rising gas prices? try this, HHO Fuel.

[AnalogPackrat]

[quote author="SSLtech"]Actually when you look at it that way, you're still tricking yourself somewhat.[/quote]

Hey, he's getting the efficiency he's getting. There is no trick. Show me a non-hybrid car of similar size to a Prius or Civic Hybrid (2500-300 lbs, 4+ passengers) that will do as well AND (this is also critical) with the extremely low emissions that these cars produce.

ANY gasoline vehicle will give best/lowest delta fuel consumption at highway speeds, and you can IMPROVE the Prius' cruise performance by throttling back slightly uphill... the computer doesn't "see" hills, but you can.

That depends on the speed, the gearing, and all the other design factors involved. Hybrids with CVT transmissions can better optimize efficiency by operating the engine at its optimal rpm over a wide range of speeds.

Cruise control usually beats human brain/foot/throttle interaction in gasoline vehicles, because the human brain EXPECTS to go faster downhill, and there is always a slight 'lead foot' instinct... even Granny has it.

Maybe that's true in FL (and other flat states), but in general it is not for the reason you gave above. Cruise control is a stupid control loop that tries to keep speed constant. It undershoots and overshoots on hills due to control lag (no look-ahead is one way to look at it).

That costs you efficiency--you hit the base of a hill at 2500 rpm and the car slows down. Cruise control compensates by increasing rpm to accelerate the car on the uphill. Bad. Human sees hill and accelerates slightly ahead (on the flat) and slows slightly as the hill is climbed (so-called "driving with load"). As the the hill is crested a human will (with proper training) slowly let off the accelerator while cruise will overshoot the target speed and let off later.

Also, if the hill is steep enough, a hybrid can use some if its stored energy on the climb and recover excess potential energy on the downhill. No, this conversion is not 100%, but it's also not 0% like in a conventional car where you burn gas to accelerate and then waste all of the excess energy heating up your brakes.

The Prius is a good car, and I'm actually for hybrids, though I know my post history contains a good deal of counter-information, because I do feel the need to play devil's advocate.

I don't understand this mentality at all. it's one thing to point out factual errors in someone's analysis, but you haven't done that, IMO.

At highway speeds the Prius is just a small gasoline car, with a slightly optimistic computer. it's biggest benefit is a fairly slippery shape and that it punches a rather SMALL hole through the air. -Other than that, it is subject to the same influences as conventional powertrain vehicles.

That's like saying "when reproducing a constant amplitude 1kHz sinusoid an 660 (or LA-2a) is just an expensive compressor." You missed the point. Well-designed hybrid cars (Prius, Civic, Camry, the late Insight) are a lot more than that. They are systems designed for efficiency, not just gas cars with electric motors bolted on (like some of the GM offerings).

These cars have aerodynamic designs (undercarriage as well), low rolling resistance tires, efficient engines, efficient transmissions, regenerative braking, much more computer control than the average car, etc. They are more than the sum of their parts--just like any other well-engineered product.

For example, the Prius engine is an Atkinson Cycle design. It produces only about 70hp from its 1.5L displacement, but it does it with high efficiency and low emissions. The Civic hybrid uses a modified VTEC variable valve system to operate the engine in three modes (power, pseudo-Atkinson, all valves closed) depending on the current operating conditions and operator input. It produces a maximum of 95hp from 1.3L, but when in pseudo-Atkinson mode has lower output and much higher efficiency.

A P

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Double post...duh.

 

[rafafredd]

Nowadays most people in Brazil is using what we call here GNV. This works really well, specially with the new "intelligent systems". Most cars has a "flex" option, where it can run on gasoline, ethanol and GNV AT THE SAME TIME. My car is just like that. It is a SIENA by Fiat, an inexpensive model, something like 25-30 thousand dollars more or less today. Really, I´m very happy with it. It´s VERY economic. And it´s SAID to polute 10 times less more. The start engine has a gasoline only small tank. I can put ethanol or gasoline or BOTH on the fuel tank. And GNV, that means natural gas for vehicles, in the gas galons. If it needs more power than GNV can give, for any reason, like transpassing or going up in a ramp, the machine just puts more gasolin/ethanol in the motor together with the GNV. I´m pretty much an ignorant about cars, but I´ve tried to describe it at my best, in english... And well, I´m pretty happy with it. this is the one exactly like mine:

http://www.grupobarigui.com.br/index.php?menu=detalhes&id=0351135

 

[sonicmook56]

Honda CRX HF claimed to get 57 mpg on the highway, and that was in the late 80's.

SSLtech wrote:
You want it to hurt less, America? -Then USE LESS. -That's really all there is to it.

Most trips people make with cars are short ones. You can replace the car with a bicycle in most cases. A bike uses no gas and will get your heart rate up and help prevent heart disease, as well as making you feel physically fantastic.

Going to the supermarket for a quart of milk
Going to the liquor store for a 6 pack of beer
Going to the transistor store for some 2n222's
Going to a movie
Going to your girlfriends house, are all easy things to do by bike.

I rarely drive, maybe once per month however there are things that are impossible to do so I keep my old 8mpg truck around for that kind of stuff.

Moving big heavy, odd shaped stuff
meeting new clients at a job site
camping

The way I'm feeling now, I can't wait for gas to cost $10.50 a gallon. If people using alternative forms of transportation means less cars on the streets, that means when I pay $10.50 a gallon and get 8mpg I wont be stuck idling in traffic 90% of the time so the value would really be more... Does that make scene?

