For all you Jeep fans - Concept Renegade

G'day Willem,

well now, what would you do? Bypass the fuse or replace it with a larger one? he he.....

Fencing wire makes a good fuse


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Interesting, but I doubt it. I think the inevitable energy loss would mean it must take more diesel to charge the batteries for the range this would give rather than just running on a diesel motor in the first place. And the point of electric motors is to overcome the costs of fuel increases anyway, so carrying a genny will only add to the problem. Plus, all the electric vehicles do whatever they can to cut weight. I just can't see an electric 4WD vehicle for serious bush work.

They'll probably build the motors with brushes, just to keep the spares profits soaring along.

Probably will be $3000 for a set of brushes and the major service will include commutator cleanup :)

I have seen this technology work, its easily feasable but I really feel car making companies have to be legislated all the way, they are lazy to the enth degree. Airbags, seatbelts and I am sure other stuff has all been pushed first by governments. In terms of energy efficiency diesel electric still wins out, the toyotas prius is not a great example of how far you can go, but at least they are doing somthing - thanks to goverments laws. There is a 3rd party 1.9L petrol electric surburban in the US doing 30 mile a gallon up from 15 mpg with the 5.7 v8, it out accelerates/tows the v8. This is a first attempt, imagine what a car company can do with the right motivation - in fact they were motivated by california for a while and we saw hybrids, the ford think, holden ev1 etc all ground breaking cars.

forgot to point out that when a diesel is designed to rev at 1 single rpm pushing out best effieiency vs peak power you get an engine which will out last and out economise any engine which needs to try and have torque at the right points, power at the right points matched with gears and all that other hard stuff, also trannys can take 30% of the power through inefficiencies, take all that away and you have far greater effiniency, electric tranmission is such a superior idea its not even remotely competitive, electric motors dont need trannys at all as they have power and torque all over the shop not just in one small band (of course you design an electric motor with maths voltsxamps=watts so you work out the power you want and work backwards)

I don't agree that all car companies have to be legislated all the way.

For mine, there are two types of car companies, the innovators (who develop things such as ESP, seat belts, hydrogen fuelled vehicles, etc) and the laggards, those who have to be forced even to fit seat belts by Governments.

For most safety and engine developments, the Europeans are the clear leaders, and the Americans and Japanese are behind. ( Please don't say Toyota leads because of the Prius )

BMW, Audi, VW, Merc, PSA (E&OE) are the leaders in my book.

The Americans are waking up now and working on new fuel technology and are beginning to rave about Euro diesels and smaller cars.

But governments and car companies are severely influenced by the fuel companies and will continue to be so until all the oil is gone. Fore evidence of thisn just look at the fuel we are dished up here in Aus - it's absolute junk compared to the rest of the world, causing more pollution than better fuel would cause.

I completely agree about toyota and leaders, it hacks me off to no end seeing the europeans bring out new technology, fumble around perfecting it, or finding out if the market wants it, take loads of flack from reporters, occasssionally make big stuff ups and sometimes make a massive breakthrough. 10 to 20 years later toyota picks up this piece of technology and you never hear the end of the stink as they push chit hyundai have been giving away for 5 years. Then we have to hear about how reliable toyota are. But in then end that is the way of the marketing winner! have toyota stopped advertising free air yet? Of all the japs I would say nissan and mazda take the biggest risks and although this does turn up crap models occassioanlly I respect that.

So anyway I love bmw, merc to a lesser extent not because of brilliance but more athestics, and all the rest of that mob (dont forget porsche).

BMW are pushing ICE hydrogen which I think makes more sense that chitty fuel cells which dont work.* And as for oil companies, there is a lot of heresay and I am sure they basicly run the show but I dont know where all the links are.

To me the idea of technology which is available now to help "save the world" but is not relieased due to better/bigger profits is obscene.

I still can't see that it can be possible to use diesel to produce electricity to power a vehicle without energy loss. ie, I would have thought that the laws of physics would make it impossible for such a system to be more efficient than a stand alone diesel engine. Prius etc use momentum to generate electricity in the stop start conditions around town. On the highway, their fuel efficiency only comes from all the weight saving and smooth body shape. Fuel advantages of a Prius travelling on interstate highways is minimal. I see no sign of a new technology suitable for the kind of needs we have in the outback.The best I am aware of is the Europen technology for turning natural gas into diesel. Pity the previous Canberra mob were so keen on selling our gas reserves overseas on long term ultra cheap contracts.

some of that I agree with, a car cruising at 100kph torque converter locked in and on CC is best case senario and this is where an electric has its toughest competition in efficiency. The fact is although some people travel interstate more than others the average trip is still only a few km in Aus and people generally work well within the limits of a low range ev (low range meaning 50km or under while most modern evs are getting 300 to 500km per charge).

If you look at the losses of ICE to generator to electric motor its not to bad (no tranny and electricity supplied to the motor is convertered at over 90% efficiency), when batts are introduced it starts to go downhill a bit but super capacitor banks have helped here a lot too for rapid regen and usage. On freeway driving you will not be using batts, you will use the generator full time after the batts drain initially.

Pug have just brought out the worlds first diesel hybrid and it uses somewhere around 3.5L per 100 with solid performance. This is obviously a small car so very easy to criticize when you want to be in an LC but it is still proof in the pudding. When you look at plug in hybrids, taking into account your yearly interstate travels where you could be using only a little less than a very efficient modern car, combined with regular type usage along with charging the car at home, you see economy a lot like toyotas plug in which are getting 150mph and better. The pug as an plug in hybrid would do somewhere in the vicinity of 1L or less per 100km. I know this could be seen as cheating but the result is exactly the same when you see your fuel bill.

So the reality is, plug in hybrid diesels are probably the best of the best with massive fuel cuts even when taking into account the cruising efficiency of a normal ICE.

Yes, I follow that. I just think it is not relevant technology for use in Oz outback. We need to carry big heavy loads on chassis busting road conditions. We need to travel very long distances. You just can't do that with the kind of lightweight personal city transport solutions pug and prius etc are using to gain their fuel efficiences. And if we think 4Wd will have a problem, this pales into insignificance compared to the problems the aviation industry is starting to have to deal with. Some British analysts have recently claimed that the age of cheap mass air travel is about to finish and only the very wealthy will be able to travel by air in 10 years time.
Mind you, if the climate change forecasts are right, it might not be such a problem. Instead of having to drive thousands of Kms to get to the desert, it will be just a quick couple of 100 kms to our outer outer suburbs.

That air travel thing is a massive wake up call. It so hard to imagine all these forecasts actually taking place. If any of these things happen I think we will all make willing life style changes.

Maybe they will bring back zeplins, I think lighter than air craft are possibly the only way of implementing electric/hybrid air travel. I wonder if the whole top was covered in solar panels if they would not be to heavy and also provide enough power, also can it could above the cloud line for lots of sun.

Yes you could be right about Zeppelins (air ships) but everybody is in such a rush these days and airships at the present time are rather slow.
Technology on air ships has advanced a great deal in the past few years and no longer rely on the gas to lift them. Their canopy structure, to give it a better name, is aerodynamic and it is this that gives it the lift with the aide of the engines.
A great deal of the fuel used in aeroplanes is used to get it of the ground but in airships it is not.