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Mitsubishi and TEPCO Testing Latest Version of i MiEV Electric Car
8 February 2008
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| The current i MiEV. |
Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) have begun test-driving the latest version of the i MiEV electric car. Mitsubishi delivered its first prototype to TEPCO in March 2007. (Earlier post.) The two have been collaborating on the electric vehicle since 2005. (Earlier post.)
The latest prototype has a newly developed lithium-ion battery, a more efficient motor that is also 10% lighter, an inverter that is 30% smaller, and tires that rotate with less resistance.
The expected range on the new version is now 160 km (100 miles) with the 16 kWh battery pack—a 23% increase (30 km) over the first prototype. The earlier version required the use of a 20 kWh pack to achieve the 160km distance.
Total distance accumulated during the first phase of testing was about 4,500 km (2,796 miles)—sufficient, according to the partners for an initial check on the fast charging and the integrity and suitability of vehicle operations (range, power performance, ease of use, etc.)
Mitsubishi Motors has supplied 10 of these new models to Tepco. This phase of the testing will run through March 2009, during which Tepco will collect data for Mitsubishi’s evaluation, and evaluate charging and driving performance.
February 8, 2008 in Electric (Battery) | Permalink | Comments (52) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments
Another year of testing and this product may actually get
to market by 2010. The overall efficiency increases may
continue on through different configurations of battery and
motor synergy. Expecting a 16 KWH battery to top out at 100 mi. range,
is just this years threshold. Another few reconfigurations
of these systems will yeild a 20KWH battery and motor assembly
capable of going 200mi. Then you will see these as real transportation,
and not just some "future car".
Posted by: William | Feb 8, 2008 12:29:58 PM
ok so in a few years the technology will improve.
Thing is, this is good enough to make and sell.
So go for it.
The sooner we get a viable electric car to mass market, the sooner people will be keen to switch and the sooner we will begin to reduce the infestation of pollution-mobiles on our planet.
Posted by: John Taylor | Feb 8, 2008 2:16:01 PM
March 2009 ?! When will this car be released? This is a great car!
Posted by: Karl-Uwe | Feb 8, 2008 2:48:03 PM
2010, just like the Phoenix SUV, 90 mpg Prius, the Volt, the hydraulic hybrid F150, Tesla motorcar......
Unless they decide to push them back again. Since they were all originally supposed to be here this year.
And how come Prius is not in my MS word spellcheck?
Posted by: Joseph | Feb 8, 2008 3:22:04 PM
A few suggestions:
1. Have the radiator mounted on the underside of the vehicle and have it be an extruded fin design (kinda like what they use on the underside of LN2 trucks). This should allow them to improve the aerodynamics slightly. No fan should be necessary as there is no "idle" as in a traditional ICE and thermal output is commensurate with load and therefore speed.
2. More aerodynamic wheels (solid exterior) with the rears being partially shrouded like in the Honda Insight.
3. Perhaps a rear spoiler and/or diffuser? I'm sure if this was viable, Mistubishi would've implemented it. They're not idiots.
Posted by: GreenPlease | Feb 8, 2008 3:51:12 PM
I agree with the underside radiator. Making the nose completely smooth should help at higher speeds.
Posted by: sjc | Feb 8, 2008 4:21:24 PM
THE WHOLE WORLD IS WAITING FOR PRODUCTION TO START . DEVELOPMENT CAN TAKE PLACE ON THE WAY DAILY. WE HAVE TO START SAVING ON OIL AND REDUCE POLLUTION RIGHT FROM TODAY AND WE CANNOT WAIT WITH DAILY SHOW OF PROTOTYPES. LET THERE BE A NOBLE PRIZE FOR THE STARTER OF FIRST MASS SCALE ELECTRIC. TECHNICAL SNAGS OF MINOR NATURE CAN BE ELIMINATED AS WE INCRESE PRODUCTION. ESSENCE IS TIME . START TODAY EVEN WITH ONE CAR A DAY.
Posted by: NIRMALKUMAR WALA | Feb 8, 2008 7:37:59 PM
I think this is one of the best-looking small vehicles I've seen, either in kei car or EV form. Give me a 150+ mile range and quick-charge nanobatteries, and we're set.
