Hybrid Cars

[Doctor Drivel]

Such Essex wit. Does it come naturally?

[Doctor Drivel]

Read it again. It may be charged from the mains and the internal charger charge the batteries too.

The electricity it uses is overnight which normally would be wasted, that is why they offer economy 7 and 19 and 34, etc, when using overnight electricity.

[dennis]

Mines about 45kg but it only holds £40 worth. How much charge can you get in 45kg of battery?

[john.stumbles]

So am I right in thinking that (roughly speaking) for continuous running a conventional system is more efficient, whereas doing a lot of shuffling along in heavy traffic a hybrid can be better? Has anyone done the figures (for current production technology conventional and hybrids) to work out which would be better averaged out over national traffic patterns? In other words, if you were to replace the entire national car fleet overnight with equivalent hybrids would net fuel consumption increase or decrease?

[dennis]

I do believe you are learning.

Now if the hydrogen were produced by solar/wind it would be good.

[Doctor Drivel]

Good thinking me boy. But do you know how much energy it takes to crack it?

[dennis]

The electricity isn't wasted at night. It is just capacity that is not earning revenue at night.

Its better to reduce the daytime demand and use more of the capacity at night. This is why storage heaters were invented.

[Doctor Drivel]

No. The hybrid is equally as efficient on say motorway runs, if not better.. In towns conventional then fall apart in efficiency.

A hybrid is infinitely better as it claws back kinetic energy when braking. They are also brilliant to drive, unlike manual tractor like diesels.

Well Prius and Honda users are getting an average of 60mpg, with vastly reduced emissions in towns. The Prius is largish car, with an interior the size of a Camry. That should tell you something. Most auto makers are having hybrids in their ranges. Batteries have improved a hell of lot and when production is up and prices down they will make the hybrid even more efficient and attractive. They only way to go - in smooth style.

[Doctor Drivel]

Nope.

[dennis]

Electrolysis me boy. water into hydrogen and oxygen.

[Doctor Drivel]

That is the process. I said "do you know how much energy it takes to crack it?"

[Dave Plowman (News)]

That's the overall figure they got including maximum speed testing - a total distance of about 1000 miles. Dreadful isn't it? And Toyota didn't argue. If it wasn't typical under those circumstances they'd have submitted another car for test.

It only managed 42 mpg on a gentle touring route. Worse than cars with much better performance which cost far less.

I'd believe it over any other since they test a car thoroughly. You just read ads and believe every word.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Then the man's a fool. Prone to massive exaggeration. Was it you posting under yet another alias?

The only way you could to that is to snip your keyboard...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

To go with your DB6? Where do you park them on your council estate? Wouldn't the money have been better spent on a decent house?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It says 100mpg + electricity, fool. Which means precisely nothing. One day you'll learn how to read and understand adverts. How many e-mails from Nigeria have you replied to?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yes - with lots of stop start stuff obviously an electric motor which doesn't idle will be more efficient *at that time*. Of course if you want heating or air-con, this will make a big difference.

Autocar have a standard test route over which they take all the cars they test. It's about 30 miles long and involves a mixture of suburban high streets and 50 mph highways. The Prius managed 42 mpg over this journey. Almost exactly the same as a BMW 330D - a very fast diesel. Any other small diesel - Focus etc - is nearer 60 mpg over the same route.

[John Rumm]

Quite probably. The prius gains some efficency from running the IC engine in a non standard cycle that would usually be too lumpy to drive with a conventional drive train, but then it also has to move all the electric baggage about as well.

So in stop start conditions where it can accumulate surplus energy in the electrics, it gets to spread out the demands on the IC engine, and can (short term) produce more power than is available from the engine alone. So good in city situations.

During sustained performance oriented driving however it will get hit with the multiple whammy ofnot being able to sustain significant output from the electric motor, carrying the baggage, and being forced to divert a significant proportion of IC engines output to maintaining battery charge (which must never be allowed to fall too low since the enitre operation of the car depends on having electric motor power to blend with the IC engine output since this is how the planatary gear setup achieves the CVT).

It is a good question. I would expect the answer is "increase" since in the real world you don't get something for nothing.

[dennis]

[dennis]

Not much.

9V DC will do it (you can try with a pp3 battery if you like).

[Matt]

Have you ever considered the energy in a fuel tank - say £50 worth? Now compare that to "modern state-of-the-art batteries"

They don't even come within the same order of magnitude.