Head of Plug in hybrid electric vehicle research center finds PHEVs far less effective than Natural Gas Vehicles!

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Permalink Reply by neil cox on October 9, 2009 at 7:20pm

Most of the problem is the advanced batteries are very costly. Since the people who came to this conclusion are very familiar with the problems of PHEVs, but not with the problems of CNG, they may have under estimated the GNG cost per displaced barrel of oil. It is also possible the abstract does not reflect properly the conclusions of the paper.
Clearly PHEV is a step to electric vehicles which should have a cost advantage over CNG = compressed natural gas for short range applications. See my charge while waiting for a traffic light. Click on Neil then search my posts in September 09. Neil

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Permalink Reply by neil cox on October 9, 2009 at 7:43pm

I did not find my trolley post, but there are 2008 threads about electrifying the highways, which might be less costly than 10,000 CNG refill stations. Is 10,000 enough to get the public to go CNG?
I did find the following: ~Vehicle charging should be done in the mediums and North side of the highway as the South side of the highway will often be shaded by tall trees. Vehicles can be powered/charged by overhead trolleys while moving slowly at the approach to a red traffic light. Some high tech batteries can tollerate very fast charging. Neil~

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Permalink Reply by neil cox on October 10, 2009 at 4:01am

In late 2007, Tesla motor car concluded that about 50 kilowatt-hours could be safely added to their battery pack in 10 minutes with the help of battery cooling. If the trolley source charges you to more than 90% charge, you may kill your battery pack. Battery cooling is a standard feature with the Tesla. That is an average of about 300 kilowatts or a 10% charge in one minute of slowly approaching a red light. This would often be enough to insure you got home with some battery power left, instead of "I might be stranded a mile or two from home" If not, you could drive around the block and get a few more percent charge from the same red light. The main problem is how does the trolley electric source know how many kilowatts YOUR battery can tolerate? If you tell it 300 kilowatts, but you are wrong, you killed your battery pack. Added problems are some vehicles use ac to power a internal charger others use dc from an external charger, or either at drivers option, and none presently have a trolley option. Neil

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Permalink Reply by Eric Scott on October 12, 2009 at 8:53am

I read the article a little closer this time. They say that they ignore the cost of adding a CNG infrastructure and assume that PHEVs charge only at home. They do this to avoid making unrealistic assumptions about those costs and thus admit their estimates are "biased downwards." They say this gives an advantage to NGVs since their infrastructure would be more costly given electrical lines already go to most peoples houses. It seems to me that they conclude that the PHEV is the worst option since it has a relatively large battery but displace less oil per unit of electricity then a car that is completely electric. At the same time, the NGV does this the most cheaply. They argue in the beginning of the paper that the idea of converting trucks to natural gas accomplishes almost nothing in terms of reducing oil consumption since 18 wheelers dont consume much of the nations oil in the first place - i found that really surprising. thanks for all the information.

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Permalink Reply by SJC on October 12, 2009 at 11:57am

"18 wheelers dont consume much of the nations oil in the first place..."

If you read Picken's statements to the group in Las Vegas, you would know that large diesel long haul trucks use almost HALF of our liquid fuel used for vehicles each year. They get 4 mpg, log 100,000 miles per year and there are more than 6 million of them on the road. You do the arithmetic and you come up with one HECK of a lot of fuel used.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Scott on October 12, 2009 at 12:16pm

SJC, do you have a link to that statement?

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