To Darell-80 mpg diesel hybrid-real or not?

[Brock]

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why is diesl so expensive aint it like the waste from maeking real gas?

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Actually Diesel fluctuates a lot more then gas. In the spring and summer diesel is usually about $.15 cheaper then the cheap unleaded, then in fall/winter it usually gets to the price of premium unleaded. There are two reasons for this. First Diesel and home heating oil are made at the same plants (basically the same thing) and guess who uses a LOT of home heating oil in the fall /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif Secondly in the fall / winter they need to add anti gelling additives to the diesel to keep it from turning in to jello in your tank for winter.

Don't worry about starting a TDI in winter though. Actually last winter when our gasser didn't want to start the TDI fired off after 10sec of "glow plugging" all automatic.

 

[raggie33]

will disel work in a keroscene wick type heater>

 

[cobb]

Motorcycles, mopeds and those other mobility devices get great mpg too. I recall seeing articles in the 70s and 80s for mopeds that got 100+ mpg.

Incase you are wondering, we were diesel fans, but after some cold winters and service work for glow plugs, pump rebuilds, we went to gas. They start up in any weather, cheap to service and some do get good mpg.

 

[Brock]

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raggie33 said:
will disel work in a keroscene wick type heater>

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Yes, kerosene is a lighter fuel compared to diesel, but they are very similar. I think diesel would soot up sooner then kerosene, but I am not sure. Typically you can use diesel in place of kerosene, but not usually kerosene in place of diesel.

Typically home heating oil and "off road" diesel are the same thing as regular diesel. They are typically dyed red so they show up in your car and you get HUGE fine for running them in cars since they aren't taxed. In WI diesel is taxed about $.17 more per gallon then gasoline.

 

[markdi]

do not use anything other than kerosene in a kerosene heater or a aladin mantle lamp

 

[Darell]

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cobb said:
They start up in any weather, cheap to service and some do get good mpg.

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Same with electrics! But at zero MPG, we can't compete with the last part. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[cobb]

You got me there with the Ev. My folks live 45 minutes one way from anywhere, an EV for us would need a generator or a sled with solar panels on it. Kind of defeats the purpose of driving an EV?

You can mix diesel and keroscene half and half in a diesel. Some diesels are multifuel and can run on a range of fuels, others not. Some diesels can run on vegetable oil if heated first and others use chemicals to make it biodiesel to run from a cold start.

I believe you may be able to put gas in a diesel, but I believe that will screw something up and should only be a last resort.

 

[CNC Dan]

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raggie33 said:
here diesel cost more then preium unleaeded

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In some areas it is cheaper than gas, and in other it is more than gas.

I drove from tucson AZ to boston MA, and the price of diesel fuel started lower than gas, and ended up higher than gas.

 

[Darell]

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cobb said:
You got me there with the Ev. My folks live 45 minutes one way from anywhere, an EV for us would need a generator or a sled with solar panels on it. Kind of defeats the purpose of driving an EV?

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Er, no. I regularly drive 1.5 hours (2 hours with traffic!) in our EV. If you have electricity at both ends, you're good to go. The only reason we didn't put more than 13,000 miles on the EV last year is simply because we don't have the time.

I know several folks who live in the sticks and drive an EV almost excuslively. The main reason? No worries about driving to town to get gasoline all the time. They fuel at home.

I'll stop. Not every vehicle, and not every vehicle technology is the *right* one for every situation. The problem is how blind we are to how wrong ICE is for many situations.

 

[gadget_lover]

Don't STOP Darell! Someone has to counter the everpresent misconceptions of EV life. I have to guess that you're asked "What do you do if you want to go out of town?" as often as I'm asked "How often do you have to plug it in?".

Speaking of silly hybrid questions.... The second most frequent is "how long do the batteries last?" So, Darell, how long do your batteries last? Are they NiMH or lead/acid? Do you still have your EV? The Rav, isn't it?

Daniel

 

[PlayboyJoeShmoe]

GM got Darells EV1...

But NOBODY gets his RAV4 EV!!!!

This I KNOW! to be true!

And I am one who wishes there was an EV for me!

 

[Darell]

Daniel -

At one time I had an EV1 AND a Rav4EV. The EV1 has lead-acid, the Rav has NiMH. It has the SAME batteries as your Prius - just lots more of them.

There are fleet Ravs running on their same battery packs with no measurable degredation of capacity - after (drum roll please) over 150k miles! And we abuse the hell out of these batteries as compared to Hybrids. Hybrids only charge/discharge the battery in a narrow "safe" range (like 50-80%. We go from all the way full to all the way empty, and the batteries just keep on coming back for more.

