Yep and the Audi A3 e-tron is £35k!
Its a mightily impressive bit of kit but its more expensive than an S3!
Cost will come down. A lot of the new hybrids are premium packaged to appeal to early adopters who like the technology.
Toyota are getting there already
I think they are premium packages to cover up the fact that the battery is really expensive. The Toyota ones have a much smaller and cheaper battery.
My posts are showing up as maxtorque? Weird...
There might be technically 2 motors in a Prius (actually three) but it's not 2x the cost, complexity and servicing, nor is it half the reliability. So it's a moot point, in my opinion.
I didn't say any of that, and didn't mean to imply it. Certainly the whole car is nothing like 2x as difficult in any way, power train is only one part of the whole. Sticking electric motors onto an existing drivetrain probably isn't that difficult. But, the motors cost, and the battery costs. Battery being the big cost.
As it goes, I think electric drivetrains are wonderfully simple, at least mechanically. Prime example must be the complete dominance of diesel-elec locos for long distance rail (or just plain electric for short haul) - an application where the battery is completely taken out of the equation, either because you have a massive generator following you around, or because you're driving along your own personal power grid.
The really difficult bit for cars is making the battery good/cheap/long-lived/etc. Which is where it all seems to fall down a bit, right now.
But, the motors cost, and the battery costs. Battery being the big cost.
True but see above - Yaris hybrid the same price as the diesel.
Government intervention has a long history of unintended consequences and this whole petrol>diesel>petrol saga is a classic example.
Is it a happy coincidence that we seem set for 'scrappage scheme mk2', just as the mnajor western car producers, especially Germany, are seeing sales falling?
Also, it's been said in different words elsewhere, but:
if you're the sort of person who just mooches around town, you aren't doing many miles a year. So fuel isn't actually a big cost, not compared with buying and insuring and parking the thing.
http://www.topgear.com/uk/toyota/yaris/road-test/hybrid-driven
VW will be pissed off as they invested so much in diesel 🙂
However, it's possible that diesel SCR will be good enough for town usage. In current legislation they are, because they meet Euro 6.
You'll be waiting a long time. Pure electric cars won't be a long distance solution for decades, if ever. IMO we've got more chance of reforming our transport habits than inventing mega batteries that would be good enough
Not sure about this, it seems almost everyday that I read about some "amazing" *possible* breakthrough in battery technology. It only takes one or two of these to be actual breakthroughs and the whole world is going to change.
Not sure about this, it seems almost everyday that I read about some "amazing" *possible* breakthrough in battery technology.
Yeah they talk up things like fast recharge capability or battery longevity, but not ultimate capacity. That needs to triple or quadruple, and still be rechargeable in 10 mins.
The battery issue will be sorted at the same time as fusion "within the next 20 years" 😀
Government intervention has a long history of unintended consequences and this whole petrol>diesel>petrol saga is a classic example.
What digga said. The high cost of fuel (mostly taxes) has lead to the emergence of diesel as the fuel of choice for many people, in fact most people in France (60% ?) drive diesels.
If they do bring in a law to stop diesels in Paris or London what they will achieve is those people just going elsewhere and this a loss of business and revenue for the capitals.
It only takes one or two of these to be actual breakthroughs and the whole world is going to change.
Unfortunately, it's far more likely that battery performance improvements will be chipped away at bit by bit, and very unlikely to be some step-change in tech that magics up a massive capacity increase overnight.
That needs to triple or quadruple, and still be rechargeable in 10 mins.
Don't forget to triple or quadruple the capacity of the national grid while we're at it...
Lol yeah that too.. and to be honest internal combusion for long trips might even be the most efficient way anyway. Renewables to charge the car for short trips, then sustainable biofuels for the few remaining long trips.
No one in their right mind could have ever thought diesel to be a better alternative, but from the 90s onwards, we were coerced into it by various means.jambalaya - Member
The high cost of fuel (mostly taxes) has lead to the emergence of diesel as the fuel of choice for many people, in fact most people in France (60% ?) drive diesels.
With the advent of the CO2 taxation, it was clear the deckchairs were due another re-arrange.
Interesting that both Japan [i]and[/i] the USA never fell for this particular enviro-babble scheme.
Of all the European mass manufacturers, probably BMW is still in the best position, with regard to petrol engines. VW are not the only ones vulnerable - JLR could be caught very flat-footed by this.
The whole thing has been a waste of resources that might otherwise have been deployed to better means. Look what interesting stuff F1 has developed in recent years, without external interference.
