Here is the plug-in hybrid I test drove a few weeks ago, the Extreme Hybrid by AFS Trinity:
I will be running a long article Wednesday on the climate implications of plug-ins in general and this car in particular. But you can read all about the car at this exclusive New York Times piece published today and the AFS Trinity website, which has a YouTube video of me driving the car and discussing why it matters:
[Note -- this video was having some problems a while ago. If it doesn't work, you can find all the Extreme Hybrid videos, including the CBS and CNN stories, here]
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This is whats needed – ZENN (Zero Emission No Noise) and cheap(affordable) to boot too at around $12,000!
http://www.zenncars.com/
test ride video
http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=8M88k6Ipp3c&eurl=http:/ / www.zenncars.com/
There are however people who don’t want the competition around…
Canadian government reticence
http://www.cbc.ca/ national/ blog/ video/ environmentscience/ a_victory_for_zenn_1.html
I want one now!
paul magnus
Joe,
You say Lithium batteries are sensitive to high current load and obviously the super-caps address this issue. I have another question: What about the limited calendar life time experienced by, for example laptop batteries. After 2 years the laptop battery is seriously degraded even without heavy use. Do the batteries for the new car have this issue?
That’s awesome. 150 mpg is the highest I’ve seen. good job.
You are becoming quite the car guy. Envy.
I’ve read most all of the stuff about this plug-in and I still haven’t figured out what is straight from the car manufacturer and what they supply. No need really, just engineering curiosity.
So they can put this on any SUV? That could be quite a market share. Putting it in SUV’s must mean they need the space, will this work in other countries cars? It’ll be interesting how this plays out.
They cycle less are last longer. Not sure of warranteed lifetime.
This is hopeful news.
I find the combination of the current campaign dialogue in Michigan regarding lost jobs and whether they can ever return together with the question of whether any established auto company will license this technology very timely.
I sure hope this finds a home with either Saturn or any other platform that can be used especially by small businesses currently being dragged down by uncontrollable costs for deliveries, etc.
I think that there should be a kg CO2 / Km measure associated with cars that claim to be climate friendly, which should include the CO2 released during manufacturing.
Cars really aren’t the answer to global warming. I’ll stick with my bicycle.
Ben, keep your bike and anyone else that can. For me at 60 years old and a 65 mile commute to work, please convert my Escape Hybrid (35 mpg) to Extreme plugin.
This looks like a fine advance, even done as a retrofit.
Ben: bicycles are nice, we like ours, too, and manufacturing effects are important.
BUT: bicycles by themselves aren’t going to get us to a long-term sustainable system, without a total collapse back out of an industrial society, which means no Internet, for one thing.
Peak oil + gas ==> no more cheap fossil-based transport fuel, UNLESS we go into tar sands, shale oil, and coal-based synfuels, and we know what happens if we do that.
Where do you live? Do you grow all your own food? If not, where does it come from? Did any oil+gas get used in growing that food? In shipping it?
Does everyone around you grow their own food & get around on bicycles? This is almost possible in a small town in the middle of farm country, although in practice it means you stay in that town most of the time. I’d guess that most of the people who live that way don’t have Internet… i.e., I’ve been in Chinese villages with bicycles and no cars, but most Americans wouldn’t like it much.
Put it this way: urban areas can be good for bicycles, because it puts jobs and services within that range … BUT the very concentration of urban life puts more people further away from where their food is grown… In the US, consider Manhattan, for example, as an extreme example.
Personally, I think it’s pretty clear that with:
- more rational usage patterns
- much more efficient cars [lighter, hybrid]
- 2nd/3rd/4th generation biofuels
- a lot of investment in electrified railroads
- electrification of everything we can
We can still have cars for when they make sense, and not have to totally raze so many US cities and suburbs.
But, I still worry about what to do about ships, larger farm machinery, off-road machinery, and things like Class 8 trucks, as I haven’t seen much in the way of existence proof that these can go almost entirely electric the way I think cars can.
Frank, you should live within walking distance of work. Why do you want to spend almost 6% of your life driving to and from work? Are you nuts?
Joe,
This is some fascinating technology. I’m assisting an electrical engineer at the moment with his conversion of a prius to a plug-in. These things are never as easy as you think they will be. Finished your book last week and got a lot out of it, thought you were right on in your positions and reporting.
Also, I was a bit skeptical of your talk of “breakthroughs” last week, but the capacitance bridge is a really good step. Your cred is intact.
Ben: it’s nice to be within walking distance of work, in my case, from the kitchen to the den, but it really just doesn’t fit everybody, i.e., you are way overgeneralizing from you particular circumstance and calimign everybody should do it. Perosnally, I’d go nuts if I had a 60-minute commute, but there have been periods in my life when I had a choice between a 45-minute commute to a summer job doing math & programming, and a 10-minute commute to wash dishes in a Holiday Inn.
These sorts of comments don’t really seem very useful to me. Let me try some that might:
a) For any town, are there good bike lanes? Why not? Does every road reworking have consideration for bikes? Can traffic lights be triggered by cyclists?
b) For any town, is there avoidance of dumb traffic-restriction features that make it difficult to ride bikes? [A town near us did dumb things, with insufficient review, and ending up ripping the features out.]
c) Is there a benefit for companies to encourage biking to work?
[Note: companies with free parking are subsidizing cars.
Read Don Shoup’s “The High Cost of Free Parking.”
d) Do bikes mesh with public transport? Do trains allow bikes? Are there safe places to keep bikes at train stgations? How about busses?
e) Do schools encourage biking to school? How?
etc, etc … i.e., there are lots of pro-active useful efforts, but “I b ike to work, and if you don’t, you’re foolish” is really not very useful.
I am writing a paper on PHEVs and Drive-by-wire systems and how they impact the motorsports industry. Though I have information on both the systems individually, I cannot find data on both of them combined, so I was wondering if someone here can help me out on that…
Canadian Business magazine has an interesting (and very recent) piece on the ZENN car.
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/ technology/ companies/ article.jsp?content=20090330_10002_10002
And here’s an enticing quote: “Clifford really has his eye on 800 million cars already on the road. He wants to make them green with a ZENN conversion kit that replaces the combustion engine with both a ZENN electric drivetrain properly married to an EEStor storage unit.”