Is Hyundai working on a Hybrid?

Or fuel cell car? Just curious.

 

Is Hyundai working on hybrid &/or fuel cell car ?

I hope so, because I have two Hyundais (currently Elantra & Accent),
and think very well of them, though:

One stumbling problem seems to me to be that Toyota owns most of the
hybrid car patents/technology.

The reason-to-be of a Toyota's existence is for maximum $ profit--the
"public interest" is considered secondary and a public
relations/advertising/propaganda thing, of course.

Bottom-line: Will a Toyota allow a Hyundai (the current lower
cost/selling price & best value/quality producer) or a China (probably
lowest cost/lowest selling price producer of the future) to
utilize/adapt the hybrid technologies at a low enough price?

To me, it's the obvious question, and the pessimistic/ negative answer
is also an obvious, though:

If I were a world political leader, then I would do/would have done
everything i could to encourage Hyundai and other manufacturers to
maximally produce cars that don't need as much--or
any--gasolene/petroleum.

However: It seemingly ain't gonna happen, and here in my humble
speculation/hypothesis/reasoning/paranoia is why it hasn't and it
isn't:

Robert Cohen Mar 6, 9:06 am show options

Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: "Robert Cohen" <> - Find messages by this author

Date: 6 Mar 2005 06:06:01 -0800
Local: Sun,Mar 6 2005 9:06 am
Subject: Re: Imagine: 500 Miles Per Gallon
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re: oil/dollar inter-dependence, what? how? why?


I hold-on to a paranoiac perception that the lessening of dependence
upon oil coulda been done since the oil boycott--the poltical-economic
weapon applied--after the Yom Kippur war, fall 1973


"Yom Kippur" may be interpreted as a "day of (annual) judgment"


Of course lessening on petroleum-dependence shoulda been substantially
done by the West


It wasn't done nearly enough in the U.S.


Why wasn't it done?


Lack of a suitable practical political-economic consensus alternative
technology (?)


Mounting inter-dependence of the oil/dollar model (?)


Difficulty in the short term ("we all die in near term," Keynes) for
conversion to a massive alternative (?)


Imho, all 3 of the above plus whatever you wanna add


Well, all sorts of posturings have been the USA's energy policy since
1973, oil prices collapse & rise & collapse & rise


I infer/suspect/fear that the U.S. & World debt & deficits are
structured as "petro-based instruments" (bonds, T-bills, bank loans)


Bottomline: The World financial system(s) would perhaps collapse if a
true massive alternative to petroleum were actually massovely
implemented


For instance: Why aren't hybrids (a la Toyota Prius & the Honda's)
massively imitated/adopted/adapted/imple­mented also by GM, Ford,
Mercedes-Chrysler?


Oh, they industry & its automotive workers union continue to make
postulations, blah, blah, blah, propaganda, rope-a-dope cars, feints,
fakes and chevaux merde ad nauseam--sensational, and fantastic 60
MINUTES type of public relations as being future vehicle reality with
the Leslie Stahls as the unwitting shills


Meanwhile: The 6000 pound SUV gas guzzlers are (still?) subsidized by

our reigning U.S. govt through tax incentivization


I call such CATCH 22 inter-dependency, and that's why a 500 m.p.g.
thing won't be massively brought about anytime soon if ever


Such is the reality I hold, and I hope I'm wrong



©2005 Google

 

Here's an example of the on-going rational absurdity of the oil-dollar
paradigm, while we're trying to figure if Hyundai could sell a hybrid
for, say, less than $20,000 or less than $25,000 or whatever (?)

 

did i leave-off this link to OPEC's benign magnanmity?


http://www.nynewsday.com/business/sns-ap-world-forum-oil,0,6978101.story?coll=nyc-bizhome-headlines

 

An article posted here on recalls, states that hybrids will arrive by
end of decade; 2010? Much too long in my book........

Last year my dealership's manager told me Tucson hybrids were coming
but for fleet service only. So I told him to let me know when he had a
"used car" to play with,

 

My instructor for the '06 Sonata class said Hyundai was currently working
on a hybrid they hoped to release in the next couple years. We'll see
whether that actually happens.

 

http://www.hybridcars.com/hyundai.html

http://www.h2cars.biz/artman/publish/article_238.shtml

 

Wow, the FGV-1 concept from '95 looks just like the AMC Pacer....LOL.

 

re: plans for hybrid, hydrogen & so forth

THANKS fir re-posting the publicity release and the magazine article
about hydogen fuel cell Hyundai.

