The Ford Nucleon
Posted on 08/15/2009 12:03:45 PM PDT by freebilly
OK, these ridiculous mpg claims are starting to get out of hand. Earlier this week, General Motors announced an estimated 230 mpg for the upcoming Volt extended-range EV--a claim that was later undermined by the EPA. No doubt attempting to steal a bit of GM's thunder, Nissan claimed (via Twitter) that its upcoming Leaf EV could do better:
"Nissan Leaf = 367 mpg, no tailpipe, and no gas required. Oh yeah, and it'll be affordable too!"
At first, we thought this was an odd claim to make, seeing that the Leaf is fully electric and (as stated in the same tweet) doesn't actually use gasoline or diesel fuel. Nissan, followed up later with another tweet stating that they were using a DOE formula to estimate the 367 mpg equivalency for the electric LEAF, but doesn't that just confuse prospective customers further with obtuse conversions?
What do you think, wise and noble reader? In a world where vehicles run on gasoline, diesel, hydrogen, ethanol, alcohol, natural gas, and electricity (to name a few), is it time for a new efficiency metric or should we stick with old faithful (if not sometimes inapplicable) miles per gallon?
Now if you buy a Honda Civic for $18,000 that gets 30mpg, after 5 years you will have spent $11,000 on fuel (given the 40 miles per day scenario. In any event, electric cars don't pencil out....
To be fair, their mpg ratings should factor in the energy required to make the electricity.
Now if they wanted to go to nuclear power, I’m much more interested.
My regular 4 dr 6 cyl. Kia Optima gets over 420 highway miles to one tank of gas. IOW it has RANGE! Until they can make an alternatively feuled vehicle that can do that, is safe to drive on our highways and costs the same or LESS than my regular gasoline vehicle they can stuff their wind-up toy cars where the SUN DON’T SHINE!
I’ll wait until they power the car with a mini nuclear power plant....
Ping to Mr. Mercat.
I can get 400 miles plus on a single tank in MY vehicle too. Problem is, its a 35 gallon tank.
At the VA hospital where I recently spent some inpatient time, they have an electric parking-lot shuttle...
One day, out of sheer boredom, I struck up a conversation with the driver, asking him how much a vehicle like that cost...
He told me that it cost $24,000, was not ‘street legal’, ran 4 hours, max, before needing 12 hours of charge, and was often ‘down for maintenance’...
They called it ‘The Obamamobile’.......
A talk show host on WNIR in Kent, Ohio used those same figures yesterday!
Question - what is the cost of charging up this type of car (electrical cost) - is it no big deal or would it zoom up the electric bill over one year?
“Now if they wanted to go to nuclear power, I’m much more interested.”
MPR = Miles Per RAD ?
And I agree with a “truth in mileage” requirement.
http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/Chevrolet_Volt/
When did they start selling electricity by the gallon? This is BS.
A flux capacitor that runs off of waste.
I remember my Dad saying the same thing back in the 70's! He believed there was a conspiracy to keep nuclear from the masses ny the Big Oil companies. This was before big Enviro lobbies were in full bloom.
If it can take me back to 1973 then I'll gladly pay $50,000 for it....
C'mon, I just went up to Wal-Mart this morning and bought 5 gallons of liquid electricity in the automotive section....
“Problem is, its a 35 gallon tank.”
Mine is a 16 gallon.
But knowing how the EPA works, it is likely that even were we to see revisions, we would get formulae that allow even more gaming of the system in place of actual transparency.
*"For example, most people ranked an improvement from 34 to 50 mpg as saving more gas over 10,000 miles than an improvement from 18 to 28 mpg, even though the latter saves twice as much gas. (Going from 34 to 50 mpg saves 94 gallons; but from 18 to 28 mpg saves 198 gallons)." (Science Daily)
And I could make a car that gets infinite mpg, but it would have pedals on it.
Lets see if I can guess what will happen;
I buy this car that gets 367 miles per gallon of gas, Great
To charge this great car will require special electrical hook up, not so great.
There will be a cost for this special electrical hook up at #10.00 per hour and a 4 hour recharge requirement. not so great.
Since gas is not selling as well the price will increase to $10.00 per gallon, not so great.
The battery in this great car will only last 2 years, and to replace it, without the installation costs, will cost $3000.00, not so great.
Special recharge facilities will be few and far between and only be able to handle a limited number of cars, not so great
As more special recharge facilities are built they will require additional electric service which will cause that cost to increase, not so great.
Sooooooooooo, it appears that the great saving with electric cars end up costing 2, 3 times as much as the cars we now drive, not so great.
and after 1000 or so charges .. the batteries will have to be REPLACED .. dunno... they saying anywhere between $5000 and $10,000 ... and those fancy batteries cannot be recycled yet... so the GREENIES ARE SCREWING themselves with their shortsightedness.
I wrote a design paper for one in college. Actually, not a conventional reactor, but one that ran off of heat from a certain isotope of the fuel expelled from a reactor.
BWAHAHAHAHA...!
Two to four cents a mile for larger vehicles. A penny per mile for the Volt.
I once bought a used (107,000 miles) 1988 Ford Crown Victoria as a commuter car. I paid $3500.00 and paid another $1000.00 in repairs over the next eight years. I drove it 18,000 miles per year and it got 30 MPG. I sold it for $800.00. Gas averaged $2.00 per gallon, but using your figure of $5.00 a gallon, it cost $3,000 per year to fuel, but the total cost to run including gas was 20 cents per mile. And that’s not even factoring in insurance cost savings (no need for comprehensive coverage).
