Nothing overly new there. Companies have been performing conversions for years. This company seems to have decided to start with a Hummer for the publicity of it all.
This is why you should never read the comments to any article on Wired, Gizmodo, et al: I award the "Most Ignorant Comment of the Day Award" to the poster I quoted above.
Of course these test conditions require starting at the top of Donner Pass, ("Donner Party, table for 40"), and stopping at the bottom!! My 4Runner got such great MPG that the Auto Tracking Software I was using at the time would reject the results, unless you forced it!!!
Bullsh*** from the get-go. It's not a hybrid, it's a PHEV. Hence the hundred MPG -- for really, really short trips, judging from the battery recharge time of 3 hours. But even though its a PHEV it's not greener than a Prius, in terms of energy use per mile or C02 released per mile or any such metric. Because its so much bigger than a Prius. The remainder of the energy to drive it at "100 MPG" comes off the grid. For my PHEV Prius, at the mix of generation used in Virginia USA, I've calculated that electrical miles produce about 70% as much C02 as gas-powered miles. Scale that up for a Hummer -- more than twice the weight, drag coefficient 0.51 -- and I'm guessing the average electrical mile in a Hummer produces about twice as much C02 as a gasoline mile in a stock Prius. So what we have here is yet another innumerate and uninformed journalist. Who couldn't be bothered to get the term right (PHEV not hybrid). And who believes in magic, or something -- that you can take a heavy, blocky vehicle and somehow turn it greener than a more modestly proportioned car, just because you use electricity to supply part of the energy for it. Until such time as the grid is carbon-free, it just ain't so. I tip my hat to the first poster to that article, who called the author out on pretty much the same issue I just described. Actually, reading through the comments, a lot of people said pretty much the same thing.
I have found that if you hook a mack truck to the back of an electric train you can travel a long way in the mack truck without using any fuel in the truck. So what?
Basically it is an EREV, or with the drive train of the Volt in steroid. It has three battery pack for a total of 40kwh. A 40 miles EV range is quite reasonable for 50% capacity discharge or 500Wh/mile. The company claims "UP TO" 100mpg, of cause if you only drive 42 miles with two miles on gas/generator assist mode. Although it is misleading but achievable. But who will buy a $100K+ extended range sports utility electrical vehicle, except the rich and famous like our governator.
What if you go on a trip of 500 mi in one day? Only stopping to fill the tank (often). I doubt very much you would even come close to 100 MPG. As I said earlier, APRIL FOOL! And you are one if you believe this crap! The vehicle is for those who just don't get it, think they look cool in a Hummer, but want to brag they are environmentally conscious. They are definitely fools, and are the ones who will/are causing us to fully trash the planet.
Let's look at some of the cost figures associated with this "conversion." 1. A 53 kWh lithium-ion battery today will cost 1000.00 per kWh to buy, 2. The 53 kWh lithium-ion battery will require 53 kg, 116 lb of lithium to construct, and 3. The 53 kWh battery will weight nearly 1000 lbs. In 2008 there were 27,600 metric tons of lithium mined in the world. Of this total 25% was consumed in the production of rechargeable batteries for personal electronics, portable computers, and power tools. The USGS figures for 2008 indicate that there may have been a surplus of lithium of as much as 5000 metric tons from the 2008 production. Let's assume that this is true. Let's also assume that the Tesla automobile uses about the same size battery, although in fact it uses a smaller battery of only some 43 kWh capacity. This means that if there were indeed a surplus of 5000 metric tons enough lithium was available from the 2008 production to make a grand total of 100,000 Hummers and Teslas and not any other battery powered car whatsoever. Each Tesla or Hummer would require the use of enough lithium to make 3 Chevrolet Volts, so if we made no Hummers or Teslas we could make 300,000 Chevrolet Volts from the surplus... Attention Hummer And Tesla Converters: There Isn't Enough Lithium Pr - GLG News
Can't we be happy that people are trying to move away from gasoline or make cars more efficient in that manner?
