We SAW Chryslers electric minivan!!!!

[Dr Mordrid]

Chryslers electric cars are REAL.....WE SAW ONE TODAY!!

They claimed they'd be ready for 2010 and that the US Postal Service would be getting 250 of them for testing. Looks like they're well on the way.

Ok....here's the scenario;

Riding north on I-275 from Westland on our way to Farmington Hills....about 25+ miles west of Detroit proper. All of a sudden this blue Chrysler panel minivan pulls on from a ramp.

LOTS of art work and text on it, including a large US Postal Service logo, so I took a look and damned if I didn't also see "A123 Systems" on the rear quarters.

A123 will be one of the providers of nanoelectrode LiION batteries for GM, Chrysler, Ford and many other hybrid and EV makers. Very high tech/high end batteries to say the least.

NOW I'm interested and decide to investigate. Down goes my window, off goes the radio and the kids get told to shut up. Just then, at 60 mph, he hits the throttle and ZOOM....off it goes like it had a 300 hp V8 in it. Plenty of zip in that puppy. IMO this thing would blister most of the cars on the road.

Traffic slows and we catch up, slow enough for me to pull ahead, stop and let it drive by. SILENCE save for a very slight whir from the electric motor(s?) and a tiny amount of tire noise (low rolling resistance tires?).

Drove in its neighborhood for about 10 miles then we had to exit. Once home I Googled images for a123 chrysler postal and got this....exactly the vehicle we saw.

If this is the tech used in the coming electric Chrysler Town & Country, count me in. With electric drive, lots of cargo-passenger space and with us living 5 miles from anything we normally need it would be the perfect commuter car for us.

[Kruzin]

I am amazed that they get away with calling hybrids 'environment friendly'.
Hybrids are not electric cars.
I'm sure the power you saw in that van was all gas powered.

I work parts at a GMC dealer in Wyoming.
Biggest Pontiac/Buick/GMC/Caddy dealership in the state, where hybrids are NOT a big seller. We've sold maybe 4. One on the lot had been there since I started working here 4 months ago. It's a GMC Yukon 1500 Hybrid.

I was under the misconception that 'Hybrid' meant 'mostly electric'.

I had a little spare time today, and decided to look into what parts make it go.
First I looked up the battery pack.
$2500
Then I looked up the electric motors.
Not available, unless you buy a complete transmission.
$7500

Then I thought...well what charges this magical electrical thing?

It a friggin 6.0 litre V8!
The thing gets almost all of it's power from the gas engine.
It's a conventional engine, with a couple electric motors in the tranny to give a little help.

Went and looked at the stickers on the vehicles on the lot. The 'Hybrids' MPGs are only a couple mpg less than the regular and 'flex-fuel' models with similar sized gas motors.
Smaller gas motor powered vehicles in the same body still get better mileage.

Hybrids are a joke. They are NOT electric powered cars. They are still gas powered, with minimal assist from a couple electric motors bolted on the tranny.

[Dr Mordrid]

I am amazed that they get away with calling hybrids 'envornment friendly'.
Hybrids are not electric cars.
I'm sure the power you saw in that van was all gas powered.

Sorry Kruzin, but this is a full electric vehicle, not a hybrid or plug-in hybrid. Found out it has a 200 kW electric motor (268 bhp, so I was close) and some honkin' big LiION batteries. NO internal combustion engine.

EREV (extended range electric vehicle), which like the Volt use a tiny IC generator to maintain the batteries and extend the range, will be optional when it hits production but not mandatory. Depends on how long a range you need. The first-gen Volt gets a 1.4 liter 4 banger but the 2012 goes down to a 1.0 liter. NO 6, 5, 4, 3 or even 2 liters in sight.

EREV's have electric drive; the ICE battery charger is not connected to the wheels and the electric motor drives the wheels 100% of the time, so they are electric vehicles and are so classified by most governments.

We live within 6 miles of most everything we need on a daily basis, so we could run gas-free 95% of the time and take a flex-fuel van for longer trips.

Besides that the research is in from the national and other labs: plug-ins are more ecologically friendly than cars running ICE's, even if the electricity used to charge them comes from coal. Economics of scale - even coal plants are far more efficient, even after transmission of the electricity, than an ICE in a car.

