How much does the energy cost to make these vs what is saved at this point?
Want to be the first on your block with a $50,000 Toyota Prius?
Head to Hybrids Plus in Boulder, Colo., and leave your Prius with their technicians. Go skiing or something, come back in three or four days with a check for $24,000 and you will have one of the nation’s very few plug-in hybrids that should easily get 100 miles per gallon.
A plug-in is an ordinary hybrid with an electric motor and gasoline engine that has been modified — usually by upgrading its battery pack or adding more batteries — so it can go a lot farther on electric power than it normally does. On Thursday, a study funded by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a power-industry group lined up behind advocates in dubbing plug-ins the car of the future, albeit the distant future.
This part sounds a bit dubious, underhanded, etc — get the other guy to pay for your ‘fill up’:
“There’s a plug mounted in the bumper,” Thesen said. “When I’m on the road and I take the car to a hotel, I drive around the parking lot looking for a Coke machine. When I find one, I park close to it, so I can plug in where the Coke machine is. … Then it takes six to eight hours to charge.”
Sounds like a lot better deal than $100K for a 12mpg car!
“How much does the energy cost to make these vs what is saved at this point?”
Frankly at this point I’d take a 1/1 exchange. At least that way I’m giving my money to technology developers and not a bunch of warmongering greedy evil oil people.
Leave it to the feds to make something retail for more than it needs.
The CalCar group providing the Plug-In Prius fleet to Google already averages 74+ mpg. The additional cost maxed at about $10K per car – and continues to drop.
Their estimate is that economies of production could get that down to about $3K per car.
Yes, me.
I’ve spent 35k so far on a Prius I intend of keeping at least 10 years.
In three more years (when paid for) I will upgrade the car with the newer batteries and plug-in capability.
Since 90% of my driving is city below 50Mph, my car will only use gas when going on the highway or during the Canadian winter when I need the heater.
IOW, a 15K upgrade on top of a 35k car, is a hell of a lot cheaper than the pure electric cars out there that are tiny 2 seaters and have limited range.
The Prius is truly the best of both worlds when “upgraded” to PHEV and the upgrade cost makes it still cheaper to own that the alternatives out there.
Remember – a fully loaded Honda Accord V6 or a Camry V6 or a Lexus V6 (list V6 touring cars) all have the same price-entry point of a Prius.
Well, if you can go 100 miles on one gallon compared to 20 miles on my current car, then every 100 miles, you save 4 gallons or at $3/gal==12 Dollars.
If I drive 20,000 miles per year, then I can save 200 x $12 or $2400 per year. Pay back in 25 years, probably less as gas prices go higher vs return on investment of original capital?
Nope–buy a gas guzzler and plant a tree.
Except, bobbo, the average American drives 24,000 miles/year – a small difference, granted, 20%. The the Oil Patch Boys are finally admitting that the usual rationale for price tolerance, e.g., “we’ll be back to normal real soon” has become part of the mythic past.
Normal – is now going upwards from $3/gallon.
“Nope–buy a gas guzzler and plant a tree. ”
You like giving money to those people? Why not buy an alternate-energy or hybrid vehicle and plant the tree anyway?
Not too sure I see the point.
The MPG rating is not relevant if you are plugging the vehicle into the power grid. It then becomes kilowatt/hours that is important.
If the electricity is produced by an oil-fired power plant the fuel used is not too different from diesel fuel.
If you put a gallon of diesel fuel in an automobile with a diesel engine it goes 20 or 30 miles.
If you take that gallon of fuel to an electrical power plant and convert the energy in the fuel to electricity. A process that loses half of the energy in the fuel.
Send that electricity over the grid losing another ten percent.
Convert that electrical energy into chemical energy in the Prius battery. No battery gives you back all of the energy you put into it, so there is another loss.
Buy a real diesel auto. It’s probably cheaper and greener than a plug-in-Prius.
Why do you think Toyota left the plug-in feature off?
Why do you think PG&E is promoting the plug-in feature?
Perry
#8 – lots of if’s and not much reality.
Most power generation is NOT oil-fired, so stuff that premise.
Toyota only leaves the plug-in feature off the Prius’ sold in the U.S. Mostly as a sop to GM and Congress. The switch for it is covered in American sales. Look at a Prius dash sometime.
