Thisw is not a completely plug-in electric car. I don't think charging a battery capable of 40 miles of travel would be that much of a load (assuming the battery is at 0 charge when you get home). The gas engine will do much of the charging. I have not done the math so I could be missing something. I look forward to seeing this on the road.

Cheers.

rcomeau

 

RE the below quote, our current electrical generating system is ideal for plug in hybrids. We have a need for more "off peak" (night) loads to even out the demand and allow higher utilization of the most efficient base load generation. We will have to build more plants whether we have electric cars or not.

The "power grid" needs no particular regularly scheduled maintenance. The power plants in the system do but those are usually scheduled on an annual basis (spring or fall when loads are lower) and not on a daily basis.

In short, bring on the plug-ins. The system is ready for all that can be built.

 

The power transportation system(Grid or often called a substation) needs maintenance all the time.

I did not realize the Volt had a engine for charging also.

I bet they control what markets they go into also so all of them dont end up in the same region.

 

If they do they will not sell the quantity they need to in order to get the price down to their announced goal of $30,000.

GM needs a winner, they really haven't had one in years.

So that probably means you are right as GM always does stupid things. Like overpay everyone in their organization except their vendors. ( I am not one and never was but I know GM thru and thru)

PS the I am in the Government , well so was i that means we are the last to know the truth. The Grid may be overload in spots and underloaded in others and improperly interlinked so that if one section goes down it pull almost the whole thing with it. This all means that the greedy power suppliers would rather pay the CEO bigger bucks than put any money into their infrastructure. I hope the electric cars buy so much electricity that they are forced to make more profits from the additional sales and that the night time usage equals the day time usage and that efficiency goes up and profits go up and their is more money for the greedy managers and that some is left over for infrastructure (grid and more generating capacity)

Lordly Lordly we might even build a new nuclear power plant. Let's see France generates 5 times the percentage of their total capacity from nuclear that we do and I don't remember any melt downs. It's was the great and wonderful Russians that everyone seems to admire so much that killed thousands (eventually) from their wonder piece of junk that blew up and melted down, yes in reality it did. End story blame it all on electric cars not greedy Corporate management.

WOW I love to get on a roll!!!!

 

The first modification to my Prius was to add a 1 kW inverter for emergency power. In Huntsville, it typically comes from high winds blowing down trees. There is a lot to be said for having enough power to run the gas furnace in winter or a 5,000 BTU, bedroom window AC during the summer. But this is also leading me in a new direction, co-generation.

Our hybrid cars can easily generate enough power for two or three houses. By capturing the waste heat, we can get a maximum return on the fuel we burn. With a natural gas conversion, it would be a very nice solution.

Although I like the plug-in to help in the commuting costs, I'm really more interested in converting my gas bill into some electricity and hot water relief. I'd really like to live comfortably where ever my hybrid is parked.

Bob Wilson

 

Sounds like a great plan. Seems my house is wired as a 12kw or 100amp home at 120v but I must be off Maybe it's a 200amp service. You may know better than I. Anyway I use All the gas I can for heat, cooking, etc as electricty is very expensive here.

Why all my blather, How do you plan to get your Hybrid to generate the electricity for your home? Will it be cheaper than buying from the Utility?
I would love to hear more.

 

Understand these are 'back of the envelope' and it will take me a little time to get everything tested:

• tap traction battery - following Richard's example, I'll be using standard NEMA plugs, basicly 220 VDC, 50A plugs.
• drive spare inverter - using a microprocessor, operate a spare, Prius inverter to generate 3-phase, sine-wave, power.
• power transformer isolation - this will feed the house and keep the Prius power loop properly isolated. This will also handle code and safety issues (DO NOT POWER THE GRID FROM YOUR HOME!!!)

At this point, we have whole house, emergency power. If the power transformer and house interface is mounted on a trailer, it becomes a nice, emergency generator. But for co-generation, the following has to be developed:

• retrofit Honda natural gas injectors - a tricky problem, there are non-trivial technical issues to address. It is also important to have a safe, flexible hose from the gas supply. It would be easier to use tractor gas but putting it in the tank would be illegal.
• flexible hose, hot water exchanger - fitting over the exhaust pipe, it captures the available heat and vents the exhaust out a safety pipe.
• quick-connect to ICE coolant exchanger - only 80C, still there is no need to waste radiator heat.

These last three elements are the trickiest but critical to co-generation. We need to run the ICE off of natural gas, a tricky but not insurmountable problem. Also, we need to capture as much waste heat as possible for space and hot water heating.

Bob Wilson

 

This is a bit off-topic, but...

I agree with you that the nation's power grid is on the verge of having serious reliability issues. Nuclear power is the key to generating enough power for a huge fleet of electric cars. There are several ecelent properties of nuclear power seem to always get overlooked:

-- The fuel is compact. A nuclear fuel rod is very small and yet generates an amazing quantity of power before it is ehausted.
-- The fuel rods last a long time. I could be wrong, but the figure I hears was a 30-year service life.
-- The fuel is recyclable. There are military applications for spend fuel rods, such as uranium armor and uranium munitions. There are civilian applications as well, such as the Troxler nuclear moisture gauge, which measures roof leaks and insulation contamination.
-- The fuel does not generate CO2 or other greenhouse gasses.
-- The United States has a huge reserve of fissionable materials.
-- The United States has a huge receptical for waste fissionables (Yucca Flats).

 

I agree nuclear fuel is awsome!

The problem is still getting the energy to the household.

If the volt would be a fuel cell powered vehicle with Hydrogen, we could all pull it in our garage, close the garge door(safely) and then power our homes with the power from our vehicle

 

I really doubt that "storing" hazardous radiation-filled waste is in the best interest of anyone living and breathing on this planet. sure the great energy/kg is there now...but what happens to the "waste" in the future? Humankind just does so poorly with the waste it creates.

Why not wind or solar? What are the waste products? It sure seems to be MUCH less hazardous than nuclear material that has to be secured as well as contained for XXX many years!