----- Original Message ---- From: Stephen A. Lawrence
> I have never seen this mentioned, but in principle the design could be described as very "de-coupled", or "modular". They are not calling it a 'hybrid' for a number of marketing reasons, preferring to call it an "electric vehicle with a range extender". My major point is that they do NOT need a 40 mile range with expensive lithium batteries! The Volt motor specs are: 111 kW (150 hp) electric motor 1.4 L 4-cylinder gasoline engine for 53 kW genset. All I am suggesting to do - to make this concept more affordable to the average Joe, is to: 1) dump the lithium in favor of advanced SLA 2) go for a battery range of 20 miles instead of 40 miles (20 was the range of the VH-1) which covers most day-to-day errands and short commutes 3) keep the electric motor the same size 4) trim the 4-cylinder down in power and weight to about 35 kW and make it a diesel, possibly a two cylinder diesel. I believe this would cut $10,000 off the cost of batteries - making the vehicle affordable for a much larger segment of drivers. Compared to the present Prius, the smaller diesel will get significantly better mileage. If the driver knows he is needing to go hundered of miles in a day, he will have to plan ahead - but can set the genset to max power, and override the normal default setting and keep the batteries topped off as long as possible. Even so, he might need to stop for an intermediate range plug-in for a few hours. That would be the trade-off vis-a-vis a Prius. I am not sure who came up with this idea initially - but they were claiming that it could get to 100 mpg, which of course becomes meaningless without knowing how much grid power is used, Jones
