First Algae Car Attempts To Cross the US On 25 Gallons of Fuel 188
Mike writes "San Francisco recently saw the unveiling of the world's first algae fuel-powered vehicle, dubbed the Algaeus. The plug-in hybrid car, which is a Prius tricked out with a nickel metal hydride battery and a plug, runs on green crude from Sapphire Energy — no modifications to the gasoline engine necessary. The set-up is so effective, according to FUEL producer Rebecca Harrell, that the Algaeus can cross the US on approximately 25 gallons of fuel — a figure which is currently being tested on a coast-to-coast road trip."
Fuel + Electric (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fuel + Electric (Score:5, Insightful)
And while the Algaeus only runs on a 5% blend of algae fuel
5% is nothing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:5% is nothing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:5% is nothing. (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes.
Besides starting out with a fully-charged battery every morning (which is like 40 miles of "free" energy when the gas engine will be turned-off), the overall fuel economy is only ~100 miles per gallon. That really isn't impressive.
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Except it's not "free", energy is energy whether you get it from the gas in your tank or off the grid it still costs you. Of course you could put solar panels on your roof to charge your car but those also cost money.
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>>>Except it's not "free"
I meant the electricity is "free" in the sense that it's not included in the "25 gallons of gasoline" bragging point. In theory they could brag they went cross-country with only 1 gallon, if they kept stopping every 40 miles and recharging the Prius' battery with "free" energy. Understood?
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>>>Stopping and recharging the battery is cheating in my book
Precisely.
You understand.
The "only 25 gallons" bragging point means nothing when you can grab "free energy" from an electrical outlet. It skews the results.
And cost is not only about you! (Score:2)
One thing often forgotten when talking about greener technologies is that even if it would not cost you, it would still cost us. Several alternatives have appeared over the years which seem cheaper on a purely monetary (number-of-dollars-spent), but have ended up being worse for the environment (i.e. natural depletion for a scarce or highly toxic component in the pre-processing, or higher costs of properly disposing of a component after its useful life is over), and fortunately are usually ruled out before
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That is how they should have done it. This vehicle isn't at all impressive, the Aptera 2h get
Re:Fuel + Electric (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/us/02algae.html?_r=2&oref=slogin [nytimes.com]
An algae farm could be located almost anywhere. It would not require converting cropland from food production to energy production. It could use sea water and could consume pollutants from sewage and power plants.
Re:Fuel + Electric (Score:5, Interesting)
An algae farm could be located almost anywhere. It would not require converting cropland from food production to energy production. It could use sea water and could consume pollutants from sewage and power plants.
Has anybody suggested a nice oceanfront inland area with lots of rail and marine transport? One with storage and refinery capabilities? One that's already below sea level? Because I think there's a likely spot in Louisiana.
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Louisiana will be the new Texas. "Louisiana tea - algae oil y'all. Strike it rich."
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Bet it wouldn't take long for them to change that to Algae Y'oil
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But how long would it take before they decided to invade R'lyeh for Y'oil ?-)
Re:Fuel + Electric (Score:5, Insightful)
What do we have then? We've still got fossil fuels being burned at key points on the electric grid *and* the emissions from those locations is very significant. But we've also gained better battery technology and fewer gas stations and (here's the big one) we are poised to replace those electrical nodes with cleaner alternatives.
Part of the struggle moving from one technology to the next involves infrastructure replacement and consolidation of old resources. The Algaeus is just a tree in the overall forest. See the forest and then the Algaeus becomes pretty cool -- because it means we are trying *something* to move away from fossil fuels in our primary mode of transportation (at least in the US).
Re:Fuel + Electric (Score:5, Informative)
Then they should focus on the "it's electric!" sales pitch, rather than spread lies about getting 100 MPG and ignoring the costs at the user's electric meter. This is the same crap Chevy does with its Volt, claiming you get 60 MPG and "save money" but they never bother to mention the $50/month increase for charging the Volt's battery. Such false advertising should be illegal.
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Its got to be about building interest in electric/hybrids instead. The way to do that is tell someone you are going to save them money at the pump because you are going to get them 100MPG.
