Archive for Automotive
Hybrid Electric Vehicles, Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles, And All-Electric Vehicles
Posted by: | CommentsThe auto industry’s biggest challenge is the transition away from petroleum (traditional gasoline and diesel) as vehicles’ primary power source to two different forms of energy: electricity and biofuels. “Hybrid electric vehicles usually outperform their conventional counterparts, which a lot of people find hard to believe,” says Bill Rankin, president and CEO of UQM Technologies, a vehicle electric motor supplier in Frederick, Colorado. “In terms of energy delivered to the vehicle, gasoline engines are only twenty-seven percent efficient, and diesels, thirty-three percent, because most energy is wasted as heat. By contrast, electric motors deliver ninety-four percent efficiency to the vehicle.”
Electric power is not the only path to a cleaner, more efficient vehicle, but we believe that it encompasses most of the key growth and investment opportunities for clean vehicles in the near- to mid-term. Electric vehicles also include the long-hyped and much-debunked hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle (FCV), because a fuel cell essentially produces electric power from its fuel source. Briefly, these are the four categories of vehicles we’ll examine in more depth below:
- HEVs. On the market for several years now and rapidly gaining mainstream acceptance, hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) have helped Toyota and (more recently) Honda boost market share and market capitalization value. They’re one of the great clean-tech business success stories to date and an immediate market opportunity for current players who are ramping up production and rolling out new models. “Hybrid models will eventually become the new automotive standard,” wrote global investment giant AllianceBernstein in a June 2006 report titled The Emergence of Hybrid Vehicles: A Game-Changing Technology with Big Implications. But we view them, to an extent, as a precursor to even more efficient, lower-emissions vehicles in the other two electric-vehicle categories.
- PHEVs. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are on the verge of a transition from the domain of “Prius hackers” reengineering hybrids into plug-in models in their garages to the production lines of global automakers. That opens up compelling growth opportunities for entrepreneurs (and their investors) to work with the big companies on battery technologies and other key components. GM surprised many industry observers by being the first automaker to announce PHEV production plans, unveiling a plug-in version of the Saturn VUE hybrid SUV at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November 2006. “There finally seems to be momentum among the big car companies for the plug-in concept,” says veteran clean-vehicle observer Jim Motavalli, editor of E, the Environmental Magazine and author of Forward Drive: The Race to Build “Clean” Cars for the Future (Sierra Club Books, 2001). Toyota disclosed its long-awaited PHEV plans in January 2008, promising commercial models for the global market by 2010—matching GM’s PHEV target.
- EVs. “Who killed the electric car?” asked the title of an acclaimed 2006 documentary film about U.S. automakers’ pulling the plug on their electric vehicles (EVs) in the early 2000s. Now the car’s response might be a line from another movie, of the Monty Python variety: “I’m not dead yet!” New entrepreneurial developments at both the high and low end of the market, from Silicon Valley to Norway to India (and even in Detroit), suggest exciting new potential for the EV.
- FCVs. The saga of the much-hyped “hydrogen economy,” based on cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells, could fill an entire book – and has, more than once. Our assessment of the near-term growth and investment opportunities in fuel-cell vehicles (FCVs) is fairly skeptical, but we recognize it’s a “wild card” sector where big breakthroughs are certainly possible. Honda’s sleek hydrogen-fueled FCX Concept, rolled out at the 2006 Los Angeles Auto Show, brings the long-promised technology closer to wide-scale commercial reality. But reaching affordable price points and building a widely accessible hydrogen-fueling infrastructure remain huge challenges.
EVs and PHEVs that draw power from a charging station or standard wall socket have raised the question: Is that really clean energy? Sure, emissions and fossil-fuel consumption are dramatically reduced on the road, say skeptics, but what if the electrons charging your battery overnight are coming from a dirty coal plant? Is that really cleaner than burning the equivalent gasoline? In a word, yes. Studies by a number of agencies, including the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Argonne National Laboratory, and the California Air Resources Board have all concluded that running cars on electricity from today’s U.S. power grid (which is about 50% coal-fired), instead of gas or diesel, reduces overall GHG emissions anywhere from 22% to 61%. A big reason why: most battery-charging takes place overnight, when power demand drops dramatically and utilities have excess generating capacity, an effect known as “valley filling.” A December 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) concluded that such off-peak utility generation and transmission could power 84% of the 220 million vehicles in the United States if they were PHEVs.
