Volvo Hybrid Cars Coming in 2012

Volvo Hybrid Car

Volvo plans plug-in diesel hybrids for 2012

Volvo has said it wants to introduce plug-in hybrid cars from 2012.

Standard hybrid cars have both an electric motor and an internal combustion engine. Energy that would normally be lost under braking is directed towards recharging batteries which are then used to power the electric motor, which kicks in to support the combustion engine under acceleration. Some hybrids are able to run for very short distances at low speeds on battery power alone.

Plug-in hybrids, which as their name suggests, can be charged from the mains while the car is stationary, are able to spend a much greater proportion of a given journey running on electric power; Volvo says that its plug-in hybrids will be able to run for up to about 30 miles on batteries alone. Only beyond that distance, which, according to Volvo, covers the daily needs of about 75% of European drivers, does the combustion engine – in this case, a diesel – play a part.

A diesel plug-in hybrid can be an exceptionally economical and ecologically friendly car but the precise advantages depend on a number of factors, in particular, which fuel is used to generate electricity at the power station, but Volvo thinks its cars will achieve a range of 745 miles while emitting as little as 50g/km of CO2 and consuming as little as 148.6mpg.

By David Wilkins of The Independent Motoring

The natural calamities that recently hit some parts of the world are urgent signs that the shift to the use of hybrid cars from gasoline-powered vehicles is imperative not just in Germany and Europe, but all over the globe. Car manufacturers will hopefully expedite the design and fabrication of these hybrid cars.

Porsche Electric Car Driving In Soon

Porsche 911, hybrid car version coming soon

The vast highway of opportunities in the hybrid cars section for car manufacturers extends to the sports car niche. An electric Porsche sports car and a Ferrari 599 prototype hybrid car are in the works. The Sydney Morning Herald reports on this:

Newly appointed Porsche boss Michael Macht says the German sports car specialist is working on an electric sports car and will expand its suite of petrol-electric hybrid cars to include the iconic 911.

Porsche was quick to prove that the rules had changed under the leadership of new parent Volkswagen.

Porsche showed it is prepared to take bold steps into the relative unknown in an effort to prepare itself for a world of alternative fuels and electric cars.

Speaking at the 2009 Frankfurt motor show, Mr Macht confirmed the company was working on an electric car.

“I am also convinced that one day Porsche will have an electric sports car in its line-up,” he said. “Since this trend towards electric power is unstoppable, our engineers are already working hard on this challenge.”

For an electric Porsche to come to reality, though, he emphasised battery technology would have to progress further. “Everything we have seen in this area has not yet been sufficient to meet our substantial demands, particularly when it comes to battery technology and charge cycles,” said Mr Macht.

“An electric sports car would therefore only make sense for Porsche if it offers the performance and cruising range similar to that of current sports cars in the market.” As with other car makers, Porsche is working on hybrid technology as a stepping stone to a full electric car.

Porsche will have a hybrid version of the Cayenne off-roader on sale in 2010 (there was a Cayenne Hybrid prototype on display at the Frankfurt motor show) closely followed by a hybrid version of the four-door, four-seat Panamera sports car.

Rival Ferrari already has a prototype of its 599 fitted with a hybrid engine, something the brand hopes to have on sale in 2015. Mr Macht also said that Porsche could build a hybrid version of the 911. “Why not?” he asked rhetorically.

The move to consider a hybrid version of the 911 demonstrates how much things have changed under the guidance of Volkswagen.

Just a few months ago Porsche suggested the 911 was unlikely to go down the hybrid route. Executives pointed out that the 911 lived by different rules to the rest of the Porsche family due to its heritage and legendary status in the sports car world.

Porsche insiders are already suggesting the new Volkswagen ownership could be a boon for the proud engineering company, allowing it to take bolder risks and invest heavily in new technologies rather than push for instant profitability.

The underpinnings of the Cayenne off-roader – which Porsche credits for buoyancy during recently challenging economic times – was famously developed and paid for by Volkswagen before being used by Porsche. News: We're healthy, says Porsche.

from The Sydney Morning Herald

Plug-in Hybrid Cars: More Efficient and Environment-Friendlier

Toyota plug-in hybrid car

Car makers today are facing a vast highway of business opportunities in the manufacturing of environment-friendly and fuel efficient cars, particularly the hybrid cars. There can be a lot of options on how to create their hybrid car models. One option is the plug-in hybrid car, which is seen to be more efficient than the regular hybrid car.

BrisbaneTimes.com.au reports on the anticipated arrival in the car market of the plug-in hybrid car:

Hybrids are here but the even more efficient plug-in hybrid car should be here by 2010.

