http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10990145/

these are vehicles like hybrids, except you can plug them in at night to have electricity power the first 60 miles of your trip. i didn't even know they existed till i saw this:

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/index.html

4/26/2007 4:17:38 PM

they talked about them on Talk of the Nation: Science Friday a couple weeks ago.
Sound cool - too bad it's not a standard feature on existing hybrids already. Costs like $10-12k to retrofit an existing hybrid to plug-in.....

to me, though, it really sounds like the best of both worlds. Ok, not the best, since some people will still complain that hybrids aren't as fast off the line as their Mustang is, but close enough. It would be perfect for people living around here who commute to Cary or RTP. Plug-in at night, drive to work purely on electrical, drive back mostly on electrical, maybe the gas engine has to kick in some, then still get excellent gas mileage on longer road trips after the electrical runs out. And I assume that like other hybrids, the batteries are also charged through regenerative braking in addition to plugin.

and before anyone complains about plugging in - they had all the numbers on Science Friday that even the worst coal-powered electricity plant is still orders of magnitude (well, maybe not that much) cleaner and more efficient than your gas engine, so even though it creates pollution to generate the electricity to power your car, the net-effect is still much less. What i haven't seen is exactly how much kWh it takes to charge the batteries, and therefore how much it costs each night in electricity. I imagine, though, it's still much less than buying gas.

4/26/2007 5:04:00 PM

ok, did some quick calculations.
If your normal, gas car gets 25mpg (which is a lot higher than you with SUVs get), and gas costs $2.50/gallon (higher than that now), then it costs you $6 to drive 60 miles - the same distance you can get on a full tank of electricity.
According to my last power bill, electricity is $0.11/kWh (seems high.... i was thinking it was around $0.07), the equivalent $6 in gas would buy you 55kWh from Progress Energy.

According to http://www.evworld.com/electrichybrid.cfm the Prius uses a 1.3kWh battery, so your Prius battery (if charged from the wall) would run for over 42 hours for your $6 of gas. Assuming driving at 50mph, that's about 2100 miles (and still over 1000 miles at 25mph average stop-and-go city driving) for the equivalent of $6 of gas.

.... anyone want to double check my math?

4/26/2007 5:26:28 PM

you cant go 50mph solely off battery power in a prius. it wont even turn the gas engine off if above 40mph.

you cant go off just battery in the civic ever.

4/26/2007 5:37:45 PM

Sonds reasonable to me. I'm surprised that feature hasn't been incorporated. This would work with people who have garages with "secure" power plugs, but would it work for people who live in condos and apartment complexes where you have communal parking?

4/26/2007 5:58:25 PM

^^ ok, follow that link and it says you can put a 9kWh battern into a Prius and drive "at freeway speeds for 60 miles or so". So put that 9kWh battery in and you can drive for 6 hours at the $6 equivalent I was using. Again, at 50mph, which that battery can do, that's over 300 miles for the equivalent of 2.4 gallons, or 127 equivalent-mpg


and if you read the original article, this is talking about a new kind of hybrid that can and is intended to drive solely off of electric power, for as long as it can. This has nothing to do with how the existing Toyotas or Hondas actually work now

4/26/2007 6:10:29 PM

Something about your math doesn't seem right

I'm just going on gut feeling based on what they have stated, but it is this

Quote :

"Now comes the fun part. Let's say you live in a city where electricity costs you 10 cents a kilowatt hour. To travel that 60 miles, it cost you 72 cents compared to the current national average price of gasoline at about $2.20/gallon in the US (as of April 2, 2005). In effect, for the same $2.20, you could drive up to 180 miles -- on three successive days, of course -- giving you the equivalent of 180 miles per gallon."

If I just see where they say 180mpg, then this to me means $2.20 gets your 180miles, and $6 gets you something around 700 miles.

4/26/2007 7:58:58 PM

ok, well on my latest post I updated it to ~130mpg. My estimates were purely based on estimated kWh contained in the battery and how expensive it would be to "fill up" the battery. I really know nothing about how the power in the battery translates to miles on the road, although my guesstimate of 130 is certainly in the same ballpark at 180.

point being, though - i know that someone will jump in and start talking about how you're just trading one form of polluting engine for another, which isn't true.