If you live in a region where more wind or hydroelectric generates the juice—or it’s coming from your own rooftop solar panels—your electric-car advantage is even better. With the market share of clean energy rising around the world, the advantages of grid power versus petroleum will continue to improve. “PHEVs and EVs are the only cars that get cleaner as they get older,” says CalCars founder Felix Kramer, “because the grid gets cleaner every decade.” And you can’t beat the cost savings. At an average utility rate of 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, you’re paying the equivalent of about 60 cents a gallon to run on electricity.
It’s a beautiful day for a drive just north of San Francisco in Marin County, California. Rays of the late-afternoon January sun, beaming between purple-gray clouds like stage lighting, frame stunning vistas of majestic Mount Tamalpais. But behind the wheel of the Toyota Prius that he’s converted to a plug-in hybrid, Ron Gremban isn’t paying attention to any of it. “Look at that!” he says, pointing to the mid-dashboard graphic display showing how much kinetic energy from the car’s brakes is going to recharge its batteries. “Thirty-five amps of regenerative braking. That’s all energy that’s not being wasted.” Elsewhere on the screen is the most important number: on the current tank of gas, the car’s getting 79.5 mpg. Back in 1968 as an engineering student at California Institute of Tech¬nology, Gremban helped design and drive an electric battery-powered Volkswagen bus, the “Voltswagen,” from Los Angeles to Boston to win the /’ Great Electric Car Race against a team from MIT. Today he’s leader of technology development for the California Cars Initiative (CalCars), a nonprofit group of engineers and marketers working with auto and com¬ponent manufacturers to promote the plug-in hybrid—a standard gas-electric hybrid like the Prius, equipped with extra batteries and a plug-in module enabling the use of household electricity to charge them. Unlike regular hybrids that use a gasoline engine in combination with an electric motor most of the time, plug-ins can run on purely electric power—delivered in an overnight battery charge from a standard home wall socket—for the first 25 to 30 miles of local driving speeds. That means virtually no gasoline burned for driving around town, which con¬stitutes the vast majority of vehicle use around the world. “GAS OPT,” reads Gremban’s license plate. The technology delivers dramatic cuts in hybrid vehicle fuel consumption—50% to 70% better than a standard Prius, which is already pretty stingy. And if the extra battery charge runs out or you forgot to plug it in, the car operates like a regular hybrid, with the gas engine charging the battery and kicking in for power when needed. So there’s no limited-range problem, a deal-killer for the all-electric vehicles (EVs) on the market in the 1990s that never grew beyond a small niche. A number of technology innovators and political leaders have even talked about pairing a plug-in hybrid with flex-fuel technolo¬gies (a fuel tank that can run on a mix of up to 85% ethanol and 15% petroleum-based gasoline). In this type of vehicle, you might drive up to 500 miles before burning up a gallon of petroleum-based gasoline. That makes it, if you will, a true “hybrid” hybrid—and one that we see as one of the greatest potential breakthroughs, and business opportunities, in vehicle efficiency. Welcome to today’s world of clean-tech transportation, a world full of vast business and investment opportunities and fraught with high risk. Designing ultra-efficient, low-emissions vehicles to serve the mobility needs of the carbon-constrained, high-oil price years and decades ahead is truly one of industry’s biggest challenges. These trends have already shaken up the global automobile industry, which cranks out 65 million new vehicles a year, in a major way, rewarding sellers of efficient vehicles and even opening the door for start-up clean-car companies in one of the world’s highest entry-barrier businesses. Motorized transportation is a broad and diverse industry, comprising aviation, boats and ships of all sizes, passenger and freight locomotives, light rail, buses, long-haul trucks, and many other forms of conveyance. But we believe that the most compelling opportunities for clean tech— and many of the biggest challenges—come in the world of personal trans¬portation.
