Ever wondered if it really makes sense to buy a hybrid car?

If you’re frustrated with the environmental impact of fossil fuel consumption, as well as paying nearly $4 a gallon at the gas pump, you may want to consider buying a hybrid electric vehicle.

What is a Hybrid?

Hybrids, like Toyota’s popular Prius model, use a combination of a small, gas-powered internal combustion engine and electric motors to power the drivetrain. Electricity is stored in your car’s batteries. A typical car has one battery, to act as a starter and power electric features in your car, such as power windows or locks. A hybrid might have an array of batteries, which do all those things, but also powers the drivetrain itself. The Prius, like many hybrids, has an acceleration and speed threshold where the battery itself can power your car, up to a certain point. When your battery power is spent, or if the car needs to accelerate faster than the battery can handle by itself, the gas engine is fired up and does the work. Many hybrids also feature regenerative braking. This means that the force of your brakes is harnessed by small generators that give your battery a small charge. Your gas engine is also used as a generator to recharge your battery.

Why Get a Hybrid Car? The Advantages:

According to this U.S. Department of Energy guide, the benefits of hybrids can be summarized as follows:

• Use less fuel, get better mileage, cost less to run
• Provide a quieter, better-quality ride
• Have more efficient engines
• Emit fewer pollutants
• Emit fewer greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming
• Reduce our dependence on foreign oil and enhance national security

Hybrids offer drastically lower emissions (about 70% less) than gas-powered cars and, since they use electric power, increased gas mileage. Hybrids tend to be more aerodynamic, and are engineered for less drag resistance. Drag increases the amount of work your engine has to do in order to move your car.

Tax incentives are also being offered for the new plug-in hybrids (PHEV) and electric cars. The tax incentives that offered rebates for non-plug-in hybrids have expired. As it stands now, consumers can get anywhere from $2,500 to $7,500 in federal rebates, for PHEVs, depending on the size of the car’s battery. The larger the battery, the more money refunded. For those who convert a gas-powered car into a PHEV will receive 10 per cent of the conversion cost back, with the maximum threshold being $4,000 for a $40,000 conversion, as part of President Obama’s stimulus bill. Lawmakers kept one Bush-era tax credit for buying and installing home charging equipment, with a maximum allotment of $1,000 for individuals and $30,000 for businesses. A run-down of state-by-state incentives can be found on Plugincars.com and an extensive database of incentives can be found on the Department of Energy’s website.

Since hybrids feature more complex and numerous parts and systems than a regular car, manufacturers are offering strong guarantees. Check for individual automakers’ warranties, as technologies and offers are subject to change.

It’s also possible to make back the extra cost of a hybrid vehicle in tax savings. The Honda CR-Z, which runs on gas, has a fuel efficiency of 39 mpg highway and 35 mpg in the city. It retails at $19,200. The Prius, which costs $2,100 more gets 48 mpg highway and 51 mpg in the city, offering a considerable annual savings in gas. The DOE has a MPG calculator that helps you estimate your gas savings over time between two vehicles.

Also, let’s not minimize the satisfaction of doing what’s right for the environment. Exercising your conscience can be much more invigorating than saving money.

Disadvantages of Hybrids

The biggest hurdle to wider acceptance of hybrids is cost. New technologies, when first put to market, can be prohibitively expensive for the average consumer. While the technology to produce hybrids has been around for decades, battery innovation has been slowed because car companies were content to build cars that ran on a cheap, relatively plentiful power source: gasoline. With consumers starting to wake up to the dangers of mass gas consumption, which includes increased air pollution and exacerbating climate change, car companies are responding to consumer demand to make energy-efficient vehicles.

But we’re not quite there, yet. One option you may want to consider is buying a used hybrid vehicle. However, the tried-and-true indicators for “kicking the tires” of a prospective used car are a little different when it comes to hybrids. Things you should consider include wear and tear on equipment. It’s one thing to replace a timing belt or muffler. It’s another thing entirely to replace rare, costly components like batteries. See our article here on Used Hybrid Vehicles.

Overall, hybrids are a great choice to help the environment, and they save money. Although tax incentives are changing, prices will come down as hybrids become more prevalent. It can be hard to open your wallet wide to support technological change, but just keep thinking about how much less you’ll be paying at the pump.

Source: Practical Environmentalist

Hybrid vehicles and especially the new plug-in hybrids (PHEV) and electric cars, are even more eco-friendly if the electricity used to charge the batteries is generated by renewable energy sources such as solar energy and wind power.  South Africa does not (yet?) have rebates for EV’s and hybrid vehicles and the cost still makes people think twice about buying them.  You don’t necessarily need a ‘green car’ to drive green- see Green Driving Tips as well as The 12 most affordable fuel-efficient new cars.  If you aren’t in the market for a new car just yet, make sure your existing car is as environmentally friendly as possible- read How to green your car.  With fuel prices skyrocketing, it pays, in more ways than one to ‘drive green’.

