Hybrid and Electric Vehicles

A GA from me. I think the same.

You'd better not tell us that you drink light beer!

I drink organic raspberry flavored wheat beer that is made by people that drive little electric cars with no horns.

Kramarat is correct - the biggest cost by far is the depeciation in the resale value of your car. Buy a new car at say, $30,000 and 1 year later it's worth about $20,000. For that hideous loss of $10,000, you can buy a good used car, and run it for several YEARS, gas, insurance, repairs included.

It's different if you are a sales rep. charging round the country at 80 mph for 35,000+ miles a year. It's all a question of "horses for courses."

The one factor that will change everything is the price of gasoline. When $10/gallon comes (and it will), then perhaps we'll all be clamouring for bio-fueled (or LNG) internal combustion engine/electric hybrids. Then, as you say "just a matter of economics."

I completely agree with you and Kramarat wrote on all of the economics. The only caveat that I'd add is that somebody has to buy the vehicles when they are new or there won't be any used cars to buy. So why not have these people help fund the research project of finding more efficient vehicles in the mean time. Particularly those effete snobs elite slobs financially privileged souls gracious enough to help us all with this quest for improved efficiency.

Has anyone compared the cost of buying and "driving" a horse to buying and driving a car (any car)?

Come on guys- It is all in what you want and are willing to pay for.

I drive a 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid (loaded) with a 4 cylinder engine and single battery / motor drive system. It costs about $1700 more than a regular V-6 Camry. I get low 30 MPG in town (Cincinnati has lots of hills that affect ALL vehicle's mileage) and have gotten over 44 MPG twice on long trips. That is better in town or on the road than the "Smart" cars and my vehicle can carry (5) 6-4, 250-Lb males very comfortably. We don't need econo-boxes to get decent mileage, we need good engineering. I have often been driving at 70-75 MPH and been on battery-only power.

The V-6 Camry is rated for about 22 MPG in town and 28 MPG highway. Because Uncle Sam wants us to make the world better, he gave me a $1300 tax credit for buying my car- so the actual cost upper was only $400. By the way, Toyota Hybrids have a 100,000 mile warranty on the entire drive train. AND- if you are driving a Hybrid, a ONE-OCCUPANT vehicle can be driven in the diamond lanes on freeways per Federal Law.

I compared my car with the V-6 Camry because it is the closest to matching my performance (the V-6 is not as good). I can get 0-60 in about 7 seconds because my car has a continuously variable transmission- two pulleys, one of which has a variable pitch that goes VERY low gear and allows the engine to quickly go to maximum torque speed and stay there as the transmission catches up, then the engine goes to maximum HP for the final burst. Meanwhile, the electric drive has been in full power, full torque from the split-second I punched the accelerator. This car will spin tires for the first 1/2 second until the traction-lock kicks in.

According to Kelley Blue Book, comparing my vehicle to a comparably equipped XLE V-6, my car is worth $915 more ($21,600 vs. $20,685). That's 35% less than I paid for the car- not bad for 3 years depreciation.

By the way- a vehicle that I used to own (a Toyota Highlander Hybrid) is a really FUN car to drive. Think of a 7-passenger, 4x4 SUV that weighs 4,700 Lbs., is stable as hell in high winds and heavy rains, can go from 0-60 in six seconds and still get 27-28 MPG everywhere.

Slightly off topic, but I wonder if anyone can answer a question about hydrogen fuel.

Gasoline contains H, O, and C. Exhaust contains NO_x, produced endothermically by the high temperature of combustion in the cylinder. Why wouldn't H₂ also cause N₂ in the air to combine with some of the O₂. I always hear the the exhaust from a H₂ burner is pure water.

Hi HarryBurt, Hydrogen is considered to be the fuel for the future. It is an environment friendly fuel & renewable. Hydrogen powered FUEL CELL vehicles are almost ZERO- EMISSION vehicles. However, complete transition to hydrogen economy could be a few decades away. With the development of commercial fuel cells some years away. Hydrogen as fuel in IC engines could be an interim solution. To achieve this position itself Auto makers will have to find answers for customer friendly refueling infrastructure & help to address issues related to production, storage, distribution & handling of hydrogen.

Hydrogen has a flame-speed & tendency to detonate. The latter creates a problem of pre-ignition during low- pressure ignition, where as it is an advantage for High pressure injection. Other issues that need to be addressed are:

* Engine combustion modelling.

* Dev. of Fuel injection System.

* Engine Control system.

* On-board fuel storage & dispensing.

