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Hydrogen-Boost June 2005 Newsletter
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Tour de Sol Results
The
weather was perfect and the traffic was acceptable on Friday the 13th
of May for the Monte Carlo style Rally mileage competition. I had an arrangement with a local
newspaper editor to meet with his reporter at the start line of the
Rally and carry him along for an hour or so, to witness the rally and
get publicity for Tour de Sol.
We met at the start/finish line at Stewarts shop off exit 13N of
I87. We went through the
official process of checking in, including filling the fuel tank to the
very top, checking the tire pressure, and sealing the fuel filler cap
and fuel filler door. I
insisted that the officials pay close attention to published rules and
procedures so there would be no doubt or question of the procedures
being fulfilled to the start. I
expected to get such good mileage that I would be accused of cheating when
I finished.
At first the start line
official wanted to bypass the sealing off of my gas cap because he
couldn’t find his glue/silicon sealer, which was to be used to glue a
business card to the gas cap and to the metal around it, preventing any
entry. I insisted that the seal
be installed so there would be no question. A second seal was installed on the filler door. This was a number of strips of
overlapping duct tape smoothed over the filler door and signed by the
official. Any tampering of the
tape would be obvious at the finish line. The signature spanned across all overlaps of the tape.
We had planned to start at
9 AM but the official procedures delayed our start until about
9:40. Because the newspaper
reporter wanted to ride only for part of the rally we had to change our
planned route to accommodate his wishes. My wife the navigator, who has never been trained to
navigate, was busier than a one legged field goal kicker and didn’t
have time nor enough hands to do the logging paperwork of the rally,
and keep us from getting lost at the same time. We did get lost for a while but we
just stopped and I deciphered the map and road signs to find our way
again.
Two hours later we had made
it to one road that was part of our planned route and back to the
start/finish line to drop off the reporter. Most of that loop was on unfamiliar roads, which is not
what you want in a mileage competition. But this was more like real driving conditions so I
couldn’t complain. On this
first loop we did have a run-in with a road work crew, which got my
temper charged up a little. Two
bad the charge couldn’t go into the battery, because on our second loop
the battery went dead and we wasted ten minutes getting help to get us
going again.
The pause at the start/finish
line, to drop off the reporter, took longer than expected because the
finish line had officially just opened and the press was there. I pulled in to drop off the reporter
and the officials wanted to do the finish line procedures. I told them I was only half done and
they would have to wait. The
press did jump in and did an interview and took pictures. My reporter got out and a half hour
later I resumed my rally.
The second half of the
rally was mostly uneventful because we chose major routes to travel,
which gave us more traffic to contend with and forced us to maintain a
higher speed than planned. We
also had that incident of having a dead battery caused by the hydrogen
generator running when the engine was off. This is a big no-no in our instruction manual and I had
planned on rewiring the system to prevent that the previous week but
got too busy.
Our route took us 160 miles
according to our odometer, which was off by 5 miles because I had
installed slightly smaller tires than stock. Our route took us through 12 villages and cities in 155
miles for an average of one city per 13 miles. I would call that pretty normal
average driving conditions. The
speed limits ranged from 30 mph to 55 mph, except in school zones,
where it was 15-20 mph. We did
no highway driving whatever on this rally as other competitors
did. We had close to 50 stop
signs and traffic lights and plenty of miles of city traffic on our
route to claim that we had pretty normal traffic conditions.
Our driving techniques were
what you would expect for a mileage competition. We used almost every technique in
the Hydrogen Boost manual expect drafting, because we never got on the
highway where drafting would help.
Yes, we did as the rules suggested, we packed in as much fuel as
we could before the start. I
filled the tank up the night before.
I shook the car and jumped up and down on the bumper to get all
the air bubble out, as suggested by the rules. I even insured that our start line
fill up was done with my car tilting down away from the filler
tube. And yes when I pulled in
to the finish line I first pulled up to the pump that had my car tilted
the other way. Of course this
was done because this is how every other car pulled in. The normal traffic for that station
was such that you had to pull in that way unless you balked traffic and
interfered with normal flow, which was in from the main road and out
onto a side road where there was a traffic light to help you get back
onto the main road.
I knew that the original finish line fill-up
would be inaccurate but I wanted to make a point to the officials that
they were not getting an accurate mileage calculation. My first fill-up took 0.8 gallons,
which calculated to an average mileage of about 200 mpg. Even I was flabbergasted but I was
not the only one who would not accept that calculation. I pointed out to the officials the
problem and said, “Let’s pull the car down there, where I filled up
before and let’s fill up again.”
