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thinking of buying a prius...any thoughts? They seem to have passed the market test for reliability

If you need an appliance, or are driving predominantly on the city cycle, I have friends who like theirs. If you drive mostly highway miles, a diesel would be a better idea IMO. The Ford Fusion hybrid may be a better choice though the SYNC and MyTouch stuff in it is often considered flaky and inscrutable.

this is the funniest story I've read in a year!

Why would you invest in a car company that is made in CA? I am sure the tax breaks landed it there and not the cost of manufacture.

Bert, Because investing in one from Detroit will burn your house down.

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If you need an appliance, or are driving predominantly on the city cycle, I have friends who like theirs. If you drive mostly highway miles, a diesel would be a better idea IMO. The Ford Fusion hybrid may be a better choice though the SYNC and MyTouch stuff in it is often considered flaky and inscrutable.

Most of my driving consists of round trip drives twice a day for a total of 12 miles per trip...either going into town or going to the school for the kids...I also have battery back up solar.

I handle LiPos a good bit flying RC planes and I've brought back every battery I have ever "bricked" (over-discharged). The way you do this is to put a constant voltage and current into the battery for a minute or two and measure voltage until the safe voltage level is reached again. In general, the protection circuitry prevents unsafe discharge no matter what.

I've never heard of a safety concern doing this; what you *should* get after a restore should be a battery that doesn't hold as much power, but due to the protection circuitry, "not hold as much" was never noticeable to me - not enough to break them or cause over-charging the next cycle.

The self-discharge rate is low for LiPo, and electronics are run on different batteries.

I think the concerns make good headlines - that's my takeaway from the above.

Electric vehicles are about a century old. To see a 100 year old car, visit the Henry Ford Museum outside Detroit and see the model Mrs. Ford drove.

Jay Leno is an antique car enthusiast and keeps several models running.

Unfortunately, battery technology has not advanced.

An aside: I live in the Los Angeles basin. I view electric vehicles as a mechanism to move the smog to Four Corners, New Mexico.

"thinking of buying a prius...any thoughts? "

Buy a Corolla. They come with a free pocket protector already stenciled with your family name: Chang. My name wasn't Chang before, but it is now. And a Corolla is a total pussy magnet. Yup. Frigid lesbian pussy.

OK, $4,500 for the Honda compressor. I don't have any idea where the $1,000 number came from that I used earlier (other than a post 50 brain).

Here's a link for you to read about it. It actually might be a decent deal given the price of nat gas versus gasoline.

http://www.autoobserver.com/2011/03/brc-....

Flap

The tesla has ~7,000 18650 cells laboriously spot welded together. As I understand it; when one fails it is "fused out" there is no BMS. I am a principle in a company that now has a patent on a BMS (battery management system) for large format lithium batteries of various chemistry (lipo, lion etc) We like the batteries from Thunder Sky Corp the best so far.
My partner and I marvel at the stupidity of using thousands of 18650 when large format cells with lower impedance; higher density; cheaper to assemble into large arrays; etc etc etc. Our BMS is the only SHIPPING, patented, product in the world (theres alotta claims out there, not alot of shipping, actual products however). We can also re charge them faster than Karl believes possible...
Electric Motorsports of Oakland California won the first zero emissions motorcycle TT race (Isle of Man 2009) with our system on board. The bike easily exceeds 100mph. http://visforvoltage.org/video/video-typ....
I believe our patented, shipping boards would solve gm's Volt problem, but alas we have discovered there are forces with waaay more capital and influence than we have who have a vested interest in ignoring this technology.

I heard recently The rules of the Zero emissions TT have been changed to allow certain internal combustion "zero emission"(couughhbuuulshiiiit) hybrid engines in the race....

We took a Ford escape hybrid apart in our shop, we found Ford uses hundreds of NiMh D cells.... Great for maglites,(yes they actually work in flashlights quite well) not so great for cars...

i am working for the railroad commission of texas at the moment. they have a program for propane schoolbuses... lots of fed funding.

and lots of schoolbuses that have been converted to propane.

