Hybrid Cars fail to live up to mileage claims

http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,63413,00.html

 

Well that's an eye-opener.

Hopefully the Smartcar will get better mileage than that.

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That totally sucks... that's probably some of the worst news I've heard all week.

with love,
kayatree

 

Yuck....well....I'm glad I can't afford one, then!!

 

I'd heard about that too. My friend's mom has a hybrid civic, it gets I think 37 mpg. It sucks that it doesnt get the 50 its supposed to get, but at the same time, 37 is a lot better than a lot of cars on the market, and the emissions are probably better too.

Sam

 

I think hybrid cars are a joke. Most of the energy produced in the world comes from fossil fuel power plants anyway, so just because you are using the electricity that was generated somewhere else, and adding to the pollution somewhere else, doesn’t mean you are saving gas at all. The electricity simply was transported there from a coal, oil or natural gas power plant.

 

Hybrid vehicles produce their OWN electricity, by running a generator from an IC engine to charge batteries and run an electric motor.

Hybrids do NOT need to be plugged in to the power grid to recharge.

Traditional EVs are the ones that simply shift pollution from the tailpipe of your car to the smokestack of the power plant.

 

oh I see... Interesting...

 

Well things gotta start somewhere....

 

Rather than go to hybrids, why not re-consider diesel engines and emphasize biodiesel fuel-especially fuel made from hemp! Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz during the last eight years have made remarkable improvements in the design and performance of diesels. These engines are by no means as noisy and underpowered as they were in years past, and achieve mileage on a par with most hybrids. Add that with more efficient combustion processes, they pollute less-especially with the use of alternative fuels!

http://www.hempcar.org
http://www.hempdiesel.com
http://www.thehia.org

 

Actually, Hybrid cars produce their own electricity through the breaking system, you do not have to plug them in. I am not surprised that these hybrids do not live up to expectations since your gas mileage depends on a lot of things such as what type of gas you put in it, your speed (most cars have a speed that they got optimal gas mileage), gear, whether or not it is stop and go or highway traffic, how well you maintain your car, ect. I am sure the advertised gas mileage are only for the most optimal conditions.

However, don't knock hybrids yet. I still plan to buy one when I can afford it (at least a few years down the road) I feel it is very important to support new technology, as we will never get anywhere if we don't start somewhere! 35mpg is better then 12, and we better start depending on something else rather than fossil fuels anyway.

Biodiesel is also a fantatstic idea. Biodiesel has lower emmissions, pollutes less, and it more efficient. Most standard diesel engines can run on biodiesel. It takes a tiny bit of work on both your engine and to make biodiesel, but in the long run it is worth it. One of my husbands current projects is swapping a diesel into one of our cars so we can run it on biodiesel.

 

there is no such thing as free energy. it is however possible to produce and transfer it without the use of combustion. the simplest and most practical means of powering vehicular systems is with storage batteries (or flywheels which are essentialy the mechanical equivelent).

the problem is, even if you made a vehicule completely emmissions free, rubber tyre on pavement eats environment. the real solution to that is to put it on rails. flanged wheel on steel rail consumes 1/5 the energy and 1/12th the realestate per unit of transportation (passinger mile, ton mile, et c.). i'm not talking the overscale dynasaurs we're all familiear with here however. vehicules for guideway based systems need be no larger then the familiar van or automobile. nor need they run on guideways any wider then sufficient to stably support a vehicule just big enough to get inside of out of the weather. stored energy systems can be automaticly recharged at stopping places from a grid fed by noncombustive sources such as wind solar and hydro. also more exotic onboard systems could be opperated safely by persons well educated in and familiar with their use and saftey precautions, something the average joe sixpack attempting to opperate a fuel cell or other exoticly powered private roadway vehicule might very likely not. this would also enhance mobility for persons who, in an auto based transportation environment, are forced to depend on others for it, such as the young, the old, the physicaly impaired and the mentaly or otherwise challanged whome it is not safe to opperate a motor vehicule on public highways. such microscale guideway based transportation infrastructures could be built as cheaply as our current system of streets and roads, if not more so, provided they use off the shelf components and are not overdesigned by rocket scientists with unnessecarily costly features and exotic one off tecnologies.
granted there are also feet and beasts of burden, these might however be a bit harder of a sell politicly, not to mention their other drawbacks.

 

Wow, that is quite interesting, a huge deal that is unlikely, but very interesting non the less. I think we should rely a little more on will power, I'm not saying no one should ever use cars, but why does no one say 'stop driving everywhere?' are we incapable of responsibility for our own actions, and are only looking for replacements that don't take us out of our comfort zone? Why not endorse compromise?

