http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050813/...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl


This is a great idea, both as a mod and as a potential next step for Hybrids in general. If all your doing in running earrands near your house, you may never actually burn gas.

I understand automakers hesitation with anything that plugs into a wall, I still have people ask me if you have the plug the current hybrids in.

 

That's pretty cool. Looks like the future hot rodders will be technology and engineering geeks.

 

If that guy puts more batteries in the back, it'll make room for some hydraulics. :p

I love alternative energy cars. Which reminds me, has anyone heard of the Ford Nucleon? It's powered by a small nuclear reactor. Just don't get into an accident with it.

 

Its too bad you have to actually replace those batteries(5-$6,000) every few years, or else hybrids might actually save you money.

 

yeah, great mileage if you ignore the fuel consumed to generate the electricity used for recharging the batteries , has to be the BS story of the week ...

try a bicycle, you'll get infinite mileage ...

 

Wrong. The energy you use on the bicycle is not infinite. Even Spider-man can't bike forever. :D

 

You get infinate miles per gallon of gasoline on a bicycle. Just like infinite MPG on a true electric car. Like TeamRX8 said though, electricity from the wall doesn't come out of nowhere. A large ammount of US power plants are powered by oil.

 

So do I, They are saving gas so I will get to drive a real car longer.

 

charging the extra batteries prolly doesn't use that much power in terms of $$$, certainly less than filling up with fuel. Now the replacement issue is certainly a problem, the cars regular batteries apparantly have a decently long life 8+ years, as proven by some hybrid taxi's that have been running round Japan and Europe, but the add on batteries sound like laptop batteries which aren't known for longevity.

 

Interesting but I'd rather have something that efficient out of the box before I'd consider switching. I'd buy a turbo diesel before a hybrid.

 

Although, if the power plants were smart and would get with the program...they could decrease oil consumption by using natural gas like methane for fuel (prominently found leaking abundantly from all covered landfills).

 

I agree, burning oil to make electricity is such a collosal waste of a limited resource. I wish that they would use different fuels to make power and leave the oil for gasoline and plastics.

 

Agreed!

F

 

To power the bike you need energy, energy you get from a goodnight sleep and food/water. What about the gas used by the machines that harvest/produce/cook/package your food? The water that is pumped into your house, thru pipes both made, and laid by machines. The bike itself has rubber tires...the bed you get rest in....made by machines.....ect, ect, ect

the world is so oil depenent that EVERYTHING in one way relates back to needing a part or process the uses oil. There is no 'free-energy'

Even solar power needs oil, to make the solar cells, the wire the power runs thru...ect ect. Its impossible to getrid of our use of oil, all we can do is scale it back and make the most of what we have.

 

Plugging a car into a wall is not a good idea. Each time you are converting energy, you are going to lose some because nothing is 100% efficiency. The existing hybrids are a much better idea until we have an entirely new fuel source.

Of course, if we went to nuclear energy, it would be a great idea to plug the cars into the wall and charge them up. But no one wants to talk about nuclear