Dark Side of the Hybrids

Any ICO will not always be making it's full rated power,usually far less.

 

Mike,
You are probably right. I know that you will be right once the price of
hybrid vehicles comes down to the point where almost anyone can easily
afford to buy them. The Honda Accord Hybrid is so expensive that Honda is
having a difficult time selling very many of them. If the Accord Hybrid
was priced the same as the 6 cyld. Accord, they would sell lots more of
them.
Jason

 

Base EX-V6 Accord $33,600 CDN
Base Hybrid Accord $36,900 CDN
Source http://honda.ca/Honda/default.htm?L=E

What prices are *you* referring too, "Jason"?

 

Steve,
The above two prices that you mentioned. If the Hybrid Accord and EX-V6
Accord were both priced at $33,600--Honda would sell lots more of them. I
rarely ever see any Hybrid Accords on any of the parking lots of the local
grocery stores and Walmart stores. I see lots of the V6 (non Hybrid) in
those same parking lots. I realize that this won't happen in the next 5
years since it costs Honda much more to make a Hybrid Accord than a
regular Accord.
Jason

 

Honda has taken a strange road with the Accord Hybrid and the Acura MDX
hybrid. Rather than using the technology to make a high fuel economy
vehicle they are using it to make a higher performance, expensive vehicle.

Mostly they are selling these vehicles to the feel-good, feel-proud
buyer. A good manual transmission diesel-powered drivetrain would be a
much more efficient use of resources both at the manufacturing stage and
in use.

John

 

As I was pricing a EX-V6 and a hybrid in the San Francisco area in
Jan/Feb 2005 I found I could get the EX-V6 Navi (with leather) for $26K
but the hybrid was about $32K. As I calculated it: for the price
difference and MPG difference one would need to drive the car for 500K
miles to break even.

I would love to have a hybrid but that $6K put the hybrid out of the
competition.

 

The only problem I have with hybrids is that people dump their "old"
cars to purchase an environmentally friendlier vehicle....

It is my understanding that the processes involved in manufacturing a
new car cause more polution than driving the same car will produce
over its entire lifetime.

So the greenest car is a used one...no matter the gas mileage.

 

there's a substantial element of truth to that, and you're thinking big
picture which is good, but for smaller utilitarian cars at least, there
is an overall benefit for the newer more efficient vehicles. whether
that continues to be the case is another matter now that we have
relatively clean burning fuel injected cars, but compared to
carburetion, the overall benefit of modern cars is worth the
manufacturing effort.

 

Hello,
I agree with you related to your last point. I am now 54 years old and
remember all of the problems I had with cars made in the 1960's, 70's and
early 80's. The carburetor and electrical system was the main source of
those problems. I have never had any problems with the EFI system or
electrical system in both of Honda Accords that I have owned.
Jason

 

Problem is, you can't get a decent, efficient, and above all else
MODERN diesel engine in the Us - i believe its because the fuel that
is sold here, doesn't work well with the new engine designs that have
come up in the last 20-odd years, and the new fuels don't work well
with the engines that have been sold in the US in those intervening 20
years.

 

now tell the other 8 billion on the planet.

However, you seem to ahve confised what i was saying. I wasn't saying
that I particularly cared. its the Prius and similar drivers that
care, not about what others drive (although that is used as a
introduction to 'well i drive a ...') but about what other people
think about the car they drive.

Personally, i don't care about what other people think about the car i
drive, so i have a ratty civic, a ratty caravan, a ratty volvo 340,
and a ratty *looking* MG metroTT. They all have dents, they all have
rust. They're all from 87-89, and i really don't care what people
think about me as i drive past. This is a concept that is very hard
for a hybrid owner to grasp. The wife cares, hence she got a saturn
SL1, Meanwhile i'll look at a caterham superlight, or an Atom2

 

Hybrid drivers aren't that easy to categorize, either. Drive what you want -
when we were looking at replacing the Nissan that kept me busy in the
garage, we had two options (I'm the car authority in the family!) We could
employ my favored and time proven tactic of buying a reliable model of car
with at least 80K miles on it or we could buy a new hybrid. I saw no reason
at all to buy a 21st century car with a 20th century power train, and I had
looked forward to mass-market hybrids since I was introduced to the concept
of hybrids some decades ago. The Civic Hybrid was hardly an improvement over
the conventional Civic and was not in stock, but the Prius was just the
ticket. Toyota had lept most of the barriers to electrifying the accessories
(power steering and brakes were electric even then, and the A/C is electric
in the current model.) The 8 year / 100K mile warranty on the hybrid system,
combined with a *lot* of research, pretty much had me sold. I wasn't
prepared for the driving experience, though. The 2002 model is a great
chassis for city dwellers, with remarkable manueverability. The off-the-line
acceleration is impressive, even here at 7000 ft where our turbo Volvo makes
me wish we could do the Fred Flintstone thing until the turbo finally gets
its mojo working. The power train is easily the smoothest available
anywhere - since there is no transmission there are no shifts at all. We are
approaching 50K miles and have done nothing but routine maintenance, replace
the tires and replace a windshield that fell victim to the Arizona road
rocks. We have taken several long trips in it and after three years we still
love it.

