Now here’s a much better idea, a Prius convertible .

Unlike a lot of gearheads, I don’t hold a grudge against the Toyota Prius. It’s a little bland and utilitarian for my tastes, but I do like the idea of using less gas, and the few times I’ve poked under the hood or driven them, the engineering is quite interesting. Overall though, they’re like Corollas with a geeky drivetrain.

I think that one of the main problems with a lot of the new, greener cars that are out there (and a lot of green efforts for this or that problem) is how they are marketed. They’re sold to you with a strange sense of approbation and duty, they way your mother or 2nd grade teacher would get you to ingest some God-awful medicine because “it’s good for you.” Now how many cars are you going to sell that way? Sure, maybe to hair-shirts like Ed Begley et al, but if you really want to change things (like lessen green house gasses for example), you’re going to have to come up with a better pitch than, “you can’t have any meat if ya don’t eat your pudding.”

So that’s why I like this Prius convertible: it makes a bland and utilitarian car much more fun.

This one was done as a one off by a Prius Chat forum member to the tune of $46K.

True, that’s a lot, but hey, it’s their money, so who am I to quibble … now, if Toyota were to start doing this, and making a hybrid that is more performance oriented, I bet they’d sell.

There’s more photos after the jump.

Continue Reading…

First let’s get the obvious out of the way: Gumpert is pretty funny name, and the Apollo is not the most esthetically pleasing of cars

OK, now that that’s done, seems that the fine folk at Gumpert have added a hybrid drive train to their already prodigiously powered Apollo and are going to race the darn thing at this year’s Nurburgring 24 hour race.

Good for them.

Racing is the best way to prove an engineering concept. It’s also the best way to get the bugs worked out of an engineering concept. And not only that, it’s a great way to sell new engineering concepts to the general public.

I know, hybrids have been more or less accepted by the public at large (except for the knuckle-draggers that believe global warming is some sort of a scam), but what the general public does not see hybrids as is fun or the least bit performance oriented.

The best way to cure that: Racing.

And a good way to go about that is to add a hybrid system to a car that already cranks out 630hp from its twin-turbo V8, put it in the very capable hands of former F1 driver Heinz-Harald Frentzen & longtime DTM racer Dirk Muller and let the beast out on the Nurburgring .

It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out, and not just results-wise.

Well, it’s close.

Remember a while back I wrote a proposition here about and interesting & fun way to make a performance hybrid?

Well, it seems like some enterprising Brits have done about half of that: check out the Thorr Electric Sports Car.

I’m not sure why someone hasn’t done this sooner … the Lotus 7 (and all its variants) are very light cars, so that gives the potential eco-car-geek a good place to start.

Of course, what the fellows at Thorr have done is just a straight electric car, not the train style hybrid I proposed, and so means there’s some compromises.

The first thing I noticed was the weight. Clocking in at 1661 pounds is pretty damn heavy for a Lotus 7 (normally these things weigh around 1200). And the range at a constant 75 MPH is 86.8 miles. And usually range & performance figures for electric vehicles is on the tad optimistic side.

Anyway, it’s a start … get the weight down the range up and bring it in for the cost of a Miata and then you’ll have something.

Following up on Chris’s post from Wednesday about whether a hybrid can be a performance car (I say yes, there’s no reason why they couldn’t be). I have a modest proposal:

Take a Caterham 7 chassis (see picture above), no drivetrain needed, just the differential.

Bolt an electric motor directly to the diff. Don’t mess around, get something like the starter motor out of an ocean going tug. An electric motor with enough torque and power to send a pound of bacon to the asteroid belt.

Next, to the motor you hook up a couple of high performance capacitors and a couple, maybe four, batteries (the caps are for bursts of power, the batteries are for sustained usage).

Hooked up to the batteries (through a controller, natch) is a diesel-fueled generator; you know, something like a little household generator. Fuel it with bio-diesel, and locate it in the engine bay, just on the other side of the fire wall (centralize the mass boys, always centralize the mass). In front of the gen-set goes the batteries, in front of them, goes the capacitors. Continue Reading…

Although they are not known for it, hybrid engines can actually be used to enhance performance, rather than fuel economy. Given the current climate (and fuel prices!) it’s understandable the more successful hybrid cars (i.e. the Toyota Prius) gets more air time, but there have been some performance hybrid cars out there.

What Makes a Hybrid a Hybrid

But first, the basics. What is a hybrid car and what do I mean they can be tuned for performance? A hybrid car is, once you get down to it, a merger of two engines. Normally, one of the engines is gas (or diesel) and the other is an electric motor. There are other hybrids out there, including fuel cell/electric or fuel cell/gas hybrids, but for the most part when someone says hybrid, they mean gas/electric vehicles.

Now, by mating a gas and an electric motor together, you can actually use the strengths of each to complement each other. For instance, electric motors can give you a very good acceleration, because they provide constant power, while gas engines are less efficient. But in constant road conditions (highway traveling), the power supplied by the gas engine is easier to manage (and it’s a lot easier to refuel with gas). The constant drain on a battery at highway speeds just isn’t as efficient.

In city driving (frequent stop and go), you can recharge the battery pack through regenerative braking. Out on the highway, the gas engine is needed to power the battery pack.

BTW, hybrids tend to have very efficient gas engines, so the myth that says if you have a highway commute you shouldn’t buy a hybrid doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. The Prius gets 45 mpg on the highway. Most people would be ecstatic to get half that.

And so, automakers have used hybrid technology to emphasize the two motors strengths. Electric motor powers the car at low speeds, while the gas engine takes over at highway speeds. Put them together and you get a more efficient vehicle. But efficiency in a car can be taken in other directions. Instead of emphasizing fuel efficiency, you can emphasize power efficiency. And that’s just what Honda did with the Accord Hybrid. Continue Reading…