I'm in the market for a new car, specifically a 2007 Saturn Vue Hybrid (Green Line). Are these pretty much safe to buy, meaning has the technology been around long enough so there are enough techs out there trained to make repairs and are parts readily available? Is hyrbid technology reliable? Would service be limited to dealer only?
Or is it better to wait a few more years, much in the same way you never buy a brand new model or make of car until it has been proven reliable, such as when Hyundais first started coming out in 1986 and had tons of problems until 1992 or so.
Depends where you are. In some places, there are specialist shops that work only on hybrids, and there are some local shops that occasionally see a few hybrids. If you live out here in farm country, you will have to take it to the dealer. The GOOD news is that the dealers, even out here in the middle of nowhere, will actually know how to work on them (unless they are Ford).
That depends on whether you are willing to take that risk. Some people are early adopters. I work with someone who bought a Prius the first year it came out, and he is delighted with it. As for me, I'm only now starting to drive cars with fuel injection because the notion of trying to maintain the fuel injection system worried me.... except now the technology is at the point where nobody knows how to maintain carbs any more and ONLY the fuel injection technology is well-understood by your neighborhood shop. It depends on your personal level of comfort, and where you live.
well i'll have to think about that one. the extra cost of the hybrid will be made up by the improved fuel efficiency over the years though, which is attractive to me.
If you aren't planning on keeping the car for a long long time and it makes you feel better then get the Hybrid. Basic engine service should be able to be handled by most shops that could handle the non-hybrid version though I would expect that problems with the special systems will remain a dealer service item for a while. Get a warranty that will cover the more complex systems for the time that you plan to own the car.
If you are going to keep the car for a long time then look at the standard version. What scares me on the hybrids is the repair cost once they go out of warranty. They are still relatively low production vehicles. The corner shop probably won't be up to speed on the special systems and parts for these systems will be harder to come by and more expensive due to lower production.
I have heard many people complain that they don't get even close to the mileage that the stickers claim for the hybrids and the battery is still a great unknown to me. If you get five years down the road and need a $4k replacement battery the cost is going to take a heck of a bite out of any potential saving you had in fuel over the years. What about resale? A $8k used car that needs a $4k battery is going to be a hard sale!!
Personally I think these cars are a great idea and I am glad that there are people out there that can afford to buy them and are willing to take the risks involved but if I were looking for a car in this category I would have to play it safe and get the standard version. Some of the VW diesel cars get comparable mileage to the hybrids without all the added complexity and might be worth a look.
OT: with crude forecast at +/- $50 through 2007, I would wait for the technology to mature while doing further research ... e.g., so what will it cost to have work done on this particular vehicle? What!!! $300 per hour??? What? You had a vehicle in and someone shorted out the electrical ... and blew the batteries??? Just kidding ... but .... :-)
Hybrids cost more that comparably sized cars that get very good milage. It will take several years to offset the added cost by the net reduction in cost of fuel. Additionally, the battery pack will likely have to be replaced and the cost will be substantial. The very high mpg figures quoted by car makers are often not attainable in the real world. You can get a Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic or VW that gets in the high 30's or low forties and not have to pay the significant premium that is charged for hybrid cars.
First and foremost is the fact that if you do little city / stop and go driving, there will be little or no efficiency gain vs. a conventional economy car.
Second is that even with regular city driving, the cost premium of the hybrid has a pay back period that exceeds the expected service life of the car.
Tax incentives are the only thing that make a hybrid appear to save you money at the present time and those incentives keep varying and some have limited times or limited number of qualifying vehicles.
Consumer reports who I generally hate had a rundown of hybrids and comparisons to conventional economy cars and came to pretty much the same conclusions.
Do your homework, comparing the hybrid and a conventional economy car like a Civic on such things as:
Purchase cost Insurance cost Property tax cost Tax breaks or incentives Real world MPG reports for each vehicle (not EPA sticker) for the type and amount of driving you do
Crunch the numbers and see what the real savings if any will be. Leave the "making a statement" nonsense to the more money than brains crowd.
got it! except i need an suv due to all the equipment i carry (i am a softball player and train daily). but i agree, forget about the hybrid for now. glad i asked here.
Not really as exaggerated or far fetched as it sounds. Roughly akin to getting into an accident with an electric pole and having wires land on your car. Nobody is going to be able to help you until the power company cuts the power.
