The USA Needs a National Hybrid Retrofit Program

Hi All,

I am trying to understand why people would do this to a car that is new enough they do not want to mess with it, and so old that the investment wont be worth it due to the legacy repair issues? And this looses allot of the synergy that reduced the costs of the Prius. In the end the total cost of ownership is just way off the charts.

That leaves a very small window of vehicle age.

Now, putting this into a new car with a reduced engine size that is another thing. Somebody could put together a Geo-Metro style car and add these 30 HP of battery drive. This way an auto-stop system could be implemented, and auxiliary systems powered off the battery.

On Cleanmpg.com (which I have enormous difficulty posting on, and usually loose the post due to incredibly short timeouts) there is discussion regarding controls. I think a computer could be setup to easily sense brake pedal pressure, and use that to control regen, but in a retrofit one is still using the friction brakes. And the operating costs synergy is not as significant as with a Prius, or other ground-up hybrid design. A fuel flow meter might be used to automatically control the motor power output level.

The wheel motor or axle mounted motors are a good idea, because it gives independantly controlable torque to each wheel. It also eliminates gear losses between the motor and the wheel. Which are significant. Think if the Prius had two MG2's on either side of the transmission housing, hooked to the output shafts of the differential with the brakes?! Kinda like a FWD hybrid version of the famous Jaguar rear-end. Since the brakes last as long the axles, now, this is totally practical.

The problem with this though, is motor diameter. Which has to be large due to the lack of gearing. Which is why Wheel motors are commonly proposed, as there is a large diameter space available behind the brake. Double stacking is a possibility to reduce diameter, but that quadruples motor assembly costs.

The G3 Prius actually went the other way, by inserting gearing between MG2 and the rest of the drive train. This allows for a smaller diameter motor, and lighter transmission.

So, there is probably some devil-in-the-details pushing things the other way.


These things might be a good way to get a AWD Prius though.

 

Hi All,

I do not buy the 3000 dollar cost. Its more likely going to be 5000. Remember the Prius battery cost $2400 retail. 4 motors, and the cost to put them on the car, and the cable sets are going to be $2000 easy. Remember these are sealed assemblies, and your probably going to need custom replacement hubs to mount both the motor and brake to the suspension. Volumes are just not going to be that high for retrofits.

The Prius cost less than its battery costs over a standard car, because of the synergies that remove legacy costs out of the platform. This is something that is being overlooked. In a retrofit, those legacy costs are either still there, or need to be replaced (starters/brake service, but probably not alternator - as that function can be built into the inverters set).

 

if using conventional financing, the cost would be unrealistic. but this has to be subsidized by Uncle Sam and why shouldn't it be...120 million gallons saved PER DAY is a program worth paying for.

the subsidy would only be one time install cost and there would be a rather large market since it would cover anyone who cannot afford $15,000 for a new economy car (if you can get one that cheap!!). $3-5K is way more affordable and i think there is a lot of people who would jump at the chance to increase their gas mileage 50 to 150%.

as far as how smart it would be to do, there are a TON of cars out there that are 5-10 years old under 100,000 miles that could conceivably drive another 5-10 years with only routine maintenance. sure, major repairs happen and that does increase with age, but a $3000 repair is still way cheaper than financing a new car

 

Then there is the question of what hybrid system will receive the government backing. Would a hydraulic retrofit be elligible? The problem will currant govt backing of ethanol means other alternatives, likely better, are getting pushed to the side. If feasable, but done wrong, a retrofit program can cause harm in the long run.

 

Analog TV signals require more energy to broadcast than digital TV signals. The digital transmitter is more "green" in that it uses less energy.

NTSC TV uses AM for the video. Most of the energy is in the carrier where none of the information is.

 

And NTSC requires about 50 dB S/N ratio to be perfectly clean, whereas ATSC only needs about 20 dB. Right there, per channel broadcast is a 1000:1 improvement. In practice however, even a 20 dB NTSC channel is watchable, but a 15 dB ATSC is not. So, in the end the stations are down about 10:1 in power/per channel.

The ABC affiliate here is only at 4700 watts right now, sending 3 channels on their original NTSC allocation of RF channel 7. Which is about a 30:1 drop in their broadcast power per channel. And it works most of the time. Although, they may be allowed to go up in power to fill in some of the poor spots in the coverage area.

 

and that's the problem. Analog degrades gracefully where digital is an all or nothing situation. Talking of picture quality, I have a digital satellite box and I must say that some of the channels are so overcompressed as to be almost unwatchable. I saw the same thing in Switzerland on a CableCom digibox. My point; some of the digital channels makes me yearn for a nice high S/N ratio analog picture.

 

Over-compression isn't a requirement of digital, nor is a weak transmitter signal. Both of these are business decisions emphasizing cost over quality.

Tom

 

Exactly!

 

Hi Tom,

Not always. In the case of Channel 7 in Chicago, its the FCC that is limiting the ERP.

 

i think with all stations going to digital, they are first looking at increasing revenue before they can look at increasing the quality. as they get the money, i believe signal upgrades will happen (its easier to pay for the transmitter if you have a greater source of income when you have multiple channels to market) and since i

1) dont pay for cable TV
2) get unfiltered digital anyway

its easy to see that most of that standard "air" channels split into 3 channels. i also know that there are very few "rich" tv stations out there. most are struggling and going to digital will be a boon to them. with 3 stations sellling ads, they will soon be able to upgrade their signal and hopefully provide the extra power needed to stop the occasional dropout we experience now.

to be honest with ya, its rarely enough of an issue for me to even consider it inconvenient. usually its just occasional artifacts that last a few seconds and its gone. without an antenna, i might simply be lucky (for those of you wondering, the signal quality does not change whether you are paying for it or not...only the channel #'s change) only on very rare occasions (maybe a few times a month) is the audio affected.

 

LOL!!
Yes, we MUST have digital TV to watch Dancing With The Stars, instead of reducing greenhouse gasses, lessening the effects of global warming. But it may already be too late... :frown:

 

but if digital TV's use less power aren t we reducing greenhouse gases?