Modded Hybrid Cars Get Up to 250 MPG 1359
artemis67 writes "Politicians and automakers say a car that can both reduce greenhouse gases and free America from its reliance on foreign oil is years or even decades away. Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage. It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an 80-miles-per-gallon secret -- a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries that boosts the car's high mileage with an extra electrical charge so it can burn even less fuel. Gremban, an electrical engineer and committed environmentalist, spent several months and $3,000 tinkering with his car."
Re:So like... (Score:4, Informative)
80MPG not 250MPG (Score:3, Informative)
HJ
Of course, that's cheating ... (Score:5, Informative)
By this reasoning, I could build a car that has a little 1 horse power engine and a big bank of batteries which are charged by plugging it in at night. I could claim 1000 mpg, but that doesn't actually mean that my car is more efficient than any other car.
I agree that this may be useful, sort of more of a middle-ground between hybrids and electric cars, but really they should stop making mpg claims.
Read Carefully (Score:2, Informative)
It is not as if he's got something that gives him great mpg all the time.
But as the article points out, some have driving patterns like that.
EDrive FAQ (Score:2, Informative)
Link [energycs.com]
It's funny how that pesky electric car just won't die. Maybe because it really is a good solution for the majority of one's commuting. This one may still have an ICE in it, but it's only a matter of time before that is dispensed with.
And don't even talk about those "fool cells". Like nuclear fusion, fuel cell cars will always be 10 years away.
*NOT* 250mpg (Score:5, Informative)
This car does not get 80 mpg. It uses 1 gallon of gas for every 80 miles it travels
Although large power plants may be able to make electricity more efficiently, he has to deal with transmission losses, and then storage losses from the inefficiency of battery storage. And he has the extra weight of 18 more batteries.
The only advantage wall-plugs do on electric vehicles is move where they're poluting -- it moves to the power plant, instead of the point of use.
Billing any of these cars as '250mpg' unless gallons of gasoline is the only input to the system is a disservice to everyone.
Re:80MPG not 250MPG (Score:0, Informative)
Re:80MPG not 250MPG (Score:3, Informative)
"Ron Gremban" did not build a car that does 250MPG; he got 80MPG on $3,000 investment in fuel cells. No where in the article title nor summary does it say he only got 80, the only number stated was 250MPG. The article barely dabbles on the 200+ MPG cars other than mentioning them in fact. Great submission and great RTFA defense to an article you barely read yourself.
HJ
Car mod kits (Score:2, Informative)
One person suffering trade offs is not conclusive. (Score:5, Informative)
And as the average American wants a big SUV and certainly isn't going to accept downgrading to something the size of a Prius and losing all of their trunk space to 18 brick sized batteries, it looks like the politicians and auto makers are correct.
In 1904 or whenever it was, two guys managed to invent a plane that, yes, technically could fly. A full hundred years later, why don't we all have our own planes or flying cars? Because, for the average person, they're totally impractical - they simply cost too much and have too many trade-offs for the benefits gained.
A Prius stacked full of batteries with no trunk space is exactly the same: Sure, you can do it. But that doesn't mean everyone in America is going to rush out and get one.
The theory is that it'll take years or decades to reach the point where it is practical for the masses. And that theory remains true.
Re:I like these folks' idea: (Score:4, Informative)
How heavy are these in-wheel motors? I couldn't find it on that website in my quick look.
Not quite the trick (Score:3, Informative)
Furthermore, there's a lot more to it than simply sticking a bunch of batteries in the trunk. Some consumers use their trunks. Why do you think they put them in cars? Because they just happen to have a lot of extra room when they're done building the car?
Also, by adding all that weight, you're changing the dynamics of the car. For a dealer to sell a car modified like that, it now needs to go through safety tests.
There are a lot of people that think, "Oh geez, all the car manufacturers need to do is XYZ and we won't need gas anymore." I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's a lot more complex a problem than most people make it out to be. You have to build a car that's safe and a car consumers want to buy. Those aren't always easy things to accomplish when the source of power isn't in question. When you're trying a new source of power, it's a big additional question.
Sure, everyone could rely on hydrogen, except we don't have enough hydrogen fuel pumps yet. Not to mention, hydrogen is pretty expensive to produce right now and certainly there isn't infrastructure to produce it in the quantities necessary for a mass market.