 

honeyhannah,

I agree! As far as taking responsibility, I think we should walk, jog, bike, run more places! If you live 2 miles or less from work...walk! If your favorite restaraunt is 3 miles away...ride your bike! Ect., ect. of course, thanks to the advent of "McMansions" and massive commericalization with highways and Walmarts everywhere, it gets less and less safe to walk or ride your bike. Frankly, although it is less then a mile to the grocery store, it can be scary to ride my bike since it is 4 to 6 lanes of traffic wizzing by at 90 miles an hour! I still try to ride and or walk everywhere, but we need to all start thinking about designing communities where it is safe to walk, bike, ect. without getting run over buy SUV's in the 8-lane parkway to Home-Depot ect.
End rant.

 

Exactly!(uh huh uh huh uh huh!) Oh you live in Columbia yeah I've been there. I live in Augusta, Georgia.

 

well you see that's just my point. most of US might be willing to walk a LOT more if we lived in communities friendlier to doing so then we do now (and when the oil runs out people are going to have to whether they like it or not, those that haven't starved to death waiting of their refrigerators and the refrigerated trucks that bring groceries to thier stores to start running again, which they won't, not as we know such things today), but if want to not have to wait for that to happen to live in a calmer, more sustainable, and less stressful world, we have to face the reality of what can and cannot be politicly sold to the average joe sixpack, who ISN'T gonna give up their 'compfort zone' for love nor money, nor to avoid real harm that is distributed where they can't see it by giving up their symbolic personal gain which they can, even if many may begin to suspect just how illusory their symbolic personal gain really is and what in real terms it is actualy costing them.

public transportation is a way to get from here to there, relatively painlessly, and again relative painlessness is a matter of what people are willing and unwilling to accept. grated even that is a difficult sell in a car addicted, economicly blinded, dominant culture. but public transportation CAN be done sustainably right. and the engineering communtiy would have no problem with doing so. it is only the executive and sales communities who immagine their oxs being gored by it. and this of course is why we don't have such things now. all the tecnolgy to assemble such systems is proven, available and off the shelf. only the reassembling of the leggo blox in that more sustainable way is what is challanging.
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personaly i don't see 'comfort zone' as the enimy, only the mindlessly unsustainable ways we are familiar with gratifying it. and really that is my whole point. we CAN have sustainability without trying to survive on yak skin coats and flint knives, but it does take a willingness to take a longer, and perhaps somewhat unfamiliar view of things to do so. and a recognition that many things we take for granted are totaly unneccessary and bennifit us nothing to have be the only way we can have or do them.
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scape goating tecnology isn't going to get us there. it's any easy sell as a concept to blame everything on our tools. so everyone aggrees to curse their hammer, and then continues to pave roads and drive their hummers, at least until the oil runs out, and then the're really gonna be up a creek, and the rest of us along with them. this is what is happening now.
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we have people who are vocal and awair seeing what is happening, but a majority of people can't make the connection with how it affects themselves. if we have to wait untill they do, a lot of people are going to get real hungry when the oil runs out, if we haven't irriversably destroyed the sustainablility of our own species before it does.
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bycicles are fine on the flatlands and sore feet are all well and romantic, but the clock is ticking and i don't believe we can wait for and expect the mass majority of joe sixpacks to buy into that.

 

Public transportation IS awesome. I have lived in places where public transportation is great, now I am living somewhere where it is non-existent. San Fransisco is an EXCELLENT example of environmentally friendly, cheap, and sustainable public transportation. We need more examples like that, and need to lobby our local governments to pursue options like that. In the meantime, I think the shit will have to hit the fan before people will think beyond instant gratification and their crappy H-2's.

 

My girls 03 Neon gets 40mpg on long road trips. It has a lot of power and dosent look stupid like those hybrids either. I may get one of those gas/electric ford suv's that are coming out soon. They would be a good replacement for most suv's even if they only get like 35mpg.

 

my mom got a civic hybrid and shes driving it alot lately and she get 47 mpg and about 510 miles in a tank and im buying one when i can drive but i cant afford insurance so ill probably be walking.

 

While many manufacturers are trying to follow the lead of Toyota and Honda by coming out with gasoline hybrid engines, there has been little talk about electric diesel hybrids. I think such applications will be better than those with gasoline engines as they'll probably provide for better fuel mileage. Being that they can also run on fuel such as vegetable oil and hemp diesel, this could provide for a cleaner environment with lower fuel and running costs. I think large vehicles could benefit the most!