Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

The new Part 9 is right here, folks. Continued from Part 8

To start it off, you've got to see this official GM page on their new "Electric car."
http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/

Of course it is NOT an electric car, but a serial hybrid. And of course it is only a concept at this point. But the most amazing part is all the virtues of EVs that they extoll here! It wasn't just a few short months ago when Lutz and Co. were still spewing all the garbage about how nobody wants EVs. About how 100 miles of range is too short. Now suddenly 40 miles is plenty, and EVs are GREAT! Just boggles the mind. This release is so eerily similar to the EV1 release that I just have to set and shake my head in wonder.

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

Is there anybody who doesn't think that the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car" had a profound effect on the auto industry? Here's a VERY recent picture of Chris Pain, the director of the film, holding a copy of today's Detroit Free Press. GM's stock is even finally going up a bit. Amazing. EVs are "good" again. Just like that.

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

I'm just not a fan of serial hybrids. They are very tricky to optomize. I predict that the VOLT will undergo a lot of changes before it hits the streets.

The biggest problem is the energy deficit when you have a 120KW motor and a 53kw generator. There should be about a 10% loss in storing the power in the batteries. This would indicate that the electric motor can drain the batteries faster than the generator can replenish them. While this would be a rare occasion, it might make cross country trips a challange when mountain ranges are encountered.

I forsee a trip where you drive 40 miles to the foot of the mountian leading to your favorite ski resort. You arrive at the foot of the mountian with the battery depleted. Then you spend 2 hours climbing 7000 feet. Uphill at speed will often require more than 53 KW in a midsized family car. Do this long enough and the battery will drain.

They may need to increase the engine+generator to make sure the battery is not depleted when you need it.

The sad part is that for 90% or more of the population, this will never be an issue. Unfortunately, there will be a cloud over the technology if even 1% have a problem with climbing mountains.

It's interesting that they are predicting a modest 50 MPG when running on gas. That's roughly what we have now. The claimed 150 MPG is 100 miles on battery and 50 miles on gas.

Daniel

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

I finally have to disagree with you Daniel. I think serial is the way to go. Don't forget that when pulling 53kw or less the batteries are essentially out of the loop so you have no loss and the engine is turning at its most efficient RPM the entire time. The generator is basically direct driving the electric motor. The only time I could imagine using more then 53 KW is going 70+ up mountains or pulling a big box trailer. Yes it is possible, but if you can cruise at 80 mph on flat terrain (guessing about 50kw) that should be more then enough for 99 people. And remember you should be able to run 40 miles up that hill before you loose the 100 kw mark, or start the engine right away and run 150 miles up that same hill.

Maybe make two versions, one with a 40KW sipper version and a 100kw speed / pulling version.

But getting back to serial or parallel, serial seems so much less cumbersome. Yes I understand there is actually more loss driving a genset which in turn drives the wheels vs. driving the wheels directly. But the big advantage is you can run the ICE at optimum RMP and loading to get the most efficiency out of it where if it were somehow physically linked to the drive train it can vary thus falling out of the perfect efficiency range even with a CVT like the Prius uses. I think because of this you could get better overall efficiency with a serial setup. It is also a lot more straight forward to repair or trouble shoot and it would be quite easy to swap out either the electric drive motors or ICE for a larger or smaller unit, unlike the Prius that built almost as a single unit.

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

In Thread #8, one of the last posts was about gasoline and hybrid cars never achieving their EPA ratings.

One of the odd things about diesels is that they not only achieve their ratings, but actually exceed them.

My '03 VW Golf is EPA rated at 49 mpg highway. I can actually get 49 mpg at 70 mph highway driving with the air conditioning on, summer hot weather and the car loaded to the gills with people and luggage. I've done it a number of times. On the VW diesel forum (Fred's TDI), there's folks that are getting over 50 mpg as their lifetime mileage.

I wonder what is different about the diesel's ability to hit its EPA rating when the gasoline and hybrids don't?

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

Darell said:

The new Part 9 is right here, folks.

To start it off, you've got to see this official GM page on their new "Electric car."
http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/

Click to expand...

Well, it SAYS they will support E85 and biodiesel too.

At least they've gotten smart on the message. When I interviewed a GM engineer last fall on the specific question of whether they'd make an E85 Hybrid like Ford said they would do with the Escape Hybrid, the guy basically snorted and acted like Ford would never actually make one [and neither would GM].

