From today's Autobeat Daily:

 

Fusion, baby. Fusion.

The 2010 Plugin Fusion...blowing away the 'archaic' TCH!

 

"Critics point out that their bulkier battery packs make plug-ins heavier. "

...and the current generation Prius battery already weighs over 300 pounds according to these 'critics'. C'mon people, let's do some research into this before making stuff up. Geez, it's hard enough to get out the right info without these ignorant people claiming things that are entirely inaccurate at best.

Current NiMH Prius battery is 100 lbs. Li-ion for plug-in hybrids are lighter, smaller, and pack more energy. No one but GM would try to make a NiMH plug-in with better Lithium technology out there. More power, less weight, no memory effects. Plenty of sites to google that state this.

 

I'm wondering if they could just offer it as an option to a regular hybrid.

 

I'm glad you spied that too. IMHO, this is a critic looking at the lead-acid, private plug-in experiments and a Red Herring. What is weight if it saves two or more orders of magnitude in gasoline. Last time I checked, I believe we used 7 lbs/gallon. After saving 100 gallons, that is 700 lbs of gasoline not carried around. Do the math.

Bob Wilson

 

A key point missing with plug-in cars is that the electricty coming from that plug came from somewhere... and that somewhere is generally a dirty emissions source such as coal, natural gas, or nuclear fission (we can agree that the nuclear emissions do not go into the air but are still hazardous).

Electric motors and hydrogen fuel cells are great, but we still need to get the electricity and hydrogen from somewhere and those sources remain largely dirty and dangerous.

While alternative fuel cars may have low or zero emissions, we have to keep in mind that the emissions may have just been moved to other places, not eliminated.

There was an article in December 2005's Scientific American (not 100% certain on the date) regarding a change in nuclear fission that would produce one tenth the hazardous waste that had a shorter half-life and could be secured against criminals.

 

"key point missing with plug-in cars is that the electricty coming from that plug came from somewhere... and that somewhere is generally a dirty emissions source such as coal, natural gas, or nuclear fission (we can agree that the nuclear emissions do not go into the air but are still hazardous)."

Key point that is missing with all the FUD about plug-ins or all-EVs: takes a good amount of electrons to bring us gasoline. Hmmm, where does all that ignored electricity come from...some 'clean' source that needs not be disclosed? Why take another step to power a car when u can just charge the **** thing and NOT use the electricity to refine yet another energy source?

And there are clean ways to produce electricity, being proven everyday to be competitive. There is NOT a clean way to extract/refine/use gasoline.

http://www.darelldd.com/ev/
This is a guy who gets it.

Cheers,

Curt.

 

Even assuming that grid-generated power is, on average, just as dirty or dirtier than burning gasoline in an automobile engine (it is not, as thorough emission after-treatment is much easier to do on a large scale at a power plant than in a vehicle), the process of generating the kilowatt hours using a centralized petroleum powerplant, charging the car, then running off of the stored electricity is still more than twice as efficient as running an internal combustion engine, which wastes about 66% of its energy in the exhaust/radiator, more in the transmission, and still more from idling and running at inefficient RPMs. Electric systems put out almost no waste heat, and even long-distance transmission losses and battery charging losses do not even approach heat losses in an engine.

Also, power plants are much cleaner and more efficient than gasoline engines as they run efficient engines that spin at a steady load, and can recapture waste heat for additional power. They also have more effective after-treatment than is possible on cars.

Also, since plants tend to run at lower capacity at night, this mean no additioanl plants would be necessary even if plug-ins were adapted on a wide scale. People could charge at night when capacity is in reserve and power is cheap.

A final advantage of the elecrtic charging system is that because of all this efficiency, and the much cheaper relative price of electricity than gasoline, fuel cost could be as much as 90% less for an all electric vehicle. The problem with electric however is the fact that even lithium batteries have very low energy desnity by weight compared to liquid fuels. Designing a plug-in hybrid system with a NiMH pack for handling surges of power and regenerative braking, and a lithium pack for about ~20 miles of range doesn't add a lot of rate, but would cut out about 80% of fuel use for most people. A typical engine coudl still be available for additional horsepower, or longer driving range when needed.