Why aren't all cars now made as hybrids?

Factual Questions
1

Hybrid technology doesn’t strike me as the magical ecological elixir it was initially trumpeted as (notwithstanding the incorporation of the color green into the car’s logo), but it does seem to me to be a good way to get really good gas mileage out of a car.

So, why isn’t it now standard to make all cars with a hybrid enginge? Why not a hybrid jeep that gets 35 miles to the gallon? Why not hybrid sportscars, like Porsches or Corvettes?

Does hybrid technology limit a car’s performance? I’ve rode in hybrid cars, and they seem just as capable of driving fast as any other car. The only real difference I’ve noticed is that they are very quiet when they idle, and they use much less gas. Is there something about the hybrid enginge that makes it unusable for anything except a basic sedan?

2

Because Hybrids are more expensive and more complicated, and they take are rather substantial re-design of the drivetrain and engine control electronics. It’s not just a simple matter of dropping in a “hybrid engine”, the entire vehicle needs to be re-designed.

More hybrids are coming, but it’s going to take a while.

3

Hybrids are great, but they’re not the be-all, end-all.

For greater Highway milage, you’re simply depending on a smaller engine to drive the vehicle. This results in a lot less power in go-to situations, as noted repeatedly in threads on hybrids - especially by people who live in the mountains.

For the most part, the milage gain is on the City driving side, when the electric engine is used more often. For some of us, this is a lot less than for others.

Expense. Hybrids are a lot more expensive because they have two engines, an expensive battery pack, and all the acutrements necessary to integrate the operation of both engines. The hybrid Civic is $4-6k more than the non-hybrid version. This leads back into the reality of the hybrid market vs. the mania. How much better gas milage do you actually get and is it sufficient to make that extra expense worth it? Are you better off buying a $27,000 (jacked up price due to demand and cache’) Prius and getting 45 mpg, or a $15,000 Ford Focus and getting 32 mpg? How far do you have to drive to make that 13 mpg difference make up the $12,000 price difference?

Complexity. Not all of the Auto manufacturers have the experience and the in-house knowledge to build successful hybrids.

4

Also, the majority of the mileage gain of hybrids occurs in city driving. If a rural person bought a hybrid pickup and used it to drive the 50 miles from the farm to the county seat to buy supplies, he’d get the same, or perhaps worse gas mileage than the regular version.

Also car performance is not about speed. It’s about acceleration. Both my regular (high performance) car & the Prius I recently rented will go faster then the freeway speed limit.

What the Prius can’t do is accelerate anything like my daily driver. And a hybrid variant of my car will either A) have a big engine/motor so it can zoom and therefore get crappy gas mileage, or B) have a small engine/motor, perform lousy & not sell well but also get good mileage.

My car gets about 26 mpg the way I drive it (rarely below 80 except on surface streets). An equally performant hybrid might get 30 if I did a lot of city driving, which I don’t. For my use, it’d get about 28. So why pay the extra 10 grand for the complexity? It sure won’t be made up in reduced fuel burn over the life of the vehicle.

If Americans came to view cars as many Europeans seem to; simply transportation appliances about as exciting / interesting as their washing machines, then perhaps we could all be happy driving low-powered commutermobiles or (where truly needed) pickup trucks which can barely get out of their own way when hauling a load. And we’d save a buttload of fuel by doing so.

But that will require undoing 75 years of advertising- & culturally-induced fascination with speed & power & ego in our cars. Not an ovenight transition.

5

[QUOTE=LSLGuy]

But that will require undoing 75 years of advertising- & culturally-induced fascination with speed & power & ego in our cars. Not an ovenight transition.
[/QUOTE]

Or, $5/gallon gasoline.

6

FWIW a couple of years ago Bill Ford said that by 2010 25% of Fords cars would be available as hybrids. Don’t know if this statement is still true, but I would look for more in the future.
Looking in my crystal ball, I suspect that the future will hold more variable displacement engines, and hybrids. Using electronic controls and perhaps electric solenoids to actuate the valves, it can be easy to turn a V-8 into a V-6 or a V-4 or even a V-2* If power demands are low enough. This would help with the highway fuel mileage, or even in stop and go traffic. Accelerate gently, you have a V-4, moderately a V-6 and hit the loud pedal hard a V-8. Idling at a stop light, a V-2 to keep the AC running.
Such an arrangement would give both power and economy. I can think of a few hurdles that need to be overcome, but I believe that those are solvable.

*first person to say I Godwinized this thread get hit with a dead trout.

7

[QUOTE=Rick]
FWIW a couple of years ago Bill Ford said that by 2010 25% of Fords cars would be available as hybrids.
[/QUOTE]

With one model year and two calendar years to go, I’d say this is busted.

Like Honda put in it’s Hybrid Accord. Unfortunately, the car model failed and was discontinued.

I think there’ll be some complexity shock on that kind of thing. Not just making them reliable and solid, but in getting mechanics in the field capable of not fucking them up.

8

[QUOTE=Chimera]
Like Honda put in it’s Hybrid Accord. Unfortunately, the car model failed and was discontinued.
[/QUOTE]
The Hybrid Accord was discontinued, but the variable number of cylinders in use feature was retained. Honda calls it “Advanced Variable Cylinder Management” (Advanced VCM™ ), available on the V-6 Accord, Odyssey and Pilot.

