[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

Regeneration of electric hybrids-pitiful compared to hydraulic

You're kidding, right? If you take the same weight carbon fiber accumulator compared to an old NiMH battery pack, the accumulator can only store about a ninth of what the battery pack can store. As bad as batteries are in terms of energy density, the better accumulators are about ten times worse.

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

Life expectancy of electric hybrids-pitiful compared to hydraulic

That's likely true if we have a situation where a vehicle is stopping way more than even a cab. If a garbage truck stops ten times more often than a taxi, then a battery pack would only last 34,000 miles instead of 340,000 miles. In that context a HH is a good idea. W/ a garbage truck, the extra weight from the system isn't an issue, and all the stops are from roughly the same speed, so the accumulator doesn't have to deal with capturing energy from higher speed stops too. KE goes according to speed squared, so if a 240lb high pressure carbon fiber accumulator can only capture ~1/5th of the energy a 120lb battery pack can, then it has to be sized properly. For a car, this means the acumulator will have to be very big to capture the same amount of energy a battery pack can, or else it will only be able to capture a small fraction of what the battery pack can if it's the same size. Also, a 300k lifespan isn't an issue because cars tend to get junked around 150k on average. HD vehicles w/ many stops/starts otoh can see a benefit from greater lifespan like I mentioned before.

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

Retained value of electric hybrids compared to conventional
Pitiful
Compare the resale value of a 2003 Corolla to a 2003 Prius, a cost you choose to ignore in your cost comparison.

Are you researching these statements before you make them? KBB indicates that the net loss is roughly the same between a 2003 and up Prius versus a comparable same year Corolla (LE), although that's technically not apples/apples since the Prius is larger and has more features. The Prius depreciates more but the Corolla costs more to fuel, the end result is that they are within a grand each other, w/ the Prius being slightly cheaper according to KBB's estimates regarding value.

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

In 1971 in an attempt to make body shops look like they were making exorbitant profits the insurance company had a body shop estimate the cost of building a $3000 Chevy from scratch using new parts.

$17000 which demonstrates the flawed comparison between any assembly line built vehicle and one built outside of an assembly line.

Conversions versus factory mass production are false comparisons.

The EPA cost calculations included carbon fiber accumulators.

Unnecessary.

You can use the EPA's $7,000 figure if you like, the situation doesn't change much. HHs are still more expensive than HEVs. I suppose a ~240lb accumulator isn't needed, when we could forgo the ~80-90% weight reduction and use a much cheaper ~1000+lb accumulator. That's clearly practical. HH systems aren't common because they can't store a lot of energy compared to HEV systems. They'll also cost more given all the info I've seen from the EPA, and they're pushing them too. They make sense for large vehicles that will last a long time and stop/go in a predictable way over the same range of speeds.

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

The EPA calculations also included a plea for a "new sheet of paper" in concepts and designs, which is exactly what my patented design constitutes. They could not possibly calculate the cost of something they did not know existed.

Obvious flawed comparisons.

No increase in vehicle weight.
No increase in overall vehicle cost, in fact a reduction in complexity and cost compared to a non hybrid.
No long term catastrophic battery or electric motor replacement costs that would equal or exceed the value of the vehicle not even considering the additional hybrid electric components.
Peak engine efficiency at all times without exception. You can not get that with gearing alone, even with an IVT.

After a year of research 8 students and a MIT doctor of engineering concluded that the design I developed was a cost effective alternative that could equal or exceed the efficiency of electric hybrids.

If you want energy density in a battery try the flywheel batteries developed by NASA for space exploration. Easily beats any chemical battery you will see in the next hundred years, but no one can afford the price.

$15,000 car with double conventional mileage, no brakes, no power train in the conventional sense, not even including the enormous additional complexity of an electric hybrid.

If you think you can build it, then don't sit here talking to the rest of the forums, put together a $1000 100mpg HH subcompact along the lines of Metro's/Ben's and all the other ~$1000 NEVs.

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

The fact that electric hybrids are already in production does not mean they are the best solutions, that logic could be used to defeat any significant improvement in vehicular transportation over the last 100 years.

regards
Mech

All those improvements happened. HHs haven't happened. If they do, great, we get cheaper hybrids than HEVs, but that isn't what's happening. Manufacturers are going w/ HEVs for most consumer apps, and HHs are being offered in HD vehicles w/ frequent stops/starts for the reasons I've gone over before. Energy density in HD apps doesn't matter as much, lifespan is more important. In consumer apps, a longer lifespan doesn't matter much if it gets junked at ~$150k miles, and the poor energy density means a smaller vehicle will either have poor energy storage, weigh too much, or both compared to a HEV.