250mpg car

Interesting...but not conducive for those who want to haul a$$ in a high performance exotic.

 

I laughed when I read that article. 250 mpg is not suprising considering it is running almost totally on batteries when it achieves that number. Last time i checked, batteries dont use any gasoline. I worked the numbers on that car and you need to drive 192,000 miles to pay for the modifications assuming the modifications can be done for $6000 (like this guy thinks they can), gas at $2.50 and the car getting an average of 80 mpg like this guy claims he gets after the modifications. I personally cant see myself ever driving 192,000 miles (and thats just to break even) in one car.

Edit- The guy spent $150,000 to $250,000 on research and development. If no companies buy his idea, he will need to drive...ready for this... 4,800,000 to 8,000,000 miles to break even (using the same applicable assumptions mentioned above).

 

Me too ... but I did not realise that he spent that much.

Adding batteries to the car and charging them from home is just stupid because:
- He is adding weight to the car, thus reducing it's efficency ... thus wasting fuel.
- He is moving his fuel bill to his electricity bill and because of the point above, probably paying more.
- He is not helping the environment cause somewhere something is burning to supply the electricity that he has plugged into, and because of point 1 he is using more of it.

I guess he is having fun . The brilliance of the hybrid cars is that they use otherwise wasted energy (ie. during braking and rolling down hills, etc.) to charge the batteries ... he has just completely fncked the prinicple.
Pete

 

Of course, this propaganda piece ran front of section here in the Boulder newspaper. I loved how they mumbled this bit out towards the end:

"Backers of plug-in hybrids acknowledge that the electricity to boost their cars generally comes from fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases, but they say that process still produces far less pollution than oil. They also note that electricity could be generated cleanly from solar power."

Oh, really?

And you'll note they didn't even mention the cost, pollution, and hassle of having 18 more lead-acid batteries in every car (that need replacing fairly frequently) -- add that into your costs Tim and you can never drive enough miles to come out ahead.

 

Still cool that they did it and it can be done. I posted this somewhere on here as well

 

meh, its cool and stuff but I would much rather have the Jetta TDI. 1000km+ per tank

 

I thought it did mention the cost of electricity...a quarter per day of charging (and of course you don't have to charge it every day). If you drive 40 miles in a 20mpg car, that's 2 gallons. At $2.50 a gallon, it adds up to $5.00. So it seems cheap to me??

They also say that the pollutants released from the generation of the electricity are far less than what is released by the gasoline burnt to go an equivalent distance. So what's the problem here?

The professor who was converting the cars at $150,000 each was doing it on grants paid for by the auto manufacturers. Spread over the large volume production runs of those models, these costs would add less than $30 to each car.

Even for the battery solutions that cost approx. $6,000 to do it yourself, if mass volume manufacturers were to offer the option, the cost would come down to $600 or less--largely from improvements in efficiency and economies of scale. Makes you wonder why the mfrs. keep harping on Hydrogen instead of going this route, doesn't it?

Finally, you don't need to replace these types of batteries often. Every two years, maybe, if that. Certainly you could own a car for less than the lifetime of the battery. And they are removable and recyclable, so I don't think you should factor in end-of-life impact costs as above.

 

I think thats mainly becayse hydrogen is a sham. Its the politicians answer to the problem, however the politicians dont know what they are talking about. It takes a tremendous amount of power to make hydrogen, whic has to be produced our gas turbine and coal fired power plants. These large power plants may pollute less per kW than a car engine, but it's not the 'green' solution that the misinformed make it out to be.

 

Uh, WHAAAAAAT?! Oil is a fossil fuel that POWER PLANTS burn! Cars burn a refined product, GASOLINE! and they're both fossil fuels.... <piff> (sound of my head exploding at these enviro-idoits.)

Let's see a real study on the polution generated by burning oil to generate electricity (what 80-% efficent?) then charging batteries (50% efficent?) and then running an electric motor (30% efficent?)

VS just burning gas in a modern lean-burning catalised auto? (IIRC 35% efficent?)

Costs too would be intresting.

If they really cared, they'd be driving BMW 320i Diesel.

 

Has anybody worked out how much energy it takes to:

1. Find and drill for oil,
2. Get it out of the ground,
3. Freight it to refining plants,
4. Refine it to create petrol,
5. Transport it to petrol stations,
6. etc.

That looks like a tremendous amount of power to me ... hardly NOT creating any green house gases doing all that!

Maybe hydrogen OVERALL would work out cheaper? ... as we do not have to go looking and build oil wells, etc. to find water. Plus we do not have to transport it all over the world, thus maybe small plants installed at service stations could be more OVERALL efficient than the current petrol based solution?
Pete

 

Hydrogen is a dangerous thing to be in cars. Couldnt it explode if the car gets into an accident? I believe that ethier Fed-ex or UPS is using hydrogen in someof they're delivery vans

 

True, but unless somebody can invent an unbelievably efficient method to convert water to hydrogen the only practical method is to carry hydrogen.

Remember LPG and CNG cars already carry exploding gases ... and in a lot more safer containers than airships of the past.

What about methane gas ... generated from our rubbish!
Pete

 

Actually, the petroleum industry is very efficient. Did you know that the shipping costs to you are only 1 to 2 cents per gallon of gasoline?
Hydrogen would not be cheaper, mainly because of the fuel cells needed to produce electricity. First of all, they are inherrently expensive because precious metals are used to make them. Second, they wont even begin to come down in price until someone mass produces them for the consumer market.
Anyway, back to my original point- It takes a sh--tload of energy to make the hydrogen. While i dont know exaclty how much energy it takes to make a gallon of gasoline, i would be curious to find out.

 

I think that the main draw to using Hydrogen is that it can be produced. Its a renewable resource. It takes extremely long amounts of time for oil to be produced naturally. I haven't heard anyone say that it is cheaper/more efficient to get the fuel to the consumers, but the technology on the consumer end is definitely able to use a higher percentage of the energy in the fuel. Also, can't forget that the wastes produced by the technology is simply water, which in itself is another big draw to the technology.

 

You are correct in saying hat a benefit to hydrogen is that it can be produced. The important thing to keep in mind is that the energy used to produce it comes from non-renewable fossil fuels. This may not matter, however, as we have more than enough natural gas and coal in the US to last well into the future. We don not have to worry about the supply running out. Our primary concern is to make it cleaner, which over the past few decades has come a very long way.

 

agree with you on that one all the way dude!

 

n e ways in a car thats give 250 mpg, what is the top speed on that thing??