Right now, I spend about $120 a month on gas --
Fuel + Electric+ *CAPITAL* (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone with all these wonderful plans to get the "Happy Motoring" era happy again with 100+ MPG vehicles is conveniently forgetting that it will take a HUGE amount of money to convert the VAST fleet of current BFACs (big f'ing American cars) to anything resembling a 100+ MPG fleet of vehicles.
This is money that we don't have. We have (you may recall) pissed away 3 trillion dollars on the PEW (permanent endles worthless war) so far and it's still at PEW status. We have bankrupted the middle-class on a bogus housing bubble to the point where half the houses built and sold in the past ten years are 'underwater'. We have maxed out our credit cards and destroyed the major banks to the point where they required two seperate 760 billion dollar 'bailouts' in a single year. We have no realistic health care system at a point where a 100 million people born between 1945 and 1970 are nearing retirement. Our totally corporately-owned corrupt government runs up a trillion dollars of deficit every fucking year. And the rest of the world is talking behind our backs about not continuing to buy our Ponzi Federal Reserve bonds.
Not only are we out of money, we are out of money with 100 million stupid and obese self-entitled citizens. And all this is happening when we face Peak Oil and global warming environmental transformation. And when the number of $1 a day people in the 'never-to-be-developing' world are increasing their population from 4 to 8 billion in 30 years.
There isn't going to be any great new 'Apollo' or 'Manhattan' project to deal with these problems. No one seems to realize this, ESPECIALLY here at Slashdot, but there is no more fucking money . Over the next ten years, critical systems for economic growth are continute to shut down, one by one. It's not going to be easy, or pretty, or fair. And as a member of the technological elite, it's going to really piss you off because you know that we could be doing so much, if only...
Start thinking like this and stop thinking about giant government projects and Mars Landing and all that other 20th century fantasy and you will be around to play with your grandchildren. And please don't mod me down to -1 because my rational discussions bum you out. If I bother you, reply here as to exactly why I'm wrong. Believe me, I do want to be wrong about all this. But I have this bad feeling...
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>>>We have no realistic health care system at a point where a 100 million people born between 1945 and 1970 are nearing retirement.
What are you talking about? We have Medicare and Medicaid for these retirees so they will be covered by the government. We also have SCHIP for the children. In total there are only 8 million citizens without either private or government health insurancee. (Note I said citizens.) I wish people would stop exaggerating the health problem. It needs tweaking but it's
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Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP programs don't have the funding to sustain their levels of service for the numbers of people who be entering these programs the next twenty years. There is not enough capital resources available to invest in new infrastructures for 100+ MPG vehicles and to support health care systems based on diminished-returns on investment. And the government will be trying to finance these programs at the same time that all the deficits that have been building up since the Reagan administr
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67% is the figure for overweight or obese American adults. I don't know how many children live here, but let's assume 1 per household. 300 million total - 100 million kids == 200 * 0.67 == 134 million overweight or obese American adults.
37% is the figure for obese American adults. That's 74 million obese American adults.
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You, gentle reader, appear to have taken too many engineering courses.
Yes, the bullet that has just been fired out the gun pointed at you actually weighs 9.5234234784895789 grams instead of 9.0 grams.
But the point is that in .047938756973837856 seconds from now it is going to blow your head off your shoulders.
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Nostradamus was a middle-ages French monk who wrote cryptic poetry that hundreds of years later people have claimed was prophecy. But actually reading it shows that it is nothing more than junk poetry commonly written by monks in the middle-ages driven mad by religious obsession and hunger.
What does this have to do with my economic theories of my post? My point is that infrastructure transformation doesn't happen simply by the development of new technologies.
The 20th century
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My point is that there is big difference between researching more fuel efficient vehicles and actually making millions of these fuel efficient vehicles. Even if the research was successful and the prototype 100+ MPG vehicles were created, there still is no money to create the factories and the infrastructure needed to convert the entire fleet of present vehicles.
The idea that there is no problem creating a new infrastructure from new technologies is a 20th century economic concept that depen
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My number comes from the book The Three Trillion Dollar War 2008 by Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, both of whom are American economists not dependent on government funding for their research.
