Right now GM vehicles clog the streets with massive, roaring, diesel-trucks, SUV's and pickups. As gas gets more and more expensive the remaining drivers of these vehicles will be reffered to as "those asshole GM drivers."

The score today Toyota=Prius, GM=Asshole.

They better do something to change that.

Put the Carbon Back

I would also point out that Toyota sells quite a few massive trucks (Tundra) and behemoth suvs too.

Could be things are not so black and white (or Prius vs. a__hole, as it were). I do agree that, to date, Toyota has been a leader in the fuel economy thingy. Along with Honda and VW. I also think Detroit has been clueless. Looks like things could be changing, though.

We were told that they know nothing, will cost too much, won't last very long, and only a few people in LA want one.  The message we took away was that potential customers will not buy the current Prius because they want to wait for the rumored plug-in.  

All our friends and relatives are holding out for the plug-in.  

GM does not have the same information liability and will hurt current Toyota sales with the promise of a future plug-in.  Clever.

especially if we stop carbon-intensive forms of generation. Can anyone sit there with a straight face and say renewables match our present electricity consumption and our car fuel too?

Perhaps, as gmunger suggests, we should do something about our 'need' to epend the energy to take a ton of metal with us everywhere we go.

and don't even get me started on SUV hawkers Toyota...

Bristling Badger

Now one problem with things like the volt, is it looks to me like they are taking a conventional car and turning it into a plug-in hybrid. What they should be doing is designing aerodynamic bodies, and building them out of carbon fiber to light-weight the car. Then you can get get the equivalent of 90 mpg even from our current grid, and the equivalent of better than 200 mpg from a renewable grid. (The difference is explained by the lack of thermal losses in a reneable grid.)

At work we got after market plug in Prius and it a fine car.  Well over a 100 miles per gallon with a 20 mile one way commute.

1 year before the end of the NEXT presidential term. >:{

http://greyfalcon.net/volt

_

It's a great concept, it's just that it's too far down the road to be meaningful.

That said, something I can truely get hyped about.
Phoenix Motors wants to come out with their own Series Plugin Hybrid.

And considering their fully electric model will be out in the next 3 months.  With an SUV model out early 2008.

It shouldn't take them too long to slap on a small gasoline generator, and then get it through additional crash tests.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/phoenix-motorcars ...
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/04/phoenix ...

Why do you provide links to pages on your own website, that merely forward to other pages not on your site?

Now one problem with things like the volt, is it looks to me like they are taking a conventional car and turning it into a plug-in hybrid.

Kinda,

A Plugin Prius is a "Parrallel Plugin Hybrid"
It has all the components, weight, cost, maintanence, bulk of a fully gasoline powertrain, and a fully electric powertrain.

Whats unique, and revolutionary about the Volt is that it's a "Series Plugin Hybrid"
A Series-PHEV is no different than a completely electric car.  
Except that it has a small gasoline generator attached to make some backup electricity.
In addition, a Series-PHEV generally has a bare minimum battery pack as compared to a fully electric car.

Considering the battery is the most expensive component on an electric car a Series Plugin Hybrid allows people to drive electric on the cheap.

It also gives them the complete flexibility most consumers demand, (Or atleast don't feel comfortable doing without).

_

Facing facts, we aren't going to get rid of Oil overnight.

However we can ween ourselves off of it by ramping up the economies of scale for battery production.

This allows for battery production economies-of-scale to ramp up.  And for quick-charge electric infrastructure to build itself.

IMHO, Series Plugin Hybrids are the ultimate transitional vehicle technology to get us off of fossil fuels.

The perplexity of proxy pages posting
GreyFlcn,
Why do you provide links to pages on your own website, that merely forward to other pages not on your site?

Because they are easier for me to remember, and use on blogs.

