Hybrid cars- anyone have one?

[Grant Lamontagne]

I put a lot of miles on my Jeep, and it's a bit of a gas hog, getting about 12L/100km (~23 mpg) on a good day.  That's on par with many full sized pickups these days.   

I'd like to be a bit greener, and, more importantly, save some money on longer trips, which I seem to do a lot of, so I have been thinking on and off about a hybrid, possibly as a next vehicle.  There's not much on the market (here in Canada at least) that appeals to me, but supposedly a hybrid power plant for Jeep is coming, likely based on the Fiat hybrid, which I know next to nothing about.  Either way, I can't see me getting one the year they come out, as I have enough problems in life. 

I looked at the Audi A3 E-Tron yesterday at the local Audi dealership, but it seems to have already been discontinued so I kind of counted it out.  Also, it was only FWD, not AWD, which seems kind of silly in an Audi.  What I liked is that it seems to have a similar range to my Jeep (about 645kms) on a single tank of gas, but it does it with a 40L tank, while my Jeep has an 80L tank.  It also had a reasonable price tag and enough cargo space for my large dogs and a roof rack for my kayaks.

I'm not 100% sold on a hybrid, and a full on electric car is pretty well useless to me because a large percentage of my driving is at or above the estimated 200km range, which I realize you are not likely to actually get.unless you are going downhill with a tail wind while not using the lights, stereo, heat or air conditioning and weigh less than 100 pounds.  The 1,000kkm trip I take to go to work each month (1000kms each way) would then take longer to get to than it would to do the job if I had to keep stopping for more electricity every hour or so.

Any hybrid I get is probably going to have to be a second (or perhaps third!) car though, as I enjoy playing in the woods, getting dirty, hauling trailers etc, and I don't see a hybrid managing any of that.

I'd love to hear thoughts and experiences others have had with hybrid vehicles.

Def

[dks]

I am not sold on the greenes of hybrids.

[Don Pablo]

I am not sold on the greenes of hybrids.

Squeezing different engines into one car seems.... inefficient.

Grant, to give you an idea of the range of shortly up-coming electric cars, next year the Nissan Leaf will have a bigger battery option available, giving an estimated EPA range of 360km.  Not anywhere as much as a Jeep, but significantly more than this years Leaf! And the increases will continue.

[Etherealicer]

I am not sold on the greenes of hybrids.

Squeezing different engines into one car seems.... inefficient.

Grant, to give you an idea of the range of shortly up-coming electric cars, next year the Nissan Leaf will have a bigger battery option available, giving an estimated EPA range of 360km.  Not anywhere as much as a Jeep, but significantly more than this years Leaf! And the increases will continue.

Wrong. Oshkosh A3 is a formidable example of that. It came out in '95 and its hybrid drive train saves 20% (some sources claim up to 40% of fuel saving) of fuel over its pure Diesel twin. Modern Hybrids commonly save about 20% - 35% of energy over their conventional counterparts.
Most electrical vehicles are meant for short distances (city). Technically it is possible to have a longer range (I think Tesla has passed the 500km range).

However, the benefits of electrical- and hybrid cars are much larger for city traffic with loads of ac-/deceleration. When driving long distances, especially at higher speed then other factors start contributing more. And as much fun as a Jeep is, its not meant for that, I would haphazard a guess that station wagons would do extremely well for that. E.g. a Skoda Fabia Estate is at about 4.2l/100km (67.3mpg).

[GrandpaPatch]

  I think I have a



Smart Car on a keychain lying around here somewhere. 

[jzmtl]

I put a lot of miles on my Jeep, and it's a bit of a gas hog, getting about 12L/100km (~23 mpg) on a good day.  That's on par with many full sized pickups these days.   

The answer is obvious, get a full size pickup. 


The upcoming 19 RAV4 hybrid look very interesting, pending test of its AWD system. (the current RAV4 hybrid has an useless AWD).

[Grant Lamontagne]

I am not sold on the greenes of hybrids.

TBH, I feel the same way.  I like the idea of a hybrid, but I'm not sure the tech is quite there yet.

Def

[Syncop8r]

The more trailblazers that bite the bullet and invest in the not-quite-there-yet tech cars, the sooner the tech will get there. 

[G-Dizzle]

I don’t want one, nor do I ever want to want one. There is no way you will ever get the same power out of an electric truck than you will out of a gas truck if the same amount of research is put in. I see why some people with long commutes have them but like i said, not for me.

[Grant Lamontagne]

Actually, electric motors put out more torque than gasoline engines, and they do throughout their entire power band, not just at certain points.  That's why electric engines don't require a transmission.

