It is used as a power source, just not the only power source. There are many modes of operation where the power required by a hybrid exceeds what the gasoline engine alone can provide and then the battery pack is a power source.
They proved that there was a market for HIGHLY subsidized electric vehicles. If they had charged what these vehicles actually cost them, they market would have likely been zero. A subsidized market doesn't reflect the true underlying demand.
Yep, the glow will wear off in a few more years as the first vehicles begin to require substantial maintenance and replacement of expensive components.
Try driving one below a certain speed for more than 20 minutes and see what happens.
This is a vehicle that takes gasoline as a power source, there is no plug for a charger. I understood it only stores power generated from braking but if they are powering it from the battery for low speed operation, they are obviously running the gasoline motor in a way as to produce more energy to motivate the car, and sucking some of that off to charge the battery. Nevertheless, the battery does not produce power out of thin air. It either comes from regenerative braking or from the gasoline engine. Thus the battery capacity does not need to be as large as a fully electric car. I still think it would be quite easy to substitute lead-acid batteries for the NiMh traction battery, assuming you wanted to preserve the gas engine and such.
The significant thing here is that in the Prius or other hybrid you have a complete vehicle chassis with an interior, carpet, seats, etc. and powertrain that is fully electric. 80% of the work is done for you in building an electric car, all you have to do is gut the gas engine and traction battery and the Toyota computer, and put your own batteries in, configured to supply the power that the Toyota traction motor requires, and add a charger.
Clearly in old used Priuses, the traction battery and gasoline engine will wear out long before the electric traction motors do. It is really a ripe candidate for a conversion once that happens, since you will be able to get them for practically nothing, and nobody is forcing you to replace their guts with Toyota's rather expensive hybrid system.
If AAA carbon batteries could supply the high current needed they would do it, but if that was the case AAA batteries would be somewhat dangerous to use in consumer applications.
You can take 8 AAA nicads, fully charged, and draw an arc with them, though. (OK, a small one)
A group of researchers built an interesting mod to a Prius (or some other hybrid). They added more batteries - but not enough for a long range -- and a charger.
The result was a vehicle that could cope with a short commute using energy from the overnight charge, while long distances could also be achieved through the gas engine. The overall fuel economy (and vehicle cost) was significantly greater than that of the original hybrid, while the range was grater than that of a 100% battery vehicle.
If one is foolish enough to put 4 AA nimh's in their pocket while bike riding with their grand daughter, they can burn their leg terribly painfully, leaving a bad scar :(
One thing is true about any new technology the owners are like the early pioneers, and you know how you could tell who the poineers were? They were the ones face down with arrows in there back.
Heh heh! I don't know if the big diesel manufacturers still do this, but when I was a kid, I remember being told (probably by my dad) that the Caterpillar scraper engines used small gasoline engines (with their own electric starter of course) to start the main engine. Not sure if the starter engines were one lungers or something bigger. I think also, in some large engines, electric motors spin up a flywheel to start a larger main engine (some WWII aircraft engines sound as if they use such a system).
Theoretically you could probably transfer the total energy of a few C- or D- cells into such a flywheel system (or a large capacitor for that matter) over a minute or two - use them once, then throw them away. Not sure if a handful of AA's have the total energy necessary. "Give me a big enough lever and i can move the earth." :)
Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')
I recently saw a print article about this topic, not sure if this is the full thing, but quite interesting to me.
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"The chassis that's sitting in a workroom on the campus of San Diego State University is painted a shade of red you'd expect to see on the lips of an attention-starved woman. On a car, the color conjures up speed, sass, and power. But this car's looks are deceptive. Although it can blast from a standstill to 60 miles per hour in less than five seconds, a single gallon of fuel can propel the vehicle 80 miles. The engine is augmented by a battery-powered motor, which can be recharged by plugging a cord into an ordinary wall socket. And the engine fuel? You can run it on diesel if that's convenient. But soybean oil works just as well."
"San Diego State University Professor Jim Burns says people have asked him where they could buy a car like this. "Nowhere," he has to say. When Burns and his team of engineering students designed and built the car -- which they called the "Enigma" -- they weren't trying to develop a commercial product. Instead they wanted to prove that it was possible to make an automobile that used no fossil fuels, got phenomenal mileage, and looked and performed like a race car. Four years later, Burns and a new team of students are attempting to transform Chevrolet's Equinox into the kind of SUV even an environmentalist could love. Their work is part of the Challenge X competition, which is being cosponsored by General Motors and the Department of Energy. Theirs is one of 17 teams, and hardly among the front-runners."
That seems kind of weird, but if our discussion helped you fire up the ol' "number one spark plug" again, then glad we could help. The centerfolds aren't working for you anymore? :)
Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')
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