Plug-in Hybrids solve the most debilitating problem of electric vehicles: The lack of on-the-go refueling. Even with improved batter technology since the introduction of GM's EV-1, a full recharge of a battery takes hours. As someone once said about the EV-1, it was like driving a car with a quarter tank of gas and all the service stations are closed.
There's a lot of discussion over which fuel technology will be dominant in cars, Hydrogen or Electric. Each technology has drawbacks, but personally I think hydrogen will eventually prevail. It's a longer-term solution than hybrids and involves an infrastructure change, but it's cleaner, less dangerous than gasoline, and ends our dependence on foreign energy. Even better, hydrogen can be produced using green energy, as demonstrated by a hydrogen plant in Minnesota that installed two wind turbines to generate half the power needed. The plant plans to add two more turbines to be fully independent soon.
posted by thenick at 10:47 A.M. EST on Mon Jan 08, 2007 #
hydrogen is a great concept, but it is too far from reality. hybrids are now and can greatly reduce the depency on foreign oil. plug-in technology can improve efficiency vastly.
i think both technologies need to be tackled. if you can give a v8 engine 4 cyl efficiency, do it. toyota has done it with many of their models and will continue to expand on it.
it's too bad the big three are so late to the game on all of this. they've hung on far too long to the once more=profitable, big suv's.
lastly, gm has come out with other concepts and pledges with alternatives in the past and it led to nothing.
posted by wholesaler1972 at 02:18 P.M. EST on Mon Jan 08, 2007 #
As someone once said about the EV-1, it was like driving a car with a quarter tank of gas and all the service stations are closed
i'm not sure on this, but i thought i read gm's new electric cars will actually have a small 3 cyl engine. the engine's only purpose is to provide a generator to the batteries. it's not used for direct propulsion.
once the plug-in charge is exhausted, the egine would kick in as needed.
i hope it is something they stick with.
Plug-in Hybrids solve the most debilitating problem of electric vehicles: The lack of on-the-go refueling
electric cars have that problem, not hybrids.
posted by wholesaler1972 at 02:46 P.M. EST on Mon Jan 08, 2007 #
thenick, disregard my last comment. i read it wrong. sorry.
posted by wholesaler1972 at 02:52 P.M. EST on Mon Jan 08, 2007 #
Toyota also has a big non-hybrid SUV at the show this year. Go figure....
posted by katie82640 at 07:28 P.M. EST on Mon Jan 08, 2007 #
katie, that vehicle will probably have a hybrid option in a few years. the company wants to expand their hybrid option to the entire line and have a goal of a 1 million hybrid sales by 2010.
while no car company is perfect, there's no question the best innovation in this area (hybrids, hydrogen) is coming from japan.
posted by wholesaler1972 at 12:01 A.M. EST on Tue Jan 09, 2007 #
Story at AutoblogGreen about the Chevy Volt Concept.
More pics about the Volt concept.
Also at AutoblogGreen, pics of the Ford Airstream concept, which was unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show.
"This vehicle [is] a sort of cross between a conversion van, a space capsule and a mirror. This totally tricked-out vehicle concept is powered by a HySeries Drive powertrain (a version of this is also in the Edge prototype that will be unveiled later this month in D.C.)."
"The HySeries Drive is battery-powered, with plug-in capability and has a hydrogen fuel cell as an on-board charger. Ford estimates a combined city/highway gasoline equivalent fuel economy rating of 41 mpg. On all-electric power, the Airstream concept can go 25 miles. Add some hydrogen (ahh, if only it were so easy), and you can go another 280 miles."
"The fuel cell, made by Ballard, turns on automatically when the battery charge dips below 40 percent. With the on-board charger (110/220 VAC), the battery pack can be refilled at home. Ford says the HySeries Drive is 50 percent smaller and less complex than conventional fuel cell system and should have more than double the lifetime."
posted by jr at 01:41 A.M. EST on Tue Jan 09, 2007 #
great pics, jr. when do they show up on the showroom floor?
posted by wholesaler1972 at 07:41 A.M. EST on Tue Jan 09, 2007 #
AutoblogGreen interview with Dave Barthmuss about the Chevy Volt. Barthmuss is GM's Manager of Public Policy, Environment and Energy Communications.