I skimmed 'em with unengineer mind, and while doing so, I thought
"hype," and yet ...

I would luv for the South Koreans--whom are seemingly oil-starved--to
do such innovating.

If that planned hybrid vehicle can be sold in the u.s. for ...say,
....uh...$15,000--$17,000, then ...nirvana.

They'd seemingly
takeover the marketplace, and should, because Ford, GM,
Mercedes/Chrysler are looking like the dinosaurs they've tragically
self-constructed selves to be.

If I see another car ad on tv (that's not our Hyundai, Prius, or Honda
hybrid), then I'll click it away to oblivion.

The Big 3 are big fools, and I've been thinking so since the 1970s.

 

Re: Hybrid Vehicles

This may be an urban legend or something similar, but there's enough
of a "ring-of-truth" to it to make me believe there is some
credibility to the story.

In the early 1990's, when oil prices spiked as a result of the first
Iraq war, when Saddam's retreating troops torched the oil fields in
Kuwait and southern Iraq, there was a lot of talk about US dependence
on imported oil and development of alternative fuel vehicles.

Here in Phoenix, AZ we have a radio talk show host named Preston
Westmoreland that, at that time, was on radio station KTAR (620 AM).
He had a guest on his show talking about the feasibility of hydrogen
powered cars. This guest was a professor of engineering at ASU who had
worked as a laboratory assistant to a Professor of Automotive
Engineering following WWII. During the war, the professor had been
very distressed about the petroleum rationing that had been necessary
and decided to find a way to prevent this from ever happening again.

As a result, this professor invented a way to convert water into
hydrogen and powered a regular car with it. The car had been driven
around Phoenix and attracted a lot of media attention at the time. It
had no emissions and could be driven about 300 miles on a tank of
water. The professor was "bought-off" by a consortium of auto and
petroleum companies because they didn't want people filling their cars
from their garden hose and having engines that would be so reliable
that they wouldn't have to be brought to dealers for service. The
"payoff" was that, in exchange for a "very large" sum of money,
the professor would transfer all patent rights to the "buyers",
would stop further research on the project and would not talk about his
invention with anyone from that point forward. All documents relating
to his project were destroyed, and "mysteriously" the files from
the local media companies disappeared. The inventing professor moved
away to an island home paid for with his silence money and had not been
heard from in several years.

This guest professor said there were a few remaining individuals at
ASU, like himself, that knew this professor and knew about his
"invention" but age had caught-up with most of them and several had
passed away. (Now, 14 years later, probably more have gone to that
great garage in the sky.)

One of the problems with trying to prove such theories is even the
companies involved probably have no recollection of the personnel
involved, kept few, if any, records on such a transaction, know what
happened to the documents and parts that were "paid for" with an
accounting transaction that was probably not traceable to it's real
purpose, since even at that time, the anti-trust laws existed and were
enforced. And, now with 50 years having passed, it's quite probable
that whatever they did have, has been destroyed or is stored in some
place where no one even knows where or what it is.

I'm not much into conspiracy theories, but if you think the
automotive and petroleum companies, at that time, had any interest in
producing cars that could be filled up from a garden hose and engines
that required almost no maintenance, I'd say you must be smoking
something. Let's face it, at that time, when gasoline cost around 30
cents a gallon, and even less when the gas-wars were going on, and
everybody had forgotten the rationing that had been a part of life
during the war, there was little incentive to pursue environmentally
friendly automobiles, let alone ones that could be filled for free.

Lee

 

Circa 1960, my geometry teacher in high school mentioned that "water
pill car" in a semi-dismissive way, and I'm in the Southeast.

When General Motors bought-up the street car track in Los Angeles post
WW II, there probably were a few observers who were accordinly
dismayed.

Perhaps a John Houston subsequently thought about a TALES OF L.A.
movie in which a Jack Nicholson gets his nose cut for nosing about the
ole "car barn," as they called the former trolley parking-maintenance
place in my own town.

An urban myth or story or joke or whatever usually has an element or
fragment of some factual truth.

A "Steve Shagan (?)" did write a movie with a somewhat similar theme,
though I didn't see it, approximately 20-30 years ago.

My own idea/hypothesis/paranoia/perception is that we're absurdly
locked-in, the u.s. dollar is interdependent with oil money.

 

The only conspiracy going on is the hype and BS about hybrids. Spend
20,000 to save 2,000? Sounds good to a lot of fools parting with their
money! By the way, hybrids need new batterys, every two years, $2000
every time! Have fun! Don't even ask about the service costs, just
bring your money! There will be no "used" market for hybrids, what
fool will buy a car that needs $2000 every two years, and thats just
for batteries!

