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razzle
Member Since: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Tas
Posts: 170
  
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| Hybrid technology- A lemon in the making? |
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Just reading the Weekend Australian, in particular articles about the governments financial backing of the development of the Toyota Hybrid in Australia.
I tend to agree with an academic on ABC TV this week, who suggested that the government (the largest vehicle fleet buyer in Australia) should insist, that by 2010 all Government fleet cars must be capable of (lets say)8km/100 combined cycle for example.
It would be then up to the manufactures to deliver a product as opposed to the government taking a punt on a particular technology.
I think CNG and Diesel powered engines are they way of the future for Australia, as Australia is self sufficient in NG for the next 100 years and Diesel is more efficient than petrol and it does not require expensive batteries to be replaced after 5 years.
I also just read that a Diesel BMW 5 series won a fuel economy race with a Toyota Prius,
“The two Vehicles drove from London to Geneva using motorways and crowded city roads†The Prius achieved 5.9 lt/100km, BMW 5.6 lt/100km. Trust me, what could go wrong?
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 14th Jun 2008 12:53 pm |
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Ocsid
Member Since: 29 Nov 2005
Location: Hampshire
Posts: 255
  
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As the hybrids are so environmentally "Green" why do we see so so few Hybrid technology trucks, lorries and semi's?
Just maybe because they simply are not environmentally that good other than in a stop start, slow and accelerate situation. Elsewhere the added weight of the batteries and supporting additional equipment is nothing but a burden using up more fuel to carry it .
The worlds genuine environmental needs will never be solved with all the part truths and miss information spewing from governments and gleefully pumped out by the media. Only scientist and engineers have any chance of coming up with the technology to crack this one and they don't need the misdirection and technically unsound "directives" of the ignorant.
Now I feel better!
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| 14th Jun 2008 4:28 pm |
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drivesafe
Member Since: 23 Feb 2006
Location: Gold Coast, Australia
Posts: 867
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Some time back now, Gold Coast Council bought two of the Toyota hybrids to evaluate, with the intentions of making the councils car fleet “Greener†by replacing all it’s cars with the hybrids.
Just like you pointed out Ocsid, there was lots of media hype at the time, but about 6 months later when the council announced it was sticking with it’s conventional car fleet, very little media coverage was given to this or the reasons why they had decided to give the Toyota hybrids the flick.
I wonder if this is because Toyota spends so much money on advertising and the media didn’t want to upset a cash cow? 2008 TDV8 RR Lux + 2009 D4 2.7
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| 14th Jun 2008 9:19 pm |
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SKP
Member Since: 07 Feb 2007
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 219
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A Friend of mine has a Prius and in the first 1000 kms it cost her $32 for fuel.
So on a recent trip to Bussellton WA (240kms south of Perth) to visit my son, I hired one from Hertz, at a cost of $400 fror 10 days. (v. a Camry at $480)
I wasn't a fan of the Prius afte reading all the "hype" on this site and others, but I was pleasantly surprised on driving it. 
A bit slow off the mark from traffic lights, but when I "planted it" on the open hwy south of Perth to pass a car & caravan that was sitting on 80 kph. the Prius took off, much faster than my TDV6, in fact, when I pulled in front of the van I was doing 157 kph   (The Prius electric motor puts out 400 nm)
I covered just over 1000kms in mostly country driving and averaged 5 L /100kms (driving it as I would my D3, that would be returning just under 10 L/100 in similar driving)
Would I buy one, NOT at the current price of (I think) $57 000 for the delux version 
According to the handbook the batteries are warranted for 7 years, so the battery life wouldn't be a problem for me.
For the money I would rather have a BMW 320 for just a bit more outlay (however I will stick with my D3)
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| 15th Jun 2008 5:47 am |
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Andy V6SE
Member Since: 01 Oct 2006
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 46
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My friend also joined the hype and purchased a Prius after watching "The Inconvenient Truth".
He drove for about a year then switched to a Saab 9-5, when I ask him about the new car, he simply replied "Now I feel like driving."