T1000
making decisions based upon what come out of an exhaust in a dishonest lab test provide by manufacturers is a waste of time
er, before you go casting dispersion like that, you may want to check your facts!
Namely:
1) To homologate a vehicle for exhaust emissions in the UK you will need to use a ETA/VCA certified test laboratory and not just "a manufacturers" own one. These independent agencies are responsible for ensuring that testing facilities meet the necessary standards.
2) The manufacturers do not make the rules. They just make their cars pass the tests set by the ruling bodies (again, this legislation is Europe wide). What else would you think they should do?
3) If you don't like the current rules, then lobby your MEP to have them changed. This is a democracy, that's how it works.
4) If you have hard evidence to show that a manufacturer has been deliberately "cheating" or using methods in direct contradiction to and to implicitly defeat, the legislation then i expect you will be taking that evidence to the European High Court.
If you have done none of these ^^^^, then shut up.......
@digga the push for diesel was based on fuel economy, with fuel costs so high due to taxes that's an unintended consequence. Diesel is much less popular in the US where fuel is cheaper. I don't think it was ever about cleanliness, not in my book anyway.
In the UK diesels have been positively encouraged, my mates diesel A3 attracted zero road tax
IMO there is zero chance the Germans will allow their auto industry (eg VAG) to be compromised by a change in legislation.
No one in their right mind could have ever thought diesel to be a better alternative
Hold on, hold on. There's more to it than that.
The issue is one of trade-off between NOx and CO2. Which is worse? One is worse locally, the other gobally. As for the USA - well, this forum is often to be seen ridiculing cars that get terrible MPG, in a country where 30mpg is considered good. Well the reason is EGR to reduce NOx emissions.
You can't have your cake and eat it, unless you roll out some higher technology. Which, to be fair, has only been around for a few years. I think both the VED scale and the EU asking manufacturers to reduce CO2 has helped. It wasn't long ago your choices were petrol or turbo diesel. Now you've got SCR and DPF on your diesels, you've got ecoboost type petrol engines and you've got hybrids from a fair few manufacturers. And electric cars too. I think a lot has been done recently.
Of course it's not a lot in global terms though, and nothing much will change without a proper rethink of transport and everything else, but that's another topic 🙂
Diesel is much less popular in the US where fuel is cheaper
It's not that:
1) Diesel is much more expensive per gallon, sometimes almost double
2) NOx regulations prevented most offerings from being sold at all between 1997 and 2008 ish I think.
3) The good ones are made by foreign manufacturers whose cars attract a fair premium.
4) Catch-22 - because they aren't popular, dealers don't stock them, which means people don't buy them. Also people see trucks roaring away and think diesel cars are the same. Not helped by people trying to sell terrible diesels in the 70s oil crisis which makes everyone think diesels are slow and noisy, see point 4)
5) Used cars are much more expensive in the US for some reason, and the market pressure is huge on new ones to be cheap, which makes an expensive German diesel look very expensive.
BTW, anyone who wants to know the actual facts behind the UKs air quality could do worse that read this:
[url= http://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat05/0408161000_Defra_AQ_Brochure_2004_s.pdf ]uk-defra-air-quality-trends[/url]
and this:
[url= https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/305145/National_Statistic_on_Air_Quality_2013.pdf ]national_air_quality_statistics[/url]
And yes, whilst local NOx has rising recently, levels of air pollution have fallen dramatically since regular monitoring started in the 1960's. In fact, given the level of scare mongering by the Media based on today's pollution levels, it's amazing anyone survived the 1960's levels.......... 😉
oh, and it's worth noting that the "standards for air quality assessment" issued by the EU were revised downwards by the best part of 20% in 2010!
As a result, since 2010, we have had more urban "Moderate or High NOx" excursions than prior to 2010. In fact, the air has got cleaner since 2010, but the new lower stds make it sound like it's dirtier......
I'm with you molgrips. Changing load is the big weakness of an IC engine, and the big strength for a motor.
You could build a small petrol engine to run a generator at a constant load / constant speed for the long journeys, which could be much more specialised than a small car engine that has to be reasonably torquey / efficient between 1000rpm and 6500rpm.
Edit: Wow, massively behind the times
Absolutely. I'd be very interested to learn about the generator engines in the Ampera and the i3. I think the Ampera one is a 4cy 600cc one which sounds like it's a normal car engine scaled down a bit, but the BMW one could be a bit more specialised.
Ironically I think diesel could be more efficient still in this application...
