mikey mags
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- NY
im doing a project for school about hybrid cars and i decided to market one for jeep. I was wondering what people would think about a hyrid jeep vehicle????
hybrid jeep??
- Thread starter mikey mags
- Start date
TheBlueSub
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- florida
what kind of jeep?
mikey mags
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- NY
maybe a new wrangler or possibly converting a cherokee to hybrid
TheBlueSub
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- florida
i would drive one a xj would also be lighter what size motor/ouput would it have??
mikey mags
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- NY
i would try to mate this electric motor and batteries to the I6
TheBlueSub
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- florida
so it would have basically I6 power or more/or less?? i know your doing a school project but i am just curious
mikey mags
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- NY
yea it woul dhave I6 power when it is needed. When the vehicle is engage in 4H or 4L the electric engine would kick in as the vehicle is crwaling at low speeds and needs minimal power to move and climb and the I6 would start when the Vehicle is trying to climb or crawl over a rock where more power is needed. Do you think this is a good idea?....i know how alot of guys complain that they waist alot fo gas just ideling and crawling
TheBlueSub
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- florida
ya or sitting in traffic
i like this idea y
ou sir deserve the noble prize
i like this idea y
ou sir deserve the noble prize
mikey mags
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- NY
yeaa now i just have to figure out a way to actually do it for real...drawing it up and writing it down is easy....gas mileage on the I6 is terrible...you never know, if i actually attmept this design i might market it
TheBlueSub
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- florida
good plan i ahven't the slightest idea on this subject
mikey mags said:
Not to discourage you, but I don't think you'll find a lot of takers.
Hybrids have a lot of disadvantages for off-road vehicles, but the main ones would be the additional weight imposed by carrying batteries, as well as the extra complexity of essentially two disparate drivetrains that somehow need to be linked together. This also brings up the question of how to package both systems in a vehicle that was never designed for more than one.
What might be interesting would be to present the class with a comparison between modern (note the emphasis) diesel technologies and hybrids. Might open a few eyes.
Rust Heap
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Chicago, IL
I think that 4wheeler magazine did an article on a full electric landcruiser. It was trail only and had a gas tow rig. Nice thing about electric motors is max torque at 1rpm. That may lead to breakage though too. Build one up and let me know how it works. Electric conversions are $$$$$$$$$$$$$
creeperjeep
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Cape Cawd
best way yet ive seen to improve mpg haha... cant wait till they come out with a kit for this onecreeperjeep said:
klonestar
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- White Mtns. New Hampshire
Is 5-90 making a wiring kit for those yet? 
XJ Jeepin Girl
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Colorado Springs, CO
mikey mags said:
I'm sure Jeep, just like every other car manufacturer, is thinking about hybrid solutions, or they already have some sort of prototype in the making. If they ever came out with a Jeep like that, I'd sure as hell look into buying one if it was any good.
XJ Jeepin Girl said:
God, I hope not. Hybrids are the biggest fraud perpetrated on the car-buying public in the last 50 years; they should be looking into getting their diesels onto the market.
Here're some of the problems with hybrids:
- Two separate drivetrains, each with their own multiple points of failure. This also means higher running costs in terms of maintenance, and vehicles that can only be diagnosed and repaired at a dealer.
- Some fairly complex software is required to make them operate in harmony. There's another point of failure, and one that can be harder to correct than mechanical issues.
- Batteries. What happens to them in eight, ten years' time when they're expended? How will they be recycled or disposed of? Does the consumer eat the cost of replacement, or will the automaker subsidise them? Is the entire vehicle (which is likely to be otherwise-serviceable) scrapped at this point?
- Climate. Batteries don't like the cold. I wish I could find the issue of the car magazine that drove an Insight around (IIRC) Detroit in the winter; it had a hard time generating sufficient power to move itself efficiently and I'd like to be able to quote this more than anecdotally.
- Energy expended in manufacturing. Two drivetrains plus batteries (in addition to the rest of the vehicle) require more raw materials and energy to produce than a conventional vehicle.
- Design inefficiency. Two drivetrains plus batteries equals more weight than in a comparable standard-drivetrain vehicle. This leads to reduced economy over a less-complex drivetrain.
- Bogus MPG claims. Consider for a moment how average MPG claims are rated for hybrids: they're calculated when the vehicle is also running in electric-only mode. Which doesn't make sense, because at this point your fuel consumption is effectively zero MPG - if you're not using the fuel, you can't measure its consumption.
- Foreign oil dependency. Hybrids do bugger-all to free us from having to import oil as long as the gas that goes in the tank is still made from oil brought in from somewhere else. Yeah, you might be using less of it - but realistically it doesn't make any difference since a good chunk of what you spend on fuel is still going to buy foreign oil. As long as we still use gasoline, this is something that can only be fixed by the oil companies being allowed to tap our own domestic oil resources.
I won't even get in to the problems with plug-in electrics except to say that moving the emissions from the tailpipe to the power station smokestack is equally as bad, if not worse. I've seen the Cherokee EV conversion, and while I appreciate the work that the kid put into it, I really don't think he's thought out the whole cycle of owning an electric vehicle terribly well.
Diesels, especially when running biodiesel (not to be confused with vegetable oil), make a lot more sense. It's a proven technology, and with modern construction and emissions technologies run as clean as or cleaner than their gas counterparts.
A few years ago, Top Gear did a segment on hybrids vs. diesels that I hope makes it into the US edition of the programme. What they did was give one journalist a Prius for and another a similarly-sized diesel Toyota sedan. They were told to drive them for a week, then swap cars and drive them for another week. What they weren't told, however, was that this was a fuel economy test - so nobody was trying to fudge the results by driving in anything other than a normal manner. Once the two weeks were up, the economy figures were tallied. IIRC, it was something like 47mpg for the Prius, 52mpg for the diesel.
About the only thing hybrids have been good for is lowering automakers' CAFE numbers. Other than that, they're a half-baked technology that doesn't even make a good stop-gap solution to fuel economy or emissions issues. Wanna do something to help the environment? Drive a used vehicle in good running tune and save the energy and materials (which can never really be reclaimed) that go into building a new one. Want good fuel economy? Buy a Geo. But don't buy into the hybrid nonsense.
Last edited:
KSXJ
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Kansas City
I have to agree with casm on this. I think there should be more of a push for bio fuel. Diesel and unleaded. Yes there is E85, but the technolgy is already there for soy fuel and others that will work with the car you drive now. Not a car you will have to buy. But politicians and others have there pockets in with the oil companys that keed it from being in production.