Posted by: Cervus | Feb 8, 2008 10:00:12 PM
Mitsubishi: Halve the size of the battery pack and put in a 500cc engine and a generator, and a 50 litre fuel tank, and tell me how much and where I can get it.
(Anyone have an idea what KW you can get out of a 500cc engine?)
Posted by: Alex | Feb 9, 2008 12:24:27 AM
500cc? You could probably get 20kw out of it. It depends on how you run the engine.
Posted by: GreenPlease | Feb 9, 2008 6:00:35 AM
A 100 mile range would be more than adequate for 98% of my driving. If I really need a longer drive, I'll use my Prius.
Of course,this article says nothing about price, so I would only purchase this if they could bring it below $25,000.
This thing supposedly gets 6.25 miles per kwh. That's less than 1.5 cents per mile where I live. The co2 emissions for the U.S. average power plant is 612.34 grams per kwh. That's 97.9 grams per mile compared to a Prius of 210 grams per mile.
We have had a similar discussion before, so we would still need to know the grams per mile on a well to wheel basis to make a more realistic comparison.
Posted by: Tom Street | Feb 9, 2008 7:42:51 AM
Tom,
Good analysis. Those are the kind of numbers that help me understand EV and HEV CO2. Higher capacity and lower cost batteries would help, but it seems to me that they will cost a lot and I do not see the prices coming down dramatically anytime soon.
I could be wrong, but I think that range will be one of those issues that will not go away. If a family has one vehicle for all of their needs, it will have to have range. Maybe some people could buy a new EV for around town, but most need a car that will do everything that they need to do to justify the expense.
Posted by: sjc | Feb 9, 2008 8:40:31 AM
Sure, I'd prefer a cheaper price, and longer range but lets not ask the people at Mitsubishi to do a rethink, what they have is viable as is.
Now all we need is to see it in production, and get "pay-for plugs" installed in every major shopping plaza parking lot.
Improvements will come after the market is opened.
Posted by: John Taylor | Feb 9, 2008 9:13:43 AM
Yes I think 100 mile range is good for almost all of my driving needs along with most americans. People are going to have to start changing some of their driving habits or else get left behind. With oil perhaps at or nearing its peak production getting anything to the market now in mass production would be a great head start for any auto maker. Sure EV dont have a long term high profit margin but this is something the industry along with everyone else will just have to slowly adjust to. Plugin hybrds will be the transition cars for the near term perhaps over the next 10 to 15 years during that time EV's will continue to become more available and cheaper. I think hydrogen is good but not going to happen for another 50 years at best. The electric economy is the future of the world unless there are some big breakthroughs in hydrogen and ofcourse when hydrogen is ready for the market the electric economy will be here and there will be no need to change. I see oil still playing a role in air travel for sometime to come until hydrogen is commerically ready to use. Bio fuels are a waste of time for now until some breakthroughs happen, all we are doing now is making food more expensive. Anyways thats how I see things.
Posted by: what2do | Feb 9, 2008 10:00:11 AM
Agreed, it may not be perfect, but just get it out there ASAP and improvements will come afterwards. What we need is to show the population what current, even 15 year old, technology can do and the light bulb will light up and the rest will be unstoppable history.
Posted by: MarkMC | Feb 9, 2008 10:05:09 AM
There were some recharging stations for EVs in the early 90s when L.A. was doing its ZEV push. I think it is better to use and adapt what we have than to hope for an overall radical transformation.
To think that everyone will give up their cars and ride bikes is a bit much. To hope that we will put in charging stations and hydrogen stations is a stretch. Companies will put in charging stations if it makes them money. Cities and states are so cash strapped as it is, I doubt that they will pay for all of that when it would be used by only a few people.
I believe that we will get to where we need to go one step at a time, or not at all. Some want a "moon shot" program, only because we have put it off for so long as it is. The sooner we start the sooner we can get there and the less wasteful scrambling will be needed when it does becomes so necessary that we can not put it off any longer.
