The story is completely misleading anyway. Where does all the electricity come from to charge and manufacture those batteries? Much less the environmental disaster of disposal or even recycling. I would love to see a study of the *real* cost in oil. 250 mpg my a**.

Well obviously Jeff, the solution to charging those batteries is to use a fuel cell! Once everything runs on hydrogen, we won't have to worry about gas or coal or oil or uranium or hydroelectric as energy just magically flows out of our good intentions! The world will be all candy canes and lolipops (provided it doesn't harm the precious ecosystem, naturally) and we'll live in peace and love and unicorns will frolick with the dolphins, at least that's what the environmental groups tell me.

More important, if you're plugging your hybrid in to charge the extra batteries, you're burning coal, natural gas or something more expensive and polluting than gasoline!

The reporter should ask what his electricity bills look like!

Whenever there's a gas crunch, bullcrap news stories like this one proliferate. Cheap, limitless energy is here! Cars that get 50, 100, 250 mpg!
Let's all ride the bus, that way we don't burn oil!
There are fleets of fully laden oil tankers waiting just outside US territorial waters! Somebody in California invented a method of changing water into gasoline but he was kidnapped by Halliburton!

Current lithium-ion battery technology is not suitable for vehicular applications, as this battery system does not take kindly to high-drain applications.

Hell, my 95 Jeep Wrangler (with the modified, souped up engine) can get 300 miles to the gallon. I just have to push it instead of using the gas pedal.

And you can't run the AC.

There are other solutions out there. That's a safe assumption. Hell, a softball sized chunk of uranium could effectively power your car for about 75 years. Unfortunately those grannies who forget to change their oil would be driving nuclear bombs with the turn signal left on.

These are funny stories though because people believe them. I mean, if someone designed a car that got 250 mpg, why hasn't he patented the idea and sold it to billions of people, effectively making him the richest person this side of Mars? Because he's afraid the gas companies will kill him if he does (although having his name and idea printed in a magazine wouldn't exactly endear him to said assasin weilding CEO's now would it?)?

As long as Gremban doesn't drive too far in a day, he says, he gets 80 mpg.

Guess what, telecommuters get even better mileage. That's right better even than 500 mpg; some days I don't drive at all.

Cue the church lady it's time for the Superior Dance.

"telecommuters get even better mileage."

LOL, rock on capitano, rock on. I try to convince my customers that I can suport them from home but they just don't believe that I'll do the work or something. I think they fear that I'll let one of those drinking bird toys hit enter for me while I play golf. *

Tob

*yes, its stolen from the Simpsons.

Paul:
How do any of these hybrids compare to the 230 hot dog HEMI barbecue?

In a related story the antiquated measurement known as the gallon has been replace with the new gallon, which is equal to 5 old gallons and the mile has been shortened from it's original distance of 5,280 to a new, more efficient 2,500.

So, if you spend $12,000 extra on a hybrid car (for a new, higher-powered battery pack that you have to recharge regularly), you get a car which can (sort of) get 250 MPG.

On the other hand, with $3 a gallon gasoline, you could drive a regular car getting only 20 mpg about 80,000 miles for that extra cash. Not including the money you spend daily recharging the thing by pugging it into the wall, of course.

We appreciate all the comments abour our project. Of course, the story isn't as simple as "250-MPG cars". And of course there's no free lunch.

I urge you to read the CalCars FAQ and our 3-page Fact Sheet, found in PDF form at http://www.priusplus.org and in text form at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/calcars-news

For a quick response to that big issue: why an electric car is cleaner than a gasoline car even on the dirty national (50% coal) grid see section 4 of http://www.calcars.org/vehicles.html

I'll clear up a few things: we're talking about SUBSTITUTING electricity for some of the gasoline, and eventually, substituting biofuels for some or all of the remaining gasoline. These things have costs, but they are cheaper and cleaner (using "well-to-wheel", that is, apples-to-apples measures of all the energy and pollution through the entire fuel cycle).

CalCars is nonprofit; for-profit EDrive will sell conversions, but our goal is to incentivize car companies to sell plug-in hybrids; they can do a better job of it, and we think they can sell for $3,000 more than conventional hybrids, which will provide a payback.

To keep things lively, we will add a link to this blog at http://www.calcars.org/kudos.html -

by Felix Kramer, founder, California Cars Initiative http://www.calcars.org and the PRIUS+ campaign http://www.priusplus.org

I remember those old stories about the car with a prototype engine (or carberator, or whatever) that accidently got shipped and sold. This was back in the 70s, and from what I understand, the stories were even old then.

Snopes has the best write-up on it.