Last edited by Andy V6SE on 16th Jun 2008 11:53 am. Edited 1 time in total
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| 15th Jun 2008 7:56 am |
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Aedo
Member Since: 22 Nov 2007
Location: Perth
Posts: 39
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Ocsid wrote:As the hybrids are so environmentally "Green" why do we see so so few Hybrid technology trucks, lorries and semi's?
Just maybe because they simply are not environmentally that good other than in a stop start, slow and accelerate situation. Elsewhere the added weight of the batteries and supporting additional equipment is nothing but a burden using up more fuel to carry it .
The worlds genuine environmental needs will never be solved with all the part truths and miss information spewing from governments and gleefully pumped out by the media. Only scientist and engineers have any chance of coming up with the technology to crack this one and they don't need the misdirection and technically unsound "directives" of the ignorant.
Now I feel better!
Nailed in one! Hybrids only work by recovering the braking energy which is otherwise lost as heat. In a steady state situation the hybrid component is simply payload. hybrids should make good taxis etc but are heavy and complicated. You have to hand it to Toyota though on marketing - look how popular the awkward blob (Prious  ) is!
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| 16th Jun 2008 6:17 am |
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Pelyma
Member Since: 06 Jan 2005
Location: Patching, Sussex
Posts: 15496
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This seems a much better idea http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7456141.stm DS3 TDV6 HSE - Silver with Alpaca (old one) Gone
DS3 TDV6 HSE- Silver with Alpaca (new one) Gone
D4 HSE Lux - Montalcino Red Gone
Porsche Cayenne V8 Diesel S
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| 16th Jun 2008 7:51 am |
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NHR
Member Since: 13 Dec 2007
Location: Warsaw
Posts: 923
 
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Agreed. The fuel cell technology looks the better long term bet.
Which all goes to show that technolgy is able to solve problems and we don't need to return to the the "Year Zero" mentality of the Greens and Pol Pot!
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| 16th Jun 2008 9:19 am |
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drivesafe
Member Since: 23 Feb 2006
Location: Gold Coast, Australia
Posts: 867
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There's a lot of development needed before fuel cells become inexpensively available in the average car but fuel cells are looking like one of the best options and the single biggest boost to their on going and accelerated development is the the high cost of fossil fuel.
Should the price of fossil fuel fall in the short term, this and other alternate fuel developments will simply be shelved, so although it may seem daft it is in all our best interests in the long run, that fossil fuel stays high and for a long time.
Another development being work on by the CSIRO is a new duel cell storage battery where part of the battery is made up of conventional construction for a battery and the other part is made up as an ultra high capacity storage capacitor.
This new battery would have some major advantages over a normal battery in both reduced weight and short period high current availability, such as during acceleration.
Lot of options being developed, lets hope they actually get there with some of them before the Arabs wake up and lower fuel prices. 2008 TDV8 RR Lux + 2009 D4 2.7
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| 16th Jun 2008 11:10 pm |
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norraban
Member Since: 17 Jun 2008
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 3
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Guys,
I'm with you on this too, as this may have just been a very clever marketing exercise by Toyota with total disregard for the best interests of the planet. There is an interesting site on the Web by a market research company called "CNW" in Oregon in North America who publish "Dust To Dust" reports on all cars sold in North America. "Dust to Dust" reports are devised to calculate the "Whole of life environmental costs" for each and every car type, but the Prius Hybrid tops this list as the most expensive to build, own, maitain, recycle and dispose of by a city mile.
Cost per "lifetime mile" for the Prius - US$3.29
Cost per "lifetime mile" for the Hummer - US$1.95
Enclosed below is a post commentary on this report by the predisent of the "60 Plus Association" in Virginia.
Commentary
Hidden cost of driving a Prius
Totaling all the energy expended, from design to
junkyard, a Hummer may be a better bargain.
By James L. Martin
When it comes to protecting the environment, senior citizens should concentrate more on
the total energy consumed in building and operating a car than its fuel efficiency - no
matter how impressive the statistics appear on the window sticker at the showroom.