That’s how the average driver saves money, not by purchasing eco-status symbols.
Don’t hire Ukrainian operators for your mini-nuclear power plants - just a suggestion
They might try a wacky “power-failure” test again.
It will have at least a 10 year warranty. Toyota is reporting excellent lifetimes of their hybrids.
-----------------
Hybrids have taken a bad rap for their battery packs – with claims (usually made by people with a political axe to grind) that the disposal of batteries makes a hybrid a bad environmental choice, and that the battery packs must be replaced at huge expense every year or two. It turns out that at least the latter claim is completely false. Out of 750,000 Prius battery packs produced and distributed so far, only 306 have been replaced as worn-out or a warranty fault. “The life of the battery pack is generally about the same as the life of the vehicle,” said Toyota’s Jeremiah Shown.
That’s how the average driver saves money, not by purchasing eco-status symbols.
The average American has more commonsense than the left thinks....
Figure out how far you want to go, in what time time,(mph) convert that into KWH, then check what you pay per KWH. THEN, you need to figure out how many KWH the charger soaks up to stuff a KW of power back into the battery.
Or you can just say electricity costs a heck of a lot more than gas, and with Obama cap and trade figured into the carbon cost of electricity, if you think gas is expensive, wait till you pay for the cost of electricity for that obamabile.
Yeah, let’s all spend $40,000 on a car that only takes us 12,000-14,000 miles per year. Let’s figure this out: If you only get 20mpg in your clunker then 14,000 miles = 700 gallons of gas. Let’s assume that gas will go to $5.00/gallon, which means that you’ll pay $3500/year for gas. Over 5 years you’ll pay $17,500 fueling your clunker. And you don’t have to burn coal to power your clunker.
Now if you buy a Honda Civic for $18,000 that gets 30mpg, after 5 years you will have spent $11,000 on fuel (given the 40 miles per day scenario. In any event, electric cars don’t pencil out....
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You have to also add in:
The interest paid on the extra $22,000 dollars you are paying for the electric car.
The interest you lost by spending that $22,000 instead of investing it.
My Dodge RAM V8/4.7 gets 350-375 on a tank. My electric bill on the other hand...
Uh, fleet vehicle reports show that electrical propulsion is the cheaper. Cents per mile from two to four. At four cents per mile that is about $1 per gall of gas equivalent since the reports I saw were utility vehicles which were large SUV's.
and with Obama cap and trade figured into the carbon cost of electricity, if you think gas is expensive, wait till you pay for the cost of electricity for that obamabile.
You are living in la la land if you think gasoline will be exempt from cap-and-trade.
As someone else pointed out, just wait until Cap & Trade is implemented. The additional charges on electrical use will make drivers of electric cars somewhat unhappy....
I want to go 60 miles in one hour. Please show me the number of KWH derived from your above numbers.
I don't believe that. There are huge losses involved. Batteries don't just absorb a electron in for every electron out from the charger, and the charger doesn't produce one electron of charging force for every electron comming out of the 120/240v line.
And every electron put out from the battery does not go directly towards the forward motion (power=force/time=force.distance/time) of the vehicle.
Enviro’s have made it so that if just 10,000 or so of these vehicles were sold and started recharging off our current grid, it would bring California to it’s knees.
These cars are GREAT, but sorry, they are also a TICKING TIME BOMB.
Hitler commissioned the Volkswagen and Obama will commission the Voltwagen. Soon he wills start taking money out of your paycheck for installment payments..oh wait..they already are, but you won’t get the car.
I was in high school during the Eisenhower administration and there was an “atoms for peace” program that would have meant virtually unlimited supply of electricity. There was even talk of having unmetered electricity for homes. That would enable electic cars feasable but obviously “atoms for peace” did not pan out just like “operation plowshare”.
Who’re you gonna believe? Obama or the Laws of Thermodynamics...?
They don't even want you to be driving a car in the first place. To the greenies, hybrids and electric vehicles are just an intermediate step toward forcing the masses onto "sustainable" modes of transit like bikes and buses.
And just think, once most of the US fleet consists of hybrids, the greens can then argue for banning private automobiles entirely because of all the awful toxic waste created by the batteries.
Do you have any numbers to support your ranting?
You are living in la la land if you think gas prices won't go up at least as much as electricity prices.
” As someone else pointed out, just wait until Cap & Trade is implemented. “
Ah, but you forgot solar and wind power...
Of course, in order to install enough solar panels and windmills to meet the demand for all of those electric cars that we’re gonna be forced to buy to keep Government Motors open for the Unions, the government would have to utilize every square inch of open space... Since the NIMBY enviros will screech about taking up ‘pristine open space’, the usable open space becomes the rights-of-way for streets, roads, and highways...
Guess we can drive ‘em up and down the driveway.....
How many meters in a mile? 1 kw=.3048m or about 3.3kw roughly per meter. multiply 3.3kw by the number of meters in a mile (1609.344 )=5310.8352kw x60= 318650.112kw per hr
That’s why I figured $5.00/gallon in my initial post....
No. The batteries will be warranted for at least 10 years. In present Hybrids, there is a surplus of used batteries because there are more wrecked hybrids than battery failures.
The Ford Nucleon
Current hybrids make more sense than the 40 mile per day all electric vehicles....
gm says 10cents per kwh so 318650.112kwh/1000 x.10= $31.60 for 60 miles.
Meaningless term. I see you are not an engineer.
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