They are using one of those new lithium designs, either the  32 series A123 cells or one of their competitors. There are other companies out there modifying existing car designs to plug-ins also saying that it would cost about $10,000 extra. I agree with the direction these guys are going. Their design is same as the one I've been talking about in various posts.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/10/25/103920/89

I'll tell you what else I like about a Yaris. It has electric steering. I have a pipe dream of modifying one with A123 batteries and an electric motor to drive the back wheels. Most cars need the engine running to drive pumps, which drive their power steering and brakes. With electric steering, I can turn the motor off and run the power steering on batteries.

Their design also has a separate electric motor driving the rear wheels and runs in either electric or regular mode but not both. Another variant of this design that might cost less would be one without capacitors for high accelerations. It would be certified to drive while in electric mode only on city streets with a posted max speed limit of 35 MPH.

I would also love a car with variable regenerative braking manually controlled by a lever (similar to the park brake lever or throttle in an airliner cockpit) by the driver to act as a brake. This design would be simpler to operate than a standard five speed transmission and clutch. The further back you pull the lever, the more current flows to the batteries and the harder your car would brake, limited by battery charge, battery temperature, and current.

You would manually turn your engine back on and go to regular mode once you drained the batteries or wanted to hit the highway, but could go back to electric once your regenerative braking charged them back up or you return to city streets.

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

They might buy the car, find that plugging it in is too much trouble and drive it mostly in normal mode. In normal mode this designe will get poor mileage because it is always lugging around a large iron and copper electric motor, batteries, and various other heavy components for the electric drive. The flex fuel SUV's have increased fossil fuel use for similar reasons.

Many will buy it for the status it will bestow, as with the Prius, but because others will not know that they are not bothering to plug it in, they will still be able to garner status (stimulate envy emotions in others) via deception, which is a common way to acquire it both in human cultures and in other parts of nature.

I wish they had picked a different car. This one promotes the SUV fad. The car sure does not have the engineering elegance of a Prius, which optimized everything, weight, clean aerodynamics, engine (optimized for mileage instead of power), regenerative braking all combined with an integral drive.

Instead, they have stuffed  "a full-size electric motor to go along with the full-size gasoline engine," controller, capacitors and batteries into a hybrid SUV that, if driven in all electric mode could get 150 MPG equivalent from the grid and probably twenty something MPG using the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine). It certainly is a step in the right direction other than the SUV platform.

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

You can be sure the vast majority of people who buy the car will keep it fully charged.  Hard to imagine why someone would go to the trouble of buying a plug in and not care about either oil consumption or greenhouse gas emissions -- so I just don't buy your theory.

Also, in case you hadn't noticed, SUVs are quite popular -- and making them vastly more efficient provides much bigger savings than making a plug in midsized car, especially since you can buy a Prius.

Re: regenerative braking lever.  Why not just add a sensor to the brake pedal?  Let the first inch of travel control regenerative braking, and traditional braking helps out after that.

Re: status.  I think the never-plug-it-in consumers would be very few compared to those not using their flex-fuel vehicle's capacity.  The reason? Cost and convenience.  Who wants to spend time at the gas station and pay for gas instead of just plugging in your car?  Besides, I don't think I've seen a station with E85 yet.

You can be sure the vast majority of people who buy the car will keep it fully charged.  Hard to imagine why someone would go to the trouble of buying a plug in and not care about either oil consumption or greenhouse gas emissions -- so I just don't buy your theory.

It isn't that hard to imagine. My guess is the same as yours, that most would charge them, most of the time.

We are talking about a $35,000 car. My other guess is that well-off consumers who really are not overly concerned about gas prices would be the worst offenders when it comes to not bothering. The same people who, although somewhat concerned about global warming, are still going to purchase an all-wheel drive Sport Utility Vehicle.

My "theory" didn't include the percentage of drivers who would not bother to plug them in, so I'm not all that sure what it is about it that you are not buying.

Car designers are always trying to anticipate consumer behavior. In this case, there may be design ideas to maximize how often people will charge them by making it very easy to do so. The EV1 had a nice charge system that used inductance instead of metal to metal contacts.

Also, in case you hadn't noticed, SUVs are quite popular -- and making them vastly more efficient provides much bigger savings than making a plug in midsized car, especially since you can buy a Prius.

Hmm, now that you mention it, I have noticed quite a few SUVs running around. In fact, I own one. However, it's my turn to not buy a theory. SUVs are a fad, like tattoos and hair styles. Very very few who own them use them for sport or utility. Unlike the SUV, tattoos and shaved heads are environmentally benign status symbols. Promoting environmentally destructive fads like SUVs is a bad strategy. The term SUV is a phenomenally successful marketing campaign.

This car will weigh almost 2.5 tons (approx 5000 pounds). The single occupant driver will weigh about 180 pounds. The hybrid version of this SUV gains only 5 MPG over the non-hybrid version before adding the additional electric drive system. My beef is with their choice of car, not with the design concept.

Matt,

Can't argue with anything you said. I would just prefer more control over the car. Driving a Prius is like driving a computer. All you have to do is aim it and stomp two pedals. I bet I could squeak some very high mileage out of a plug-in if I were given more control over features like regenerative braking because I can see down the road and anticipate, whereas my rolling computer can't, at least, not yet.

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

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/1/10/16651/4008#14

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Joe: have you seen any such data?

On the "people buy SUVs" thing, that's true to a degree, but it would be sad if "our side" was caught lagging a change ... you heard that the Prius outsold the Ford Explorer last year, right?

Just curious, who amongst the activists or peak oilers (or doomers) predicted that?

(We carry a too-fixed idea of society and energy consumption patterns in our heads.  Change sneaks up on us.)

I think this is very likely.  A system like the article describes is going going to get much better performance in a vehicle that is more of a full hybrid; the Vue sounds like it's a light hybrid in its original configuration.  But when you're building a proof-of-concept prototype, it's real handy to have extra space and weight capacity to work with.

One wonders why they didn't start with a Prius and simply put the batteries in the backseat for prototype purposes.  With the Prius, they probably could have gotten by with the stock electric motor, rather than having to add their own.  Maybe it was a weight issue, though it doesn't sound like their battery pack weighs very much (no more than an 18-pack of Red Bull, one would expect).

Maybe it was a marketing thing: plug-in conversions for the Prius are already available, so they thought they should do something different?

I don't know the reason, but the description in the article says kludge to me -- which is no bad thing in an engineering test bed.  So I wouldn't assume that their actual production target is the SUV market.

Actually, this isn't quite true.  It might be more accurate to say that the oldest, most inefficient coal plants are about on par with mid-efficiency gas engines.  More modern plants (even coal plants) that have bottoming cycles + electric drive are probably a net win in terms of CO2 just because electric motors are so much more efficient than gas engines over the actual operating range of conditions.

Matt's point is also very valid, and probably the more important one overall: It's much easier to produce renewable electricity than renewable liquid fuels.  Electrifying transportation opens up a range of options for the future that currently don't exist (and lead to silliness like ethanol being billed as a "green" option)