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Hybrid Vehicles Hybrid Vehicles - Archived Discussions Who can compete with Toyota/Lexus Hybrids? 
126 messages, Last post on Nov 28, 2003 at 11:50 PM
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| Your point on price differential is well taken, but history is any example I believe it will be overcome within a fairly short period of time. At that point, you have a technology that offers attractive advantages in fuel efficiency and emission control. If other auto makers aren't with the program by that point, they could suffer. People won't pay a lot more to get lower fuel bills but they'll pay something, and if the lower fuel costs come essentially free, they'll be camping out at the doors of whatever brands offer them. | |
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will be mostly cars from: Honda Toyota Nissan (entered a deal with Toyota for a hybrid Altima) |
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and Ford will be the first one if it ever quits the talk and actually makes the hybrid Escape available to the public - it will use the THS from the old Prius. If you have the $$ for a luxury nameplate, Lexus' own RX may be the first hybrid SUV available if Escape doesn't get with it pretty quick. HL will follow within a year, I think. Exciting: Ford estimates the fuel economy of the hybrid Escape to be 36/32 (city/hwy). It is also estimated to have the acceleration of the V-6 gas-only. If Toyota and Honda are the only ones to run with hybrid tech, it may peak and gradually whither away, absent an oil crisis, draconian new emissions regs, or something like that. Toyota already has a huge head start if there winds up being a hybrid race. |
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| I want to know what the big deal is with having a hybrid anyway. The Feds are not really offering anything that special to people buying hybrid(tax-wise) and to actually believe that you'll be making any significant difference in our environment is VERY debatable. Is this a discussion on all types of cars or just Lexus/Toyota and their hybrid lead right now? Right now there are so many good cars available OTHER than Toy-Lex I shudder to even want to start typing them in here. Those smart men and women from South Korea are competing in a large way right now for starters. | |
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You all better relax a little bit, Hybrid cars are ancient technology. The first cars were Steam, then Electric, then gas, then Hybrid and then back to gas after some things were ironed out like better gearboxes, clutches, final drives. Etc. >but especially Toyota, which is already licensing and selling their hybrid tech to other car companies, something that could make them some really juicy profits in the next ten years if even more car companies come a-callin' Why would anybody pay to somebody for reinventing the wheel, the Petersen automobile museum in L.A. has a 1917 Woods Hybrid car on display. Probably the earliest Hybrid was the Krieger, a front wheel drive Hybrid built in 1903. http://www.didik.com/ev_hist.htm As far as I know no fundamental breakthrough in automobile development has come from Japan other than the counter balancing shaft for vibration dampening on engines. Automotive breakthroughs come mainly from Europe and in Europe the Diesel engine is the immediate future (numbering into the millions) because is the only engine that can double or triple the fuel mileage over a gas engine (displacement Vs displacement) and offer way more power than a hybrid or a gas engine, and after that, hydrocarbon cracking fuel cells. The same thing is going to happen here in the US in three years when the mandate for low sulfur diesel fuel takes effect and the new common rail diesels become available. The success of the Diesel engine is due to the fact that it can convert the energy of the fuel into mechanical energy better than any IC power plant, the 230MPG experimental VW efficiency is 42% the best ever attained by any engine or the VW Lupo that went around the world averaging over 100MPG and reaching in some stretches over 140MPG. That is the engine of the immediate future. The diesel takes on the Hybrid. http://compactcars.about.com/cs/automakers/a/aa052603a.htm |
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well........the hybrids being marketed today are not quite that 1917 Woods thingy - if they were, Toyota wouldn't have sold a one. Problem with diesel will be marketing. People will remember those great 70s and 80s diesels from companies like Mercedes that had perennially blackened rear ends because of all the smoke, required warm-up time before you could actually drive them, and sounded like a Mack truck when you drove off in the morning. No, that is nothing like today's diesels. But that is what people remember. The "if" I wrote in that statement you quoted above was a big one, no, a HUGE one. I am certainly not convinced that other companies WILL come a-callin'. In the end, diesels and hybrids will probably both remain a small percentage of the personal vehicle market because gas is too cheap in the US, and selling "green" vehicles to the American populace is almost an impossibility as well. |
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| The hybrid badge on the back of your car lets you drive in carpool lanes around here. That's a big deal. | |