Also allows me to update the link retroactively incase I make a typo, or the site relocates/updates

Yeah, now GM has released a vehicle that will satisfy Big Oil, and Big Auto, since obviously they couldn't do it with the EV1--in fact, quite the opposite.  Practically all the statistics on driving provided here were fulfilled by the EV1, as a commuter car.  Those who leased the vehicle knew the it had the range limitations since there was no infrastructure beyond that range. Yet they crushed them to ensure no one would ever have the benefit of them.  

The Volt (a name ignoring its other means of propulsion) will extend Big Oil's life, and provide a complex vehicle that will have lotsa headaches and repairs for its paying customers, giving Big Auto reason to smile.  It also has the potential to satisfy Big Agri-Bidness, when they get ethanol shoved down our throats.   It will also help Gobbleization, since they can import ethanol from Brazil, at the expense of the richest biogeographic region in the world.  The line between satisfying and sucking up can be vague, but given the facts, it is pretty sure this was a marketing and political decision.  

If the EV1 had been allowed to survive I could have plugged one in and charged it on the excess power I generate from Wind and PV--  7-8 years ago.  Now after all this time I can do that with an inferior efficiency, far more complicated vehicle.  Such progress.  GM is right on the ball.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

To start with, fully electric vehicles are about 10x less complex than gasoline vehicles.
And the ammount of maintanence is almost neglible.
Practically the only thing you'd need to worry about replacing are the windshield wiper blades.

Adding slightly to the complexity, you add a small gasoline generator, gas tank, and slight aftertreatment.

This small generator has no transmission.
It only runs at one speed, optimised for reduced emmisions and effeciency.

_

If the Chevy Volt were out by early 2009, I might be actually giving them some kudos.

Only reason I'm bagging on it, is because GM is taking 4 years to bring it to market.

My congressman actually knows why ethanol is a big mistake and this is the way to go.  I was shocked to realize this at the first fund raiser for him in this next election cycle.

The staff understood my points anti-ethanol and pro Volt right away.  Pretty encouraging.

The Volt only needs half the power of the present incarnation.  Really the design is easy to understand this way.  It's like an EV1 with 40 mile range on batteries, taking one third the batteries and charge time, with a backup generator that takes over after 40 miles.

Pretty simple, but revolutionary.  Because that takes care of most daily trips on battery alone, the average mileage can be very high.  This is a way to really cut gas consumption by 90%.

And no, renewable energy will not power all the huge waste of energy we now use.  Conservation is needed too.  The Volt design is a huge part of that needed conservation.  

Make it happen sooner GM.  Come on politicos, order up fleets of these in economy version, for government service, to get the ball rolling.  This would make all the car companies scramble to copy gM's lead.  Good for our living planet!

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Priority 1b should be reducing our demand for energy through conservation, efficiency (Gar's point about grid-powered (even coal-sourced), autos being more carbon-efficient than conventional petro-power being well-taken), and just plain gluttony-reduction. I believe reducing human population is imperative too, but let's not start with that here, shall we?

We need to both both 1a AND 1b. And we need to get busy with it.

Some quibbles:

If they are serious about plug-ins and beat Toyota to market, they will have reasserted their leadership in electric drivetrain technology, which they abandoned so short-sightedly several years ago.

An electric car is a very simple thing, in part because it has no drive train. The electric motors connect directly to the axles. The missing link, until just about one year ago, has been the battery.

Toyota and Ford also abandoned the electric car market and all for the same reason: Battery technology was not ready. The battery is the heart of an electric vehicle. The EV1 was a non-viable product. It was a 100-mile range, $40K, two-seat lead sled that took all day to recharge. I can go to my local dealer right now and buy an electric car for $14K. Yes, it has less range and speed than the EV1, but at least it holds four people and only costs $14K. On the other hand, it is also a crappy product and not worth the price.

To date, the Volt is all hat, no cattle.

A viable plug-in hybrid with a series drive train (a locomotive) is a bigger engineering challenge than your average layman understands. Ever wonder why Toyota didn't opt for it on the Prius? It will get terrible gas mileage when running on its ICE engine and here is why.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

But that said, what the Prius operates with is actually technically not even a Parrallel Hybrid.