For those of us that get our power primarily from natural gas or nuclear, it's a solid go.

As for your Yukon: it has the first generation of the two-mode system - a big motor to power two 60 kW electric motors inside a computer controlled tranny, which is why you have to order them together, with a smallish NiMH battery. Not the best setup, but it proved the concept.

The next-gen gets a much smaller/lighter footprint suitable for front wheel drive vehicles with much smaller motors. It will also use much more powerful Hitachi LiION batteries; GM has ordered >100,000 of them with dibs on more if needed. It's also to deliver a no-gas mode and will be going into everything from compacts up to crossover and full sized SUV's.

One such 'crossover' will be based on the Equinox but the guts were developed for the Saturn Vue Green Line Plug-in. They ditched Saturn with Roger Penske's group taking it over, but the plug-in hybrid crossover SUV stays with GM.

If the specs stay the same it'll have a 30 mile electric drive range.

[Kruzin]

'For those of us'.
Michigan. UP. Ill. Some of Ohio.
This is your 'us'.

Once again, you seem to be oblivious to the the fact that most of 'us' do not live near Detroit. The vast majority of the nation does not see what you see till 10-15 years later.

Most of 'us' still cant get E85 or have propane as a common fuel.

[Dr Mordrid]

I said natural gas which besides cooking meals and heating a whole lot of houses is used to generate >22% of our power and has made up almost 95% of all new power generation in the US since 2000 according to the Energy Information Administration.

Nuclear makes up >20% of US power generation, and with any luck someone will grow a brain and increase that. To that end the NRC has started the licensing process for at least 26 new reactors....hopefully Obama doesn't muck it up.

Together they make up at least 42% of US electric power generation, nearly half, so give the "it's only there" routine a rest. Not everyone lives in the middle of nowhere.

That said: thanks to Wyoming for being one of the largest suppliers of coal, natural gas and nuclear fuel.

By the way: you can legally make your own E-85 with a fuel license from the BATF. We've found non-food liquid sugar works good at a total cost, counting the gas used for distilling, of about $1.70 a gallon.

Problem right now is oil prices are tanking with some predicting it down to $25 a barrel by late fall. Could mean sub-$2 gas real soon. It's already down to $2.29 here, and dropping.

[paulw]

That vehicle looks RHD. When did you guys switch to driving on the left??

[Kruzin]

Try to convince a farmer he should drive across his fields in an electric-powered truck. Aint gonna happen.

Not even being a farmer myself, my last job required I commute 35 miles each way.
Almost every on I know drives well over 30 miles a day.
A 30 mile range electric vehicle does nothing for us.

I'm sure Ed Begley Jr., and others who don't have a long commute will like this.
Realistically, It still ain't there for most of us....

[Dr Mordrid]

30-50 mile EV's for out in rural country doesn't make sense....I grew up on a farm so I know.

OTOH an EREV has no range limit other than the size of its tank, like any other vehicle, and recent work at the Argonne National Lab says that the mileage equivalent (allows for comparing EV's with ICE's) for them is from 153 to 201 miles/gallon depending on the size of the battery and how the charging is programmed.

Not only the Volt etc. - one company is making a Dodge Ram pickup EREV mod that gets 140 mpg. It was shown at this summers SAE convention in Detroit. Pacific Gas & Electric bought several. Their Hummer H3 mod is similar.

EREV's can also run on most any fuel; diesel, gasoline, E-85, biodiesel....whatever kind of ICE you choose to put in it.

Think your farmer would like that?

[Dr Mordrid]

That vehicle looks RHD. When did you guys switch to driving on the left??

We haven't. It's a Post Office vehicle and they have RHD so the driver is next to the curb. That way he can stuff the boxes without getting out of his seat.

[Brian Ellis]

Kruzin

Your conception of hybrid is totally wrong. They are fossil-fuel cars with nothing more than an electric boost. Mine. for example, has only 30 kW on electric but the ICE is 83 kW. The electric motor kicks in only during acceleration and climbing steep hills.

Yes, they are worthwhile. I get ~half the fuel consumption than with my old CR-V which is built on the same chassis and has the the same dimensions (except height) and, strangely was 100 kg lighter (all the new safet regs).

