting cars at uneconomical cost isn't really what advocates of plug-in hybrids have in mind, so I wouldn't say the concept is "here" yet.
Re:I'm not sure I'd call that being here (Score:4, Interesting)
You have to start somewhere - plugin hybrids weren't really even on anyone's radar before the various Prius hackers started making their own and getting press about it
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A start (Score:5, Interesting)
I converted my POS gas car to a "mild" plug in hybrid: removed the alternator and added a deep cycle battery. I reduce the mechanical load on the engine by removing the alt. I have more power available for speed and acceleration and I get better mpg. I recharge the battery using solar and since I park outside at home and work, it gets plenty of time to charge. All the parts were originally for a full home solar system that I have yet to make space for, so there isn't any additional cost for the car conversion. Some data shows [metrompg.com] that you can get up to a 10% increase in efficiency by going alternatorless.
Re:A start (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a bit insane.
Batteries are meant to give you just enough power to reliably start the vehicle, for good reason. Batteries are horribly inefficient, and generating electricity on the fly is much better all-around.
Deep cycle batteries are expensive, large, heavy, etc., and no batteries last long when you're regularly charge/discharge cycling them.
And safety would be a serious problem. Your headlights will be substantially dimmer, and continue to dim throughout your drive, and would very likely drain your battery completely in perhaps 4 hours. Might not be a problem for summer-only vehicles, not too far outside the tropics, but horrible for most people.
I bet you could get comparable results, for very little money less money, by just putting a (heavy duty) diode with a 2-volt drop, on the alternator line. Then, it puts out 12V, and the battery is only maintained at about 50% charge capacity. Never any over-charging or wasted energy trickle charging.
For a bit more money (but far less than solar panels and a deep-cycle battery) you could REPLACE your alternator with a fixed-magnet generator, at least doubling electrical generation efficiency.
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Re: (Score:3)
alternators are more efficient or produce more power at lower speeds than generators do
Lower engine speeds, not lower alternator speeds. Dynamos (remember them?) need a complicated arrangement with a commutator to give a DC output, and have only two stator windings. An alternator has usually got several stator windings combined into three phases, and a single rotor winding fed through slip rings. The AC output is fed to a three-phase bridge rectifier to get DC out. Because the rotor is simpler, it can
This is not a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The result of removing the alternator in cars can be sub-optimal lighting, ignition and fuel injection when running on battery only. This even applies to Diesels nowadays - because the injection is controlled by the EMC. The general rule has to be, and I cannot recommend this too strongly, the manufacturer designed it that way for a reason, don't fuck with it.
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And the lights, and the steering, and the aircon? (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that the CPU and the electronic peripherals will run down to 8V - which is necessary because of battery volt drop on cranking - is irrelevant. It is the lights and the actuators that are affected by reduced battery voltage. In fact, looking at the linked article, the guy admits that he does not run without an alternator after dark, which at least shows some element of self preservation.
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what do you do with the batteries? (Score:3, Insightful)
also, i'm not seeing the point of TFA - rich people can afford expensive status symbols? electric cars and plugin charging has been around for a decade or more in this form....
Crash testing (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Isn't a one off conversion by definition not a new model, I was under the impression crash tests are only performed on mass produced vehicles.
Anyhow atleast in Sweden all you'd most likely would have to do is to let a government mechanic go through your vehicle and approve it's safety(Which you have to do once a year either way).
Re:Crash testing (Score:4, Insightful)
You talk bollocks.
One-off conversions are signed off by engineers.
Parent
Why the absurd fixation on batteries? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why the absurd fixation on batteries? (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have better energy density. 160Wh/Kg for LiOn beats the pants off anything in production by Maxwell Technologies. EEStor claims ridiculously high energy density in their ultracapacitors, but I'm skeptical for now until their technology leaves the lab.
Another thing is, batteries tend to keep their voltage as you discharge them - a LiOn cell may drop from 4 to 3.5V from full to 10% charge. Capacitor voltage is set by E=0.5CV^2 - an ultracapacitor charged to 2V will be down to 1V at 25% charge.
Pulling "usable" energy (reasonably constant voltage) out of ultracapacitors requires wide-input-range switching power supplies. These require larger inductors, bigger transformer cores, etc. and are less efficient than narrow range SMPS. The charging circuitry for ultracapacitors will also be less efficient than LiOn charging circuitry for the same reason.
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A joke! (Score:4, Informative)
She's green? And drives an SUV by herself? Why does this make no sense?
What she is, would be non-petroleum - but not "green". So she uses coal instead of petroleum ... both are damaging to the environment, both are in limited supply.
I would think she could get a Focus, or even a bicycle, for much less the cost of the hybrid plug-in. And then, she would actually be conserving!
Not green ... just gullible. $35,000 gullible.
Re:Whole lot of stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Whole lot of stupidity (Score:4, Informative)
You are entirely right. A hybrid car makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever. Todays hybrids basically use a big gas motor and an electric motor to help go easier on the gas. The problem with this method is that its carrying TWO BIG ENGINES so more weight means you have to be that much more efficient. If you want to help save the environment you'd build a fully electric car but the problem with that is electric motors are retardedly simple and surprisingly clean to maintain (only a little grease/oil on the moving parts).
The idea behind plug-in hybrids is to make the electric motor the big engine and have a small gasoline motor who's only job is to charge the batteries when they get low. This makes a bit more sense than the current hybrid model does as your primary source of 'fuel' is your batteries. If you don't go very far like what is it 60-80 miles a day you probably don't need an Internal Combustion Engine in the first place. Electric cars have a 60-80 mile range currently and that pretty much covers your typical urbanites driving habits well enough. A plug-in hybrid with a gasoline engine for recharging purposes would be more than enough for anyone except for long haul trips for those things like gasoline and possibly hydrogen or biodiesel in the coming years might be popular for road trips.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"If you want to help save the environment you'd build a fully electric car but the problem with that is electric motors are retardedly simple and surprisingly clean to maintain"
That makes no sense - simple and easy to maintain would be win-win for everyone. The reason why pure electric cars aren't common is the pricey battery required to push a *mainstream* car a decent distance. Americans simply aren't ready to make the jump to the ultra-light tiny cars that would be viable in an all electric model.
To put