GM Volt versus Prius

while I do agree the price is too high, the principal is sound, the drivetrain would be a lot simpler than the hybrid motor/engine in the prius, no gears or diff needed, the 1litre engine would only kick in when needed, as a daily driver to work and home the engine would hardly kick in if at all, and when you do want to take it for a weekend run the engine will give you a far better range than a pure electric car like the Tesla would.

besides, isn't the 3rd gen of the prius going to have plugin charging??

You mean Gen 4? Im not sure on the plugin concept..one more thign toahve to remember to do/arrange as I see it each nite..

But that aspect is easily handled. See this month's issue of Smart Computing and the article about magnetic induction battery charging. Just drive into the garage and have an induction system "sense" the car and then charge the battery -- no plugs required. Could be done in parking lots and garages too, of course.

TKM

I see a mess of red tape as to how those recharges are paid for when out of town..hybrids do away with dealing with it.

plus I wonder how much charge current a system like could deliver, it works fine for my battery driven toothbrush,

actually take that back, the General Motors EV1 used a inductive paddle to charge it, you still had to plug it in, for an inductive system to work properly it would have to have some method of getting the transmitting and receiving coils close together, just getting someone to park the car in the right place....... ;)

better to have some sort of automatic eject system for the plug, so if someone does start the car and forgets to disconnect the plug is popped out.

If you look carefully at the Prius design, you'll come to realize that a diesel engine would bring nothing to the table.

Which is fine as far as that goes, but if you look carefully at the Prius design, you'll come to realize that a diesel engine would bring nothing to the table with respect to being the ICE part of Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive.

Only easy on a conceptual level. This type of system, although a cool idea, would be hugely inefficient. That is not to say that it couldn't be made to work somehow, but it is definitely not a slam-dunk, especially for a large scale implementation. It works OK when the coils are very close together and if a relatively low amount of power is needed (like an electric toothbrush, which spends 23 hours and 55 minutes a day sitting in the charger).

This is the kind of thing Tesla wanted to do (wireless power transmission)--and 100 years later, it still hasn't happened. There are good reasons for that, and they're not political. Even so, Tesla's work led to the invention of radio, so it's all good.

- Doug