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Hybrids & Diesels - Deals or Duds?
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Comments
As for "environmental benefit", how come you didn't mention an actual emission rating goal? Being vague is how we got in this mess in the first place.
What is the EU equivalent of PZEV?
JOHN
I'd be happy to have one of each in my fleet, hedge my bets on fuel prices and have a great city car (hybrid) and trip car (diesel).
Team up and ask for a diesel-electric hybrid, then I'll sign up for sure.
-juice
Hybrids will unquestionably be the future.
With a battery-pack generation or two beyond the impressive 1250 W/kg currently in Prius (same size, same lifetime durability, yet much higher capacity and lower cost) coupled with a tiny diesel engine, you'd have a system that makes a whole lot of sense. But currently, it quite simply isn't realistic.
There are some that will resist that combination to the bitter end, claiming the non-hybrid diesel somehow makes more sense instead... even though it clearly has shortcomings dealing with emissions and commute driving. When will they learn to embrace the change?
JOHN
Hybrids will unquestionably be the future.
With a battery-pack generation or two beyond the impressive 1250 W/kg currently in Prius (same size, same lifetime durability, yet much higher capacity and lower cost) coupled with a tiny diesel engine, you'd have a system that makes a whole lot of sense. But currently, it quite simply isn't realistic.
There are some that will resist that combination to the bitter end, claiming the non-hybrid diesel somehow makes more sense instead... even though it clearly has shortcomings dealing with emissions and commute driving. When will they learn to embrace the change?
JOHN
I think you are correct. All hybrids really need to become more economical is a change it battery technology to allow them to store more energy with less weight and cost. I think its only a matter of time.
One of the charges levied has always been manufacturing with the "throw away mentality" in mind. This of course has multiples of energy use that is large but unseen or unnoticed. Also the pollution of manufacture is largely ignored. If anything, one of the goals should be to get up the average age of the fleet at 8/8.5 years. Over my own car buying experiences (38 years), the prices of cars has NEVER gone down!!!! In fact, from model year to model year it tends to appreciate 4-6% per year. Of course how the price gets jacked up and seeming "kept affordable" is to come out with new generations faster. Of course the ubiquitous "new model years". In some cases "new model years" have turned out to be every half yearly or six months! They also reprice (almost always higher) by market segment and trim status.
Keep in mind also the real nexus of the gasser/hybrid is two fold 1. to keep a smaller gasser engine a higher % of the time OFF vs a a bigger gasser engine working full time.
It might be illustrative to say a bigger engine might operate 10,000 hours and get 250,000 miles. The hybrid/smaller engine combination might operate 10-15% less or 8500 hrs- 9000 hrs.for the same 250,000 miles. This is at a premium of 7500 dollars. One can see it certainly costs more per mile driven and does not in any way address the average age of the passenger vehicle fleet of 8/8.5 years.
Current battery technology is the limiting factor for hybrid cars. Only the sweet spot from 20% to 80% charged can be used without damaging the NiMH battery. It is kind of like eating the heart out of a watermelon and tossing the rest away. This battery limitation is a good reason for Toyota to resist the move to plugin hybrids. With a plugin hybrid people will want to go as far as possible on battery only. That will mean charging to a higher level and discharging to a lower level. The batteries life would be much shorter than it is, as used in the current hybrids.
If some automaker builds a midsize hybrid car that gets an Honest 70 MPG on biodiesel, it will have the appeal to interest me and I am sure many other skeptics.
So far hybrids have only been able to match diesel mileage. As for emissions that is the governments screw up. If they had not mandated the removal of lead from gasoline where would the gas cars of today been? They should have done the same with diesel years ago. Blaming individuals that want to get better mileage with a diesel car, is lame. Blame the EPA and Congress, they are the ones that get the money from the lobbyist. I do not feel guilty for one second driving a modern diesel car. I buy ULSD from BP/ARCO. If it is not available I would use whatever I can find. I would use biodiesel if it was available.
