The "secret" about hybrid cars industry carefully avoids mentioning...
For the past few years, as hybrid electric/combustion engine cars have entered America's lexicon and driveways, the automotive press has generated reams of reportage on them. The hybrid idea crosses into politics in a way that other more "gearhead" oriented auto stories do not. Nevertheless, industry and the auto press have carefully danced around the most important aspect of hybrid drive. For the benefit of TPM readers, I'd like to give you something surprising to say about hybrids at your next cocktail party.
The number one hybrid car myth: "The hybrid drivetrain is the royal road to super high gas mileage." Yet that doesn't mean they're bad. They're great! Why does Liberal KingElvis speak such hybrid heresy?
The number one way to reduce fuel consumption is to reduce vehicle weight. Hybrid drive adds weight, because it requires heavy batteries, not to mention an additional motor. You want a 50mpg vehicle? They abound in Europe. They use pint sized diesel engines to get Prius type economy without dragging big batteries around. Furthermore, even large European cars use much smaller engines and have far less "reserve power" on tap than typical US cars. It's a truism of combustion engineering that engines are most efficient when running near the peak of their power output - at least in terms of power/gallon.
In fact, the idea of hybrid drive has been around at least since the 1960s, but hasn't caught on where fuel thrift is the primary concern. Don't take my word for it either. None other than efficiency guru Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute will tell you the same thing. He has said over and over that his concept of a super high mileage "hyper car" is about using ultra light carbon fiber construction rather than steel. The drivetrain is a secondary consideration - vehicle weight is primary. He doesn't much care if it's hybrid or fuel cell, though, hydrogen fits in with his vision of a total switchover from oil to a hydrogen based economy. Yet I think he will tell you that unless weight is reduced, you'll just be using more fuel, whether gasoline or hydrogen.
Hybrid drive is complex and expensive. Even with $3 gasoline you have to drive the car for 5 or 6 years to get the fuel savings to compensate. Now should you be "anti hybrid?" Hell no! Here's the rub about the hybrid question. It has to do with the inborn, inherent quality of automotive "aesthetics" more than any of the allegedly rational arguments like energy autarchy, foreign policy or global warming.
The Theory of the Aesthetic of Automotive Excess:
We have always associated fuel economy with tiny, spartan, low priced cars. They use the least materials possible and have not just the lightest weight, but the least "reserve power." The more expensive vehicles are not only bigger, but faster, despite increased weight over economy models, because makers install a massive engine with loads of "reserve power." It's not necessary that you use the power, but you, and more importantly, that Milquetoast liberal next door, "know it's there." In fact, there is less and less "utility" in the extra horsepower as you spend more and more on it, because once you go past 220hp or so, where the hell are you going to use it without ending up in jail? The point is that the extra power is mostly ornamental - not "utilitarian." Remember that peak power/gallon is when the engine runs near peak RPM. So the bigshot in the 500hp M5 BMW is doubly wasteful - most of the time he is demanding the same power as us mortals, but that engine is particulary wasteful in delivering the relatively low power needed in mundane traffic driving.
OK. This is the part where I tell you what is the best kept secret in auto journalism: The "hybrid question" is being posed in exactly the wrong way. It's literally 180 degrees wrong. Why? "Liberals" should be talking about "gas mileage equallity" rather than consumerism. Liberals should be making demands on the rich, not shouldering the load by "choice." That argument frame plays right into the hands of the right wing! Should a small minority of "nice" people "choose" to avoid global warming, while the immoral majority can "choose" to go to hell in a hand basket?
Since at least 1990, there has been a backlash against the "Corporate Average Fuel Economy" NHTSA regime, despite its stellar success in lowering the growth rate of US oil consumption. Some interest groups allied to Bush senior and the auto companies framed the criticism that CAFE defied that all important totem pole of 'Merikun civilisation: "Consumer Choice." CAFE was outlawing rich people's cars!
Hybrid drive gets rid of the "Consumer Choice" rationale that has frozen CAFE increases for nearly twenty years now, and auto companies as well as auto magazines have carefully avoided mentioning that.
Hybrid drive is great at providing vast "reserve power" because you have two power sources rather than just one. Electric motors are uniquely suited to intermittent lead-footing you associate with that asinine jerk blasting around you in traffic, because peak power comes at low electric motor rpm. You get 'instant' power, whereas even Mr. Richy McJerk's M5 requires the engine be revved to the stratosphere to get that 500hp. The rich 'n jerky can then recover some of that battery power used in blasting away from the green light when they invariably jam on the brakes at the red light, since the electric motor becomes a generator and converts the vehicle's kinetic energy into electrical current.
Most importantly, hybrid drive's extra weight and expense doesn't make any sense on a cheap, small, economy car, but on big and expensive models, it becomes a small fraction of the price of the vehicle.
Complexity itself is a virtue in the realm of "conspicuous consumption," so all that extra stuff under the hood becomes another emblem of automotive status - like having a supercharger or an 8 speed transmission. Also, more expensive materials like aluminum or the carbon fiber favored by Amory Lovins can boost performance and gas mileage by lowering weight, but they would be too expensive to employ on cheap models.
