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Hybrid Vehicles Chevrolet Volt Will the Chevy Volt Succeed?
545 messages, Last post on Dec 02, 2009 at 12:57 PM
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Replying to: tpe (Sep 25, 2008 11:40 am) "I can't understand why anyone would object to that." Only if they're irrational. I know I would not want to arrive home ready to plug in only to find out my car was fully charged. I want to use cheap electricity, not expensive gasoline! |
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Replying to: tpe (Sep 25, 2008 11:40 am) If you travel 40 miles or less everyday, then you don't even need the ICE. You might as well add maybe 50-100 lbs of reserve battery and delete the ICE altogether. The ICE is a range extender, nothing more, but it is somehow expensive and still pollutes the air. The goal is to use grid electricity to charge the battery where it is cheaper rather than the ICE. If you travel say 200 miles, then it is best to use 1) battery power where it is most efficient and also 2) ICE where it is most efficient. 1) Battery is most efficient (financially) when it gets it's charge from the grid and not from ICE. It is also best for stop and go application portion of the long distance travel. It is also efficient on steady speed but it has limited range. 2) The ICE is most efficient if it powers the electric motors exclusively, and bypassing the batteries. It is also best if the car is already in motion and not stationary. With those presumptions, it is best that the battery will be depleted just in time when you arrive home for grid recharge. Going back to the subject of deleting the ICE. How much would it cost if you remove the ICE and in it's place, put additional 100 lbs of reserve battery (or shall we say range extender battery?)? Will it be cheaper and make more sense to go pure EV? By the way, the 1999 model Toyota electric RAV4 had a range of 120-130 miles per charge and it did not even used lthium batteries. It used EV95 NiM hydride batteries where the patent rights was then purchased by TEXACO. TEXACO subsquently denied production of more EV95 batteries and threatened the companies with electric vehicles on the road. No wonder, the car companies were scared and crushed their EV's despite public protest from leasee, owners and treehuggers. Speaking of EV RAV4, there are still some of them running and escaped the crushing. Some have more tha 150,000 miles on the odometer without battery problems.
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"GM to build new engine plant Just what we need - a new plant to fabricate combustion engines. This whole thing is an investor relations ploy....  Good bye GM!
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Replying to: hoyahenry (Sep 25, 2008 6:55 pm) This is the plant that will be building the 1.4 for the Volt and Cruze. Speaking of "investor relations ploy" there was a story that GM is planning to build Volt batteries in the U.S. using government setup money, of course. IMO, this would be a good thing... otherwise we'd just be going from imported oil to imported batteries. They'd probably still have to import lithium, but I believe the largest producer is Australia, which is not an unfriendly nation.
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Replying to: peralta (Sep 25, 2008 2:19 pm) If you had an EV with a 70 mile range would that be your only car? Unless you live in a retirement community the answer is probably no. So now you're in the situation where you have to own and maintain 2 vehicles, obviously more expensive. You will also use your EV less, resulting in less fuel savings. Any trip you now take of 70 miles (probably 60 miles) or more will be with your ICE powered vehicle meaning you will have sacrificed 70 electric miles that you could have taken advantage of with an EV that had an ICE range extender. Bottom line is that a person with an EV and an ICE vehicle for long trips will end up burning more gas and polluting more than a person driving an EV with an ICE range extender Until we have affordable EVs with ranges of 200+ miles and a fast charge infrastructure the EV with a range extender is the most practical way to go and will result in the greatest fuel savings. The RAV4 EV is probably the best EV application to date. It's battery pack weighed over 900 lbs and cost $27k to replace. As you stated it had a range of over 100 miles but I seriously doubt many RAV4 EV owners ever embarked on a trip this long. It would be a major inconvenience for your battery to die before you got home. So I suspect almost all RAV4 EV owners/leasees had another vehicle.
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Replying to: eaton53 (Sep 26, 2008 3:01 am) The two areas with the greatest Lithium reserves are in South America (either Chile or Bolivia) and China (the Tibet region). However up until recently Lithium really wasn't too valuable so there hasn't been a lot of exploration. So undoubtable other reserves will be discovered. It wouldn't surprise me to see these batteries manufactured domestically. While costs are higher here than in China these battery packs will weigh several hundred pounds. So the expense of shipping them here won't be trivial. Also China doesn't have the greatest reputation right now for quality control. When you're talking about something that if manufactured improperly could potentially catch fire or explode that will be a major consideration. That's one reason that Toyota will be manufacturing all its battery packs in house. I don't know if these manufacturing plants will actually be in Japan but they will be Japanese owned and controlled.
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Replying to: tpe (Sep 26, 2008 5:11 am) http://www.roskill.com/reports/lithium Looks like the Aussies do have a lot of the stuff, along with the Chileans and others. All preferable to buying Middle Eastern oil... |
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Replying to: tpe (Sep 26, 2008 4:57 am) Would you be interested if say Infiniti would make an EV version Nissan Rogue with 140 miles range and only costs $42,000? Put it in another way, how about a Lexus version of a RAV4 but EV with same 140 miles range for $42,000?
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Replying to: peralta (Sep 26, 2008 5:56 am) Let me ask you this. If you took this hypothetical Nissan Rogue EV with 140 mile range and added an ICE range extender to it would that make it a less appealing vehicle in your mind? If your answer is yes then basically you are saying that anyone making a trip over 140 miles needs to be using a strictly ICE powered vehicle. |
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Replying to: peralta (Sep 26, 2008 5:56 am) People don't like to chance being stranded, especially when the solution is a tow truck rather than simply fetching a gas can. |
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