4/26/2007 9:15:08 PM

I would buy one of these in a hurry.

4/26/2007 9:41:44 PM

you can currently convert a prius to be a plug-in already. I *think* you can disable the functionality that kicks into gas mode once you pass 40mpg, but I could be wrong.

4/26/2007 10:37:45 PM

Yep, accepting everything written on the site you linked as accurate, and taking into account most battery chargers only manage 80% efficiency, that means you should spend about 50 cents for every $2.50 spent by your gasoline burning neighbors. Now, what other expenses do we have? Well, getting a hybrid vehicle is not cheap, costing you perhaps $10,000 more for the vehicle. Finally, you must upgrade to the 9kw-hour battery, even swapping in your 1.3kw-hour battery, it should cost $10,000 more. Over-all, you've spent $20,000 to save $2 every 30 miles. To break even you then need to drive 300,000 miles. Regretfully, no battery will survive 10,000 recharge cycles, so you will need another $10,000 battery long before you break even.

Of course, this is just using your numbers. The power company only charges you a flat rate of 11 cents because you asked them to. In exchange for promises to only recharge at night, and separate meetering, Progress Energy should be willing to let you go at 6 cents per kw-hour. At this lower rate you should break even after about 160,000 miles.

If a lot of people do this and we give Progress Energy control over the recharge cycle, such that their computers are able to control the charging rate for the purpose of load balancing then theoretically speaking the rate could get down to 4 cents per kw-hour; breaking even at only 100,000 miles.

4/26/2007 10:45:53 PM

yeah, or hopefully they will start selling plug-in hybrids at the same price as regular hybrids

4/26/2007 10:52:17 PM

The biggest expense is the batteries: they cost a heck of a lot of money. Odd as it may seem, the manufacture of most battery chemistries is very electricity intensive. If we figure out Fusion to a sufficient extent to make electricity cheap then lithium batteries will become cheap, so would be the electricity to recharge them; the electric car wins.

Until then, find an efficient gasoline or diesel and be happy.

4/26/2007 11:00:49 PM

Quote :

"^^ ok, follow that link and it says you can put a 9kWh battern into a Prius and drive "at freeway speeds for 60 miles or so". So put that 9kWh battery in and you can drive for 6 hours at the $6 equivalent I was using. Again, at 50mph, which that battery can do, that's over 300 miles for the equivalent of 2.4 gallons, or 127 equivalent-mpg and if you read the original article, this is talking about a new kind of hybrid that can and is intended to drive solely off of electric power, for as long as it can. This has nothing to do with how the existing Toyotas or Hondas actually work now "

Sorry i was just commenting on the behavior i noticed when driving the prius 700 miles. Read whatever you want anywhere. I wont stop your dream. Dont let it start with any honda hybrid would be my advice.

Can you even fathom how much a 9kw lithium ion battery would cost?

[Edited on April 27, 2007 at 8:33 AM. Reason : .]

4/27/2007 8:30:55 AM

how about 0 emission hydrogen fuel cell cars, with the hydrogen made from 0 emission nuclear power?

4/27/2007 11:35:51 AM

Well, let's see. Nuclear Power costs about the same as Coal Power, so the hydrogen producer is going to pay at least 4 cents per kw-hour and that it takes 9 kw-hours to go 60 miles. Now, the efficiency of electrolysis is about 60% and the efficiency of a fuel cell is about 80%. Therefore, just to get the electricity into and then out of hydrogen you will need to pay $0.83 to do the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. Therefore, you are saving $1.17 for every 30 miles. But fuel cells are not cheap, so you run into the same problem we had with electric vehicles. Not to mention this does not factor the inherent distribution, storage, and safety problems associated with hydrogen.

4/27/2007 1:03:38 PM

Quote :

"they had all the numbers on Science Friday that even the worst coal-powered electricity plant is still orders of magnitude (well, maybe not that much) cleaner and more efficient than your gas engine, so even though it creates pollution to generate the electricity to power your car, the net-effect is still much less"

No freaking way the exhaust from a Coal Power plant is cleaner than my car exhaust. No way I buy that.