 

do you have proof of the battery replacement times and cost ?
from what ive read, honda etc guarantees their battery packs for 8 yrs or
150 000 miles i think...
now i agree about the up front cost though, i dont thhink your really saving
anything because of excess cost of buying the hybrid in the first place...
and youd have to keep it for ten years to make it worth while...
but again, before that 10 years is up i bet youd have to replace the
battery pack and im sure its very $
so there goes gas money saved....

 

Hmm, read about the battery thing on a web blog, I shall have to double
check now . thnx for asking, didn't know about Honda guarantee.
Does the guaruntee tranfer to the new owner, though? I hear that the
car companies are insisting that used buyers also purchase an extended
warranty, which is another way of saying that, guess what!, you pay for
batterries!

 

Here's what I found on a hybrid site:

"How often do hybrid batteries need replacing? Is replacement expensive
and disposal an environmental problem?

The hybrid battery packs are designed to last for the lifetime of the
vehicle, somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, probably a whole
lot longer. The warranty covers the batteries for between eight and ten
years, depending on the car maker. "

I give absoloutly no creedance to these figures, I have seen marketing
BS for too long to fall for it, ESP. in the battery business, not much
better than used car salesmen...hey Notice no mention if the
warranty is transferable.

 

Ok, my bad, I confused $2000 with two years, sorry. Here's what I
read, from Oraculations:

"Mainstream journalists are ignoring-what else is new?---- the fact
that there's another propaganda campaign being conducted by the usual
suspects to get us all to just love hybrids. Well, here's a few
negatives for you. The true long-term costs of owning a hybrid have
either been ignored or largely swept under the rug. The fact of the
matter is that it's not just the battery replacement which will run
between $2,000 and $5,000 (outside of basic warranty coverage) that
will have to be dealt with by consumers - the sub-systems in hybrids
are frightfully expensive too, and no one has even bothered to mention
that fact. As for the argument that the more hybrids there are on the
road, the more the costs to repair them will go down? Check this out:
The buyers of used hybrids will face the music of horrendous
maintenance costs. Buyers for used hybrids will be presented with a
kaleidoscope of problems, from batteries and sub-system replacement, to
the fact that seriously pricey extended warranties will be absolutely
mandatory and will have to be tacked on to the cost of ownership. What
this is going to do to the actual resale value of these used hybrids
remains to be seen, but suffice to say the true cost of hybrid
ownership is a story that's being ignored by the environmentalist
lefties in the media. Right now it looks like a hybrid that cost 25k
new will cost at least 15K in maintenance after ten years. How much
will you pay for a ten year old car? How about for a 5 year old car
that will bust you up for huge costs in five years?

Because battery replacement will cost at least $2,000 per car after
nine years of ownership; that means the older the car the more expense
the new owner will face. All existing data states that when you get on
the highway the gas mileage is worse than on compacts through many mid
size cars. In terms of mileage, diesel beats any hybrid to death right
now; 90 mpg to 40 at best.

The Left Environazis will insist on a whopper of a tax credit to
"make" people buy hybrids. The way it looks now that tax credit
will have to be around 4K. People who now own them report only modest
gasoline savings and actually higher mpg on highways.

Test results? We don't need no stinking test results....Here's one
anyway: The Seattle bus company that tested hybrids is disappointed
with their performances vs. cost analysis. Can't wait for that to
appear in a Newsweek paragraph. link "




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

there u go, 8 too ten yrs...
most people get rid of a car before that...
just read the fine proint about the warranty

 

the price of hybrids needs to come down by atleast 5000.00 to make them
worth while..
im leery on them for where we live cause cold kills batteries, and where I
live the temp goes low as - 50 c..
so, does that mean the batteries in a hybrid be dead or near dead in the
morning ? and batteries don't accept charge till they're fully warmed up..
so I don't think one would be very good here..
ill stick too our accent..

 

They get rid of them because they have some WORTH...

They won't if the thing is worth scrap prices (or less - recycle fees)

The economy simply doesn't work out. If the car is 100% surefire trash
in 150k miles, its used value will drop like a rock compared to reliable
conventional vehicles...

Personally I wouldn't buy a mostly-dead rolling super-fund site, would you?

JS

 

Its not just about saving money, Dingbat! You want your kids or grandkids
to be paying $10.00 or $20.00 per gal. for gas. It could happen in our
lifetimes. We need to start putting our money into technology instead of
some mid-eastern countries economy.

SuperGlide