APR 21

Actually I think this is a very attractive vehicle. and as a property owner who does a fair amount of renovations, I would find it very useful. What about a pickup version? People I know would love to find a pickup like this. and a superlite RV would be a big seller.

Where do you get 70 mpg from? Wheels puts at at 40 mpg: http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.co...een-jeans/

If you can go 50 miles on 1/2 a gallon and 30 miles are all electric, then that is 1/2 a gallon for the other 20 miles or 40mpg.

any word on wether they are working on a way for the the batteries to be recharged by the engine during operation?

For the love of god! Please stop quoting plug-ins in MPG! I thought ecogeek was better than this. If I see it one more time I'm never visiting this site again.

The web site has a graph explaining gasoline usage:
http://www.brightautomotive.co...ency.html

The gas motor alone (no plug-in charge) is about 50mpg, but driven 50mi (30+20) it's effectively 100mpg-gas, or 70mpg driven 70 miles. This is gas-only and not including a gasoline equivalent for electricity, but the electricity doesn't use petroleum (usually).

the 100 MPG and 70 MPG figures here are both false.
It only does 40 miles per gallon.

On shorter trips, it can do 70 miles per ( gallon PLUS enough electricity to fully recharge the battery )
or 100 miles per ( gallon plus enough electricity to fully recharge the battery )

@Ross

It says the electric motor alone has a 30 mile range. Once that's done, a hybrid engine kicks in. That's what's getting 70 mpg. I suppose you could argue the title's a little off, but the article at least is using accurate units.

How much money was paid to whom for the article to say 70 mpg on the main page, (based on the facts from other individual posts

to go from 15 at average to 70 to 100mpg per vehicle with fleets is just what companys need to turn things around, capital purchases of these will be hard as price hasnt been set. not to distant future a hope, we can push down price per barrel to $5.00 so to cripple the middle east, or even less...

all this MPG talk is meaningless to the rest or the world. At least show some respect, as others do, and put Kilometres per litre in brackets.

I do have to say its great the people are voting with thier cash and changing the automotive landscape somewhat. As some one who works for car companies and works directly with battery manufactures, I can tell you catagorically without any problems that batteries are worse for the enviroment than petrol. The arguement here isnt about emmissions its the processes required to make a car that are worse. In view of this the best thing thats happened for the enviroment is the recession. Please dont belive car companies when they refere to thier products as green they rarely are. Email me if you want me to clarify my opinion.

Why is it that I keep hearing that electric cars don't pollute and don't burn fossil fuel? HAs anyone calculated the amount of fossil fuel (Oil coal you know the ones that put out really dirty HCs) that it takes to charge one of these electric cars? There is a lot of loss over the power grid and within the generation itself. So unless your local power company is geothermal, hydro electric or Nuclear, the MPGs vs CO2 produced are MUCH different than advertised. Someone needs to do a total cost (in hydrocarbons) per mile for electric vs gasoline/diesel. Remeber that even a hydro or other non-polluter often mixes with diesel as a backup or peak. Something that will become more common if electric cars are used more due to electric regulation. It is nearly impossible to make a new electric plant these days but we keep saying we want more of it. Is this a false economy all the way around?

It's a big van. Obviously 100-70-40 MPG whatever is really is must be based on an empty van. What is the MPG a fully loaded van is getting?

Just curious....but does the MPG refer to mileage under any sort of CARGO LOAD? I mean this is a van....right?

to change units, just use dimensional analysis. (100 miles/1 gallon)*(1 gal/3.785 liters)*(1.609 kilometers/1 mile) = 42.5 kilometers per liter. That's just multiplying by two conversion factors such that the miles and gallons cancel.

or just put it into Google. "100 miles per gallon to kilometer per liter" and it will convert it right there.

plug in hybrids shouldn't be measured in mpg anyway. it should be given in kilowatt hour per mile for electric mode and gallons per mile in gasoline mode. electricity isn't free so it doesn't make sense to list it as such.

This van looks & sounds great but I have a few concerns:
1. As others have asked what is the impact on the mileage numbers with any sort of cargo load?
2. Loaded with cargo/equipment, what is the impact on the performance of this van? I've worked as a delivery person and speaking from experience, if it can't make it up a hill loaded it won't sell.
3. A huge part of a fleet is maintenance. So if I were a company looking at IDEA for a fleet vehicle, my primary concern would be how long the battery lasts, and how readily available spare parts were. The reason lots of companies use GM fleet vehicles is because skilled mechanics and parts are relatively cheap and readily available.

Why type 100 miles per gallon to kilometers per liter to google when you can type:

100 mpg in kpl

Google wins!

Since when does electricity not pollute?

its not that it doesn't pollute, but it is easier to control and limit the pollution from one big source (a power plant) than thousands of individual sources (cars).

Check this out guys,
They did this in the 80s.
http://www.100mpgplus.com/index.html
I have driven this car and its amazing.

For Christ's sake. Doesn't anyone realize that electricity isn't free and, in fact, it costs more per unit of energy than gasoline? When are people going to get this into their heads? Electric cars ARE NOT the answer.