Hybrid Electric Vehicles – Squarely In The Mainstream
Posted by: | CommentsToday’s gas-electric hybrid cars have been called the most significant innovation in the auto industry since the automatic transmission—some even say since the gasoline engine replaced the Stanley Steamer. Hybrid sales in the United States exceeded 350,000 in 2007, a fivefold increase from 70,000 just 3 years earlier. Families driving a 50-mpg Toyota Prius today get legroom and cargo space comparable to that of a Camry sedan, Toyota’s worldwide best seller (which has a hybrid version of its own, launched in 2006—the first Toyota hybrid built in the United States, in Georgetown, Kentucky). Or they can choose a hybrid full-sized sedan (the Camry or a Nissan Altima), small SUV (Ford Escape or GM Saturn VUE), large SUV (Toyota Highlander, Mercury Mariner), full-sized luxury SUV (Lexus RX 400h), or pickup truck (Chevy Silverado).
That’s just a sampling, and there’ll be many more hybrid models in the next few years. Nissan, after lagging fellow Japanese competitors Toyota and Honda, finally released a hybrid Altima in 2007 with technology licensed from Toyota and will develop its own HEV technology for vehicles aimed at the 2010 model year. But bear in mind that not all hybrids are created equal. Many, notably the Lexus models, use the electric motor more for its power boost to the gasoline engine than to run as often as possible in emissions-free electric mode. That can mean very little improvement in gas mileage or emissions compared with the nonhybrid counterpart model; you’re paying the hybrid premium for extra power (and perhaps pride of HEV ownership). Hybrid-electric is a flexible technology adaptable to many different market segments, but not all HEVs are as clean as others. Regardless, it’s a huge potential market. Alliance-Bernstein, one of the world’s largest publicly traded asset management firms with some $750 billion in assets, is particularly bullish on the sector. The firm predicts that hybrids (including plug-ins) will comprise 50% of global new car sales by 2015 and a stunning 85% by 2030.
Sometimes the financial advantage of a HEV goes beyond savings on fuel expense. Hybrid buyers in the United States get a federal tax credit of up to $3,150, depending on the HEV model. And people working at a growing number of high-tech firms and other companies, including Google, HP, Timberland, and Yahoo!, receive up to $5,000 from their employer toward the purchase of the highest-mileage hybrids.
The appeal of hybrids, and their breakneck sales growth, has extended far beyond the green-minded and has proven there needn’t be a trade-off between fuel efficiency and performance. Motor Trend magazine, Detroit’s bible of speed and style since 1949, bestowed its coveted Car of the Year honor on Toyota’s Prius in 2003, Honda’s lineup of Civics (including the hybrid) 2 years later, and the Toyota Camry, including its hybrid version, in 2007. These honors didn’t come just because the hybrids save gas. “The Prius is a capable, comfortable, fun-to-drive car that just happens to get spectacular fuel economy,” wrote then editor-in-chief Kevin Smith. “It also provides a promising look at a future where extreme fuel-efficiency, ultra-low emissions, and exceptional performance will happily coexist.” No trade-off at all—it’s just a better car. It’s helped Toyota make its historic leap past GM as the world’s largest automaker; the company expects to sell 1 million hybrids annually worldwide by 2010.
“When we launched the Prius in the U.S. in July 2000, the star of the Detroit Auto Show earlier that year was the Hummer H2,” says Celeste Migliore, national marketing manager of advanced technology vehicles for Toyota USA in Torrance, California. “Hybrids were an unknown quantity. Now the Prius has become our ‘halo’ for the Toyota brand, and we’re branding our Hybrid Synergy Drive technology across all models.” Toyota, which initially eschewed traditional advertising for the Prius, clearly caught a wave of market forces that place it in an enviable position moving forward as HEVs, PHEVs, and EVs evolve. “Our feeling is that we don’t create demand, we facilitate it,” says Migliore. “It’s really hard to make a product cool. You can’t do it—your customers have to do it.”