ABG: How serious is GM about building a vehicle like this?
DB: Well I know somebody asked Bob Lutz, What's the timeline? and he said by the end of a decade. I don't know what decade that is. But this is an aggressive product program that is moving forward. We have our chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner up there talking about the virtues of E-Flex. He doesn't say that kind of stuff if he's not serious about having the company committed to doing it. Yeah there are some issues when it comes to battery technology but none of them we believe are insurmountable. And we've been talking to a lot of different battery suppliers and potential battery partners. So I, we have every confidence in the world that this program is going to move forward and become a reality. And as soon as that battery technology is there, the vehicle is going to be there to meet it. The question is how quickly can that battery technology occur. People are saying it can happen between 2010 and 2012. But you know there's a lot of unknowns in the battery world that we just don't control. We know that lead acid and nickel metal hydride aren't going to work inside a vehicle. So it's got to be lithium ion.
posted by jr at 08:23 A.M. EST on Tue Jan 09, 2007 #
I caught part of an interview with a Ford executive and he stated that the company was working on hydrogen technology and that it was probably eight years away from maturity. While that doesn't sound great, in the auto world I've noticed that if an executive mentions that a technology is a decade or more away from being viable, it's a pipe dream. If it's less than a decade, they're working on it. I guess most auto executives don't invest in technologies that would take a decade to develop because most of them will be fired/bought out by then.
Honda and GM are also producing home hydrogen generation units, which would refill your car and power your house during outages. Honda has a unit roughly the size of a washing machine that runs on solar power, while GM is working on large scale commercial versions that would need to be tied to the grid, but could be scaled down eventually.
BMW is taking a different approach to hydrogen as a fuel by developing internal combustion engines that can run on either gasoline or hydrogen. With 286HP and a 0-60 time of under six seconds, it's got some power. I'm not sure how it actually works, but BMW claims that when the hydrogen runs out, the driver can flip a switch and run on gasoline. I imagine that can't be done while the engine is running.
The problem is that right now, hydrogen is more expensive to produce than gasoline. However, if oil company subsidies were shifted to hydrogen production, that situation could flip as new technologies come into play with hydrogen production. Even today we can see the benefits of using hydrogen over gasoline: it's clean and when you fill up one week, there's not going to be a drastic change of hydrogen prices because OPEC decided to reduce their quotas.
posted by thenick at 09:57 A.M. EST on Tue Jan 09, 2007 #
that's great if ford can get something done w/in a decade. i wonder if that means we could see it on the lots w/in eight years.
the next question would have to be about the infrastructure. when could we see a practical system? i'm sure market forces will follow the leader.
i really hope this happens sooner than later. that applies to any meaningful technology and to any/ all companies. when you look around the globe, we depend on too many bad people/ countries for the black gold.
posted by wholesaler1972 at 09:16 P.M. EST on Tue Jan 09, 2007 #
The engine in this thing is a 1.0L, 3 cylinder. This is the SAME engine found in the Geo Metro, which got over 50mpg fifteen years ago!
posted by CaptainLance at 08:50 P.M. EST on Mon Jan 15, 2007 #
I've mentioned here before the Honda Civic VX hatchback I bought back in 1992. It was an all-gas powered car that got 60 mpg on Ohio's highways when driving 60 mph.
So I also don't get impressed when an alleged "green" car today gets 40 to 60 mpg. Back in '92, I thought that some all-gas powered cars today would be getting 80 to 100 mpg.
posted by jr at 09:41 P.M. EST on Mon Jan 15, 2007 #
Syndicate ToledoTalk