Posted by: sjc | Feb 9, 2008 10:08:29 AM
I don't see recharging stations/areas as a big problem. You already have all the power lines up, hell you can have them at gas stations even, were not talking millions and millions of stations/areas up all at once. They will grow as the demand grows. Now what about cost well like I said all the major power lines are up so all you need to do is install small outlets will credit card access on them. To make places like gas stations and companies to put them in just make it tax deductible this will make the tax payers pay for it over a longer time period. This will also create new jobs across the country, this will be a slow and some times painful process but as far as I can see it the best thing we can do right now. As for hydrogen like I said this is still some time of in the future and at best only a small part of the next revolution of mankind which is techno revolution.
Posted by: what2do | Feb 9, 2008 10:48:28 AM
Rural charging stations? I'm always seeing U.S. Interstate exits advertising RV camping with full hookups. If you pulled in the the middle of the day when they had vacancies and offered to pay to plug in for a few minutes they'd be delighted with the new source of income. I only mention this because the infrastructure is already in place.
Posted by: Mick | Feb 9, 2008 11:30:57 AM
Quick charging may not be an option. To recharge 10 kwh after 40 miles of driving in only a few minutes would take a lot of power. It could also shorten the life of the batteries and be a huge load to the grid. That is the idea of hydrogen, you can fill the tanks in a few minutes much like filling your gasoline tank with fuel.
I think that most of the charging stations that were in use years ago were installed in parking lots, where the drivers would spend quite a bit of time. A computer store in Sunnyvale, California put some in to try to get people to spend more time in the store. So it sounds like parking lots and garages would be good candidates for charging stations.
Posted by: sjc | Feb 9, 2008 11:48:45 AM
I think initially long battery range isn't needed. There are plenty of two car families with off street parking who would like a Fiesta sized second car (in Europe - maybe a bit bigger in the US) for school runs and shopping trips. A 20 miles range would often be good enough.
Posted by: Alex | Feb 9, 2008 12:45:39 PM
1) If you keep batteries or capacitors at "gas" stations they can be fed with normal power lines but produce bursts of power to quick-charge EVs.
2) Quick-charging EV will not hurt their batteries. They will be designed for this.
3) Stop thinking corn or arable land produced products for biofuel. Think waste and algae. Algae can be grown in the desert, grows with dirty or salt water and feeds on the exhaust from power plants. They are building large-scale pilot plants now.
4) Write to your political leaders to tell them energy is the biggest problem and you will vote for the person that has the best plan. Period. Enough with the two-step shuffle.
Posted by: future-gaze | Feb 9, 2008 2:35:37 PM
I think that a shorter EV range with hybrid capability might work. If they exceed the range on electric, the engine comes on. They would probably need more than 30 mph top speed in EV mode though.
The quick charge idea is a probability distribution. If you have 1/2 the cars out there running around as EV with no hybrid, what happens when 1000 of them would like to quick charge using 440v at 400 amps each all across a city? Just one car quick charging could be equal to 100 home central air conditioners coming on at the same time. Now multiply that by 1000.
I know people say that they would have caps or batteries, but those cost a lot and there are limits to that. Would I be able to quick charge 2 vehicles at my station but 4 at the same time can not be done? After I charge those 2 vehicles how long do they have to wait before I can charge two more? These are details that either make or break an idea. If the idea is to charge at home over night, then people need to know that, because it limits the utility of the vehicle.
Posted by: sjc | Feb 10, 2008 8:27:28 AM
Why is that 400v line going to need a 400amps breaker ? each 110 line would only need 20amps so at most you would need 100amp breaker, so were are you pulling 400amps ? Also one car quick charging would be equal to 100 homes ac turning on, seeing how most ac are 220v your looking at 40 amps at most, so 100 home ac turning on would be equal to 4000 amps. If Im wrong here someone please correct me thanks.
Posted by: what2do | Feb 10, 2008 8:49:29 AM
You want to charge 10 khw in a few minutes. 440v at 100 amps for one hour is about 40 kwh, but you can not wait an hour, you want to quick charge. So, that 10 kwh will take you 15 minutes. But you can not wait 15 minutes. You want to charge in 5 minutes, so it takes 300 amps. But it only takes you 3 minutes to fill a gasoline tank so....and so it goes.