It's not a simple problem and there isn't a simple solution.
Re:There's still pollution, though (Score:4, Informative)
did you even bother to google before making such a stupid statement
"Today, nuclear power plants--the second largest source of electricity in the United States--supply about 20 percent of the nation's electricity each year."
http://www.nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=2&catid=106
http://lsa.colorado.edu/essence/texts/hydropowe
Re:You failed math class (Score:1, Informative)
125.5 MJ/gallon.
Just a *minor* math mistake, so 1 gallon is equal
to 34.7 kwh, so at 10cents/kwh that is $3.47,
which makes it about the same price as gasoline, when you remove the taxes from the gas and count
the inefficiency of a gas engine.
Re:That's all good, but.. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm suprised people aren't excited about this as I am. Solar panels never took off because the energy they produced didn't cover costs. This is more efficient and cheaper. They'll make money off their solar farms, then reinvest the money to create more solar farms, which allows them to reinvest even more money on even more solar farms. Its a cyclical process where somepeople are going to end up being in the top 100 richest people in the world. I'm so excited that I applied to their company and I'm trying to prototype out my own sterling engines. I figure that even if I can't be employed by them, nothing will stop me from running my own buisness.
Re:That's all good, but.. (Score:2, Informative)
The options are very much higher gasoline prices, and more wars. The next ones will require more bodies and cash from somewhere. Hence, are you of draft age? Are you ready to be part of our next noble adventures? Or do you have better things to do like talk politics, drive extravagent cars and chase the "good" life? Sounds nice, but there will be hell to pay for those outrageous indulgences.
Pay now or pay even more later.
Re:That's all good, but.. (Score:5, Informative)
Ask for a refund on your high school education, as they failed to deliver.
737 kg/m3 divided by 264.17 is the number of kilograms per gallon of gasoline. Multiplying the 2.79kg that a gallon of gasoline weighs by the net energy content of 44 MJ/kg gives you 122 MJ per gallon of gasoline, or the equivalent of 34 kWh of electricity.
I pay about USD 20 cents per kWh of electricity with tax, so the electrical equivalent for a gallon of gasoline would be about USD 6.80. Or, I can buy gasoline at about USD 2.15.
The more interesting question is: For each of those joules combusted in the engine, how many of them make it to the rubber/road interface (according to one FAQ about 0.2) and for each of the joules my ersatz-electric car pulls out of the wall socket, how many of THEM make it into the rubber/road interface (according to another FAQ about 0.6). Of course regen braking lets me use some of those joules over and over again, how much of which is highly dependent on driving conditions.
So, it turns out that the utility-electric-sourced car is about $11.30 per mega-newton-meter/second at the road surface, while the gasoline car is at about $10.75 - although it would not take very much regeneration at ALL to push that to the other side of the equation.
Re:MPG (Score:5, Informative)
Last Monday I put on 280 miles at 70 mph, and got 49.5 mpg. Sure, I got passed by a few Suburbans, but I passed a bunch, too. Our Prius is quite sensitive to who is driving it; I get significantly better milage than my wife. Also, in winter the milage drops substantially (colder battery? alcohol in the gas?).
It's true that the cost of the hybrid is such that it is hard to make a strong argument for buying a hybrid on strict economic grounds. However the estupidass US automakers have been so distracted with making ever larger SUVs that I simply couldn't bear to give them a dime when we needed a new car several years ago.
Look: my Prius is not a sports car, obviously. I'm not going to haul a horse trailer over Snoqualmie Pass with it. But it is really ignorant to describe these hybrids as lemons. They are extremely good at what they are designed to be good at, and that turns out to be just about 95 percent of all my family's driving needs. My Prius is comfortable, thrifty, fun to drive, and interesting to drive.
The single largest problem with the Prius is that it is so quiet that pedestrians and bicyclists don't hear it.
Re:So like... (Score:2, Informative)
Geos of that time had 3 cylinder engines that put out around 55 HP. It is incredibly easy to get good gas mileage from a 3 cylinder engine that puts out no horsepower. There are dozens of cars in Japan and Europe that do just that. What you're failing to realize is that not everyone can live their lives in a shoebox. For day to day commutes, yes something like that is usable but for anything else it's total garbage.
Re:So like... (Score:4, Informative)
That said, I would never buy a Prius myself. There are better cars for the price (and similar cars for much less), and there are many better ways to help the environment then by purchasing a new car.
