Giving Hybrids A Real Jolt

I would buy a plug in Hybrid in a hart beat. What is not to love. Electric car around town. ICE at speed and for distance. This is really a major no-brainer. I don't understand the logic behind not getting behind this. I will admit in some parts of the US the electric plug in component is not environmentally friendly but it could be.

 

I would have no way to plug in, since I don't have a garage. But a battery pack with greater capacity would certainly mean better mileage. It will be very interesting to see what the next generation Prius is capable of.

 

That is true, you are simply shifting the location of fossil burning, but honestly, which is more efficient, burning it in a few big 'power factories' or in thousands of little kinetic plants? I am not trying to be smart, I am curious, as I could see this go either way.

I currently pay $0.07, so right now which would be economical financially, gasoline power, or electric power? It was said that gasoline can deliver 36KWh of power, but how many miles per KWh for gas, and how many for electric?

 

I pay $.05 per KWh for Hydroelectric and $.075 per KWh for Wind Power. My Prius would be very clean as a plug-in.

Nate

 

When I built my home in 1980 the government was pushing the concept that centralized power generation was more efficient and cleaner than home heating systems. I bought into the idea and my house is all electric. Big mistake. My house is cleaner but I pay a serious bill during winter months and high bill the rest of the year.

New Hampshire now has an electric rate among the highest in the country at 13.104 cents per Kilowatt hour. Retro fitting the house to gas or oil isn't a viable option for me as there is no place for ducting or piping. Installing a furnace would necessitate major structural and design renovations.

 

Don,

I know this is completely off topic, but...

I own a home in Edgartown, MA. It also has electric baseboard heat (ugh). We had one of these installed several years ago. One unit keeps the entire 1500 sq/ft house warm.

We also use a Monitor system for heating our water (heats on demand rather than keeping a tank).

You can get them in kerosene, natural gas and propane models.

http://www.monitorheaters.com/monitor_stoves.htm

 

I use a kerosene heater to supplement my home heat pump and the price of kerosene has doubled in the last five years in Wash. DC area. Natural gas and propane prices are rapidly going up. The biggest advantage of using electric vs. gas vehicles is our wealth will not be going to the Arab countries, Russia, Canada, etc. We have plenty of coal and it can be burned clean if the consumer demands it and are willing to pay for it. Any new power plants should be nuclear anyway. The fact is no one in this country has died from nuclear power! Human error can be eliminated and the waste disposal problem can be dealt with--other countries have.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jtmhog\";p=\"80819)</div>

Couple points...and I'm not anti-nuclear power...but sometimes you see rhetoric that goes a bit over the top. If this doesn't belong in this section...I fully understand...move it, delete it...put it in a fusion reactor if necessary

1. "The fact is no one in this country has died from nuclear power!" Two things here...first plenty have died in other countries and many nearly died here near TMI. In addition...there have been significant unsafe radiation ventings throughout the program in the US....can you be sure no one died prematurely because of those?

2. "Human error can be eliminated." As long as humans are designing the process than there is always the chance for human error.

3. While human errors can be minimized human greed can't...there will always be someone trying to make an extra buck by cutting corners or lying...and the risk to others never seems to have much effect on this kind of scum.

4. "waste disposal problem can be dealt with--other countries have." Are you volunteering your backyard? By the way other countries are dealing with waste disposal, but you only cite this country when talking about deaths.

 

umm in 1962 three people died from an accident in Idaho Falls nuclear power plant accident.

 

ok so i was wrong. got above info from my Dad who was one of the people sent to clean up the mess. he is 77 and guess he dont remember as well as he used to but the date was jan 3, 1961.

heres an excerpt on the incident

3 January 1961
A reactor explosion (attributed by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission source to sabotage) at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls, Idaho, killed one navy technician and two army technicians, and released radioactivity "largely confined" (words of John A. McCone, Director of the Atomic Energy Commission) to the reactor building. The three men were killed as they moved fuel rods in a "routine" preparation for the reactor start-up. One technician was blown to the ceiling of the containment dome and impaled on a control rod. His body remained there until it was taken down six days later. The men were so heavily exposed to radiation that their hands had to be buried separately with other radioactive wastem, and their bodies were interred in lead coffins. (my dad says that there was nuclear radiation for at least 10 miles in all directions requiring radiation suits. so that "largely confined" statement is a bit misleading)

there is actually many other incidences of death also because of nuclear power and on the innocence of TMI (which btw, is one of the best and most effective government coverups in history)

28 March 1979
A major accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania. At 4:00 a.m. a series of human and mechanical failures nearly triggered a nuclear disaster. By 8:00 a.m., after cooling water was lost and temperatures soared above 5,000 degrees, the top portion of the reactor's 150-ton core collapsed and melted. Contaminated coolant water escaped into a nearby building, releasing radioactive gasses, leading as many as 200,000 people to flee the region. Despite claims by the nuclear industry that "no one died at Three Mile Island," a study by Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass, professor of radiation physics at the University of Pittsburgh, showed that the accident led to a minimum of 430 infant deaths.

so to say nuclear power is completely safe up to this point is waaaay off base.

now to say we shouldnt do nuke is not what im saying. i still believe it to be one of the best options we have right now. we simply need to learn from our mistakes of which we have made many. there was over 2810 incidents of radiation releases in the 1990's most of which none of us know about.

http://www.whistleblower.org/getcat.php?cid=16
http://www.cdi.org/adm/1341/
http://www.nirs.org/

 

This is like one of those urban myths that no matter how many times it gets a response, it keeps returning.

For a quick response to that big issue: why an electric car is cleaner than a gasoline car even on the dirty national (50% coal) grid see section 4 of http://www.calcars.org/vehicles.html

Also see an update to the John Carey Business Week article where the reporter quotes studies confirming the same thing:
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/calcar...news/message/32

 

Felix- in another thread, I questioned the validity of those assertions and asked for backup information but I got no response. Is there anyway to get that information now?