not fire from article, just some other random fire, but earth was safe
Posted on 06/22/2008 7:45:17 PM PDT by Flavius
As U.S. gasoline prices hover above $4 per gallon and automakers race to make plug-in hybrids available in 2010, it’s no wonder that green-car enthusiasts have turned to after-market kits to convert their hybrids into plug-ins sooner.
The kits include additional batteries and plugs that allow drivers to replace some fuel with electricity from a standard wall outlet, getting more than 100 miles per gallon. It’s an alluring proposition.
But the road to plug-in hybrids hasn’t been easy, and now conversion companies may have run into another bump.
Hybrids Plus this week said a converted Toyota Prius had caught fire, causing no injuries, but “significant damage” to the car.
According to a Cooperative Research Network report, the fire – which happened June 7 – destroyed the car.
(Excerpt) Read more at greentechmedia.com ...
not fire from article, just some other random fire, but earth was safe
I’m glad the fire didn’t occur on the beach in Seattle - someone might get arrested.
a toyota
primadonna
caught fire?
lol!
Whew!! At least it takes the heat off the killer SUV’s.
Why do we need cars you have to plug in? Can’t they make them with batteries that can be recharged while driving?
I was thinking the same. lol
*Gasp!* Did the fire release any greenhouse gasses?
It’s not like conventional cars never catch on fire.
But electricity from a wall socket is free and comes from a magical place that doesn't require any carbon emission.
That takes gas. Plugging in your car just takes electricity. Supposedly electricity from your wall is cheaper than charging your batteries with the gasoline motor.
I’m not so sure it’s that great of an idea. It requires more batteries. So now your car is heavier. I suppose it will all depend on how much improvements they can make in battery technology in the coming years.
No smog ... only smug.
Exactly! You nailed that one.
Up until recently the SUV was the prime target of the press. Any accident that had an SUV involved received broad coverage. SUVs were the devil’s spawn. Now it’s hybrids.
I laugh at this. Other vehicles have problems besides SUVs and hybrids. All this coverage is silly.
No wonder the media is going belly up.
I’ll get an electric vehicle when my local supermarket provides plug-in powering-up while I shop. Of course I expect to pay for the juice!!
I live in what I reckon is the Prius Capital of the US, Silicon Valley, and while they're ubiquitous out here on the roads, I have yet to see one at the side of the road (and I've been looking out for that, actually.)
Yeah but once there is a market for it...we’ll be paying big bucks for electricity. I would like to be energy independent. (I guess I need to air up the tires on my bike)
One less ricegrinder on our American roads is fine with me.
Talked w/a guy tonight that is putting an electric motor in a 2000 ford probe that will run off golf cart batteries. He says he’ll get 50 miles a charge out of it.
I wonder how much it will cost to charge it up?
Fully electric cars can't charge off the brakes.....thermodynamic laws and all.
I just bought a Prius (well not really I’m on a 3 month waiting list). I don’t give a damn about reducing greenhouse emissions, or any other such crap. I bought it because it gets twice the gas mileage of my current car, and has good resale value.
I guess if it catches on fire, or I get cancer from a 200 volt electromagnetic field, then the joke is on me. I really doubt either of those things is going to happen, but I guess we’ll see.
check this out
http://venturebeat.com/2008/01/10/27-electric-cars-companies-ready-to-take-over-the-road/
I did some original design work on regenerative braking in the 80's for a golf cart manufacturer.
LOL, not sure if I want a car that has a top speed of 25 mph.... some of those looked like glorified golf carts. I’m anxious to see how the hybrid thing works out. My friend has a Camry hybrid, he gets 45-50 mpg, no problems so far, he’s had it for over a year.
It wouldn’t surprise me if we see newer and more advanced hybrids getting better and better mileage. I guess I don’t understand why everybody is hating on the hybrids. I guess there’s an “Al Gore” stigma attached to them, but like I told the salesman, when he started in on the ‘saving the environment’ spiel: ‘buddy, I don’t care about that. If I could get 100 mpg driving a tank, I’d do it’.
well since prius has been around for awhile i guess it will continue
i think ill wait for volt, if its under 30k
if it is ill get something from overseas
at any rate
oil should crash soon anyway
lol. I would have liked to have seen his face.
I didn’t know it was called regenerative braking. Cool. That would be an interesting engineering problem to work on.