There’s a lot of buzz about hybrid cars, but the next step in the shift to cleaner, greener motoring is the plug-in hybrid.

A plug-in hybrid is effectively an electric vehicle with a small petrol or diesel engine acting as a generator to recharge its batteries.

As the name suggests, a plug-in hybrid car can also be plugged in to a regular power point to be recharged. Research has shown that most people’s daily driving needs rarely goes beyond about 60 kilometres.

The thinking of a plug-in hybrid car is that it will run purely on electricity supplied by the onboard batteries for about 60km. Then it can be recharged overnight, ready for use again the next day.

In such everyday use for short journeys the regular engine would never be used. However, the beauty of a plug-in hybrid is that it also has the regular engine acting as a back-up generator.

When the batteries of a plug-in hybrid start running low the engine starts up and starts charging the batteries. The engine in a plug-in hybrid never actually drives the wheels.

Instead it’s purely a generator used to charge the batteries which, in turn, power the electric motor/s.

One of the criticisms of plug-in hybrid vehicles is that while they may be clean running, just like a tram or electric train they’re effectively transferring the nasty emissions to the power station, which could be running on brown coal or something equally as polluting.

If the electricity is clean – such as hydro-electric or wind power – then the plug-in hybrid equation works effectively, but most of Australia’s electricity is heavily polluting; 50 per cent of carbon-dioxide emissions in Australia come from power stations, while cars and trucks account for about 7 per cent.

In many ways plug-in hybrids are the car makers’ way of forcing the energy debate back on to governments. Many car makers have signalled their intention to build a plug-in hybrid vehicle through various concept vehicles shown at motor shows around the world.

General Motors led the way with its Chevrolet Volt concept car, released at the 2007 Detroit motor show. Volvo followed suit with the ReCharge concept and Nissan has flagged its intention to pursue plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles.

And, of course, Toyota – the producer of the most hybrid vehicles – is trialling a plug-in version of its Prius, something that is in the production pipeline.

from brisbanetimes.com.au

Indeed, the production of environment-friendlier and more fuel efficient hybrid cars should be led not just by car makers, but should be in partnership with the government.

German Chancellor Promotes Hybrid Cars

BMW Hybrid Car Vision at Frankfurt Motor Show

Merkel promotes green cars at Frankfurt Motor Show

German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the Frankfurt Motor Show Thursday with a speech that looked to the future of transportation with electric and hybrid cars.

Merkel said widespread "green" car use was still some time off but that her government was making big investments into programs that would push green technology forward and make the eco-friendly cars more readily available on the market.

"Electro-mobility, electric and hybrid cars are very much the future," she said in her opening speech at the show, which runs until September 27.
There's a lot of interest in Frankfurt in electric-powered cars, like this model from Renault

Merkel also said she hopes Germany will have 1 million electric cars on the road by 2020, which means that "it would really take another generation of car buyers" before this trend becomes mainstream here.

Merkel said she hopes Germany will remain the automotive leader it is as the face of the industry changes. Some Asian car companies have heavily stepped up production of green cars and are on the cutting edge when it comes to green automotive technology.

"If Asian markets take over the lead role and we lose the upper hand in standardization, then we will also lose the markets," Merkel said.

Merkel also had words of support for the general German car industry in general, which has recently found itself embroiled with the European Commission over environmental standards.

"In a free world, it can't be that we prescribe the size of a car," she said, referring to the EU's plans to penalize automakers that produce larger cars that are less fuel efficient. "If the producers of large cars did not exist, the innovation of small ones could not be implemented so quickly."

Though German car companies have are also producing electric and hybrid cars, they rely almost entirely on profits from standard gas models and aren’t looking to jeopardize the health of that sector of industry.

“Germany is playing it smart with their multi facted approach,” Tim Urquhart, an auto analyst at IHS Global Insight, told Deutsche Welle. “They care deeply about green technology and electric cars and the whole bit, but they're going to wait and see how much the trend catches on. When it comes to all this new technology, no one knows what the end game is going to be. Germany’s hedging its bets."

from Deutsche Welle
Editor: Susan Houlton

Any business entity would ensure it's company's profitability whatever it ventures into. Green or hybrid cars are a risk venture worth taking because for sure these hybrid cars will be the wave of the automotive future. Hybrid cars are not immediately a need of direct consumers of cars, but they are really needed in order for our world to last longer.

BMW's Beautiful Vision of a Hybrid Car

BMW Hybrid Car Vision

European carmakers rev up the electro-diesel concept

If you think all hybrid cars are like the Toyota Prius -- mirthless, ugly hair shirts of green conscience -- BMW would like you to meet its Vision: a stealth submarine of a car, lower than a boxing foul, all folded geometry and LED tracer lights. The signature BMW grille glows blue like a reactor cooling pond. The transparent doors open like dragonfly wings.

