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Would You Rather?
Would you rather drive an electric car (as they exist today) or a hyper mileage-capable car that should be available today?
I bring to your attention the Volkswagen XL1. A car I never heard of until a few days ago. A Diesel Electric hybrid car capable of 280 MPG. 10 Years ago! This genius little car is powered by a 2-cylinder 0.8L (49 Cubic Inches!) diesel engine, generating less than 50 HP. The lightweight car weighs under 800 KG (1,800 lbs-ish). So, 0-to-60 time is about 12 seconds, which may get you shot in some cities, but it gets there and is drivable at freeway speeds.
So what do you think? Apply this technology to a more normal, 4-seat, 5-door hatchback kinda thing… Maybe bulk it up a few pounds, add a bit of horsepower… Make it biodiesel compatible… maybe get around 200 MPG?
The one off-hand comment in the video that really sparked my interest, was that as a result of Volkswagen’s Dirty Diesel Scandal. This project got killed, and Volkswagen switched its research focus to electric cars… That really got my conspiracy theorist juices flowing!
Published in General
Rational people want less pollution.
Zealots want no pollution and their extremism drives the narrative, such that steady improvement is never good enough.
I’ve always liked the idea of hybrids. It works for submarines.
Lithium-ion batteries are inflammable. Very inflammable. I’d rather schlep around 21 gallons of gasoline than 450+ kg of battery.
I owned a 3 cylinder, 1.0 liter ICE Geo Metro for several years. It was quite adequate for my daily commute getting mileage around 40 mpg average on combined city street and Interstate driving. It was inexpensive, cruised quite well at 70 mph and performed well right up to the end when the front stub frame, which had rusted, broke while I was on my way to work. I drove it the rest of the way to work and home again in the evening with the steering wheel cocked at a crazy angle. Looking at the thickness of the metal in the stub frame, I decided to give it away rather than repair it. If the front end had been a little beefier, I might have kept it a few more years. I miss the under $10 fill-ups. It did not have any unusual technology for the time. 0-60, yes, it could do that.
I disliked the Jeep hybrid the rental company foisted on me in Germany, largely because it was a hybrid, but not only because of that. I’ve liked driving other hybrids.
I might rather drive the EV. I wouldn’t care for stopping it to refuel or a great many things about caring for it. Driving it might be good, but since I’ve never driven one I don’t know for sure.
Oddly, I was thinking about Geo the other day. I was thinking about defunct GM divisions. Pontiac, Saturn, Holden, Oldsmobile…
I was thinking that they could use a metallic foam to build the car’s frame with – reduce the weight of those parts by 30%, then also use an air cooled ceramic block engine – also to reduce weight… I think we could get a fairly light car without having to resort to (many) exotic materials like the XL1. Like perhaps being a direct drive hybrid, and not lug around the heavy battery pack, that possibly reduces the car’s range by as much as it extends it. (if we’re lucky)…
What’s a direct drive hybrid? An ICE type engine turns a generator to power an electric motor, with no battery in between? There are a few reasons why that doesn’t work very well. Another stage of loss being one. One reason the current type of hybrid works out fairly well is that the ICE type generator can be relatively low power and since the battery serves as a buffer it can always run – when needed at all – at its most efficient RPM level.
You want to see the joys of an EV versus a diesel watch this….
Having owned a hybrid Camry for years now, I can say the technology is a perfect compromise between gas-only and battery power. I bought it not to “save the planet,” but to get exceptional mileage for all the post-retirement traveling we’ve been doing . . .
I haven’t watched the whole video but, having owned a 2007 Camry Hybrid and now owning a Chevy Bolt has led me to wonder why no one has gone further to marry a pure Electric with a small engine dedicated purely to charging the battery. Forget the hybrid model which entails very complicated and expensive co-powering devices that use both engine and motor to propel the car, they break and wear out and are very expensive to repair/replace. It seems to me that a much simpler (read cheaper) approach would be to forgo all that stuff and just have a small tank (diesel makes sense) and a small engine, 2 cylinders is more than adequate to run an alternator capable of keeping the battery charged between 80-100 percent. Then the range would be only limited by the size of the tank plus you’d get the acceleration of an EV without all the complicated transmission/power sharing devices that make hybrids expensive and complex. There must be reasons this hasn’t been done yet but I hope it isn’t because ‘activists’ are driving things.
So, Ricochet engineers, what say you? Educate me, please.
That arrangement would likely generate as much or more CO2 than a regular ICE. Charging a battery imposes an energy cost. Discharging one does too. The little generator probably won’t be as efficient as a big one – still more cost.
TANSTAAFL
Still waiting for this:
https://www.oreillyauto.com/flux-capacitor
Not available for purchase.
I’m still waiting for you to return to your meme job. How are things going in the meantime?
New responsibilities. Won’t be back, except for a single here and there.