Contact us for all your water conservation and solar energy requirements.  Our WWF Award Winning water conservation systems include rainwater harvesting systems, rainwater tanks, grey water recycling systems, greywater irrigation systems, water-saving toilet flush mechanisms, swimming pool backwash recycling systems (see product demo) as well as the full range of JoJo water tanks and water tank stands (we are authorized JoJo Tanks dealers in South Africa). Yes Solar Mpumalanga supplies SABS and Eskom-approved solar water heaters that are installed professional Eskom-accredited solar installers.  We supply FREE QUOTES on all our eco-friendly products and services.

The automotive industry has invested billions in alternative fuel technology since that first Prius rolled off its assembly line. And these days a growing portion of that investment has been focused on zero emission technologies, such as battery electric vehicles (EVs) and hydrogen fuel cells.

Yet as a professional tasked with commercializing the next generation of alternative fuel vehicles, I can’t help but feel like zero just isn’t good enough. Pushing emissions off board and upstream to a dirty power plant may solve the automaker’s problems, but it doesn’t solve the Earth’s.

Which is why I was truly excited when, last week at the Los Angeles Auto Show, Honda introduced their “total energy management system.” The system consists of an EV, like the electric Fit they debuted at the show, as well as a Honda-developed solar charging station. An experimental solar hydrogen station is already being used to power the company’s FCX Clarity fuel cell vehicle. Honda is not only thinking about how many EVs they can put on the streets, but how to guarantee their customers a clean energy commute day after day.

This is not the first attempt by an automaker to offer its customers a clean energy solution. Tesla Motors has promoted a Solar City charging station for its electric Roadster, demonstrating Elon Musk’s strategic interest in providing the clean electrons to power his clean car (Musk is CEO of Tesla and led the initial funding of Solar City). The Tesla-Solar City project and Honda’s recent announcement highlight a new opportunity for the auto industry – end-to-end sustainable personal mobility.

Where the industry goes from here is anyone’s guess, but the possibilities are promising. Toyota already operates a housing development subsidiary in Japan that offers homes equipped with solar panels and rainwater recycling systems. Imagine the experience if this business were integrated with Toyota’s automotive operations: when you buy into an “ecommunity” of carbon-neutral dwellings, selecting the battery range of your plug-in vehicle could become as routine as picking out your home’s paint color or bathroom tile. Or better yet, you could select to participate in a community car share program to accommodate a less frequent need for your own car.

This vertical integration of energy generation stations with the vehicles that demand their energy would go a long way toward aligning auto industry objectives with the needs of the planet. If automakers were also fueling their vehicles, they would have a strong incentive to make cars as efficient as possible. And that vertical integration would bring us much closer to a future of sustainable personal mobility.

Paul Hirsch is a Senior Product Planner at Toyota.

Source: Cleantech Blog

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]]> http://www.rainharvest.co.za/2010/12/what%e2%80%99s-beyond-zero-emissions-vehicles/feed/ 0 http://www.rainharvest.co.za/2010/07/how-to-hypermile-drive-green/ http://www.rainharvest.co.za/2010/07/how-to-hypermile-drive-green/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:56:02 +0000 admin http://www.rainharvest.co.za/?p=2456 Tweet

9 Steps to Saving Fuel, Saving Money and Saving the Environment

Hypermiling refers to a collection of driving techniques aimed at improving your car’s fuel efficiency by reducing the demands placed on the engine. Since it’s possible to improve fuel economy by 37% just by changing the way you drive hypermiling is gaining interest in light of high fuel costs. While some hypermiling methods are controversial and potentially dangerous, this article will focus on safer techniques that can still save you gas and money.

1. Drive as if you don’t have brakes. Stopping and starting kills gas mileage. Increase the amount of distance between you and other vehicles, don’t race to red lights or traffic obstructions. Coast as much as possible. On newer cars (Manual Transmission) if the car is in gear and your foot is off the accelerator, the injectors shut off completely, creating FREE mileage at the cost of some minor engine braking. Engaging the clutch and/or putting the car in neutral causes the car to idle, using up gas as opposed to using none. Coast as often as possible, because if you’re smart enough with your coasting, your acceleration won’t even cause a hiccup in your cruising mpg.

This may be frustrating and difficult, however, if other drivers keep cutting in front of you. You should keep your foot ready to use the brake so that if you do need to stop suddenly you can react quickly. If using this technique at night, make sure you have clean headlights and that they are working properly. Obviously, you still need to obey all traffic laws and common sense. For example, you wouldn’t roll through stop signs; the increased risk of a car accident and/or traffic ticket is not worth a few extra cents saved in fuel costs.