Googling the name Charles Nelson Pogue gets you extra goodies, like patent numbers and pictures. It's too bad I don't know anything about cars (stupid double X chromosome - grrrrrrrr) because all of the drawings are like gibberish to me and it'd be interesting to know if these devices would even function, much less get 200 mpg.

Hey Felix,
Why doesn't any of your website info address the energy of production of these extra hybrid batteries?
I note that the only links on your website to EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) studies make the claim that new, more advanced batteries "will be capable" of reaching cost parity with non-hybrids.

I conclude from this that current batteries are NOT capable, as only the theoretically improved batteries theoretically "Might" be able to do so.

In other words, the construction of the hybrid batteries causes an input of energy GREATER than the energy "Saved" by the hybrid, when compared to a non-hybrid of comparable power.

This is all feel good pseudoenvironmentalism at its worst.

What we should be doing is pushing for the construction of nuclear power plants first, then worrying about how to use the clean energy when it is available. Since it is not, you are WASTING energy by buying and using hybrid vehicles.

Yea and in World War II they had a car that could run on water -- remember? LOL
Thanks for bursting this bubble
BTW my Mustang gets 22-25 mpg and that is regularly doing 90 on the freeway. Did I say 90? I meant the posted speed of 70, Mr. State Trooper. Typo

Doesn't crap like this float into the news every August?

As the owner of a 2005 Prius no one can accuse me of being a hybrid-basher, but that 230MPG number that was quoted in the article is extremely misleading:

"The result is EV driving and electrically boosted gasoline driving for the first 50 to 60 miles with a gasoline efficiency of 100 to 150mpg. After the 50-60 mile 'boosted' range, the vehicle performs just like a standard Prius until it is plugged in again."

"Q7: Can I really get over 200mpg with EDrive on my Prius?

A: Yes, but it requires low speeds (55mph freeway) and mild acceleration in city driving. Most Prius EDrive users will likely get closer to 100mpg."

www.edrivesystems.com/Edrive-FAQ.html

One more thing -- and I posted this -- what would it run on? Electricity. And how do we get more than half the electricity in the United States? By tearing down mountains to get the coal.

"And I didn't even get into the fact the reporter was just being a politcal hack."

But that's the real story behind the story; the thinly veiled assurtion that government (in the form of Bush the Evil) doesn't want to make the world, and your life, better. You can almost hear the clarion cry of "Here! Look here! Here's proof the Neocon Cabal exists only to line the pockets of Enron, Exxon, and Haliburton. Killing the planet and your take-home pay is of no concern to them."

There's nothing to this story except conspiracy theories, professors in labs tinkering with concepts and very poor journalism.

> More important, if you're plugging your hybrid in to charge the extra batteries, you're burning coal, natural gas or something more expensive and polluting than gasoline!

Uh, yes you're likely burning coal, natural gas or something (nuclear? hydroelecftric?). But coal is NOT more expensive than gasoline in terms of cost per unit energy, and as far as I know, neither is natural gas. Also, because they're being burned in a big facility, the conversion to electricity should be pretty efficient and the output should be mostly CO2/water thanks to high burn temperature and pressure. Burning fuel in a small reciprocating motor is likely a good deal less efficient than in a big turbine generator facility.

It's certainly far from "zero emission" if you're charging the batteries with power generated by burning...

This is why I think electric cars will come into their own when the vast majority of power is nuclear. Hydroelectric isn't so good for river life, solar is too big. Wind and geothermal are OK but nuclear is still a lot more practical.

Let me get this straight. I can get 80 mpg with the $4,000 upgrade if i don't drive very far. How far are we talking about-less than 80 miles or less than 100 miles etc.?

I invented a car that uses no fuel, has no emissions, and gets unlimited miliage. The only problem is that so far, it only works when running down-hill.

Beck, my truck has such lousy mileage that if I left it parked for months I'd still have to fill the gas tank every couple of weeks.

I wonder why no car company has targeted the little-old-lady market with electric cars.

My mom says that an old lady in our town drove a 1910-vintage electric car--might have been Edison or Detroit Electric--around town up until the 1960s. The thing could not go fast, but it did what he lady wanted; it got her to the store and back.

The GM EV-1 experiment was to make a car that could go freeway speeds. What if that wasn't necessary? If 40 MPH is an acceptable top speed, it opens up the possibilities dramatically. And range doesn't matter if you're not going much past town and you plug it in every evening. And maintenance is a lot less for an electric, too, with fewer moving parts; that's important because old ladies always feel like the maintenance guy is scamming her with unnecessary repairs (and often, he is).

Please disregard my first post. I found the answer to the electricity problem:

"Einstein proved that all matter is Energy, that vibrates and different frequencies. Tesla himself was on the verge of learning how to tab into these vibrations, to be able to supply unending, free energy to all the world to power or homes our vehicles etc. as soon as his financial backers found out about this, his funding was cut to protect the interests of various financial powers, such as oil industries etc."