Here's what our batteries look like:

And my entire pack of them:

The most frequent question I'm asked is: What's your gas mileage? I kid you not. Nobody believes that this is NOT a hybrid. Usually the only way to convince them is to show the odometer and tell them that I've never put gas in it yet. Or I ask them to find a place to put gas in. Or I have them find the exhaust pipe. They still wander away wondering just what kind of trick I'm pulling on them.

The ones who "get it" always ask how long the batteries last. Half of them want to know the replacement time, and the other half want to know the range on a charge.

 

[IlluminatingBikr]

Hey Darell,

Instead of a fuel gauge, do you have a battery gauge on your Rav? If I wanted to, could I buy a brand new RavEV right now? Who sells them?

 

[gadget_lover]

I'm pretty sure that we don't use the same batteries. My battery pack is about 288 volts and weighs a bit over 100 pounds. That's 1/10 of the RAV EV.

Your modules are arranged in packs of 10 (12 volts) where mine are packs of 6 (7.2 volts). I think we both use about 240 cells. I once read that each Prius cell is about the size of a sub C. I've not seen that substantiated.

Daniel

 

[cobb]

You got a point there Darell, forgot we could charge at home. Now once we get to town, not sure of a place to plug in. If we did it would be for an hour or so like at walmart, sams club. Then back home. When its snowly out that 45 minute trip can take 4 hours.

We tried diesel, but gas seems ok. Untill gas hits 15 bucks a gallon, we will keep rolling.

Yes, I have heard that the prius uses C cell shaped batteries, at least according to the one I saw on tv. According to a talk I had with the folks at a local toyota dealer, he said if you drain the batteries down the highway, it will revert to a top speed of 45mph untill the batteries charge back up. The honda folks said their car would just accelerate slower if the battery was dead.

I gave a speech on batteries, my condition and why you should by a hybird car. I almost had the guy from honda bring a car down for folks to test. THe toyota folks knew nothing about it, but the parts guys did.

 

[jtr1962]

Why not build solar cells into all the upward-facing horizontal surfaces of an EV so that you can get some recharging while parked? As a bonus, you might be able to get enough power this way to avoid recharging off the grid at all if you don't use the vehicle that much. As with anything else, if enough vehicles were BEV, there would be recharging stations for them. It's a chicken and egg sort of thing. And I'm very, very annoyed that fuel cells and hybrids are what I thought they were-just another delay tactic so that automakers can keep on producing fossil fuel burning dinosaurs. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif

 

[Lynx_Arc]

If your local power plant uses oil to produce electricity would it be any cheaper to recharge an electric car off the grid or off a small gasoline engine built into it? I guess it would depend on the efficiency of the engine vs powerplant.

 

[jtr1962]

The power plant is way more efficient than a gas engine (at least 50% versus 20%). It all depends upon what gas costs versus electricity. Regardless of price, you'll put less pollution in the air charging from the grid, and gas is only going to get more expensive. I think we've seen the last of <$2/gallon gas in the US. In fact, with worldwide demand going up due to developing countries like China, and supplies pretty much peaking, we'll probably see as high as $10/gallon by the end of the decade. I've heard that global oil production will peak no later than around 2010. It will be all downhill after that with only the hardest to get at reserves left.

 

[Frangible]

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The power plant is way more efficient than a gas engine

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Dunno about that... coal power -> boiler isn't the pinnacle of effeciency, nor is the loss of power in the power lines, and batteries aren't 100% effecient, nor are the mechanics and motors driven by it. I'd be real surprised if it was 50%. I doubt even a coal boiler is 50%.

 

[Brock]

Yes modern coal fired plants are above 50% and emissions are about 100% better then ANY ICE car. The thing most people aren't aware of is until a car is warmed up it pollutes far more and is far less efficient. So on a 5-mile trip you will never be up the emissions standards or rated mileage.

Darell on the other hand has the same efficiency starting down the driveway as he does later, well maybe a tiny bit less due to heat build up.

NiMH batteries are about 90% efficient, even at the worst your at 40% overall and far better with emissions using BEV.

As for adding a solar panel, it is a nice thought, but if you cover the top of the car, hood and trunk in a day you might get another mile out of it. Your way better off mounting the panels in a good spot with direct light at the correct angles and pushing the power thought the grid or to the car, like Darell does /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif