Anyone who's ever talked with me at length knows I abhor large vehicles such as
Suburbans,
Yukons,
Expeditions,
Excursions and their ilk. It kills me to actually own a
van that gets less than 20 MPG. Anyway, I firmly believe that owning a large vehicle does NOT actually make you safer, as is commonly sited by consumers when purchasing such ridiculously large and inefficient vehicles.
In fact, these behemoths are less manuverable, and more likely to roll over when, not if, you are involved in an auto accident. Statistics demand that each of us, if we live to the age of 60, *will* be involved in some sort of auto accident. I'm a math geek. You can't argue numbers like these. Go to the
NTSB. They'll tell you the same thing.
Anyway, I was impressed that Toyota recently stepped back from the party line of saying that owners of
Toyota Pruis's should NOT tinker with them. Instead, they seem to realize that they, as a company, can learn from what their ambitiously gas conserving owners are doing to modify their product. Hey, at least they're humble enough to admit everyone can learn from someone else.
The UT had a great
cover article on this today. Go read it. I think you'll begin to understand how easily we can wean ourselves off foreign oil. It won't be that hard. It will just be unpleasant for a time.
The flu is unpleasant too. Yet I've lived through it each time I've had it.
So will we all.
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Hybrid plug-in gives efficiency an added boost -- Some experimental cars can get up to 250 mpg By Tim Molloy
ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 15, 2005
Ron Gremban added 18 electric bicycle batteries to the trunk of his Toyota Prius hybrid that allow him to drive 80 miles per gallon.
Politicians and automakers say a car that can reduce greenhouse gases and ease America's reliance on foreign oil is years away.
Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage.
It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an 80-miles-per-gallon secret – a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries that boosts the car's high mileage with an extra electrical charge so it can burn even less fuel.
Gremban, an electrical engineer and environmentalist, spent several months and $3,000 tinkering with his car.
Like all hybrids, his Prius increases fuel efficiency by harnessing small amounts of electricity generated during breaking and coasting. The extra batteries let him store extra power by plugging the car into a wall outlet at his home – all for about a quarter.
"Plug-in" hybrids aren't yet cost-efficient, but some experimental models have gotten up to 250 mpg.
They have support not only from environmentalists but also from foreign-policy hawks who insist Americans fuel terrorism through their gas guzzling.
And while the technology has existed for three decades, automakers are just beginning to take notice.
So far, DaimlerChrysler is the only company that has committed to building its own plug-in hybrids, quietly pledging to make up to 40 vans for U.S. companies. But Toyota officials who initially frowned on people altering their cars now say they may be able to learn from them.
"They're like the hot rodders of yesterday who did everything to soup up their cars. It was all about horsepower and bling-bling, lots of chrome and accessories," said Cindy Knight, a Toyota spokeswoman. "Maybe the hot rodders of tomorrow are the people who want to get in there and see what they can do about increasing fuel economy."
The extra batteries let Gremban drive for 20 miles powered equally by gas and electricity. Even after the car runs out of power from the batteries and switches to the standard hybrid mode, it gets the typical Prius fuel efficiency of 45 mpg. As long as Gremban doesn't drive too far in a day, he gets 80 mpg.
"The value of plug-in hybrids is they can dramatically reduce gasoline usage for the first few miles every day," Gremban said. "The average for people's usage of a car is somewhere around 30 to 40 miles per day. During that kind of driving, the plug-in hybrid can make dramatic difference."
Backers of plug-in hybrids acknowledge that the electricity to boost their cars generally comes from fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases, but they say that process produces far less pollution than oil. They also note that electricity could be generated cleanly from solar power.
Gremban rigged his car to promote the nonprofit CalCars Initiative, a volunteer effort in the San Francisco Bay area that argues automakers could mass produce plug-in hybrids at a reasonable price. (On the Web at
http://calcars.org)
But Toyota and other car companies say they are worried about the cost, convenience and safety of plug-in hybrids. They say that consumers haven't embraced all-electric cars because of the inconvenience of recharging them like giant cell phones.
Automakers have spent millions of dollars telling motorists that hybrids don't need to be plugged in, and don't want to confuse the message.
Nonetheless, plug-in hybrids are starting to get the backing of prominent hawks like former CIA Director James Woolsey and Frank Gaffney, the undersecretary of defense in the Reagan administration. They have joined Set America Free, a group that wants the government to spend $12 billion over four years on plug-in hybrids, alternative fuels and other measures to reduce foreign oil dependence.
Gaffney, who heads the Center for Security Policy, said Americans would embrace plug-ins if they understood the argument that gasoline contributes to oil-rich Middle Eastern governments that support terrorism.
"The more we are consuming oil that either comes from places that are bent on our destruction or helping those who are ..... the more we are enabling those who are trying to kill us," Gaffney said.
A mild boost for some hybrids, not necessarily the plug-in variety, comes from the recently signed federal transportation bill, which puts into effect a California law allowing solo hybrid drivers to use carpool lanes.
Only three hybrid models – Toyota's Prius and Honda's hybrid Civic and Insight – will be allowed in the lanes. They are the only models that meet the eligibility standards of at least 45 miles per gallon and almost no smog-causing emissions.
DaimlerChrysler spokesman Nick Cappa said plug-in hybrids are ideal for companies with fleets of vehicles that can be recharged at a central location at night. He declined to name the companies buying the vehicles and said he did not know the vehicles' mileage or cost, or when they would be available.
Monrovia-based Energy CS has converted two Priuses to get up to 230 mpg by using powerful lithium ion batteries. It is forming a new company, EDrive Systems, that will convert hybrids to plug-ins for about $12,000 starting next year, company Vice President Greg Hanssen said.
University of California Davis engineering professor Andy Frank built a plug-in hybrid from the ground up in 1972 and has since built seven others, one of which gets up to 250 mpg. They were converted from non-hybrids, including a Ford Taurus and Chevrolet Suburban.
Frank has spent $150,000 to $250,000 in research costs on each car. He thinks thatautomakers could mass-produce them by adding just $6,000 to each vehicle's price tag.
Instead, Frank said, automakers promise hydrogen-powered vehicles praised by President Bush and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, even though hydrogen's backers acknowledge the cars won't be widely available for years and would require a new network of fueling stations.
"They'd rather work on something that won't be in their lifetime, and that's this hydrogen economy stuff," Frank said. "They pick this kind of target to get the public off their back, essentially."
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