Very Cool... the future for Hybrids... PHEV

[trekbiker]

Plug in Hybrid Electric. My next car will be a Prius but my one complaint is that the Prius electric system is used primarily to optimize the efficiency of the gas engine. It needs a larger battery with increased range and speed using Electric power only. The regenerative braking also needs improvement which may be possible with the next generation of Lithium batteries that allow 80% recharge in under one minute.

The current USA version of the Prius has no electric only mode. Prius's sold outside the US have an Electric only mode accessible with a dashboard button. Many are retrofitting with electric only mode but even then it can only go about a mile or two on a charge using the electric drive. But... huge improvements are here already and hopefully will soon be offered on a production Prius (as well as other hybrids). Increase battery size to 9+kwh and plug in overnight to charge battery to supplement gas engine. 30 mile electric only range at speeds up to 35 mph. This is a fantastic improvement and far more practical than electric only vehicles. You still have the long range of the gas engine but can take advantage of off peak utility power to charge the battery.

...."I've gotten anywhere from 65 to over 100 miles per gallon," said Mr. Gremban, an engineer at CalCars, a small nonprofit group based in Palo Alto, Calif....And EnergyCS, a small company that has collaborated with CalCars, has modified another Prius with more sophisticated batteries; they claim their Prius gets up to 180 m.p.g. and can travel more than 30 miles on battery power. "If you cover people's daily commute, maybe they'll go to the gas station once a month," said Mr. Kramer, the founder of CalCars."....f

http://www.gizmag.com/go/3945/
http://calcars.org/
http://www.greencarcongress.com/batteries/index.html

[prodigal_green]

1. that only really helps

if your household electricity is generated from renewable sources. At any rate, any improvement in cutting down gasoline dependence is good.

[Squeech]

2. At least

we can lower our oil consumption, alleviating not only the peak oil problem but our need to pimp our pResident out to the royal family.

Yeah, we generate far too much of our electricity with natural gas (also import-dependent) and coal (really polluting) and we have to do something about that too. But I'd love to get a hybrid like this.

[prodigal_green]

4. even better

would be more mass transportation options powered by hybrid engines!

Didn't mean to rain on the parade, just pointing out that we have a lot of work to do on renewable energy in all aspects of consumption.

[trekbiker]

5. I agree..

much needs to be done with mass transit. But try to convince the general american public to give up thier cars??? It's a non-starter..

I believe we could achieve the best of both worlds.

[trekbiker]

3. Only a small percentage of Electricity in the USA

is generated using oil, less than 5%. Most is coal and natural gas. Also, nuclear generation (20% of USA total) is very innefficient at night (off peak hours) because nuclear needs to run at full power for optimum plant efficiency. You cant cycle nuclear up and down like you can natural gas or hydro. The Diable Canyon plant on the Calif coast overcomes this by working in conjunction with the Helms pumped storage facility. At night it pumps water to fill a lake and during the day the lake is drained thru hydro turbines. While this is very inefficient it is better than trying to cycle the nuclear plant.

Another factor. Increasing the US auto fleet average MPG by just 3 MPG would save 1 million barrels of oil per day. Imagine increasing it by 10 or 20 mpg thru technologies such as PHEV??

If we were smart we would levy a 1 or 2 dollar tax on a gallon of gas and put that money into subsidizing PHEV, solar, wind etc.

but we're not that smart.

[mike_c]

6. yeah, the electricity has to be produced by energy conversion...

...SOMEWHERE, and if the ultimate source of that energy is combustion of fossil fuels, then this becomes primarily a question of efficiency. Is central generation (one large power plant) and transmission over long distances (+ battery storage) more efficient than local energy production (lots of small gasoline burning engines) with direct transmission to the wheels? What proportion of the initial energy release from fossil fuel combustion is ultimately converted to kinetic energy in the vehicle? Even with the increased efficiency of scale, it seems that this simply shifts the production burden from one source to another, and *might* actually decrease hybrid vehicle energy efficiency despite raising the MPG rating. There's a paradox. Using renewable energy for the initial electrical generation is another matter altogether, because it shifts the production burden away from fossil fuels.

[trekbiker]

8. it will never be an either/or situation..

at least not in our lifetimes. The total energy needs will be a mix of large central generators and local renewable small generators like solar. Maybe a few large scale wind and solar as well. I am an electric power engineer for a large utility and can see that we are a long long way from ever eliminating large central power generation.

Small solar PV generators are very promising. I've approved over 300 installations in the last two years and the numbers are increasing. But PV contribution to the total grid peak is tiny. Currently they are subsidized at about 50% of total installation costs but break even is estimated as soon as 2012 with no subsidization needed for cost effectiveness. I can see that within 10 to 20 years PV will be an effective part of the total power needs, maybe even 20% or better of peak power requirements.

We will not get away from fossil fuels for a very long time. And total greenhouse gas emmissions can be reduced by increasing the CAFE standards even if PHEV needs coal plants to charge them at night. This is a practical technology that is HERE RIGHT NOW. waiting for pie in the sky technologies like hydrogen and fuel cell, etc. is folly...

[mike_c]

9. I think you misunderstood my question....

The small generators I was referring to are the individual gasoline engines in each hybrid vehicle, producing kinetic energy directly for transmission to the wheels. If the ultimate source of that kinetic energy is the combustion of fossil fuels in either event, which is more efficient: lots of small engines producing kinetic energy directly at the point of use, or central generation facilities converting that energy to electricity for transmission, storage, and later use? I'm not suggesting one or the other-- it's an honest question. To what degree does the economy of scale overcome the inherent inefficiencies of the additional conversion and transmission steps?

The situation you proposed in your answer-- decentralized renewable energy used to generate electricity-- is something else entirely.

on edit-- BTW, your DU name reminded me of my solution to this issue:

[trekbiker]

10. I understand...

but I would say that the most efficient use of fossil fuel as applied to vehicles (lets forget mass transit for the moment) would be the large central power station generators, transmitting and storing power in the battery storage of the PHEV fleet. This is because oil is far to valuable a resource to be burning up in large SUV's etc like we are doing right now. Even too valuable for PHEV's but there's no practical way around that at the present time. The USA does not use oil for power generation. We use Coal, nat gas, hydro, nuclear. You cant shovel coal into a car so using it to generate electricity that can help power a PHEV is a more efficient use of the total fossil fuel mix than burning just a valuable commodity like oil. We need that oil for agriculture, plastics, mass transit, cargo transport, etc., as well as individual vehicle transportation. It's just a shame that it's so cheap and easy to get that we are squandering it like fools. I'm not a fan of coal and much needs to be done to clean it up but we are stuck with it for the time being.

[mike_c]

12. ok, thanks-- you've got a point....

Even if the ultimate result is reduced total energy efficiency between the buring fuel and the wheels, PHEV technology extends the fossil fuel base needed to supply that energy.

[trekbiker]

11. nice bike. I love my 5200

[mike_c]

13. and it's a beautiful day for a two-wheeled commute....

I have some of the best cycle commuting in America, IMO. Coastal NorCal. Yum.

[megatherium]

7. even without renewables, I think it still helps -

because battery-electric motors are more efficient than internal combustion engines. Don't recall the numbers, but I'm thinking maybe two or three times more efficient.