Re:There's still pollution, though (Score:4, Informative)
They are, in fact, a LOT more efficient. An ICE in the modern car converts gasoline into kinetic energy with about 25% efficiency. The modern power plants exceed 60% efficiency in converting fuel (typically oil) into electricity.
The reason the ICE efficiency is so low is that there is considerable wasted energy in the form of heat. A power plant burns fuel to boil water to drive a turbine, so heat is in fact desirable.
Fuel Cells are not sustainable (Score:1, Informative)
The FT man - money paper don't lie.
Re:That's all good, but.. (Score:5, Informative)
Third time in this article I've seen someone make this mistake. It's an epidemic.
The gasoline powered car is only 25% efficient so although you pay $2.15/gallon you only use a quarter of the energy. Electric motors are very efficient so you don't need 1:1 energy equivalent with gasoline. The "electrical equivalent for a gallon of gasoline" is actually closer to $1.50, using your figures.
Re:So like... (Score:5, Informative)
For comparison, my lawnmower has six horsepower.
better ways to help the environment than by purchasing a new car
Excellent point. Many environmentalists fail to factor in production into their calculations. Steel is made by burning coke in with your iron ore. Aluminium is an incredibly energy-consuming electrolysis process. Plastics, well, they're non-biodegradable and made from petroleum. Copper is a particularly polluting metal to mine. And lets not even get into things like batteries.
If *I* needed a new car, I'd probably choose a hybrid. However, to run out and get something new because it's more efficient often ignores the big picture. Complex physical devices often have polluting activity involved in production at least somewhat related to cost.
Re:Nothing to see here, move along... (Score:2, Informative)
Interesting quotes:
Re:There's still pollution, though (Score:3, Informative)
You can list many types of loss, but they are all very small. For example, losses due to transmission and distribution are about 5%. Info http://www.energy.qld.gov.au/infosite/eff_trans_di st.html [qld.gov.au]
Re:Of course, that's cheating ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Of course, that's cheating ... (Score:3, Informative)
I wish that was true. Charging is about 90% efficient, the other 10% is why the battery gets warm. Discharging is slightly better, but there is still internal resistance, and therefore energy losses. Big three phase industrial motors can be 95% efficient, but smaller ones are notably less so.
So if you take all three steps as 90% efficient, which seems reasonable, then the total for the chain is about 73% efficiency.
Which is still three times better than a standard ICE
Re:The "only advantage" argument: (Score:3, Informative)
Of course you don't get your power from a different source - but your provider, assuming they're a public utility, is usually legally required to produce a percentage of their power proportional to the percentage of their output used by 'green power' buyers from renewable sources.
The extra amount you're paying goes into green power funds to pay for windmills, solar panels, etc. Obviously this is questionable if you get your power from a private company, but I get mine from Seattle City Light, and they no longer even operate non-renewable sources due to high demand for green power.
Just like anything an individual can do to lessen their impact on the environment, this one works well in numbers, but not so well when there are detractors like you.
Re:So like... (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately that's just bullshit. Smartcars have their issues (with a top speed on 135kph, and poor acceleration they aren't exactly ideal for highway driving) but safety is not amongst them. They are surprisingly well designed. Here's an article from Wired [wired.com] that discusses the safety issues of smartcars. In crash tests they actually rate better than Ford Escorts.
Jedidiah,
MOD DOWN! (Score:4, Informative)
See, here's the funny thing: surprisingly enough, when they make these small cars they take that into account and make them safe despite it. I drive a Hyundai Accent, and the thing has so many safety features it's not even funny: front airbags, side airbags, crumple zones, side-impact door beams, etc.
I saw a thing a while back comparing a Mini to a F-150 by crashing them head-on into each other. Guess which driver would be less injured? The MINI driver! You know why? Because the passenger compartment of the Mini is designed to maintain its structural integrity in a crash. The front of the thing was completely flat, but the passenger compartment was completely intact. The driver of the truck, on the other hand, would have massive damage to his legs because the footwell crushed in completely. Incidentally, the Mini looked worse, but both vehicles were totaled (the truck was folded in half at the joint between the cab and the bed).