EDIT oh.. it's apparently a C650 GT motorbike engine, and
"BMW clarified that the range extender is designed not for long-distance travel but purely as an emergency backup to keep the electric system going until the next recharging location"
Also the Ampera one is a 1.4l from the Corsa. Shame!
http://www.torquenews.com/2250/bmw-i3-rex-vs-chevrolet-volt-two-different-approaches-plug-hybrids
Ampera uses the GM/OPEL/Vauxhall global 1.4l 4 cyl engine. It's nothing special, and means the Ampera actually has fairly poor economy when the engine is being used.
The I3 uses a two cylinder 600cc engine derived from a motorcycle engine. This is also not that clever, but it has lower losses, and due to the larger battery fitted to the I3, is used less. All hybrids are compromises in this respect.
I'd think the Fiat TwinAir engine would be a good candidate - low cylinder count so low friction, small displacement / turbo charging for max efficiency.
Generator load could be tweaked to keep rpm constant - keep it on full boost all the time to keep the cat good and hot...job done.
Issue with things like the Prius is that the engine probably rarely warms up - engines need heat to operate efficiently. You want the engine to start rarely, but when it does, run at 100% load for a decent length of time to fully charge the batteries.
Would be especially good if it knew the route so it knew what it could / couldn't get away with, best time to start the engine (i.e. a little while before sustained high load).
Would seem to make sense to have NA but run it at WOT and low revs - open throttle (or no throttle) would improve efficiency a lot.
But I'm sure decades of generator design expertise could be put to good use here!
Issue with things like the Prius is that the engine probably rarely warms up
Nah, it does - and quickly, cos it's pretty small and never idles. First 30s or so the engine just spins about 1.3krpm to circulate the oil, but you use all electricity if you can to keep the engine unloaded. Then once you've left your housing estate/car park it'll run a continuously to get a bit of heat in it - again about 1.3krpm but this time it'll be charging the battery. Then when it's all good and hot, it has an auxilliary water pump to circulate coolant when the engine's off so you can get heat into the car when the engine's off. Depending on how cold it is this can go for a fair few minutes until the coolant drops, when it turns the engine back on (and charges the battery whilst it's at it).
Pretty clever and well thought out bit of kit. In the US, there's also a thermos into which the car pumps the hot coolant, so it stays warm for longer. Cool.
You get better energy recovery with a turbo 😀
TBH My daily commute is a round trip of ~32 miles (either on my bike or in my car) plus maybe an extra 5-10 miles to do errands a couple of evenings, a week... so Monday - Friday a car with maybe 50-60 miles range between refuelling/charging would do for someone like me... I'd quite like to drive a little leccy car to work (of course that leccy juice has to be generated somehow doesn't it)...
It's weekends that will mostly impact things, I drove a good 200 odd miles this weekend for general family stuff, not all that unusual...
Which gets you to the "two car" conclusion, small, efficient weekday commuter, plus weekend family wagon might well work for the 2.4 kids nuclear family units... Although we've concluded we need to go down to one car at present rather than continue to run two shit-boxes...
Of course that wouldn't suit everyone, but I can actually see the benefits for quite a few people, we've perhaps become too used to cars which cover "All bases" when maybe 80% of car use is actually quite limited in terms of distance...
Also many of us seem to automatically assume we have to own the car we're driving, but why?
I'd happily dispense with all the VED/Insurance/servicing costs of an over-specified vehicle when I could occasionally rent something to cover that extra ~20% of my transport needs...
So long as there's a financial benefit to doing that, rather than owning a "Motorway capable" car that spends most of it's time bumbling round town, or averaging 46 mph on 'A' roads, why wouldn't you?
[i]The whole thing has been a waste of resources that might otherwise have been deployed to better means.[/i]
No different to when lean-burn engines were superseded by catalysts; loads of quality engines junked and replaced by old engines with cats and less power (and economy).
Toyotas working on an integrated linear electricity generator...
Which gets you to the "two car" conclusion
Or the Ampera.
Or readily available instant car hire. BMW have a 'car club' offering with their i3 afaik.
PS good to see Toyota innovating.. I like that.
Not sure why it's not double ended though - two combustion chambers
It's interesting that not one person has mention VOC (volatile organinc compounds) yet, purported to be 10x more harmful to the environment than Co2 and NOx, though it's not a direct polluted to health.
Technologies are ever moving with emissions, but the change in the NEDC drive cycle is aiming to capture true/representative figures for emissions as "static" testing is fudged at the best of times.