The word hybrid means just that - it has two sources of motive power at the same time, but not necessarily all the time. See here for more details.

[VJ]

A problem I see is that many people consider hybrids environmently friendly by definition, whereas it depends...

There are cars on the market that have a higher mpg (and lower CO2 emissions) than for instance the Toyota Prius, without resorting to a 2nd source of power. So while these cars are not hybrids, they can outclass it. In a way, this shouldn't occur: the main concept of making a car hybrid is to reduce emissions; if there are other ways (better motormanagement, ...) to achieve it, than it means that the combustion engine of the hybrid is not sufficiantly optimized. (just my 2c )

Of course, if you consider the Lexus hybrid 4x4, it is more economical than its non-hybrid cousin, while having more torque. So in this example the hybrid it is more environmentaly friendly than its cousin.

[Brian Ellis]

The true hybrids, like the Lexus gas-guzzler hybrid you mention, consume less juice than their non-hybrid counterparts but you must compare like with like. If the hybrid is of a given size, weight, performance, comfort, form and style, then so must your comparison car be. You cannot compare a Prius with a Fiat 500 turbodiesel, which you could just about drive into the Prius' luggage compartment, but which is more economical.

As you can see, hybrids are not all born equal, some are more equal than others.

with mpgus figures between 16 mpg for the Chevy Silverado "Hybrid" (it isn't really one) and 65 mpg for the Honda Insight (figures reported by actual users). Mine is rated at a mean 46 mpg (5.2 l/100 km) by users: in reality, I get about 5.6 l/100 km (within the variability line) because of local topography, climate, much short distance usage etc. This compares with 11-12 l/100 km with the old, lighter CR-V on the same chassis. But any 3 cyl 1 l Tdi will consume, say, 4 l/100 km, but could I get 5 hefty adults + baggage into such a vehicle? And if I did, how long before I reached 60 km/h with my foot hard down?

Compare like with like, please.

[Helevitia]

I went the opposite direction and bought a 2009 Dodge Ram 390HP 5.7l

And the cool part is, it has lots of tech from the daimler/chrysler merger of past. How do I know? I went with my sister-in-law to help her buy a Mercedes and it had all the same features but with different looks.

I also have a 36 mile each way commute. I ride with one of my co-workers, so I literally save 50% which is nice when your gas bill approaches $400.

[VJ]

Brian,
I mentioned the Lexus in that aspect. I was merely pointing ot that there are non-hybrid Prius size cars that have better mileage. So IMO, this means that the Prius' fuel enine is not as optimal is the one in these cars.
Jorg

[dZeus]

The true hybrids, like the Lexus gas-guzzler hybrid you mention, consume less juice than their non-hybrid counterparts but you must compare like with like. If the hybrid is of a given size, weight, performance, comfort, form and style, then so must your comparison car be. You cannot compare a Prius with a Fiat 500 turbodiesel, which you could just about drive into the Prius' luggage compartment, but which is more economical.

As you can see, hybrids are not all born equal, some are more equal than others.

with mpgus figures between 16 mpg for the Chevy Silverado "Hybrid" (it isn't really one) and 65 mpg for the Honda Insight (figures reported by actual users). Mine is rated at a mean 46 mpg (5.2 l/100 km) by users: in reality, I get about 5.6 l/100 km (within the variability line) because of local topography, climate, much short distance usage etc. This compares with 11-12 l/100 km with the old, lighter CR-V on the same chassis. But any 3 cyl 1 l Tdi will consume, say, 4 l/100 km, but could I get 5 hefty adults + baggage into such a vehicle? And if I did, how long before I reached 60 km/h with my foot hard down?

Compare like with like, please.

can't some independent organization come up with an accurate way to compare the energy/natural resources footprint of different cars? just focusing on mpg/lp100km seems a bit weird imo.

What about incorporating the materials and energy used in production of the unit (including the footprint of the manhours of people in the factories), average lifetime of the car including an average amount of spare parts used during the lifetime (based on existing data of similar models from car repair centres), footprint of manhours spent on repairs, etc. Plus a similar build-up based on actual used lifetime of the car per country (often doesn't match the potential lifetime of a vehicle?).