[geeks] [rescue] Computerfests (was: first real server hardware) -OT

[Dan Duncan]

On Mon, 26 Apr 2004, Sandwich Maker wrote:
> otoh hybrid tech has a ways to go.  the toyota sells - reputedly at a
> large loss - for twice the echo it's based on, gets mileage no better
> than a vw diesel, and when the batts run their life out - guard your
> wallet...

<begin rant>
I think it's because their design is basically flawed.  There are
plenty of perfectly good examples of hybrid electric in long term
use and the car crop has ignored it in an attempt to reinvent their
wheels.  Trains and submarines (nuke and diesel) have been hybrid for
ages.  There have been a number of prototype road vehicles doing it right,
but I have yet to see one in production.  It seems to me that a basic
premise of a hybrid is that you can get rid of things like transmissions
and differentials and simplify the design somewhat, but what are
Toyota and Honda doing?  They're keeping them and ADDING complexity
by trying to integrate an inline electric motor inside the mix.  Gah!
Part of the inefficiency of a conventional vehicle comes from having
to run the engine at varying rpm's.  So why do it?

A local company here prototyped a hybrid Humvee for the military.
They stripped out the entire drivetrain and went with a design that
had the same weight and range, but used electric motors at each wheel
hub and a smaller engine driving a generator under the hood.  The engine
ran in a fairly narrow rpm range to maximize efficiency.  It got
double the fuel mileage, several times the acceleration, better top
speed, and more reliability because there wasn't a single point
of failure.  Up to 3 hub motors could fail, the engine/generator/fuel
XOR the battery bank could fail and you could still drive quite
a ways.  This had the added advantage of being able to shut down the
motor and drive a distance on battery alone in "stealth" mode with
very little heat or noise signature.  In the real world this last
bit would translate to extra distance in case you run out of fuel
or suffer some sort of breakdown or an emissions savings in the
event of a short trip in cold weather.  (Since the engine wouldn't
warm up, the emissions would SUCK, so why bother starting the engine?)
The production cars are also the only ones still doing it with
GASOLINE.  Everything else is doing it with a fuel that's already
more energy/emissions efficient than gasoline.  Instead of
trying to make gas suck less, why not choose something less sucky
to begin with like diesel or natural gas?  As you mentioned above,
they merely bump a gas car up to the level of an ordinary diesel.
Why not START with a diesel?

If I want to build myself a great computer, I'm not going to
start with a Gateway PC.
<end rant>

-DanD

-- 
#  Dan Duncan (kd4igw)  dand at pcisys.net  http://pcisys.net/~dand
# Westheimer's Discovery:  A couple of months in the laboratory can
# frequently save a couple of hours in the library.