Posted on 10/09/2004 1:09:21 PM PDT by doug from upland
Yep, Toyota is going to build a hybrid plant in China...for the Chinese market, which is going to be huge...not for building hybrids to export to the U.S., which I think is what you are inferring. Toyota is considering building hybrids in the U.S. as well since the market here appears to be growing significantly.
Capacitors, by definition and in practive, charge instantly and discharge on demand; I'm unsure of that which you speak.
First, when you buy it the battery must be charged before it can be driven, somebody already paid to do that.
Next, if you drive at low speeds for too long, the engine begins to start, run and switch off to try and maintain the threshold voltage.
Each time this is repeated a small piece of the battery's life is gone forever.
You can't win a dragrace with a critically-injured Armadillo on your best day.
It has all the sex-appeal of Michael Moore in a Rotorooter's uniform.
Thirty years from now your children will finally admit they cut down the family tree the day hugged your last leaf.
How much is the lobster buffet in Boomtown?
Paid 2.29/gal for reg unleaded in Loomis today.
The goal shouldn't be lower performance. In fact, car buyers shouldn't have to give up the things most important to them - safety, functionality, comfort, and quality, to begin with. Many, if not most, Americans aren't ready to buy into going slower, in cars so small they don't feel safe amid the larger vehicles on our roads, or in ultra-lightweight cars.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't have small cars. The Mini is finding its niche, as has the New Beetle. DaimlerChrysler's smart (lower case intended) car is very popular in Europe, is now on sale in Canada and Mexico, and is coming here in 2006. If small cars are perceived as being "cool," they will sell to a certain segment of the new car market.
And by the way, diesel passenger cars will be coming in much greater numbers because the automakers need to increase their fleet-wide fuel economy numbers to meet federal regulations, and diesel accomplishes that. These diesels are quiet, perform well, and do not leave a trail of soot (particulate matter) in their wake, as have diesels of the past.
While we have our own needs and desires in this country, they can be served well by better and more advanced technology vehicles, including hybrids, advanced diesels, and more efficient/lower emission gasoline vehicles as well.
What brought it all together was pretty much the same thing that gave us self-rising flour - a simple exercise in expansion of knowledge and understanding.
There is no historical proof that auto manufacturers were purposely impeding "progress."
California maintains a "zero-tolerance" stance on diesel-powered cars.
$20.00 and they look like big crawdads, very chewy. Not worth the money!
on emissions? absent government regulations, they would have never equipped cars with such systems. if we had a modest, steady CAFE for the last 15 years - we might have production ready carbon fiber infused plastics to put into cars now and reduce weight without losing strength.
Yes, I read that you could go from LA to Yosemite on six gallons of gas. Does your husband like his Prius? My son turned 16 in January and he wanted a Prius, but the waiting list was until November, and of course he couldn't wait that long for his first car. So I got him a Civic. It gets much better mileage than my Chevy truck.
that will change when the new diesel fuel regulations take effect in 2007. and the modern diesels will be equipped with urea releasing systems to reduce NOx.
I read about the Hyundai DualNote in Popular Science a few years ago; I don't know if anything ever became of the idea, though.
Basically, the notion was that in most hybrids, the size of the battery "pack" required is set by the power requirement rather than the energy-storage requirement. A battery pack large enough to supply the necessary power will hold a lot more energy than is really needed.
A capacitor which can supply the same amount of power, but hold less energy (enough to accellerate the car from 0-60, but not much energy beyond that), can (at least in theory) be made much smaller and lighter, and somewhat cheaper than batteries.
Caps don't charge and discharge instantly, btw. For small caps the internal resistance is usually low enough not to be a factor, but for larger caps the internal resistance can be very significant.
In the design of any particular type of cap (tantalum, electrolytic, etc.) there are three basic parameters [greatly oversimplifying]: (1) the thickness of the metal; (2) the thickness of the dielectric; (3) the total volume of space the thing takes up.
Breakdown voltage will be proportional to the thickness of the dielectric. Internal resistance will be inversely proportional to the thickness of the metal. Capacitance will be proportional to the total contact surface area between the metal and dielectric and inversely proportional to the thickness of the dielectric.
If you look in Digi-Key, you'll find some one-farad capacitors which are about the diameter of a quarter and well under an inch thick. Although these caps can hold an awful lot of charge, the metal in them is very thin and thus the internal resistance is quite high. That isn't a problem for the caps' intended application (supplying a few microamps over a period of days) but woudl make the caps useless for an application that required drawing 1,000 amps for a milisecond. One-farad caps exist that can perform the latter function, but they are much larger.
I don't know what the engineering issues would be for designing a capacitor that could supply the necessary voltage and current to get a car from 0 to 60. If one makes a WAG that optimal design would be for the cap to hold 316 volts (since energy capacity is proportional to the square of voltage, increasing dielectric thickness will improve energy storage density), each farad of capacitance would represent 50KJ. Accellerating a 1000kg car from 0 to 31m/s (70mph) would require 500KJ. So a 10F cap would be required. If a lower voltage were used, say 80 volts, a larger cap (160F at 80 volts) would be required.
That should make my two male dogs happy.
well, your dogs aside, the car owner will have to replace the urea cannister like they change the oil.
Correction-to-self: HONDA DualNote.
Good explanation; now, in a practical sense, how do they propose to maintain that charge?
Do you somehow see this comparison being made at the expense of people waiting for organ transplants? That would be interesting...
Hybrids are good for all types of driving and they get better fuel economy than almost all other types of vehicles. The Ford Escape Hybrid is rated at 36 mpg city and 31 mpg highway. Show me another SUV that does this. In fact, you should understand that this is a better highway fuel economy number than many economy cars.
Has anyone done an environmental impact study on the disposal of this device?
The battery depens on an outside source to replenish it; the most efficient generators still have losses. What makes up for this?
LOL!Thanks, I seldom make it up there on weekends. Imagine, great seafood on the high-plains of Nevada--somebody's driving a turbo.
My band's playing a wedding in a couple of weeks in Tahoe, I'll be climbing up US50 in an 8.1 Vortec with four other musicians and all gear. Roundtrip, less than 50 bucks.
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