I’m a diesel fan, a diesel-hybrid fan. But, leave the non-sequitur arguments to the SUV fanboys.
8,
I think it is dependent on how that elecricity is generated. Hydro, wind, and solar are all non fossil-fuel based.
7–Alix!!!!!!!!! – – -Go read up on ROI==Return on Investment. The math shows you “give” your money to “those” people when you buy a hybrid.
Actually, at simple 5% return on 50K is $2500/year—so one could put the $50K in the bank and drive a standard car for “free cost of gas” and have the captial available for when the hydrogen economy kicks in or we start painting our cars with fullerene solar panels and the cost of alternatives becomes competitive with the gas guzzlers.
Energy is not free==driving those hybrids though is much more efficient than gas with the proper components for electrical generation put in place==even better if homemade hydrogen centers became available.
My next car will most likely be a hybrid. My three main reasons for it…
#12
4!=3 … Okay… you guys got one bonus reason. 😉
I’ve got to think that if they mass produce a diesel hybrid prius with a couple of solar panels on the roof (currently available for around $2-3k) and an HECE device (around $3k) they’d get 100mpg at a lot less than $50k final price.
So, would I pay $50k? I probably couldn’t afford to. Do I think that it would really cost that to hit 100mpg? Not if they really want to sell them and aren’t just trying to twist peoples’ minds by lying about the cost of getting significantly better mileage.
#9 It really doesn’t matter how the electrical plant is fired. The point is that to make electricity you generally throw away half of the energy in whatever the fuel is.
#10 70% of the electricity in the US is generated with fossil fuels. Most of that is coal. A plug-in Prius is coal-fired indirectly. No pollution there?
Perry
at $3.25 gallon over 100,000 miles fuel cost for a car getting…
12mpg = $27,083
20mpg = $16,250
40mpg = $8,125
100mpg = $3,250
I have a google spreadsheet you can view at
http://tinyurl.com/33u53e
11,
“The math shows you “give” your money to “those” people when you buy a hybrid.”
True, if you have oil-based electricity you are giving some of your money to the evil ones, but much less than with a gas guzzler. On the other hand, hybrid electronics and bbattery technology developers get your money to improve the technology and make things better for everyone when you buy a hybrid.
For the record, I have a Caliber, a functional car that gets prety good milage. I’m waiting for a biodiesel hyrid myself.
Alix. Power grid management is a dark science. You’re always burning something.
To take care of the peaks and lows of energy consumption, fossil fuel burning thermoelectric plants (coal, oil, gas…) are always on at cruise level. You just can’t switch on or off a Coal electric power plant. Usually power grid managers use hydroelectric dams as batteries, using excess energy to pump up water back into the dam. In a way Nuclear plants turn out to be better deals at energy production than fossil fuel burners, but in a complex power grid you always need dependable generators. And hydro and solar and wind is just not dependable enough. Of course, everything helps, and also you should use the most diverse energy sources available.
To put out some myths… Hybrid cars save gas not because they use electricity to move, but because they can recollect excess energy from the combustion engine and kinetic energy, and help out when the gas engine is not efficient. Gas engines have a curve of efficiency while electric engines are almost flat as efficiency goes. They can help starting up movement or at a speed recovery, avoiding excess consumption.
World’s First Air-Powered Car: Zero Emissions
The $12,700 CityCAT, one of a handful of planned Air Car models, can hit 68 mph and has a range of 125 miles. It will take only a few minutes for the CityCAT to refuel at gas stations equipped with custom air compressor units; MDI says it should cost around $2 to fill the car’s carbon-fiber tanks with 340 liters of air at 4350 psi. Drivers also will be able to plug into the electrical grid and use the car’s built-in compressor to refill the tanks in about 4 hours.
Of course, the Air Car will likely never hit American shores, especially considering its all-glue construction. But that doesn’t mean the major automakers can write it off as a bizarre Indian experiment — MDI has signed deals to bring its design to 12 more countries, including Germany, Israel and South Africa.
http://tinyurl.com/yudg6x
[Please use TinyUrl.com for overly long URLs. – ed.]