Test drive both and decide which you like better. There is no money to be saved by going to a Hybrid unless you are looking at a SMALL vehicle and are willing to change your driving habits.
Also, GM's hybrids don't work like others. They don't shut the gasoline motor off when not needed, etc.
Honestly though - the EPA mileage estimates of all cars tend to be higher what most people experience in the real world. It's unfair to single out hybrids for unrealistic published fuel economy.
At least in California, a hybrid's battery pack is considered part of the emissions system. In California, all emissions parts are required to be warranted for 10-years or 150,000 miles. The cost of rechargeable batteries are going down, and I'd expect that the price of replacement battery packs will be extremely reasonable if they need to be replaced after the warranty period. Honda has an
8-year factory warranty on their hybrid batteries, which may be higher in some states.
Really though - NiMH batteries can last an extremely long time provided they're not deeply discharged. I kind of worry about people who insist on needing a "battery only" mode. I know the typical NiMH AAs I use in my camera have a rated life of about
700-1000 recharge cycles before the capacity is reduced to less than 80% of original capacity. I've read information that they can literally last many (dozens to hundreds) times this if exposed to only shallow discharge periods - like being topped off by the generator or regenerative braking.
"Cobasys' NiMH batteries are capable of supplying powers of
200 W/kg to greater than 1000 W/kg to a load. They have demonstrated cycle life of greater than 1000 80% depth of discharge (DOD) charge discharge cycles. And in HEV applications, with shallow charge-discharge cycles, they have achieved 200,000 to 300,000 cycles."
It's perfectly fair when the real world hybrid numbers are much worse than the EPA numbers and the real world conventional numbers are usually better than the published EPA numbers.
Certainly all the vehicles I've had (all standards) have had better mileage than there published EPA ratings, up to the point I started buying larger trucks with no EPA ratings.
The battery issue is negated by the warranty as long as you turn the car over in the warranty period. If you are the type who keeps a car for a long time, until it is no longer economical to repair it, you may well find that no longer economic point coincides exactly with when the battery needs replacement out of warranty.
My main issue with hybrids at the moment is that in most cases the only savings the purchaser will actually realize is in the form of tax breaks which basically mean we are all subsidizing their fashion statement.
About the only users who will realize an actual savings from the hybrid system are those with heavy city / stop and go driving, which largely means commercial delivery use.
In recent years, I've found the opposite to be the case. I might be able to get close to EPA estimated highway fuel economy on long road trips, but I don't come anywhere close to rated city mileage on my daily five mile (one way) commute. It's been well publicized that most drivers aren't getting anywhere near EPA estimated fuel economy.
Again - the price of the battery packs will go down with time. I suspect that by the time the warranty period is up, the price of a replacement battery pack will be similar to that of a clutch replacement. I would also gather a lower cost when there are several aftermarket battery pack suppliers. By that time, the NiMH battery capacity and technology should be much better. Right now it's a specialty item with only one source for each car model.
I remember buying NiMH AA cells in 2000 with 1200 mAh capacity for about $16 for 4. Right now the state of the art is about 2700 mAh capacity for $10 (or less). Back then there were only a few brands commonly available, and now every battery brand has them, even if they're only "branded" from another manufacturer's design.
Even without that, current NiMH batteries have be shown to have an extremely long life if they're used with the shallow discharge patterns inherent in ICE-hybrid cars. If a hybrid charging system is constantly topping off the batteries (as they're designed to do) I think the batteries will easily be usable after 10 years of use. Of course there will be early failures, as you might find with any engine or transmission. However - they will be covered by the longer battery warranties.
Standard or automatic, and do you know how to drive, not just alternate between mashing the gas and the brake? A good part of the problem is the fact that most people are driving automatics these days and also have little or no driving skill.
As I noted, all my vehicles have been standards and on all that had EPA ratings I was readily able to achieve better MPG that the EPA ratings. Not vastly more, but a good 5 MPG better on average. Driving was a pretty even mix of highway and city.
Yes, but not to the point that it is an insignificant cost.
You suspect wrong. I expect the batter pack will be more comparable to an engine replacement (rebuilt engine), say a good $3,500 between the cost of the battery pack, the shipping on the part, the removal and install labor and the recycling / disposal fees.
Unless there are standards formed such as those for "regular" car batteries, it is very unlikely you will see more than a couple suppliers for each battery type, and those will be the same two suppliers the OEM uses or used.