The natural consequence of unleaded gas distillation is a CERTAIN % of more hydrocarbon rich fuels such as jet fuel and DIESEL. So that I am clear, you can not produce unleaded regular without production of a % of diesel (simplified here for illustrative purposes) Diesel is app 37% more fuel efficient than unleaded gas. As a matter of fact in the early days of say the oil robber barons, the real problem was to find a market for the byproduct (GASOLINE) for even in those days it was more cost effective to use diesel. The majority is opting for the less efficient of the two. As a consequence MORE fuel is USED!!?? So again it is not a stretch to conclude that use of gasser/hybrid combination will in NO way lessen the demand % wise for foreign oil. All you have to do is look at Europe which arguably has way better mpg fuel standards than us. They import a much HIGHER % of foreign oil than even the USA.
That is one of the dirty little secrets of the hybrids. According to Toyota there is a significantly higher amount of pollution in the manufacturing of the Prius over a comparable gas only car. They justify that with less pollution over the life cycle of the two vehicles. My question is how does that add up if the gas only car is also PZEV rated. It would seem to me that the Prius then would have a higher amount of pollution over it's life cycle than say an Accord that has the same SULEV II rating. That mismatch becomes even greater if you recycle the Prius at 100k miles, (as Toyota suggests it's usable life to be). It is not uncommon for the Accord to go an additional 100k miles. How many miles would you have to drive a Prius to pollute less than the ICE only PZEV Accord? Or would you ever pollute less than the PZEV ICE only car?
Where did that bogus claim come from?
The Toyota documentation I have unmistakably states the expectation for the battery-pack is 180,000 miles.
And I already have real-world data of 3 Prius here having exceeded 200,000 miles.
JOHN
I have no concerns with your quote. The expectation for the TDI is 20,000 hours. So if the average speed is 50 mph then the math would indicate 1M miles.
So in theory is is more/less consumptive of energy for the manufacture of one car vs 5.56 cars?
In the northern states, winter beats vehicles up pretty bad. Rust, leaky seals, missing paint, rattles, and a deteriorated interior are evidence of salt, sand, and water damage that drive people to replacement by year 10.
Of course, with the continued advancement of safety features, it's a very hard sell convincing people to not upgrade. Why would I intentionally accept the risk?
JOHN
I always thought it a bit humorous than the same environmental types who advocate social engineering don't like social engineering when they are the ones being "engineered"
Also your post highlights the EXACT point, I was making about the "throw away" mentality.
Why not the Southern states too? They have to run the A/C all summer long. The smaller engine and electric A/C, like that in Prius, clearly offers an advantage under those driving situations too.
> "throw away" mentality
At what point do you draw the line? 15, 20, 25, 50 years?
10 years / 200,000 miles isn't as bad of a goal as you make it out to be... especially when you take into account all the gas-guzzlers now be dumped prematurely due to the cost of gas.
JOHN
both of these tdi's do put out soot clouds when i mash the accelerator & downshift. but when i was in california with the passat, this did not occur. no matter how much i mashed the accelerator, no soot clouds would result. i attributed this to the cleaner california fuel.
i'd look at hybrid cars too, but at this point i'm happier to let others buy them and let the technology proceed via their $ instead of mine for now.
i think that california allowing hybrids in carpool lane increases fuel usage and pollution. but then again, carpool lanes are not supposed to reduce fuel usage & pollution, never have been for that. imho. the reason that allowing hybrids in the carpool lane increases pollution is that hybrids get better mpg in stop & go, worse mpg in open highway cruising. so for lowest fuel usage & lowest pollution, they should be prohibited from the carpool lanes and left in the stop-and-go next to the carpool lanes. YES!
mercedes benz has a research report which shows that for highway-cruising, diesels will *always* get better mpg than gasoline-hybrids. this makes sense to me, using my engineer seat-of-the-pants judgement. i think that 'obviously' a diesel-hybrid would be the 'best of both worlds'. i understand that MBenz has a diesel-hybrid R class, but that for whatever reason it is not available to consumers yet. maybe it will be available in USA after we clean up our diesel fuel. despite my previous mbenz ownership of the least-reliable-new-car i've ever owned , a diesel-hybrid R class would be mighty enticing to me.