The point is there is a finite supply of money. Money spent on the war is money that not available to manufacture fuel-efficient vehicles. And since the money has already been spent on the war, there will be no development of American fuel-efficient vehicles on
Re:Fuel + Electric (Score:5, Informative)
>>>Yes and no. If a Chevy Volt costs 60 mpg + $50/mo to travel 1200 mi/mo, that's $100 at $2.50/gal....
>>>
Yes and another hybrid like the Prius (approximately same size/shape) will only cost $66 each month. So even though the Prius appears to be a less-efficient 45MPG car versus the Chevy Volt's advertised 60MPG, in reality the Prius will be cheaper to operate for the customer.
Heck even a non-hybrid 38MPG Civic is cheaper to operate ($78). This is why I think this Chevy Volt false-advertising needs to be stopped. It's misleading to the consumer to say "it gets 60MPG" while never mentioning the additional impact on their electricity bills.
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The inefficiency in an electric car is not in the car itself.
It's in the "engine" that converts coal or natural gas into electricity at the central plant. So if you're going to compare EVs versus gasoline cars, you need to compare the efficiency of the electric plant versus the gasoline engine. Most plants achieve 40% which is better than most gas-powered cars, but not as good as some (like the Lupo 3L or Insight hybrid operating at >50% efficiency)
Another flaw with EVs is recharge time. It takes 8 ho
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>>>greater than 90% efficiency
Wow. That's not even close to accurate. First off 90% is impossible according to what I studied in Thermodynamics class. Even if you built a perfect cycle with NO friction or heating losses, the best you can get is around 80% due to the limitations of our universe (i.e. "you cannae change the laws of physics!" as Mr. Scott would say).
Furthermore while some of the modern "clean coal" plants can get almost 60% efficiency, the overall national average is only 40% or le
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Further research points to the 40% figure as being more typical with up to 60% in some experimental new technology.
As you point out, still much better than a gasoline or diesel engine... so coal electricity f
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Well in order for Volkswagen to build a 5-seat car like the Lupo, and get 90 MPG for the highway rating, it would HAVE to get more than a measly 20% efficiency. VW's claim of 50% is believable.
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>>>gas/diesel engine to an entirely electrically driven car is a very solid move forward.
P.S.
I agree, but that still doesn't excuse deceptive advertising that deliberately fails to reveal your Electric bill will increase ~$50 each month. Customers need to be told this info, even if it's something like "Gets 60 MPG and uses 300 watthours per mile"
BTW my Honda Insight which has 70hp power comparable to the Volt gets around 80 MPG and would cost just $37/month of gasoline to operate in your scenario.
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Chevy Volt does 40 miles per charge, so figure 2 charges a day (to work/from work) and 20 working days per month == 1600 miles which is 600 kilowatthours for a typical EV. Multiply by 15 cents per KWh == about $87 per month for electricity.
Re:Fuel + Electric (Score:4, Informative)
Chevy Volt does 40 miles per charge, so figure 2 charges a day (to work/from work) and 20 working days per month == 1600 miles which is 600 kilowatthours for a typical EV. Multiply by 15 cents per KWh == about $87 per month for electricity.
Most people don't drive 80 miles roundtrip to work and where are you getting 15 cents per kilowatt-hour from? According to the map on this site [michaelbluejay.com] there's only one US State that comes close to that price.
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It is really important to do the math as you are doing and include the increased cost of the car. I've been very interested in a VW diesel for a long time, but with my 5 mile commute, it would take me forever to earn b
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>>>So your math on the electrical usage must be flawed or even the national media would have laughed hybrids off the market.
A lot of media has done exactly that. For example when Honda introduced its Civic Hybrid (around 2003), many many car magazines stated it would be cheaper to buy a regular Civic for ~$15,000 than to buy the hybrid version with a ~$6000 markup. The +10 MPG savings from hybridization don't offset the initial price premium, they said. Even today that's still true.
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Perhaps you would like to rebuild and exponentially expand the current electric grid while you are at it. If not, kiss your electric car dreams good bye.
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My question is, under the accounting they're using, why do they use any fuel at all? Why not go for the gold and say "we crossed the US without using any fuel at all!"?
Re:Fuel + Electric (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the snake oil they're pitching is algae. They had to add a meaningless amount of algae-based fuel to the gas tank in order to include the proper buzzword in their PR release. Not TOO much algae-fuel, or the car wouldn't work, of course.
