Hybrid Jaguar XJ en-route?

They fail to explain one thing

Say we all have electric cars that we have to charge every night, how does this protect the environment? A little law concerning the conservation of energy tell us that either way we will need the same amount of energy whether it comes from petrol or electricity and since we produce electricity using fossil fuel, the increased electrical consumption to charge our future toy cars will lead to extended fossil fuel consumption at the power plants which inevitably will cause the same amout of pollution. So what is this all about?

As long as its plug-in

The idea of a non-plug in hybrid makes me cringe .. How dumb have you got to be to charge a battery from an internal combustion engine? from breaking OK that's a good idea, but to use petrol or diesel at £1 per litre to charge a battery is plain STUPID..

All hybrids need to be plug in ones or else they are just marketing for the dumb... although that's not stopped Toyota...

Paris - as I bet she has a prius that's never left the garage...

Re: They fail to explain one thing

Yes, you are right. If your electric car is charged from fossil fuels, there's no net gain (apart from a reduction in urban pollution and noise).

The reason they're pushing plug-in EVs is that they know how to generate lots of electricity from low-CO2 sources: wind, wave, nuclear, solar, etc. They don't know how to do the same for petrol or diesel. The only other low-CO2 option (biofuels) didn't work and the politicians got their hands burned, so using electricity to power cars is seen as the Next Big Thing.

Of course, there's always some exciting new technology on the horizon (synthetic fuels, cheap hydrogen, etc), but for now no one's really come up with a better idea. Heck, most cars only last a maximum of 10 years anyway so none of this is permanent...

Plug in...

Just to clarify, the XJ-e will be a plug-in. Essentially it will work the same way as the Volt/Ampera.

Wow!

A way to make the world's poorest built & unreliable cars even more prone to breakdown!

@ AC: 14th April 2009 10:59 GMT

You're missing the bigger picture. Several million cars on the road using fossil fuels versus several million electric cars on the road with a plug in to a power grid which can and will improve its fossil credentials. It might not have an immediate effect but at least it transfers the problem to a more manageble consolidated one.

@They fail to explain one thing

"A little law concerning the conservation of energy tell us that either way we will need the same amount of energy whether it comes from petrol or electricity"

Er.. kind of. You aren't taking efficiency into account though are you? ICEs are wildly inefficient... Far less efficient than the charging of a battery from mains, which discharges into a motor - even taking power loss through the National grid into account.

You are making the assumption that 1MW of power produced at a coal fired power station, and delivered to your home / filling station via the national grid produces the same amount of CO2 as, say 20 Fossil fueled cars producing 40KW of power. This assumption is utterly ridiculous.

"...and since we produce electricity using fossil fuel..."

Correction: "we CURRENTLY produce MOST OF OUR electricity using fossil fuels."

Electricity can be generated from dozens, if not hundreds of different sources, and while the majority of it is currently produced in gas, or coal fired stations, this can change, and is changing - albeit quite slowly.

Wind, Tidal, Wave, Nuclear, Solar, Geo-Thermal and a few others are already being put into use all over the world. Hell, if we wanted it badly enough we could chuck a satellite up in orbit to convert solar energy to microwave and beam it down to earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite#cite_note-9

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/20/0149254

You also aren't taking into account micro-generation - i.e. solar, wind and hydro in the home... Almost anyone can get solar PV panels put on their roof(all you need is a roof within 45Degrees of south), or a wind turbine in their garden (if they have one) - several rural areas even have hydro-power from rivers & streams - essentially free (post-setup costs, of course) energy with 0 emissions.

YES there are issues with the manufacture of Lithium Ion batteries and the emissions caused during manufacture.

YES there will be a greater load on the national grid (But they are going to have plenty of notice of the changes and should adapt)

YES there are issues for people who don't have garages or some other means of charging their vehicles.

NO it isn't perfect, but there isn't going to be a perfect solution, certainly not around the corner anyway.

Plug-In hybrids are just a stepping stone - they have the ability to be 100% electric and POTENTIALLY 0% CO2 emissions for 90-95% of their use (i.e. commuting to work) while being able to fall back on petrol (or preferably diesel) for the odd longer journey.

@ They fail to explain one thing

Power stations are rather more efficient than your average car engine at converting the chemical energy in their fuels to useful output (in their case electricity). And when combined with local community heating schemes this can be a

The losses from there to your tyres are relatively small - so you may even get a gain in efficiency (especially if you add in regenerative braking).

The other major advantage is that we can easily upgrade all the cars in the country by producing "better" power stations. Whether by pollution capture schemes or cold fusion power stations whose chimneys exhaust daisies and otters.

The short term advantage is relavtively small overall, but it makes for quieter and less smelly streets. The long terms gains are an ecologists dream* though.

John

* Of course assuming we don't need to start pushing smoke into the air... ref: recent NASA study

Jesus...

...there's a hell of a lot of nonsense in this comments thread.

1. 'Extended Range' Hybrids DO NOT use the IC motor to charge the battery directly, rather the motor will supply power direct to the leccy motors once the battery is depleted; the battery is charged via plugging-in or from regenerative braking.

2. Jaguars are quite reliable and VERY well made, and score well in JD Power surveys as a result.

3. As long as the hybrid powertrain shows demonstrable efficiency gains over a similar IC-only set-up then the technology can be considered a success; and don't give me all that Diesel-is-just-as-efficient bollocks, we've yet to see a Diesel hybrid and NO IC MOTOR can come close to an EV in urban stop-start driving conditions. The Prius proves this day after day.

4. All the Prius bashers are REALLY boring, all they ever demostrate is that they simply do not understand the technology and WHY it was designed the way it was.

@Frank Bough

If the Prius does it for you, then that's nice. But please don't think they're a solution for everyone.

Last time I drove one I found it painfully slow, poor handling and disappointingly thirsty (i.e. sub 50mpg). In short, I hated the damn thing.

For my usual driving (which doesn't involve sitting nose-to-tail in endless traffic jams), existing diesels do the job cheaper, quicker and with less effort.

Having said that, I rarely drive > 250 miles, so put me down for a lottery win and a Tesla! :-)

Jaguar, eh?

I'll bet the petrol generator will be driven by a 5.3 liter double overhead cam V-12... just because they can.

Paris... because Jags aren't the only ones that are fast.

Leccy... augh!

I can't take it any more! "Lappy" was cute but toothless, "Mobe" uglier but still relatively easy to dodge, but "Leccy"... It's like being shived, every time. I'd gladly trade it for one of the banned abbreviations...

Old news

I thought Jaguar built an electric car years ago.

But perhaps I've misunderstood the e-Type.

@Paul Barnfather

Who said the Prius 'does it for me'? I drive a Subaru Legacy Spec B, which gets woeful mpg but is a great laugh to drive. The Prius is an intelligent solution to the peculiarities of the Californian car market - it offers reasonable performance, good economy and low emissions (the Calis are much more concenred about smog generation than CO2). What you've done, like so many Prius bashers, is get all muddled about the IMAGE of the Prius versus its engineering merits (which are many). Of course, you've also managed to totally miss the point of the thing by using it outside its design parameters - it's an urban car designed to be maximally efficient when tooling around towns and cities in traffic. SUrely anyone with a few functioning neurons to work that out?