Is Hyundai working on a Hybrid?

Is Hyundai working on hybrid &/or fuel cell car ?

I hope so, because I have two Hyundais (currently Elantra & Accent), and think very well of them, though:

One stumbling problem seems to me to be that Toyota owns most of the hybrid car patents/technology.

The reason-to-be of a Toyota's existence is for maximum $ profit--the "public interest" is considered secondary and a public relations/advertising/propaganda thing, of course.

Bottom-line: Will a Toyota allow a Hyundai (the current lower cost/selling price & best value/quality producer) or a China (probably lowest cost/lowest selling price producer of the future) to utilize/adapt the hybrid technologies at a low enough price?

To me, it's the obvious question, and the pessimistic/ negative answer is also an obvious, though:

If I were a world political leader, then I would do/would have done everything i could to encourage Hyundai and other manufacturers to maximally produce cars that don't need as much--or any--gasolene/petroleum.

However: It seemingly ain't gonna happen, and here in my humble speculation/hypothesis/reasoning/paranoia is why it hasn't and it isn't:

Robert Cohen Mar 6, 9:06 am show options

Newsgroups: sci.environment From: "Robert Cohen" - Find messages by this author

Date: 6 Mar 2005 06:06:01 -0800 Local: Sun,Mar 6 2005 9:06 am Subject: Re: Imagine: 500 Miles Per Gallon Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show original | Remove | Report Abuse

re: oil/dollar inter-dependence, what? how? why?

I hold-on to a paranoiac perception that the lessening of dependence upon oil coulda been done since the oil boycott--the poltical-economic weapon applied--after the Yom Kippur war, fall 1973

"Yom Kippur" may be interpreted as a "day of (annual) judgment"

Of course lessening on petroleum-dependence shoulda been substantially done by the West

It wasn't done nearly enough in the U.S.

Why wasn't it done?

Lack of a suitable practical political-economic consensus alternative technology (?)

Mounting inter-dependence of the oil/dollar model (?)

Difficulty in the short term ("we all die in near term," Keynes) for conversion to a massive alternative (?)

Imho, all 3 of the above plus whatever you wanna add

Well, all sorts of posturings have been the USA's energy policy since

1973, oil prices collapse & rise & collapse & rise

I infer/suspect/fear that the U.S. & World debt & deficits are structured as "petro-based instruments" (bonds, T-bills, bank loans)

Bottomline: The World financial system(s) would perhaps collapse if a true massive alternative to petroleum were actually massovely implemented

For instance: Why aren't hybrids (a la Toyota Prius & the Honda's) massively imitated/adopted/adapted/imple=ADmented also by GM, Ford, Mercedes-Chrysler?

Oh, they industry & its automotive workers union continue to make postulations, blah, blah, blah, propaganda, rope-a-dope cars, feints, fakes and chevaux merde ad nauseam--sensational, and fantastic 60 MINUTES type of public relations as being future vehicle reality with the Leslie Stahls as the unwitting shills

Meanwhile: The 6000 pound SUV gas guzzlers are (still?) subsidized by

our reigning U.S. govt through tax incentivization

I call such CATCH 22 inter-dependency, and that's why a 500 m.p.g. thing won't be massively brought about anytime soon if ever

Such is the reality I hold, and I hope I'm wrong

=20

=A92005 Google

Here's an example of the on-going rational absurdity of the oil-dollar paradigm, while we're trying to figure if Hyundai could sell a hybrid for, say, less than $20,000 or less than $25,000 or whatever (?)

did i leave-off this link to OPEC's benign magnanmity?

An article posted here on recalls, states that hybrids will arrive by end of decade; 2010? Much too long in my book........

Last year my dealership's manager told me Tucson hybrids were coming but for fleet service only. So I told him to let me know when he had a "used car" to play with,

My instructor for the '06 Sonata class said Hyundai was currently working on a hybrid they hoped to release in the next couple years. We'll see whether that actually happens.

Wow, the FGV-1 concept from '95 looks just like the AMC Pacer....LOL.

re: plans for hybrid, hydrogen & so forth

THANKS fir re-posting the publicity release and the magazine article about hydogen fuel cell Hyundai.

I skimmed 'em with unengineer mind, and while doing so, I thought "hype," and yet ...

I would luv for the South Koreans--whom are seemingly oil-starved--to do such innovating.

If that planned hybrid vehicle can be sold in the u.s. for ...say, ...uh...$15,000--$17,000, then ...nirvana.

They'd seemingly takeover the marketplace, and should, because Ford, GM, Mercedes/Chrysler are looking like the dinosaurs they've tragically self-constructed selves to be.

If I see another car ad on tv (that's not our Hyundai, Prius, or Honda hybrid), then I'll click it away to oblivion.

The Big 3 are big fools, and I've been thinking so since the 1970s.

Re: Hybrid Vehicles

This may be an urban legend or something similar, but there's enough of a "ring-of-truth" to it to make me believe there is some credibility to the story.

In the early 1990's, when oil prices spiked as a result of the first Iraq war, when Saddam's retreating troops torched the oil fields in Kuwait and southern Iraq, there was a lot of talk about US dependence on imported oil and development of alternative fuel vehicles.

