What is everyones thoughts on hybrid vehicles? Opinions, thoughts, concerns, pros, cons, etc

I personally would like to see more of them but in less ugly vehicles. A bit better 0-60 time might help me sway my opinion of them as well. As far as all out race goes...I dont do that anyway so it doesnt bother me. I travel at about 70 mph daily... But as insta will chime in you may be able to fix yourself up a lil speedy bastard anyway.

Now, I posted this to get a good discussion going. Insta made the comment he likes this type of discussion so here it is.

well besides the fact that for them to save you any money at all it would take years and years, i think they are intersting.

depending on your commute to work you mean...driving a mile a day buying one of these cars would be retarded.

i would love to own a toyota prius. the wife and i rented one one weekend and it was great. good gas mileage in california is hard to come by, and the car had so many cool options on it that didn't change the price of the car a whole lot. if i could afford one i would buy it and drive it everyday. you can't beat 60 mpg in the city, unless you own a bike.

^--- thats what i mean, for the extra cost to buy the things for you to start actually saving money you would have to own it from 5 to 10 years. we did a study on this in school.

i want a electic hybrid motorcycle

I would love to see more mainstream adoption of hybrid vehicles, but even moreso than that I'd like to see biodiesel. The ultimate geekgasm for me would be a hybrid 1.6L turbodiesel hatchback ... but alas, that will never come, at least to the US

Plus, CJW, you're right. A few mods here and there, better motor controller, bigger electric motor (or just a rewind and better magnets), and you could have yourself a speedy little bastard. Check out the National Electric Drag Racing Association, and look at some of the videos. There's a 1972 Datsun that runs a 12.1 (on two wheels for a few feet). I've seen videos of the AWD Corolla smoking all 4 from a standstill ... in 3rd gear.

But, yes. I wants me my biodiesel. Maybe when I've got my millions of dollars, I'll but a little whine into the ZX2 ;)

Me wants a electric hybrid zx2 that can smoke all 4!

I mean all 4!

I personally am a big fan of hybrids (the escape hybrids give me my paycheck). however for me they don't make sense as I do pretty much all highway driving.

Really, hybrid turbodiesel is where it's at. Not hybrid gasoline. Not hydrogen. Not ethanol. Combined with low-sulphur petroleum diesel, or a petrol/biodiesel blend, we can have small Escort-sized cars scooting around on well over 100mpg with as much pickup as they had stock. If not more.

Consider that the Toyota Prius has over 290ft/lbs of torque (yet barely over 60hp) from the electric motor alone ( source ), and diesel makes all its power down low, it's easy to see why we could very easily make tall-geared vehicles that still scoot around and go when they really have to. I don't know what's stopping their introduction over here in the states, but frankly I'm getting fed up with the lack of small commuter diesels ...

sounds to me like the first person to introduce one of these designs would be a billionaire..

Sign me up

No seriously Id really love to hold shares on the company who starts that thing....hehehe

Well, maybe, maybe not. It does seem to add up though. Diesel is already more energy efficent than gasoline (more energy per liter-- source), in the order of up to 18% more efficent. That means, you'd get 18% better MPG if your car ran on diesel, and nothing else was different.

It's also easier to refine. Much easier. Gasoline is more difficult to distill, no matter the octane. The problem we're facing in the US is that we have pretty crappy diesel. It's got a high sulfur content, which is akin to "leaded fuels" of yesteryear. The sulfur provides a necessary lubricant, and ULSD (Ultra-Low Sulfur Diesel) requires additives to do the same. However, we don't get to have the sexy European autos until we have ULSD. You know what else has the lubricity of US diesel, or ULSD+additives? veggie oil

Nearly any diesel will run straight from vegetable oil, if heated before being drawn from the fuel tank. Pass methanol through it, and the glycerin in the oil will precipitate out, leaving a much thinner biodiesel. It is a drop-for-drop replacement (actually, it's 5% more energy dense than normal diesel ... another 5% more MPG for "free"). Turbocharging diesel engines makes a lot of sense as well, because they are already high-compression by nature, and diesel can't knock because of how it's injected.

We always hear "blah blah foreign oil dependencies". There is enough dead space in this country that we can grow vats of algae which are specifically bred to produce massive quantities of vegetable oil. Think of all the space that we're already budgeting for growing surplus corn, to turn into ethanol, which is a flawed concept. Ethanol requries more energy in, to produce a gallon of fuel, than that same gallon will provide to any vehicle. In addition, billions are spent in government subsidies to encourage farmers to grow more corn, which reduces the amount of space available for livestock. As such, consumers see a hard hit in the wallet at the supermarket on meaty items. Like meat.

We can produce all the oil we need from within the 50 states we own, and for hundreds of years to come. There is nothing wrong with using dino fuels, provided we use them at a reasonable rate. Let technology mature before dumping billions into misguided research on futuristic technologies. Stop giving tax breaks to people buying SUV's! (source). What hurts us as a nation is trying to tear down our entire fuel infrastructure and put something new in its place -- like hydrogen. California and Oregon have already begun the process, and the whole architecture has to be ripped up and rebuilt. We already know how to ship diesel, we're just abandoning this time-tested technology.


*tips a 40 of heating oil into the curb* And here's for some very expensive lives in the future ...

Volkwagen is kickin some tail in Europe with their turbo diesels. There is a guy here in Lexington the is running an older VW Rabbit Diesel with used vegetable oil. He uses very little diesel, and he gets his used cooking oil from places like McDonalds. In the winter he has to run a heater to the tank to keep the oil thin to run right. He gets like 80 mpg, It is incredible. One thing I have noticed at work, we have had a lot of cars coming in for fuel pumps. My boss had been telling me it is because of the ethanol in some of the pump gas.

bastard american policies and not having the good cars that get 80mpg....