Not bad; City MPG is better due to regen braking, and the ~54 hp diesel is enough for 60 mpg highway cruise. Get VW to cooperate for EU and Korean market. Afterwards, expand to Japan, and NA markets.

If you want to put on a fuel mileage show, I wouldn't start with Volkswagen's least aerodynamic car.

JRod.

The Product is good should be sent to our side for
exibition.

Thanks.

Lou,

I agree. If you can mke the genset light and powerful enough, you do not have to haul all the weight of a heavy engine and transmission everywhere you go.

As some here know, I've been touting my idea about Lithium-Ion, plug-in, in-wheel drive with a small BioDiesel Gen-set for several years.

Over time many have commented on the idea of making the Gen-set removal. At first I didn't see the point but am slowly catching on. The idea of making a car with modular components seems like a really good one.

With this approach, a buyer could only add whatever necessary components he/she needed.

Now all we have to do is convince the auto builders.

This is an excellent work, especially the use of ultracap as surge power unit and energy capture without the wear and tear of battery. Altairnano or A123 batteries will be good also to convert this into a PHEV, due to their durability of many charge and discharge cycles, although cost can be an issue here at the present.

The only thing not mentioned is a highly-desirable direct torque coupler between the engine and the drive train during cruise in top gear, kinda like the torque coupler between the torque converter and the engine in an automatic transmission. So, when you ease up on the gas, the torque coupler transfer engine torque mechanically to the drive train and preventing energy loss in the generator-motor route of 20% or higher, due to resistance in the windings of the generator and motor. When you steps harder on the gas, the stored electricity in the battery or ultracap will power the motor and give the engine a boost of power. When the ultracap runs out of juice and you are climbing up a steep hill, then the torque coupler will be released, allowing the generator-motor to act as an automatic transmission, and the engine will rev up the generator faster, while the motor is churning more slowly but with higher torque.

I'm already averaging 50mpg on biodiesel and it's EMF's free. Why trade this for a hybrid the comes with EMF's and potential health risks.

George,
You've raised a very good point: "...but remember that car mfg's are not in business of providing clean [and] economical transportation..."

That's why the eco-conscious public must vote with their pocket book to make darn sure that car mfg's will. How about gasoline tax increase, everybody? More stringent CAFE standard?

It sounds more like the creators were too cheap to retrofit an electric A/C system, which would permit idle-stop.

Roger makes good points on EMF - especially EMF radiated by an EV built for consumers which will probably have to utilize shielding if only to prevent RF interference with radio reception. We are also bombarded by high energy particles like gamma rays, hard x-ray and fast electron beams on a daily basis... maybe that's why we are going green so slowly;)

Modular components in engine design makes a lot of sense. If we could simply drop in a genset like a spare tire, before going on a long trip, daily BEV mileage /efficiency would improve more. Genset mods could be rented at local energy stations the way one rents a car further limiting upfront vehicle costs.

"car manufacturers are not in the business of providing clean economical transportation. They are in the business of making money."

George, with millions of new driver/owners coming online auto manufacturers will need to realize profits at lower margins. The electronics industry learned this a long time ago. Consumer electronics is a huge business - hundreds of millions of units at small margins. They're doing just fine - check Sony's bottom line.

If small EMF's hurt people, you'd get cancer from electric blankets.  It doesn't happen enough to even be detectable, which is pretty small.  Subway riders in NYC and El riders in Chicago also form a very large exposed population, which would have revealed any signficant effect by now.

On top of that, steel is a near-perfect barrier against electrostatic fields and does a fair job of carrying magnetic fields through itself instead of the air.  Last, magnetic fields can be minimized (self-cancelled) by the use of e.g. coaxial or twisted-pair conductors.

You should treat claims of harm from garden-variety EMF's like free-energy nonsense from Keelynet.

If they used lithium batteries and made it a PHEV, esp. with an aerodynamic body a small car like this would only really need a genset of perhaps 25 or 30 kW (34 - 40 hp). Honda managed for the Insight to build a 56 kg, 50 kW (124 lb, 67 hp) engine--granted it's not a diesel. If you use a free-piston engine, a rotary (LML does these), a turbine or an advanced fuel cell perhaps, the genset could be lighter. I imagine a genset module of less than 50 kg (110 lb) with separate or empty fuel tank.

With the right facilities--straps, hinges, wheels etc.--you'd only be lifting one end at a time so 25 kg (55 lb) lift requirement, which most any driver could do alone. It could be set up, for a conventional engine compartment with a high lip, with a set of straps so it could be rolled out end-over-end and then to the ground. Additionally you might have a built-in hoist using the hood for pulley mounting. Or have a low-lip trunk lid front or back (whichever end is used) so lift height requirement is low. You wheelbarrow the engine around the garage.

A ground-up car design could have the slot at the bottom, up against the front or rear with a cutout, so you essentially drive the car over or off the genset. No/minimal lifting. Maybe with the help of a pneumatic suspension (like a kneeling bus) to make the car get over it and then down. Possibly fully automatic (de)coupling--at least that could make sense for the swappable batteries option.

Rental/lease of a genset would be like renting a car, but should be less than 1/10th the cost. The few abuse modes could be electronically monitored for so there's little fuss, and capital and storage costs are low. Negligible liability issues. The genset could also be hung on the front of a trailer for moving day if your car doesn't have a slot.

Genset flexibility yields altfuel flexibility. Say you're in the Midwest and get a high-compression, high-efficiency dedicated E85 unit. If you're travelling around the country where they don't have E85, you might rent a propane one or a propane fuel sub-module.

BTW those orange power cables should go coax for safety reasons as well as EMI.

A PHEV need not be super-aerodynamic nor ultra-light. The real problem with cars is NOT their fuel efficiency. The real problem is how the modern urban/sububan environ has been built to exclude travel by any other means except driving long distances for every purpose.

Driving distances must be reduced, essentially directing development toward that end. When driving becomes an option along with walking, mass transit and bicycling to nearby shopping, occupation, institutions and amenities etc, vehicle aerodynamics is irrelevant.

The PHEV drivetrain creates an economic incentive for short drives, to patronize and build local economies, whereby more destinations eventually become accessable without having to drive. Too few understand this concept. We don't need to build a better car as much as we need to (re)build better communities.

Vehicle weight is an important safety factor to all class of vehicles. Building cars, trucks and vans ultra-light compromises safety, period. The weight of NiMh batteries is an absolute advantage in many ways and need not be supplanted by lighter Li-Ion batteries.