I do know what you mean about the political bent of many Prius owners,
though. As a Reaganite I do not see eye-to-eye with many of the other
owners, whom Click and Clack characterized as "granola eating" and "tree
hugging." Oddly, I've learned I am one of four former or current Lotus
owners active in the Yahoo Prius group - and none of us hug trees. I miss my
Europa, but the Prius is almost as much fun to drive in its own way... and
*way* more reliable!

Mike

 

Sadly, you are right. The success of the Prius has been driven mainly by
fuel economy, but the luster of hybrids has led a lot of manufacturers to
jump on the bandwagon and call some pretty embarrassing things "hybrids." GM
is easily the worst, trying to pass off idle-stop technology as
hybridization. Proposed and existing legislation favoring (but not usually
defining) hybrids makes the problem worse.

Until controller and battery technology can bring us practical serial
hybrids (essentially electric cars with on-board chargers) we will have to
wade through the fluff.

Mike

 

VW is the only one selling good moderate priced diesel powered cars in
the US right now.

This is mostly a problem of politics and not of engineering or economics.

John

 

OMG - I wasn't familiar with the Lupo, so I did a little research. See
http://www.usatoday.com/money/consumer/autos/mareview/mauto497.htm
for the USA Today report on an early test version. The truth is ugly
indeed! Non-existent acceleration, maddening transmission behavior,
rock-bottom comfort, and so much more. Talk about doing tricks to get fuel
economy - this benighted little gremlin tries them all. No A/C of course, no
P/S available, and a $3000 premium for the privilege of being abused by your
car. This is the basis of the TD version the economy claims stem from.

http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/car-reviews/car-and-driving/volkswagen-lupo-1.4-e-1003151.html
is more kind to the production "E" version of the car, but notes much lower
economy - 54 mpg on the highway and 30(!) mpg in town. Our Prius gets
real-world upper 40s in town, even with hills and stop and go traffic and
frequent waits for trains.

Mike

 

this wiould be the 'lupo 3l' - and the link i gave a few days ago in
the thread about the canadian test, right? Few things to remember. No
PS - normal, its so small you don't need it. Don't need it in my 88
civic either. AC is not standard in european cars, its a
hgih-equipment spec standard, or otherwise option. Most of europe you
don't need it. the engine stop+start is something common to a fair few
of the 'high effiiciency cars' The Rock bottom comfort - well thats an
american reviewing a european only claim. Used to luxury boats, that
get terribale millage, and well hes not in one, plus it was a
pre-producton model. By contrst, the BBC's top reviewer (and one of
the most influential reviewers in europe) tested the F150 recently.
Thats the best selling vehicle in the US, and he tested a production
model (the lightning in fact) and he said pretty much the same thing
about the comforts, and the production quality. He liked the engine,
but then, since he was about to take delivery of the new FordGT (which
has the same engine0 i'm not surprised there. In short, i feel the
usatoday reviewer was predjudiced by his american car standards, same
as europeans are predjudiced against american vehicles (such as their
amazement when they drove the caddie CTS, branding it 'the first
american car to be able to handle a corner', so which I say "its about
time"

Its a petrol engine, what doyou expect. the 1.7tdi is more efficient.
though, 'return a combined fuel consumption figure of over 64mpg,
although acceleration is rather limp" which is
http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/car-reviews/car-and-driving/volkswagen-lupo-2002288.html
on the combined lupo test.

 

But the point stands - these are dinky cars (as the above link points out,
the rear seat is really only practical for children) with small engines to
increase fuel economy - the same things that have been used for economy for
half a century or more. Remember the Nash Metropolitan or the early VWs? You
can have economy or you can have performance, but not both, by selecting the
version... as the article makes very clear.

That is where hybrids shine, with economy in the same league as the
economical Lupos and spaciousness and performance in a completely different
league. Our 2002 is smaller, lighter, less powerful, lower performance and
15% *less* economical than the current generation Prius (which started in
2004) but still seats five adults adequately (better than my daughter's '93
Accord) and gets fuel economy in town between 45 and 50 mpg - real world,
many short trips, with A/C on. According to the article, the 1.0L
entry-level model offers that sort of economy but takes more than 18 seconds
to reach 60 mph - half again as long as our first-generation Prius and
almost twice as long as the current generation.

The Prius is the Model T of hybrids. Popular, well designed, but only a
shadow of the cars to come. Hybridization is the answer to many engineering
dilemmas posed by the requirements of passenger cars. At last we can have
spacious, responsive and economical cars - something VW's tricks still can't
bring together, as the article makes plain.

Mike