"At what point do you draw the line? 15, 20, 25, 50 years?"
You might inquire how old your UPS and FED X trucks are. You also might inquire how old your trucks are (semis are the critical infrastructure of ones economy) the estimated percentage of good/services effected affected by trucks is fully 98%.
Just think of how long a vehicle body would last if it was a composite fiber instead and how incredible the MPG would be due to the reduced weight. Unfortunately, that design doesn't come cheap.
JOHN
A very asute observation!!
The practical effect of car pool is to increase the cost of operation, increase pollution, leave less lanes for effective traffic flow, increase use of fuel. So yes if hybrids do use less fuel in stop and go lanes then that is where they should be confined???!!!! Then you could use the carpool lanes to let a 15 mpg vehicle inch toward 18??
The operative action is graphic punishment for those who for whatever reason do not/can not car pool. However if folks did car pool, the car pool lane would be a rolling parking lot!
Government at all levels is responsible for a large part of bottlenecks. For example I have driven extensively in most of the USA's major cities. So not wanting to pick on Boston, the traffic flow there might humorously be described as a rolling parking lot more accurately a parking lot that rolls.
Also in the vicinity of where I live is one very famous iconic GG BRIDGE and one that is almost as iconic but more of a workhorse bridge BB. How much fuel does it waste from the very simple act of paying the toll? 24/7/365 days a year
So one issue might be if one wants to buy one car at 20k (using your example) why should that one be penalized because someone else wants to buy 5.56 cars at 69,500 dollars?
i'm heading out now to do some highway driving in my 'other car', an australian 6-speed v8 which seems to get at least 23 mpg on the highway. it's incredibly fun to drive!
That is good. My point is several posters on this forum have made it clear they would not keep the Prius past the warranty period. Just to be on the safe side. Are there any links that you would like to post giving particulars on these long lived Prius? That may calm some fears of the longevity of hybrids. Though I believe years are more telling, than miles on a car.
Where did that bogus claim come from?
Toyota claims it, on the same website that they posted the Life Cycle Analysis. That chart was for 100k miles as I recall. I believe Toyota was trying to point out that over 100k miles the Prius would pollute less than one of their comparable ICE only cars. What Toyota did not take into consideration was that many ICE only cars would be PZEV. That kind of negates the emissions advantage of the Prius. I would like to see a LCA of the lower polluting CNG cars to the Prius. As I see it the hybrids can only be the technology of the future, if the pollution from inception to being recycled is less than other comparable cars. That would include cars that have a practical life cycle of 250k miles. High MPG & emissions are not the only criteria for saving our planet. For example how much bunker fuel pollution is spewed into the atmosphere by the cargo ships that brings the Prius from Japan to Long Beach CA? Cargo ships are the biggest polluters in the Los Angeles basin.
I did not buy the extended warranty as a precaution. I would hope you feel good about your purchase, for it comes at a substantial premium to other Toyota's or Honda' s gassers only. The good news is Toyota is reputed to be selling this at less than the usual mark ups (other gassers that is) and while they have not confirmed it, reputed to be actually losing money per unit sale.
The truth is almost ANY European model you find in the USA has a DIESEL counterpart (in Europe) but is not allowed into the country. So the country is indeed allowing the European gas guzzlers into the USA market but indeed is keeping the fuel sippers OUT.
Indeed Honda has a CTDI. It is a wonderful package with I think 150 hp and 255# ft of torque. Again Honda's lunch is being eaten in Europe so it hopes to have diesels sales fully 45 % of its total European auto sales. Toyota has also for years has been selling diesels.
but seriously, jmess, leave your armchair psychoanalysis for some other forum.
modern diesel car exhaust smells like water vapor.
i purposely follow volksy TDIs to reassure myself of how nonstinky my tdi is.
