Road & Track published my letter

cool. Care to post a copy for us?

 

Awesome! What did it say? (Transcript would be fine)

 

so what's the answer?

doody.

 

But you get like 85 mpg!!! Don't you?

 

so post a pdf already.

 

I guess it's basically the same problem with electrical cars anyway.

90 % of electrical power is built by fossile energy, like coal (yeah...), oil and uranium.
Driving an electrical MOVES the pollution, it doesn't REmove it, also, i doubt these plants have the same requirements than petrol engines have, meaning they are NOT good at producing power (aka, 1 Kw from a car takes less fuel than 1Kw from a oil plant).
Regular (NA) engines produce as useable energy ~13 % from the energy contained in petrol.
So again, hybrids can't use less energy (if you count it all) than what a regular uses, unless you brake a lot (but this means you just wasted a lot before).
I was also always amused that nobody ever mentions how healthy batteries/solar cells are, and how environment friendly they are.
Never forget that electrical engines are as old as petrol ones, and same for cars (search for La jamais contente, an electrical race car from turn of century), but they made it in real life, because they have too many drawbacks.

 

electrical would be the ticket (some european guy built a 110mph+ 2-seater sports car, all electric) IF you could get them to recharge 1) at night, and 2) with nuclear power.

until we can build more nuclear power... diesel is the only reasonable answer for commuter cars (I soooooo want a BMW 130d....)

 

Bad, bad, bad, VERY BAD idea.

Now I don't know about were you live, but here in So Cali the drivers are IDIOTS. I'm sure you have seen these people that drive piles of crap down the road. Then to top it off aren't insured. Nuclear power is something that MUST be maintained extreamly well. Then imagine some drunk idiot smashing into a car on the freeway and causing an "nuclear powered" car pile up, in which the cars catch fire. It's not a question of if it will happen, or even when it will happen, but more like how many times it will happen in a week, or even day. Now back to the insurance issue. The insurance premiums would be insane on a car like that.

Sorry but that is just an EXTREAMLY bad idea.

 

I thnk he meant setting up nuc power plants in order to create the energy efficiently.

--Dan

 

Bahahahah, Mr Fusion. I'm gonna guess he meant using terrestial nuke stations to RECHARGE electric cars.

ROFL.

 

Yeah, but what happens if you split an Ariel Atom? You ever think about that, huh?

 

ummmmmm, I was talking about building more nuke plants to serve the load...

 

your theories intrigue me, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter...

 

And here it is in all its glory
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

A while back I posted an analysis of just this question in another hybrid thread. Happy reading. Skipping to the end, the hybrid loses badly

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12963

 

there it is, in all its glory. well stated.

and yeah... hybrids loose worse than ethanol.

 

That is awesome! I love it!

 

One advantage of a primarily electric vehicle not yet mentioned is the scrubber location - theoretically, you could put a much more efficient combustion byproduct scrubber/recovery unit on a fixed energy generator, where it is obviously a dissadvantage on a moving vehicle.

I agree the energy sum is not in a hybrid/electric's favor, but the environment may benefit in the big picture.

Cheers,
JB