A Hummer getting better than 100 mpg?

Raser's Hummer H3E gets 35 mpg, 100 mpg, or 190 mpg in city. It depends on how you calculate mileage.

(Credit: Raser Technologies)

The plug-in hybrid Hummer H3E by Raser Technologies actually gets better mileage than originally estimated.

At the SAE World Congress and again at a Hummer event hosted by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Raser originally said (based on a prototype) its E-REV power train could give the Hummer an initial range of 40 miles on electricity only. After that first 40 miles, the SUV would then get about 33 to 35 mpg earning it the dubious moniker of a Hummer that gets over 100 mpg.

Raser's power train is an electric motor-drive system powered by lithium ion batteries, and a gas-powered generator, aka "range extender," to recharge the batteries.

But further street testing has shown the power train's engineers that the H3E could actually get by on its electric battery alone for the first 50 miles using 60 percent of the battery pack, according to statistics released by Raser.

"This initial test indicates that the vehicle should easily achieve over 100 miles per gallon in typical local daily driving," Jim Spellman, Raser's vice president of business development, said in a statement.

Note Spellman's word choice of "typical local daily driving."

Many have scoffed at automakers' recent mileage claims for hybrid vehicles which often include the car's initial electric-only battery start. It's often justified by the much-loved statistic that the average American on a typical day of local driving only covers a total of about 40 miles.

Well, it seems that Raser thinks General Motors' estimate of 230 mpg in city for the Chevy Volt is even more fudged than its own mileage claims for the Hummer.

"In fact, if we were to employ the method we believe was used recently by GM to estimate city fuel economy for the Volt, the electric Hummer H3E could achieve more than 190 mpg in city driving using about 70% of the battery pack," Spellman said in a statement.

Instead of going that route, however, the company has decided to tone down its power train to make the car more affordable.

It plans to reduce the size of the battery pack so that the SUV gets the original target of all-electricity for the first 40 miles. By doing that, the company can reduce vehicle weight and make the SUV available to customers for a cheaper price, according to Raser.

[jasonaorr]

A true guilt-free Hummer. I wonder what the final price will be.

[gsmiller88]

I would say upwards of $60,000

[SteveW928]

It is only guilt-free if you have a LOT of solar cells on your roof. While the calculations here are much better than those used to promote the Volt... the same basic problem applies. The electricity used to get the initial miles is not free nor pollution free in most cases.

I'm all for this kind of technology... just wishing it was reported and advertised more in reality rather than green-washing.

[texaslabrat]

Even @ 35mpg, it's a huge improvement. More consumer choices like this, please!

[natedogg0511]

If I had the cash I would be all over this. I love big, ugly, and good on gas.

[Bytrat]

It's all fine and dandy to quote figures and statistics from test conditions, but what are the real world end-user results? The EPA and manufactorer quoted numbers don't seem the relate to the actual real life driver experiances.

[Dalkorian]

Never have and likely never will.

[Renegade Knight]

I matched or beat EPA before they changed to e more "real" and I still do it. While everone can argue how real it is, as long as it's consistant its all you need. They need three ratings for the new generator run rigs. Miles on electric alone. Electrical efficiency, and Generator only MPG. When they dry to merge them all to compare MPG to Standard Motor's that's when it doesn't work.

[ddhboy]

I guess I'm the only one who thinks that electric cars aren't ready for prime time. Sure you can spout out these milage claims, (which is questionable) but over the grid electricity is still expensive, especially in my state of New York, or states that are pushing for this like California, and may not be able to deal with the additional demand. Not to mention that until you have quick charge batteries, ones where you can go to a station and charge your battery to full in like 5 minutes, these vehicles pale in usability in comparison to their gas equivalents. I guess the only situation that I'd see these things working great in now is city residents, who wouldn't drive their car as much as people in the suburbs and such. Still here in NYC, most of these people wouldn't be able to own one of these cars in the first place since most places here don't have garages, and thus the owner wouldn't have access to the home charging stations which come with their car.

[Bakkster]

This kind of electric vehicle is like the Volt: all-electric drivetrain with a gas generator to recharge the batteries. This solves most of the problems you point out. You can still fill it at a gas station, meaning there is no limit to its range beyond any other vehicle. The ability to plug in and charge is a great option, but not mandatory.

