Dark Side of Hybrid Vehicles

Maybe so. Out of curiosity, what would be your suggestion for an
alternative power source for consumer vehicles?

 

http://www.caranddriver.com/article.asp?section_id=27&article_id=9489
The hybrid portion is filled with diatribe and a few factoids.

http://fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/030705.html

 

It was Fareed.
http://fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/030705.html

 

http://www.caranddriver.com/article.asp?section_id=27&article_id=9489
The hybrid portion is filled with diatribe and a few factoids.
Other than the negative spin that Yates is deliberately putting on it, I
don't see any misstatements.

The hybrid market is small. Yates cites the wonderful surveys from
J.D.Powers. As a J.D.Powers member, I see that the surveys are all
whatever the buyer of the survey wants them to be.

He says all of the hybrids cost more to manufacture than the sales premium,
and that manufacturers are losing money on them. Toyota says that's not
true, but it has been questioned.

The MPG goes down when you run the A/C. That is surprisingly true. The
MPG drops a couple of miles per gallon with the load of A/C. It's a small
percentage, that isn't noticed when your H2 is only getting 8mpg to begin
with, but a 5% drop at 50mpg is noticeable. Plus the hybrid owners are
paying attention. Brock is trying to ignore his mileage, A/C or not.

http://fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/030705.html
Fareed's article is dismissed with an italicized "voila 500mpg!", knowing
full well that it must be false. I doubt if he even read the article
beyond the mention of methanol.

It is a spin. 500mpg of Gasoline. But there are other components. And it
is a speech that President Bush "could make tomorrow". It is not a
statement that such a thing does exist, although he does explore it.

"Here's the math (thanks to Gal Luft, a tireless <and independent> advocate
of energy security). The current crop of hybrid cars get around 50 miles
per gallon. Make it a plug-in and you can get 75 miles. Replace the
conventional fuel tank with a flexible-fuel tank that can run on a
combination of 15 percent petroleum and 85 percent ethanol or methanol, and
you get between 400 and 500 miles per gallon of gasoline. (You don't get
500 miles per gallon of fuel, but the crucial task is to lessen the use of
petroleum. And ethanol and methanol are much cheaper than gasoline, so fuel
costs would drop dramatically.) "

The comment about ethanol and methanol being cheaper is dubious. I tend to
agree with Brock on that one, unless the production becomes ubiquitous,
reducing the transportation costs.


I think plug-in hybrids are the way to go. My Ford Escape Hybrid would
run the gas engine for the required few minutes every day, but would run
electric-only every workday, plugging in to my home solar power system for
recharging at night. The ICE would still be there for needed additional
power, or for long trips. I could easily get 500mpg of gasoline with no
other energy source but the sun. The upfront cost might be high, but I
personally don't care about that. I will amortize today's purchase price
over a period of many years to eliminate my need for foreign oil.

 

Hmmm. Everybody's right.

Tom Friedman, "As Toyota Goes"
< http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17friedman.html?ex=1276660800&en=da9affdfc40683db&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss >

Fareed Zakaria, " Imagine: 500 Miles Per Gallon "
http://fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/030705.html

and they are both acknowledge the work by Gal Luft as their source.
http://www.setamericafree.org/news.htm

 

Hello,
I disagree. The so called "greenies" love the word "hybrid" since they
love to tell their friends and almost anyone else that they talk to that
they have a "hybrid". They also like it when fellow greenies see the word
"hybrid" on the back of their cars." It's not the actual word that they
love--it's the thought behind the word. An example is the word "diamond".
It's the thought behind the word that is important when it comes to
"hybrid" or "diamond".
Jason

 

You forgot to mention, he's also a lawyer.

 

I stand corrected. Friedman also wrote a column on this
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17friedman.
html?
ex=1276660800&en=da9affdfc40683db&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=
rss

But it looks like Zakaria's was first.

 

Yup. And you had a good summary of Yates' biased spin (to be
honest, Friedman and Zakaria have their own biases). Yates' plays
the crochety, libertarian boor. F & Z in their liberal bent do not
completely disclose the other primary energy sources (including
fossil fuel) consumed in their "500 mpg" soundbite. Though one may
argue that at least the majority of those other energy sources do
not necessarily have to be imported.

 

it's not necessary or practical to go to a wholly alternative fuel
model. but i'd go pure electric /if/ the power source was nuclear or
wind/solar/geothermal, etc. but that would only be practical for local
commute traffic affording known recharge schedules. the current
electric car model [such as it is] is not so great because burning
fossil fuels to generate electricity that charges batteries is only
marginally more efficient than burning the fuel in the car.

i'd also consider fuel cells. better conversion efficiency, and the
fuel supply system is already in place.

imo, the best most practical solution that meets the needs of urban,
suburban and country dwellers is to encourage the use of smaller more
efficient vehicles, strongly discourage the use of ridiculous gas
guzzlers, and actually deploy known technology that increases
thermodynamic efficiency. and all the folk that drive huge vehicles
because they "need" them should go to europe for a few minutes to get
some perspective. in europe, vehicles are smaller, substantially more
efficient and do exactly the same job as the giant stuff we have here.
tradesmen still haul their tools & supplies without gigantic trucks.
soccer moms still drive their kids around without the gigantic suburban.
delivery trucks still carry the same payload with half the engine
size. last time i looked, the average american household consumed
/double/ the energy per unit compared with the next highest consumer
country. that's not because we're an impoverished techno-desert that
doesn't know any better, it's because we just don't put this stuff on
the agenda. if we got our act together, we'd be able to design, build &
sell this stuff around the globe and make a huge fortune, but hey.