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> well........the hybrids being marketed today are not quite that 1917 Woods thingy. Using your same reasoning a Mercedes Diesel today is not the same as a Diesel of the 70’s, Mercedes was the first car company in the world to introduce a Diesel for passenger cars in 1933, in the 70’s a Mercedes Diesel was state of the art just as is today, for comparison GM introduced a Diesel in the 70’s based on the 350 V8 engine, it only produced 125hp out of that big engine and 14mpg by comparison today the VW TDI 150 which at 4cyl is one third the size, it produces 25 hp more and 20% more torque and gives a Bora 58mpg. Again, today the big revolution in diesel technology is the common rail developed by Mercedes Benz and Bosch and direct pump pressure developed by VW, the better calibrated fuel burn along with alloys development and mechanical design allows for quiet, smooth and faster and lighter diesel engines, some of the VW small diesels already meet the EU4 emissions requirement to take effect in 2005. Clean diesels require a sulfur fuel below 50ppm, in the US diesel today is on average 450ppm, that is the reason that VW is the only manufacturer today selling Diesels in the US, they are a detuned version of the European engines able to cope with the US fuel but their emissions levels are above the European engines for the same reasons, also for the same reasons VW is limited in the number of vehicles they can sell based on the corporate emissions average for any manufacturer. That formula allows a few thousand diesels per year which VW sells in a few months and the rest of the year they are empty. So in effect what is keeping the modern diesel out is not the engine itself but the fuel situation. The EPA is aware of this situation and refiners are obligated by 2005-6 to bring the sulfur level down and that includes Gasoline too. Once low sulfur diesel is the law of the land the new diesel is coming in. You are talking about bad memories of diesel engines, and I say that is mostly verbatim. Today just about any American who keeps up with cars is aware of the new diesels, many have traveled to Europe and bring their good news, people are not that dumb, they know that technology advances, Americans like power under the hood and right now the diesel is the only thing that can give them that and on top of it, improve their fuel mileage. |
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Thor8 - What makes you think that a diesel engine cannot be mated worked into a hybrid drivetrain? Fuel cell-powered cars are hybrids. Bio-diesel engines could be made into hybrids. There is no law stating that a hybrid electric motor must be combined with a gas engine. Callmedrfill - Toyota is clearly ahead of the game in the hybrid race. I think the latest Prius is the best example of a production hybrid to date. The only other game in town is Honda. The Honda electrics may not be as good as those from Toyota, but they make the best engines. That's still half the drivetrain. |
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To understand the power behind Hybrids is simple. Small engines whether Gas or Diesel are a lot easier to control emissions, engines around one liter displacement + or -, the bigger the engine the harder to bring emissions down, for instance VW can comply with EU4 tier with their little diesels but not with their big V10, same applies for the MBZ, BMW with their big V8 diesels, other techniques need to be used. Having a small engine that complies with emissions mandates leaves the other side of the equation on a deficit, no power. To solve this an electric motor is added to help the gas engine when power is needed (Hybrid, meaning two different), but an electric motor is energy dependant in other words something has to feed the electricity to it, in this case batteries, but batteries deplete their charge and need to be charged and we get back to the small motor which has to either propel the vehicle when there is no charge or both. For this reasons energy recovery systems are added, like when braking (greatest recovery percentage) the electric motor function as a generator to charge the batteries (this act is what increases the fuel mileage). For these reasons hybrids are more efficient in stop and go traffic, like the city, but when on long and open roads there is little opportunity to charge the batteries and the vehicle has to rely on the main gas engine and consequent power deficit. Now there is a small fact that people needs to be aware and that is if you have 200hp under the hood when cruising at 50mph or below where wind drag is not a big factor that 200hp engine is using only a small percentage of its power because that is all that is needed, maybe 30hp, the hybrid exploits this fact and only uses a 30hp engine, when extra hp is required it calls on the E motor. A hybrid vehicle could give a better fuel mileage but is penalized by having to carry extra weight as in batteries, another power system weight factor (E.motor/Gen). If a breakthrough in accumulators is achieved then the hybrid will improve its mileage greatly. Now is easier to see why the Europeans are pushing for the Diesel engine, if you can increase the efficiency and lower emissions in one package the problem is solved very simply or less complicated, the car will be left practically as is until something more revolutionary comes. Right now the devil to contend with is emissions first and better fuel mileage second, for this reasons the Europeans and Germans mostly. Half of the vehicles in the world have Bosch electronics, in Japan distributed as Denso, this is what Bernd Bohr from Bosch, GmBh predicts for the next 25 years. http://www.waitnews.com/bosch_outline_the_future.htm |
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