The top 10 Hybrid myths (Autos alert)

Business Week ^ | 2/12/06 | B Berman

[voletti]

With more of the gas-electric cars on the road, it's time to dispel some of the misinformation surrounding these alternative vehicles

Five years ago hybrid cars were an unknown commodity. Today vehicles powered by a combination of gasoline and electricity are all the rage. Like any new technology, until you get your hands on it -- in this case, on the steering wheel -- it's hard to get your mind around it.

If you are having a tough time separating hybrid truth from reality, you're not alone. The warp-speed adoption of hybrids into popular culture -- and into hundreds of thousands of American driveways -- has produced more than a little confusion and misinformation. Most industry analysts predict the continued growth of gas-electric vehicles, with estimates ranging from 600,000 to 1,000,000 hybrid sales in the U.S. by 2010, so this is a good time to debunk the 10 most prevalent myths about hybrid cars.

1. You need to plug in a hybrid car. As soon as the word "electricity" is spoken, you think of plugs, cords, and wall sockets. But today's hybrid cars don't need to be plugged in. Auto engineers have developed an ingenious system known as regenerative braking. (Actually, they borrowed the concept from locomotive technology.) Energy usually lost when a vehicle is slowing down or stopping is reclaimed and routed to the hybrid's rechargeable batteries. The process is automatic, so no special requirements are placed on the driver.

Car companies explain that drivers don't have to plug in their vehicles, but a growing number of them wish they had a plug-in hybrid. The ability to connect a hybrid into the electric grid overnight to charge a larger set of batteries means that most of your city driving could be done without burning a single drop of gasoline.

[Psycho_Bunny]

6. Hybrids are small and underpowered.
The Honda (HMC ) Accord hybrid is the fastest family sedan on the market.

My mother picked up the Accord hybrid....I'm here to tell you, that thing lays down rubber.

Seriously. 

[HP8753]

I wonder what their towing capacity is:

35lbs tongue weight,150 lbs towing weight. :-(

[Jeff Chandler]

That's one slick golf cart!

[decal]

"That's one slick golf cart!"

Aye, it's not much bigger than one - but that's all right, too, for these vehicles aren't intended for other than commuting.

Don't know about the van and pickup, though, let alone the BUS.

[fix]

Considering the fact that the article attempts to do just that, and folks are totally disregarding the information presented and repeating what they've heard elsewhere, there's not much point in trying. For cripe's sake, there are folks still talking about plugging the cars into their houses when the first myth addressed in the article is exactly that!!! I think it's a case of people having a kneejerk default conservative reaction to anything (oh the irony!!!) that conserves fuel. It seems the current trend is to roundly castigate anyone who dares to get more than 10 miles to the gallon, as if driving gas guzzlers has become a litmus test for one's political leanings and people are afraid to be branded as a tree hugger for driving an efficient car. You can't have a rational discussion under these circumstances.

[HamiltonJay]

No Deisels don't have zero emissions, and neither do Hybrids. You get the same mileage or better mileage from TDI and advanced deisel... you use less resources to build them, and you don't have all the chemicals and waste involved with the manufacture and disposal of batteries and other motors like you have with a Hybrid.

Facts are simple, Deisel is a better solution, less impacting on the environment and to top it all off cheaper... those are the facts. But hey, when do tree huggers worry about facts?

[No.6]

You've got it; thanks to the 'watermelon' cheerleading for hybrids, the topic of hybrids is not debated on its own merits but on its political taint.

I like diesels. I like hybrids. I'd like hybrid diesels, maybe even "hydraulid hybrids."

Anything that flips the bird to Chavez, the Saudis and Armeni-jihad :) is good tech to me. I don't particularly give a rat's 6 what some loon in a ratty tie-die thinks, even if he happens to agree.

[Eagles Talon IV]

I don't see where that matters. The test is how many mpg does the hybrid get in under the conditions tested. You or i needn't know nor should we care about the battery's level of charge before during or after the trip.

[Lx]

The new renesis rotary has its exhaust ports in the side housing so unburned hydrocarbons aren't swept out the old peripheral exhaust port like they used to and are swept into the next combustion chamber. It's also supposed to improve mileage as well.

[Inyo-Mono]

So what is the real MPG for hybrids?