To hell with all of these vehicles. Bring back the kerosene Stanley Steamer!
Almost the entire US railroad industry uses locomotives that work this way…why would it be more effective there that for cars?
Saw one of these several years ago on the parkway near Reagan Airport across from DC. Going about 60.
A Prius, like most non-plug in hybrids, is a “parallel” system; the theory is, whichever motor/engine makes the most sense is the one that operates. I’ve got a pair of Chevy Volts; they are “series” systems. The car is driven by electric motors the whole time, and a small gas engine kicks in to generate electricity, as described in the post and the comments. It works extremely well. Acceleration and handling are excellent, right up there with gas cars. Real-life economies have been great. GM also made a Cadillac with this drive train.
I usually go about six months between fill-ups at the gas station. My daughter has our other car. She’s got no place to plug it in, so she uses it only in gasoline mode, where the mileage is very good.
So what happened? They made and sold a quarter-million of them, but they were overtaken by the flood of battery-only cars. Chevy dealers rarely learned how to sell the cars properly; the sales staff didn’t know what made them better than ordinary hybrids.
The Germans, usually makers of some of the world’s best cars, didn’t quite get the hang of “strong” hybrids either. They’ve got plenty of plug-ins with less than 20 miles battery range, about enough to get you to a gas station.
Since you asked. First of all let me say that I absolutely hate the new ICE cars with six-speed electronically controlled transmissions. In my experience, no longer can you push the accelerator very slightly and immediately get a very slight increase in speed. If I want to noticeably increase speed to keep up with the vagaries of traffic flow, I have to keep increasing he pressure on the accelerator for easily five seconds before the car “thinks” whatever it thinks I want to do, and then drops down a couple gears and takes off, only for me to have to take my foot entirely off the accelerator and feel the jerk as the car slows down.
So to answer your question, I’d love a straight electric motor to provide quick, timely, and powerful acceleration. But the world isn’t perfect, and neither are battery run cars. I just want a long range, and a light nimble car, and a battery system that can be charged anywhere and everywhere, and a battery that won’t burn uncontrollably whenever it’s in an accident, or gets wet, or whenever it wants to. And a car that retains its resale value when the battery goes bad and needs to be exchanged, or doesn’t need a second loan to replace the battery.
I know a guy whose hybrid’s battery went bad after a few years and it was so expensive to replace he just bought a new ICE car instead.
You’d still be adding the weight and bulk of the engine plus fuel tank etc, to the great weight and bulk of batteries that already exist for a straight EV. The big advantage to the hybrid system – and it doesn’t HAVE TO BE as complicated as some companies make them while trying to claim peak technology etc – is eliminating most of the battery weight. Which also means less labor required by children in China and Nigeria to dig out the metals, and less to recycle or dispose of later.
Different needs. And diesel-electric mileage is measured in gallons per mile, not miles per gallon. On a per-ton basis it works out great, once everything is up to speed, but again they have different operating situations not readily translated to small cars.
Also the diesel-electric locomotives don’t do any regenerative braking. That’s a pretty important efficiency factor for regular passenger vehicles.
Because size matters (I presume).
Yes, Thats what I meant by a Direct Drive Hybrid… Its not a marketing or industry term that I know of. But does describe what I was thinking…
I was thinking that the mechanical losses could be minimized because the electric drive train is much simpler than the mechanical version… Also things like traction control or torque vectoring would be much simpler to implement on an electric system.
The bulk and weight of an engine doesnt have to be that much.
Look up the Mazda MX 30 R-EV. Its a plug in eletric hybrid, that uses a 0.8L ROTARY engine to run the generator to recharge the batteries. Such an engine would be extremely light and very small. Its a bit expensive, landing around $64 000 CDN.
Top Gear Mazda MX 30
Do you think it would scale down to trucks? Like a tractor trailer truck – not a pick up. The problem with an electric semi truck, is that the battery weighs about 8 000 lbs. also to have a facility that could charge 30 trucks over night? Thats a 5 MW draw on the grid… The factory that makes trucks, only draws 2 MW.
Any way you look at it, the demand for electricity will be prodigious. We can’t generate enough power now. We’ll be popping out nukes like they were Starbucks just to keep up.
On the other hand, if that’s the only way to get the leftist greenies to stop protesting nuclear, it might be worth it, short term. And once those nukes are built, THEN stop with the electric car madness. They’re still needed.
The electric car madness has already ended. GM Ford have both lost Billions in this fiscal year building electric cars. They have YEARS with of inventory sitting on lots. The Ford F 150 Lightning for example, has a 440+ day supply out in the dealer network … The general public dont want electric cars, thats why they need massive subsidies and incentives to sell them….
On the other hand, Tesla can’t seem to keep up with demand. But they’re a pretty specific market, not shared with GM and the others.