Welcome to West Ho Chi Minh City.
Posted on 04/16/2006 10:16:07 PM PDT by neverdem
IF you make your way over to the Javits Convention Center for the New York International Automobile Show — or if you've gone to any auto show in the last year or so — you'll know that hybrid cars are the hippest automotive fashion statement to come along in years. They've become synonymous with the worthy goal of reducing gasoline consumption and dependence on foreign oil and all that this means for a better environment and more stable geopolitics.
And yet like fat-free desserts, which sound healthy but can still make you fat, the hybrid car can make people feel as if they're doing something good, even when they're doing nothing special at all. As consumers and governments at every level climb onto the hybrid bandwagon, there is the very real danger of elevating the technology at the expense of the intended outcome — saving gas.
Few things these days say "environmentally aware consumer" so loudly as the fuel-sipping Toyota Prius. With its two power sources — one a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine, the other a battery-driven electric motor — the best-selling Prius (and other hybrids sold by Honda and Ford and due soon from several other car makers) can go further on a gallon and emit fewer pollutants in around-town use than most conventional automobiles because under certain circumstances they run on battery power and consume less fuel. For this reason, federal, state and local governments have been bending over backward to encourage the sale of hybrids, with a bewildering array of tax breaks, traffic lanes and parking spaces dedicated to hybrid owners.
But just because a car has so-called hybrid technology doesn't mean it's doing more to help the environment or to reduce the country's dependence on imported oil any more than a nonhybrid car. The truth is...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You're more likely to die in a small car, especially in a totalled hybrid - the firemen don't want to touch the thing for fear they'll get electrocuted, and in the meantime, you bleed out. Same thing for truly small cars, like Geo Metros or Honda CRX HFs. Down here, they get so badly wadded that the occupants quite often bleed out before they can cut the wreckage apart to get to them.
With modern safety gear, the chances of motorcycle rider death have been greatly reduced.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
What an enormous waste of money
$250/yr, full coverage on a liter bike.
What does a Prius cost to insure per year, again?
Mine doesn't preclude me from that - it does, however, not apply if I, say, ride without a helmet.
This is just an anecdotal story, believe it or not. My friend in SLC has a friend who runs his electric battery powered bike with a MEG(taps into space energy, supposedly 2/3rds of the universe)as a regenerator-on-the-fly. He doesn't pay anything for transportation fuel, how much with hybrids or whatnot, do you pay? Don't believe it? Ok, fine...and big oil...smiles...
<< ... a major problem with the way people are using hybrids - that they are using the brakes rather than letting the energy be reabsorbed and stored ... >>
An even bigger problem is that they are redundant.
Hybrids are a socialists' response to the absoluite absence of any demand worthy of the use of the word.
If folks really gave a darn about gas economy, Europe's incredibly energy-efficient 65MPG modern diesels would be the way to go. And they're WAY better looking.
"Hybrids are a socialists' response to the absoluite absence of any demand worthy of the use of the word.
If folks really gave a darn about gas economy, Europe's incredibly energy-efficient 65MPG modern diesels would be the way to go. And they're WAY better looking."
Well, over the long run, recovering braking energy is a good idea.
But government subsidies to lower the price when the technology won't pay for itself is another sotry.
Welcome to West Ho Chi Minh City.
I thought I read the hybrid sales figures are declining this spring. They're a hokey, Rube Goldberg non-solution to the energy debate and pretty much the darling of the Leftists.
I think the physicist is mistaken. Most hybrid vehicles have regenerative braking. Some of the braking energy is used to recharge the batteries. The brakes must be applied to enable the feature. However, the recharging feature is very inefficient, for various reasons, and only a fraction of the braking energy is actually restored to the batteries. If you simply coast down to stop, a hybrid technology vehicle has no inherent fuel saving advantages over a conventionally powered vehicle (unless the engine is shut down during the coast down).
Hmmm sure does look like you are right with a quick search
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-car3.htm
Bearden is a quack. He's been pushing that nonsense MEG for at least 15 years. Get the name of your friend of a friend. I'll pay him $10,000 tomorrow to prove his technology to me.
Nope. First I'd heard of this.
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