Of course, the "100 MPG" stuff we're hearing is pure marketing, even most electric car proponents recognize that. In this case, the car running off electricity from the gas generator still gets over double the mileage of a stock Hummer, but the first 40 miles are straight off the grid. Depending on the prices of gas and electricity in your area, this should make things more cost effective.

Of course, the biggest benefit is that electric motors are efficient and produce consistent torque over a wide range of driving conditions, unlike a gas engine. This means an increase in acceleration, even with the same peak horsepower. Add regenerative braking for city driving, and there's no reason to prefer a gas engine-powered car.

So that wraps it up for your imagined problems with the technology, since they don't apply to electric cars with a generator. The only thing left is cost, which can only come down by producing expensive first-generation vehicles for those who can afford them. See the Prius for an example of this principle in action. I look forward to the wave of electric vehicles with gas generators, and you should too.

[stepyourgameup]

Hey, my stock '99 Corvette gets 30mpg on the highway.

[mike_ekim]

If all cars were as aerodynamic as a Corvette they'd all get over 30 mpg.

[baconstang]

And Hummers are as aerodynamic as a blimp.

[TechSlap]

I hate how the automakers "scew" there findings. They should but in a note right after the 100 mpg that says something like "(unless your driving on the highway past __mph or exceeding 40 miles a day then... you get about 35 mpg)." Sure 35 mpg is alright, but obviously nowhere near 100 mpg. Same goes for the Chevy Volt. Give me some numbers, give me some statistics. Don't just throw this as the final answer, because its NOT!

[texaslabrat]

Here's some numbers:

The Chevy volt gets around 50mpg highway when operating on its gasoline "range-extending engine". It gets the rough equivalent of 110mpg highway (apples-to-apples comparison based on energy consumed to go a given distance) when running on electricity from the grid. The overall mileage can then be calculated based on the time spent in each driving mode. The mileage actually improves in stop-and-go city driving due to lack of aerodynamic losses and the fact that regenerative braking largely erases the normal braking energy penalty suffered by "normal" friction-only brakes.

[whoperson]

Indeed these milage claims are very bogus - they are based on charging the car from an external source. If that external source is a coal-fired power plant, the car may be contributing more CO2 to the atmosphere than if it just burned gasoline. The reason for this is that, even if the power plant is more efficient, a lot of energy is lost in the transmission. Of course, if the power comes from nuclear, wind, solar, or hydro power plants, then this could help with CO2.

[texaslabrat]

The CO2 is, at worst, a wash with respect to gasoline..and likely better as you have mentioned depending on the sourcing of electricity. But this isn't an argument just about CO2 (or shouldn't be)..it's just as much about national and economic security gained by releasing us from the strangehold of imported oil. Environmental impacts are a happy bonus. Once you look at it from that angle...these kinds of vehicles make a lot more sense.

[lang0502]

When they calculate those MPG numbers what value do they use for the price per kilowatt hour to charge the batteries? My electricity seems to run about $.14 per kilowatt.

[texaslabrat]

MPG calculations don't (or at least, shouldn't) have a price component in them at all. Both a gallon of gas and a kilowatt-hour of electricity have a certain amount of energy in them (you can express that in BTU's, or Joules, or whatever). The overall formula is then just derived from a basic distance traveled per unit energy consumed. It is up to the business side of things to put in the pricing to present a value proposition. For instance, a gallon of diesel typically costs more than gasoline, but you don't often see an asterisk beside THOSE mpg figures. It's up to a cost-benefit analysis showing cost of ownership figures that bring that part in.

[rtuinenburg]

We need a site, where you punch in your zip code, specify which car you want to purchase... then it spits out the true MPG & true CO2 footprint that is based on where electricity comes from and your personal driving habits. People then in turn make real buying decisions on real data!

[Dalkorian]

How is any software, let alone a simple website, supposed to take a zip code and model of car and from that data derive your personal driving habits? Finish elementary school and then come back for an intelligent discussion, please.

