Some good news about the new Jetta

(sorry to jump in late to this discussion)
fuel cells have immense problems. All of what I've read indicates that
this is a huge red herring
- there's no infrastructure for hydrogen. Yes, you can use any
hydrocarbon, but then you're not getting all the benefits of the fuel
cell
- there fuel cell technology is nowhere near reaching practicality
- production of hydrogen is energy expensive

On the topic of this discussion, there's been alot of talk on plug-in
vehicles and their limited range. The current thinking is that you'd
make the plug-in vehicle a "super hybrid". As noted, the Prius Plus is
like that. You make the batter pack larger and plug it in overnight.
That might give you a run-time of 50 miles. Enough for most shopping
trips and commuting one way. Then you plug in at work for the commute
home.

However, the great thing about the Plus is that it's still got the fuel
engine so you don't have to worry about limited range. If you drain
down the batteries, then you're back on the conventional engine and no
worse off than a normal hybrid except for an extra hundred pounds of
batteries.

The problem I see with this is as mentioned by another poster - energy
transmission losses. Currently, with our large electric grid, the
transmission losses average 7.2%
http://www.answers.com/topic/electri...r-transmission
which isn't really that bad. As the country moves to local
microgeneration plants, we'll be better off.

Finally, once the companies get their act together and use diesels in
the hybrids, that will improve efficiency substantially. If the Prius
is now getting 50mpg (US), then one might expect to get 80mpg with a
diesel Prius.

Note that the national goal is what they're calling the 500 mpg car.
That's a mainly plug-in hybrid electric that gets an effective 500 mpg.

>
> Note that the national goal is what they're calling the 500 mpg car.
> That's a mainly plug-in hybrid electric that gets an effective 500 mpg.
>
Yes, and according to the announcements I've seen on the internet, the
California group that I mentioned previously is well on their way to
achieving that goal with their Prius plug-in hybrid which they call the
Prius +. Reports state that current fuel usage for the Prius + already at
180 MPG, and just think, no gasoline consumption for local trips, yet
unlimited range on the open road.

A company called Valence Technology Inc is directly involved with their
advanced battery technology, and a report about it from "Business Wire"
dated March 29, 2005 is available on the internet at
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?sect...ue&newsid=8032