User 169775

Are Hybrid Vehicles Worth the Price?

On 2008 Nov 22 06:00 PM lesceil wrote:


> 2. Battery lifetime has not been proven by a long history, but for
> all I have experienced with rechargeable batteries before, they get
> stale quicker than advertised.

You don't understand how the battery in a hybrid car works.

They last VERY long because they are NOT deep-discharged like your rechargeable batteries.

Rechargeable batteries wear out because of all the full-charge-then-full-... cycles. Hybrid car batteries DO NOT do that.

The Prius hybrid computer is always trying to keep the charge state of its hybrid battery between 60%-80%, where it has a life span measured in decades. Even when you see the charge state in the Prius MFD display a low charge state of just 2 red bars, the battery is still 60% charged.

Purely Battery-powered electric cars like the Tesla do go through full-charge-then-disch... cycles, which is why their battery life is problematic-- Tesla recommends replacing the battery pack in the Roadster after 5 years. Non-plug-in hybrids do not suffer from this problem because they don't deep-discharge their batteries.

Latest on Hybrids: Toyota Yaris for U.S.

This is nothing new...

Between 1997 and 2003, Toyota had a compact hybrid built on the Echo/Vitz platform (the platform from which the Yaris is developed on).

What was this Yaris-sized compact hybrid?

The first-generation Toyota Prius! :-)

I can see how it will complement the now-much-bigger midsized 3rd-generation hatchback Prius though.

Are Hybrid Vehicles Worth the Price?

Hybrids compare favorably in terms of performance to their conventional counterparts.

For instance, the Ford Escape Hybrid has a combined output of 196hp from its I-4 engine and electrical motor. The regular I-4 Escape has 171hp.

Are Hybrid Vehicles Worth the Price?

Replacing the battery pack is not an issue. All current new hybrids sold in the U.S. have an 8-year / 100,000-mile warranty on the battery, and the warranty is extended to 10 years / 150,000-miles in the 8 states with California-standard emissions laws.

If it fails within the warranty period, the cost of replacement is FREE.

That is assuming you didn't do anything stupid to void the warranty, like crash the car, tamper with the hybrid system, etc.

Failure of the battery pack in the 2nd-generation Prius within warranty terms is virtually unheard-of.

Chrysler's Rebadging Plan: Strategic Blunder for Nissan?

@211293:

Agreed. Toyota has left the door open for Chrysler to introduce a hybrid minivan for the past 5 years. And Chrysler has not taken advantage of it!

The window of opportunity is closing fast. Toyota has been selling their Estima Hybrid minivan in Japan for years, and in the next couple years they plan to bring it to the U.S. as the Sienna Hybrid.

The opportunity is there.. It's just Chrysler is doing everything they can to flub it!

The Electric Car Battery Battle

The compressed air to be used in the MDI car is going to be pressurized to 4500PSI. Personally, I'd rather not sit in a car with a tank pressurized to 4500PSI in the back. If that sucker ruptures, whoever is sitting in the driver's seat is going to become hamburger.

Objectivity is right. Imagine the amount of power needed to compress that air to 4500PSI. When you buy a fillup of that air at 4500PSI, you are paying for the gasoline to run the compressor to compress that air to 4500PSI. Sorry air-car fans, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Is There Any Hope for the Big Three Auto Makers?

I think the 1980s Federal bailout of Chrysler created a bit of moral hazard here. It's a bad thing to have GM and F think that Uncle Sam is always going to be there to clean up their mess no matter how badly they misbehave.

Considering how the Fed handled the Bear Stearns crisis (arranged for JPMorgan Chase to buy them out), I think more likely Uncle Sam would probably try to arrange for some private equity firm to take over F or GM if they should fail, though I have a feeling a lot of private equity firms have looked at Cerberus's experience with Chrysler and would probably politely refuse. :-P

F does have a takeover candidate lined up though-- Kirk Kerkorian's Tracinda Corp. Uncle Sam would probably guarantee a loan for Kirk to take on the unsavory job of salvaging Ford's collapse if that does come to pass.

Don't know about GM..

Is There Any Hope for the Big Three Auto Makers?

Up until last week, I believed the Chevy Volt will be GM's savior... No longer.

Some Chevy spokesman had said the Volt is going to have an MSRP of $40,000. People are already whining about the price premium of current hybrids like the Toyota Prius, and the Prius costs only $21,500 MSRP. If those prices are true, the next generation Prius is going to absolutely KILL the Volt in sales.

Things look grim for GM.

Is There Any Hope for the Big Three Auto Makers?

I wonder if Kirk Kerkorian is still harboring dreams of gaining control of Ford, considering that he bought his few million shares at $7 only to watch it fall to $4. Well, at least Ford has someone who may be willing to pump more money into the company.. Not sure if GM or Chrysler can say the same.

GM Looks Beyond Oil

jackkreg: Reprocessing nuclear fuel will not solve the nuclear waste problem. It will actually make it worse.

Trying to recover fissionable material from spent fuel rods requires an enormous amount of equipment and chemical reactants, all of which will be radioactively contaminated over the course of the fuel reprocessing and will end up as nuclear waste that requires long-term storage.

Check out the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State where they have industrial plants that produced Plutonium for the U.S. nuclear weapons program by recovering Pu made from Uranium-238 in breeder reactors. Those facilities are so badly contaminated with radioactivity that they cannot be safely demolished when the DOE stopped producing weapons-grade Plutonium there. Those facilities will remain hot zones for thousands of years.

What the nuclear physicists and engineers need to do is figure out how to produce energy via nuclear fusion. That presents a much smaller danger in terms of radioactive waste.

Green Awareness Among Online Auto Shoppers

Green online auto shoppers visiting Saturn the most?

I don't doubt if it's true or not... I just find it funny since Saturn does not exactly have the greenest cars on the market, considering GM's "hybrid" system in the Saturns are just a regular drivetrain with an extra large alternator and battery pack, and doesn't get much better mileage than its all-gasoline counterpart.