The turn on of a home AC may be 220v at 30 amps single phase, but running them after start up takes less current. Since we are quick charging now for 3-5 minutes you would take the average power consumption over that interval. It might not be equivalent to 100 central air conditioners running for 5 minutes, but you can see the problem before it arises.
Posted by: sjc | Feb 10, 2008 9:39:58 AM
IMO, the 4-passenger iMiEV is the most practical example of a close-to-production (and hopefully close-to-sales-in-North-America) vehicle. Can it be improved? Certainly - for example, instead of aluminum, use carbon fiber (using Fiberforge techniques) as a unibody material. But it is a heck of a start. I will buy one as soon as it is available in the US.
Posted by: Willie | Feb 10, 2008 12:34:40 PM
IMO, the 4-passenger iMiEV is the most practical example of a close-to-production (and hopefully close-to-sales-in-North-America) vehicle. Can it be improved? Certainly - for example, instead of aluminum, use carbon fiber (using Fiberforge techniques) as a unibody material. But it is a heck of a start. I will buy one as soon as it is available in the US.
Posted by: Willie | Feb 10, 2008 12:35:20 PM
@Tom Street:
Where do your numbers come from? I thought the official Prius CO2 emissions were 104 g/km = 167 g/mi. Do you also factor in the refinery emissions? Or is it based on real life fuel consumption?
The CO2/kWh for power plants does that include grid losses? I also assume that to fully charge a 16 kWh battery, you usually need to put in more than 16 kWh of electricity.
Posted by: Anne | Feb 11, 2008 4:38:08 AM
Just to clarify - the 'official' Prius emissions only account for the CO2 from the gasoline in the tank. There is no accounting for all of the CO2 produced in the exploration, drilling, extraction, refining and transportation of the gasoline to the tank. I think probably the electrical CO2 per kWh estimates are closer to the truth than the 'official' gasoline CO2 figures.
Posted by: | Feb 11, 2008 5:58:16 AM
Anne.
I got the 210 figure from a previous post I made. I no longer have figures that went into that. However, the IPCC estimate of co2 emissions per gallon of gasoline is 8788 grams. Using the current (revised) EPA estimate of 46 miles per gallon yields of grams/mile figure of 191.
I didn't use a grid loss factor. Do you have that factor? If so, I would be interested in seeing the results based on that factor.
In any event, it appears that this EV would still beat a Prius even with grid loss. And, as pointed out above, there are also all the refining, research, drilling, and production factors to consider.
Posted by: Tom Street | Feb 11, 2008 6:46:31 AM
EVs are great and 10% of the cars being EV would maybe be even better that 10% hybrid. With 10% hybrid and 10% EV, we are on our way to reducing oil imports and cleaning up the air.
I hope that they keep making advances in batteries. If we could have 100 mile range with small, lightweight batteries that cost a few thousand dollars and last more than 10 years/100,000 miles, they would be very popular. So far, I have not seen any of these in wide spread production/mass consumer usage.
Posted by: sjc | Feb 11, 2008 7:18:06 AM
Tom,
A quick search on Wikipedia for grid losses yields a figure of around 7%.
I think the revised EPA estimate is pretty close to average real world consumption for the Prius. Add to that a figure of around 30% well-to-pump CO2 and a good well-to -wheel CO2 estimate for the Prius would be 250 g/mi.
Even when adding the 7% grid losses, and a real world usage that is 20% less efficient than the 10 m.p.kWh that Mitsubishi claims, it is still better by nearly a factor of 2.
Posted by: Anne | Feb 11, 2008 8:56:21 AM
Wonder what the price will be...
Just a guess- say $30,000 MSRP minus a $4,000 Federal Tax credit.
I'd be willing to spend $26,000 on this vehicle given a 200 mile all-electric range.
Posted by: DieselHybrid | Feb 11, 2008 9:16:13 AM
I see alot of wrong info so ill try and clear it up.
1 A battery is never perfect.. at best at best temp charge rate and charge range your talking about 80% AND that isnt even outlet to bat thats just the bat itself. On TOP of that just as in your computer there is a power supply converting ac to dc and regulating it and all.. and those are never perfect.. most computer ones are only 50-65% eff and the best are 85-90%.
