Archives

Mass production could reduce the figure to $3,000, which drivers could recoup through fuel savings. (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003070514_newplugincars19m.html?syndication=rss)

Mike Lindblom - Seattle Times - June 19, 2006

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/PHEV_Prius_II.jpg
John Lok - Seattle Times

Ryan Fulcher shows where a battery has taken the place of the spare-tire compartment in his Prius. Fulcher says with its modifications, his car now gets 100 mpg.

Ryan Fulcher was so intent on getting more than 100 miles a gallon that he drove his Toyota Prius overnight to a technology fair in California, changed the wiring, and installed an extra battery in the trunk.

He returned to Washington as the owner of a "plug-in," a car that consumes even less fuel than an ordinary hybrid.

The additional battery serves as a spare fuel tank, except it supplies electrons, not gasoline. Each night, Fulcher recharges it from a wall socket at his Federal Way home.

Then, the engine can run all-electric for 30 miles before taking its first sip of gas. A Prius that normally attains 50 mpg can achieve hundreds of mpg at low speed.

Fulcher may be a pioneer in a potentially large-scale shift to plug-ins, which are gaining momentum with politicians and environmentalists as a route to energy independence.

So far, automakers have built a market for hybrids by reassuring buyers their new Insight, Prius, Civic or Escape won't need to be plugged in.

But to some people, a car hasn't truly evolved until it grows a tail.

Evangelists for plug-ins say they would reduce global warming and unplug the nation from imported oil. Cars supplied by a regional power grid would pollute less than cars that burn fossil fuels individually, and the energy price is equivalent to $1 per gallon, they say.

Fulcher's car was modified by CalCars Initiative, a nonprofit team whose goal is to dazzle people with the technology and to prod the auto industry to build plug-ins. About a dozen Priuses have been converted by CalCars and other groups.

After dismissing plug-in cars last year, Toyota now acknowledges that its engineers are working on them.

"Our position has kind of evolved on this," spokeswoman Cindy Knight said. "It is something we are seriously looking at. We think this kind of thing does have potential, under the right circumstances, to increase fuel economy and reduce CO2 emissions."

DaimlerChrysler has outfitted a small number of Sprinter delivery vans with extra batteries for experimental plug-in use.

Bellevue-based AFS Trinity Power is developing an "extreme hybrid" drive system, expected to get 250 mpg.

The company anticipates finishing a demonstration model within 24 months.

Unlike a plug-in Prius, which requires a gasoline infusion at 34 mph, Trinity's power system will run at freeway speed for 40 miles on the battery, according to Chairman and CEO Ed Furia. "Ours will work. Ours will achieve the promise," he said.

Running silent

In an ordinary hybrid, a gas engine works in tandem with an electric motor. The car is recharged from within - as it rolls, kinetic energy from the wheels replenishes the battery.

By adding a second, plug-in battery, Fulcher reduced the role of the gas engine. Besides saving fuel, he gets a smoother ride.

"There's this whole different experience, of silent and swift electric torque," said Fulcher, who works at the DigiPen computer-animation school in Redmond. "You take off and it throws you back in the seat. There's no exhaust, no noise, no vibration."

The downside: His experimental battery will last just a couple of years. Costs of a longer-lasting one are high.

Toyota is testing a new lithium-ion battery meant to last a decade, Knight said, but costs could reach roughly $10,000.

Andy Frank, a University of California, Davis professor who advises CalCars, thinks mass production could reduce the figure to $3,000, which drivers could recoup through fuel savings.

Political friends

At a recent forum sponsored by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center, former CIA Director James Woolsey and U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., touted plug-ins as a relatively quick road to energy independence.

Would they mean more pollution from coal-fired power plants? No, backers say, because power plants have enough unused capacity at night to charge millions of vehicles. Frank suggests adding solar panels to parking shelters to feed the outlets.

"We have an infrastructure for a plug-in hybrid," said Frank. "It's called your extension cord."

I'm still confused by the way we seem to measure the fuel economy of PHEVs. My fear is that the claims of 100mpg and 150mpg might be a little misleading. For example, this guy states that he gets 100mpg or more, which in conventional terms means that a gallon of gas can propel him at least 100 miles. But that isn't really the case, is it? My understanding is that he's probably going something like 50 miles on gasoline and 50 miles on electricity, right? So it's a 50mpg car with EV capability, and for some reason we are counting the EV range toward the fuel economy. To me, that doesn't really seem like the right way to be counting.