Here in Phoenix, AZ we have a radio talk show host named Preston Westmoreland that, at that time, was on radio station KTAR (620 AM). He had a guest on his show talking about the feasibility of hydrogen powered cars. This guest was a professor of engineering at ASU who had worked as a laboratory assistant to a Professor of Automotive Engineering following WWII. During the war, the professor had been very distressed about the petroleum rationing that had been necessary and decided to find a way to prevent this from ever happening again.

As a result, this professor invented a way to convert water into hydrogen and powered a regular car with it. The car had been driven around Phoenix and attracted a lot of media attention at the time. It had no emissions and could be driven about 300 miles on a tank of water. The professor was "bought-off" by a consortium of auto and petroleum companies because they didn't want people filling their cars from their garden hose and having engines that would be so reliable that they wouldn't have to be brought to dealers for service. The "payoff" was that, in exchange for a "very large" sum of money, the professor would transfer all patent rights to the "buyers", would stop further research on the project and would not talk about his invention with anyone from that point forward. All documents relating to his project were destroyed, and "mysteriously" the files from the local media companies disappeared. The inventing professor moved away to an island home paid for with his silence money and had not been heard from in several years.

This guest professor said there were a few remaining individuals at ASU, like himself, that knew this professor and knew about his "invention" but age had caught-up with most of them and several had passed away. (Now, 14 years later, probably more have gone to that great garage in the sky.)

One of the problems with trying to prove such theories is even the companies involved probably have no recollection of the personnel involved, kept few, if any, records on such a transaction, know what happened to the documents and parts that were "paid for" with an accounting transaction that was probably not traceable to it's real purpose, since even at that time, the anti-trust laws existed and were enforced. And, now with 50 years having passed, it's quite probable that whatever they did have, has been destroyed or is stored in some place where no one even knows where or what it is.

I'm not much into conspiracy theories, but if you think the automotive and petroleum companies, at that time, had any interest in producing cars that could be filled up from a garden hose and engines that required almost no maintenance, I'd say you must be smoking something. Let's face it, at that time, when gasoline cost around 30 cents a gallon, and even less when the gas-wars were going on, and everybody had forgotten the rationing that had been a part of life during the war, there was little incentive to pursue environmentally friendly automobiles, let alone ones that could be filled for free.

Lee

Circa 1960, my geometry teacher in high school mentioned that "water pill car" in a semi-dismissive way, and I'm in the Southeast.

When General Motors bought-up the street car track in Los Angeles post WW II, there probably were a few observers who were accordinly dismayed.

Perhaps a John Houston subsequently thought about a TALES OF L.A. movie in which a Jack Nicholson gets his nose cut for nosing about the ole "car barn," as they called the former trolley parking-maintenance place in my own town.

An urban myth or story or joke or whatever usually has an element or fragment of some factual truth.

A "Steve Shagan (?)" did write a movie with a somewhat similar theme, though I didn't see it, approximately 20-30 years ago.

My own idea/hypothesis/paranoia/perception is that we're absurdly locked-in, the u.s. dollar is interdependent with oil money.

The only conspiracy going on is the hype and BS about hybrids. Spend

20,000 to save 2,000? Sounds good to a lot of fools parting with their money! By the way, hybrids need new batterys, every two years, $2000 every time! Have fun! Don't even ask about the service costs, just bring your money! There will be no "used" market for hybrids, what fool will buy a car that needs $2000 every two years, and thats just for batteries!

do you have proof of the battery replacement times and cost ? from what ive read, honda etc guarantees their battery packs for 8 yrs or

Hmm, read about the battery thing on a web blog, I shall have to double check now :). thnx for asking, didn't know about Honda guarantee. Does the guaruntee tranfer to the new owner, though? I hear that the car companies are insisting that used buyers also purchase an extended warranty, which is another way of saying that, guess what!, you pay for batterries! :)

Here's what I found on a hybrid site:

"How often do hybrid batteries need replacing? Is replacement expensive and disposal an environmental problem?

The hybrid battery packs are designed to last for the lifetime of the vehicle, somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, probably a whole lot longer. The warranty covers the batteries for between eight and ten years, depending on the car maker. "

I give absoloutly no creedance to these figures, I have seen marketing BS for too long to fall for it, ESP. in the battery business, not much better than used car salesmen...hey :) Notice no mention if the warranty is transferable.

They get rid of them because they have some WORTH...

They won't if the thing is worth scrap prices (or less - recycle fees)

The economy simply doesn't work out. If the car is 100% surefire trash in 150k miles, its used value will drop like a rock compared to reliable conventional vehicles...

Personally I wouldn't buy a mostly-dead rolling super-fund site, would you?

JS

Jody wrote:

Its not just about saving money, Dingbat! You want your kids or grandkids to be paying $10.00 or $20.00 per gal. for gas. It could happen in our lifetimes. We need to start putting our money into technology instead of some mid-eastern countries economy.

SuperGlide

Anything this absurd "with a ring of truth," is exactly that; An urban legend.

SuperGlide