Hybrid cars: The wave of the future? Not really..

www.hybridcars.com...

1979
Dave Arthurs of Springdale, Arkansas, spent $1,500 turning a standard Opel GT into a hybrid car that could get 75 miles per gallon, using a six-horsepower lawnmower engine, a four-hundred-amp electric motor, and an array of six-volt batteries. Mother Earth News used the Arthurs plan to build their own hybrid, which averaged 83.6 miles per gallon. Sixty thousand Mother Earth News readers wrote in for the plans, when the magazine published their results.

So, does anyone else wonder why no similar hybrid cars were actually on the market until 1997, nearly 20 years later?

Mother Earth articles:
AN AMAZING 75 - MPG HYBRID ELECTRIC CAR!
Update: David Arthur's Hybrid Electric Car
Hybrid II.
Mother's Own Hybrid Car!
STATE-OF-THE ART ELECTRIC VEHICLE CONVERSION

I'm looking into finding the actual plans and I'll update as I progress.

[edit on 10/18/2004 by shbaz]

It seems that the batteries were wired in parallel with the generator as if they were a capacitor, so that when more energy than was needed was made the generator would charge the battery bank as well as power the vehicle, and when the vehicle reached a hill the batteries would feel some pull. According to some accounts on the internet, this doesn't actually last that long, it just extends the range that the battery bank would normally be able to offer. Some universities have used larger engines such as the Geo Metro with success. Critics also say that vehicles produced from the plans only reach a top speed of about 50 mph, but this is a problem of gearing or underpowered motors moreso than the design.

He used an unconventional controller which had mechanical contacts rather than transisters. This is probably a lot simpler, but rather inefficient with energy losses.

My conclusion is that with a bigger motor similar (but not quite so high) efficiencies could be reached with a home-made conversion.

Does no one else have any thoughts on this?

[edit on 10/18/2004 by shbaz]

I think hybrid cars are only a temporary help, not a solution. They have a purpose, but they are only extending current fuel needs and oil consumption. Although they pollute less, they still pollute. In the future I think all electric vehicles will be much more feasible, once battery technology catches up. As far as the vehicle you mentioned, I think you are right in that the shortcomings are more a poor choice in hardware than in design or theory. I remember reading in popular Mechanics a couple years ago about a Semi- (think it was a peterbilt) that ran on a 500 HP electric motor with a Chevy 4.3L V6 vortec converted to natural gas as a generator. The Rig was supposedly able to pull even better than its current diesel counterparts on the road today.

Everything pollutes, so anything that pollutes less is a better choice. And since modern cars really don't last much longer than 10 years...

Keep in mind where the electricity for electric cars comes from. Coal, oil, and nuclear plants, mostly. And don't look to hydrogen to be the great non-polluter, too. You have to split the water molecules first, which takes more energy than you'll get from combustion.