@Eduardo,
The key difference between a Saab BioPower engine and all other engines which are claimed to use any mix of gasoline and E85 'optimally' is the use of a variable boost turbocharger. Most gas/E85 engines have compression ratios set for gasoline only. Because E85 has a much higher octane rating, these engines don't use E85 with maximum fuel efficiency, despite the claims. Yes, ignition and injection timing gets adjusted automatically in these engines, but the effective compression ratio remains the same. However, not with a BioPower engine, which automatically raises turbo boost pressure to burn the E85 more efficiently - remember, a diesel engine's better fuel efficiency comes mainly from its higher compression ratio. The bonus is ~20% higher peak power on E85. I apologize to Saab for forgetting about its many markets outside Europe where it does indeed sell BioPower versions of its 9-3 and 9-5 cars. But I don't think Saab will be too upset, because I don't think any other major car company does it right anywhere yet, as defined above. If I've missed something special in Brazil, please let us know.

@Warren
A basic surge power unit (SPU) would be an electric motor/generator and a relatively small battery or supercapacitor, not just a motor as you suggest. You may have been mislead by a mistake in my text – the sentence 'In its simplest form, it is an electric traction motor also capable of acting as a generator to recover energy during braking. ' should have ended with '... during braking, plus a relatively small battery or supercapacitor.' Please accept my apologies, everyone, for any confusion caused, but the various examples in the article should have made the point clear.

I was amused by your comment that 'The PHEV and the parallel HEV are dumb ideas and should be abandoned'. Almost every authority I've checked describes the Volt as a 'plug-in hybrid electric vehicle' or simply a 'plug-in hybrid', so you seem to have thrown your baby out with the bath water! Any hybrid that can be plugged in and can run for several miles at over 60 mph would seem to meet the intent of the label PHEV. So both a plug-in Prius and a Volt qualify as PHEVs. By all means try to argue that a plug-in Prius is not an E-REV, GM Marketing's attempt to differentiate the Volt. But so what, if the plug-in has a 40 mile AER? However, understand that GM's insistence that the Volt's engine power can only be delivered via the Volt's electric motor is a disadvantage functionally. The only advantage that can be claimed is one of cost, if a powerful generator and its controller can be manufactured for less than a simple gearbox. I'm not aware that any company has achieved this yet, nor do I expect it soon, and it will never be a significant cost advantage, outweighing the multiple disadvantages.

@Neil
You may well be right, but your comment may have unsettled GM's accountants and lawyers. First, almost anyone with a one-way commute of 40 miles or more will spend most of it at 60+ mph, traffic permitting, probably rather more. The claim of a 40-mile AER is usually qualified by a phrase such as 'in city driving' or 'over the UDDS cycle'. So I expect your suggested typical Volt user is going to get a little upset when she discovers that the engine cuts in after only 30 miles (or less). And that she is now getting only 40 mpg when the little guy in the Cruze (the much cheaper Volt look-alike) is getting 50 mpg. She might even spend some of her commuting time phoning her lawyer.

Your long-distance commuter is putting her battery pack through two full cycles a day. Assuming 250 commuting days a year and, ignoring weekend driving, that's 2,000 cycles over 4 years. Any potential second owner is going to be distinctly nervous of such high mileage Volts, until there are lots out there with 50,000+ miles on the clock. Any guesses on the typical sticker price of an early high-mileage Volt? Now work out the full cost-per-mile over the first ownership, and then the full life of the vehicle. If the battery packs in Volts driven like your example aren't unusually robust, then the warranty claims could get out of hand, starting in 2014.....

By then, Scully's 100,000 mile, three-year-old, Malibu plug-in will be on its second 8 kWh battery, but still going like new. Scully is planning to buy it for her mother, when the FBI's ready to part with it.

The series HEV, the range extended BEV (BEV with about a 120 mile range and a small hi-efficiency recharge generator) and the BEV are the three best options of the standard EV chassis.

The PHEV and the parallel HEV are dumb ideas and should be abandoned.

The Detroit Big Three would not be in the mess they're in now if they had marketed the 70-80 mpg diesel HEV's they developed under public directive and at taxpayer's expense in 1999. Instead they catered to their buddies in the Oil Industry to force consumers to waste as much fuel as possible. They deserve to go belly up, and should receive no funding from the government.

FlexFuel is another stupid idea. Biofuels are a waste of resources (except maybe algae based) and cannot supply more than 15% of fuel consumption, so who needs E85, E15 will do. Much better to build engines optimized for Methanol, at double the efficiency of typical gasoline engines, and still ultra-low emissions. After fossil fuels run out, we will be stuck with Methanol derived fuels anyway, as it can be made from green electricity plus water and atmospheric or waste CO2. Methanol fueled series HEV's are 4 times more efficient than standard ICE vehicles, including Picken’s wacky NG fueled vehicles. Convert NG to Methanol, and burn in extreme efficiency engines and series HEV’s, and that will quadruple the miles we can travel on NG. Add to that, the enormous, high GHG emitting, high fresh water consumption, environmentally destructive Tar Sands converts NG to heavy crude at a ratio of about 1 part NG to 3 parts Heavy Crude. So instead convert the NG to Methanol directly, and burn in series HEV engines, and you will gain 33% more mileage than using the Tar Sands conversion. So who needs the Tar Sands? On top of that, we’ve been waiting 20 yrs for an environmentally contentious, $20 billion, NG pipeline to be built to carry Arctic NG to southern markets – all of which will be used in the Tar Sands. It is much more efficient and cheaper to convert the NG at source to Methanol and ship it in simple-minded environmentally friendly tankers. Spills quickly disperse in water and are environmentally benign. Is it any wonder that the Oil Industry has instituted a blockade of Methanol Fuels? They also blockaded high efficiency diesel engines in light vehicles by having their government cronies abruptly lower the North American NOx emission level to 1/6th that of Europe’s – SOx, CO, HC’s, particulates – similar to Europe’s.

Posted by: Warren Heath