Inhabitat

why? because they could. I dislike hummers as much as the next guy but you can\’t slam them for developing this car. The biggest complaint of them for the past 5 years is that they\’re gas hogs . . . . now, not so much if one buys this. Though I would be intrigued to see how the materials footprint of this stacks up against another plug-in hybrid. I can\’t imagine they left everything stock; there must have been some downgrade in weight to reach those efficiencies.

This is a concept car. The initial demand is for work vehicles, pickups and suvs used by traveling people. Then there are the families that need a larger vehicle for car pools etc.

So essentially it is a battery (coal) powered Hummer with a range of 40 miles that still uses half a gallon of gas.

Sure it will no longer be a gas hog but it is always a nice picture when you have the person behind the steering wheel of one these vehicles texting on their phone and they slam into the family sedan. That is one way to keep the population in check. In fact in my area, Texas, people love to put cattle guards on their trucks, SUVs and Hummers – in the city. It’s fashionable right now to look “rural” while in the city. Their nicknamed “baby killer grills” around here.

And now for “the rest of the story…”

How do these guys at Raser come up with their 100 MPG? Simple, they claim that if you drive 60 miles per day that the first 40 is powered by electricity and the next 20 is provided by their 33 MPG onboard engine. Therefore, only 1/3 of the distance traveled was provided by gas at 33 MPG, so it’s as though you got the equivalent of 3 times 33 MPG, which equals 100 MPG.

Now let’s see what Raser isn’t telling you. First, their 200KW electric motor costs MONEY to operate! How much, you ask? Easy. If you drive 40 miles on electric power — half in the city and half on the freeway — you will spend about 1 hour driving (20 miles @ 30 MPH = 40 minutes, plus 20 miles @ 60 MPH = 20 minutes). Raser’s 200KW motor is rated at 100KW continuous, so 1 hour of driving will likely consume roughly 100KWH worth of electricity (100KW times 1 hour). The average cost of electricity in the U.S. is 11.5 cents/KWH; therefore 100KWH costs you $11.50, got it? That’s eleven dollars and fifty cents to go forty miles!!! Luckily, you get to go the next 20 miles on good old gasoline @ roughly 33 MPG, which would consume 6/10ths of a gallon of gas if the gas engine powered the vehicle directly. Unfortunately, it first has to power a generator, which then charges batteries, which then powers the electric motor. Still, lets be generous and assume that this gas engine takes you 20 miles on 2/3 of a gallon of gas, which costs $1.67 (2/3 times $2.50).

So the grand total to travel 60 miles in Raser’s shiny EREV (Extended Range Electric Vehicle) only cost you $13.17!!! Isn’t that great? Of course, you would’ve only spent $5.00 if you could’ve driven all of that distance powered by their good gas-mileage IC engine. Or you could’ve paid $7.50 in any vehicle that averaged 20 MPG. However, where’s the fun in that? Look, you’re driving a high tech “EREV”… ooooh! One that cost you an extra $25K, and that added an extra 1,000 pounds of weight to the vehicle. Nice extras, huh?? BTW, did I forget to mention that their 200KW motor only provides 134HP in continuous mode? But wait you say, it gives 268HP at peak operation. Yes, that’s about what the new Ford Taurus provides (except for the Ford Taurus SHO, which gives 350HP). So you’ll be riding around in your new EREV Hummer in a reduced 134-268HP powertrain… can you say “put, put, put”?

Does anyone see anything wrong with this?? Now do you see why Raser omitted mentioning the cost of electricity and only focused on their fuzzy-math MPG gas equivalent calculation? In reality, at today’s prices, their Hummer only got the equivalent of 11.4 MPG ($13.17 divided by $2.5/gallon = 5.27 gallons, and 60 miles/5.27 gallons = 11.4 MPG)!!!!!!!!

The fact is that electric vehicles have NOTHING to offer in solving America’s transportation needs. They are not cost-efficient nor are they technologically superior. The demand for electricity in the U.S. is expected to grow by a taxing 25% over the next decade. Raser’s Hummer draws 100KWH of electricity in order to travel it’s first 40 miles, which is well over 3 times the power that your house draws in a complete day! Talk about an instant energy crisis! It’s a good thing that battery technology is still limited and that they added an IC engine to extend the range, otherwise their Hummer would’ve used 150KWH of electricity, or more than 5 times the daily draw of an average home!!

This conveniently omitted information might explain why Raser has also entered the geothermal power market… they realize that switching to EV’s would require well over a 300% + increase to America’s annual electric power consumption.

My question is this, why couldn’t Raser be upfront and honest with us about the true costs of Electric Vehicles? Afterall, consumers have shown that they are willing to pay more for efficient green power.

Could their hesitancy in telling us the whole story be due to the fact that EV’s are neither cost-efficient nor green compared to standard IC engine technology?

To inventioneering comment June 5/09
The issue is to stop the use of oil for transportation. That large sucking sound is not oil pouring into the US but hundreds of billions of dollars yearly flowing out to foreign countries (trillions so far). You focus on the small picture (still important) and forget the big picture of the loss of wealth, jobs and technology for the US.