Hey all,


Just got finished reading an article from Popular Mechanics on a company called Hybrid Technologies that, amongst other cars, offers a Mini Coo per conversion to an all-electric powertrain. You can read about it here. But they say it offers ~80 mph cruising speed with ~150 mile range. Sounds almost like the perfect commuter. The only downside is that they take out the back seats to make it happen, but i wonder with the added length of the Clubman, would they be able to keep all 4 seats?

I guess the other downside would be that it costs roughly $60,000.

I think they can convert you're current cooper or let you order one straight up. I know the Minis are wonderful on gas, but with prices blowing past $4/gallon and not looking back, i wonder when that $30,000 premium will seem like a steal.

Here's another link to the actual company site, for those that want some more details...

 

To figure out the worth/cost of gas vs all electric.....

If the tank took 11 gallons (est) it would take 681 fill-ups to equal $30,000 at $4/gal...I think that come out to 14 years of fillups figuring you fill up once a week-ish...

Now...what's your electricity bill go up to when you plug it in every two days for how long? Now....if I could get 350 miles a fill-up to match what the mini is already getting and still have the HP and fun factor I think I could mak that happen.

But.....if you are shelling out say $400/mo on a car payment costing you around 30k to start...figure you will be doubling the payment or at least $200 more a month upping it to $600 which is already half of what you were paying for gas per month at a fillup per week (around $190).

I may be wrong,...haven't had my coffee yet.

Plus side is the newer batteries used by Honda, the customers are paid back $200 a battery when you exchange them and typically the newer batteries will last between 150,000 and 200,000 miles..figure around 10 years of 15,000 miles/year driving.

Yes? ok...coffee.

 

 

So instead of using oil in your car you are using coal from the power plant. Does not sound very environmentally friendly to me. I don't think electric cars are going to catch on as an alternative fuel until we get a clean source of power.

 

how you get that power is a good question. but it looks like nuclear power is making a comeback...

and in all fairness it seems that coal plants have increased their 'green' factor with cleaner burning / more air scrubbers.

i also wonder what it takes to charge it. is this something that a dedicated solar panel on top of the garage could accomplish? if the charge rate / load is small enough there are a few alternative options.

just some more thoughts. i'm happy someone's thinking about motorvation without gasoline at least. the more people out there thinking about it means the sooner we come to a viable solution...

 

Our club just went there for a personal tour and it was amazing what they were doing. They actually buy MINIs from the factory and sell the engines back to MINI.

 

ALL of the money I pay my utility company for electricity goes to low-impact hydro-electric dams. I do not support coal, nuclear, wood, oil, or natural gas in my electric bill. Irving oil has begun studying tidal power that will bring electricity to Maine and the Maritime provinces, and we have more windmills going up all the time in this state. In fact, I think we have the largest windmill farm in New England. So it's coming... slowly.

The Chevy Volt looks promising, and Nissan expects to have an electric car by 2010. I will certainly consider getting one if they're affordable and if my wife will drive it instead of her 04 MC.

 

I picked this up at the New York Auto Show last year

 

Pretty impressive 0-60 in 6 seconds. Especially since the Prius manages a 0-60 in a whopping 11 seconds

 

They've only increased the perception of cleanliness via the "Clean Coal" marketing campaing will fighting tooth and nail against any mandate to use the very same techniques that could clean their exhaust stream, retrofit programs for existing coal-fired power plants, or CO2 sequestration. Guess the marketing is working....

Matt

ps, you can order this car at Wall-Mart of all places. If you're in Las Vegas, I think Hybrid Technologies has offices there.

 

You are sadly mistaken about the "greenness" of hydro-power. Hydro-power has caused the near extinction of several species. Damming the waterways in the Pacific Northwest to accommodate hydro-power generation has virtually destroyed the Pacific salmon population.

 

EVERY energy harvesting technique has some downside. Really, go nuke! Sure it craps up small geographic regions, but then pretty much every thing we do does this. Somehow, we'd rather screw up everywhere a little bit as opposed to some small areas a lot. Totally counter to the rest that we do.

Matt

 

I would love to have an electric MINI. If you guys could spread the word & talk a few million people into buying one then that might bring the price down to where I could afford one. Thanks

 

I guess I misspoke. I actually shouldn't have used the word "dam" in the original comment. It's just "low impact hydroelectric". So no dams, and no harming of the salmon.

 

Sorry to get a little off topic. I do support renewable energy but the amount required is much more than solar or wind can provide alone. I wouldn't mind seeing nuclear power plants replacing coal plants. Look at France, most of their power comes from nuclear and they don't have the "doomsday" meltdown that the public is afraid of.

 

4.2 billion.
That's how many rooftops you'd have to cover with solar panels to displace a cubic mile of oil (CMO), a measure of energy consumption, according to Ripudaman Malhotra, who oversees research on fossil fuels at SRI International. The electricity captured in those hypothetical solar panels in a year (2.1 kilowatts each) would roughly equal the energy in a CMO. The world consumes a little over 1 CMO of oil a year right now and about 3 CMOs of energy from all sources.
Put another way, we'd need to equip 250,000 roofs a day with solar panels for the next 50 years to have enough photovoltaic infrastructure to provide the world with a CMO's worth of solar-generated electricity for a year. We're nowhere close to that pace.
But don't blame the solar industry. You'd also have to erect a 900-megawatt nuclear power plant every week for 50 years to get enough plants (2,500) to produce the same energy in a year to equal a CMO. Wind power? You need 3 million for a CMO, or 1,200 a week planted in the ground over the next 50 years. Demand for power also continues to escalate with economic development in the emerging world.

*******************************

The above is from http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9928068-54.html It's a good read to get an idea on just how daunting a problem this is.

Matt