It's a Series/Parallel Hybrid.
http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/tech/environment/ths2/what.htm ...

YES a series hybrid system is not the most effecient way to burn gasoline.

If you're trying to maximimize gasoline fuel economy, the Prius is how you would do it.

That said, Series Hybrids aren't not far off.
They are just slightly worse.

_

Another bottleneck of the Prius

The NiMH battery charge isn't big enough, lifecycle isn't long enough, and charge speed isn't fast enough to be rapidly charging and discharging the battery.

All of these hurdles have been overcome with new battery tech, and super/ultracapacitors.

_

That said a Series Plugin Hybrid maximizes the range you get in all-electric-mode.

Since any gasoline components you have are merely going to be deadweight.

And a complete gasoline drivetrain is a considerable weight.
And mileage is proportional to weight.

Not to mention, there's an additional benefit to using a generator rather than an engine.

You gain the effeciency involved with running the engine at peak effeciency 100% of the time.

_

Another issue with the Prius is that it's electric motor is a DC motor.

Using an inverter to turn Generator-AC electricity into DC electricity involves an effeciency loss.

However if you were to use an AC motor, that gasoline generator to motor loss would be cut out.

_

More or less,
For a small weak battery.
The Prius setup is the best.

For a large robust battery.
The Volt setup is the best.

I hope future plug-ins also have DC plug options for backyard solar collectors.

Hydrogen pumps are sprouting up all over.

Give me the MP3 player (fuel cell) -- Grist Editors can keep the 8-track (plugin).

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

Oh, by the way.  Hydrogen created with California grid electricity puts up more CO2 per mile than gasoline.

And California has one of the greenest grids in the nation.

http://www.greyfalcon.net/hydrogen.png
versus
http://www.greyfalcon.net/volt

_

Onsite Natural Gas reformers are cheaper

But offer virtually no difference than powering a car with Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).
http://www.greyfalcon.net/electriccars2.png

Instead of emitting the CO2 in the car, it's emitted at the station.

_

Remind me, what was the benefit of Hydrogen supposed to be?

For a large robust battery.
The Volt setup is the best."

With the additional observation that given "scarce" or "expensive" batteries, more Priuses might win over fewer Volts.

With the additional observation that given "scarce" or "expensive" batteries, more Priuses might win over fewer Volts.

This is actually a possibility.

Supposidly the 2009 Prius is supposed to be sporting larger lithium ion batteries, and a more powerful electric motor, at reduced cost.

Catch being, the Prius can only be recharged via gasoline.

_

If you're maximizing gas mileage, Prius is where it's at.

If you're maximimizing electric mileage, Volt is the right idea.

_

A Prius tends to have more cost and maintanence than a conventional gasoline car.

Where as a Series Plugin Hybrid would have almost no maitanence.  A very cheap fuel source.  And overall would be able to scrap most of the expensive gasoline and electric components.

More or less it's a question of, where do you want your dominant fuel source to come from?  

Electricity or Gasoline.

I betcha the Prius will end up beating all of the "normal" brands out there, and stack up very well against the few/best contenders (Toyota, Nissan, Honda, non-hybrid).

(Like I'm worried that it will cost me more than my old Jeep Cherokee to keep running, LOL.)

I mean, sure it is more complex than a hypothetical equivalent non-hybird Prius, but there are a lot of people choosing worse things, right now.

Researchers have found a cocktail of enzymes that converts starchy syrups to hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The hydrogen can then be fed into a fuel cell to run an electric car, or even used in an ordinary combustion engine.

The team says its technology is the solution to three major hurdles that stand between us and a hydrogen economy: safe and cheap production, storage and transportation of hydrogen.

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn11927-starc ...

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

Corn powered Hydrogen cars.
Just incase you were looking for the worst of both worlds.