We care about the children too (Score:3, Informative)
Cars sold in Europe are rated for safety using the Euro NCAP system [euroncap.com]. If you check out the tables you'll see that in terms of crash protection the Smart MCC scores the same as a 2002 Jeep Cherokee. In terms of what it does to a pedestrian when it hits it the Smart is safer.
Re:MOD UP! (Score:4, Informative)
Jedidiah.
Speaking as an owner of one... (Score:2, Informative)
In the US the '87? - '88 (MK1 series) of the Chevy Sprint and Suzuki Forsa were briefly available with a fuel injected, turbocharged, 1.0L 3 cylinder engine. These vehicles stock, put out a much healthier 80 hp. These little cars can be frighteningly quick with some engine mods and the boost turned up.
Re:So like... (Score:2, Informative)
For another, the Prius is a bigger (4.5m vs 3.8m)and higher-performance(76+67hp, 0-60 10s vs. 55hp, 0-60 18s seconds) car than your Geo Metro. kudos for coming up with one of the very few cars where that's true.
FWIW, Cars like the Jetta TDI also get 50-ish MPG. The secret to doing it conventionally is what it's always been - trade off performance. The Prius is interesting because it gets into that efficiency league (perhaps not to the front, but certainly in the running) *without* being tiny or sluggish. This means it may be possible to sell the tech the unwashed masses, espescially with high gas prices (see how well it works for Europe).
Re:MPG (Score:2, Informative)
Re:MPG (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.hybridcars.com/ram.html [hybridcars.com]
Is that all? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:There's still pollution, though (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the proof on this is pretty strait forward, and lets simplify it, use gasoline both in the vehicle, and in the power plant, ignoring the economies of using less refined fuels (coal) in the power plant.
The internal combustion engine runs on a compression/expansion cycle. A standard 4 cycle gasoline engine uses the Otto cycle (suck,squeeze,bang,blow). Energy flows in as gasoline/air mixture, which is then compressed, and ignited. The ignition triggers expansion and heat, the cylinders/pistons are arranged to extract a bunch of the energy from the explosion in the form of longitudinal motion, which is converted into torque on the crankshaft. 35% of the input energy is then used to feed the compression cycle for the next cylinder, 30% is dissipated as waste heat, and about 35% ends up on the shaft as useable torque to drive the system. Overall the cycle is about 35% efficient. The cycle is modified to a constant flow system in a turbine engine (the Brayton cycle), and modern turbines run about 40% efficient. Axial flow turbines with high bypass can approach 45% efficiency.
Contrast that to a typical large scale power plant, which uses an external combustion cycle. combustion chambers are designed so that approximately 90% of the energy in the input fuel ends up in the heated medium, usually a boiler, and about 10% actually disappears up the chimmney as waste heat. The resultant steam is then fed to a turbine that extracts about 80% of the energy into useable mechanical form, which is converted at an efficiency of approximately 98% into electricity. these numbers reflect power plants that are typical, they are 10 to 20 years old in design, modern designs do much better, but the typical result is an efficiency of about 72% in the conversion to electricity for current operating coal plants 10 to 20 years old.
As you can see, it's actually quite simple, the internal combustion engine uses a lot of it's energy to keep itself in a sustainable cycle, its used up on the compression stroke. The energy used by a large scale external combustion engine to sustain it's cycle is inconsequential (a few conveyor belts and some lights). The net result, all that energy used by compression in the car, is available for conversion to output in the power plant. Even if they were both burning gasoline, the power plant would win by a factor of 2 on efficiency. Now factor in the cheaper fuels a power plant can use, it doesn't need a highly refined fuel, works just fine on coal, or on bunker crude (unrefined oil). the external combustion system now gains both in terms of efficiency, and cost, because of the less expensive fuel. Putting in a fuel that's half the price per MJ as the gas in a car, and then converting it at twice the efficiency, you end up with energy available at the output for 1/4 the cost of that obtained on the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine. And that is exactly the reason we have an electrical grid infrastructure, and dont all run our homes on gas fired generators.
