“..After five years of research, students at the University of Middle Tennessee have installed a full plug-in hybrid kit in a stock 1994 Honda Accord.
The setup gives between 50 and 100 percent better gas mileage – with two electric motors delivering power directly to the rear wheels -
- leaving the engine-powered front wheels to work with little effort.
The price of all the parts comes to about $3,000 – and can be applied to almost any car…”
(cont..)
(ed: now that is very cool..)
go to source/story>>>
Turn Your Car Into a Plug-In Hybrid for $3,000 | Autopia | Wired.com.
The efficiency is lower than the unmodified car in most respects.
A misleading item.
The increased mileage with the petrol motor depends on the battery providing power so less petrol is used for a set distance. If you take into account the electricity used then the car is less efficient then the unmodified car in most circumstance and costs more to run.
At higher speeds the petrol motor provides all the energy but has to pull along a much heavier car. If the rear motors are still engaged then losses will even be higher with increased fiction and rotating mass.
The only part of the car that has some limited merit would be the potential of motor braking having the potential to generate electricity and charge the battery.
All hybrids have a very large carbon footprint. eg The Prius has a foot print similar to a Hummer over its life cycle.
There is not substitute for a planned society with drastically reduced need for mechanised travel and a smaller world population, achieved hopefully through intelligent planning rather than war, greed, exhausted resources and worse.
The so called better efficiency in personal transport may be a comforting sop to keep the myth alive that we can continue to live the wasteful way we do.
I missed an important point.
If we as a race wish to become more efficient whilst in harmony with a future prospect, plant based food must be our main sustenance. Manual means of cropping will eventually replace mechanisation and communities will not be city size.
“.. Manual means of cropping will eventually replace mechanisation and communities will not be city size…”
..what leads you to see that outcome..?
phil..
Energy and resource needs are lower, it is a more sustainable model with lower environmental damage, requires less land area or fertile soil, less transportation wastage and costs to support. Infrastructure needed is more sustainable and social structures are more cohesive when common aims are shared across the community linked with a shared purpose and greater homogeneity of wealth.
The growth away from such traditional models has depended on abundance of energy and stripping of resources which has funded growth of community size but with longer term loss of social capital. Environment capital and resource capital. It is not a sustainable model at many levels.
Our world population growth will crash and why NZ never talks about population peak is linked to big money aims to grow forever. Growth is the problem to be dealt to.
Meanwhile we stuff up our land and social structures for the sake of feeding the share markets which hold us to ransom through its political puppets. The interests of a few and a system that feeds that few with promise of trickle down is a falsehood and mindset that has always brought about boom and bust crashes and a legacy of a large poor class and slavery.
As we see the natural resources diminish and damage to the biosphere accelerate with loss of biocapacity, arable land decrease through use of fertilisers. irrigation and intensive farming, water shortage created with increased consumption and pollution, forests undervalued and stripped for land use, climate change stuffing up our existing patterns of producing food; things will not continue to follow the pattern of large scale agriculture which is very energy and resource intensive. The longer term effect of genetically modified plants look to be uncontrolled with rogue pollination.
The true cost of providing food this way is not reflected in short term operation.
We have no measure of the damage done by release of dioxin, plutonium, PCBs and other persistent pollutants and poisons which will be significant and could have catastophic effects. [ Research Fukushima ] The extent of degradation of the biospheres’s ability to regenerate is also and unknown. We currently depend on regeneration for most models.
The world is finite and minerals that have accumulated over many 100s of millions of years in concentrations which are mine-able, will become more costly to find and exploit in real terms as all the easy stuff is used. Substitute sources of energy still will require mineral resources to develop and maintain/replace. When the environmental costs are considered then we get a very different picture to what business as usual plans for us.
Economist at best are confined to narrow short term considerations.
They don’t factor in natural resources, biosphere damage, climate change, social conditions or planning for dozens of generations ahead; all of which are much more important than money and trading for the moment.
Models that won’t work with massive carbon footprint per capita per annum .
Qatar 54 tonnes with 10 others greater than 20 tonnes
Australia 19 Tonnes per capita. US 18 tonnes Russia 12 Tonnes Japan 10 tonnes UK 9 tonnes NZ 8 tonnes [ but 19 tonnes of GHG due to our obsession with dairy ] etc.
Models that have a better chance if left to get on with it.
Mali, Dem Rep of Congo, Chad, Burundi. Afgansitan. All less than 0.1 tonnes with most of the population having a small fraction of that.
Close to 70 countries have less than 1 Tonne per capita.
The higher rates of emissions and contribution to biosphere damage are linked with consumption and supply methods as well as energy intensive lifestyles. Industrialisation is a key contributor as is transportation and mechanisation.
Ecological Footprint is a measure of what land and sea resources are needed per capita per annum.
United Arab Emirates 16 ha, USA 12 ha, Kuwait and Denmark 10ha, NZ 9.5 ha; so we are number five in the stakes of worst demands of the planet per head, with 30 countries using above half our footprint while another 30 countries use less than 1 ha per capita. They are countries that have largely a simple agrarian lifestyle. You can guess who is causing the problems in causing a peaking of demand and global imbalance which will destroy our brief boom.
Traditional agrarian economies are usually not a problem until new technologies that consume energy are introduced. “Four legged tractors” are a better option for stable long term sustainability.
We have already overshot our ecological / biocapacity footprint needing 1.5 Earths [ but not allowing for water ] to maintain the human population at present levels of fertile land and natural resources consumption, not allowing for other species many or which we depend. We are on a crash course.
Land use requirements to support sustenance per capita depend much on land care practices and diet.
A plant based diet has a fraction of the ecological footprint of an omnivore diet. NZ’s preoccupation of destroying land with dairy is abysmal. Sure you may not think it matters short term but gearing of an economy becomes crucial to future possibilities. Meanwhile the Bankers own over half of our rural land in this off shore investors cash crop. Family farms are an endangered enterprise. Organic is important.
While inevitable downsizing is a simple argument, it points towards a solution we probably will end up with to survive.
The more we strip out fossil energy, natural resources and destroy the biosphere, then the future environment will support a diminishing human population. We have past our peak.
Intelligent planning has not evolved so we must adapt to new levels of knowledge albeit difficult to curb the wants that have become a product of a short 200 years of boom..
To survive to the not too distant future, the we either shrink and share or annihilate competition. Long term a better strategy for the entire biosphere is urgently pressing. Human wants to one side.
Of course Cornucapians do not subscribe to this.
Blind faith is a conservative mindset and rejects information that presents challenge or change.
Collective Sociopathy cares not about the future.