By their numbers it takes 60 pounds of starch to make 1 kg of hydrogen

1 kg of hydrogen is roughly equivalent to 1 gallon of gasoline.

1 gallon of gasoline weighs 6.25 pounds.

_

Great job.

This year, Toyota will easily produce over 250,000 hybrid vehicles and for 2010 plans to produce 1,000,000 annually world wide.  By 2010, GM and Ford will have produced how many hybrid?  By then, if the new battery technology is developed, there are likely to be hundreds of thousands of plug-in hybrids on the road.  Hooray, but I'll bet most plug-ins will bear the Toyota name plate.  Meanwhile, GM will be talking about the next big break through for 2012.  Somethings never change.

9.6 gallons of corn fuel, to make up enough hydrogen for 1 gallon equivalent of gasoline.

Genious.

Using that logic, we should just use 10 gallons of gasoline to get the same mileage we are right now, and save ourselves the hassle.

2.7 mpg, whoohoo!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prius#2009_Prius

I'm just glad that car companies are finally competing for better mileage.

Talk about globalists betraying the American worker...it's all right here, in the pages of Grist.

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

I'd say it's Ford and GM.

They are too concerned about short term profits and are causing the collapse of their workforce.

They are betraying American workforce by taking no action to compete in a global market.

And they are betraying American people by forcing them to drive vehicles which get no better mileage than they did 30 years ago.

Don't blame people for pointing out that they are intentionally forfieting America's position in the car market, just for a quick payoff.

They are selling out.

That could partly be a California perspective, with fewer diesels available here, but still.

FWIW, I like novelty and might switch from my Prius to something new.  Just give me space for my mountain bike

Prius/Volt competition is a good thing for the consumer.

Funny how hybrid competitors are always future-cars.

Uhm,

1. 50-state-legal light-duty diesel cars will be availible early 2008.
   
2. I wouldn't really call "the end of this summer" too far into the future for electric cars.
   

More or less, before the next Prius is on the market, Diesels and Electrics will start to crop up.

_

And for more heavy duty bus fleets, Compressed Natural Gas also makes quite an impact.

... thank you, I'll be here all week.

That same money in serial plugin hybrids like the volt, would have really saved GHG and money for taxpayers, at 200+ mpg.  Instead of the small fractional GHG and mileage savings of paralell hybrids.

Too bad.  I bet money is going into that flex fuel scam too now.  We must wake up our elected officials and send the facts down the line to where taxpayer dollars are spent in procuring government vehicle fleets, federal, national, and local.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

The Volt design has full power on plugin for the first 40 miles.  No comparison.  Toyota needs to go serial hybrid and retire the present prius drivetrain as soon as possible, or even GM could eat their lunch.  Maybe even ford?  Hehey.  Well probably not.

Ford=voluntary bankruptcy.  Shareholders beware.

But GM seriously has to cut the horse power of the volt in half fior a reasonable family economy car.  Put the 160 hp (gasoline motor equivalent)Volt power train in SUVs and trucks.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

NNadir's latest: good stuff.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes

I mentioned the greater complexity of the Volt compared to the EV1, and the response was "oh no it isn't!".  Good retort....

Parallel systems are highly complex, since two separate drive systems have to be joined before the power reaches the wheels.  Series systems have power losses with conversion steps.  Both systems are at least twice as complex and in each, both of the parts are roughly half their optimum size.  

The EV1 was killed by politicians and industry. Period.  Explain that away.  Practically all first  production efforts are troubled with reliability in the field, and even more so when it is groundbreaking technology. When the company behind the product is forced to do provide it, these issues become suspiciously magnified, as if sabotaged.  

Used with a sustainable electricity system, either stand alone or grid, emissions of electric  vehicles would be magnitudes less.  Rebut that.

Hybrids using fuels, either fossil or biofuels, will only extend and exacerbate the problem of Carbon production.  And Big Auto, Big Oil, and Big Coal are the beneficiaries, and the gift comes from the corporate oligarchy. Distract attention from this.  

