Want to be green and still drive a 64?

Chrysler built some in the 60's. They relases some for testing in "the real world." and later (rumor has it) dumped the leftovers in the ocean because it was cheaper than paying taxes on them or something. The show "My Classic Car" on Speedvision had one on it.

Jay

Lead-acid is within 20% of the weight/energy performance of the best alternate technology which is up to fifteen times the price. NiCds are a little better and can be put together surplus from aircraft batteries (they junk an entire battery when some replaceable cells go bad) and may give a slight improvement, if you are a good scrounger.

If the economics of electric cars really made sense, backyard builders would spring up out of nowhere en masse if the majors refused to build them. For most people gas would have to be $8/gallon for electric to be cost effective. For a very few people now, they are-which is why people build one occasionally.

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The other aspect is that this wonderful 'green' solution isn't any better in environmental terms than a well-tuned car. Manufacture of the lead-acid batteries contributes more than its fair share to our burden of toxic waste and except for special cases the electricty to recharge the batteries is produced by the combustion of coal, oil or gas (other forms of power generation make only a tiny pimple on the curve).

Emissions-wise propane is at least two orders of magnitude greener than anything using a battery. But trashing an old bug to run it on batteries is fairly simple whereas converting an air-cooled engine to gaseous fuel is not.

-Bob Hoover

Pretty much right-on. A couple of local geniuses (local being Winona, Minnestota) were recognized recently for their about-face in this hybrid technology. They use a gasoline engine to turn a generator which charges the batteries which in turn run the car (and like hybrids, braking using the generator to charge as well.)

Looking at the caloric potential, it makes a lot of sense and in a real way it is what we are doing when we charge our batteries at the electrical outlet - unless you get your power from a nuclear source. But I don't think they are going to let us have on-board nukes. :)

A nuclear Bug. Now there's an idea who's time has passed. :)

Maybe not:

I'm hip to that thing. I'd be worried that a shot-down drone would end up in the enemies nuclear arsenal. Weapons of mass destruction, all that. BTW do you know how deadly the depleted uranium ammo the US used is? An associate of mine is dying of radioactive poisoning from that crap. Baaaad.

But very interesting technology.

My '70 Bug is pretty green.

I saw a propane burning Beetle in England that had a flat four Alfasud engine and a pretty little radiator built just the size of the air cooling fan housing of the original VW. The builder said that many aircooled VWs were in the UK on propane, but they used a vapor feed from the fuel tank and an electric heater to keep the fuel vaporizing properly. He said that the hot setup was to get the 9:1 compression alcohol burning Gol engine from Brazil, which he said looks like a baby IO-360 Lycoming with canted valves.