[Vegaman_Dan]

@Dalkorian:

There's plenty of data available for the system to pull from- frequency of accidents, types of collisions, locations of heavy traffic, times of day such traffic occurs, types of vehicles involved in accidents, police records of tickets given, travel times between locations, etc.

It can all be done anonymously and pulled from insurance, police, hospital, DOT, and even the DMV. It's not perfect by any means, but it would give you pretty good notion of what to expect.

A person living in Bismark may find their commute times a bit less frantic than those living in LA, for example. They may have the same vehicles and same driving habits, but environmental/external factors could drastically affect the end results.

[ddesy]

Let's see the proof that sans-electricity you can get 35 MPG with actual real life driving. I have a very hard time believing something so horribly non-aerodynamic has much hope.

[texaslabrat]

if the 35 mpg claim is made in city driving with regenerative braking, the aerodynamics barely come into play if at all.

[viper396]

While it may conflict with common sense, aerodynamics is not significant factor in gas mileage for the average commuter drive. You have to be going fast before you start seeing significant benefits of having an aerodynamic car. At lower,commuting speeds, the design and efficiency of the engine is more important. Look at cars like the Honda Fit or the Toyota Scion, they are basically boxes on wheels yet they get good gas mileage when compared to some flashier more aerodynamic cars.

[dimtick]

I wish that auto makers would stop with the ludicrous claims about milage. all it does is make them look like idiots.
stick with 2 numbers and stop trying to combine them using some rediculous formula.
it goes 40 miles on a charge and gets 33 mpg after that. period.
leave it at that and stop with all the smoke and mirrors.

[vg1000]

YES/ NO? Yes, you get the mileage, but are the lithium ion battery drive system really a green system? Electric motor systems last half as long as the traditional engine, so you are using twice the resources and twice the energy to produce. On top of that, the environmental impact to produce the lithium ion battery is, well, not green. So before we go off the deep end lets look at this from all side --please.

[texaslabrat]

You forgot to factor in all the oil and other noxious stuff beyond the fuel burned that is consumed by a traditional engine, as well as the fact that the batteries AND the electric motor are 100% recyclable. The electric cars are definitely far and away "greener".

[summershoe]

Can someone explain how to get 100 mpg from the figures in this article? Even if you were to pretend that the electricity in the batteries is free and doesn't equate to any fuel consumption that still leaves you with 40 free miles + 35 miles on gas before you've burned up a gallon. Even using that bad math I don't see how it has "earned" the moniker of anything better than 75 mpg.

[Bakkster]

Drive less than 75 miles. For example: you could drive 55 miles, 15 of which are on gas, using half a gallon of gas.
55mi / 0.5g > 100MPG

Of course, it's all marketing speak anyway, which is why the method is bad. I'm hoping the system gets standardised to two numbers:
MPG while running off the gas generator
Storage size of the battery pack in miles

[The_happy_switcher]

This number fudging has to stop. They should an approximate range and go with that instead of making mis-leading claims.

[texaslabrat]

listing a range without listing the energy required to go that range is pointless. A 747 has a range of thousands of miles..but that doesn' t mean I could afford to fill one with fuel for such a trip. But I agree, fudging needs to stop and real "apples-to-apples" numbers need to be used such as the calc I did in the last Volt article where I converted everything to BTU's first for comparison.

[CrashPad63]

Yeah right Applerocks... Like Apples claim of superiority over MS. LMFAO

[Yuca]

The way the auto companies calculate these outrageous mileages is that they assume that you are going to recharge the car before you completely burn through the first gallon of gas.

[Dalkorian]

Right, and as long as that is understood why is it a problem? Consider the fact that the manufacturers have been gaming the system since it's invention.

[CA1900]

It's pointless because it's not using gasoline for the bulk of the trip. They're using a different mode of propulsion for most of the trip, then using gasoline for a small fraction of it, then rating the ENTIRE trip on "miles per gallon." It's deliberately deceptive.

If I drive that Hummer for 41 miles, I got 1435 miles per gallon. Does that seem reasonable?

[fokkwp]

When a car runs on stored electricity obtained from non-gasoline sources, it DOES NOT GET MILES PER GALLON. Not zero mpg, not infinite mpg, not 100 mpg. An electric train does not get miles per gallon, nor does a bicycle.