Among the offspring of this 'appointed royalty' inbreeding are goofy ideas in which to sink billions of subsidies, such as Carbon sequestration, CO2 being justified as gas lift technology for stripper wells, charcoal being plowed into farmland, and GMO trees modified to grow with the speed of kudzu.  

There is a 1000-pound gorilla at the tea party and everyone is talking about cake recipes.

Hell is much too good for all of us.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind  and Sun!  

It was killed by the consumer thanks to a lack of a viable battery. The same thing that killed the other electric cars testing the market in the same time frame.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Hey, BioD:

"It was killed by the consumer..."

With maybe a thousand units on the road?  Gee, with your background, you should know the electrical/mechanical equivalent of a long harsh winter would render that small population extinct.  Puuullleeeeeze!

The EV1 was killed when CARB changed their rules under pressure from Big Auto and Big Oil.  Pulled the plug as soon as they could after the rules change.  Everybody, deal with it.  

Film?  What film?

"...other electric cars..."  Given their exposure to the market, there must have been fewer of them than the maybe a thousand EV1s.  

And given all the press reports and glowing praise for all the new battery technology, why don't they re-release them?  Oh, wait, they were CRUSHED!  

Sorry, BioD, try again, and this time, defending Big Oil and Big Auto don't look good on ya. Or anyone.  

We need all-electric vehicles, far more mass transit, and sustainable energy to charge them.  Let's try setting the bar a little higher.  If we don't, "mediocrity" will be on our headstones.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

http://www.toyota.com/html/shop/vehicles/ravev/rav4ev_0_h ...

Had GM made the same decision as Toyota the world would have one less documentary and one less conspiracy theory.

There have been dozens of attempts to market electric cars.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Did the switch from the california focus on electric cars to hydrogen fuel cells constitute murder?  When that pie-in-the-sky hydrogen scam was pushed through the electric car favorable legal aspect was dropped.

"Hybrids using fuels, either fossil or biofuels, will only extend and exacerbate the problem of Carbon production."

Rebuttal:  Nope, not serial plugin hybrids like the volt design.  You are lumping serial, parallel, and plugin together. That loss problem is minor, about the same as the automatic transmission the serial drive system replaces.  

And the backup generator operates at a steady power level which is more efficient than the constant throttling of a regular iCE vehicle.

The average mileage of a serial plugin hybrid  will be over 200.  Up to 10 times the present average with a lower powered economy version.  That would solve the automobile part of GHG production.

To tackle the rest, power the grid with renewables and heat and cool buildings geothermally, using the 50 degree temperature of the ground.  Augmented with solar, waste heat from appliances, and heat pumps operating to and from ground temperature.  

Other conservation measures like ultra efficient low power computers, tvs, and appliances are needed also.

Complete the energy revolution with industrial processes that recycle waste heat with heat pumps and use solar, wind, and the geothermal heat sink.

Bad news, politicians are clinging to cellulosic ethanol in a last ditch effort to save subsidies and ethanol industry campaign "donations".

Serial plugin hybrids could retire all fuel farming scams. Oil demand would drop precipitously making fuel farming uneconomic and unecessary.  Oil supplies would last a  decade at least, until batteries got good enough to dispense with backup generators running on liquid fuel.


http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

The temperature should go down by 1/10 right?  if we all drive volts...


Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

Heating/cooling buildings is 36% if I remember correctly?

Gotta embrace the whole solution, a complete energy revolution.  And revive the US manufacturing sector in the process.

It's gonna be rough.  Deniers will be about as helpfull in this battle as appeasers were in WW2.  Rumor has it there are still a few who doubt global climate change has a human cause, even in congress.

But those who think that the climate is cooling instead and ocean levels will actually drop are very rare indeed.  So nice we have one on this blog.  That goes well beyond appeasement.  That's downright burning-tires-in-your-front-yard-to-annoy-the-vast-liberal-conspiracy insane.