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Only 5% of the fuel is from algae derived products - the other 95% is regular gasoline.
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"When they factor in or go without the gallons of oil, pounds of coal, cubic feet of natural gas, amount of uranium or other fissile fuel"
Uranium is not a fossil fuel.
"wind turbine hours"
exactly - electricity can be generated from non carbon producing sources. (Including hydro, solar, tidal...
I hear that our local power company has pulled out of the Big Stone II coal fired project. Since they were the lead investor in it I think thats a dead duck...
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He said it was a FISSILE fuel.
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In most cases these days we are not striving to lower cradle to grave energy use. We are trying to reduce gasoline usage. If a car uses, effectively, twice as much energy to get from point A to point B, but uses solar or some renewable resource (even centralized electricity from hydro plants say), then it's better than gasoline.
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Has yahoo been hacked? I get http://m.www.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com] (notice the m)
m.no, m.I m.don't m.see m.any m.problems m.here. m.Check m.your m.settings?
5% blend of algae fuel only... (Score:5, Informative)
...if you rtfa..., guess a full algae-driven car isn't feasible yet.
Re:5% blend of algae fuel only... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
>We can convert any plant matter into diesel pretty easily (just not on the large scale yet)
Biodiesel blends are readily available across the country. Typically it's a 15% Bio/85% Petrol blend to help prevent clouding problems in lower temperatures.
So yeah, large scale production already in progress.
=Smidge=
Re:5% blend of algae fuel only... (Score:5, Interesting)
Diesel engines were DESIGNED to run on plant matter...
Peanut oil, to be precise.
And the inventor was murdered while crossing from France to the U.K...
So that the oil industry could use their dirty by product from petrol production, and re-name it 'diesel'. What we call 'diesel' nowadays is nothing of the sort.
"In the evening of 29 September 1913, Diesel boarded the post office steamer Dresden in Antwerp on his way to a meeting of the Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing company in London. He took dinner on board the ship and then retired to his cabin at about 10 p.m., leaving word for him to be called the next morning at 6:15 a.m. He was never seen alive again. Ten days later, the crew of the Dutch boat "Coertsen" came upon the corpse of a man floating in the sea. The body was in such an advanced state of decomposition that they did not bring it aboard. Instead, the crew retrieved personal items (pill case, wallet, pocket knife, eyeglass case) from the clothing of the dead man, and returned the body to the sea. On the 13th of October these items were identified by Rudolf's son, Eugen Diesel, as belonging to his father.
No one knows for sure how or why Diesel was lost overboard. Grosser (1978)[5] presents a credible case for suicide. There are conspiracy theories that suggest that various people's business interests may have provided motives for homicide. Evidence is limited for all explanations."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Diesel engines were original designed to run on biodiesel- its only a fact of history that the fossil industry discovered they could make a compatible fuel for cheaper.
Biodiesel mass production is no great technological challenge (the method is pretty simple compared to crude oil refining). Now demand is growing fast, supply is growing fast- 40% growth annually before the recession.
It should also be pointed out that diesel engines can be mechanically modified very easily to run on pure vegetable oil, withou
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Um, yes it is, but the knuckleheads behind this decided they wanted to put it in a gasoline engine instead of a diesel engine.
End result: They could only put 5% in the mix or it would cause engine problems (duh!)
Why anybody would think this stunt helps their cause, or the cause of biodiesel, is beyond me. They should have just got a diesel car.
5% Algae? (Score:5, Insightful)
If anyone has better knowledge on what just 5% of this fuel can change to the overall MPG rating, I'd be glad to hear about it, but call me sceptical about the whole claim.
Re:5% Algae? (Score:5, Informative)
Easy answer - it's just a marketing stunt. As mentioned above, they don't include the oil / coal / etc. used to produce the electricity that will provide, oh, say, 99.9% of the motive power. And since of the .1% (and that's probably an over-estimate) of energy used to move the car that's in the form of liquid fuel only 5% is algae... the real questions are: 1) so what? and 2) who cares? If this stuff is so great, why can't you use it exclusively to go across the country? Or at least provide 50% of the energy?
Even as marketing stunts go, this just completely sucks ass.