Jambalaya is right to a point that the auto industry wont allow their market to evaporate, they lobby far to heavily for that, however they do also realise that peer pressure will force people in to greener forms of transport, therefore they will continue to "outdo" each other in these stakes, which is is indirectly because of EU green lobbying.
For now, and for the foreseable future, hydrcoarbon transport will stay and diesels will continue to play a big part in that, hybrids or one or more description will be the norm very shortly.
Not sure why it's not double ended though - two combustion chambers
One end is a gas spring - like the fork in your push bike.
Very clever, eliminates the need for a crankshaft.
, in fact most people in France (60% ?) drive diesels.
In France its actually about 80%, the EU as a whole is 55%, the UK is just over 50%
So most people in the EU drive diesels.
Of all the European mass manufacturers, probably BMW is still in the best position, with regard to petrol engines. VW are not the only ones vulnerable - JLR could be caught very flat-footed by this
BMW do have a very good range of new petrol engines, but there is not a lot wrong with the EA888 4cylinder turbo lump in almost every new petrol VAG they were slightly behind the curve but the new petrol engines are pretty good.
Ford also have an excellent range of petrol "Ecoboost" engines - partly driven by some many sales in the US market.
Similarly Japanese manufacturers have been producing good petrol engines for years due to their domestic market.
The majority of people couldn't give a flying fart what type of engine they have. They'll buy whatever is marketed to them. If legislation forces the big manufacturers to start restricting their diesel offerings then petrol will quickly overtake diesel again. And very few people will actually care!
In fact, given the level of scaremongering by the Media based on today's pollution levels, it's amazing anyone survived the 1960's levels..........
well, a lot of people didn't!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog
imagine the headlines now if we had pollution that killed 12,000 people in 4 days.... terrifying 😯
When most people bought Diesel's, they weren't thinking about the environment, they were thinking about their pockets and big MPG. If the pursuit of diesel by the manufacturers was purely environmental, why the proliferation of yet bigger engines in family cars. To me the idea of a 3 litre diesel engine, which 20 years ago would have been typical in a small truck / tractor, is now relatively common on an estate car.
As Petrol has a higher calorific value than diesel, is it fair to say that petrol engines are far from optimised, surely they should be pushing out higher MPG than diesel?
pie face, other way round mate!As Petrol has a higher calorific value than diesel, is it fair to say that petrol engines are far from optimised, surely they should be pushing out higher MPG than diesel?
[maxtorque - Member ]before you go casting dispersion like that, you may want to check your facts!
bit touchy! (what my comment meant to highlight was that testing when you have a prepared vehicle in does not represent reality for most people)
the thrust of my post was that all the guff posted by manufatureres and lobby Groups about CO2 V Nox blah blah blah are meaningless...Unless the cradle to grave impact of both the manufacture of the vehicle and its emmissions and fuel supply chain are considered then arguing over test standards etc is pointless
saying fuel type X in vehicle y produces 10% less of pollution W is a complete waste of time without considering the vehicle and supplychains
@Sui, just looked it up.
http://www.acea.be/news/article/differences-between-diesel-and-petrol
The calorific value of petrol is a tiny bit higher, but diesel is denser holding about 15% more per given volume. Therefore any petrol engine that is more than 20% less efficient than an equivalent diesel is less than optimal it seems.
Yes, given for the same density Petrol is. For comparison sake a reference Gasoline (used for emissions testing) typically has 46.20 MJ/Kg , whereas diesel has 45.68 MJ/kg. Density of Petrol is approx 0.745 kg/l, diesel is 0.834 kg/l.
MJ = millijoules
edit - just looked at that ACEA report, the diesel cal vals are off slightly.. My figures are actual.
cheeky second edit.
Megajoules, a joule isn't very big.
😳 yes.. trying to concentrate on too many things- blast work!
saying fuel type X in vehicle y produces 10% less of pollution W is a complete waste of time without considering the vehicle and supplychains
The supply chain is mostly outside the control of the UK and the EU.
They can only control what is sold/bought/used within the UK/EU.
We have to work with the economic tools we've got rather than wait for the entire world to agree to limit use of fossil fuels and pollution.
Hmm. Could you fit a bigger engine/generator to the Ampera and overcharge it? I want to put a smallblock in one.
No... You can turbocharge a Prius tho....
Put a supercharged LS7 in it. You could then charge up all the Amperas in a 5 block radius.Hmm. Could you fit a bigger engine/generator to the Ampera and overcharge it? I want to put a smallblock in one.
