Thread: Hybrid Boats
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Old 01-10-2011, 01:32 PM   #9
Marin
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Join Date: Oct 2007
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Hybrid boats

Quote:
Moonstruck wrote:In automotve and street cars and the like the energy generated from braking can be somewhat stored in a flywheel or battery.* There are alot of variables in fuel mileage so it is hard to say just exactly how much fuel is saved by the hybrid engines.
An interesting factoid I have read in various articles and heard talked about by people in the car review/testing business like Jeremy Clarkson and so on is that hybrids are beneficial in terms of fuel use when driven in the city.* At low speeds, sitting in traffic, waiting at stoplights, the vehicle is running more in the electric mode than the gasoline mode.* But on the highway, the gas motor is running all the time because the battery power cannot maintain this kind of performance.* So when considering highway driving, there are other vehicles--- diesels and perhaps even some of the very efficient gasoline cars--- that actually get significantly better mileage than the hybrids.* The average mileage of a hybrid is high because its skewed by the low speed-no speed driving.* But if one does a lot of longer-distance, higher-speed driving (as we do), a hybrid is not the way to get the best mileage.

It was also interesting to hear the other day Alan Mulally, Ford CEO, say that in his opinon, electric cars like the Volt are not the answer.* He feels that there is a lot more efficiency that can be wrung out of gasoline and diesel engines that makes them more viable at least in the foreseeable future than the electrics.


-- Edited by Marin on Monday 10th of January 2011 03:35:17 PM
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