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Originally Posted by Ryland
I agree to a point that we don't have the electrical generation for every single person to have a plug in hybrid, but I've heard that the real reason we don't have plug in hybrids in the US was that one of the patents was held by a compeny that would only let it be used if it was not used as part of a plug in car, now I don't have the source of that information any more, but at the time it sounded solid and lodgical.
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Sounds like the story of the 100mpg carburetor. You've probably heard of it, the inventor builds a new variation of the 100mpg carb. Puts it on the market. "Someone" buys the patent and "burys" it because it would use too little gasoline. I get the willies when I come here seeing all of these "run your car on water" adds here, it's the same sort of "something for nothing" that is "suppressed" by "the powers that be" but you can buy it here!
I'm sure that such miracles have happened, but more often than not miracles that do happen are ignored rather than buried by entrenched interests.
First of all, I don't think that the batteries in a hybrid store all of that much energy. I haven't done the math but I don't see them taking you very far. I'd guess maybe a dozen or so miles? Someone who is in the know will have to fill in the details, but these things are not electric cars with a gasoline motor, they're a mix of gasoline and electric and designed accordingly.
Hybrids probably could use a plug in. They probably don't have them because the manufacturer doesn't want the hassle of a consumer damaging their batteries with external power.
Lithium ion batteries require a special charging routine, one that is often controlled with microprocessors. You can buy such gadgets for a song, but they require engineering. Engineers hate to complicate things by adding separate charging circuitry for the house power.
There is also an ethic amongst engineers who work in high volume industries that reducing parts count is a greater good. Saves "total costs" for a production run. This was part of the reason why the Ford Maverick had that cheap plastic tube for gasoline, one that sometimes sheared in accidents resulting in immolating passengers. These guys are constantly striving to reduce parts count and parts cost. I know, been there, done that.
That all being said, a plug in would be a nice option. At least we'd get a tiny bit of help from the power grid.
BTW, one place I do see a "conspiracy" is the funding for nuclear fusion. They're really stingy with this kind of research but they'll spend billions developing weapons systems that will probably never get used and if they're used will probably not perform according to specs and if they do perform according to specs some innocents will get caught in "collateral damage". Seems to me with a world hungry for energy that people ought to be spending more money on energy sources.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryland
as for wind power, if you are in an area that has wind it's cheaper then building a coal plant, faster to build, and I don't know how many birds coal plants kill, but if you compar a wind turbine to a single window in your house, they both end up killing around one bird per year, so if you really love birds you would board up the windows in your house, the only case where they found any numbers of birds being killed was when someone did some poor planing and put a few wind turbines in a migritory path, and as I understand those turbines are still there, that flock of birds is still alive and the birds have learned to take another route.
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We have a lot of wind in the high mountain areas. There are windmills. Every one of the little darlings is subsidized to the hilt. More often than not they're not turning too much at all.
Yeah, they're cheap. They don't produce a lot of power. They're annoying, they make a sound which is hard to ignore and sometimes they grow ice which they then fling when they start to turn. I keep wondering when they're going to topple over, perhaps on my pointy head but I ought to be really worried about being beaned on the head with a chunk of ice.
Meanwhile we have an enormous concentration of coal fired plants hereabouts, including one in Bobtown, PA which might be one of the largest of its kind on Earth. They do not require subsidization, most are compliant to at least the Clear Air Act of 1970 and our electricity hereabouts is very inexpensive. Most of the SOx and NOx are scrubbed out and I don't buy mercury being a big deal. I bet I get more mercury from a can of tuna than I do from our local power plants.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryland
I know a number of people with hybrids who also have solar panals, and if they had a plug in hybrid they would get more solar panals, simaler to what I plan to do with my electric car.
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You might get a mile here or there from the sun. I have this feeling you're going to be spending a lot of money and waiting a long while for the "free" energy of sunshine to pay for the solar cells, collection devices and your time.
I do not think that the hybrid batteries store a great deal of power either. Maybe not even enough to make the costs of those collectors worth the time for surface transport.
None the less, helping oneself is powerful medicine. I don't knock you for wanting to do something, though I feel that there are better alternatives out there than solar cells for surface transport.
Gene
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