The all-wheel-drive Vision sport coupe is the Usain Bolt of hybrid cars: zero to 60 mph in under 4.8 seconds, top speed of 155 mph, 356 horsepower, and handling and braking comparable to the company's brain-melting M3 coupe.

Fuel economy: 75 miles per gallon. And you can plug it in.

Santa Monica might never be the same.

The Vision is one of several so-called electro-diesels at the Frankfurt Motor Show that put a typically European spin on Japan's signature eco-tech of hybrids. By combining electric motors and batteries with the huge torque and efficiency of direct-injection turbo- diesels, the European automakers are breeding a species of car that delivers V-8 performance with the fuel economy of mopeds.

Behind the menacing grille of the Vision, there's a small, 1.5-liter, 163-horsepower three-cylinder turbo-diesel engine and a big electric traction motor; arrayed like a capital "I" running down the spine of the car are rows of lithium-polymer batteries. At the rear axle is another electric motor, which gives the car essentially all-wheel drive. Together these components produce a whopping 590 pound-feet of torque, considerably more than your average Lamborghini.

The Vision, which uses batteries developed for Apache attack helicopters, is only an experimental vehicle for now. But "all the components are very realistic," said Philip Koehn, BMW's director of concept vehicle development. The batteries, the diesel components and electric motors are "off the shelf," he said.

Too flashy for you? At the other end of the performance spectrum is Volkswagen's L1 concept, a hyperlight, tandem-seat oil-burner, like a bobsled for the road. Getting its world premiere in Frankfurt, the L1 is powered by a small, two-cylinder turbocharged direct-injection (TDI) diesel engine and a small electric motor.

The L1's marquee number: 170 mpg, or about four times that of a Honda Insight hybrid. If it comes to market as planned in 2013, the VW L1 could claim the title of most fuel efficient passenger car on the road.

It would also be one of the cleanest. On a carbon-gram-per-mile basis -- that's the emissions metric that Europeans are most concerned with -- electro-diesels can outperform the thriftiest gas hybrids on the planet.

In the case of the Vision, BMW says the car produces 99 grams of carbon per kilometer on its own; plug it in and that number drops to 50 g/km.

To compare, a Toyota Prius has carbon emissions of 89 g/km in the European emission test cycle.

Depending on what you call a hybrid, electro-diesels have already arrived. Audi sells two diesel cars that are equipped with small starter/generators and battery packs to give them stop/start capability (the engine shuts down when the car is put in neutral).

However, Americans think of hybrids as cars with powerful electric motors that can move at low speed on battery power alone. The first such diesel car to come to market will be the Peugeot 3008 HYbrid4. Arriving in spring 2011, this mid-size sport-utility vehicle is expected to get about 62 mpg and produce 99 g/km of carbon.

A HYbrid4 version of the company's RCZ sports coupe is all but certain.

For years European automakers, who are the acknowledged masters of turbo-diesel technology, have quietly stewed as Asian companies reaped the green-image benefits of hybrid technology.

On a cost and emissions basis, German automakers argued, turbo-diesel engines are more efficient. One reason is that diesel fuel itself has a higher energy content than gasoline.

Still, hybrids offer some advantages. They recover kinetic energy as they brake or coast and use it to charge the batteries. They also save fuel by shutting down the internal-combustion engine when the vehicle comes to a stop. And they can move on electric power alone at low speeds, where internal combustion engines are less efficient.

So why not combine the best of both technologies?

Cost, mostly.

By Dan Neil
Los Angeles Times

Nissan's Leaf Electric Car Hums Futuristic Sound

The science fiction of the past becomes the reality of the future. The future has arrived today. The present was the future of the past. With this development in the automobile industry, it seems that those flying cars we see in sci-fi movies are but just a few years away from reality. Like these hybrid cars.

At present, car owners fuss over their car audio system, err, audio-video system. But soon, they would also be concerned about their cars' "sound system" from outside, or the "hum" of their cars. But this time, it would not be any ordinary hum, it would be "futuristic noise. Nissan sound engineers have developed "beautiful noise" for their Leaf electric car. See article below from Los Angeles Times.

Nissan Gives Silent Electric Cars 'Blade Runner' Appeal
A campaign backed by automakers and some lawmakers to make electric or hybrid cars noisier in a bid to increase safety for pedestrians and cyclists has taken a strange, “Blade Runner”-type twist.

