Ravenwood - 08/16/05 07:00 AM
Environmentalist wackos are claiming to get up to 250 miles per gallon out of their hybrids. And as long as you only drive them a mile at a time, you can apparently do just that.
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.Let's see, for my kitten stomping SUV that's 15,000 miles a year divided by 15 miles per gallon in the city, or 1000 gallons. At 2-something a gallon, $3,000 is nearly a year and a half worth of fuel bills. If I drove a tiny little girly car the size of a Toyota Prius, $3000 would be about 3 to 4 years worth of gas. Combine that with about a $3,000 premium for a hybrid and you're talking nearly 8 years worth of fuel bills, paid up front.Gremban, an electrical engineer and committed environmentalist, spent several months and $3,000 tinkering with his car.
But at least you're doing something for the environment, right? Well...
Like all hybrids, his Prius increases fuel efficiency by harnessing small amounts of electricity generated during braking and coasting. The extra batteries let him store extra power by plugging the car into a wall outlet at his home in this San Francisco suburb -- all for about a quarter.And where does that electricity come from?
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 still produces far less pollution than oil. They also note that electricity could be generated cleanly from solar power.It could also be generated by a giant hamster wheel but it isn't. It's generated by burning fossil fuels, and that is generated miles away in power plants that are likely surrounded by poor people.
And I'm sure that hitting the road with a trunk full of toxic waste and battery acid doesn't harm the environment at all.
Category: Left-wing Conspiracy
Comments (5) top link me
"It could also be generated by a giant hamster wheel but it isn't."
First LMAO moment of the day.
Posted by: Steve Scudder at August 16, 2005 9:39 AMFWIW, the Prius uses NiMH batteries. From Wikipedia: "A Nickel metal hydride (or NiMH) battery is a type of rechargeable battery similar to a nickel-cadmium (NiCad) battery but without the expensive and environmentally harmful metal cadmium. This is why they are sometimes called the most environmentally friendly battery type."
The thing they don't mention in this article is that not only did this guy spend $3k on his fancy batteries, but that sooner or later they'll die, and he'll get to buy new batteries again. So your math works out even more poorly for him.
Posted by: Jay Kominek at August 16, 2005 10:34 AMThe cost of replacing the power system in a Prius is something no one is sure of yet. No hybrid manufacturer has any idea how long these cars will last, and they are all predicting costs for replacing the power train at about $5000 plus labor. Batteries will be an additional cost too.
Posted by: countertop at August 16, 2005 11:39 AMI commute 8,000 miles a year and haven't yet bought gas this year. The secret is the hamster wheel. http://home.att.net/~rhhardin/bike.jpg
Note the dual GPS's and airspeed indicator.
Hybrid bashers miss the point: Gasoline engines are TERRIBLEY inefficient at part throttle yet we put 250 hp engines in when we only need 20 hp to cruise down the road (therefore operating at 10% throttle, more or less). That's why in-town mileage is so much worse than highway mileage --think about it, it ought to be the other way around. So you put a tiny little engine in, operating much more nearly at full throttle. Now you have lost acceleration so you put in an electric motor which has GREAT torque (5 times) at slow speeds to bring the performance back to normal (and use it also to help passing).
My Prius costs THE SAME as the Camry it replaces (it's the same size but for a somewhat smaller trunk) and gets 52 mpg both at 70 mph and starting and stopping in city traffic. And its fun to sneak up on people!
Posted by: Tom Stockebrand at October 5, 2005 2:52 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