It should be easy to resuscitate Tesla's method. ;)

Like Boifromtroy said, it's not taking into account that you're getting the miles per gallon by using an external power source -- plugging the car in at night to pre-charge the batteries (rather than letting them charge as you drive). It's not as if you're getting all that mileage from more efficient use of gasoline per se. On the same basis, electric cars get infinite miles per gallon.

Having said that, it'd be useful if they gave better stats on how much money you'd spend on charging. The article quotes a quarter. Riiiight. Maybe if they installed solar panels or something.

I recently read a cost-ratio analysis of what fuel cell driven vehicles actually cost and it isn't lightweight, much less currently cost efficient. Just trendy. But the amount and cost of the energy involved inorder to allow even one fuel cell vehicle to motivate is huge when compared with battery and/or petroleum byproduct driven.

We could be allowing alternative vehicles for varoius conditions, much like wearing appropriate clothes for climates: allow those little old ladies (and men) to drive golf-cart and/or three-wheeler battery operated vehicles on roads in neighborhoods/around towns (a certain area within cities and towns and homes, etc.), build less roads and more train tracks, charge far more for trucks in suburbia, things of that nature (sorry, suburbanites, but someone in Marin County does not require an F250 in parallel with someone in Montana -- not specifically, just as example here, to consider appropriate vehicles per application).

Not trying to suggest the dreaded "ban SUV" thing, just saying, there are alternatives to our fuel and transportation woes but humanity isn't ready for them.

My chief preference would be: horses. Allow people to use horses in more areas ... course, that means we have to have hay and habitat available, so maybe it's a even better idea than I initially thought.

There's a neat, three-wheeled, closed chassis, battery powered vehicle being made (or was, last I checked) in Hollister, CA called "The Sparrow" that is very, very appealing. You can park the thing in a motorcycle space, goes 200+ (last time I checked) on a charge, even offers heated seats!

People in urban environments and around suburbia could make great use of vehicles such as that and forego larger gas guzzlers, is my point. How, well, incentives would make them more appealing.

Hey S:

Before getting too enamored with that horse thing, you might want to ponder this:

"The authors conveniently forget to describe life in New York City in 1900, when 100,000 horses walked the streets, creating 2.5 million pounds of manure requiring daily disposal, when 15,000 horses annually died in the city, requiring sanitary disposal, or the filth and disease that horse transportation bred, all of which amply prove the inaccuracy of that fable." [the fable that horses are better than cars] source

I read the full article, and it costs the 80-mpg guy a whopping $0.25 cents to charge the extra batteries.

The article also said that the average American drives 30-50 miles a day.

So, if the extra electricity you get from 'plugging-in' each day allows you to cut your daily miles/gallon down, then you're saving money. Sign me up.

Given, it's not 250 mpg's, but as much hyperbole that the AP spawned, this blog posting swings as much the other way in negativism.

This technology is HERE today. Just needs to be developed, and it so happens it's being developed by hobbyists. The costs will come down as soon as they're in production.

To poke fun at this sort of thing is one thing, but the point the AP makes is that change is coming SOON, and it will be good for the environment, and it will be great for the pocketbook.

If you don't believe this, then you're a dinosaur. Maybe we can make some oil from your remains some day if all this doesn't work out?

Eric said:
>This technology is HERE today.

GREAT! Go buy one!

Then Eric said in the very same breath...
>Just needs to be developed, and it so happens it's being developed by hobbyists.

OH, so it's NOT here today.

I'd debunk you Eric but you did that yourself in the same paragraph.

Then Eric added to the confusion:
>If you don't believe this, then you're a dinosaur.

Eric, you're a dinosaur.

Recharge for $0.25?

Let's do the math.

25 cents, in the average US retail electricity market, will buy you about 2.5 KWh of electricity.

Convert to BTU's ( multiply by 3413), that's 8540 BTU's, or the energy of approximately 1/14th of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline.

Even at 100% efficiency, someone much better at math than me is going to have to explain how that 1/14th of a glallon of gasoline is going to boost a Prius from 45 mpg to 200 mpg - or even 100 mpg - or anywhere above 48.2 mpg.

Even if the electricity is bought at wholesale rates (4-5 cents per KWh), you can't make this math work out, or anything like it.

Math - it's a wonderful thing.

llater,

llamas

Incidentally, mrs llamas drive an all-bells-and-whistles minivan. It includes an instantaneous mpg display option. Under some driving conditions, this display maxes out at 99.9 mpg, which I suspect is the limit of the system's ability.

So what's the issue? Pontiac is selling cars that get 'up to 99.9 mpg' - right now!

llater,

llamas