Could it be that the diesels won't actually meet that criteria, which gas hybrids already do, for many years still? Perhaps we have to wait all the way until 2020, the scope of that paper, before diesel finally delivers what gas already does.
Reducing emissions is a goal that simply cannot be taken lightly. Modest changes are just barely enough to keep smog from getting worse, as drive time & distance continues to increase as the population grows. That SULEV (tier 2) rating is a very important minimum, since what we create now will still be used for many years to come.
JOHN
I agree with you. The big question is where does the pollution originate. I think you may have missed the point of the study. Cars that run on diesel are an insignificant part of the pollution. As far as the EPA ratings. I took my new Passat TDI to the local CA smog test station. They have no way to test it. That tells me they are not worried about it, or there is not enough emissions to test. Both Ford & DCC claim they have cars that will pass CARB emission requirements. You don't seem to want to acknowledge that possibility. I at least acknowledge a place for any technology that uses less fossil fuel. My preference is home grown organic fuel. That leaves out any current hybrid car sold in the US. Only diesels can run on 100% organic fuel.
While off-road Diesel engines make the greatest contribution to statewide NOx
emissions, it should be noted that that source category includes commercial marine vessels, which are largely unregulated. In addition, most off-road Diesel engines will also be required to comply with the NOx emissions standards similar in stringency to those that apply to on-road Diesels, which will be phased in starting at the end of this decade. While those standards will lead to some reduction in non-road NOx emissions by 2020, the full magnitude of the reductions associated with those standards will not be realized until sometime later due to the long life of Diesel engines and the time required for the replacement of all existing engines.
http://www.sierraresearch.com/Reports/default.htm
49.2 MPG is the lifetime average for my Prius, using 10% ethanol.
That's hardly a penalty. And the horsepower gain is nothing to complain about.
> You can go to different states and get gasoline that has very high sulfur content.
No true, anymore. The mandate deadline for low-sulfur gas in all 50 states is just 3.5 months from now, which means many have already become cleaner.
JOHN
I've seen reliability issues even with relatively low miles with the TDI engine, so I doubt most of them will make it past 200k. 150k, even.
-juice
You might have gotten closer to the EPA 55 MPG without the ethanol. I believe Prius owners on this forum have commented on getting higher mileage with non-ethanol gas bought across the CA border in NV.
Too bad the EPA wasn't as aggressive about removing the sulfur from diesel. How much pollution does one big semi put out compared to a VW TDI? How many semi trucks on the road? How many tractors in the fields? How much earth moving equipment, How many trains with that long black stream of smoke trailing behind? The problem is NOT diesel cars.
-juice
The funny thing is that spark ignition (SI) engines dump more sulfur into the air because there are more of them. Another interesting point that struck me is that SI fuels have to be blended/refined differently for different parts of the country and differently for different seasons. That is not cheap to do.
As for ethanol (ETOH), it to is not cheap to produce and it's production is heavily subsidized by Washington D.C. to make it competitive. Also, ETOH has other issues. It can hasten the the demise of seals (yes there has been testing and the newer materials are a little better) and being a good solvent, pickup trash in the gas tank and clog the fuel filter.
As for sulfur dioxide pollution, until all sulfur levels in motor fuel are reduced, SI engines will continue to dump more of this pollutant in the air than compression ignition (CI) engines. There are many more SI engines than CI engines in passenger cars in the U.S.
Not here in SoCal, we don't rust out. It is very common to see really old cars, especially diesels, with the body in very good condition.
It will be interesting to see where this whole battery technology issue goes. Lithium Ion batteries were available when the Prius II was being designed, but they were not used. Why? They don't hold the charging capabilities as well, even though they pack more battery power per pound (especially Lithium Polymer). Over time, they lose the capability to hold a charge. And they are more expensive.
I have not seen newer battery technology on the horizon, but then I am not looking for it. Anyone out there seen anything on newer battery tech?
