13 thoughts on “What’s Better Than Hybrids?”

  1. Sadly the EPA has neutered diesel engines in North America with their focus on smog producing exhaust compounds like nitrous oxides. In Europe they focus on the soot instead, and the same diesel engine there produces considerably more horsepower.

    1. Rented a Mercedes B class over there earlier this year. Averaged about 60 mpg. Very nice. Would consider finance/lease if I had the need and imprimatur.

  2. I have owned two VW diesels. The 1980 VW Dasher wagon was great, 45-50 mpg and never a problem. But the 1984 VW Rabbit I traded it for was a dud, good mileage when it ran, but lots of engine problems. I junked it after the last time it left me stranded.

    I have no knowledge of the current crop as I am very happy with my 2005 Lexus RX330 that gets 27-30 mpg on the highway and carries the same number of passengers as my daughter’s H2 Hummer.

    In the finance class I teach students about evaluating life-cycles costs by comparing the Toyota Yaris with the Prius. The Prius only make sense if gasoline goes over $5.50 dollars a gallon and stays there. I think next time around I will add a diesel to the mix.

    1. All-too-rare insight. I’ve often wondered what would happen to the automobile industry if everyone did full lifecycle cost calculations and then acted on them, since very few people would buy new cars and those who did would keep them for 15 years.

    2. While the Prius and Yaris are both fairly small cars, they don’t make the best examples for comparison because they’re quite different. I own a Prius (I expected Obama’s dumb energy policies to drive up gas prices and they did), I test drove a Yaris among many others before making the purchase. Now, all I need is a “Drill Baby Drill” bumper sticker for my car so I can enjoy the amusing sight of watching liberals’ heads explode.

      A better comparison is to look at vehicles that have both a hybrid and standard version such as the Toyota Camry, Ford Escape and Honda Civic. In most cases, the higher cost of the hybrid will take many, many years of ownership to recoup the price differential. However, if the only thing you’re looking at in your TCO calculations are initial purchase costs and gas mileage, your analysis is flawed. You also need to factor in insurance costs, specialized items like high mileage tires that are used on some hybrids and residual value. While the hybrid versions typically cost several thousand dollars more to purchase, it’s likely their residual value may be higher than that of the standard model. This isn’t a guaranteed assumption because of the extra complexity of hybrids and the unknown nature of maintenance costs over the long haul.

  3. Subaru makes a Legacy diesel that’s sold everywhere except for the U.S. It’ll go over 700 miles on a single tank. That’s pretty good for an all-wheel drive car. Of course if everybody moved over to 60 mpg cars the gov’t would just jack up the fuel taxes to Euro-weenie levels in order to keep revenues at status quo.

  4. So almost $400 to fill two fifty gallon tanks for one day of travel would be considered a step backward? 😉

  5. There are several gas stations around town that are out of diesel, claiming a shortage at the refinery. This is outside Edmonton, Alberta, and we pump the stuff out of the ground only a few miles from here.

  6. Except that your city mileage with diesels will never become stellar, unless they start doing KERS, start-stop or other hybrid-y stuff. Or gasp, even just use diesels as range extenders in electric vehicle.

    Science fiction, i know, because rail transportation has been doing this forever ..

    1. Or gasp, even just use diesels as range extenders in electric vehicle.

      Then you’re back to a $40K investment like the Volt and you never break even.

      1. Volt is built ass backwards.

        There is no fundamental reason why fully electric powertrain, designed from ground up to be electric, has to be more expensive than ICE. In fact, due to its simplicity, it can probably become a whole lot cheaper.

        Same goes for batteries, and automotive size lithium-iron batteries with no expensive materials in them are just on the brink of entering relevant production volumes.

        As for the range extenders, once you relax the engineering constraints of torque vs rpm, you can finally start simplifying and optimizing for maximum efficiency and lowest cost, i.e. burn hydrocarbons in entirely new ways to get the maximum out of the BTUs instead of the current lousy 20-30% efficiencies. Stirling cycle engines, linear combustion engines, perhaps microturbines and so on.

  7. I’d rather have a heavy flywheel rather than a heavy battery packet. The flywheel won’t burn you car to the ground after a small fender bender. And it will offset the fuel losses from start/stop driving in the city.

  8. >>I’d rather have a heavy flywheel

    Good luck with the handling. Try sticking a gyro reaction wheel in your car ..

    >>The flywheel won’t burn you car to the ground

    As opposed to hydrocarbon fuels ? Because none of the automotive lithium batteries would, you know. Look it up, lithium iron phosphate chemistry.

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