Congratulations!

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Film?  What film?

Watch this movie, and you might get a rancid taste in your mouth the next time someone cheerleads for hydrogen.

Suplimental links:
http://www.greyfalcon.net/evmovie3
http://www.greyfalcon.net/evmovie
http://www.greyfalcon.net/evmovie2

When the composition of a comment on this blog is initiated by first clicking Reply to This, the Parent link of the comment -- when ultimately submitted -- becomes associated with the replied-to comment. That way, people can read the comment being replied-to by simply clicking on the Parent link at the end of the current comment.

However, to compose your most-recent comment, you clicked on the Reply to This link of Comment 49, rather than that of the comment you had apparently been intending to reply-to, Comment 45.

I'm astonished that hydrogen-bashing has not done its job here.  Demonstration fueling stations, which are the core of the "Highway" effort, do absolutely nothing to advance the art, or solve the core problems.  All they are is a way for the Hyorogen Lobby to hype itself at government expense.

Sad, sad, sad.

(I agree that batteries were the EV1 problem, but also that also that GM decided Hydrogen Hype was better for corporate marketing.  They wanted to push the "Buy a Tahoe now, and Hydrogen later" future vision.)

I wish could understand why folks are drooling over this.  Its range on batteries is 40 miles?  The EV1 was ~200?  The Volt doesn't rid of us of either fossil- or bio-fuels, and it is called a "world changer"?  Bullshit.  But, I guess the propaganda has had its desired effect.  Big Oil and Big Agri-Bidness are breathing a sigh of relief--and seeing continued dollar signs.  

On the other hand, there are maybe 4 models of plug-in all-electric cars scheduled to be released in a year or so, which have had little or no coverage here--only the Tesla that I have seen, it is well out of the range of most buyers, and there will not be very many produced.  Not much of a solution, but at least people will be able to buy and not just lease it.    

Hey, Amazing:

I agree with some of what you say in "Died", especially about energy source solutions, but I have to correct the information on what you call "geothermal" heat pumps.  I am sorry to get off-topic (but being off-topic seems to be the standard here).  The term "geothermal" needs to be stomped out of the vocabulary for this use.  "Geothermal" properly applies to heat from seismic substrates and other sources.   What you are referring is much better called an earth- or ground-coupled heat pump.  There are a host of references on the Web that confuse the terms, so it is a widespread mistake.  The big difference in a heat pump is whether it is air-coupled  or earth-coupled.   Air-coupled heat pump simply has a blower (familiar to everyone) as medium and heat sink.   Earth-coupled uses glycol in plastic lines as medium and the soil as heat sink.  

The other part that needs correction is the temperature.  It is not 50 deg F unless your Mean Annual Air Temperature (MAAT) is 50 deg F.  The rule of thumb is that the soil temperature at the site at a depth of 6-10 feet is approximately equal to the MAAT or MAT of the site.  I live at 28 N latitude and my MAAT is 74 deg F.  Canada is, what?, 30 deg below zero?--(Okay, I'm kidding!)  

The MAAT affects the efficiency, design, and use of the earth-coupled heat pump and how much it may have to be helped do its job by other means.   It cools less well in my high MAAT region, and it heats less well in cold climates.  

None of this is to imply that I don't like them, because I do.  They work well, provided they are specified and installed correctly.   They cost more initially but are more energy-efficient, and they last longer and are virtually silent.   Just get a professional who knows how to do them.    

Little grey tweet:

No, instead, when I think of unsupported and unattributed graphs and charts on someone's own website, that is when I have a rancid taste--like when a Blue Jay tries to eat a Monarch butterfly--but mostly I ignore it.  And I didn't bring up Hydrogen here--you did.  Sticking your head in the sand like an Ostrich by foreclosing research into sustainable energy sources, such as distributed solar Hydrogen, out of extreme bias is very limiting and it stalls progress--a real turkey--at the same time you crow about cutting edge research into batteries.  All of your biased, blind objections and your distractions (like a Killdeer) and diversions into fossil fuels have been addressed.  Often, the chickens who stall are the ones who wind up first with a visit to the abattoir.  Why don't you pick up a hobby?  What is your agenda?  

