Quote:
Originally Posted by Setec Astronomy
He used to work in the industry, so he knows all the stats. It was a pretty interesting discussion...those countries had coherent energy policies and standards which allowed them to be successful at it.
PS I'd like to consider myself a pragmatist on this...I'm all for reducing (energy) waste, so in the same way you pointed out that power plants don't recover their waste heat, if we can recover the braking energy of 100 million cars...it's kind of like emissions controls, 35 years ago everyone thought that would destroy cars as we know them, that they would be too expensive, have no power, crappy driveability...but we engineered our way past that. You never hear anyone say "boy, this 500 HP really sucks in my Corvette because of the smog gear" or "I could afford to buy a new car if only they didn't have emission controls" or "OMG, I have to use UNleaded gas???" (how many young Autopians don't rememer that gas used to have lead in it  ). Anyway, a will to do it and the economy of scale are important factors, and it looks to me that hybrid systems that are transparent to the end user and affordable are just about here--there was an article about the new Lexus big SUV-h in the paper here last week. |
When I called on the power generation industry, what drove me crazy was that they thought nothing of wasting electricity, because, don't ya know, they make tons of it.
I question the benefits of hybrids, because of several factors. One, whether we're talking about lithium ion or nickle metal hydride batteries, we're talking about swapping foreign oil for either foreign batteries, or foreign rare metals.
Secondly, even if economies of scale bring the costs down for hybrids, you're still increasing the complexity of the car or truck, with extra components over a regular gas or diesel vehicle. Hybrid advocates can't seem to grasp the concept that you're using extra energy to make the electric motor, the battery, and the high voltage wiring (which itself is a huge extra component). Then you're using more energy shipping it to the assembly plant. Then you're using extra energy in the plant, in extra material handling and robotics to handle integrating those parts into the assembly process.
Environmental benefits, to society, are also highly questionable when the toxic emissions and hazardous waste production of the battery and high voltage wiring is taken into consideration.