9

[QUOTE=Atomicktom]
Hybrid technology doesn’t strike me as the magical ecological elixir it was initially trumpeted as (notwithstanding the incorporation of the color green into the car’s logo), but it does seem to me to be a good way to get really good gas mileage out of a car.

So, why isn’t it now standard to make all cars with a hybrid enginge? Why not a hybrid jeep that gets 35 miles to the gallon? Why not hybrid sportscars, like Porsches or Corvettes?

[/quote]

Because there are other ways to achieve similar or better gas mileage that have existed for years before hybrids hit the market. Diesel for example. The VW Polo tdi can achieve upwards of 60 mpg, is as clean burning as a hybrid, and produces fewer greenhouse gases during manufacturer as it does not require exotic batteries, unlike the hybrid. the drivetrain is also much less complicated than a hybrid’s and reduces weight. And we still have yet to see how a hybrid vehicle will affect passenger and driver safety in a severe crash.

Other viable alternatives for clean burning vehicles include propane, aka autogas, which is also popular in certain European countries and used as an aftermarket upgrade to vehicles, with a fairly wide availability of fueling stations.
And you can’t have a hybrid with a manual transmission. A Porsche with an automatic would defeat the purpose of owning a Porsche :slight_smile:

10

[QUOTE=ntcrawler]
Because there are other ways to achieve similar or better gas mileage that have existed for years before hybrids hit the market. Diesel for example. The VW Polo tdi can achieve upwards of 60 mpg, is as clean burning as a hybrid, and produces fewer greenhouse gases during manufacturer as it does not require exotic batteries, unlike the hybrid.
[/QUOTE]

Of course, making this a hybrid would increase it’s MPG, too: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/03/revealed-volksw.html

11

[QUOTE=Rick]
Looking in my crystal ball, I suspect that the future will hold more variable displacement engines, and hybrids. Using electronic controls and perhaps electric solenoids to actuate the valves, it can be easy to turn a V-8 into a V-6 or a V-4 or even a V-2* If power demands are low enough. This would help with the highway fuel mileage, or even in stop and go traffic. Accelerate gently, you have a V-4, moderately a V-6 and hit the loud pedal hard a V-8. Idling at a stop light, a V-2 to keep the AC running.
Such an arrangement would give both power and economy. I can think of a few hurdles that need to be overcome, but I believe that those are solvable.
[/quote]
Actually, Cadillac did this back in the early 'Eighties on the L62 (“V8-6-4”) engine. Engine control systems being what they were at the time it didn’t really work all that well and was often disabled at the owner’s request, but it is not a novel idea.

One problem with hybrids is their lack of torque; because they use such a small engine. The 1NZ-FXE Atkinson-cycle engine used in the Prius is a 1.5l engine; the Honda Civic Hybrid uses a 1.3l Otto-cycle engine (which is nonetheless more powerful, albeit less efficient, than that in the Prius). This makes them fine as intracity commuter cars, and about equal with the low-powered but fuel efficient subcompact Japanese cars that became so popular in the 'Seventies, but they’re neither fast nor well suited to tasks like driving up long mountain inclines or pulling trailers (which, admittedly, very few of the large engined SUVs that populate suburbia ever do, either). The amount of energy stored in the battery pack is only sufficient for a few minutes of driving time at best, and once that is drained you’re basically pulling with that anemic little engine.

It should also be noted that the really fuel efficient hybrid vehicles are also making a lot of other tradeoffs besides the powertrain to obtain those MPG values, including lighter weight components, low rolling resistance tires, et cetera. It’s not as if you can just plop a hybrid powertrain into an H2 and expect a 50% mileage efficiency improvement.

Also as noted, hybrid technology is far from mature; Ford has actually been working on their in-house hybrid system for the last decade, and from what I’ve read and heard it is still not ready for prime time. GM busted their nut on the electric EV1 which turned out to be unprofitable. Chrysler has apparently been working on a high performance hybrid system which has yet to make it into production cars. Ford, Mazda, and Nissan have adapted other makers hybrid systems; Subaru, Saab, Porsche/Audi, and BMW are developing unique proprietary systems. [url=Car Reviews, Car News and Car Shopping Advice | AutoGuide.com]Here is a list of production and conceptual hybrid vehicles, so it is clear that manufacturers are working on it, but save an order of magnitude performance improvement in electrical energy storage capacity, there isn’t one ‘killer app’ that makes hybrid powertrains vastly superior to conventional layouts. The notion that hybrids are the great world-saving invention is little more than marketing hype; the reality is that they provide an incremental improvement in mileage for some trades on power, capacity, et cetera.

[QUOTE=Rick]
*first person to say I Godwinized this thread get hit with a dead trout.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, although the Werhmacht dubbed the operational rocket the V-2 (Vergeltungswaffe 2) the Heeresversuchsstelle Peenemünde designated the rocket design in question as the A4, so Audi beat you there.

Stranger

12

The suburban my family drives varies between V4 and V8 depending on how hard you’re working the engine.

But I’m pretty sure when idling, it runs as a V8 :smack:

13

ISTR that one of the problems that the EV1 faced was that there wasn’t the manufacturing capability for the volume of batteries that were needed.

I know that battery production capacity has been going up pretty quickly, but isn’t that still one of the factors limiting both the numbers of hybrid vehicles that can be built, and driving the costs up on the hybrid vehicles that do get built?