Grid losses varry.. in california they are high.. right next to diablo nuke plant however its nill;/
To make matters worse they extend range by widening the charge range faaar past its efficient range and thus the battery heats up alot more wasting far more power on charge up AND they charge it faster AND they let it get hotter.. all fubarring recharge eff.
Add in the losses due to cold or hot weather.. below x your bat looses MOST of its capacity and wastes more power to charge and too hot and...
And THEN we have battery leakage.. ever recharged a lith battery then waited an hour or 3 and tried to charge it some more?
2 This car has no room for both a battery and a small engine and gas tank its simply too small to fit it all in. Its that small because even a 16kwh battery cant prvide the energy just half a kilo of j2 could.. between 7-9 kwh usable energy.
As with biofuels and h2 and everything else.. in the end we will only truely know if we didnt screw up after we screw up BIG..
Posted by: wintermane | Feb 11, 2008 10:03:03 AM
Nonsense.
Posted by: Bob Bastard | Feb 11, 2008 12:21:38 PM
Subaru is also testing this kind of EV in Japan.
Their target MSRP is less than 2M yen(less than US$19,000).
Posted by: Ken@Japan | Feb 11, 2008 12:39:15 PM
If your talking about my posr bob.. wrong. The bat makers themselves have the specs for all this info snf msny car makers are showing said info.
Oh and how big is your hiney? Because as a friend found out its rather hard to ise a stick shift if your sitting on it and many of these cars have very narrow seats.
Posted by: wintermane | Feb 11, 2008 4:23:17 PM
Parking meters already have electricity run to them - we could easily add daytime charge-up stations to parking meters.
Posted by: Susan K | Feb 11, 2008 7:27:20 PM
Nonsense, as in illegible, incomprehensible, baseless....nonsense. I think I was able to get the general gist of your last sentence, though. To answer, I am 5'10", 175 lb fairly athletic build. My posterior fits just fine in the seat of my 1984 VW Rabbit, which happens to be manual shift. The seats of most small cars are approximately on par with the size of the seats in airplanes. When/If you fly, do you fit in the seat, or do you have to purchase two tickets? Is it the responsibility of the airlines to enlarge the seats and raise costs for everyone else in order to accommodate the increasing percentage of obese people? Or is it the personal responsibility of the obese to take control of their own health and reach a reasonable weight that will allow them to live a 'normal' lifestyle?
Posted by: Bob Bastard | Feb 12, 2008 7:35:48 AM
I would need two cars, an electric for most of driving which is in nearby cities, and a second for the long drives. I'm not sure about auto insurance. I only purchase liability, but if I have to purchase 2 policies, 1 per car, I would only have the 2nd car. Maybe auto insurance law reform would help the cause of the electric car.
Posted by: Lawrence | Feb 12, 2008 10:02:13 AM
Lawrence, I have multiple vehicles. My other vehicles only add a nominal cost on my insurance policy. I suppose the insurance companies are smart enough at least to realize that you can only drive one car at a time, and State registration is only $36/year, so I'm not forced to try to buy one vehicle to suit all my vehicular needs.
Posted by: Bob Bastard | Feb 12, 2008 11:20:45 AM
I could use an EV with 100 mile range and if I wanted to go further, I would rent a car for the day, put a lot of miles on someone else car. Usually I would need more range on the weekends and car rental companies like to rent their cars at good rates on the weekends.
Posted by: sjc | Feb 12, 2008 2:10:39 PM
Um as its a japan only car its built to thier size and your hiney is too fat. Anyway as I said we will only know the true metrics of these ev cars when we have them and can measure it all.
On parking meters that all depends on how they were wired up. Ib some places its likelt to require ripping up the sidewalk to run alot more circuits to handle the load and alot of rather large amounts of power.
Posted by: wintermane | Feb 12, 2008 2:15:47 PM
@ Alex asked "How much power can a 500cc range extender provide ? "
GreenPlease answered about 20Kw. Depends how you run the engine.
Well, that's a good answer if you are scaling the 1500cc 57Kw 1NZ-FXE engine from the Prius. But that is Utopia, and as Isaiah Berlin said "the abandonment of Utopia is what makes real gritty ground level progress possible."