We did this and it took on another 0.4 gallons, but this was not
enough either. Though it would
have calculated to 133 mpg, I said, “Wait we’re not done yet. The rules encouraged us to shake the
car and put as much in as we could.”
So I got on top of the bumper and jumped up and down and shook
the car to get all the bubbles out.
Then we took the pump again and put in another 0.2 gallons, for
a total of 1.424 gallons, for an average of 112 mpg. After doing a ten mile odometer calibration
run and using 10.28 miles on the odometer to do it, we calibrated the
real distance traveled on the rally to be 155.3 miles. This made our real mileage 109.1 mpg.
After that the official went through the vehicle
“with a fine toothed comb” to find out how I must have cheated. By this time the best hybrid had
recorded about half that mileage.
After examining under the hood and inside the computer readout
on the Auterra Dyno-Scan, they finally gave up the quest for cheating
proof. They wanted to figure a
way to dock me for shutting off my engine while still moving (Read about
the porpoising technique in our newsletters.) but I objected that the
Prius hybrid also shuts off its engine while moving so how could you
dock me in a competition with them.
The
official awards ceremony was Saturday at 3 PM and I was called up to get
in lie for an award. I expected
that the official finally dropped their objections to porpoising and
would award me the best in show trophy. When I was called up I was given an award for “most
unique vehicle” which I though quite inappropriate since I was driving
the most common vehicle there.
My mileage was announced as 99 mpg and I figured I was docked
for porpoising. I called the
official the next day and he said they had originally made a mistake
adding up the three fill-up receipts during the calculations and that I
only got 99 mpg. He said that
we had on one slip used the cent instead of gallons. I objected, but without having the
slips in front of me I could not make accusations. Of course when gas sells at over $2
a gallon the cents would have been more than the gallons. After seeing the official results I
saw that they also only credited me with only 150.1 miles instead of
155.3. They must have
mistakenly done the calibration adjustment twice. Regardless of any mistakes made in
calculating the mileage, the reported official results were that The
Hydrogen Boost Saturn SL1 achieved 99.53 mile per gallon. The only vehicle to officially
achieve more mileage was a plug-in hybrid that used both electrical
power from the wall and gasoline from the pump. You can notice on the official
results that this entrant is listed twice, once at 102.13 mpg and again
at 67.47 mpg. I can only assume
that the 102.13 mpg was the mileage based on just the gasoline added to
the tank at the finish line and the 67.47 mpg was the equivalent mpg
after the electrical power to recharge the batteries was converted to
gallons of gasoline. I haven’t
seen the formula that the officials used to calculate how many gallons
of gas were equivalent to the kilowatt hours used to charge the
batteries. Whatever the formula
was I know that it favors the electrical power input. 2004 results reported an electric
“vehicle” achieving 1099.5 mpg.
There
was at least one modified hybrid that was credited with 94.73 mpg, but
as far as I know, none of the other entrants including this one, were
required to fill their fuel tank at the finish line with three attempts
in different positions and with jumping up and down on the bumper to
shake out the bubbles.
Regardless of the finish line procedures, technically the
plug-in hybrid that is listed twice and officially credited with
beating the Hydrogen Boost Saturn should have been disqualified or told
to go back out and drive around some more, because they did not cover
the minimum distance required by the rules.
