What do You Think About Hybrid and Electric Cars?

by Village Idiot 45 Replies latest social current

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  Village Idiot

  Battery technology has been making leaps and bounds in affordability and energy output throughout the past decade. While pure electric cars currently have limited range, the near future holds prospects for longer ranges.

  Hybrids, and recently plug in hybrids, have a mileage of up to 50 mpg* giving them a range of 500 miles from a ten gallon gas tank. That cuts the price of a fill up in half.

  Plug in hybrids allow you to run the car on pure electric or regular hybrid mode. Currently their batteries will only allow a range of up to 20 miles before the gas/electric mode kicks in. That’s not sufficient for most use but when they get to the point that they’ll have a range of 100 miles it will revolutionize the auto industry and our driving habits.

  With a range upwards of 600 miles (500 in hybrid mode plus 100 in pure electric mode) no one will have to worry about having to recharge their car very often. The 100 mile range would allow the driver to recharge his car when convenient and/or use the gas/electric mode for longer trips. This can happen in as little as 5 years from now.

  Over 1.5 million Priuses have been sold in the U.S. and 6 million worldwide and this does not include other hybrids. Saudi Arabia, look out!

  Opinions anyone?

  *These are EPA figures which are based on strict driving conditions. Real life mileage comes out to about 10% less.
  
  
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  Island Man

  What do I think? Revolutionary! Did you see the news article about Goodenough's (the guy who invented the lithium ion battery) new battery technology? If that comes on stream then gas vehicles will go the way of typewriters and pagers. Even with the latest current technology, electric cars are already an attractive alternative to gas cars.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu3cpICjCKw
  
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  LoveUniHateExams

  I had to drive in London as part of my job from 2007-2009.

  The company had two cars for this, a Honda Civic hybrid & a Toyota Prius.

  Both hybrids were ok to drive, although I preferred the Civic.

  I haven't driven a fully electric car.

  Hybrids and electric cars are a good idea - I hope they take off. Maybe companies need to make them more affordable.

  Reducing our carbon footprint is a must.
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  Xanthippe

  It want an electric car but they're still too expensive in the UK. I think being in a metal box with an internal combustion engine that can burst into flames if you crash is terrifying.
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  Finkelstein

  I think its the right path for humanity to continue upon, especially in are highly congested cites for public transportation needs.

  There are stumbling circumstances that is going to make the conversion to cleaner alternative energy sources, one being the enormous gas and oil industry and the countries that rely on the sales of this resource as a large part of their gross capital income.

  Another might the cost of the technology such as engines built for hydrogen and the availability for consumers.

  Once these technologies mature and can be produced at lower cost their acceptance will more appealing to a wider portion of consumers.
  
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  scratchme1010

  Electric cars are a good alternative, but unfortunately that technology is not being explored as much as the current gas/oil based car manufacturing. In some parts of USA it was politicized (I even saw commercials suggesting that having an electric car is "liberal" and unpatriotic).

  From a technology perspective, it's very interesting to see the way they work. From a convenience perspective, I'd prefer to let their engineering mature a little more an perfect certain things.
  
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  Simon

  I think they are interesting but not the nirvana people assume. The electricity still has to be produced which often means burning fossil fuels and transmitted which means power loss. Yes, it can save fuel being burned where the car is, but it's still burned.

  The energy harvesting is great though. You can do it yourself though by "hypermiling" and driving with some intelligence so you don't waste fuel by breaking after accelerating etc...

  It's interesting that advances in engine technology have usually been applied to performance and acceleration instead of efficiency. Cars haven't really advanced a great deal in MPG over the last 20 years even though they get lighter and should be considerably better. Some of it is due to increased road congestion and, especially in North America, a lot of this is due to piss-poor road planning and layout. As a simple example, North America is obsessed with junctions with lights and 4-way stops that are very impactful fuel and traffic wise and also more dangerous compared to roundabouts.

  What will probably make the biggest difference to vehicle fuel efficiency is driver automation. A computer would be able to drive far more optimally than the average moron driving too close, stamping on the pedals and generally being an idiot.
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  Village Idiot

  I think they are interesting but not the nirvana people assume. The electricity still has to be produced which often means burning fossil fuels and transmitted which means power loss. Yes, it can save fuel being burned where the car is, but it's still burned.
  

  For every hybrid car produced there will be a conventional car that will not be bought or produced. That means that the amount of electricity needed to make them will cancel each other out.
  
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  OnTheWayOut

  We are on our way toward a future where fossil fuel is gone. But as long as the powers that be stay rich on our use of fossil fuels, the progress will be slower than it should be. We could already, with current technology, have awesome all-electric autos and rely exclusively on renewable energy (primarily solar and wind powered electricity) and save our fossil fuels for the airplanes until we figure out that technology also.
  
  We could even have faster electric trains and ships to minimize air travel.

  I am glad some people are driving hybrids so that the demand for improvement will come. I am still not ready to spend nearly the same amount of money on a car that isn't as good as a non-hybrid, but that could easily change as the cost of fuel in the future changes or as the cars get better.
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  Simon

  For every hybrid car produced there will be a conventional car that will not be bought or produced. That means that the amount of electricity needed to make them will cancel each other out.

  Is that leftist math?

  You have fossil fuels and you have a vehicle. When vehicle needs power then fossil fuels are burnt. They can be burnt by the car engine directly (in which case the cost of transporting that fuel has to be factored in) or they can be burnt by a power station (in which case the loss from transmission and storage has to be factored in).

  Electric cars on their own don't save a great deal, they just mostly move where the pollution is produced which isn't necessarily a good thing - instead of people in the city suffering the pollution they create, they now enjoy cleaner air and their pollution is sent to someone else's skies.

  What we should be focusing on is reducing trips and combining travel. 10,000 vehicles with 1 people in each is never going to be as efficient as 100 vehicles with 100 people in each.

  People also need to accept that more efficient travel means slower travel. Just as aircraft trips are now slower than they were 20-30 years ago, car journeys need to be slower. The drag on a vehicle goes up exponentially the faster you go and most fuel is burnt compensating for that when on the highway. Drive at 100kph instead of 110kph and you will get very different mpg. most vehicles have a sweet spot much lower than that.