Anyone drive a hybrid?

[Karlos]

Talk about synchronicity, I recently had a lift in the exact same model. It was spookily quiet when the engine was not in use. Even empty milk floats make noise :-D

[Karlos]

Would riding a mule count?

[Karlos]

nadoom wrote:
Do you own one? a mule that is

No, but it could be construed as driving a hybrid in some pastoral society :-D

[Karlos]

One likely problem with that reaction is that it isn't easy to reverse. You'd end up with a lot of sodium borate (jagshemash!) that would be difficult to reprocess back into sodium borohydride. Ideally you don't want by products from you fuel cell other than water. Anything else is dead weight you are carrying around.

Production of the borohydride in the first place requires a considerable amount of energy. Overall, it's cheaper to use liquified hydrogen. However, that's also extremely dangerous.

[Karlos]

That's the rub. Any rechargeable system that ultimately requires recharging from a mains supply will result in increased load on electricity supplies and subsequent increases in emissions from there. However, not all electricty is provided by burning fossil fuels and it's a lot easier to establish 'greener' sources at that level and making greater use of electricity than it is designing 'greener' consumers of energy.

Note that hybrids tend to be based on the idea of converting surplus engine power into electrical charge that you can reuse later, as well as reclaiming kinetic energy during breaking or downhill driving etc. They essentially give you better overall conversion of your fuel by storing the surplus energy as electrical charge that would otherwise be wasted.

[Karlos]

nadoom wrote:

Woah, ok im sold. I want one. But i would feel like a put of a dork if i bought a prius (sorry prius owners :-P  ), cant the put the technology in something with a little more... va va voom? ( i dont mean a renault clio )

Pride is the fuel of the fire, akhi ;-)

[Karlos]

A pure plug in might make you feel more smug about emissions on the road, but at the end of the day, more carbon is being emitted by the power station. Quite what it does to your electricity bill at the moment is another issue. Energy prices are going up and up at the moment.

I think hybrids are the sensible middle ground for the present time. Fully electric cars require that we solve our energy production problems first.

[Karlos]

Cyberus wrote:

And to conveniently fit with the thread, it *is* a hybrid (between a horse and donkey) :-D

That was the original implication ;-)

[Karlos]

@Gadget

How was it on the Notts run just now?

[Karlos]

Agafaster wrote:

Don't you ride mules? =)

my wife has a pair...

Never heard them called that before :lol:

[Karlos]

If hydrogene gas leaks out of a tank, it immediately rises rises up to the sky, as hydrogene is the lightest element.

That never helped the Hindenburg. Air/Hydrogen mixtures are explosively combustible over a very wide range of partial pressure and temperature. You rupture a pressurised / liquidised source of hydrogen in any normal atmospheric conditions and very little energy is required to ignite it.