*Safety Standards.

* Vehicle integration.

* Regulatory & policy deployment.

Hope this note gives you some idea about Hydrogen as Fuel for Vehicle applications.

Rangasamy.

Here's my "slightly off-topic" answer:

The combustion of hydrogen in air does generate some nitrogen oxides, but a lot less than gasoline. One number I came up with is 27 times less. The temperature of burning H2 is about 2,800K, as opposed to gasoline at ~2,000K. You would think the higher temperature would generate more NOx, not less. However, it could be that the presence of hydrogen free radicals generated by the combustion process reduces the N-oxides back to N2. The result would be that the equilibrium constant for the N2 + O2 reaction is even smaller than for the gasoline oxidation, thus giving a lower standing concentration of NOx.

Thank you. That makes sense.

Back in the early 80's a coworker who was known for doing dumb things bought a new car to save money on gas.

Another coworker laid it out for him how many hundred thousand miles he would have to drive to start the savings. Needless to say the second guy drove an old clunker - happily.

Same with the new 'great' cars to come out today - as several have pointed out.

I have a 1992 Olds 3300 V6 auto 4dr average 30mpg and 35mpg highway. This car compared to new hybrid @ $30000 I'd save about $420/month keeping the old buggy. With electric car I'd save about $380/month keeping the old buggy.

To assess whether a car or a process is really green one should consider not only the fuel but also emissions,water used and fuels/chemicals etc used to manufacture the components like battery,solar panel,wind turbine and associated equipment. It is the duty of every government which lives on the taxpayers money to give energy ratings to the public who uses them.

The carbon footprint to create a hybrid car is certainly still higher than building a gasoline powered car. Check out what it takes to mine enough nickel to make the batteries.

At some point in the mileage, around 45000 miles I think they break even, then the hybrid starts to get ahead. Long way to go before a hybrid is really a 'green' car, right now they are just ego booster.

Ronseto and all you other forum junkies (like me)-

I will have a prototype built in about 6 weeks for a totally new engine (based on the good old steam engine) that will allow for truly electric (not hybrid OR plug-in electric) vehicles to hit the road.

My calculations (which have been reviewed by an engineering department chair at a major university) indicate that we will be able to produce more electricity than it takes to power the engine. No- it is NOT perpetual motion, just neat relationships between thermal values and pressures. It is compact enough that it could be installed in an auto and provide totally pollution free and totally FREE operating costs (maybe a little for maintenance). AND it will be relatively cheap to build (likely less than current gas-only vehicles, and definitely less than current hybrids).

I will keep you posted on progress, although- if it works- you will find out about it soon enough.

On-board energy storage is the critical issue. Any practical/successful new vehicle design will need to have the capability of storing and converting approximately 310 MJ (87 kW-hours) of energy into motion between "refills/recharges".

Without giving away any proprietary details, can you state how you plan to store this energy?

There will be a small battery bank between the engine/generator and the controlled output to make up for fluctuations in energy needs- storage when reduced energy required until the generator can back off and discharge under higher loads until the generator can catch up.

Other than that- there is no "storage"- just continuous power output at varying levels.

The calcs say that, for every kW of power input to drive the engine, the connected generator can produce 8 to 11 kW of power- higher ratios for larger motors as the friction loss factor gets proportionally smaller. So- output will be 7 to 10 times the input energy forever.

Thanks for that answer. It was exactly what I expected.

"totally FREE operating costs." Sorry, but it cannot be done, except by extracting energy from the surroundings (either continuously whilst in motion or batchwise and storing it for use later). The only feasible way to extract energy from the surroundings whilst in motion is through absorbing solar radiation, and we know how weak and limiting that is. Boiling off liquid nitrogen using ambient air as the heat source in a psuedo "steam engine," has also been tried, but the liquid nitrogen is far from FREE and is lost to the surroundings.

I've spent 50 years on and off trying to think of a ways to "beat the system" and come to the conclusion, reached by other scientists for ~200 years, that you cannot. There is no free lunch. There cannot be - it defies the laws of physics.

We wait with baited breath to hear about your invention.

Sounds to me like it will be very cheap to build and operate!

Zero building costs

Zero operating costs

But then - Zero miles traveled as well!

I buy the best new car (based on my research against my criteria) and then drive it until it's no longer useful. That may mean that when it is no longer road worthy it gets used to haul wood or pull a wagon around the "estate". So the life span of my vehicles is generally 25 to 30 years! I then it goes to the recyclers.