Amazing how gullible these Tech editors are.

[pentest]

Um, did you notice the question mark in the title and read the article? It mentions the fudging going on combining total miles traveled with both gas and electricity divided by the number of gallons used.

[texaslabrat]

@fokkwp:

Actually, it *can* get miles per gallon (equivalent). A gallon of gas has a certain number of BTU's. So does a kilowatt-hour of electricity. They can be interchanged. I did a calculation in the last "Volt" article that put the Volt at around 110mpg equivalent when running purely on electricity from the grid.

[fokkwp]

I'm fine to compare BTUs to BTUs, if they want to state that. But there are lots of differences between generating BTUs from gasoline and by other means. There is no simple gasoline equivalent for electrical power - it takes considerable analysis to compare gasoline to electrical generation in terms of consumer cost, environmental impact, and infrastructure requirements. Once that is done - perhaps by the EPA - we can have some kind of simple comparison that is accessible to the consumer. Until that is ready, these fabulous mpg claims should not simply be questioned, but disregarded.

[texaslabrat]

once again, yes there is a "simple gasoline equivalent for electrical power". That's my point. All the other stuff you point to are irrelevant to mpg calculations. Do they matter in value and ecological issues? Sure. But mpg comes down to simple "how much energy did I put into the car to go a certain distance". You're making it too hard.

[texaslabrat]

To avoid typing it all out from scratch, here's the calc I did in a previous blog post's comments section:
http://news.cnet.com/8618-11128_3-10309170.html?communityId=2069&targetCommunityId=2069&blogId=54&messageId=8288634

"It's easier than that. Simple math can suffice. There are 3414.42595 BTU's in a kWh. There are 125000 BTU's in a gallon of gas. Using the BTU-equivalency leads to a direct comparison. Assuming a 60% overall charging efficiency (might be pessimistic, but probably not too far off), 40 miles @ 8kWh consumed from the battery leads to a 110 mpg gasoline equivalent mileage rating on pure electric mode."

http://news.cnet.com/8618-11128_3-10309170.html?communityId=2069&targetCommunityId=2069&blogId=54&messageId=8294742

"Actually, it makes no assumption at all regarding efficiency of the motors...the relative efficiences fall out of the equation since we are looking strictly at energy input versus distance traveled. So, the Volt is very much 110mpg during pure-electric mode travel in a straight-up apples-to-apples way due to its very high efficiency in how it uses the energy available to it while in pure-electric mode. Once the range extender kicks in after 40 miles, the overall efficiency will naturally fall since the range-extending ICE is less efficient than the pure electric mode. In summary...the Volt is really and truly a 110mpg vehicle from a straight-up energy consumption point of view when in pure-electric mode if my input assumptions about charging efficiency etc were correct.

Moral of the story..don't read more into the analysis than is there as you'll just get yourself off-track and come to invalid conclusions. Now, while the apples-to-apples comparison is valid from an energy consumption point of view, I did not analyze the price-per-mile issue since electricity prices can vary so widely from region to region, and even the time of day the charging is done. Where I live, @3.00/gal for gasoline and $0.15/kWh the Volt would be roughly half the cost per mile to drive for my daily commute (which happens to be nearly exactly 40 miles round-trip) compared to my current car assuming all highway driving (@30mpg). With rush-hour stop-and-go...the ratio gets considerably better."

[Vegaman_Dan]

It's a HUMMER.

It's not about MPG or efficiency or cost per mile.

It's a HUMMER.

It's about being seen driving one and showing that you are rich enough not to care. The Hummer is the owner's way of flipping off the world in regards to things like gas mileage.

[pentest]

No, it is about showing the world you have inadequacy issues and have poor taste.

[gefitz]

Will it do what I really need it to do? Meaning: every day I need it to wade through 5-ft-deep pools of thick mud. Just like on the commercials.

That's why everyone's buying these things, right? So they can do their normal, everyday stuff?

[baconstang]

They are still a rolling roadblock that most vehicles can't see past, too heavy to maneuver in an emergency and so heavy as to inflict excessive damage to people in cars whom couldn't get out of its way. Other than that, they still suck and are poor compensation for, umm, the drivers deficiencies.