To be honest, I'd be all over an electric vehicle if the charge times were more reasonable and the range was comparable to gas engines.

Don't fall for the OPEC rhetoric.  In the early days, electric cars were just as common as gasoline engines until the oil companies started paying manufacturers to only build gas powered vehicles.

If electric cars had stuck around longer, imagine where they would be now, after a century of development!

Der

[MadPlumbarian]

Idk the first thing on hybrids, the closest thing I have are automatic or solar watches. The coolest thing I ever saw was an air powered car, it had two large cylinders filed with air and a dinky gas powered air compressor which would fill the cylinders,
JR

[Dutch_Tooler]

One often overlooked factor in both hybrid and all-electrics is the need to get the electricity from somewhere. As long as this entails burning fossil fuel the 'greens' are iffy at best, the more so when you factor in conversion losses. Power generation would need to move away from fossils by quite a margin to compensate...
Oh yeah, and building the batteries and disposing of the remains once they give up is a chemical headache too.
This quite apart from, in all-electrics, not being able to restore even a more limited range in the time it takes to fill 'er up with gasoline.
Long way to go as yet for the overall energy balance. For polluted inner cities electric drive may be a solution but by doing that you move the problem elsewhere as long as power keeps coming from fossils.

[Gerhard Gerber]

We get a lot of grey imports from Japan sold locally, and among the Toyota Prius.......

I would never buy one, but the surprising feedback I've heard is these things costs nothing to run, and it's not just fuel costs....apparently the wear&tear is very low.

[Don Pablo]

One often overlooked factor in both hybrid and all-electrics is the need to get the electricity from somewhere. As long as this entails burning fossil fuel the 'greens' are iffy at best, the more so when you factor in conversion losses. Power generation would need to move away from fossils by quite a margin to compensate...
Oh yeah, and building the batteries and disposing of the remains once they give up is a chemical headache too.
This quite apart from, in all-electrics, not being able to restore even a more limited range in the time it takes to fill 'er up with gasoline.
Long way to go as yet for the overall energy balance. For polluted inner cities it may be a solution but by doing that you move the problem elsewhere as long as power keeps coming from fossils.

Batteries aside, it’s possible to power electric cars with electricity from green sources when it becomes more widely available. Try doing that with a fossil fuel car. 

[Dutch_Tooler]

We get a lot of grey imports from Japan sold locally, and among the Toyota Prius.......

I would never buy one, but the surprising feedback I've heard is these things costs nothing to run, and it's not just fuel costs....apparently the wear&tear is very low.

Toyota have managed to build very reliable cars over the last decades. My personal experience with a Prius rental (6 or 7 years ago, not the latest model) was mixed. Pretty good fuel economy but disappointing in steering gear and suspension (where, driving German, I admit to being brutally spoiled ).

One often overlooked factor in both hybrid and all-electrics is the need to get the electricity from somewhere. As long as this entails burning fossil fuel the 'greens' are iffy at best, the more so when you factor in conversion losses. Power generation would need to move away from fossils by quite a margin to compensate...
Oh yeah, and building the batteries and disposing of the remains once they give up is a chemical headache too.
This quite apart from, in all-electrics, not being able to restore even a more limited range in the time it takes to fill 'er up with gasoline.
Long way to go as yet for the overall energy balance. For polluted inner cities it may be a solution but by doing that you move the problem elsewhere as long as power keeps coming from fossils.

Batteries aside, it’s possible to power electric cars with electricity from green sources when it becomes more widely available. Try doing that with a fossil fuel car. 

Agreed, but it could be a longer wait

[gregozedobe]

With current (pun intended) technology & prices hybrid cars are great if you only do short trips (ie within the range of the battery pack) and have easy access to chargers where needed.  If you can use your own power (eg rooftop solar panels) the running costs can be very low indeed. 

They are not at all well suited to long trips where you are running on diesel/petrol almost all the time, as lugging around unused extra weight (electric motor/s & batteries) increases fuel consumption.

If battery efficiency & cost reduces significantly in the future then expect electric cars to become more popular.  If that happens then current subsidies provided by Govts (either directly at purchase or indirectly by avoiding taxes/excises etc on liquid fuels and registration fees) to be phased out, making the economics less attractive.

Most people don't look at the whole-of-life costs for buying, running and finally selling a vehicle.  If they did they would be more likely to hang on to their existing vehicles for much longer (for shorter term ownership depreciation is by far the largest cost for almost all cars).  Then battery life and replacement cost may also become a serious factor when choosing a car.

[Don Pablo]

The original Tesla Roadster battery packs are going on 10 years old and still working. Granted, there are some that performed below expectations, but we’re talking about battery tech that’s about 60% as old as me!

