Posted on 07/18/2006 12:05:31 PM PDT by LouAvul
If you're fed up with paying high gas prices, Hybrid Technologies says it has a solution for you.
The company is out with an "electric smart car" that runs on a lithium battery.
The company's co-founder, Richard Griffiths, pointed out to The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler Tuesday that that's the same type of battery you'll find in cell phones, PDAs, computers, "pretty much anything we use now that's a portable electronic device."
Griffiths showed Syler how you simply plug the car in, literally, to a conventional 110 volt outlet.
"If you completely drain the battery," Griffiths said to Syler, "it's like your cell phone, if you drain the battery, a full charge is five to six hours. Normally, people won't drain the entire battery, so maybe one to two hours at night. Basically, it's like, 'Honey, did you take out the garbage and plug in the car?' It's kind of a new way of thinking. It's a plug-in hybrid. It uses absolutely no gas.
"On a single charge, you can go up to 120 miles and, depending how you drive, 150 miles."
"It's very, very small, though," Syler observed. "I am thinking safety. How does it crash test?"
"It has a three-star crash test rating," Griffiths responded, "and it has air bag systems, five air bags, three in the front. It's like a walnut. It's actually a very safe car. This is a city commuter car, so it's not a car that you'll necessarily be driving on the highway every day. So we're not looking at high speeds, necessarily."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
>>In other words, this is marketing-speak for "its a death trap on the highway".<<
Safer than my motorcycle or bicycle...or a scooter.
It's all a relative thing.
Nope, not for me, and I doubt whether a cold car in the winter would appeal to many americans. But you don't have to worry about it starting!
where's the picture....
Electric for around town are justifiable.. as a secondary vehicle... but the problem is at 30k+ that's not worth it for a vehicle you can only commute in. Now get them down to 5k or less and you'll sell em by the boatload.
Basically get them to the cost of a moped or scooter and you'll have so much demand you won't be able to keep up... until it gets there though it just remains pipe dream for mainstream.
I imagine that you'd have to put in a separate circuit just for it. Depends on the recharge rate; X Whrs/(Y hrs * Z volts) = Amperage needed. I'd like to know because electric rates in Northern Illinois are high and I want to see what fuel cost/mile would be for this.
I personally think that we need some kind of national, federally funded project on alternative fuels. I realize that conservative thinking is normally dead set against such a thing, that this kind of thing belongs with the private sector. But even conservative thinking allows that defending the nation is a government function, and at this point I believe that getting as much of our economy off the oil standard as possible is a national security issue and should be pushed as hard as possible by the government. Get a research institute going, with all research results usable by any American corporation.
Really? Then you may want to get on the horn to one of the major power companies around here because they now have three of them and a buddy of mine makes a nice living building them.
There are already three of them.
"And, it will have to behave as a conventional vehicle..ie same or close pick up, speed, etc."
Not for commuting. Especially for trips to the park-and-ride, or the local grocery store.
Those gruff/crotchety types do have a strong hold on logic. My favorite crotchety quote is "Well, guess you best be putting some gasoline on those socks...so the ants don't crawl up and get your candy ass."
Not "Hybrid", an electric.
Something I intend to build one of for myself when time permits.
But I will convert an old VW, for a fraction of the cost.
Mine will also be capable of use on rough trails, dirt roads, etc.
Recharging from Solar panels, and since I only need to travel 50 miles a day or less I do not need the absolute best efficiency.
Once I reach town, and paved roads, I will use a conventional car for longer trips.
A decent sound system would pull more current than the motor.
This is impossible... without there being more energy coming from somewhere... capturing the energy from the water flowing downhill cannot generate enough electricity to pump the water back uphill otherwise you have a perpetual motion machine...
Well, it's sort of a hybrid. It's a dual use car -- sometimes you're driving it and the rest of the time you can't because you're charging it.
Y'know, I think once solar cells cross a cost/efficiency line, it will matter a lot. Imagine in, say california, having one of tese things, covered in solar cells, sitting in the park and ride while you are at work (and when you are at home, and all weekend). It is possible that most of your power really could come from those cells, with rare necessity to actually plug in.
'Course these don't seem to have that, so they're pretty worthless as designed.
Biker is right. It's not perpetual motion, you're just using some of your generated product to keep the system going. Think of it this way. Is one turbine enough to pump it back up? Two? Three? Eventually you hit a break even point and then any added after that is profit.
Unless there's a problem with velocity or something... I've wondered why you can't just keep putting turbines in a river and create endless power.
From a pure energy standpoint you are correct. However, from an economic viewpoint it's a little different. For large commercial users of electricity, charges for electricty are more expensive during the day (when there is high demand) than at night, when it's cheap.
There are a number of buildings in Chicago that are air conditioned with ice. Rather than run air conditioners during the day, when everyone is running their air conditioners, they blow air across ice and then through the buildings. At night, they run the refrigeration compressors (with less expensive electricity) to freeze the resultant water back into ice. The scenario proposed to you may run in a similar fashion; pump the water back up using cheap electricity, generate electricity during the day when it's more expensive.
It looks like the Daimler-Chrysler (Swatch) Smart-Car design to me...which, with an extremely strong crash cage, is as safe in crash tests and most of what people ar driving today. The diesel version of this car is all over Europe, and a gas version will soon be in the USA. Interesting that they (already) have a hybrid version.
LOL - yep, you got that right. Can you imagine the amount of power the grid would have to carry if only 1 out of 10 cars were electric? How many nuke power plants / coal plants would that require?
You're saying that you generate more energy than you expend by pumping the water back to the top. That would mean every multistory apartment building would have a water tower with one of these generators to power the apartments and we would have endless energy. No, there is something missing here. Anyone else care to comment on this?
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