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 ...
Obviously this guy is from the Marketing Dept and not the Engineering Dept.
You and me both....
Let someone else pay for depreciation. :) Of course, I still carry full insurance, but it hardly costs me anything.... Of course, if gas goes up to $10/gallon and it becomes cheaper to buy a new hybrid or something, I'll fork out the extra dough....
Actually mostly diesel is used to transport E85, but we should be using more bio-diesel. I'd rather subsidize our farmers though than terrorist muslim states.(Sorry about the redundancy in that sentence.
You remind me of the time when I was a kid that my buddy asked his dad "Bud" for a ride somewhere. "Bud" was a lot, a LOT like "Red" in That Seventies Show.
Anyway, "Bud" (nickname for Virgil) goes "You got a thumb?" Kevin's mouth dropped open because he knew his dad couldn't be advocating him hitchhiking. "Stick it up your butt and start walking!"
When did PLUG IN CAR become something new??? They had these things when I was a kid... I'm now 34...
That would not work. It takes MORE energy to pump water back to the top than you would get from it running down.
What you suggest would be a "something for nothing" situation which doesn't exist.
How about Nukular Frisson?
Oh you want everything now don't you? I'd just install a good 100 Amp alternator in there (you mean it just runs down the battery faster? Never mind).
The UN and rock stars will just demand that we make up their economic shortfall with financial aid.
sorry, I meant diesel, for transportation
Turn a turbine generator on it's side and then run a hundred of them the same way down the length of the shaft. Then do the same for the other three sides of the shaft.
Start pouring water down the sides of the shaft and gravity does the rest. It doesn't take as much energy to pump the water back up as it generates going down because instead of passing just one turbine the same water passes hundreds of them generating enough to pump the water back up and they sell off the rest. Keep in mind these are not massive turbines that you'd see in a dam.
It's not perpetual motion because you do have to use energy to run the pump. Without the pump the water stops and so does the power. On top of it there is routine maintenance that needs to be done.
If they didn't cost 35k a pop, I'd probably investigate one.. a car with 120 range that plugs in would be practicle for me... I'd still have a gas vehicle, but for day to day around town stuff... little thing like this would work...
But It would need to have a price tag around that of a VESPA for me to serioulsy buy one... that means it needs to be well under 10k and preferably under 5k before I'm going to buy it... My gas car can do around town driving too... for me to justify a car just for that, it has to be cost effective.... and 35k I'd have to burn a hell of a lot of $3 gas to justify it... which I don't.
I drive 8.2 miles to my office, all on surface streets with a top speed limit off 40. Several of my friends drive three to ten miles to a park and ride every day, also on surface streets, and take the bus the rest of the way.
What about folks like them and me? Especially if we don't want to ride a motorcycle or scooter.
'Course, for me, summertime means bicycle commuting.
The real problem for these is that the electricity is not free. If they had plug-in's at work, I'd seriously consider it.
Seems like it would be VERY hard to manage an a/c if you're sucking off a battery bank. I'm wondering how you'd even do heat. One thing about good old biogasoline, you get you get free heat as a byproduct, torque for the a/c, and plenty of electricity for accessories on top of getting from point a to point b.
How 'bout those rolling California brownouts? Who is going to charge those car batteries?
You are describing a perpetual motion machine...won't work.
Moving out of the suburb and living within 4 miles of work and bicycling would really solve the problem.
It called an alternator.
It's not perpetual motion, you have maintenance that needs to be done a pump that needs to be kept running while in operation etc.
Would you consider a large dam to be perpetual motion?
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