On Being American, Or, "A Hybrid? Not Unless It Has Tail Fins"

by: fake consultant

Fri May 22, 2009 at 10:32:06 AM EDT

So let me tell you what Neil Young did: lately, he’s been tearing around the countryside in a converted 1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV that he calls the LincVolt.

Here’s the good part: it’s a “series hybrid” vehicle that gets 65 miles to the gallon.

To be more accurate, I should say today it gets 65 MPG. 

The car reportedly will compete for the Automotive X Prize: a competition that seeks to award a vehicle that can (among other requirements) achieve the equivalent of 100 MPG and emits less than 200 “equivalent grams” of CO2 per mile...and the engineering team is confident they can pull it off.

Now here’s the really good part: it is truly an American car: it’s fast. It is indeed huge...in fact, it’s just about 19 feet long. And it is dripping with chrome. 

Tail fins? 
This car is so over-the-top it has front fins.

The interior? 
The usual: tuck-and-roll, tons of dashboard...and the requisite computer-aided status monitoring system. 

“If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend”

--Canadian Racing Champion Doug Larson

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/13/news/companies/healthy_gm/index.htm?postversion=2009051312

UPDATE 5/26/09:

A commenter at the DailyKos site had questions about the methodology Johnathan Goodwin uses in his performance claims.

This is an excerpt from one of his comments:

“So, how can a car that's heavy and has a bad drag coefficient get 65mpg? Simple: the PHEV game.

Question: How much mpg does a PHEV that is running purely in electric mode get?
Answer: Infinite

Realizing this, you can see that it's trivial to give an arbitrary PHEV any mpg figure you want -- you just have it run in a scenario where you make X% electric and Y% gas, and you pick the percents. That's exactly what they've done here. Not to mention that that 65mpg number isn't for the US06 drivecycle -- it's for steady-state driving, so even if they weren't cheating, it still wouldn't be comparable to EPA figures.

I hate this sort of dishonesty, yet it's pervasive in the PHEV industry. The federal government really needs to step in and regulate it. Goodwin is a particularly bad example of this -- he always plays the PHEV game and never uses proper drivecycles.”

“This is Goodwin, I see many out there doing the backwards math. To date i have only stated what i do in the mannor of simple math. Fill the tank, drive the car 100 miles and refill the tank. The consumption for a distance gives you your fuel econimy. I am not a fan of plug ins. I am a fan of fuel efficiancy without sacrifice in power or room. A train is one of the most fuel efficiant modes to date. This car is a posterchild to old technoligy in a new way. What i have done is made a 6k car have 500lb tourque and 50+ mpg with a 650 cu inch motor. The efficiancy of the small generator is were you get great results. Not the electric side. I only use that for the power end. I wish those that critisize would spend there time assisting the ones who are trying to make changes. We would get there much faster.”

WARNING—Self-promotion ahead: I am competing for a Netroots Nation scholarship, and I was not selected in the first round of voting. There are two more chances to be selected, and the voting has restarted from scratch...so even if you’ve done so before, I still have to ask you to stop by the Democracy for America site and click on the “Add your support” link to offer your support for me again. Thanks for your patience, and we now return you to your regular programming.