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Re:5% Algae? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Probably because then they would need to modify the engine.
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Re:5% Algae? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually the rest is a mix of gasoline and coal (well, electricity derived from it).
Show me some actual numbers of the (usable) energy density of this 5% alge and we can talk. Until then this is a car being driven as an electric-primary vehicle with diluted gas as a secondary source.
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Did you look at the picture of the fuel? It was green wasn't it? Well?
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm also a little ticked about it actually being only 5%...
but a little silver lining to look at is that 5% of the CO2 emittied from combusted fuel is a net-zero in regards to anthropogenic CO2 production.
----------------------
I just can't wait for JC Venter's (SGI) new $50/barrel algae setup to revolutionize energy in the next decade. We're all gonna wish our cars were turbo diesels when his plants start pumping out affordable diesel with net-zero carbon.
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ballpark is kick it up a 1/2 a percent, diesel is 11% more energy so that would be 5% of 11% real-world YMMV.
Well, my Honda can cross the US on TWO gallons... (Score:5, Insightful)
...of whale oil, since it's actually using gasoline, not whale oil, as its fuel. But, hey, whale oil is fuel, and I don't need more than two gallons of it, so my claim is exactly as well-founded as theirs.
Plug-in hybrids are a great idea. But stop already with the stupid and misleading claims about "gas mileage" based on getting most of your energy from the grid.
Re:Well, my Excursion can cross the US on..... (Score:2, Funny)
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$ = ""
Fixed that for you.
MPG debate (Score:5, Informative)
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Which is why you should be looking at grams of CO2/km. You know how much energy the batteries can contain, you know how much energy the fuel tank can contain, making it very easy to do these calculation.
CO2 isn't the only interesting pollutant though, but that doesn't make it any more difficult to figure out.
Fill up entirely on solar or wind power, and your battery energy is pollutant free. And for those who then want to factor in the pollutants released in building those plants: You now have to factor in e
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Please correct me if I'm wrong.
It's almost impossible to say absolutely , but it is likely just a shift (and likely a net carbon loss, currently.) If you compare Oil to Oil Car engines are in the 10-35% efficiency and power plants are in the 45-50% efficient range (reclaim the energy the car radiator throws away, run at peak efficiency 24/7.) But you lose 3-5% in transmission/transformers you must step through. then another 2-20% in charging the batteries (more like 25% for Pb, NiMH LiPo are at the lower end, but still the charger t
False Advertising (Score:2, Insightful)
What makes this an Algae car? (Score:2, Insightful)
It could just as easily be an Exxon Mobile car. Or a Chevron car.
I guess the point is to try to draw attention to algae fuel extraction technology, but it's a bit misleading.
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This claim is about as revolutionary and ecological as my desktop pc; it's been running for years on NO gasoline. Didn't realize I was so green.
Yeah, great idea... (Score:2)
because this algae are neither the food of some lifeform, nor do they take giant amounts of space for production, for no reason.
Would you please finally offer me energy from concentrating solar thermal power plants?
What do they mean? (Score:3, Interesting)
They speak of 25 gallon to get from coast to coast. Coast to coast is about 3000 miles (google earth tells me).
A regular 25 gallons of diesel would get you to about 750 miles?
So i was thinking: yeah good deal!
Then further on in the article they say that only 5% of the fuel is algae fuel.
Then what do they mean with the 25 gallon thing? Is 25 gallon 5% of the entire fuel used to get from coast to coast? In that case, i guess you're far better off with running regular fuel
What did i miss?
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Excuse me? That's 95l of Diesel for about 1200km.
Even my 11 year old VW Golf IV TDI (1.9l engine w/ 90 metric HP/66kW) does 950km (590 miles) on *half* of those 95l/25gal and on a real everyday commuting mix, not some fake test course.
And I'm not quite known for my defensive driving, so I like to go fast wherever and whenever possible. The same car and engine can be driven 1200km (750 miles) on a single tank of 55l (14.5gal) if driven fuel-op
Website is forgery giveaway (Score:4, Insightful)
Come on guys! A single look at the website shows that this is a marketing stunt. It seems to me that there are quite a few "green" sites that are completely misleading.
