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Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles are Amazing

My mechanic who works at a Toyota shop says that the prius batteries last for over 200,000 miles.

They work, damned well.

My wife's car is a Prius. It's at 125K miles w/o battery issues.
 
I always love it when folks belittle electrics.
I could sell a hybrid to the biggest baddest coal rolling redneck on the planet if Chrysler would turn me loose in their design department.

Q: What's more macho than a diesel-electric locomotive?
A: NOTHING.

The solution is to develop a diesel-electric truck. Diesel-electric tech is eighty years old and therefore quite mature.
Adding battery technology to it simply brings it into the 21st century.

And since electric offers 100 percent torque at ALL RPM's, what you wind up with is the biggest, baddest most stump-pullingest truck on the planet.
Just toss in the right "locomotive" design concepts and Billy Bob and Joe Bob and all their friends will be lining up around the block to get one.
And it will get 45 miles to the gallon and make all the right noises, too.

Yup...I just responded to another poster that they are marketing it all wrong.
 
I always love it when folks belittle electrics.
I could sell a hybrid to the biggest baddest coal rolling redneck on the planet if Chrysler would turn me loose in their design department.

Q: What's more macho than a diesel-electric locomotive?
A: NOTHING.

The solution is to develop a diesel-electric truck. Diesel-electric tech is eighty years old and therefore quite mature.
Adding battery technology to it simply brings it into the 21st century.

And since electric offers 100 percent torque at ALL RPM's, what you wind up with is the biggest, baddest most stump-pullingest truck on the planet.
Just toss in the right "locomotive" design concepts and Billy Bob and Joe Bob and all their friends will be lining up around the block to get one.
And it will get 45 miles to the gallon and make all the right noises, too.

If they really wanted to reduce emissions, this would be a good move.
Pickup Trucks have plenty of extra space for batteries as well.
 
If they really wanted to reduce emissions, this would be a good move.
Pickup Trucks have plenty of extra space for batteries as well.

Thing is, even though diesel engines are thought to create more PHOTOCHEMICAL smog, the fact is, their emissions are less harmful at the chemical level, that is, less carcinogenic. But the important to bear in mind is, if a diesel engine is used to run a gennie and power electric motors, then it would be designed to operate cleanly and efficiently in a very very narrow RPM range.
You don't see giant clouds of soot issuing from a diesel generator for that very reason.

So I am making an educated guess that an engine on a diesel electric hybrid truck would be designed to operate primarily in a 1000-2300 RPM range 90% of the time. If the gen set is a motor-generator type, then the motor-generator would also be able to help kick the diesel from a low RPM idle up to operating RPM thus further eliminating pollutants emitted when the engine goes from idle to 1000-2000 RPM.
The motor portion of the motor-generator would only need to be a very light duty type, as it would only be used to start the diesel engine and to boost it up to operating RPM, as a typical diesel-electric powertrain would not connect the engine to the drive wheels, which would be exclusively powered by the electric motors.

If you then add a DEF (urea based diesel exhaust fluid) package, as most state emissions would require anyway, now you have an extremely clean diesel powertrain.
 
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Thing is, even though diesel engines are thought to create more PHOTOCHEMICAL smog, the fact is, their emissions are less harmful at the chemical level, that is, less carcinogenic. But the important to bear in mind is, if a diesel engine is used to run a gennie and power electric motors, then it would be designed to operate cleanly and efficiently in a very very narrow RPM range.
You don't see giant clouds of soot issuing from a diesel generator for that very reason.

So I am making an educated guess that an engine on a diesel electric hybrid truck would be designed to operate primarily in a 1000-2300 RPM range 90% of the time. If the gen set is a motor-generator type, then the motor-generator would also be able to help kick the diesel from a low RPM idle up to operating RPM thus further eliminating pollutants emitted when the engine goes from idle to 1000-2000 RPM.
The motor portion of the motor-generator would only need to be a very light duty type, as it would only be used to start the diesel engine and to boost it up to operating RPM, as a typical diesel-electric powertrain would not connect the engine to the drive wheels, which would be exclusively powered by the electric motors.

If you then add a DEF (urea based diesel exhaust fluid) package, as most state emissions would require anyway, now you have an extremely clean diesel powertrain.

I agree, serial hybrid is the way to go, much simpler.
The transmission to combine mechanical AND electrical motors to the wheels are more complicated.
 
So we recently bought a new minivan (yes...I'm kinda a wild child, I know) that is a plug-in hybrid. What is the difference between this and a regular hybrid? Well, you plug it in, just like a battery car, and it has a certain range on the battery power alone. We got the Chrysler Pacifica, which has a range of 33 miles on the battery charge.

My biggest beef with full-on battery vehicles is they just aren't energy efficient. A regular gas-powered car will reliably get a certain distance and then fill it up in 5 minutes and hit the road again. A full battery-powered vehicle can vary widely and once it's empty of juice, you have to wait hours to get going again, meaning you still need another vehicle for longer drives. It's never been an issue of power, electric actually provides more efficient power than gas.