The question of whether or not to buy a hybrid has been framed as a "moral" one. In fact, one "consumer" cannot have any leverage whatsoever on global events. To believe so borders on hyper delusion. But then again, it plugs perfectly into the biggest myth in America: "Individualism." Even if you want to make it "personal" the cliche of the hybrid driver should be the exact opposite of what it is now.
"Hybrid cars: perfect for rich, selfish jerks who drive like maniacs."
We should recoil at token measures like tax credits for hybrids. Instead, the focus should once again return to constant, gradual increases in the boring but effective "CAFE" regime. By getting rid of loopholes for SUVs, the market for hybrid drive will take care of itself. Rich, selfish jerks will be forced to buy hybrid drive to maintain their addiction to "reserve power," and most importantly, everyone will be required to help in this noble project of reducing energy consumption.
Hybrids can be implemented in a variety of ways. My Toyota Prius, for example, has a "strong hybrid" system. The electric motor produces perhaps as much as a third of the total power. When the battery is depleted, the car is extremely marginal in performance - zero to sixty in, like, where's the calendar? It's not a matter of me wanting excess performance, believe me. No one drag races a Prius.
Then there's the "Weak Hybrid" approach, such as on the Honda Accord. In that case, the onboard electric gear provides maybe 5% of the total power. That falls into the category of irrelevant technical embellishment which you criticize
Hybrid offers a couple of other options as well. I ran out of gas once and rather than calling the Auto Club or batting my eyelashes at passing cars, I just drove on electric power only to the nearest filling station. Also, it's convenient for me to back in to my garage, and I'd never do that in a fuel-burning car because it'd fill my garage up with exhaust fumes.
I guess the bottom line is, it's all in how you design the system. Ample reserve power is one reason to go to hybrid drive. It's not the only reason. And making cars weigh less is of course a good idea.
February 6, 2006 7:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the response. The idea is not that hybrid drive is "good" or "bad." The idea is that hybrid drive takes away the "consumer choice" argument from the right wing. We would make much more progress towards energy independence simply by raising economy standards for all vehicles.
Hybrid's role would then be to make "guzzlers" like musclecars and SUVs able to meet a higher basic standard.
As you rightly point out, the hybrid drive can be set up in a variety of ways. Lets say I buy GM's upcoming 24mpg hybrid SUV - should I be getting the same tax credit as someone with a 40mpg hybrid car? Or even more bizarre, someone with a 40mpg non-hybrid car would get zilch. It makes no sense. That's why we shouldn't have tax credits for generic 'hybrid' vehicles. Besides, the idea is to save fuel as a NATION, not on an individual basis. That's why the CAFE regime is so much better than tax credits. Oil consumption is a "collective" problem that must be addressed collectively, through CAFE.
You also have a great point that there are other advantages to the hybrid than just fuel economy. However, it's still the case that in pure cost benefit terms, the smaller and cheaper the car, the less hybrid drive is worth the upfront cost because small cars already get good gas mileage, and the low price is of greater importance to the economy oriented buyer.
The idea is to make the ENTIRE new car fleet thriftier. The paradigm of "consumer choice" allows "jerks" a pass on this noble project of decreasing national energy consumption. They can say "I 'choose' to buy this 12mpg truck, thereby helping terrorism and contributing to global warming."
You can't squeeze 50mpg out of a big ol' truck with hybrid drive, but you could make it get 24mpg. It would literally be 100 times better to have 1,000,000 "jerk" truck buyers driving a vehicle that gets 24mpg instead of 12mpg, than to have 10,000 "good" people driving a car that gets 44mpg instead of 32mpg.
The punchline? Nobody in the auto press or auto industry has uttered this unavoidable fact:
Hybrid drive allows CAFE standards to be increased without decreasing the size and/or power of expensive vehicles.
Those who want the excess power or size will have to pay the hybrid piper, but then excess size and power have always been at a premium. It makes more sense on a pure cost/benefit basis, since tacking another $3000 in expense to a $30,000 vehicle represents a mere 10% price boost - that would be double the relative price boost for a small $15,000 economy car where a low purchase price is just as important as high fuel economy.
February 7, 2006 10:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Amory Lovins' vision of a total switchover from oil to a hydrogen based economy ignores the fact that hydrogen is not a "source" of energy, but merely a conduit.
Hydrogen is not available in its natural form in enough quantity to be considered a fuel; it must be manufactured by using electricity to split water molecules. The energy required to do this is more than the amount of energy that can be obtained from burning hydrogen. Where does that energy come from? Fossil fuels, for the most part.
Ironically the best source for hydrogen energy is nuclear power (since it does not produce greenhouse gases), something that Armory and his friends would loathe.
March 27, 2006 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the comment robert.
You are right that Hydrogen is more of a "conduit."
I would advise that you take a look at his rmi.org website. He has this whole vision of putting photoelectric cells on car roofs, trunks and hoods, then you plug the car into the parking lot and sell any excess solar energy back to the building.
It's a pleasant experience reading and listening to Lovins, because he's not all gloom and doom. In fact he's very much a capitalist as he thinks 'the market' is the best place to improve efficiency.
My point here was that the "hypercar" Lovins first concieved of in 1993 was a hybrid, then he switched over to the Hydrogen idea later. In any case, the use of carbon fiber for ultra light weight is the nexus of the 'hypercar' not hydrogen, or hybrid drivetrains.
April 12, 2006 3:39 PM | Reply | Permalink