misterzee Loc: N'Georgia Mountains

I think that’s because they have a 25 mile range on battery.

nospambob Loc: Edmond, Oklahoma

That is not exactly a hybrid. My Lincoln MKZ hybrid has an electric motor and a 4-cylinder gasoline engine. The engine runs when power is needed to move the car, not just to charge the battery. Both run when I'm accelerating hard, and together both the engine and the motor produce about 188 hp. Under about 30 mph, just the electric motor runs until the battery drains down and needs charging. It got over 39 mpg on a 3000-mile trip last July. It gets better mpg in town.

cdayton

Either/both the battery and gasoline engine can drive the Prius and similar hybrid cars. To the best of my knowledge, only the Chevy Volt used the gasoline engine strictly to charge batteries that powered the car. It has not been a commercial success. The Bolt is a fully electric car like Tesla.

ecobin Loc: Paoli, PA

There are so many "new" battery start-ups - I hope at least one will turn out to be a winner. I'd like my next car to be all electric but so far none are appealing to me.

Bison Bud

New battery development is a good thing if electric vehicles are really going to be the future of personal transportation. Frankly, I think we are a long way from making the big move to all electric and I'm not convinced that this is our best course either. Improved batteries will be a must and they not only need improvement in capacity and performance, but also in safety, toxicity, and need improved methods of manufacture and disposal. We also need to consider that our current power grid needs some big improvements to charge all these vehicles. Can you imagine the increased current demand when every commuter gets home from work and plugs in his electric vehicle to recharge it? Currently, most of the power used to charge these vehicles in generated by fossil fuels anyway and the "Green" aspect of it is kind of a moot point. In response to those that mentioned here that they can use a small gas motor, to turn a generator, to charge the batteries, the efficiency of this approach would likely be dismal when compared to today's internal combustion engines. Frankly, there is no "Perpetual Motion Machine" and each process used to convert energy to one form or another loses some in the process. In any case, I think that hybrid vehicles will probably be the real future, at least for the next 50 or so years. However, hydrogen fuel cells show some promise as well. All in all, we need to be smart about pushing for changes to be sure we don't cause bigger problems than we already have.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Right. You probably noticed the at the end of my reply. I've never had a problem with Prius drivers. It's pickup trucks that I don't like. No matter how much over the speed limit I am driving, a pickup's grill will fill my mirror. Speeding tickets are very expensive here, and we have four police departments in town: town, state, sheriff, and NYC.

That smoking by diesel trucks is illegal in most places. It's another example of the decline of American intelligence.

G. Crook Loc: Linden, TX

WOW!! I drive a diesel pickup, as do most of the farmers/ranchers that I know and see here in east Texas. Unless highly modified, these pickups are not “huge” nor do they normally blow out black smoke. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. Some older diesels as well as modified ones can blow excess smoke. Most diesel truck drivers dislike that as do you and others.

Some people do put lifted suspension and oversized tires and wheels on their trucks as well as their cars. They are for show and have absolutely no practical benefit and you frequently see them used for sale. These vehicles are the exception and not the rule. A “worst offender” I am NOT !!

Abo

No Bob,

that same piston engine directly turning the wheels would most definitely use less fuel.

You probably wonder, why then, are there Diesel/Electric locomotives.

The reason is because of the extreme weight of a train.
Piston engines (unlike electric) produce more power as they gain RPM.
So to get the thousands of tons moving with a piston engine it needs to
be revving highly (again unlike an electric engine) to get things rolling in the first
place... which is where the root of the problem lays.

The downside of heat and wear (and very short life span) generated by a clutch or
torque converter gradually engaging the drive of an 8000 horsepower piston
engine to accelerate tens of thousands of tons of train is greater than the downside of the losses from conversion of energy from a piston engine to electricity and then to the powering of electric engine/s which need no clutch or torque converter... as electric engines produce maximum torque near zero RPM...

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

I share your curiosity as to why the diesel electric locomotive model hasn’t been used for an automobile. It would seem to me an IC engine could be designed to run on non-fossil fuels to eliminate/reduce carbon emissions.

Stan

rcarol

Isn't that the way the Toyota Prius works? It has a small engine that runs a generator used to charge the car's battery.

Real Nikon Lover Loc: Simi Valley, CA

Interesting Jerry. Also, BYD is the company that produced millions upon millions of the N95 masks ("PPE") the U.S. bought for COVID mask mandate. I am storing millions in my warehouse.

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

Geez! I thought that problem with those yayhoo’s and their pick ‘em up trucks was only a problem down here in redneck country. These guys re-tune their diesels to produce as much black smoke as they can get and they like to rev the engine while their waiting for the light to change. If they like smoke so much, I think they should be required to run those twin stacks directly into the truck cab so they can enjoy inhaling it like I have to while waiting for the light to change. And the trucks are so tall their headlights are right at a sedan drivers eye level and most truck driver here are run their brights on even in daytime and it is blinding. I’m done ranting.

Stan

marine73 Loc: Modesto California

I own a Prius c that my wife drives, actually it is her car, but from my observations the car runs on electric below 40MPH and kicks over to gas above 40MPH. Battery charging is done through braking. My wife can get 60MPG plus, me on the other hand can barely get 60mpg, difference in driving styles. She will sit in traffic where as I will find alternate routes especially if I know the traffic will be stop and go for more than 10 minutes. She loves her Prius and she drives the speed limit, never had a ticket or accident. I on the other hand have had numerous traffic citations and been involved in numerous accidents, not all of them were my fault. I commute 90 miles one way to work 5 days a week, drive a 2017 Subaru Legacy which I bought new in 2017 and it now has close to 199,000 miles on it.

bobbyjohn Loc: Dallas, TX

Couple of weeks ago, I saw this article on the internet (where from I forgot), which for anyone considering buying an electric car vs. gas engine.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
In case you were thinking of buying hybrid or an electric car...

Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of those things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it.

At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro Executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious.

If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.

This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So, as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This later “investment” will not be revealed until we’re so far down this dead-end road that it will be presented with an ‘OOPS...!’ and a shrug.

If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following. Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It’s enlightening.

Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes, “For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.” Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.

It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip, your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.

According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned, so I looked up what I pay for electricity.

I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 Mpg = $0.10 per mile.

The gasoline powered car costs about $25,000 while the Volt costs $46,000 plus. So the Government wants us to pay twice as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country.

WAKE UP NORTH AMERICA!!!!!!!

marine73 Loc: Modesto California

And the green people do not understand that the electricity they are using is produced my coal fired power plants and possibly some nuclear power plants. They think I will plug in and I am being green. People don't stop and think where the source is coming from or how it is being produced. If they really eat an all electric vehicle they would figure out how to continuously charge while driving or how to put solar panels on the vehicle so it can charge while driving or parked.