So we have this plug-in hybrid minivan now and just driving around town we use almost solely battery power. We put over 500 miles on it with only using a quarter of a tank of gas and some of that was because is missed plugging it in the first night. We are on track to get around 2,000 miles on a tank of gas...yes, 2K miles and we are pulling about 150 mpg.

Now, for longer drives it quickly goes to regular hybrid mode as you are doing straight pushing on the gas and it still gets around 33 mpg, which is great for a minivan. We estimated that we are using about $50/month more in our electric bill but saving $250-$275/month on gas. We are at 21 days of ownership, and around 650 miles and have only used a little over a quarter of a tank, meaning we'll go months without filling up at this rate we'll go over 2 months without filling up.

I think this is actually the real future of cars and I'm really enjoying it and hope to see this form of hybrid spread across all platforms and it will really knock down emissions from vehicles. Maybe I'm a big dork for being all stoked about this but here I am.


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I think the hybrid versions are the best. Electric only just aren't there yet and if you don't have access to power, well....
 
What's the total cost of all this manufacturing of batteries and then recycling? How much actual new energy is creative vs converted?

When going full battery and no engine, the cost (in a few year with more mature battery tech) will possibly be cheaper than an engine, transmission and pollution controls on cars.

Just a battery and 1-4 electric motors
 
I didn't get the Limited. It was just too much money for us to handle and that I don't have the butt cooling system makes me sad. We got the mid-range model so we have one central DVD player and only butt warmers. It doesn't have the advanced cruise control, I don't think.

ACC is great on freeways and highways, my wife's car has it. I set it at say 70 mph and it will slowdown to maintain your chosen distance from the car in front of you , and accelerate up to your set speed when the road is clear
 
One problem that seems never talked about but is a major problem is that EV's are heavily subsidized both at purchase and when filling up. Subsidies can amount to nearly half the cost of the vehicle and in most cases no road tax is paid on fuel. Take away that and the picture doesn't look so rosy.

Because our government is trying to pick winners again, in this case E Cars over traditional cars, on the grounds that they will help save the planet...which is taken as conventional wisdom with as I can see very little justification.....so maybe this just makes us feel like we are doing something for the planet when we are in fact not.

That sounds like us.
 
I think the hybrid versions are the best. Electric only just aren't there yet and if you don't have access to power, well....

Yup...plug-in hybrids are the way of the future. My biggest beef with people going on about full electric vehicles is they just aren't practical. Need to drive a lot in one day or take a longer trip and now you need another vehicle. This gets you that battery power for around town and has the gas in there for days where you have to drive a lot or for longer distances.
 
Yup...plug-in hybrids are the way of the future. My biggest beef with people going on about full electric vehicles is they just aren't practical. Need to drive a lot in one day or take a longer trip and now you need another vehicle. This gets you that battery power for around town and has the gas in there for days where you have to drive a lot or for longer distances.

Exactly...

And if you live in a hurricane zone or have any issue where electricity is gone, you'd be in trouble in the electric only car. My pal has the Tesla 85 and I've had to pick him up three times so far with each being a total blackout of the car (battery was charged, just something didn't work). Each time, it ended up on a diesel powered towtruck and went back for rebooting or whatever they did to reset that thing. It seems he sort of regrets that car already. He went from a Mercedes CLS to the Tesla. I agree the Tesla is fast, but to me, it's dull inside (other than the tablet) and it just can't go far enough.
 
I didn't get the Limited. It was just too much money for us to handle and that I don't have the butt cooling system makes me sad. We got the mid-range model so we have one central DVD player and only butt warmers. It doesn't have the advanced cruise control, I don't think.

Heated seats are the LAST thing I needed in AZ. Thankfully the car came from someone in Vegas, I bought via Carvana, the only way to buy a car...no salesmen!
 
Heated seats are the LAST thing I needed in AZ. Thankfully the car came from someone in Vegas, I bought via Carvana, the only way to buy a car...no salesmen!

Yeah...don't need them right now in Texas, either, but the Limited model had the seat coolers, which were so nice but out of my price range.
 
So we recently bought a new minivan (yes...I'm kinda a wild child, I know) that is a plug-in hybrid. What is the difference between this and a regular hybrid? Well, you plug it in, just like a battery car, and it has a certain range on the battery power alone. We got the Chrysler Pacifica, which has a range of 33 miles on the battery charge.

My biggest beef with full-on battery vehicles is they just aren't energy efficient. A regular gas-powered car will reliably get a certain distance and then fill it up in 5 minutes and hit the road again. A full battery-powered vehicle can vary widely and once it's empty of juice, you have to wait hours to get going again, meaning you still need another vehicle for longer drives. It's never been an issue of power, electric actually provides more efficient power than gas.

