New Hybrid Honda PCX coming?

General Honda PCX chat, questions about the PCX, or questions about riding.

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slowpoke
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Re: New Hybrid Honda PCX coming?

Post by slowpoke »

I saw this the other day:

http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/woman-t ... d=50519591


I remember seeing this on the news some years ago:

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/pea ... de=1.24578
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Re: New Hybrid Honda PCX coming?

Post by dgnyberg »

PCX150Rider wrote:
Just a different mindset needed. Would you run your mobile phone on petrol?
It's like eating meat. May as well just cut to the source and eat plant based foods. At the end of the day when we eat critters we are just eating a byproduct from them eating plants or eating other critters that eat plants.

Clean energy is key. . ..

BTW bacon causes cancer. :roll:

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Re: New Hybrid Honda PCX coming?

Post by Gil »

The benefit of electric vehicles will be more evident and widely know as more people buy them. I'm certainly looking forward to owning one. With nearly nothing to maintain on electric vehicles, no clutches, internal combustion engines, water pumps, timing belts, catalytic converters, exhaust, leaky engine gaskets, dried and cracked rubber houses, the list goes on. With electric vehicles, one would need to check the tires, maybe the brake pads, change the brake fluid, the coolant for the batteries and that's it, wait maybe the CVs? I have a Subaru Impreza WRX at 230,000 miles, great car, but the maintenance is just annoying. I expect electric vehicle to do that amount of miles with little to no maintenance.

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Re: New Hybrid Honda PCX coming?

Post by Oyabun »

Huh, poor little Hybrid PCX opened up a big can of worms
While I agree with many of the points I'd add a few things, as I believe I see a few things from a different prospective. I have to say here that I'm quite biased, as we're currently building 2MWp capacity Photovoltaic power plant with two friends of mine, and I'm anyway working in the IoT industry so one can say I'm definitely pro new technology.
Mel46 wrote: Imagine a tornado taking down power lines. What do you do? You can't just jump in your electric vehicle and drive to some place that has power, and then just plug it in. ("Excuse me sir. Can I plug into your house power. My car is running low.")
Imagine a different situation. A tornado strikes, and you have your partially charged electic car. Let's assume it is down to 25% and also assume that it equals in battery capacity with the smallest Tesla, which is 70kWh. Also take into account, that you might have a transformation loss of 10% when creating 110v AC from the battery's several hundred Volts DC. This would still give 15.75kWh capacity before it runs dry. With our average monthly electricity usage of 250kWh (which includes wshing machine, hair dryers, aircon, two fridges and a freezer, routers, computers, a home server running 24h etc) still gives two full days of autonomy. In case It would look like a longer term stuff, using only the important devices (fridges, lights and the circulation pump for heating and fan coils) would last for over a week.
Mel46 wrote: To add to that, I read recently that most of the power plants in the United States still use coal. How is an electric vehicle a good alternative if it uses electricity from a coal burning power plant?
All of those problems need to be addressed before electric vehicles will become a real viable alternative.
Fact is, that even the best internal combustion engines are very inefficient somewhere between 25-50 at only a thin range of their operation parameters, and they tend to spend a fraction of their total use at those ranges. While a co-generating powerplant can operate at up to 80% efficiency all the time, plus due to its stable operation parameters exhausts can be better cleaned. Indeed, there are electricity network, and battery storage losses also, but generating energy is still more efficient in a power plant than is a family car. Not to mention that hydrocarbon logistics (including fuel) have it's environmental cost too.

True, that electric mobility is not yet at the stage to entirely replace our hundred and so years of internal combustion based transportation. But it might not have to entirely change it either. Car sharing is a great way to substitute for suburban and urban traffic. In the family we have no diesels, but have electric, hybrid and dual fuel (petrol and liquified natural gas) and all have their own place. Why not use electric transportation charged by even coal fired electricity in the city, where IC engines are very inefficient, and keep enough cleaner liquid fossil fuels for longer trips?
And using the full potential of electric mobility needs a different grid operation also. As for the earlier example that huge amount of electric storage capacity is not only a sink waiting to be charged. It is also a great potential to use renewables and off peak energy generation a whole lot better, given their capacity is available for the grid or for the home (microgrid) when not on the road.
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Re: New Hybrid Honda PCX coming?

Post by TheMaverick »

Oyabun wrote:Huh, poor little Hybrid PCX opened up a big can of worms
While I agree with many of the points I'd add a few things, as I believe I see a few things from a different prospective. I have to say here that I'm quite biased, as we're currently building 2MWp capacity Photovoltaic power plant with two friends of mine, and I'm anyway working in the IoT industry so one can say I'm definitely pro new technology.
Sounds like an exciting project. I'm toying with the idea of something along similar lines for bitcoin mining.
Imagine a different situation. A tornado strikes, and you have your partially charged electic car. Let's assume it is down to 25% and also assume that it equals in battery capacity with the smallest Tesla, which is 70kWh. Also take into account, that you might have a transformation loss of 10% when creating 110v AC from the battery's several hundred Volts DC. This would still give 15.75kWh capacity before it runs dry. With our average monthly electricity usage of 250kWh (which includes wshing machine, hair dryers, aircon, two fridges and a freezer, routers, computers, a home server running 24h etc) still gives two full days of autonomy. In case It would look like a longer term stuff, using only the important devices (fridges, lights and the circulation pump for heating and fan coils) would last for over a week.
It's an interesting discussion. What you mention was one of the things identified following the devastating earthquake in Japan - many indicated that they would love to be able to tap into their electric vehicle reserves. I'm wondering what the barriers are to it being done (technological, financial, political etc) (ie "would Elon Musk refuse to do it because he'd rather sell you a Tesla battery"). Somewhat ironically, I have a couple of petrol generators for emergencies - there's something quite nice about being the only ones on the street with the lights & TV going during a powercut :)
Fact is, that even the best internal combustion engines are very inefficient somewhere between 25-50 at only a thin range of their operation parameters, and they tend to spend a fraction of their total use at those ranges. While a co-generating powerplant can operate at up to 80% efficiency all the time, plus due to its stable operation parameters exhausts can be better cleaned. Indeed, there are electricity network, and battery storage losses also, but generating energy is still more efficient in a power plant than is a family car. Not to mention that hydrocarbon logistics (including fuel) have it's environmental cost too.