[ezdog]

So it sounds like lots of opinions but not from many actual owners either?

I owned a Prius for a while and mostly got it as it was a 12 year old car with 4k actual miles on it and it seemed like a decent way to try one and make a little money when done with it too.

From the moment I got in mine the first time I was astonished at the quality of the ride and the available power at all times!
As a car for running around town the Prius was insane really,they are just great cars and it can be disarming that they can also seem to be not even running while running around too!
Especially freaky to me was starting it up in the summer and having the air conditioner blast cold air wile the car was not running seemingly.
The Prius of my vintage were all built in Japan too and the level of quality and fit and finish showed this,these were not cheap econo boxes at all at that time.

My model was so smooth and powerful that it was tough to accept and from the start I had to try to get less than 45mpg no matter how I drove.
The handling was much like a larger luxury car in that it wallowed around some but was tighter than a bigger car too. The batteries are heavy and you could tell that in the way the car handled but it was smooth and quiet and never twitchy or rough in mine even on rough road.

At the same time I need to be able to carry tools and stuff pretty much all the time and there was just no practical reason for me to try to make the Prius work for that for me but I agonized over getting rid of it nonetheless and really considered keeping mine as a nice ride for times that I don't need stuff with me.
I own 4 cars and none are really cars so adding an actual car to the mix just made little sense in the long run for me.
So when I realized that there is no time like that for me anyway , I moved it along.

I sold it to a friends Uncle who put another 25k on it,mostly making the 3 hour drive between his small town and my large town and he had not a single issue of any kind in those miles and still got 45mpg easily on every trip he took.

Mine was a 2005 and they are a lot better now than they were even then,there are also tiny underpowered models ( the C models) now in the line but there are also bigger and roomier models The V models) probably flexible enough for me to make work now too if I decide to try another one.

Anyway all I am trying to say is to try one before deciding what you think.

I have nothing but respect for the Prius as a vehicle but as always YMMV.......well not actual gas mileage though!

[Grant Lamontagne]

Why do they have to make the Prius so absolutely hideous though?  If you thought the old ones were ugly, look at the new ones, where they took the least attractive car on the road and added 80's style sci-fi lights and wings to it.  It looks like The Last Starfighter vomited all over it.   

But, I do appreciate having some actual hands on experience with it though- this is what I was looking for.  My concern is longevity, and I doubt I would buy one used.  Quite the opposite, I was considering leasing, and just getting a replacement every 2-3 years as I have heard some scary stats on battery life and the costs of replacement.  I can't imagine cold Canadian winters do the batteries any favors either, as it will easily get to -40 here, and stay there for a month or two.  It seems like a lot of these kinds of things are designed with California in mind.

I'm glad to hear that is was reliable for you.  That's the part that worries me about the new Jeep hybrid they have been promising us.  Fiat has had some cool designs, but they aren't always the most robust and dependable vehicles out there.

Def

[Etherealicer]

One often overlooked factor in both hybrid and all-electrics is the need to get the electricity from somewhere. As long as this entails burning fossil fuel the 'greens' are iffy at best, the more so when you factor in conversion losses. Power generation would need to move away from fossils by quite a margin to compensate...
Oh yeah, and building the batteries and disposing of the remains once they give up is a chemical headache too.
This quite apart from, in all-electrics, not being able to restore even a more limited range in the time it takes to fill 'er up with gasoline.
Long way to go as yet for the overall energy balance. For polluted inner cities electric drive may be a solution but by doing that you move the problem elsewhere as long as power keeps coming from fossils.

The advantage of electric-/hyprid cars is not that they can be plugged in, but that they can recuperate energy every time you brake or drive downhill. That is why they consume 20+% less energy (not just petrol).

[Etherealicer]

I don’t want one, nor do I ever want to want one. There is no way you will ever get the same power out of an electric truck than you will out of a gas truck if the same amount of research is put in. I see why some people with long commutes have them but like i said, not for me.

You got it the wrong way round. Electric engines are far more powerful than Petrol/Diesel engines. They also deliver max-torque from 0 RPM, that is why they don't need transmission.
Hybrid-/electrical cars have the better acceleration from standing and at low speed. Electric cars are already starting to take over hill climbs (look at the Pikes Peak Hillclimb), they will dominate off road racing in the very near future, then take over rally and finally they will crush road races and the Formula One.

[Don Pablo]

I don’t want one, nor do I ever want to want one. There is no way you will ever get the same power out of an electric truck than you will out of a gas truck if the same amount of research is put in. I see why some people with long commutes have them but like i said, not for me.