 

[bcarso]

Since a parting of ways at Harman in late '04 I've managed to persuade most of my clients that face-to-face meetings are usually not needed, except maybe in the early get-acquainted phase. The internet and the phone usually handle most of the issues, and equipment and parts can be shipped. FedEx is within easy walking distance.

I also charge for travel time unless the destination is really close. This tends to reduce the requests.

I could probably cut down travel even more, but it runs about 6-7k miles a year now. The Accord manages about 30-ish on open highway, less on surface streets.

I feel fortunate.

 

[dale116dot7]

I've been doing a lot of reading up on energy use, oil discoveries, etc.

IMHO, this 'peak oil' think is probably real, but it is not really related to the amount of the stuff left in the ground. It's going to be mostly related to economy of extraction and EROI - energy return on investment. Corn-based ethanol has a net EROI of about 1.0 = you should not really do it because the agriculture inputs (in the form of oil) is the same as the energy content of the ethanol produced. Sugar cane based ethanol might be ok, with an EROI of probably 10 to 20. But still, you are taking food, which the world is running short of - and turning it into fuel. Not the wisest thing to do when there are almost seven billion of us and a lot of us our hungry. Some of us, of course, eat enough for two or three, and our waistlines show it.

The current technology of tar sands production is about 1.5 or 1.6, which means that you need to use a lot of natural gas to get a bit of oil. But that number is slowly creeping up. There is probably a 80 to 100 year supply of bitumen in the tar sands, but a likely absolute maximum extraction rate of a few million barrels per day, which is a far cry from the currently used 86 Mbd. And we will be using a lot of natural gas to make it, unless we change our process considerably. If we can use nuclear power to do it, things make a lot more sense.

There have been mentions of 'big discoveries'. But remember that a 'big discovery' of 32 billion recoverable barrels will only last one year *at our current use rate*. Also, you have to be careful about the numbers thrown around in terms of discovery sizes. In many fields, only about 10% to 30% of the oil can be extracted - the rest remains. With enhanced recovery methods, you can do better, but still, much of that oil stays trapped in the rock formations.

As for 'peak oil' causing a destruction of civilization or all this other doom-and-gloom crap that you hear, I don't buy that it has to be that way. But as oil extraction starts to drop off, which it will, if agriculture gets priority, and if alternates come on line as they need to, and if we can cap our current population or preferably drop it to somewhere between two and four billion over the next generation or two, doom-and-gloom can be averted.

So far, at current extraction rates, given the rate of new discoveries, the new extraction technologies available, several oilfield engineers and geologists that I have talked to say that 2030 is a very practical number to work with in terms of maximum global extraction capacity, at worst it could be a few years before that, at best it could be a decade or two after that, but certainly less than a century from now.

In the long run, oil prices will not drop, unless global consumption drops by more than about 10% or so.

-Dale

 

[dale116dot7]

I've been doing a lot of reading up on energy use, oil discoveries, etc.

IMHO, this 'peak oil' think is probably real, but it is not really related to the amount of the stuff left in the ground. It's going to be mostly related to economy of extraction and EROI - energy return on investment. Corn-based ethanol has a net EROI of about 1.0 = you should not really do it because the agriculture inputs (in the form of oil) is the same as the energy content of the ethanol produced. Sugar cane based ethanol might be ok, with an EROI of probably 10 to 20. But still, you are taking food, which the world is running short of - and turning it into fuel. Not the wisest thing to do when there are almost seven billion of us and a lot of us our hungry. Some of us, of course, eat enough for two or three, and our waistlines show it.

The current technology of tar sands production is about 1.5 or 1.6, which means that you need to use a lot of natural gas to get a bit of oil. But that number is slowly creeping up. There is probably a 80 to 100 year supply of bitumen in the tar sands, but a likely absolute maximum extraction rate of a few million barrels per day, which is a far cry from the currently used 86 Mbd. And we will be using a lot of natural gas to make it, unless we change our process considerably. If we can use nuclear power to do it, things make a lot more sense. But should we be doing that? I dunno.

There have been mentions of 'big discoveries'. But remember that a 'big discovery' of 32 billion recoverable barrels will only last one year *at our current use rate*. Also, you have to be careful about the numbers thrown around in terms of discovery sizes. In many fields, only about 10% to 30% of the oil can be extracted - the rest remains. With enhanced recovery methods, you can do better, but still, much of that oil stays trapped in the rock formations.

As for 'peak oil' causing a destruction of civilization or all this other doom-and-gloom crap that you hear, I don't buy that it has to be that way. But as oil extraction starts to drop off, which it will, if agriculture gets priority, and if alternates come on line as they need to, and if we can cap our current population or preferably drop it to somewhere between two and four billion over the next generation or two, doom-and-gloom can be averted. Globally, if we want to look at having oil for two or three centuries, we need to drop our consumption rate to about 10 Mbd, or by about 88%.

So far, at current extraction rates, given the rate of new discoveries, the new extraction technologies available, several oilfield engineers and geologists that I have talked to say that 2030 is a very practical number to work with in terms of maximum global extraction capacity, at worst it could be a few years before that, at best it could be a decade or two after that, but certainly less than a century from now.

In the long run, oil prices will not drop, unless global consumption drops by more than about 10% or so.

-Dale