Nissan sound engineers have announced that the Leaf electric car set for release next year will emit a “beautiful and futuristic” noise similar to the sound of flying cars -- or “spinners” -- that buzz around 2019 Los Angeles in Ridley Scott’s dystopian thriller based on a Philip K. Dick science fiction novel.

“We decided that if we’re going to do this, if we have to make sound, then we’re going to make it beautiful and futuristic,” Toshiyuki Tabata, Nissan’s noise and vibration expert, told Bloomberg. “We wanted something a bit different, something closer to the world of art.”

Automakers since 2007 have been exploring ways to increase the sound of electric or hybrid vehicles, which run almost silently at low speeds, after concerns were expressed by advocates for the blind and for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. Nissan says its system would turn off after the car reaches 12 mph, when, it says, tire noise is deemed loud enough to warn a pedestrian or cyclist that a car is approaching.

An act going through Congress -- The Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2008 -- would require a federal ruling on whether a minimum sound level for hybrid and electric cars is needed and, if so, for the Department of Transportation to set that limit. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will release a report on the issue in January. And Nissan, alongside Toyota and Honda, has responded to concerns in Japan over sound-emission safety, and in a combined report with Japanese government agencies will present its findings later this year.

Some reports suggest that in the future, car owners will download a sound for their car the way many consumers buy ring tones for their cellphones. No word yet on whether electric vehicles will -- a la “Blade Runner” replicants -- get implanted memories, though.

by Craig Howie

Frankfurt Motor Show Tinkers With BMW Hybrid Car

2008 GMC Yukon Hybrid Car

Frankfurt Motor Show Tinkers BMW With Hybrid Car

Frankfurt Motor Show: BMW Vision EfficientDynamics concept car
This extraordinary machine is a vision of a BMW supercar for the year 2020.

While BMW, Mercedes and Audi normally match each other move-for-move, this is an entirely different idea from the big-engined and thirsty Mercedes SLS and Audi R8. It's compact, light and almost unbelievably efficient.

The drivetrain consists of a mid-mounted three-cylinder 163bhp diesel engine, boosted by a hybrid electric motor. It goes through a six-speed dual-clutch transmission to the rear wheels.

But there's an extra electric motor driving the front wheels. This boosts total system power to 365bhp for short periods of acceleration, and gives the car all-wheel-drive traction and the performance to match today's BMW M3.

Yet the CO2 emissions figure is just 99g/km. It can also run emissions-free as a plug-in hybrid for short journeys.

Encouragingly, BMW says all these drivetrain components are well into the testing phase and they are confident of their practicability for production.

The body is, say the designers, 'layered'. The panels sit proud of the understructure, and a layer of air goes into the gap and allows very fine aerodynamic control. It reduces turbulence, controls lift and manages engine and battery cooling.

BMW also launched two production petrol hybrid cars, a high-performance X6 and a super-economical 7-series. But these are mainly aimed at the USA – in Britain we buy our economical BMWs as diesels.

By Paul Horrell of Telegraph.co.uk

When we think of taking care of the environment, we think of the future and the long-term effects of environmentally hazardous human activities and inventions. It is a good thing that automobile companies nowadays include environment-friendly innovations in their visions for their cars in the pipeline.

HYBRID CARS DEFINED

Hybrid car Honda Insight Concept

Before we start comparing different hybrid cars, let us first define what haybrid cars are we talking about in this site. Technically, according to Wikipedia,

"a hybrid vehicle is a vehicle which uses two or more distinct power sources to move the vehicle." This includes simple means of transport such as mopeds and electric bicycles, and heavy vehicles like trains, ships and other heavy vehicles which use two or more distinct power sources."

But Wikipedia clarifies that,

"When the term hybrid vehicle is used, it most often refers to a Hybrid electric vehicle. These encompass such vehicles as the AHS2 (Chevrolet Tahoe, GMC Yukon, Chevrolet Silverado, Cadillac Escalade, and the Saturn Vue), Toyota Prius, Toyota Camry Hybrid, Ford Escape Hybrid, Toyota Highlander Hybrid, Honda Insight, Honda Civic Hybrid and others. A petroleum-electric hybrid most commonly uses internal combustion engines (generally gasoline or Diesel engines, powered by a variety of fuels) and electric batteries to power electric motors. There are many types of petroleum-electric hybrid drivetrains, from Full hybrid to Mild hybrid, which offer varying advantages and disadvantages.

In addition to vehicles that use two or more different devices for propulsion, some also consider vehicles that use distinct energy sources or input types ("fuels") using the same engine to be hybrids, although to avoid confusion with hybrids as described above and to use correctly the terms, these are perhaps more correctly described as dual mode vehicles."