Ride a HOG

William

How much modification, exactly, does an engine need in order to run on methane (or for that matter other flammible gases)? If simply piped into the intake manifold, would the engine computer on a late 1990s car have the wit to reduce the fuel injector pukse width as required to bring the mix back to stoichio and|or adjust the timing?

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How much modification, exactly, does an engine need in order to run on methane (or for that matter other flammible gases)?

i dont know, but these guys probably do.....


http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WoodG....
(tried to post picture of woodgas burning motorcycle...)

@Burya_rubenstein

When I was a mechanic with the county, we ran a couple of 1994 Dodge Caravans on methane. The Caravans were built by Dodge to run on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), but the vehicles were used by the department that ran the county land fills. The gas was free, as it came from the land fills, and the only expense was the compressor. While I was there at the county, I ran a 1994 Dodge 15 passenger van with a 5.2L engine running on CNG for 30,000 miles on the same oil. When we changed the oil, it looked just like new. I sent a sample out to see if there was any damage done to the engine, the report said everything was within normal limits.

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How much modification, exactly, does an engine need in order to run on methane (or for that matter other flammible gases)? If simply piped into the intake manifold, would the engine computer on a late 1990s car have the wit to reduce the fuel injector pukse width as required to bring the mix back to stoichio and|or adjust the timing?

No, stock engine computers typically won't add or subtract more than about 25% from what they consider to be a "base" amount of fuel for a given set of conditions (mostly airflow, either directly measured or calculated).

-Uwe-

Hello everyone. I've been reading Karl's tickers for a couple years now but am just wading into the forums. I'm pro-EV but I'm anti-subsidy. That includes not only EV subsidies but oil industry subsidies as well (including the billions and billions we spend on the military to run all over the world to protect our oil interests). Put everyone on an even playing field and let the market decide.

That being said, let's take a step back here. The arguments that you all are making about EV's are basically the exact same ones the owners of horse-drawn carriages said about the internal combustion engine when it was introduced. "Only rich people can afford them." "The range is terrible." "There aren't enough places to refuel them." "If you smoke around them they will catch on fire and explode!" (Replace smoke with "leave unplugged" and catch on fire with "bricked" and you have the EV version) My point is that these were all valid arguments at the time yet here we are and the ICE clearly won over horse-drawn carriages.

It will be the same with EVs. We're still in early days with EVs and there is a lot of work to be done. Today's EVs are not for everyone, just like the first ICE's weren't for everyone back in the day. You have to be a bit pioneering and be willing to plan your life around the car to some degree depending on your needs. That being said, the Roadster is Tesla's first car. They have already stated that their next model, due out this summer, will be able to sit for over 12 months when parked with a 50% charge without being plugged in. They are constantly improving the technology, just like we've been doing with ICE's for 100 years.

I have owned a Tesla Roadster for just over a year and 15,000 miles. I have had zero problems. Tesla was extremely clear about keeping the car plugged in - they told me verbally, they made me sign a document, etc. There was no way anyone could say that they didn't know they had to keep the car plugged in. Also you have to enable the GSM modem in the car to allow Tesla to access it so Tesla didn't illegally access that person's car - the owner gave them permission. I commute about 60 miles per day and the car just works. I plug it in when I get home (it waits to charge until after midnight when power is cheaper) and it's full when I come out in the morning. It takes no more time that my cell phone. Will the battery pack need to be replaced someday? Yes. But I'm saving ~$12/day over my last car (2006 Corvette) that I will be able to buy a new battery pack and still have some money left over. That $40k figure is if the pack is destroyed. If you turn in a worn down pack the cost is ~$12,000 as they are able to reuse and recycle the old pack.

My final thought is this… What do you all think we're going to use to carry ourselves and our stuff in the future? To adopt Karl's manner of speaking, I have news for you folks, the easy oil is gone. Most oil today is energy neutral (it takes as much energy to get the oil out and process it as you get back by burning the products) and some (tar sands) are actually energy negative. How long can we keep that up? Yes, Natural gas is a good option. But I would content that burning natural gas in a power plant and putting the electricity into an EV is a much better solution. The Tesla Roadster can go 138 miles on the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline (~37kWh). ICEs are very inefficient - much of their energy is lost as heat (the best diesels can do ~60mpg, half of what an EV can do). A power plant burning NG and an EV will use that energy much more efficiently than burning the NG in an ICE.