 

Jim, overall you make some good points. And I do agree that we
should be working on the 10-20-30% improvements that can be had by
conservation, downsizing, hybridizing, etc. But that still puts out
a lot of CO2 and consumes lots of gasoline. So I think it slows
down the looming crisis (if you subscribe to the evidence), but
doesn't halt them.

Gasoline-based fuel cell research has been all-but abandoned. I
could go into the issues, but they are numerous. Hydrogen fuel
cells are what all the auto companies are spending their R&D
effort on, to the tune of over $1B. Note that is corporate
money, not tax payer (though the DOE budget over the next 5
years is slated at a combined $1.7B or so). Direct methanol may
have small portable application. Large stationary may be natural
gas based.

Link:
http://www.eere.energy.
gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/committee_report.pdf

 

I would stay away from hybrids. Saw one die in the middle of traffic - no
power and creating massive backups.<<

Yessiree. YOU saw one die, so we should all stay away from them. No other
kind of car has ever died in the middle of traffic, with no power and
creating massive backups...just hybrids.

Thanks for today's Usenet entertainment.

 

I don't have the source of the picture/caption I have (probably from
something like Popular Science), but the sucker is complete with a large
steering wheel (yes, a steering wheel), lots of analog gauges covering a
whole wall (yes, gauges!), and a maybe 18" teletype tractor feed printer.
It's also got a large TV mounted high on a wall.<<

BZZZZZZT! Wrong...but thanks for playing.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp

 

true, but from what i can see, a complete cessation of co2 production is
unnecessary. parallel that with things like addressing deforestation
and erosion, things that harm natural co2 absorbtion, and we have a more
sustainable system.

when federal tax benefits & grants stopped, yes. what are the technical
problems? you're probably going to have a butane fuel cell in your
laptop before long.

because that's where the federal tax credits are. doesn't mean the
decision to subsidize hydrogen research is based on good science.

but again, that is eligible for 100% write-off is it not? whether the
subsidy comes from a direct payout or from 100% write-off, doesn't it
amount to the same thing?

sure, hydrogen fuel cells work, and the by-product is water, but let's
address the practical reality: hydrogen is, per kilogram, not as energy
dense as gasoline, and somewhat more hazardous in both transportation &
storage. what use is hydrogen if you can't safely transport or store
it? the space shuttle, which uses liquid hydrogen, has to be fueled as
closely as possible before launch to reduce risk & losses.

 

OK I read it. Reminds me of why I usually skip Yates' editorials.

Other than raising the red herring of battery disposal and drawing
meaningless comparisons to electric cars, the "dark side" is entirely
based on the well known and widely reported fact that these vehicles
will not pay for themselves in fuel savings. According to Wards'
analysis, gas would have to be $10/gal for a Prius to pay for it's
higher cost compared to a Corolla.

So what? Why must a hybrid be justified only on economic grounds?
Why compare a Prius with a Corolla? Why not compare an Insight with a
Corvette? Both have similar passenger and luggage capacity. In many,
perhaps most circumstances the Insight will even be as fast as the
Corvette. So how long will it take for the much more expensive
Corvette to pay for itself?

For now at least, hybrid buyers are not buying based on economics any
more than Corvette buyers are. They like high milage bragging rights,
environmental conservation and the message their car sends. However,
to move into the mainstream, the cars will have to make economic
sense. Economies of scale should bring down the cost. Or gas may go
to $10.

Hydrogen is a pipe dream. It might be a reality some day but we are
going to conserve our oil if we are going to make it there.

 

Well it may be a matter of semantics but the way I see it, they are
bragging the technology and benefits of the hybrid, not the word
itself. I think most of them understand the technology reasonably
well. It would be a different story if they had no real clue what
'hybrid' meant, or if hybrid technology didn't really do anything.
Think Fahrfurnugen or Cab-Forward design. Got a Hemi in that thing?

 

Thanks for the summaries. The 500 mpg of gasoline is a little
contrived in that one could easily run the car on 100% methanol and no
gasoline at all. The only problem is that recent analysis indicates
that these bio fuels consume more fossil fuel than they replace.

The plug-in hybrid is a good idea and will hasten the arrival of the
day when hybrids do make economic sense.

 

youd think burning the fuel directly in the car would be the most efficient

 

not thermodynamically. or at least, not currently. formula 1 engines
are pretty good because they run at real high combustion temps, the key
to best yield, but to do that reliably for the mileage of the average
family sedan requires expensive and/or different materials. i recall
reading some stuff on ceramics in diesel engines, and they allowed both
higher combustion temperature [with accompanying increase in efficiency]
and a significant increase in service life. but as you may imagine,
manufacturers did not show any interest in the last of these two. and
to be fair, production cost at that time was very high. but if they had
production runs in the millions, that situation would change pretty quick...

 

Who, Nate Fisher?