It's just semantics, but something that I think ought to be addressed once and for all. We really need to find a clearer way to rate these vehicles, separating efficiency into distinct chemical and grid-power components.

Hi Tim:

___You already know all of this already but for those that do not …

___There certainly is a lot of hype built into a PHEV’s 100 mpg claims. Along with the hype however is the reality that a PHEV traveling ~ 50 miles of every 100 via EV costs the average owner just $0.75 in electricity vs. $3.00 in gasoline to cover the same 50 of 100 miles not under EV. The second benefit is that the electricity consumed was produced from a domestic source which met or exceeded current PZEV emissions standards when considering the SMOG forming effluent produced for the electricity needed to cover those 50 miles of 100 in total vs. the smog related emissions of doing the same while running on 100% gasoline. In terms of GHG’s, the electricity needed for the 50 miles of EV can come from a 100% renewable or non-GHG emitting source. Even if the electricity was created from 100% coal, the CO2 output is slightly less then if it were produced from the consumption of 1 gallon of gasoline.

___Although the upfront costs for a sufficient sized Li-Ion pack and conversion for a 100 mpg PHEV today ($10,000) will in no way pay for itself in fuel savings, it is a stepping stone towards the near future when a sufficiently sized pack and conversion costs < $3,000 and the payback is indeed positive over the life of the automobile. At that point, the PHEV solution becomes not only feasible, it makes perfect sense just as the hybrid premium is feasible today when taking into account Federal, State, and local tax credit(s), HOV lane access, corporate incentive(s), actual fuel savings, and the hybrid’s higher residuals as of late. I am speaking of Prius II’s, TCH’s, FEH’s, and HCH’s, not so much the AH’s, HiHy’s, RXh’s, and GS’s. In reality, it makes even more sense for the larger and less fuel efficient hybrid’s to go PHEV due to the amount of fuel they consume over a lifetime vs. the fuel efficient hybrid’s many here actually own.

___I do not want to get into where all of this transportation based electricity is going to come from because right now, non-peak can support a few thousand PHEV’s attached to the grid at night for a given larger utility. Once beyond a certain point however, the more expensive sources will have to be fired up for longer periods of time and then the numbers start to head south again …

___Good Luck

___Wayne

I would rather see these claims in terms of "kilowatt-hours input
to the car" including that wasted as heat by burning gasoline,
just like the Tour de Sol folks try to calculate every year.
All the press reports NEVER take the "fuel burned elsewhere" hit
into account, and they need to become aware of the "gallons of
gasoline equivalent" [GGE].
.
What I'd like to see as practical plug-in capacity is a modular
approach, in which an owner would have smaller units that could be
hand-carried or wheeled into the house/apartment/whatever and
charged there -- which would help folks without their own parking
places. An owner could choose how many modules to stack on top
of each other based on anticipated trip types and cargo-carrying
needs, and allocate accordingly. I.e. if I'm stuffing 4 people and
their backpacks in and going on a long road trip to go hiking,
I don't need EV capability. If I'm just commuting to work, then
I want a lot of EV capability to try and do all of it without
lighting the ICE. Or something in between. The modules would hook
together bringing power and data-communications into the car,
and the computers would sort out who's got what SOC and how long
it can go and how much recharge/regen any of them want to accept.
All self-contained in each module, including the wall-plug
charging circuitry.
.
_H*

Hi Hobbit:

___When you find some time later on, I would like you to explore our Mileage DBase. I think you will find a few very interesting entry items with regards to a future EV/PHEV user. We currently have data entry for the electricity used and costs as well as displaying it for others to see from the tank data afterwards … Hopefully that would alleviate much of the EV via Grid vs. FE via gasoline question some may have. Tom and I have thought about this knowing full well the EV’ers and PHEV’ers will more then likely be the future but with anything built from scratch and initially released, very rarely is it ever perfect and we know it will need more work once the first EV’er/PHEV’er arrives ;)

___Good Luck

___Wayne