On Tuesday, November 2, 2004, 1:43:48 PM, William wrote: WVH> Darin,
WVH> Well, if a hybrid saves money by using electricity part of the time, and WVH> electricity is generated by burning fossil fuel at the utility station, WVH> wouldn't electricity be equally as (more) expensive over there as petrol? WVH> Unless they have come up with some alternative way of generating WVH> electricity, it would stand to reason that electricity prices would be in WVH> direct line with petroleum prices. When oil prices go up here, electric WVH> rates rise, since that is how most of the energy in the U.S. is generated. I WVH> don't see how it could be so much different over there. WVH> Of course, some energy/money will be saved through the efficiency of WVH> electric motors as compared to gas motors (mainly, the fact that electric WVH> motors do not burn fuel while idling at stop lights and such, which doesn't WVH> help much if you are primarily doing uncrowded freeway driving). It's WVH> certainly not going to be enough to cut your costs that dramatically I would WVH> think though. A couple of things are in play here... In a normal car, braking throws kinetic energy away by converting it to heat. In a hybrid car, braking converts a good deal of this kinetic energy back into stored electrical energy which can be used for the next acceleration. -- that's the first savings. In a hybrid car, acceleration loads are satisfied largely by draining the battery system. This allows the fuel-burning engine to operate more efficiently than it's non-hybrid counterparts. Under normal cruise a hybrid is usually slightly less efficient than a normal car because there are additional electrical losses (as heat) however these are usually very small and are easily drowned out by the gains in the other parts of the system. Hybrids don't use electricity from the grid (generally). However, electricity generation in a power plant tends to be much more efficient than electricity generation in a vehicle because the fixed plant process can be highly optimized... in a vehicle everything is dynamic and so all of the engineering parameters are trade-offs between the many possible states of the system. _M To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