The availability of a new pack at all will even be in doubt if as I expect most people will be turning over the cars at the end of the warranty period. This will leave those who would normally maintain a car for 20 yrs and those who normally buy used cars stuck with no source for the obsolete battery pack.
The technology is not improving, NiMH is pretty much mature. The laptop computer, cell phone and cordless tool worlds already pushed NiMH technology to it's peak, as they did with NiCD before it. They have now moved on to LiPO technologies and those are close to maturity as well.
There might well be a new "miracle" battery technology that comes along in another decade and solves all the faults in current battery technology, but that will still leave you with a junk car that you can't get an obsolete battery pack for since the new technology is very unlikely to be back ported to the decade old car.
Again, it's a mature technology, it isn't getting any better and cost savings are only a result of mass production and the fact that the NRE costs have already been recovered.
Which means the folks doing the "plug in" hybrid conversions are likely to kill their packs even faster and they've also voided their warrantees.
Certainly some packs that haven't been abused will last more than their warranty period. It's still a crap shoot how much longer and as noted, unlike a conventional economy car, a dead battery pack after warranty will almost certainly mean the end of the economical service life of the car.
Honestly though - the EPA mileage estimates of all cars tend to be higher what most people experience in the real world. It's unfair to single out hybrids for unrealistic published fuel economy.
JS> The scale of error is very different. We are talking about erring on the high side 15 to 20 mpg for the hybrids. For gasoline/diesel cars the variance might be +- 3 or 4 mpg.
At least in California, a hybrid's battery pack is considered part of the emissions system. In California, all emissions parts are required to be warranted for 10-years or 150,000 miles. The cost of rechargeable batteries are going down, and I'd expect that the price of replacement battery packs will be extremely reasonable if they need to be replaced after the warranty period. Honda has an
8-year factory warranty on their hybrid batteries, which may be higher in some states.
JS> Having an extended emissions warranty would be some help. The high initial price really isn't offset by the net cost savings though.
Really though - NiMH batteries can last an extremely long time provided they're not deeply discharged. I kind of worry about people who insist on needing a "battery only" mode. I know the typical NiMH AAs I use in my camera have a rated life of about
700-1000 recharge cycles before the capacity is reduced to less than 80% of original capacity. I've read information that they can literally last many (dozens to hundreds) times this if exposed to only shallow discharge periods - like being topped off by the generator or regenerative braking.
JS> I've read that 100,000 miles is about the level at which problems could begin to show up with the batteries and charging system.
But the real question is whether the consumer ends up saving money by buying one. With their real world mpg down in the 40's I don't think there is much invcentive. If they were able to return average mpg's in the high 60's as originally advertised then a better case could be made.
"Cobasys' NiMH batteries are capable of supplying powers of
200 W/kg to greater than 1000 W/kg to a load. They have demonstrated cycle life of greater than 1000 80% depth of discharge (DOD) charge discharge cycles. And in HEV applications, with shallow charge-discharge cycles, they have achieved 200,000 to 300,000 cycles."
Death can occur from as little as 42V, although I hear 50V is typically the point where it's considered dangerous. I know it's the current that's really fatal, but lower voltages typically don't penetrate through human tissue. I handled 12V batteries in HS physics, where our teacher said we had nothing to worry about.
At the very least, even a non-lethal 85V shock might cause someone to back off for fear that they might get electrocuted. I've heard that most HID controllers shut themselves down to prevent potential shocking of rescue workers in case of collision. If they don't....
I also found this:
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"Although these are not as dangerous as short arc xenon lamps, they are still hazardous. They need to be enclosed in case they explode, especially with a homebrew ballast. The ballast typicaly has ignitor pulses in the 20 kilovolt ballpark, and the open circuit voltage excluding the ignitor voltage has to be several hundred volts. These can spark through up to about 20 mm (about 3/4 inch) of air, and outright strike an arc through a few mm. of air, and can very easily electrocute you. The output of these ballasts will normally fry voltmeters, multimeters and oscilloscopes without suitable high voltage probes. Arcs and malfunctioning circuitry can start fires."
I remember reading some electronics industry publication which stated that carmakers were aching to employ higher voltage batteries (about
42V nominal) that might allow for the use of higher voltage motors. It wasn't mentioned in the article, but I would worry about the possibility of electrocution or serious injury. Power electronics really aren't my thing (digital logic is), but 85V is hardly considered a "safe" voltage.
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