Hybrid car production is also booming in China (along with overall’ auto manufacturing there), with Toyota, Hyundai, and Volkswagen all producing hybrids in partnership with local Chinese carmakers. They have plenty of competition from China’s own manufacturers. At least five—Dongfeng, Chery, Geely, Chang’an, and China FAW—planned to start manufacturing and selling hybrids in China by the end of 2008.
Sign Of The Times – The X Prize For Vehicles
Posted by: | CommentsIn 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation awarded $10 million to SpaceShipOne, the winning design for a two-person spacecraft that’s opened the door to space travel as a pastime for consumers, albeit very wealthy ones. In 2006, the foundation turned its sights toward clean vehicles, deciding that one of its next multimillion-dollar prizes will go to the best new design of a super-fuel-efficient vehicle. Mark Goodstein of high-tech incubator Idealab became the X PRIZE Foundation’s new executive director to lead this effort; some 50 international inventors and design teams are competing for the prize. “The X PRIZE is about changing paradigms,” says Goodstein. “The current paradigm is that it’s perfectly acceptable to drive a car that only gets 20 or 30 miles per gallon.”
The new paradigm may be hybrid, plug-in hybrid, all-electric, fuel-cell, some combination thereof, or something entirely new. There will be winners and losers in all of these sectors, with new entrants already shaking up the personal transportation industry, a trend that’s likely to continue. If innovators can figure out how to launch billionaires into space, the idea goes, what about a new, safe, fun, and dramatically better way to drive millions of families to their jobs, schools, and soccer games across the globe in ultra-efficient, low-emissions, high-performance vehicles? Now that sounds like a business opportunity.
Electric Vehicles – No Longer a Trade-Off
Posted by: | CommentsElectric cars of the past usually involved asking people to make a tradeoff. With some notable exceptions such as GM’s EV-1 car and Toyota’s RAV-4 small electric SUV, most commercial electric cars developed in the 1990s had limited range of 150 miles or less on a battery charge, acceleration that most drivers would call wimpy, small size, and styling (or lack thereof) that appealed only to the extreme alternative-lifestyle demographic. For many reasons—some alleged by environmental activists to be conspiratorial—most automakers stopped making commercial electric cars by the early 2000s. Some EVs are still on the road and the technology has a very loyal following, but it has been little more than a tiny blip in the global vehicle market. Until now.
Tesla Motors, Silicon Valley’s first auto company, is out to prove that the all-electric car can be high-performance, sexy, and profitable. The $98,000 Tesla Roadster sports car, powered by more than 6,300 tiny lithium-ion batteries charged from a home socket, does 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds. It’s caught major buzz among California’s well-heeled high-tech crowd, selling out its first production run of 600 cars in a few months, with the company now ramping up to build a few thousand. The cars were scheduled to hit the road in 2008. Forbes called it “the new car that best lived up to the hype” in 2006.
Tesla is out to chart a dramatic new future for EVs that’s light-years away from what cofounder and former CEO Martin Eberhard calls the “ugly pathetic little cars” of the 1990s. “Electric vehicles in the past were designed by people who viewed driving as a necessary evil,” he says. “We wanted to build a car that doesn’t force you to make a choice between performance and efficiency.” Tesla is starting at the high end of the market with the Roadster, then plans to get broader and cheaper with a five-passenger, all-electric sedan selling for $50,000 to $65,000 in 2009. It’s aiming to build and sell 10,000 to 30,000 of those annually. “As an entrepreneur I’ve learned that the right time to enter a market is when your product is just barely possible,” says Eberhard. “If it’s really easy, then you’re too late.”
