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by trhway 3912 days ago
>But the Prius combines both technologies and gets 40% thermal efficiency

well, you can get an even better ICE with relatively simple improvements. In some sense there is just no business case for it as metal-air batteries would probably beat all the other options for passenger cars in near future.

>Many think that hybrids and plug-in hybrids are a bridge technology to a pure EV future. But the future may end up being a lot more similar to the present than expected. Maybe the typical car purchase in the future will be a 100 mpg hybrid with 60 mile plug-in battery range as an option.

kind of. Small personal cars will go EV (typical secondary and metal-air batteries). Starting with pickup trucks and into the big ones - will be hybrids with various plugin (probably with metal-air or similar) options.
1 comments
toomuchtodo 3912 days ago
> well, you can get an even better ICE with relatively simple improvements.

You really can't. Note the VW emissions scandal. We've already hit the wall regarding how much energy we can squeeze out of a unit of liquid fuel (most of the energy gets wasted as heat).

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trhway 3912 days ago
>We've already hit the wall regarding how much energy we can squeeze out of a unit of liquid fuel (most of the energy gets wasted as heat).

far from it. Just for example - the gas turbine reaches 50+% efficiency and in sequence hybrids there is no limitations which killed gas turbine car 50 years ago. Of course gas turbine is expensive, so we aren't going this way.

>Note the VW emissions scandal.

A BigCo stuck in old ways tells nothing about what is technologically possible. I'd say you can't do worse than current typical gas or diesel engine which basically hasn't changed for 100+ years :) Even well known Atkinson cycle was implemented en-mass only recently. Once i file my patents, i'll tell you in more details about other efficient designs and improvements :)

Without the efforts like CAFE and CA emission/efficiency requirements, we'd still be stuck with 20% efficient carburetor gas ICE. The increase of the regulatory pressure creates market opportunity for efficient designs, and you'll see what will come when CAFE hits 50mpg :)

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