So... we'll see. GM desparately needs something to drive show room traffic and sales. I hate to see all of my old friends at GM out of work and with no retirement (one of my friends at my old division just told me he had been informed "not to count on" getting any retirement; after over 30 years).

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

Hi Brock,

I'd like to start by saying disagreement is healthy. I'm not trying to convince anyone, just airing my views....

My take on the serial hybrid is based on 4 years in the Prius. Mine has the 70 HP (53 KW) gas engine. I have driven it everywhere; mountain, deset, city and mountain.

During this 4 years I have noticed that there are many times when the gas engine is not enough. When accelerating or climbing inclines it needs a boost from the battery pack. Luckily, the periods when it needs to do that are less than 50% of the time, even on long climbs through the mountains. Since the Prius is designed to keep the battery charged, it tries to top off the battery every time the road levels out even a little. That makes it available for the next incline.

If a serial hybrid is not designed to keep the battery charged, it will deplete the battery and have to run on the power from the generator alone. If the Prius needs to supplement the 53 KW gas engine to climb hills, I imagine the VOLT will also have to. This implies that it will not be able to climb a hill or accellerate if the battery is already exhausted.

I could, of course, be all wet.

As for simpler or not.... I can see a serial hybrid having MORE parts (and bigger) than a hybrid built using Toyota's design. The electric motors have to be sized to drive the car full time in the serial. The motor(s) has to be big enough to provide 100% of the power required under worst case conditions. The battery pack is bigger and heavier (10 times the current Prius size). The only thing being dropped is the CVT, and in the Toyota design that's been a pretty trouble free, low overhead component.

In either case, you still need the gas tank and emissions control. You still need the heavy duty electronics. You need the aux subsystems of AC, heating , power steering and brakes.

Again, I could be all wrong, but that's my take on the stumbling blocks GM may encounter.

Daniel

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

Yes disagreement was meant tongue and cheek But I see what your saying about it trying to charge the batteries or allowing them to get low before you hit the bottom of the hill, then trying to charge and run uphill at the same time. Point taken. How close does the ICE stay to optimum in the Prius while running? Does it sit at some efficient level and vary the CVT or does it change more with real speed? I have only driven my uncles Prius once and at that time I didn't know as much about the car as I do now.

My EPA numbers are 42-49, my worst ever mileage in my TDI was 45.69, that was in winter doing some towing, about 120 miles and a snow storm right after that. I have no idea how I could hit 42 mpg, maybe towing a 2500lb trailer the whole time? One person towed an SUV from Florida to Texas and got upper 30's for the trip. My best mileage was 62.28 this last summer with lifetime right now at 54.40. Well above EPA estimates. It does appear to be true that the 99-03 TDI's at least meet or exceed their EPA ratings, even when driven like they were stolen. It seems vary rare they are below EPA ratings unless something is physically wrong with the car.

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

Brock... I practically earn my living disagreeing with Daniel. Here you've got two people on the same page disagreeing - I agree that's healthy.

Having enough power from what GM *says* they'll provide this car with shouldn't be a problem at all. When the APU comes on, it can charge the batteries at 50 kW. That doesn't mean you can't exceed 50kW of power from the electric motor. Same with the ACP Long Ranger trailer. Your *average* power is limited by the output of the APU, but the *peak* power is the same as always. So, you can't go 90 miles per hour for miles on end, and you could concoct some artificial situations that would limit your available power, but under all usual circumstances, you have the same power available from the electric motor whether the APU is running or not. The APU keeps running when you're going down hill, when you are stopped in traffic, etc., so it usually has plenty of opportunity to catch up. Also, the software will no doubt allow some cushion below the SOC point where the APU starts, to provide for short spells right after the APU starts where the instantaneous demand exceeds the APU output.

To illustrate the point, if the RAV4 EV used 50 kW (peak rating of the motor) constantly, it would be out of juice in about half an hour. (28 kWh battery capacity, using about 833 Wh per minute.) We know that's not reality, unless you drive 80 mph against the wind the whole time. Reality is that you can normally drive the RAV4 EV for about two hours. At a constant 60 mph, the RAV4 EV uses only about 22 kW, 220 Wh per minute/mile. The Long Ranger, at 20kW, can sustain this operation, because there are usually coasting periods, downhills, etc., that keep the average consumption down over time.

It still seems to me that 50kW is plenty, and won't cause a performance problem under any usual circumstances

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

The usual circumstances won't be a problem. It's the unusual circumstances that start the rumor mill running. If the Volt falls short in any aspect it will reflect badly on all EVs.