A prime example is Toyota's Prius, a compact hybrid that's beloved by ardent
environmentalists and that fetches premium prices because it gets nearly 50 miles-pergallon
in combined highway/city driving.
Yet, new data have emerged that show the Prius may not be quite as eco-friendly as first
assumed - if you pencil in the environmental negatives of producing it in the first place.
Like most hybrids, the Prius relies on two engines - one, a conventional 76-horsepower
gasoline power plant, and a second, battery-powered, that kicks in 67 more horses. Most
of the gas is consumed as the car goes from 0 to 30, according to alarmed Canadian
environmentalists, who say Toyota's touting of the car's green appeal leaves out a few
pertinent and disturbing facts.
The nickel for the battery, for instance, is mined in Sudbury, Ontario, and smelted at
nearby Nickel Centre, just north of the province's massive Georgian Bay.
Toyota buys about 1,000 tons of nickel from the facility each year, ships the nickel to
Wales for refining, then to China, where it's manufactured into nickel foam, and then
onto Toyota's battery plant in Japan.
That alone creates a globe-trotting trail of carbon emissions that ought to seriously
concern everyone involved in the fight against global warming. All told, the start-tofinish
journey travels more than 10,000 miles - mostly by container ship, but also by
diesel locomotive.
But it's not just the clouds of greenhouse gases generated by all that smelting, refining,
manufacturing and transporting that worries green activists. The 1,250-foot-tall
smokestack that spews huge puffs of sulphur dioxide at the Sudbury mine and smelter
operation has left a large swath of the surrounding area looking like a surrealistic scene
from the depths of hell.
On the perimeter of the area, skeletons of trees and bushes stand like ghostly sentinels
guarding a sprawling wasteland. Astronauts in training for NASA actually have practiced
driving moon buggies on the suburban Sudbury tract because it's considered a duplicate
of the Moon's landscape.
"The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants, and the soil slid
down off the hillside," David Martin, Greenpeace's energy coordinator in Canada, told
the London Daily Mail.
"The solution they came up with was the Superstack. The idea was to dilute pollution, but
all it did was spread the fallout across northern Ontario," Martin told the British
newspaper, adding that Sudbury remains "a major environmental and health problem.
The environmental cost of producing that car battery is pretty high."
A "Dust to Dust" study by CNW Marketing Research of Bandon, Ore., shows the overall
eco-costs of automotive hybrids may be even higher.
Released last December, the study tabulated all data on the energy necessary to plan,
build, sell, drive and dispose of a vehicle from drawing board to junkyard, including such
items as plant-to-dealer fuel costs, distances driven, electricity usage per pound of
material in each vehicle, and hundreds of other variables.
To put the data into understandable terms for consumers, CNW translated it into a
"dollars per lifetime mile" figure, or the energy cost per mile driven. When looked at
from that perspective, the Prius and other hybrids quickly morphed from fuel-sippers into
energy-guzzlers.
The Prius registered an energy-cost average of $3.25 per mile driven over its expected
life span of 100,000 miles. Ironically, a Hummer, the brooding giant that has become the
bête noir of the green movement, did much better, with an energy-cost average of $1.95
over its expected life span of 300,000 miles. And its crash protection makes it far safer
than the tiny Prius.
Such information should be of major concern to senior citizens - especially those on a
fixed budget.
If seniors need a small gas-sipping car for city travel, however, the undisputed champion
is Toyota's own gasoline-powered subcompact, the Scion xB, whose energy cost
averaged a negligible 48 cents for each mile traveled over its lifetime.
Fully armed with all the facts, seniors may want to zip down to their nearest Toyota
dealer and trade in their Priuses for Scion xBs. That would be the equivalent of reducing
their energy footprint from a size 24D to about a size 5A. In the case of global warming,
one small step for man may turn out to be a giant leap for mankind.
James L. Martin (JMartin@60plus.org) is president of the 60 Plus Association, a national nonpartisan
senior citizen organization based in Arlington, Va. Norraban
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| 17th Jun 2008 2:58 am |
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Aedo
Member Since: 22 Nov 2007
Location: Perth
Posts: 39
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| Re: Petrol/Electric Hybids |
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NHR wrote:Agreed. The fuel cell technology looks the better long term bet.