-juice
Yes, we do need to explore alternate forms of energy, but put the effort into VIABLE, USABLE, SENSIBLE options. Not movie star hyped electric cars, no use at all to 99.99% of the public. Hybrids, you can save, they say, $300 over the life of the car, now that really is saving a lot, don't you think.
When I see gas stations being converted to whatever fueling stations by the oil companies ( who do have the money after all) then I will worry about a shortage, until then I won't. They project 20+ years into the future.
Whatever fuel for mass transit comes next (Natural gas/propane, better tell people they can't park in the garage anymore. Electric, well what can I say, a 100 mile trip turns into an overnight stay. Hybrids, heard the joke about "HOW much does battery cost?) it had better be easy to use, take no more than 10 minutes to refill/recharge, require no special talents eg: twist this, turn that, lock this, by the way you have to wear special gloves and or clothing AND be equivalent in range to a tankful today, say around 400 miles oh and by the way, be within 15% of todays price of gas, then it will succeed. If it is anything other than the above, it will only survive as a black hole for research dollars, nothing more.
Just my thoughts, folks.
http://www.king5.com/sharedcontent/northwest/drivingnw/stories/NW_091705DNWhighlanderEL.64- 2e87be.html
By TOM VOELK / Special contributor to NWCN.com
Later, over a legendary pepper cheeseburger and handmade onion rings at The Pickwick, I try to come to grips with a few things. First, I’ve shortened my life by a year eating this deep fried burger (it’s worth it though). The second is the hybrid’s price. With the navigation system option the front drive Highlander Hybrid Limited just breaks the $40,000 threshold. If you want 4-wheel drive, tack on $1,400. The lowest price Highlander Hybrid comes in at $33,600 with destination.
Using the math I learned at East High School down the road I try to determine if the Hybrid Synergy Drive system is worth the extra cash. Comparing similarly equipped Limited models comes up with a $5,600 price difference. This gap grows assuming you can deal on plentiful standard models but not on the rare hybrids. The standard Highlander V-6 gets around 19 MPG, the hybrid 26 or so. Even with gas at $3.00, the math doesn’t support paying the hybrid’s premium.
Math doesn’t give the whole picture though. For some, the emotional “green” environmental edge this gas electric vehicle holds is worth at least a few thousand dollars. Others like knowing the neighbors will look on in envy as they proudly show off this high-tech wonder. Considering there’s only a slightly revised front bumper and a small badge on the trunk announcing your respect for planet Earth (and thinner wallet), you’ll have to point it out.
Let’s also remember that under the skin, this SUV is the same as the Lexus 400h hybrid. The fancy pants Lexus only seats five and costs $50,000 similarly equipped. Looking at it this way, the Highlander Hybrid suddenly seems like a bargain.
Wonderful engines when new. Thats it. The CI engine works its best at steady state load, at its hp/torque optimum, which for most "real" trucks is around 2300 rpm.
Here come the diesels, "better mileage, more power than gas" boy what a way to sell high margin product.
Little secret, diesel components that are cast like gas engines, just don't last. niether do the injectors when you run 30,000 psi through them. Start up cold, go to store, shut off before spool down. Heat soak, come out of store, start up, travel to mall, shut down, no spool down, heat soak. The Duramax engine was "designed" to have a life of 500,000 miles. A few acheive it. The rest are sold asap. Same for Cat and Cummins.
As far as car pool lanes go, any of you who drive the 91 in SoCal know they call them, after conversion to Toll Roads (Fastrac) the Lexus lanes. If anybody had the gumption to figure out that if you can't get the traffic off the freeway at destination, delivering more to that point faster is utter stupidity. But, if one took all the cars sitting on the freeway, idling, and did the math, then converting the Car pool lane to a regular lane would save a huge amount of fuel and manhours.
But that takes sense, something that seems to be lacking. Only $$ count anymore.
I got some big plastic barrels if it comes to using cooking oil from KFC. I don't look forward to that. Just like to be prepared. Engines were much simpler back during WW2.