EPA says Series Hybrid Better

at current technology and production methods, it is a loss and the large non-centralized farms are the biggest reason.

one proposal that has already been proven effective is small localized farms. they dont rely on heavy machinery to farm the land and the biggest thing is transportation and handling expenses. farm products travel an average of 1500 miles to get to your local supermarket... in Canada the average is 5000 miles. remove that energy cost and bio-fuel does become viable

 

there is a bio diesel farm just east of seattle that is small scale (just over 5 acres i believe) and has been experimenting with bio-diesel. there was a really cool website they had and i for the life of me cant find it...(actually dont remember saving it and am kicking myself now) they talked about how little needed to be done to convert any diesel engine to run this stuff.

they talked at length about the feasibility of having several small local farms growing the stuff and maybe having one farm that processed all the bio-diesel for a small handful of people. they went through the number of like having 6-10 farms all under 10 acres providing the stuff and even recommended different things to grow that would harvest more often and stuff. the place was in issaquah i think...or maybe wenatchee... all HECK... i dont remember...

 

From what I've heard from the research conducted by a hybrid-obsessed friend of mine, engineers originally worked on hybrids that ran an efficient engine at a more constant speed to store power in the batteries and use that power to drive the wheels. It was far more efficient than the Prius, but when they did consumer testing, consumers did not like it because the gas engine would run at "random" times to charge the battery, not when they stepped on the accelerator.

People want what they're used to, not what works best. Car companies don't want to take the chance on an unusual product that might not catch on, especially when it requires so much development cost. There was some problem with the engine not being able to keep up enough battery charge to propel the car up an extended incline. If you run the battery down going up a mountain, the gas engine eventually can't provide enough power to keep the battery charged and keep the car moving. Anyway, the engineers gave up on solving the problem after the consumer testing results.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(richard schumacher\";p=\"86299)</div>

I completely agree. I would like to add some more. For Series hybrid, bigger battery is necessary and the life would be shorter due to the motor usage all the time.

Also, isn't the electric motor inefficient at high speed? For example, Rav4 EV needed more Kw per mile as speed increased.

HSD is a continously variable mode hybrid. It made me laugh when GM-Chrysler announced their two mode hybrid(static) design. Now EPA is claiming that single mode hybrid is better.

 

any one can say what they want about whats better... but until they start walking the path they are talking about, it dont matter.

 

Biodiesel, I'm certain, has some great potential, but so too does ethanol. And also, thinking of improving efficency, I wonder why Toyota did not also add a CVT into the drivetrain. Cost?

Perry

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(clett\";p=\"87984)</div>

Let's see. For a series hybrd, if electric motor is twice more powerful(100kW) than Prius(50kW), you'll need the battery twice as big. If the battery get used twice as often, the battery needs to be 4 times as big to achieve the same life expectancy. This is assuming the ICE is powerful enough to keep the battery SOC in the ideal range as HSD can. The inverter will need to handle more current as well.

I don't think passing performance on the highway would not be as good as HSD because single electric motor torque curve drops significantly as RPM increases.