How do you make the electricity? That's the point. He has a separately located engine that is burning some kind of fuel.
He is essentially got a hybrid/hybrid. Hybrid engine hybrided with an electric car.
All he has really done is added extra batteries. And a charging circuit from the wall, about as revolutionary as filling up his tires to get better mileage (which really does give you better mileage). But in reality is more of 3 card Monty scam. Look I’m only using x gallons of gas from over here, distracting you from over there where he is getting the equivalent of 3x gallons of gas.
I also believe if you read the article that that 250 mpg only works for 20 miles. So long as your commute is less than 20 miles your fine, on a daily basis. Once you drive more than that you start getting into your issue of, peak versus sustained like you mentioned. His peak is in the first 20 miles, after that he goes down to LESS than a normal Prius because he has the extra weight of batteries to carry.
In essence it's the same argument for/against an electric car. In some cases it's workable, but all around for most people, it's not a good compromise.
Then you have to factor in the energy/fuel costs for the electricity, which is not done in this mythical 250 mpg which is Rich and my point.
On top of that you have to factor in the energy and environmental impact of the batteries. As a Segway owner you well know that the batteries don't last forever. That 20 miles would soon fall to 18, then 15, at some point they are no longer worth the effort and start hindering the overall mileage. Time to replace them. If we assume the charging circuit costs $200, that means he's got a $2,800 periodic battery replacement. Worse case scenario every year, best case every 2 years maybe as much as 3.
But yes he is just looking at the gas at the pump, and that is the problem. Would you say I could get 300 mpg if I spent a lot of time siphoning gasoline out of other peoples gas tanks? I mean I'm only buying X gallons at the pump. Leaving aside that I steal 6 X gallons from other people.
It's all well and good to find ways to find more efficiency, but ignoring the math is not one.
Congrats on the Insight, your doing much better than most (based on the gauge, you ever tracked it on gas purchased?). I'm betting that you do a lot of city driving, that's where hybrids perform best. If you did any long haul driving that would drop significantly. But there are standard Internal combustion engines that can approach what you’ve done. You hadn’t driven them until then because you didn’t want to be seen in public driving one, for instance the Yugo, or the Le Car. The 1983 Renault Alliance got 36mpg City 50+ mpg Highway, Long before Hybrid cars were even thought of.
It’s all somewhat complicated. You have to factor in all the different variables and energy sources, not just picking one. More importantly can it scale up. Anyone in CA will tell you that our electricity generating capacity is not even enough to meet current demands, what happens when 250 Million people start plugging their cars into the walls. I could power a car by scavenged junk wood from my town, but not everyone in my town could do that. More importantly, we currently have no way to generate electricity that is any better in any aspect than burning gasoline in your car, and it is not as efficient. If it was electric cars would be taking off by now. I mean modification of my cars to 100% electric wouldn’t be hard at all, nor would it be expensive. But I wouldn’t want the performance loss, the reduced range, or the lower efficiency. Nor would I want to spend thousands of dollars on batteries every couple of years.
Fact of the matter. For a motorized vehicle there is currently no fuel better than gasoline or diesel, nor anything on the horizon. There is nothing that comes close to the amount of energy per volume than diesel or gasoline. As a point of reference. If you can convert your car to Liquid Hydrogen your gas tank would have to be approximately 3 times larger than it is now, never mind the safety considerations.
This is a very interesting link in regards to that.
http://xtronics.com/reference/energy_density.htm
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