That’s
enough about the bad news. If
you want to see the chart of the official results of the Tour de Sol
Monte Carlo style rally mileage competition, you can see the full chart
at http://www.bestrateofclimb.com/montecarlo-results.htm
If
you want a brief summary, here it is:
Entrant Vehicle Mileage
M. Kohler Plug
Hybrid Priys 102.13
F. Giroux
Hydrogen Boost
Saturn 99.53
B. Hardegen HybridMod Insight 94.73
C. Sullivan Insight Hybrid 81.74
M. Lewis Insight Hybrid 79.12
Glynn VW Biodiesel 76.82
H. Marsolais Smart Biodiesel 74.72
M. Houle Civic Hybrid 74.52
Jack Lee Insight Hybrid 73.75
E. Diefenbach Insight
Hybrid 72.31
M. Kohler Plug Hybrid Prius 67.47
M. Bardall Prius Hybrid 64.23
A. Lane Prius Hybrid 62.49
J. Laughlin Civic Hybrid 61.17
J. McConville Prius
2 Hybrid 58.99
Rw. Pichardo Insight
Hybrid 58.87
Claude Insight
Hybrid 58.82
S. McAusland Insight Hybrid 56.87
E. Seal Civic
Hybrid 56.37
R. Stratton Prius 2 Hybrid 56.32
S. Greenbaum Civic
Hybrid 53.65
Deb Van Batt Insight Hybrid 52.58
Herbert Prius 2 Hybrid 51.52
B. Gillett Prius Hybrid 51.06
C. Lawrence Prius 2 Hybrid 47.58
S. Tanenholtz Prius
Hydrid 47.29
G. LaBelle Prius 2 Hybrid 46.76
A. Walker Prius 2 Hybrid 46.58
E Packer Prius 2 Hybrid 45.12
A Fiffick Escape Hybrid 42.88
M. Grisborne Prius 2 Hybrid 41.95
CVB Prius 2 Hybrid 40.79
J. Van Duesem VW
Pass Biodiesel 38.78
Dave Escape Hybrid 35.03
J. Murphy Lexus 400 Hybrid 28.09
C. Vogel Ford F250 Biodiesel 19.88
C. Shelton Mercedes Biodiesel Fun Run
J. Schnebly Prius 2 Hybrid DNF
 
Hydrogen Boost versus Hybrid Technology
After
competing in the Tour de Sol’s Monte Carlo style Mileage competition
against the “leading edge” of technologies, I figured it was time to do
another analysis of mileage gains versus cost for the competition’s
technology. Last year I
analyzed the cost versus benefit of the Honda Civic vs the Honda Civic
hybrid vehicles, since that was the only model on the roads last year
that could be compared.
This
year there are at least four models of hybrid vehicles that have
comparable non-hybrid models.
Using EPA’s mileage numbers and manufacturers’ suggested retail
price as benchmarks, I did the following analysis for this year’s
models. All basic models
compared were the basic standard shift model with no additional
options.
Honda Civic sedan 36
mpg city 40 mpg ave. 44 mpg highway $13,260
Honda Civic hybrid 48
mpg city 47.5 mpg ave. 47 mpg highway $19,900 7.5 mpg diff 18.8%
diff $6640
Honda Accord sedan 26 mpg city 30 mpg ave. 34 mpg
highway $16,265
Honda Accord hybrid 29
mpg city 33 mpg ave. 37 mpg highway $30,140 3.0
mpg diff 10% diff $13,875
Ford Escape SUV 24
mpg city 26.5 mpg ave. 29 mpg highway $19,425
Ford Escape hybrid 36
mpg city 33.5 mpg ave. 31 mpg highway $28,455 7.0 mpg diff 26.4%
diff $9030
Chevy Silverado PU 16
mpg city 18.5 mph ave. 21 mpg highway $19,040
Chevy Silverado hybrid 18 mpg city 19.5 mpg ave. 21 mpg highway $30,345 1.0 mpg diff 5.4%
diff $11,305
Average for all four vehicles 15.15% diff $10,212.50
Averaging all four vehicles we get a 15.15% increase
in average mileage for an average price difference of $10,212.50. Now there is an idea of where the
“leading edge” of technology is taking us.
If you are the typical
environmentally friendly “Yuppy,” you are spending a whopping $10,000
to improve your gas mileage by 15%.
Of course no average environmentally friendly “Yuppy” would
consider “saving the environment” by keeping their old vehicle for a
couple more years and installing the Hydrogen Boost system to achieve
that 15% increase in mileage for a whole lot less money. Nor would that average environmentally
friendly “Yuppy” ever consider changing his driving habits slightly to
get a 20-40% increase in mileage without any extra hardware.
But lucky for us who have
to breath the air spewed out by these “environmentally friendly”
Yuppy’s vehicles, we can save most of the $10,000 cost of that so
called “leading edge” technology, still drive our SUVs, and also save
the cost of a lot of otherwise wasted fuel, by simply installing and
implementing the Hydrogen Boost system. Or if we really care about our environment and our
wallets, we could all drive a reasonable size vehicle like the Honda
Civic, or Accord, or Ford Escape, or if we need a work truck a Chevy
Silverado, and implement the Hydrogen Boost system, which will pay for
itself long before our vehicle is paid off.
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