(I guess I need to air up the tires on my bike)
My bike went in the trash on my 16th birthday 55 years ago and i’ll never plant my butt on another one!!!
Cubic inches and gasoline forever!!!
Mine is comfortable. I had a hard time finding it though. It’s a girls bike with brake peddles and even a basket:’)
At the time it was "cutting edge". I was later hired by a French company (in the US) to employ regenerative into their electric work van. That was a piece of crap. It was too heavy and under powered. We were allowed to take it home over weekends to show it off but it rarely came back on it own power. I bet the folks at Honda have squeezed effeciencies out of their system that we never considered.
“I had a hard time finding it though. It’s a girls bike with brake peddles and even a basket:’)”
Like they used to say 60 years ago, girls ride bikes so theycan peddle their a** all around town!
Somebody should invent a foldup compact tent or mini carport for these hybrids thats covered with solar cells, cover the car while at work and it recharges.
In the late 1980s, my company testing a Ford EV with a sodium sulfur battery. The sodium sulfur had to be kept at 700 to 800F around the clock. One day the battery leaked the liquid mixture onto the asphalt parking lot. The car was a total loss and the cars adjacent to the test vehicle were a total loss, too. Sodium sulfur is no longer viable for EVs.
I rarely see anything on the side of the road these days, apart from total pieces of s-—. I think the manufacturers have pretty much figured out how to make things die over a long enough period of time that you can get well off of the road. I saw a Prius on the side of the road a few months ago, but that’s because a Mercedes SUV had sheared its front end off.
I’m not so sure that there is some truth to the health risks that nobody has ever considered, from these cars.
Not really so much from the ElectroMagnetic Field, but from the extreme concentrations of Ozone Gasses coming off the armature. In tight enclosures, like a car, those emissions are being focused on the passengers and driver at some very high levels.
There is some concern that Ozone gasses are not healthy and somewhat carcinogenic. It is one of the dangerous listings in most cities that post smog warnings. Ozone levels that is.
That little rotating wheel on the meter creates it!
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with regenerative systems and I think they can be a great innovation. The problem is that sometimes the systems affect performance of the primary. A car with a turbo uses the exhaust of the engine to generate power, but restricts the exhaust in the process.
The system I worked on took energy from stopping the vehicle and threw it back into the battery. It effectively reversed the motor's function (turned it into an alternator) when you stepped on the brake pedal. Performance of a golf cart was not paramount.
That about sums up the mentality of the electric car weinies.
Or they watch too many old Frankenstein movies and think lightning can magically charge electric cars somehow.
Americans dump about 83 million tons of AA flashlight batteries every year. Does anyone ever think about dumping one car's worth of 600 pounds of car storage cell batteries? Naaa. No consequences ever considered. Sorta like the ethanol fiasco.
Gee, the top speed during WWII was 35 mph for all cars and trucks.
U.S. Government mandate...
Oh please...
Electric cars don’t “catch on fire.” They have “thermal events.” Just ask General Motors...
Mark
Whoops, better buy back all those carbon offsets you sold ‘cause the fire pro’ly made up for your carbon savings and then some.
And nothing will happen to the national power grid when everyone plugs in their cars...
I believe you have that concept somewhat turned around.
Turbos do not “regenerate” power. They do three things that increases HP. First, they raise exhaust gas temperatures, which increases rotation, which induces the equivalent atmosphere in the engine to up to triple the available atmosphere. (from 29.92 in. of Mercury to 90 in.)
Which in turn increases the flow of air into the engine allowing for a much higher burn rate in the hot end. The same process accelerates the exhaust out of the engine which in turn allows for more air to flow into the intake.
Turbos do not restrict anything in the engine, it magnifies performance greatly as well as makes it much more efficient. One of the negative effects is, it allows the engine to use more fuel than normal, albeit more efficiently.
better than oil from the middle east
One thing I noticed when I bought my last Honda Civic(2006), was that the gas mileage it got was significantly less than my old 1995 Honda Civic. The 1995 got 44 mpg on the freeway when I first bought it, and after 10 years and 215,000 miles, still got 34-38 mpg on the freeway. My new 2006 never got above 36 on the freeway, usually between 30-32 mpg. I noticed since then that Japanese cars made in the late 80's to mid 90's still get better gas milage than newer ones.
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