So we have this plug-in hybrid minivan now and just driving around town we use almost solely battery power. We put over 500 miles on it with only using a quarter of a tank of gas and some of that was because is missed plugging it in the first night. We are on track to get around 2,000 miles on a tank of gas...yes, 2K miles and we are pulling about 150 mpg.

Now, for longer drives it quickly goes to regular hybrid mode as you are doing straight pushing on the gas and it still gets around 33 mpg, which is great for a minivan. We estimated that we are using about $50/month more in our electric bill but saving $250-$275/month on gas. We are at 21 days of ownership, and around 650 miles and have only used a little over a quarter of a tank, meaning we'll go months without filling up at this rate we'll go over 2 months without filling up.

I think this is actually the real future of cars and I'm really enjoying it and hope to see this form of hybrid spread across all platforms and it will really knock down emissions from vehicles. Maybe I'm a big dork for being all stoked about this but here I am.


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Do you get decent mileage in commuter traffic?
 
Remember when Right wingnuts were saying hybrids were a flash in the pan?

They haven't really caught on. They don't even represent 1% of automotive car buying Market. That being said they'll become more and more common the plug-in hybrid isn't a bad idea. I don't see electric cars coming back.
 
Thanks. The fact that most of our driving doesn't use the destructive force of gas explosions just made me wonder what that meant for less stress and wear on the engine.


Well sadly it means more 90% of the wear and tear on an engine happens at startup and warm up and cool down. This is why I thought the stop-start engines were a bad idea.

But these days with the Precision of engineering with regard to internal combustion engines that van will be falling apart before the engine does.
 
What happens to the batteries when they hit the junkyard?

Well I still say the most environmentally friendly thing to do is buy a used car because number one nothing had to be made it already exists and producing a car out of raw material is extremely hard on the environment and also you save the disposal of the used car.
 
Yup...plug-in hybrids are the way of the future.
I'm really hoping to see more advancement in the gas electric or diesel Electric realm of things. There was the Chevy Volt but I'm thinking this would be more practical for pickup trucks and medium duty trucks versus use for commuter cars.
My biggest beef with people going on about full electric vehicles is they just aren't practical.
yeah electric cars have some barriers just in the car itself I don't think our electrical grid could handle a significant number of people owning an electric car power plants run at 100% constantly until something breaks and then it's brownouts.

But besides that because we can make more power plants for the demand of electricity the drawback is the charge time. I've heard some pretty clever workarounds but I think they would be very difficult to enact. Like instead of going to a gas station you pull up bed at battery swapping station and they drop a battery in your car with a full charge and you go on about your business this will be brilliant as long as fully charged batteries and charging a battery doesn't cost more than filling up a car. And then there are issues with different manufacturers and having to cater to all of them or a great number of them. I am not going to say this will never happen because it might but I think it's a long way off.

Need to drive a lot in one day or take a longer trip and now you need another vehicle. This gets you that battery power for around town and has the gas in there for days where you have to drive a lot or for longer distances.

I will be interested to know how this thing does overtime. Do keep us posted.
 
Well I still say the most environmentally friendly thing to do is buy a used car because number one nothing had to be made it already exists and producing a car out of raw material is extremely hard on the environment and also you save the disposal of the used car.

Building cars also creates jobs for people. Car factories are becoming more efficient all the time.
 
When going full battery and no engine, the cost (in a few year with more mature battery tech) will possibly be cheaper than an engine, transmission and pollution controls on cars.

Just a battery and 1-4 electric motors

With more mature batteries of course.
 
Do you get decent mileage in commuter traffic?

So long as the commute is < 33 miles it's all battery. Highway is about 33 MPG after the battery runes out. I'm not sure what it is in commuter/stop-and-go with the battery run out as I'm still on my 1st tank at 650 miles and only down a little over 1/4 a tank. What I can say is that between the stopping, breaking, coasting, and engine running (some of the engine power gets tossed back into the battery) the van switches to straight battery often as it intermittently gets charged up.
 
So long as the commute is < 33 miles it's all battery. Highway is about 33 MPG after the battery runes out. I'm not sure what it is in commuter/stop-and-go with the battery run out as I'm still on my 1st tank at 650 miles and only down a little over 1/4 a tank. What I can say is that between the stopping, breaking, coasting, and engine running (some of the engine power gets tossed back into the battery) the van switches to straight battery often as it intermittently gets charged up.

For non plug in hybrids the city gas mileage is generally equal to that of highway driving +/- 1-3 mpg, depending on driving style of course
 
For non plug in hybrids the city gas mileage is generally equal to that of highway driving +/- 1-3 mpg, depending on driving style of course

It should be the same as that or maybe even better because it just then operates as a normal hybrid once the battery drops, with the added benefit that it still does do full battery at times as the kinetic power of the vehicle charges up the battery.
 
So here's my picture of my fuel gage with almost 200 more miles on it and it has moved maybe just a smidge. 836 miles and only a little over a quarter of a tank used.

36885958_10156401510351212_9037743670580740096_n.jpg
37205408_10156414556291212_9109523839796117504_n.jpg
 
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