4/27/2007 1:13:14 PM

http://www.calcars.org/vehicles.html

The "well-to-wheel" emissions of electric vehicles are lower than those from gasoline internal combustion vehicles. California Air Resources Board studies show that battery electric vehicles emit at least 67% lower greenhouse gases than gasoline cars -- even more assuming renewables. A PHEV with only a 20-mile all-electric range is 62% lower (see printed page 95 in the 2004 study).(http://www.arb.ca.gov/regact/grnhsgas/isor.pdf)

Nationally, two government studies have found PHEVs would result in large reductions even on the national grid (50% coal). The GREET 1.6 model (http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/TA/153.pdf) in 2001 by the DOE's Argonne National Lab estimates hybrids reduce greenhouse gases by 22%, and plug-in hybrids by 36% (see table 2). An Argonne researcher reached consensus with researchers from other national labs, universities, the Air Resources Board, automakers, utilities and AD Little to estimate in July 2002 that PHEVs using nighttime power reduce greenhouse gases by 46 to 61 percent. This is summarized in slide 11 at the November 2003 presentation (http://www.epri.com/event_attachments/2093_(16)DuvallEmissionsGlobal.pdf) by EPRI. For more in the media on this, see also the May 2, 2005 followup to the April 11 Business Week story (http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/32.html)

Quote :

"The idea of hybrids that can be plugged into an electrical outlet is winning fans among both conservatives and environmentalists (BW -- Apr. 11). Such cars could store enough juice in their batteries to cover most daily commutes and only use their gasoline engines on longer trips. But since most of America's electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, critics worry that any cut in tailpipe emissions would be offset by dirty air from increased coal burning. A collection of studies, however, makes clear that while power-plant pollution would rise, car emissions would fall by a much larger amount. Total energy use per car would drop by up to 45%, calculates the Electric Power Research Institute. EPRI and the California Air Resources Board also calculate that replacing regular cars with plug-in hybrids would reduce pollution and carbon dioxide emissions up to 50% overall. Emissions would fall even more as the cars become capable of traveling farther on batteries alone and as new, renewable sources of electricity come on line."

http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/32.html

Believe what you like

[Edited on April 27, 2007 at 1:29 PM. Reason : m]

4/27/2007 1:25:43 PM

^I don't see anything there about coal plants. Sure I have no problem at all believing its cleaner coming from other types of power plants. I'm talking about coal.

4/27/2007 1:28:21 PM

Quote :

"Nationally, two government studies have found PHEVs would result in large reductions even on the national grid (50% coal)"

4/27/2007 1:30:05 PM

Well I'm amazed. Thanks

4/27/2007 1:30:58 PM

It wouldn't be the first time you're completely wrong about something.

4/27/2007 1:31:42 PM

what in the fuck is that supposed to mean. don't pussy foot.

4/27/2007 1:32:23 PM

http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=465968
Your stance in this thread seems primarily based on the idea that you can't fathom humans causing global warming, so that must be the case.

4/27/2007 1:45:53 PM

My stance is our effect is insignificant, and that global warming is basically 99% a natural trend. And this stance is backed up by countless facts and specialists. So feel free to continue to be an ignorant ass

4/27/2007 1:52:59 PM

Quote :

"No freaking way the exhaust from a Coal Power plant is cleaner than my car exhaust. No way I buy that."

Look at it this way. Your gasoline engine is often only 15 to 20% efficient. Meanwhile, most power plants today manage 70 to 80% efficiency. As such, your car needs to burn as much as four times as much fuel to produce the same amount of power.

Add to this fact that most cars are miss-calibrated and some produce a rediculous amount of pollution. Meanwhile, most coal power plants have scrubbers, burn low sulfur coal, and are closely monitored to guarantee efficient fuel consumption.

4/27/2007 1:55:27 PM

Quote :

"My stance is our effect is insignificant, and that global warming is basically 99% a natural trend. And this stance is backed up by countless facts and specialists. So feel free to continue to be an ignorant ass "

by countless do you mean 1% of scientists all of whom are paid by exxon? cause if that is what you meant than yeah sure you are right.