We agree with the business potential of the company’s vision. But we’re even more intrigued by the opportunity, exemplified by Tesla, of EV technology (and its variations) enabling a whole new type of car company. Rather than trying to beat the world’s auto giants at their own game, as last century’s visionaries, such as Preston Tucker and John DeLorean, tried to do and ultimately failed, Tesla and other EV manufacturers are carving out a whole new business opportunity and model inspired by Silicon Valley. Tesla is partnering with a range of technology providers (such as British race car legend Lotus for the Roadster chassis) in designing its car. And it has deals with solar PV installers, such as Solar City in Foster City, California, to jointly sell both the Roadster and the clean-energy source—rooftop solar panels—that can power it at your home.
Taking the new-model, high-tech car company concept a step further, several efforts are under way around the world to design new, clean, ultraefficient vehicles in a collaborative, open-source process. Initiatives such as the Germany-based OScar (www.theoscarproject.com) and the Open Source Green Vehicle (www.osgv.org) are tapping the expertise of hundreds of engineers worldwide to create a fuel-efficient, next-generation vehicle. The Rocky Mountain Institute has followed this model for some time, placing its Hypercar hydrogen FCV design in the public domain for improvement and tweaking by outside collaborators. We’re not sure what these business models or investment opportunities will look like yet. But bringing the open source process from high tech to the auto industry is an exciting development partially mirrored by the open-source efforts to modernize the electrical grid.
Whether to Stop Driving
Posted by: | CommentsThe decision to stop driving a vehicle should not be made based on age but on such issues as one’s health, genes, lifestyle, and sense of confidence. Since we all age differently there exists no magic number at which a driver’s license should be relinquished. Consider the following statements, and if any are applicable to you, you should consider giving up driving.
- You are frequently lost even on roads once familiar to you.
- Drivers of other vehicles often honk or gesture at you.
- You’ve recently had a fender bender or two.
- You are often surprised by the sudden appearance of other vehicles or pedestrians.
- Family members have voiced concern about your driving.
- You drive as infrequently as possible due to a lack of confidence.
Since the decision to stop driving is not an easy one, consider contacting the AARP at www.aarp.org or AAA at www.aaa.com to obtain publications to help with your assessment.
Getting Around without Your Car
Even without a car, there are still options for getting around in most communities. Contact local organizations dedicated to serving senior citizens to inquire about transportation services. There may be low-cost public transportation available to those who are 65 or older.
Religious, social or nonprofit organizations may offer transportation services to senior citizens. Keep in mind that operating a car is expensive, and without the monthly cost of fuel and maintenance, more funds may be available to you to pay for taxis or hired drivers.
Lower-Carbon Driving – How to Reduce the Emissions of Your Current Car
Posted by: | CommentsEven if your vehicle’s a gas-guzzler, you could probably cut its fuel usage by a tenth – and in some cases by as much as a third – by simply tweaking your driving practices. Here’s how.
Limit your speed
If you travel much on motorways, then the single most significant way to reduce the carbon footprint of your driving is to limit your speed. Most cars achieve maximum fuel efficiency at around 45-50mph. Above that level, fuel consumption rises by as much as 15% for every additional 10mph. So simply driving on the motorway at 60mph rather than 80mph can cut emissions and fuel costs by as much as a quarter.
(Of course, governments could easily force us to drive in a less polluting way by simply reducing and imposing the speed limits of main roads. This is exactly what happened in the US in 1974, when a 55mph speed limit was rolled out across the country in response to the 1973 oil crisis. To date, though, few if any governments have implemented new speed restrictions in light of climate change.)
In some cases, high speeds can be avoided at no time cost by favouring more direct routes on A-roads over longer routes on motorways.
Drive smoothly
Rapid acceleration and sudden braking will increase emissions both directly, by increasing your fuel consumption, and indirectly, by reducing the longevity of your vehicle and bringing forward the date that a new one will need to be manufactured. So it makes sense to accelerate gradually and also to take your foot off the gas as early as possible when you’re approaching a stop. Every time you press the brakes, you’re turning energy from the fuel into wasted heat.