Currently I am very suspicious of over-engineered websites like these. I remember the site of ThinFilm. Brilliant to look at, technically very interesting and technologically completely misleading (oh, the capacity that they could reach!). Now their main applications seem to be kids toys and RFID for which they are planning to use a few hundred bits.
The Private, Free Market (Score:3, Insightful)
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If that is true then we must have a free market.
That means that anything bad that happens is also the free market.
Potential Problem? (Score:2)
Two words:
Rocky Mountains
This might get 150 MPG in a lab but I've driven those mountains and unless a miracle happens, they're not getting anything close to their rated MPG going up them.
Eye roll (Score:2)
When it sounds too good to be true...
Let's do this in a BMW then :-) (Score:2)
The BBC Top Gear team did a different experiment [thenewspaper.com]: worth having a look.
Having said that, there's no way my car will be any more economical than it is right now, regardsless of how gentle I drive - 4 wheel drive has its price. And at top speed is frankly gets embarrassing as that takes 5x as much fuel as a normal 70mph trip would - but I've only done that once out of curiosity :-)
Plain BS (Score:2)
Second: it's a plugin hybrid. Crossing the US with a plugin hybrid is no big deal. Heck, if you belive the Chevy Volt's "230MPG" number, you should be able to cross the US with about 12 gallons of fuel, right? Hell, I can drive across the US on almost no fuel, if you let me re-charge the batteries every 150 miles in a motel along the road!
I hate such gimmicks. Just tell the truth, dammit!
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One of their distortions depends on having the battery to store most of the energy they will be using to power the vehicle.
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You seem to think that a Prius runs either on the gas motor OR the electric motor (but not both).
If you watch the display on a Prius at highway speed (gas motor running), the electric motor / generator / battery are being used in one way or another almost all the time. If they were just useless weight, a Prius would get mileage similar to a typical gas car. In reality, it gets much better mileage and has rather good highway performance. I drive 100 miles roundtrip to work every day and average about 50 mpg
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>genrator / battery are being used in one way or another almost all the time. If they were just useless weight, a Prius would get mileage similar to a typical gas car.
Nonsense. The efficiency of the generator to battery to electric motor is no better than 65%. Any energy you pass though this chain is a net loss.
There is no way to come out ahead, or even break even, when running the car on the highway.
Where you get the benefit is at times when you need just a teensy bit of power, like in slow city drivi
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>>>If [battery and motor] were just useless weight, a Prius would get mileage similar to a typical gas car.
Bzzzz. You don't need they hybrid components to get decent mileage. The 45 highway MPG a Prius gets is not really any better than a 44MPG Honda Civic HX, which is not a hybrid. And even though they are no longer made, the old Suzuki Swifts were rated around 60MPG. And in the EU they make gasoline cars (Polos, Focuses) that also get around 60MPG.
Nope, that's not how it works. (Score:5, Informative)
Most folks would take a highway, where the electric motor and battery do not get used at all-- they're just useless weight.
Not how it works at all. The electric motor in my Prius works at all speeds. It contributes to the drive chain when it makes sense to do so regardless of the speed. If I take my foot off the gas at 65mph the car coasts and the motor runs in reverse as a generator and charges the batteries. If I lightly rest my foot on the gas the gasoline motor stays off and the electric has enough torque to maintain speed. Until I hit an incline or need to accelerate, then the gas will pop on. Under most conditions if you watch the Energy display screen, you can see both the gas motor and the electric drive contributing at the same time.
The whole system is pretty dynamic. It's not like there is a kill switch on the motors at 30mph.
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>The electric motor in my Prius works at all speeds.
Well, that would be crazy.
> If I take my foot off the gas at 65mph the car coasts and the motor runs in reverse as a generator and charges the batteries.
No, when you take your foot of the gas, you are not asking for *braking*, you're asking to coast.
> If I lightly rest my foot on the gas the gasoline motor stays off and the electric has enough torque to maintain speed.
Nonsense. We are discussing a cross-country trip on highways, not 30MPH backstr
Re:Nope, that's not how it works. (Score:4, Interesting)
Nonsense. We are discussing a cross-country trip on highways, not 30MPH backstreets. A Prius can neither go 55 on electric only, not go cross-country on electric. On any significant trip, the electrics are doing nothing for you but weighing you down.