You got it the wrong way round. Electric engines are far more powerful than Petrol/Diesel engines. They also deliver max-torque from 0 RPM, that is why they don't need transmission.
Hybrid-/electrical cars have the better acceleration from standing and at low speed. Electric cars are already starting to take over hill climbs (look at the Pikes Peak Hillclimb), they will dominate off road racing in the very near future, then take over rally and finally they will crush road races and the Formula One.

Publicity stunt, but still impressive:
https://youtu.be/NGaserLHhgQ
And that, is with a fixed single speed gearbox.

[Dutch_Tooler]

One often overlooked factor in both hybrid and all-electrics is the need to get the electricity from somewhere. As long as this entails burning fossil fuel the 'greens' are iffy at best, the more so when you factor in conversion losses. Power generation would need to move away from fossils by quite a margin to compensate...
Oh yeah, and building the batteries and disposing of the remains once they give up is a chemical headache too.
This quite apart from, in all-electrics, not being able to restore even a more limited range in the time it takes to fill 'er up with gasoline.
Long way to go as yet for the overall energy balance. For polluted inner cities electric drive may be a solution but by doing that you move the problem elsewhere as long as power keeps coming from fossils.

The advantage of electric-/hyprid cars is not that they can be plugged in, but that they can recuperate energy every time you brake or drive downhill. That is why they consume 20+% less energy (not just petrol).

True, but as of now still offset in part by the need to transport a heavy battery (several hundred kgs versus say 80 kg of fuel (say times two thirds to account for use of said fuel) for similar size/power cars). Even more for hybrids because of engine plus motors.
I agree it's the future though. No way around it - it would be the first step in potentially banning fossils from cars (or from generating the electricity that powers them). Which is why at the moment I don't want to commit long-term to petrol (my next will be a 2y lease) - electric doesn't meet my requirements for range and practicality yet but maybe in a couple of years? Another factor is electric hub motors don't require any transmission which should make all-electric cars much simpler (and on the long run cheaper) to make, as well as 'greener' in manufacture (compare the no. of moving parts, taking account of machining, lube, etc. and you'll see why).
Anyway, I digress...

[Grant Lamontagne]

I hadn't seen that.  That's pretty awesome.

The only issues with electric cars, at least as I see it, is the amount of energy that can be stored (very limited at the moment) and the length of time it takes to refill that limited energy storage.

The nice thing about a gasoline or diesel engine is that when you run out of power you can stop, fill it up and five minutes later you are back on the road as if nothing happened.  And, there are fuel stations all over the place.  Not so with charging stations, which are getting better, but are still few and far between.  And, some of the best ones available right now will give you something like 80% charge in 20 minutes, which is great, except that it reduces your best case scenario from 200 kms to 160.  As I said, I drive a thousand kilometers to one job, and it takes 11-12 hours to get there by the time you factor in gas and food stops, construction and traffic etc.  Assuming there are well enough placed charging stations (which there aren't- I've checked), the trip will take over 15 hours, best case scenario.

That's why I was thinking about a hybrid, or perhaps more accurately an extended range electric car with a liquid fuel generator to recharge the batteries as I go.  Unfortunately the BMW i8 is a bit out of my price range, doesn't have space for my dogs and would look silly with kayaks on the roof, because that's what I'd really like to get. 



I used to handle all European cars coming into Canada and I have wanted that car since the moment the first one rolled off the boat.

Def

[Dutch_Tooler]

I believe the X5 is or will soon be available in hybrid and kayaks wouldn't be too misplaced on it

[dks]

[Grant Lamontagne]

I could see myself driving a BMW.

Maybe not making the payments on it, but driving, yes!

Def

[Butch]

Where I live electricity is generated by burning coal, so if being green is one of your reasons for a hybrid, you are just shooting yourself in the foot buying one.

[Grant Lamontagne]

Where I am now, the electricity is generated by hydroelectric dams.  In Halifax, where my house is, power is generated by burning coal and natural gas.

Yes, I would like to start taking steps to be more green, but the real reason is to reduce the amount of money I spend on fuel.  When I go to work it gets expensive, being a thousand miles away.  I go through at least five tanks of gas in 3 days just getting there, doing the job and getting home, and at $100/tank, that really gets pricey.  And, that's if things go well.  Between the gas and the hotel, I'm paying about $1000 just to go to work.  Mind you I get paid for that, but it's often up to six weeks before I do.  I'd really like to minimize my initial outlay.  I can't go any cheaper on the hotel, so the gas is the next best step.

Def

[Don Pablo]

Where I live electricity is generated by burning coal, so if being green is one of your reasons for a hybrid, you are just shooting yourself in the foot buying one.

Big power plants are still more efficient than car engines, when it comes to converting fossil fuel into energy.