A friend of mine just returned from a cross country trip in a Ford Escape hybrid. He told me that he averaged 28 MPG. That's 5 MPG less than my standard 4 cylinder Toyota sedan gets.

[Osage Orange]

I've owned 54 thus far in my lifetime.

WOW!!

[DBrow]

The article is a public relations piece, propaganda, if you will. It is attempting to change the public's attitudes toward hybrids, trying to make them more acceptable.

Lots of people don't trust industry public relations releases, based on past history.

Chesterfield cigarettes used to be endorsed by physicians, for example. Bacon was touted as health food by Beech Nut Packing Company. There were lots of misconceptions about microwave ovens that were handled with a similar PR campaign.

So what you are seeing is the reaction to what could be a misleading set of "facts". If someone in the hybrid car industry claims 60 MPG but nobody actually gets that, and there are questions about test methods, then people will scrutinize other claims that are being made as well.

If you work the numbers, the hybrids save a gallon per day if your drive to/from work is 40 miles, and some folks then question whether a hybrid is worth the extra cost, and the risks of not knowing all of the maintenance factors (since the technology is new), just to save one gallon.

Questions about disposal or replacement of the battery pack are certainly legitimate, and being told that "gosh, we never have replaced one yet" is not that reassuring- it's a way of dodging the question without quite saying "we just don't know".

I think that once the skeptics friends drive hybrid cars, that direct contact will shift attitudes. I don't think we are seeing a knee-jerk reaction to conservation efforts, but rather a skeptical look at a new technology and the propaganda promoting it.

[fix]

None of that explains away the fact that posters here discussing myth #1 as if it were fact rather than myth. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to find out for yourself that the Prius and the Escape don't have to be plugged into your house to charge overnight. So perhaps I should amend my original statement a bit...

The willful ignorance on this thread is astounding.

Better?

[DBrow]

Several people were wishing they could plug it in, thinking they'd save more money- what's wrong with that?

Prius and Escape don't offer even the optiont to charge the batteries with house current, and they wanted to.

I don't see that as ignorance, but rather exploring possibilities. I even calculated some of the economics of using wall current, and someone else figured out end to end efficiencies.

[eraser2005]

Gas engines are anywhere from 15-30% efficient, with most around 20-25.

Electric are as high as 90%, but you do have to consider charging losses (if you're comparing to a non-hybrid, you do get some of this back through regenerative braking).

So for a gallon of gas, you're only getting about 9 kWh of useful work. Even if charging results in 50% loss (its not this bad), you'll need 20 kWh of electricity for the same useful work. That's $2 for the equivalent of 1 gallon of gas. Since you can get charging up to 80% efficient relatively easily, you're looking at ~$1.25 in electricity for 1 gallon of gas equivalent.

[eraser2005]

The price premium is more like $3-4000, depending on the vehicle, not $10k. Most aren't meeting their MPG ratings, sure, but most conventional vehicles don't, either.

Of those I know who own hybrids, 43 mpg combined out of a Civic or 1st gen Prius is reasonable, with 45-47 out of a 2nd gen Prius (even though it is larger). Those with Escapes are getting around 30-32 combined, about 34 in the city (almost exactly the EPA rating).

[eraser2005]

The tax break WAS a deduction. With new tax law, though, it is now a credit.

[NCLaw441]

DOH!! I bought mine in 11/04 and only got the deduction. Then again, I have driven about 43K miles since then, averaging just under 49 MPG.

[eraser2005]

If gasoline has 37 KWH/gallon and electricity costs 10c/KWH, then the equivalent cost of electricity is $3.70/gallon. The site you linked assumes the equivalence to be $1.00. It looks like you don't gain much by plugging them in to charge, in fact you lose, since the juice costs more than the equivalent gas.

What you're missing is the efficiency of the engine. A gas engine is VERY inefficient in comparison to an electric motor. You'll be lucky to get 25% of the energy in a gallon of gas turned into useful work, whereas you should easily get at least 67% of the energy from electricity. That means that for 10 kWh of useful work, you're paying for about 1.1 gallons of gas or 15 kWh or electricity. That's $2.63 in gas at today's price, or $1.50 in electricity.

[eraser2005]

No, but if EVERY vehicle was hybrid and fuel economy went from 20 to 40, it would drop consumption from 400 million gallons to 200 million gallons. Thats about 5 million barrels of imported oil per day, or almost half of all imported oil.....