Wow. Almost everyone seems to think that electricity from a power plant is worse than a variable-load ICE in a car. Nobody even stops to consider that an electric car is about 90% efficient vs. about 30% efficiency in an ICE. Add to that the fact that an electric plant has scrubbers and more efficient gas turbine engines and the efficiency of electric cars is better than ICE even with transmission losses accounted. It is shocking that people can't look at more than one variable in determining how efficient an electric car seems.

Let's approach it a different way. How clean would your city be if everyone cooked their food with gasoline instead of electricity? You wouldn't be able to live in most cities if just a simple task like cooking wasn't done with electricity.

Electric is better. It is more efficient. It's pollution is more controlled and cleaned by scrubbers. The exhaust is sent up a stack where it isn't in your face.

I have to say my point was about the manufacturing processes used. The earth is due to run out of nickle within the next 30 years, lithium in the next 50. Both of which are the main components in a modern battery. Aluminium requires a minimum temp of 950 degrees and 12.8 (or more in some cases) kilowatts to extract and purify. Thats 12800 watts! imagine the amount of coal, nuclear andgas would need to be burnt to get that. Manufacturing is where the real revolution should begin, get your engineering caps on!

Ugh! Enough already! Let's just let Asia invent new technology that will leapfrog over the poison power of fossil fuels.

SEE:
http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/...c-hybrid/
Look what a couple of American backyard mechanics did with this old car! Why can't Americans embrace the turbo-bio-diesel/electric concept for heavy stuff? To goddamn stupid to see the 40% advantage from diesel's higher compression, higher efficiency, or too stubborn to admit the Europeans got it right, and the old low compression, spark ignition 20% efficient gasoline engine, no matter how well loved, is a crock of shvt ready to go down histories road? Even Methanol can be burned better in engine designed for that purpose, but Yankee Doodle sticks to an eight to one compression ratio , a five or six speed transmission, and sheet-metal fabrication? I am surprised he doesn''t want 4 wheel drive, solid chrome, V-8 monster anymore and I applaud the small progress he has made over the last 30 or 40 years! Why is it so hard for him to accept the changes that will save his very ass, and keep him in the driver's seat for another generation? Perhaps the poverty and degradation of the great republican depression will dissolve away some resistance to change, and his unbending sense of entitlement over the rest of the people in the world, who knows? This back-yard Lincoln has technologies that might have saved GM and Chrysler, but somehow, never quite made it through the magic of bureaucracy and expertise of the GM savants, like the so called miracle "Volt" - vaporware at best, and asinine P.R. trick pulled at just the wrong time, just like the 620 hp, 231 Mph, 5 mpg, 2009 Corvette, "just in time" for the great republican depression and world money markets melt-down! And we PAY executives to work these things out! This is clearly a Back-Yard mechanic Win, clearly!

Perhaps the IDEA will be better than what Ford has in store for next year?

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/02/09/ford-confirms-transit-connect-ev-with-smith-electric-for-2010/

EPRI has already studied the issue of PHEVs. Won't be a problem to the power grid and the GHG emissions will decline.

Kevin said:

Doesn't anyone realize that electricity isn't free and, in fact, it costs more per unit of energy than gasoline?

Kevin, I think you're mistaken about that. Let's take the example of the Tesla Roadster. It takes about $2 of electricity from the grid to charge a Tesla which can then travel 200 (very fast) miles using that $2 of power. Obviously, $2 of gasoline would take that car much less distance; in fact, the Lotus Elise (which is the same body, suspension, etc as the Tesla) gets about 20mpg so even at today's low prices, energy from gas is 10X as expensive as energy from the grid. I'd be curious to hear what made you say that gas was a cheaper source of energy.

From an emissions standpoint, it seems obvious to me that a single power plant is much more efficient that a thousand small engines. Emissions from that plant can be cleaned much easier than emissions from a thousand car engines and the grid's energy is slowly but steadily getting greener.

Kevin also said:

Electric cars ARE NOT the answer.

What do you think is the answer? Doing nothing? Or do you think hydrogen is the answer? Well, I've got news for you. Hydrogen cars are electric cars with hydrogen as a power storage medium instead of batteries. And, to get an energy density approaching gasoline, the hydrogen has to be in liquid form which means cooling it to -200 degrees (or more, I don't remember) and that just might affect your efficency. Unfortunately, right now, hydrogen is not a source of energy; all of the hydrogen on our world is inconveniently bonded to another element such as oxygen (H2O). Breaking those bonds required energy; in fact, it requires almost the same amount of energy you get when you put that hydrogen through a fuel cell.

So, Kevin, what do you think the answer is?

Electric cars are the answer, or at least a key part. But misleading statistics are no kind of answer at all. The fuel cost of centrsl electrical generation are not negligible, nor factors like transmission loss, but the real point that must not be lost is that specilations that central management is easier to clean up carry no weight until we actually do clean them up. Presently, central electricity is largely coal, and there are precisely zero production-scale carbon-recovering coal plants.

Hi there,
Ugh, I liked! So clear and positively.
Have a nice day

The only real measurement, to which all the others should be converted, is ton-miles moved per ton of carbon used. Passenger miles per gallon easily convert.

A solar-powered house charging its associated vehicle is, of course, ideal. Solar central power is good.

beautiful car!

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That I have to say it one ugly looking van, I hope they will look better then that when they really come out.