interesting article in today's paper about hybrid cars

[Vaughn]

What is your battery management style?

Given that I have hundreds of users who pay little attention to me
except when they want something, I would say that our battery management
consists of providing the manufacturer's recomended charger and hoping for
the best.

Deep charge/discharge cycles will shorten longevity in NiMH batteries.

I hear different stories about this.

the hybrids have sophisticated battery management systems, which never
let the batteries go outside a certain range of %SOC (State of Charge),
which greatly increases their life.

I hope this is true.

Besides, the warranties are all for 8 or more years (in the US) for the
batteries.

That is good, (although I see no mention about that on the Honda
website) but not sufficient. A $3,500 repair bill (or whatever, it won't be
cheap) on a 8+year-old car can be sufficient to give it an early trip to
the junkyard to be melted down prematurly to be made into a new car with all
of the ecological impacts that implies. If these cars do not have a normal
lifetime, then they are a bad deal, (speaking of both economic and
environmental impact.)

I don't see people complaining that their bumpers are going
to need replacing after 3 years when most bumper-to-bumper warranties
expire.

I do! Particularly the $500 to $1,000 built-in repair bill to replace
a timing belt when they could apply 1960's technology for another $10.00 and
use a timing chain that would probably last the lifetime of the vehicle.

Vaughn

 

[News]

X-No-Archive: yes




Sounds like corrupt government to me!

Sounds like a sensible one to me (London). You pay to enter the centre.
When implemented the drop of traffic was about 25%. HIghly significant.
Hybrids and electric cars travel into the centre free. New York, San Paulo,
Paris, and a host of other cities around the world are seriously thinking of
adopting the system too, to reduce traffic levels, which also reduces
pollution in a heavily built up city.

 

[No One]

Sounds like a sensible one to me (London). You pay to enter the centre.

When implemented the drop of traffic was about 25%. HIghly significant.
Hybrids and electric cars travel into the centre free. New York, San Paulo,
Paris, and a host of other cities around the world are seriously thinking of
adopting the system too, to reduce traffic levels, which also reduces
pollution in a heavily built up city.

Sounds good to me as well, smaller cities and rural areas can use the
business that will flee the higher cost. This is one reason I support
California's draconian anti-pollution laws.

 

[William P.N. Smith]

However - the darn politicians don't care about economy.

I don't think it's the politicians, IMHO it's the consumers. You and
I and nearly everyone in this newsgroup wants high efficiency, but
there's no lack of demand for Urban Assault Vehicles, and economic
incentives are meaningless, as the consumers of them don't mind low
gas milage and $2/gallon gasoline.

You can't legislate economy if that's not what consumers want.

 

[Steve Spence]

My non-tdi only get 38-40, but the veggie oil is free, so I'm not
complaining.


--
Steve Spence
Renewable energy and sustainable living
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