Wow - you're smart! That's some good thinking there. I'll dash right out and gut my Prius of those gigantic useless batteries and electric motor that never gets used. Just think of how much better it'll work without all that heavy stuff that teams of professional automotive engineers designed in! Thank God I found someone on the internet who is smarter than everyone at Toyota.
These are truly magic times we live in. I thank you for your wisdom.
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Sarcasm works well on AOL, here maybe be a little bit more factual?
Fact: On a long highway trip the batteries and motor/generator are worse than useless. Once the battery runs down it's all dead weight. No, recharging it from the gas engine is a losing proposition. The generator/battery/motor system is only like 65% efficient. Every unit of energy you send to the battery is a unit you're not sending to the wheels, and you can only get 65% as much back later. It has nothing to do with the relative smar
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Another fact: You've obviously never been in a Prius. Or paid attention if you were. You're an armchair expert - I actually own one, so I'd say I'm in a better position to tell the world what this car does do, and what it doesn't do.
On a long highway trip sometimes the car will coast down inclines, charging the battery the whole way. More unassailable physics. Mine is called "gravitational potential energy". Yours is called "pulling numbers out of your ass".
The car also runs the engine at the RPMs
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Another fact: You've obviously never been in a Prius. Or paid attention if you were. You're an armchair expert - I actually own one, so I'd say I'm in a better position to tell the world what this car does do, and what it doesn't do.
On a long highway trip sometimes the car will coast down inclines, charging the battery the whole way. More unassailable physics. Mine is called "gravitational potential energy". Yours is called "pulling numbers out of your ass".
Hmmm... let's see who's the butt-puller here. Her
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You are out of your mind. Have problem arguing a point? Switch to a new one.
We are talking about a coast-to-coast race. The coasts are very near sea level. The amount of ups very closely equals the amount of downs.
No, we were talking about your claim of how the battery is useless on the freeway. That was your claim which I refuted. Then you decided to talk about the race. I am still debating the point that you made about the electric components being useless on the freeway.
And BTW, your statemen
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>No, we were talking about your claim of how the battery is useless on the freeway.
Yes, and I gave you chapter and verse why it's useless. You did not respond with anything quantitative, in fact you did not even repeat your adhockery, which is curious.
> Going down the hill it stores energy that would normally be lost. Going back up the hill it spends that stored energy.
And I gave you chapter and verse and actual numbers on that. I think the number was 0.35%. Most people consider that insignificant.
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Yes, and I gave you chapter and verse why it's useless. You did not respond with anything quantitative
Ah, but you sure did. Lots of numbers. You must be right. Don't worry, we don't need to see any references on where you're getting your data. Only scientists worry about that sort of thing. Keep spouting numbers.
If you wish to answer in the lanuage[sic] of physics and thermodynamics, I'm all for continuing this discussion.
Dear God I'm not. You've gotten things wrong from your very first post.
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I see. If you can't follow simple efficiency calculations, *I'm* the charlatan.
To put it into words of one syllable: by repeating 90%/80%/90%, I was repeating what I though was clear: your generator is about 90% efficient in turning HP into watts. Your battery is about 80% efficient in storing and releasing electrical energy. then again your electric motor is about 90% efficient in converting that electricity to horsepower. Multiplying those out you get 64.8% system efficiency. { I even gave you a b
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My Prius generates its electricity through breaking. Not sure where you get the info about electricity generation in reverse during coasting.
Switch your Info screen from Consumption to Energy, and watch what the drive train does when you're on the freeway and you let your foot off the gas pedal. You'll see it switch to charging the battery.
The claim of 150 mpg even considering a 95% gasoline mixture would indicate a severe amount of tweaking to the engine. I've heard of 80 mpg (in Japan), but thats n
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[edit] [Why was this post rated "troll"? Jeez. Everything I state here is factual.]
If you think a 2500 mile 3-day crosscountry trip in your gasoline car is long, try doing it in an electric car sometime. You can only travel 200 miles tops, and then you have to stop at a hotel room so you can recharge overnight (8 hours minimum). It's a 13 day trip instead of 3.
Even if you skip sleeping and drive at night, it will still take 7 days in your EV, due to the frequent need to stop and recharge.