True, that electric mobility is not yet at the stage to entirely replace our hundred and so years of internal combustion based transportation. But it might not have to entirely change it either. Car sharing is a great way to substitute for suburban and urban traffic. In the family we have no diesels, but have electric, hybrid and dual fuel (petrol and liquified natural gas) and all have their own place. Why not use electric transportation charged by even coal fired electricity in the city, where IC engines are very inefficient, and keep enough cleaner liquid fossil fuels for longer trips?
And using the full potential of electric mobility needs a different grid operation also. As for the earlier example that huge amount of electric storage capacity is not only a sink waiting to be charged. It is also a great potential to use renewables and off peak energy generation a whole lot better, given their capacity is available for the grid or for the home (microgrid) when not on the road.
I think there are quite a few dynamics that aren't fully appreciated when it comes to electric vehicles; the vehicles themselves are progressing nicely (would love a P100D), but the infrastructure to support them in significant quantities would struggle - they use a LOT of energy and according to the last figure I saw, only 2.8% of the world's energy production comes from renewable sources. Then there's the required infrastructure to support fast charging (in most cases 3 Phase is needed) (would be one HELL of a peak load on national grids if every man and his dog recharging their vehicles at around the same time). Then of course is the question of what to do with the worlds existing 1.2 Billion vehicles, in addition to being sufficient mined resources to manufacture the batteries and efficient resources to handle the old ones. Many of these issues are not trivial to solve.

Existing levels of electric vehicles amount to "farting against thunder".
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Re: New Hybrid Honda PCX coming?

Post by Mel46 »

We have a friend who had a Prius. She was the world's worst driver, and taught her daughter to be just as bad. They beat that poor Prius up so bad that eventually the batteries died. Toyota said that they had not had that happen on any of their others so they offered to pay 1/2 of the cost on the replacement batteries. She still had to pay $2,000 for the batteries. That isn't counting the body work. The body work cost about the much too.
As an example of how bad they drove, she was teaching her daughter to back up, but not in a parking lot. She did it from their driveway, with another vehicle beside them. Their mailbox was a cement and brick one. The daughter backed into the mail box, stopped, put it in forward gear, hit the other vehicle, put it in reverse, sideswiped the mailbox all the way down the driver's side including taking the outside mirror off! Then she pulled forward right into the mailbox again but couldn't figure out how to stop, so she pushed down the Mailbox! Those poor batteries must have been working hard to do that.
In any case, after they had the batteries replaced the daughter drove that card throughout her entire remaining time in high school and all the way through college. They finally traded it in for a new Corolla.
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Re: New Hybrid Honda PCX coming?

Post by gn2 »

TheMaverick wrote:according to the last figure I saw, only 2.8% of the world's energy production comes from renewable sources
We do a bit better here in Scotland.

"Renewables experts say this means wind generated the equivalent of 57 per cent of Scotland’s entire electricity needs."

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 55846.html
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Re: New Hybrid Honda PCX coming?

Post by TheMaverick »

gn2 wrote:
TheMaverick wrote:according to the last figure I saw, only 2.8% of the world's energy production comes from renewable sources
We do a bit better here in Scotland.

"Renewables experts say this means wind generated the equivalent of 57 per cent of Scotland’s entire electricity needs."

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 55846.html
Good to hear. We've had quite a few of them pop up in various places around the country here. They're causing problems for some residents though - the air changes speed between the blade and the tower resulting in a constant beating sound which has been driving people nearby some of them absolutely nuts (poor buggers).

Quite incredible the amount of energy some of the bigger ones can produce. We're going to need a lot more of them if everyone goes with electric cars though .
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Re: New Hybrid Honda PCX coming?

Post by springer1 »

57 per cent of Scotland’s entire electricity needs."
Nothing for nothing, but note that that says "electricity needs" not energy needs. So it doesn't count non-electric heating, transportation, agriculture power, etc.

I wonder what % it would be of Scotland's entire "energy needs"......
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Re: New Hybrid Honda PCX coming?

Post by TheMaverick »

Oyabun wrote:Imagine a different situation. A tornado strikes, and you have your partially charged electic car. Let's assume it is down to 25% and also assume that it equals in battery capacity with the smallest Tesla, which is 70kWh. Also take into account, that you might have a transformation loss of 10% when creating 110v AC from the battery's several hundred Volts DC. This would still give 15.75kWh capacity before it runs dry. With our average monthly electricity usage of 250kWh (which includes wshing machine, hair dryers, aircon, two fridges and a freezer, routers, computers, a home server running 24h etc) still gives two full days of autonomy.
Looking at this from a different perspective, if you're average monthly electricity consumption is 250 kWh per month then that's 7.6 per day. I don't know how much the consumption of Tesla cars varies between models, but one I found averaged around 200 Wh per kilometer - so if someone who's normal electricity consumption averaged 7.6 kWh a day bought this Tesla car and averaged just 38km per day - they'd DOUBLE their monthly electricity usage.
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