4/27/2007 2:00:41 PM

^^I'm aware of efficiencies of cars, and how horrible it is. I was referring to actual emissions. And I was corrected

^Ignorance is bliss huh??? Look, you want to rehash that feel free to bump up any of the numerous threads (where Treetwista and myself took care of business).

[Edited on April 27, 2007 at 6:44 PM. Reason : k]

4/27/2007 6:44:04 PM

haha. ok. you show me a study where the scientist wasnt paid to say what he said by exxon or some other similar company and i will apologize.

4/28/2007 12:45:10 AM

MIT, Richard Lindzen is one that comes immediately to mind.

4/28/2007 3:22:26 AM

Lindzen is the only credible "dissenter" on the matter and his view is this:

Quote :

"Lindzen replied to Annan "The quote [at Reason Online] was out of context. I think the odds are about 50-50 [on global warming]."

His basis for that is merely that there is not enough evidence to say with a very high degree of confidence that it is humans, but that from what we can say surely right now, is that it might be, with a 50/50 chance. THis view is not incompatible with the full report of the IPCC, which if you actually read it, talks a lot about the margin of error of the various models, and how they reached the conclusions they reached considering them.

But, Lindzen is not a detractor of the idea of anthropogenic climate change, only a detractor of the politicians on either side of the issue, which I think most scientists would at least be skeptical of.

4/28/2007 3:41:48 AM

Firefighters are wary of gas-electric cars

Quote :

"It's the what-ifs that worry firefighters. What if they cut the wrong cable, and 300 volts of electricity surge through their bodies? What if the car they thought was stopped suddenly takes off on them? What if the high-voltage battery pack catches fire and, possibly, explodes in their faces? As hybrid cars become more popular, firefighters across the country are facing a new danger from their high-voltage circuitry. 'We had a lot of concerns: the battery acid, the vapors, we're going to be electrocuted,' Chandler Fire Capt. Norm Germaine said. 'We have to be very sharp at securing the vehicle and turning the vehicle off.'"

http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special21/articles/0613hybrid13.html

Hybrid Cars Pose Dangers To First Responders
Rescue Crews Train On Hybrid Vehicles

Quote :

"'Some of the accidents that we run are horrific, and if that battery pack is split open we definitely have a shock hazard as well as a small hazardous-materials problem,' [Matt] Groff [Fairfax County Fire Department] said."

http://www.nbc4.com/safeandsecure/5078972/detail.html

[Edited on April 28, 2007 at 4:11 AM. Reason : .]

4/28/2007 4:10:05 AM

^FUD

Quote :

"Manufacturers use orange cables to mark electrical wires, which run underneath the cars, and a lightning bolt indicates high voltage. Castiaux said hybrid cars also come equipped with two or three safety features that would shut off the electricity if there was an accident."

From the same article you posted

4/28/2007 7:30:36 AM

^^how is that any different from any fire?

risk of explosion - check
risk of burns - check
risk of death - check

4/28/2007 7:37:50 AM

^^ and ^ I was simply posting stories about emergency workers that have concerns about hybrid vehicles. After all, hybrid vehicles are not made out of Granola bars--hybrids pose some dangers to people and the environment.

4/28/2007 7:32:55 PM

[user]moron[/link], look I'm not gonna rehash everything I've already stated in another thread in here. So feel free to go in there.

Plugin hybrids seem like the best option right now.

4/28/2007 7:42:16 PM

^^^^^ glad current cars don't have dangers like that already. you know, i wouldn't want us to strap, like, 20 gallons of highly flammable liquid in metal containers on the underside of our cars or anything....

4/28/2007 11:53:34 PM

I agree. Depending on the chemistry of the battery the dangers are quite minimal.

4/29/2007 12:48:55 AM

Quote :

"His basis for that is merely that there is not enough evidence to say with a very high degree of confidence that it is humans, but that from what we can say surely right now, is that it might be, with a 50/50 chance. THis view is not incompatible with the full report of the IPCC, which if you actually read it, talks a lot about the margin of error of the various models, and how they reached the conclusions they reached considering them."

You took that Lindzen quote way out of context. He gave it a 50-50 chance that the global mean temperature would be lower in 20 years.... That quote had NOTHING to do with his view that humans are causing global warming.

4/29/2007 2:01:09 AM