Now I am sure he wasn't happening to think of the State Of The Art in motorcycle engines at the time but his basic principle certainly applies here. Case in point, if we inspect the 600cc inline four cylinder Honda CBR600RR engine, we find it delivers 88Kw @ 13500 rpm. And it would no doubt deliver reliably for those relatively few and relatively short period of times, say eight seconds to reach 60 mph, needed for vehicle acceleration. Of course this is a great engine to use for input to a stepped transmission on a bike but is rather an elaborate way to supply shaft power to drive an 88Kw electric generator, for arguments sake. The engine has the extreme oversquare ratio of 1.5 (bore and stroke 67mm x 42.5mm) and at 19.12m/sec piston speed comes beneath the 20m/sec reliabilty wall which are both desirable. An interesting thing is that using just two cylinders and adopting an induction motor front transaxle - the performance without a battery pack would not be too bad. If you wanted to pursue this idea to the limit then a single cylinder with the same total piston area but at a less stratospheric piston speed, comes off the shelf as a 450cc with a 62mm stroke and 98mm bore which may do the 44Kw at 9000rpm. Just saying that's all.
T2
Posted by: T2 | Feb 13, 2008 11:08:31 AM
Any carmaker or other person, who says that batteries are not available for long range electric vehicles, is incorrect and has not taken the effort to find out what batteries are available. ZEBRA batteries could be fitted into a PRIUS with minimal changes to give a full electric range of over 100 miles. The ZEBRA is in production lorries and in the new production TH!NK. The comment about installing a small engine generator with fuel tank represents the best solution to the real but mostly inflated importance of limited range. The TZERO was fitted with a small trailer containing a motorcyle engine generator for long range trips. Auto, HUMMER and SUV makers would not dare tell you how fast a single horse-power could propel their vehicle down a level city street or you would know that their advertised HP is almost mere sales fluff. An average speed would be better than 15 miles per hour which is faster than the normal rush hour traffic flow. Most drivers could not afford to run at even 100 HP for their hour of commute. A ten pound high speed engine of the OPOC design or the RCV design coupled with a ZEBRA battery would give both exhaust free short city commutes and unlimited range freeway travel at 65 mph for the occasional need for long trips. Diesel can be used to reduce the much higher cost of producing gasoline and have a much more stable fuel for long periods of no use. Certain types of biodiesel may have very long lives for storage. Butanol might also work well. Hydrogen and any other fuel for fuel cells and the fuel cells themselves will remain far to expensive for the next 100 years for anything but space research and demonstrations. Coal to Jet fuel (Diesel) conversion plants need to be built and subsidized more than corn-ethanol plants as they are much more energy efficient and do not tend to starve the poor of the world. They would also relieve the poor of the world by reducing the price of kerosine for cooking. Coal to Methanol (and biowaste to Methanol) is much cheaper and produces a fuel with infinite storage life and clean burning in simple stoves as well as engines....hg....
Posted by: Henry Gibson | Feb 13, 2008 11:43:58 AM
Hi Henry, have to concur with your post.
I would say that this MiEV still not close pricewise when you consider that the Prius battery holds only 1.3Kwh and yet Mitsubishi contemplate a solution using a battery that is twelve times as large. My feeling is that if this vehicle were released for the benefit of early adopters then the accompanying ramp in production could accelerate a complementary reduction in cost similar to the flat panel TV experience. Although shrinking the battery from 20Kwh to 16Kwh shows that technical progress is being made it is still not fast enough by itself to approach the Moore's Law trajectory for DRAM memory i.e. halving the cost almost every eighteen months. On the other hand that ramp up in production, as I suggested, could provide in itself a second driver into cost reductions.
In the meantime the 'virtual battery' idea I've been espousing although not Off_Oil it is Off_a_helluva_lot _of_Oil and would be a good interim solution while manufacturers play catch up on high power full time inverter systems. I also believe there is work to be done deciding whether the architecture should stabilize on a single liquid cooled induction motor driving a differential or on the original twin motor approach used by Impact with air cooled machines.
Anyone know the traction motor power of the MiEV ? A pack that size would be good for 250kW. Of course that could violate the terms of its ZEV rating on account of the smoke from the tires when it lights off !