I'm not saying EVs are the be all and end all. For instance I don't see semis going electric any time soon. But for a lot of people an EV can work just fine and they're a hell of a lot of fun to drive. The instant torque and lack of shifting is simply outstanding. It's like having your own personal roller coaster. So I'll keep on enjoying mine.

Welcome Strider - nice first hand knowledge post.

UWE ......seeing as this is your specialty, would it be possible to feed a new fuel map into a modern cars computer to allow for the adjustments needed? How complicated would that be? or is it something a racing shop with a dyno and the right software could do.

So you bought a 100k pseudo sports car and....?

Oh yes you save 12 bucks a day. That is 4380/yr, so in 25 years you will break even.

Err ok.

For 100k you could have had a real sports car and a daily driver, for less. He'll you could have kept the vet as a wk end car and just bought a commuter car and saved yourself money.

Enjoy your coal powered car.

Lowbeyond: I never said I would break even on the car. You never break even on ANY car - they are a depreciating asset. I was saying that the fuel savings will more than pay for the replacement of the battery as it wears out which is something people worry about.

A "pseudo" sports car? My car's 0-60 is 3.7 seconds and it can do it over and over again without breaking stuff. Believe what you want. I also drove a new Corvette ZR-1 and it's not even close. This is the most fun car I've ever driven.

Less than 24% of my utility's power comes from coal but even if it was 100% an EV still pollutes less than an ICE because it doesn't waste over 40% of its energy as heat. Also, you have to remember that your gasoline has to be found, drilled, pumped, shipped halfway around the world (using bunker fuel), refined, trucked to your gas station, and then pumped into your car.

Again, EV's are not for everyone today but they are the future for a lot of our transportation as they allow the most flexibility in energy sources. I don't know what the ultimate solution to our energy supply is whether it's wind, solar, Karl's thorium reactor (which I'm a huge fan of BTW - nukes are carbon free and very efficient), shale gas, or something we don't even have yet but no matter the source it will be turned into electricity and an EV can use that. Can your car burn the output of a nuclear reactor?

But thank you, I will continue to enjoy my car.

Wow... so how did you ever wind up with $100,000 to blow on such an impractical car as the Tesla seeing as how you've drunk the "carbon free" Kool-Aid.

As if all life on Earth wasn't carbon based and requires and thrives on higher concentrations of CO2 (of which we are impoverished as compared to more lush eras of Earth's past)

Strider - Congrats on having the dough to spend on a car like that :-). What fun! Wish I could go for a ride in it. Wouldn't be so presumptuous as to think you'd let me take the wheel.

The vast majority of the driving I do in a day is less than 15 miles. If I could afford a decent electric car, there'd be one in the driveway. Every month or two, when I go 180 miles round trip to pick up or drop off DD at college, I'd rent an ICE if necessary.

As for the haters, jeez louise, folks, even animals play. And, uh, money management 101, repeat after me: "A car is not an investment. A car is not an investment." You lose money on the dang things even if you get one free.

Lemon wrote..

Wow... so how did you ever wind up with $100,000 to blow on such an impractical car as the Tesla seeing as how you've drunk the "carbon free" Kool-Aid.

Tacky, tacky, tacky.

I'm glad that a TF poster has the bucks to do so. It may well be a quite simple purchase to Strider, and if he wants to blow his money on a Tesla, that's probably better than blowing it on hookers, coke and the horses.

As to the "Carbon free" koolaid - If I thought the technology was appropriate today within my discretionary income level , I would buy one just for the hell of it.

Whatever - I see little benefit to snidely attacking a poster on his income level or using such phrases as "drinking the koolaid" to describe his position.

Neither point is any benefit to a rational discussion!

Frankly, makes it look like Lemonaid is sucking sour grapes because Lemon doesn't reach anywhere near that income level.