For myself, I support parallel lines of research into truly sustainable energy sources, which will end reliance on Carbon, including solar Hydrogen.  This would be in opposition to the selfish, genocidal, anthropocentric, archaic, destructive (and parroted) edicts of the corporate oligarchy.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

"... We ended up fighting over what to do and eventually riding with the tow truck driver who hauled the decrepit car back to LAX. Along the way he told us he had often had to tow EV-1s back to Budget..."

Emphasis mine. I think the problem wasn't decrepitude, but the fact that the car was a GM EV1 with, as mandated by the state of California in and after 1999, a NiMH battery pack. The pack weighed 520 kg.*

The car had 20 mechanical kWh available at the driveshaft, as much as a gasoline tank that weighs 6.3 kg, full, affords. A typical riding lawnmower has more.

Batteries contain their own ash and turn it back into fuel when current is forced through them the "wrong" way, so to speak.

There is another option: burn fuel, hold onto ash -- zero emissions -- until refuelling time, and then send it away for conversion back to fuel.

This doesn't promise to eliminate the zero-local-emission weight penalty, but on the scale where a full gas tank weighs 6.3 kg and a NiMH battery pack weighs 520 kg, it might weigh as little as 22 kg.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Boron: internal combustion without exhaust gas

* Before that order came down, a much cheaper 594-kg lead-acid battery was preferred -- heavier than the 1914 Tin Lizzie. The NiMH battery was lighter than one, by 24 kg.

No matter what you call it, geothermal electric power generation from hot rocks uses up too much water.  Using ground temperature for heating/cooling could save around 36% of US GHG production.  Better total gHG savings than even 100% conversion to  pure electric cars.

The point is that earth heat with mainly direct circulation would do almost all cooling.  No heat pumps.  No titanically wasteful air conditioners in windows.  

The other point is that by creating a heat envelope just under the outer layer of a building with 50 degree ground heat using direct circulation, most buildings would be heated with waste heat from appliances.  Or with waste heat from solar hot water heating for domestic hot water.  Very efficient heat pumps operating to and from ground temperature could supply the tiny percentage left over.

"Its range on batteries is 40 miles?  The EV1 was ~200?  The Volt doesn't rid of us of either fossil- or bio-fuels, and it is called a "world changer"?"

You still are not getting the point.  By covering the average trip with that 40 mile range, this design makes the average mileage soar.  The average daily trip is around 23 miles.  So 40 is really good.  Those who drive over 40 on average could pack more batteries of course.

Pure electric cars are not yet practical for most people.  the batteries are too expensive and take too long to charge.  Wealthy individuals can have road service for their pure electric if they ruin out of charge.  Most drivers need backup on board to have a practical ride.  By reducing battery weight the vehicle is still practical with the extra weight of the backup generator.

This is designed as a transition to pure electric.  If we wait until batteries that charge in 5 minutes at very high power charge stations all over the nation are cheap enough, it will be too late to stop GHG disaster.

I agree pure electric is coming.  when it does backup generators will be recycled and so will the old batteries.  Then the car can be retrofitted with the next generation batteries to use the next generation charging infrastructure.

Meanwhile parallel hybrids are soaking up government funds used to buy vehicle fleets and consumer dollars better spent on a design like the Volt.  

You ought to rethink your insistence on purity.  We could reduce fuel use to 10% of present car fuel use fairly quickly with EVs with backup.  And fuel cell/turbine backup that runs on various liquid fuels would get three times the mileage.

Don't let word games get in the way of the result we are looking for.  Come on in for the big win.  Hehey.

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