2. Be gentle with the accelerator. When you slam down on the gas pedal, it pushes more fuel into the engine, making it run faster (and lowering the fuel economy and increasing your output of pollutants). Push the pedal down slowly, and lift it up as soon as you know you’re going to need to stop (when you see a red light, a stop sign, or brake lights from the car ahead of you) so that you can coast the rest of the way. You should never need to push down the pedal by more than an inch (2.5cm). Some cars are even being designed with pedals that “push back” when you’re accelerating too aggressively!

If you have a choice between various routes, go for the one with the least number of stops; country roads are good because you don’t have to stop (and go) as much and you don’t have to accelerate/brake to get on/off (like with the highway).

If you’re driving on sloped roads, it’s useful to think about where you should come to a full stop because that’ll affect how hard you need to accelerate:

• Fuel efficient vehicles actually generate better gas mileage when a “brisk” acceleration method is used. Acceleration makes for terrible mileage, so get the acceleration out of the way so that you can cruise (excellent mileage!) Slow acceleration will yield less mileage on efficient cars.
• Avoiding stopping on an incline heading upwards. Starting from a dead stop on a hill is the worst scenario in terms of fuel economy. Stop at the top of the hill, or stop before you climb the hill (if it’s safe).
• When coming down a hill and faced with a red light at the bottom (where it levels out), try to stop well before the light so that you can use the remaining downhill slope to your advantage when you need to move again.

3. Avoid idling. Turning off the engine when you stop for more than one minute can improve fuel efficiency by 19%. In cold weather, letting your car idle to warm up reduces fuel economy and creates additional pollution; all you need to do is drive gently for 5-10 minutes and if you’re following the previous two steps, you’re going to be driving gently all the way anyway.

If you have multiple stops in one trip, plan it so that you go to your furthest destination first and make the rest of your stops on your way back. By taking your longest drive at the beginning, you give the car enough time to warm up for the remainder of the trip; if you took the short trips first, your car would take longer to warm up (because of the brevity of each trip). Since engines do not operate efficiently until they are warm, taking your longest drive first increases fuel efficiency.

4. Go slower up hills, and faster downhill. Going uphill slower allows you to use your momentum to help keep your car from using extra gas to get up the hill. If you plan for a hill by going faster you’ll get further up the hill before you need to use extra gas. While going downhill you can go faster using less gas, as such don’t lay off the pedal completely, use it until you’re going a little faster than normal. If you combine the two in areas with small hills you’ll see much higher mileage.

5. Minimize the engine load. Generally, it’s better for your fuel economy if you maintain a steady speed, which is why using cruise control and driving at or below the speed limit is an important part of hypermiling. If you’re driving on a hill or any kind of varied terrain, however, you need to consider how much work the engine is doing. Sometimes, a steady speed means unsteady strain on your engine, which lowers fuel economy. Let’s say you’re approaching a hill. When you go up the hill, you should slow down, or else your engine will have to do extra work to maintain your previous speed. Practice with caution as you may annoy other drivers.

6. Park for easy departure. Instead of searching for the perfect spot close to an entrance (which will involve stop and go driving, especially with pedestrians involved and other drivers pulling in or out of their spots) pull into a spot that’s further away from the entrance. Look for the parking spot with the highest elevation and park face-out so that when you start the car and the engine is cold (at the lowest efficiency) you can use gravity in your favor without having to spin your car around.

7. Check tire pressure regularly. If the tires are incorrectly inflated, then there will be excess drag, or not enough surface contact with the road. The car therefore suffers a drop in efficiency.

8. Reduce the junk in the trunk. The more weight you’re carrying, the more the engine and drive-train have to work. Removing all of that unused junk in the trunk increases efficiency.

9. In a hybrid, Pulse and Glide. If you own a hybrid car, you can increase your mileage by learning to pulse and glide. Pulse and glide is a technique that can dramatically increase your mileage, but is best when you are on a road where there are few other people around.

• “Pulse” or accelerate up to a speed that is the higher end of a range of speeds that are appropriate. Do this using one of the sweet spots for mileage/power ratio on your car. For the prius these spots are ~15mpg and 25mpg, and correspond to times at which the gas engine is powering the car and charging the battery.
• “Glide” between acceleration, but use the accelerator to provide electric assist. This requires knowing how hard to push and in which circumstances, but is very easy to see on the consumption screen. Get used to the maximum electric assist you can use and you’ll go further between pulses, further increasing your mileage.

Source: wikihow

Many haven’t heard of the term ‘hypermiling’ but have probably practiced some of the tips mentioned above.  This shows that you don’t necessarily need a green car to drive green.  As a student, I remember trying all sorts of fuel saving tips out of necessity- who wants to spend money on fuel when there are so many other better things to spend it on?  Even if saving money is not the primary incentive, reducing fossil fuel usage reduces your carbon emissions and lessens your environmental impact. The same can be said for water- when you save water, you generally save money too.  Water Rhapsody has a solution to all your water conservation requirements.  See the water systems featured on our product demo and contact us for a FREE quote!  We also supply and install JoJo water tanks (we are authorized JoJo dealers in South Africa).