The rules are a bit different for hybrid cars, which often operate most efficiently at 30-40mph. For many hybrids, it can increase efficiency to accelerate fairly briskly until you reach this speed range and then to employ so-called “pulse and glide” driving – basically, hovering in the optimal speed range through small accelerations and decelerations. When it’s time to slow down, brake slowly at first, then increase the pressure: this ensures that the maximum energy goes into recharging the battery versus creating unusable heat.
Whatever car you’re in, avoid pushing it too hard before changing gear. If you have a rev counter, try to shift up a gear before you reach 2500rpm in a petrol car, or 2000rpm in a diesel model.
Other ways to shave your car emissions
Keep heavy items out of the car unless you need them – you’ll typically lose a percent or two in efficiency for every extra 50kg you haul. Avoid unnecessary roof racks, too, as they increase aerodynamic resistance. Also keep an eye on tyre pressure: rolling resistance goes up and efficiency goes down by as much as 1% for every PSI (pound per square inch) below the recommended pressure range. Never over-inflate your tyres, though, as this increases the risk of accidents while doing little if anything to boost efficiency.
Another fuel drain is air conditioning, which typically cuts down a vehicles efficiency by a few percent. That said, if it’s a choice between driving with the windows down and running the A/C, there may be little difference – at least not at high speeds. That’s because wide-open windows will typically increase the car’s aerodynamic drag, and this has a higher impact as the speed increases. If outside temperatures are comfortable, try using the vents and fan but leaving the A/C off.
Finally, except when it’s required – such as in stop-and-go traffic – avoid idling. Letting the car tick over for anything more than around ten seconds will use more fuel than turning the engine off and back on. In some cars just five minutes of idling can throw half a kilo of CO2 into the air.
Consider your fuel
As well as changing your driving practices, you may also be able to improve the environmental performance of your car by switching to an alternative fuel, such as LPG for petrol cars or locally produced biodiesel for diesel cars.
The Basics of Motorcycle Engines
Posted by: | CommentsIn the old days, there were three basic types of motorcycle engines: four-stroke, two-stroke and rotary. Alas, the two-stroke is all but gone for street bikes. Stricter noise and emission regulations have made the two-stroke uneconomical or impossible to manufacture for street use. This apparently has changed manufacturers’ engine choices for most of the other street/dirt bikes in their line-ups as well. On a recent trip to the bike shop, two-stroke engines were found only on jet skis, snowmobiles and some motocross racing bikes.
The rotary engine never caught on, and although in production, it is almost extinct. Poor marketing strategies and rider unfamiliarity caused the rotary’s unpopularity. The last producer, Norton, fell victim to Thatcherism, the leveraged buy-out greed of the ’80s, and Reaganomics. It seems that only the four-stroke is able to survive decade after decade.
The name stems from the fact that the combustion happens internally. This is contrasted to, say, an old steam engine where coal was burned externally beneath a closed tank of water to produce steam power. The first internal combustion engines were built in the 1820s, but the concept of combustion under high pressure was not theorized until 1838 (by William Barnett). In 1876, the German firm of Otto and Langen began producing a “silent engine,” based on Alphonse Beau de Rochas’s 1862 theory of a four-stroke engine. This was the first modern four-stroke engine. Hence, the four-stroke engine is often called an Otto engine. Otto’s engine, like most of the era, burned coal gas.
In 1878 Dougald Clerk developed a two-stroke engine. Clerk’s design used a secondary piston and cylinder that would take in a charge of fresh fuel vapor. It would pass this charge to the working cylinder, scavenging the working cylinder of burned fuel and providing fresh fuel. It was not until 18 91, when Joseph Day simplified the two-stroke engine by using the crankcase to perform the duties of the secondary cylinder, that the modern two-stroke was born. In Day’s design, the fresh charge is drawn into the crankcase, rather than a secondary cylinder.
To round out our discussion of engine history, in 1892, Rudolf Diesel patented an engine in which very high compression (V^5th of original volume) resulted in high enough temperatures (538° Centigrade) to ignite fuel sprayed into the cylinder. This is, of course, the Diesel internal combustion engine.
Internal combustion engines are wonderfully simple in concept. An internal combustion engine requires three things to run: air, fuel and spark.