Which all goes to show that technolgy is able to solve problems and we don't need to return to the the "Year Zero" mentality of the Greens and Pol Pot!
Afraid I don't agree. Fuel cells are great things (worked for a fuel cell company for 5yrs so know something about them) but not ideally suited to vehicle applications IMHO. The biggest issue is of course hydrogen (and not because of the hindenberg factor!). Hydrogen is simply not a fuel - it is an energy storage mechanism just like a battery - it needs significant energy input to make hydrogen then compress it for automotive (or any other) use. It is much less efficient than batteries!
The only upside to hydrogen for vehicle use is that it can be refuelled quickly in a similar way to petrol - the same cannot be said for batteries.
norraban wrote:...Cost per "lifetime mile" for the Prius - US$3.29
Cost per "lifetime mile" for the Hummer - US$1.95
...
...
The Prius registered an energy-cost average of $3.25 per mile driven over its expected
life span of 100,000 miles. Ironically, a Hummer, the brooding giant that has become the
bête noir of the green movement, did much better, with an energy-cost average of $1.95
over its expected life span of 300,000 miles. And its crash protection makes it far safer
than the tiny Prius.
...
While good to look at the whole product I am a bit skeptical that the Prius will be scrapped at 100k miles and while the Hummer will soldier on for 300k - seems an arbitrary decision which clearly overrides other factors.
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| 17th Jun 2008 9:43 am |
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NHR
Member Since: 13 Dec 2007
Location: Warsaw
Posts: 923
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Corrected by an expert which does support my second point - prefer the experts to Greens any day 
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| 17th Jun 2008 10:14 am |
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Rob Bruce
Member Since: 18 Jun 2006
Location: Canberra
Posts: 687
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Hybids, apart from the polution in manafacture, polution from fossel fuel, what about the polution from the coal fired power station that produces electricity to plug into the batterys.
Just doesent add up.
Short term keeping cars longer also saves the enviroment by not having to polute in manafacture.
How long do you have to run a new enviromently fendly car to offset the polution of manafactureing it ?
Well maintaned older cars may be better for the enviroment but not better for the pockets of manafactures.
Oh well ducking my head now to dodge incoming flack
Rob
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| 17th Jun 2008 10:29 am |
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Desert Traveller
Member Since: 06 Aug 2006
Location: The Gabba - QLD
Posts: 420
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IMHO.
There are 2 issues here. Global Warming (Climate Change) and the finite reserves of oil. GW is mainly caused by industrial activity (and power generation).
Oil. From any given barrel what is the most efficient use of oil (for transporting tonne/kilometre)? Making diesel, petrol or a combination.
As Bruce commented, should people be encouraged to keep older vehicles up to a point to save the energy cost of manufacturing new vehicles?
These view points will upset the status quo. 06 TDV6 SE with many LR and after-market extras. Used only on weekends and trips out west.
Audi TT Roadster (Daily and around town drive)
VW Eos TDI For Sale
Previously 01 TD5 and 94 TDI
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| 17th Jun 2008 10:31 pm |
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Aedo
Member Since: 22 Nov 2007
Location: Perth
Posts: 39
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Rob Bruce wrote:Hybids, apart from the polution in manafacture, polution from fossel fuel, what about the polution from the coal fired power station that produces electricity to plug into the batterys.
Just doesent add up.
Short term keeping cars longer also saves the enviroment by not having to polute in manafacture.
How long do you have to run a new enviromently fendly car to offset the polution of manafactureing it ?
Well maintaned older cars may be better for the enviroment but not better for the pockets of manafactures.
Oh well ducking my head now to dodge incoming flack
Rob
No flack required from me for that post!! See my avatar for an environmentally friendly car in terms of manufacture - most components were from wreckers so reused - even better than recycled 
Keeping cars longer is clearly a good solution and as demonstrated can even make a Hummer look good 
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| 18th Jun 2008 1:54 am |
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