40 mpg Prius vs 50 mpg European Diesel cars - Page 14

 
"recharges."

production

Oh, I do not think I am smarter than Toyota's engineers.  I figure they are
thinking about this or have thought about it and the idea has been at least
temporarily shelved under the heading of "infeasible" for reasons I don't
know or "unmarketable, except to that DH character and a few loons like
him."

:-)

I will check the faq, though, and see what they had to say.  I hadn't
realized they would bother to put up a faq that included speculative items
like this.



*** Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com  ***

 


<snipped>

 Oh, I do not think I am smarter than Toyota's engineers.  I figure they are

Toyota has a reputation among the public and automotive press for making
good cars.  Toyota's reputation among automakers is that of being a
moneymaking machine and being perhaps the best in the world at "doing
business."  i can tell you from firsthand experience that Toyota gives
thought to every actioin.

I've often thought that Toyota should have designed and marketed the
Highlander, RX 400h, Camry, GS, and LS hybrids for good fuel economy yet the
emphasis for these vehicles is more on performance than fuel economy because
Toyota is aware the hybrid powertrain does not make sense from a pure
dollars and cents view.  Rather than market to people who are trying to save
money, they market to people with money who want performance and reasonable
fuel economy.
--

Ray O
(correct punctuation to reply)

        dh@stargate.com "DH" writes:


Okay, I see his point.  Fair enough, if the flexibility you go on
to describe can be made to work.

My short-term expectation is that battery technology will shrink
the current pack.  This would (a) release more space in the rear
of the car (for normal uses like carting around random rubbish)
and/or (b) allow more battery capacity in much the same volume.
--
Andrew Stephenson

           ames@deltrak.demon.co.uk (Andrew Stephenson) wrote:


You would still have your petrol engine for times when the battery got
low.  But at least you could arrange to always start out with a full
charge.  If you did a lot of short journeys, it would vastly reduce
overall fuel consumption.



Created on the Iyonix PC - the world's fastest RISC OS computer.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.dixon4/

 

A hybrid already has extra batteries so having the power to crank a diesel
is not a problem.  The hybrid controller would have to be programmed a
little differently to allow for the additional power needed to crank a
hybrid engine.


A diesel engine doesn't weigh THAT much more than a petrol engine.  A diesel
hybrid is technically feasible but it is not necessarily something that a
consumer would pay 2 premiums for.  There is a premium to build a diesel
powerplant and there is a premium for a hybrid system, and it is unlikely
that a consumer would pay over $
,000 more for a diesel hybrid.

As I mentioned before


There are a lot of totally ridiculous conspiracy theories floating around
that the oil companies control the technology that goes into consumer
vehicles.  Since consumers buy a lot more cars than oil companies, the
automakers have a lot more to gain by producing something consumers want
than what oil companies want.

Again, the factors that make charging the batteries from household current
are practical;
- the hybrid system has the capacity to charge the batteries as necessary so
an additional power source is not needed with the current battery capacity.
- Adding additional battery capacity costs more money to build, adds weight
to the vehicle, and reduces cargo and/or passenger space in the vehicle.
Some enterprising do-it-yourselfers have fitted external chargers and
additional battery packs at a cost roughly equal to the cost of the hybrid
vehicle and they have had to use all of the cargo space in the car to do it.
--

Ray O
(correct punctuation to reply)