It's ironic that Darrel quoted that particular scenario. Last month I drove to San Diego on I-5. The speed limit was 75 MPH. The last 30 miles leading to the grapevine I was fighting a wicked headwind. That was an instance where I traveled for several hundred miles at 75 mph, fighting headwinds along the way, and then had to climb a mountain range. That's pretty close to the scenario Darell listed.

Now I must admit that it's only twice in 15 years that I recall hitting that exact scenario on that trip. The point is that it does happen once in a while.

Please don't get me wrong. I believe that it's possible to make serial hybrids work. I'm just questioning the specs they've published.

It's funny that concept cars are taken seriously when they are seldom working models or even test beds. It looks to me like the Volt is a mock-up and a set of ideas. The actual engineering still needs to be developed.

I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing how they do it.

Daniel

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

I havent been following this thread of all 9 parts... only this part got my attention.... now my question is... why cant one build a 'farm' based fuels... veg. oils or something similar.

instead of investing in batteries, hydrogen etc.....

wont it solve a problem once and for all of 'bio' fuels / oil powered cars are produced. (we can grow plants as much as we want)... and wont have to worry about the "fossil" fuels getting extinct any more.

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

I think the biggest reason we dont grow more farm grown fuels is that the companies and people that make and distribute fuels dont need to yet, and dont know how even if they wanted to. And the people that own and operate farms dont know anything about the gas business.

You can't really just make connections in your head and instantly translate that into whole industries. This takes time and experimentation and motivation.

This is happening here, just slowly. There are test farms and ethanol plants going up, and people growing oil plants to make into bio diesel. It's not that we can't do it, it's that we can't do it overnight.

The other thing that is often funny to me is that once a company becomes large enough that they are capable of creating a whole industry like that, they are also so large and beaurocratically constipated that the upper brass is completely disconnected from the rapidly changing reality. This is extremely obvious in the car companies. They have no connection with us who buy regular cars at all. That is why you see really great concepts coming out of their labs, but once the committee has had their way with it it looks and performs almost exactly like the last car they sold that did well. They dont know what we want so they treat it like voodoo. Repeat the same steps and expect the same results. It's very hard or big companies to do really new things. It frightens them Only when their old voodoo spells stop working for long enough that they realize that they suck do they start to get interested in doing anything new.

All arguments of the real viability of farm raised fuels will be resolved as people actually TRY to make them and we see how their small companies do. When they can prove that they can do it, and that people will buy it and use it in real life. The companies that are unable to think new things will latch on or buy them out.

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

ViReN said:

...we can grow plants as much as we want...

Click to expand...

The problem is with yield.

If we took every existing acre of corn and made ethanol, we might replace 15% of our gasoline. If we took every acre of soy beans and made biodiesel, we might replace 6% of our diesel. You can see even if we doubled existing production (and the land is not there to do it), we'd still be far away from replacing existing petroleum fuel usage.

The beauty of electric drive miles is that the electricity can come from a very wide variety of sources including renewables like solar and wind with are pretty much inexhaustable. Since solar and wind are intermittant (sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow), we should be developing come good ways to store electricity so we can make it when we can and use it when we need it.

Existing ways of storing electricity include compressed air in old caverns or mines and pumping water uphill into reservoirs and then letting the water or air drive turbines. Vehicles that can be charged could be part of the solution too. You charge'em at night and plug them into the grid during the day to give some back when needed.

Having Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) with an all-electric range of 20 miles would allow us to reduce liquid fuel needs by about half.

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

gadget_lover said:

It's funny that concept cars are taken seriously when they are seldom working models or even test beds. It looks to me like the Volt is a mock-up and a set of ideas. The actual engineering still needs to be developed.

Click to expand...

So True!

And don't forget the 108mpg GM Precept. How would you like that? Fuel cell or Hybrid? That was 7 years ago at the Detroit Auto show. While it seems to make a lot of sense for GM to take a leadership role with a serial Hybrid such as the Volt, history suggests it's unlikely to produce. It would be a welcome surprise though.

We can debate the specs until the cows come home. But it would be just as valid for me to say, "Hey guys, I'm gonna build a $20k car that has 500 hp, and will go 300 miles on battery power before the 100mpg bioD genset kicks in." Nobody can complain about that, right?

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

And here's GM's "eye popping" entry to the auto show circuit in 1999. Sound familiar?

