I don't understand...

[forgotten_aria]

Saturn has announced making a hybrid... SUV... that gets 32mpg highway!!!

Saturn!? WHY!? My non-hybrid, bigger engine SW2 gets 35mpg highway (that's the offical dealer number.)

Next, the low-fat, all candycane diet!

Why do companies who fill a great niche decide to go compete for the big slice of the pie that already has huge number of competetors and destroy everything that was ever good about the company?

Comments

[geekosaur]

Because the profit margins on SUVs are ridiculously high. (Or were before gas prices went up --- although I suspect people are stupid enough to keep buying them.)

[testing4l.livejournal.com]

Worse -- why does everyone keep making hybrids? Why does everyone keep buying them? Aren't people aware that the mechanical->electricity conversion is wasting a significant amount of energy and that their gas mileage would be better with just that nice, little engine running the show?

[warlord-mit.livejournal.com]

Because that nice little engine by itself would barely get the car to move on its own. It's find at high-speed, but it's just not got a lot of torque... On the other hand, if we all had turbo-diesel then we'd all be getting 40-50mpg without the environmental cost (and added weight) of batteries.

To answer the original statement, tho, Saturn had some corporate reorg several years ago (when Saturn was the most profitable GM company) and since then has tried to go more "mainstream" instead of the niche audience they had. This is why they introduced the L-series and then the Vue, and got rid of the wagon and S-series. Even though I love my SL2, I really don't think I'll buy another Saturn. :(

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

My friend cortneyofeden experienced this recently when her hybrid civic ran out of gas... suddenly it got reeeeeally sluggish and she realized it was because she was running on the battery assist alone. Fortunately it was just as she was about to pull into the gas station - talk about cutting it close!

I really wish I could have a turbo-diesel. *sigh*. This is the one time I curse california's higher emissions standards - because of those high standards turbo-diesels aren't sold here. Theoretically European standard diesel fuel, which is cleaner, is coming soon, and then they will be able to be sold. Also I do know people who did sketchy things with buying them out of state and registering them elsewhere for some period of time (I don't know if this was 6mo or a year) but that all just seemed like too much hassle to me.

[warlord-mit.livejournal.com]

We have the same issues here in MA -- you can't buy a turbodiesel because the /fuel/ isn't clean and therefore emissions are too high. *sigh* But there apparently is a HUGE market for used turbodiesels, because you /can/ buy them in New Hampshire.. So people buy them new in NH, keep them a year, and then sell them to MA residents at a premium.

Yea, the new cleaner (low sulfur) diesel fuel should help significantly once we get it.. But that's still a year or more out. :(

[testing4l.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm misreading something -- if her hybrid ran out of gas (i.e. the engine wasn't running) and it was sluggish, doesn't that suggest that the engine (or at least the stored power it produced) is what makes the car not sluggish?

My guess -- she was low on gas & batteries. I have a friend in Berkeley who'll drift into the gas station on batteries alone.

[testing4l.livejournal.com]

That doesn't make sense -- energy doesn't come for free. In the case of a hybrid, energy is either from the combustion engine or regenerative braking. It seems reasonable to assume that unless you live in San Francisco or some such, you aren't going to get a significant amount of energy out of regenerative braking.

The engine as far as I know is designed to run in a specific set of rpms to save on fuel. The 'leftover' energy (modulo a chunk for running a generator with the torque) from that torque dumps into the batteries.

The implication to my reading is that it'll move the car just fine, but unless you're siphoning off some of the energy it creates to batteries, you're wasting energy. Actually plymouth's comment below seems to suggest the same (note -- her friend's car got sluggish when it ran out of gas and was only running on the battery).

[warlord-mit.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I was being dramatic. Yes, the car will 'run' with just the tiny engine, but it would be like a Geo Metro, barely able to get out of its own way. Yes, either engine is sufficient to make the car "move", but not necessarily with decent performance.

[testing4l.livejournal.com]

I've never driven a hybrid, so I can't really say one way or another, but my understanding has been that during most of its normal operation, the gasoline engine is totally off and it makes for relatively good (read: not underpowered) driving.

[warlord-mit.livejournal.com]

Nope, that's not how they work. Granted, the different models do behave differently, but in general you are always using both engines. In particular you mostly use the electric engine at low speed and the gas engine at high speed. The Prius can only 'reverse' on electric power due to its drive chain mechanism, but the Insight is not so limited. But no, in general both engines are in use.

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

So my understanding of hybrids and engines isn't great, but I think that the part you are missing here is you don't just care about energy output, you care about torque. If you've ever driven a manual transmission and tried to get off the line in 3rd or 5th, you can see all the wasted energy of the engine because of how slowly it gets the car moving. Conversely if you tried to run down the high way in third, the engine would be spinning very quickly and also heating up, which ruin's it's efficency. Engines have power curves, which is to say there is an rpm where the amount of gas being burned will produce an maxium power output. Any slower or faster than that, energy is wasted though friction, slippage, time or other means.

My understanding of most hybirds is that you take two engines, both with very different power curves (the gas is good at high torque output, the electric effecient at running at high speeds (I think)) and then you have them only run at the most efficent place at their power curve, trading power between the two when one is better than the other. That is to say if you were eccelerating all the time, you'd want the combustion engine.

And as for your comment on regnerative breaking. I think it would also count for a lot anywhere with a lot of stop lights. One does an awful lot of breaking on city streets.

[totient]

It's crazy that people buy SUVs. But I'd much rather they buy a hybrid SUV that gets 32mpg than a non-hybrid that gets 20.