T2
Posted by: | Feb 13, 2008 5:24:12 PM
You might get 88Kw shaft power at 13500 rpm, but once you drive an alternator at 90% efficiency you get less.
I do not know about anyone else, but somehow I can not see a genset screaming away at 13500 rpm under the hood of my car. I would prefer that it were as quiet and long lasting as it could be.
Posted by: sjc | Feb 14, 2008 2:50:09 PM
@sjc
"I do not know about anyone else, but somehow I can not see a genset screaming away at 13500 rpm under the hood of my car. I would prefer that it were as quiet ..."
If it were to be done with automobile acoustic standards in place I doubt you'd hear it.
This is OT here so then if you want to discuss in more detail then post on Edmunds' "Course in advanced hybrids.." on their community forum for hybrids and I'll put up a more technical response regarding alternators and gasoline engines. Repeat your 13500rpm post there and we'll discuss.
T2
Posted by: T2 | Feb 15, 2008 8:32:27 AM
Thanks for the invitation, but I like it here. This is a nice mix of less than over wonked types, that have a balanced view of things. Some people think everything is an engineering exercise. The old saying is if all you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail.
If all you have is engineering, everything starts to look like an engineering problem. It is much more than that. If countries can not afford the alternatives, they will chose the low cost options. The list of impedances goes on and on and needs to be addressed before we encounter them.
So, a Green Car Congress is just fine by me. We can discuss many aspects of sustainable mobility without any one topic taking over the discussion. I am sure Edmunds has some interesting discussions and I thank you again for the invitation.
Posted by: sjc | Feb 21, 2008 11:56:33 AM
Aside from the last few posts by the lurker, this article has been a great read. I applaud Mitsubishi for their accomplishment thus far. Just get this vehicle to the American market asap and price it as listed elsewhere (~$17,000 - $19,000 US) there will be a lot of interest in it.
Count me in the camp of not needing to drive over 30 miles a day. And if I need a longer trip I always rent a car today anyway even though my gasoline powered pollution maker can go as far as I need. Why put all those miles on my car when they could go on someone else's?
For those quick charge fanatics, what is to stop you from having a battery bank in your garage that you charge via solar panels all through the week, use it to quick charge the cars pack when (or more likely, IF) you need to.
Posted by: CSGuy | Mar 23, 2008 5:32:06 AM
According to one post in this discussion,IPCC[whomever or whatever their agenda and/or credentials are] is quoted as stating that one gallon of gas emits 8,788 gms of CO2. My grammar school science[a long long time ago]says in the 1st Law of the Conservation of Matter that matter is neither destroyed or created. 8.788 kg of Co2 is 17.576 lbs of CO2. A gallon of gas is approximately 6lbs. So we are creating about 2 and 1/2 times as much material from the original amount? Or did I get it all wrong in the 5th grade. I am confused so...please help me! For if I remember the law right and my teachers weren't fabricating then I have to believe the science of manipulating the results to prove the theory are in play here.
Posted by: Larry Rodgers | Apr 24, 2008 9:59:29 AM
It seems impossible that a gallon of gasoline, which weighs about 6.3 pounds, could produce 20 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) when burned. However, most of the weight of the CO2 doesn't come from the gasoline itself, but the oxygen in the air.
When gasoline burns, the carbon and hydrogen separate. The hydrogen combines with oxygen to form water (H2O), and carbon combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide (CO2).
A carbon atom has a weight of 12, and each oxygen atom has a weight of 16, giving each single molecule of CO2 an atomic weight of 44 (12 from carbon and 32 from oxygen).
Therefore, to calculate the amount of CO2 produced from a gallon of gasoline, the weight of the carbon in the gasoline is multiplied by 44/12 or 3.7.
Since gasoline is about 87% carbon and 13% hydrogen by weight, the carbon in a gallon of gasoline weighs 5.5 pounds (6.3 lbs. x .87).
We can then multiply the weight of the carbon (5.5 pounds) by 3.7, which equals 20 pounds of CO2!
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/Feg/co2.shtml
Posted by: Brian Paddock | Jun 22, 2008 11:26:36 AM
Clean Energy Technologies & Integral Solutions For The Car Industry
Posted by: Luis Beck | Oct 23, 2008 2:25:03 AM