SayUncle, that car will NEVER hit American shores. Not as long as President Cheney still draws a breath. wtf kind of ROI is he going to get on Iraq if all the cars are using AIR to run on??
If I could just find a local gas station with a 4350 psi compressor, I’d consider going to India and buying one of these things. Unfortunately, all the ones in this area have a hard time hitting 30 psi….
18,
Actually JoaoPT, I am heavily involved with the power electronics industry and am well aware of the issues and core technologies. There are many ways to use alternate energy to achieve increased independence. Denmark exports power on most days.
Dependability is a red herrring issue. If the system is large enough its average performance will meet requirements, and we already use energy-conditioning technology in every application where power quality is an issue.
The how of hybrid cars is actually secondary to the philosophy of using an alternate energy technology to operate our vehicles. Money spent on such cars goes towards moving our knowledge and ability to create better and more efficient devices to move around in.
As for grid power, we are our own enemies in that concern. We believe the lame-ass lies that the oil people give us and fear change.
Actually, some of us are doing what we can. Here in NYC we’re putting turbines in the East River to help reduce our dependence on the grid. When the project is completed we’ll be the most self-sufficient city for power and clean water (a different situation with a similar philosophy) in the country.
#21 Alix. Kudos.
I wasn’t battling your POV. I was just spelling out some issues to take into account. Hey am all for alternate power. We’re doing a lot of effort to build solar, wind and wave generated energy here in my country. A lot is Political baloney, but through the seams something is getting done. Everything helps. Going greener is not about a miracle technology, it’s about lots of technologies coming together.
The hybrid thing was just to say that going all electrical or Hydrogen based is not going greener per se.
Just adding one remark, not with the post’s subject…
I have no incandescent bulbs in my house and love it. Also heating is all natural gas. Still I spend a lot in transportation for my needs. It’s a luxury… (I could easily walk to work, it’s a 15 minute walk…)
#19, sayuncle,
Sorry, but the idea is too far off base to work. Using the air solely as the energy source is a misnomer. It will require energy from somewhere else to fill run the compressor. Also, it would be easier and cheaper to run the engine on liquid nitrogen then it would on compressed air. This is another hidden energy sources, the same as battery power.
A vehicle like this would still be very low powered. The limited range and speed is too inconvenient for anything but the most rudimentary transportation.
There is also the heat problem. As gas is reduced in pressure, it requires (or absorbs) heat. This causes the surrounding materials to build up ice from condensation. Humid areas would fair even worse. If the heat is unavailable, gas will not expand and much of the energy is wasted.
You know, I can see this going on in the city:
Some dude upgraded his prius to a plug-in unit. Upgraded his batteries. He can go as far as the electricity will take him for free, because he’s leeching electricity off a building next door.
In a suburban setting, a man uproots grass in both his and the neighbor’s backyard in the middle of the night. Premeditating this event, knows what part of the siding to take off on both houses, drill a hole in his garage, and Assuming this person knows what he is doing, and is well protected, will be able to find a main line, cut it off, use two units that will connect a plug unit to the main, replace the siding and bury the whole thing underground, keeping it plugged in his garage, without the neighbor knowing he rooted grass or touched the siding to begin with.
There you go, two ways to leech off of neighbors. The second way isn’t as easy… or quick. But since I told this to you… Pray that I don’t move into your neck of the woods with a plug-in hybrid soon.
This entire thread is bogus. A plug-in Prius is not greener nor more economic. It’s all about stealing energy…
The problem with the Prius is that it’s ugly and small. Put the same power plant/drivetrain in a full size truck and you’re getting somewhere.
#27 – Wrong, you put a non-polluting truly modern diesel engine in that truck.
#26 – Stealing & leeching…sheesh. It’s all about reducing dependency on foreign oil.
Electricity in the US is not produced with oil – it’s either coal, hydro, nuclear. Exceptions to Alaska, Puerto Rico & Hawaii.
So getting 75% of all urban / city cars to PHEV within 10 years will make the US independent of foreign oil completely.
#28 Oh… thought that it was all about of reducing Co2 emissions…Getting greener and stuff… but it’s all a ploy to cut USA free of the Oil shackles…my mistake… [/sarcasm]
#28: Don’t forget natural gas. It is displacing coal plants.