Ah, but Jed are there actually that many drivers like
you?
I happen to live in Wichita, Ks and I can honestly say
I have never driven a day in my life which did not
involve 45 mph at minimum. My daily commute of 7
miles each way has me driving 55 mph for the majority,
and that is without taking the major highways. Speed
limits around here are typicaclly 40 mph, which means
if you don't drive 45 you are somewhat of a road
hazard.
I will soon be changing jobs to one located downtown,
and then will probably not have to drive over 40 for
the majority of the commute, but that kinda depends on
if I can miss rush hour or not.
Point is that except for major metropolitan areas,
most drivers need highway speeds for at least a
portion of their daily commute.
--- Jed Rothwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Take someone like me, who hardly ever drives at
> highway speeds. If I stick
> with the parallel Prius+ design, using the ICE at
> speeds above 40 mph, I
> will end up burning five or 10 gallons per year of
> gasoline more than I
> would with your serial hybrid design. I would still
> reduce overall
> consumption by huge margin, in compared to an
> ordinary driver I would use
> practically no gasoline. On the other hand, since
> there are millions of
> urban commuters like me, overall this would consume
> many millions of
> gallons of gasoline extra. There are more of us than
> there are people who
> drive 500 miles per day on a routine basis. So you
> are right: looking at
> the big picture, the serial configuration probably
> would be better for most
> drivers under most circumstances, and the Prius
> design would probably be
> better for things like long-haul trucks. However, as
> I said, there is much
> to be said for going with the design we now have,
> since that design has
> been tested for many years and debugged.
>
> - Jed
>
>
>
Merlyn
Magickal Engineer and Technical Metaphysicist
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