- Air – A colorless, odorless, tasteless gaseous mixture, containing 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, with small amounts of argon, carbon dioxide, neon, helium and other trace gases.
- Fuel – Usually gasoline or gasoline mixed with oil or alcohol. Fuel can also be more exotic. Internal combustion engines run on diesel, propane and other combustible substances as odd as fumes from decomposing chicken droppings (methane). The best economy is obtained when one part fuel is mixed with 17 parts air (notated as 1:17). For power, a richer 1:12 mixture is required. For n. cold engine, an extraordinarily rich mixture is required.
- Spark – In gasoline engines, detonation is caused by a 20,000 to 30,000 volt electric spark. The spark plug provides a gap between electrodes across which the high tension voltage jumps, which is the spark. Detonation is caused by the heat of extreme compression in diesel engines.
These are combined via compression to produce an associative event called combustion, which produces power, as defined below:
- Compression—Usually attained by pushing a piston up a closed-ended tube (i.e., the cylinder) toward the closed end (a.k.a. combustion chamber) to squeeze the fuel and air to a density that will permit detonation via spark.
- Combustion—The rapid oxidation of fuel, or the conversion of gasoline and oxygen into carbon dioxide and water.
When all these factors are present in the proper quantities, and delivered at precisely the correct time, you have a running internal combustion engine. Of course, the engine won’t run for long if you do not have other systems dealing with many residual by-products of the detonation, such as a cooling system for excess heat, a lubricating system to keep metal parts from grinding themselves into shavings, an exhaust system to control noise and fumes, etc. It is all quite clever.
Knowledge of air, fuel and spark is an important trouble shooting tool. A motorcycle mechanic will begin a dead-engine diagnosis by searching for air, fuel and spark. Finding all three operating correctly, a check for compression comes next. The absence of one of these is an immediate clue to what is ailing the engine, and directs the mechanic where to focus his attention.
The Basics of How to Jump Start a Car’s Discharged Battery
Posted by: | CommentsJump-starting a discharged battery requires a set of jumper cables and another vehicle with a good battery. Before connecting jumper cables, remove any rings, watch, or bracelets that you are wearing. Then, follow this procedure:
1. Maneuver the vehicle with the strong battery next to the one with the run-down battery, making sure that the two vehicles don’t touch.
2. Turn off ignition switches, lights, and electrical accessories in both vehicles.
3. Shift the transmissions in both vehicles to Park or Neutral. Engage the parking brakes.
4. Open the hoods. If one or both of the batteries have vent caps, place a cloth over the tops of the caps. Batteries emit hydrogen through holes in vent caps. If exposed to a spark, hydrogen can ignite and cause the battery to explode.
Don’t smoke.
5. Connect one of the jumper cables to the clamp of the cable attached to the positive side of the battery in the vehicle that doesn’t start. Connect the other end of this jumper cable to the clamp of the cable attached to the positive side of the battery in the other vehicle.
6. Connect the second jumper cable to the clamp of the cable attached to the negative side of the battery in the vehicle that does start. The negative side of a battery is marked – or NEG. Connect the other end of this jumper cable to a clean metal part of the engine in the vehicle that doesn’t start. Place the clamp as far away from the weak battery as possible. An alternator bracket or an engine bolt that is large enough for the jaws of the clamp to bite into is a suitable spot.
7. With everyone away from the engine compartments of the vehicles, start the engine of the vehicle with the strong battery. Then, try starting the engine of the vehicle with the weak battery. If it doesn’t start, turn off the ignition switches in both cars and check to make sure that both jumper cables are securely attached. Try again. If the engine of the vehicle with the weak battery still does not start, the problem is probably more serious than a run-down battery.
8. If the engine in the vehicle with the weak battery starts, let it run for several seconds. Then, with the engine still running, disconnect jumper cables in this order:
- From the ground connection of the vehicle with the weak battery
- From the negative side of the strong battery
- From the positive side of the strong battery
- From the positive side of the weak battery