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3012/is_11_179/ai_58038328

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

gadget_lover said:

The usual circumstances won't be a problem. It's the unusual circumstances that start the rumor mill running. If the Volt falls short in any aspect it will reflect badly on all EVs.

Click to expand...

I realize that you're speaking of the thoughts of the unwashed masses, and you risk falling into the "every vehicle must be capable of everything" mentality. A concept that I don't want to foster.

Will this fancy new EV be able to pull my boat? Can I seat nine adults in it? Can it drive through waist-high mud? Can it park in motorcycle parking areas? Split lanes? There are plenty of things the car won't be able to do. The current design parameters make it an amazingly capable vehicle (a bit TOO capable, if you know what I mean). We already have popular gasoline cars on the road that would have great difficulty in achieving the scenario you relate. I wouldn't be able to do it in my Rav4EV, of course, and it is our main vehicle. I've never felt that the Rav is under-powered, though my modern standards it certainly is - just like the gasoline version is (was).

Dunno. Tough nut for me to swallow. There are always extreme scenarios that we can imagine - scenarios in which our CURRENT gasoline vehicles can't even compete. Best to think of what the tehnology is capable of, not its limits. Reminds me of what many were saying about the Prius 1 when it came out actually. There were those who headed up huge hills with the pedal on the floor to use up all the battery charge, and then were all too happy to demonstrate that the Prius was no good because once the battery was used up, it would only go about 60mph max.

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

Solar faces the same issue: People say it's not an important energy source because it can't provide all of our energy needs all by itself. If we would just start investing in these technologies, all sorts of solutions would present themselves.

The one thing that always always surprises me about electric or plug-in hybrids or even hybrids is that solar cells are not built into the frame. Although solar wouldn't be enough to power a large car by itself, it should give a pretty good increase in mileage.

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

That headwind scenario can cause problems for many vehicles as was stated. In college, two of us took our college's panel van from Michigan to Iowa to pick up some lighting gear the auditorium bought. We were fighting a bad headwind on the way out west. I don't remember if it was a 4 or 5 speed. But in OD, it didn't have enough power to keep the speed up. You had to down shift a gear and then at highway speeds, the engine was running way too high of an rpm. But, there was no other way.

I just want a car, ev, pluggable hybrid, whatever that will do most of what I want. I will have a fossil fuel vehicle for the foreseeable future to do most everything else. What that can't do, I really don't need, or can rent something that will do it.

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

I remember my dad once saying that his car was a Rolls_Hardly. It rolls down one hill and hardly makes it up the next. Then he bought a volkswagen (back in the 1960s) and by golly, it really worked like that! We lived in the Santa Cruz mountains, so it was a really inappropriate car. Under 50 HP as I recall. It got great gas mileage.

But back on topic.....

Part of folstering new technologies is to manage expectations. If GM is billing the car as an EV with unlimited range, it will need to perform properly on the freeway. That's the only place where unlimited range is needed. If there are limitations, it's better for GM to make that obvious up front or engineer around the limitation. Of note is the fact that the Prius battery can no longer be depleted by a long uphill run. Not in my experience and I climb a lot of mountains/hills/ranges.

When you say you have a new car (as GM is proposing) with a 120 kw electric motor and fast 1/4 mile times, you are appealing to the crowd that will drive fast. They will expect to be able to drive all day at 80 MPH, head wind or not. They will complain bitterly if the car fails to meet their expectations.

I would not mind a car that is plug in capable with a freeway mode that keeps the battery at a reasonable state of charge. I have to stop at the Starbucks at the base of the Grapevine anyway, so I'd give it an extra 15 minutes of charge.

With the availability of cheap GPS chips it would make sense for a "smart hybrid" to prepare for the upcoming terrain. The GPS only needs to know of the few hundred areas where it's going to encounter a sustained climb and keep the battery charged in those areas. By the same token, if you are headed towards the place you park every day, it should shut down the engine, knowing that you'll be either plugging in or warming up the next day. Now that's what I call a concept!

Daniel

Re: EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, Part 9

A hybrid motor can be used to increase mileage or horsepower or some combination. The Japanese went primarily with mileage and Detroit went primarily with horsepower. Given the environmental crisis we face, Detroit once again went the wrong direction. Most people live in cities and need a daily commuter. The first priority of the auto makers should be to build a light, economical EV/hybrid for that scenario and a plug-in hybrid for the rest of us. I see GM making the same mistake over and over: selling sex appeal rather than function.