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Still the most efficient gasoline vehicle off the production line is the Honda Insight 00. Which I believe was a series hybrid......
I'm going to vote that there is no way the mini is lighter than a diesel equivalent. High-power/weight ratio batteries are much heavier than a fuel tank, engine and transmission. So the mini can only be lighter if it can only go around the block. The electric motors are at least going to weigh in at 50-60 lbs. The top end power to weight for electrics is around 2:1 so in the real world they probably weigh 80-100 lbs. combine that with the battery power needed to go 50 miles.... be able to charge it and do it again frequently... 400 lbs?
So they took out 400-500 lbs of junk and replaced it with 400-500 lbs of junk and now it can only go 50 miles... whereas before it could have gone 400-500 miles. lame.
Parrallel hybrids and EVs are only useful in city driving with no highway driving. Otherwise Series hybrid with IMA and virtually no battery pack dominates it along with the average gasser on a diet and with some modification. If someone wants to build an EV and claim its superior to a gasser.. then it had better be able to make the same range on a single fuel fill or they had better just say its a better city car(which we don't even know what its KWHr/mile consumption rate is so it might not even be close there either...because it costs me less than 10 cents a mile(both in emissions and price) now.
Comparing a car to a diesel train is moot. Trains accelerate(where a vast amount of fuel is consumed) very slowly(and almost all stop points are located on downward grades on purpose) and have such enormous components that adding a few hundred pounds to the engine bays to store the breaking energy when they stop is going to go completely unnoticed during normal locomotion. A car can't have the extra weight to provide KERS without suffering under normal conditions.
featherweight cars, with 1 liter engines, low to the ground with decent aero could fairly easily destroy EVs and hybrids on cost/mile and emissions/mile(if the electrical production average for that location is considered). They could also be cheaper to manufacture and sell. A lotus Evora is in the volts price range and does 30 mpg... and stomps it into oblivion on a high speed run... and probably gets better FE on that high speed run.
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