In terms of the pollution per unit energy as your were looking to compare, you must factor more than just the emissions from the internal combustion engine into the equation. On the internal combustion side, factor in the emissions from combustion, and the emissions from the refining process where the crude is refined to gasoline. On the coal side, factor in the emissions at the mine site, and at the power plant, and now, you have a valid comparison, and you'll find that they are similar in terms of emissions per unit energy burned, so, the external combustion cycle wins by a factor of 2 when it's measured in terms of emissions per unit energy produced. Ofc, all of this changes somewhat when you factor in the scrubbers in the coal plant chimney, and the internal combustion engine lack thereof, the coal plant becomes an even bigger winner, on a first rub, but, in reality, the scrubbers just remo
Propane Conversion (Score:2, Informative)
Convert your vehicle to propane. Propane is currently half the cost of gasoline, and when combusted, produces dramatically few emissions than gasoline or diesel. People may argue that propane has slightly less energy than gasoline, while this is true, the higher octane rating of propane (110) allows you to compensate for this by advancing your engine's timing, increasing it's compression ratio, or upping the boost (if turbocharged). Because propane is clean burning, your oil stays cleaner longer, and your engine will have a longer lifespan as well. Most conversion are dual-fuel, which switch back to gasoline, should the propane run out. Propane conversion is becoming popular in Europe, and there are a number of modern propane systems on the market that work with today's fuel injected engines.
Propane is a byproduct of the refining of methane and natural gas. In many parts of the petroleum industry, propane is regarded as a nuisance to be flared rather than harvested. Currently more propane is generated that there is demand for it, causing it's price to be proportionally lower than other fuels. As much of the methane and natural gas refining is done in North America, consumption of propane over gasoline keeps more money out of the hands of foreign oil producers that are known for sponsoring terrorism.
Although propane is still a fossil fuel, and won't end our dependancy on oil, propane is widely available commercially (unlike pie-in-the-sky fuelcell or hydrogen schemes), and nearly all gasoline engines can be converted to run on it right now. Most people recover the cost of conversion with the first few monts of use. Also most propane vehicles fetch a higher price when sold on the used market.
Re:MOD DOWN! (Score:2, Informative)
See this:
http://www.bridger.us/2002/12/16/CrashTestingMINI
Wrong... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So like... (Score:3, Informative)
In metric / SI... (Score:2, Informative)
250 miles per gallon = 0.94 liters par 100km.
That needed to be said.
Re:True dat (Score:2, Informative)
The big news is the same as was announced earlier this year; that Lithium-Ion can now be constructed to electrically survive in a car.
Evan
Re:So like... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Nothing to see here, move along... (Score:3, Informative)
And as for European cars not being as safe - you must be mad. Smaller, lighter cars with lower centres of gravity are inherently safer, before you even take into account the safety bells and whistles fitted as standard to every car on the market nowadays. I'd far rather crash in a Renault than a Ford pickup.
Re:There's still pollution, though (Score:3, Informative)
I've heard this claim before, but can you actually provide any sort of proof to back it up? I suspect you can't, but I'd like to be proven wrong.
Simple. You have zero cold starts where the engine runs highly inefficient. The rpm is allways spot on at the optimum operating point (max efficiency). There is also an 'economy of scale' issue but I don't have the link to prove it. Anyway that's two points for the power plant.
In addition the power plant is stationary and can therefore be fitted with much bigger filters, catalysts etc than a car. This gives an advantage in sulfur and particle emmisions. That's and additional point for the power plant.
I'd say the power plant beats pretty much any car you can come up with.
Re:Of course, that's cheating ... (Score:2, Informative)
Waste of time.... (Score:2, Informative)
The ironic part about the prius story is that it requires electicity from the utility company to charge, and that is being generated by burnig fuel oil, or even worse coal in the majority of the county. So the owner is probably causing more environmental damage with his prius than if he just had a biodeisel, solar or hydrogen card. (oops, hydrogen takes massive energy inputs to produce...more coal and oil).
Re:You missed the point (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, we also hate you 'cause you're a fucking prick, but we wouldn't have known that if you hadn't posted.
Re:So what are the transmission & storage loss (Score:3, Informative)
Coal generation is about 35% efficient, transmission losses can be up to about 20% or so, battery storage is around 60% efficient, electric motors are around 66% efficient, so 0.35 * 0.80 * 0.60 * 0.66 = 0.11.
Cars are what, about 25% efficient at converting the energy into work?
"Then look up coal gasification on Google."
Coal gassification doesn't make up a majority of the electricity generated in the US. When we're talking about electricity generation, traditional coal can be taken to be the majority.
Re:So like... (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, if you consider a difference of approximently 20 to 25% similar... I would consider that significant.