UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

from sportiness to economy, just for a post... after twice accidentally running across first the site for that kooky supercharged 2-cylinder diesel, and then some serious electric car sites.
AKA an essay on alternative power sources after spending an evening sidetracked on some very interesting sites around the subject. Comments/thoughts/experiences welcome.

Whatever happened to the Õko-Polo? As torquey as a petrol 1-litre, as much power as the 900cc (yes, it's not much, but it's "enough" and more than it should have) at about the same weight, able to peg along at 85mph.. but also capable of 80-120 mpg in daily use and recorded at 160+ mpg on an extended test cruise, if volkswagen's official figures are to be trusted. All that in a standard weight, two-bricks-in-the-mating-season Mk2 steep-tail. Makes it all seem rather odd that they had to go to such extremes to make the "one litre" car - giving it a single cylinder, normal aspiration, 10hp diesel, and basically turning it into a two-seater tandem go-kart. It's 280mpg hardly seems worth it next to those three figure Polo consumptions, especially when the Polo can carry three more people, a fair bit of luggage, go quite a bit faster, and wouldn't be *quite* so much like Cockroach vs Welly Boot when in dispute with a truck.

Seems to have been the first sighting of the modern style direct injection type diesel, with a (super)charger on it to make the most of the titchy 850cc capacity (without damaging the economy) and a rather primitive incarnation of the system that kills the motor when coasting or at lights. I wonder why we haven't seen more of this idea.. if VW were to even make any kind of low-capacity diesel again someone could do a home conversion. Even the supposedly lighter, smoother Lupo with the 1.2 unblown diesel would have trouble matching these figures, though it does have a little more power.

(heck, take that engine, make it a 3-cyl, and you're almost at 1.3 already - almost 50% extra power (for ~60hp and ~83lbft at quite low revs) without making a 50% reduction in economy... you'd still get, say, 65 to 95mpg, and that cruise would be 130mpg)
(then you do a bit of weight-treatment on the car, and alter the bodywork for improved aerodynamics, give it a modern 6 speed box as it's none too far from the diesel governor at 85 and is at best torque/economy around 45 with the standard 5th)
(and add a hybrid low-speed/restarting/boost/regen system.... in fact, with a 10kw motor - 13hp - you wouldnt need the extra cylinder on acceleration (leccy motors more torquey per hp than combustion, usually), so long as you were prepared to forgo an increased top sustainable speed - which would come with better windcheating anyway... so the hybrid would give you both benefits, better acceleration and incredible economy, so long as it's extra weight didn't harm things... reliably in the 100mpg range on all trips?)

While thinking of such frugal 80s dream machines (replete with oh so fetching rainbow-strip-on-white bodywork), ran across another site where people in the states are making quite viable electric cars from Geo Metros (like, a honda applause or something of that ilk - tiny 4-door saloon) and pickup trucks. The former being mainly good for inner city work upto 60mph (or faster, but it drains quickly then), the latter being a bit more rangeworthy because of sheer battery carrying space. (oh yes - and the Honda/GM eco-1 sports car or whatever it was called.. 0-60 in 7 seconds, almost a 200 mile range, etc, in a 2 seater droptop that wouldnt look out of place next to an elise).
It then struck me that a large majority of my journeys, and I would lay money on a large majority of other peoples journeys, are well within the parameters of that little car. It would be perfect, for example, for current trips to work. One workplace (a shop) being close enough to comfortably cycle on good days, and the other (countryside nightclub) only being 8 or 9 miles with speeds mostly under 50mph, peaking into the 70-80 range for maybe 3 or 4 whole minutes on the way there, and the trip home being rather more relaxed. Almost any trip that might be usually taken in the midlands wouldn't cause a troubling dent in it's batteries. (Well, going to/from Alton Towers or Coventry from Birmingham might be a worry if you used the cheaper 'standard' batteries rather than nickels - but if you could leave it to charge whilst in the park, or doing your business in the city, still no bother).

It also struck me, after seeing the eco-polo, and noticing the quite minimal weight of the machine (unless stacked next to a nova, panda, etc that the mk2 would make quite a good basis for a conversion, with the different models all being rather equal because of different benefits vs drawbacks. (ie hatch has more space for batteries plus luggage than coupe, but less aerodynamic, derby both spacious and aerodynamic but heavier... etc.. any home brew estate having monster space but also very heavy AND brick shaped).

It would accelerate like crazy off the line and be good for twisty country roads as well, even if powered by a modest 20kw motor (~26hp, or roughly equivalent to a 1.3 with two plugs removed)... plenty of torque, though the top speed would naturally be lacking (~65mph in that case).

There's also the matter that, truthfully, most of the time your car is stood not going anywhere and you may as well hook up a solar panel to it for a free trickle-charge. It won't get you the equivalent of more than a couple miles "free" each day in britain (more if you had a series of them to fold out, put on a rooftop, etc), but hey - you wouldnt get any free with petrol.
And when you're in traffic, it doesnt need to expend any power at all.
You can claim back the braking force instead of throwing it to heat.
No more stalling, choking, waiting for it to warm up. No more hard winter starts.. so long as you can prevent the batteries freezing up (and that needs colder than -25'c for a lot of them) it'll run.
Quieter, less maintenance (no clutch, air filter, oil change, plugs, timing belt, lambda probe, etc) - and "no" pollution! (particularly on solar, or renewable mains)
Only about 2p/mile energy costs (assuming you're on about 5-7p per kWh and do efficient driving) compared to 10p/mile for petrol as an average (8.1 miles per litre (37mpg), 80.9p/litre)
Etc...

Of course, it's bobbins if you need to take a long trip, say, Birmingham to Holyhead, Aberystwyth to Bournemouth, Scotland to Inters ... though you could pack a small petrol motor-generator (say, 15hp?) between the back wheels somewhere and use it either to hybrid yourself along (sharing the energy used between the two power sources, at 60mph) or top the batteries up while stationary. The american users didn't do any such thing, but broke their journey up into 40-50 mile jaunts between caravan parks that agreed to let them top up off the hitching posts. Thing is, at 45mph for best economy, and maybe 90 minutes to 2 hours per stop, thats VERY slow going, and you may as well ride a bike. (i'll never complain about slow petrol pumps again )

And the purchase costs, installation complexity, just don't bear thinking about. You have to get the car, drop the engine, transmission, fuel tank etc, buy a good motor (or two) and transmission for it, a whole load of batteries, battery charge/discharge/usage controller, load balancers, power pack cooler/heater, replacement devices for powering demister/cabin heater, brake servo (though that's one thing skipped for the mk2 ), a heavy duty charging controller stand for the garage (so you don't burn out your 13amp plugs trying to get a 30amp charge) etc..... ouch.
Plus if you want solar charging, there's the cost of the photovoltaic cells, they aint cheap (those £2.50 things you can get in Maplins for your mobile phone? They put out about 1 watt at 3v when in direct summer sunlight. Do the maths for a car that can use 50kW hours on a run and uses a 150 volt power pack.. even to get a trickle top-up or maintenance charge its decidedly uncheap).

But then, the first petrol cars cost a bomb to run as well. It was only from about the 1920s onwards they got mass "affordable", and til the 50s when rationing stopped for them to become "cheap".

I'm quite taken by all this and very interested. After seeing stories of how you can get 200 miles on a set of NiMhs (or 160 on NiCad, 60 on standard lead-acid) in the right car (which, say, a weight-treated mk2 Coupe with a more aero grille would be) and still have pokey enough performance - if its fast enough for an american, it should be fine here - it looks like electrics are no longer the nasty old milk floats they used to be. Even giving fuel cell cars quite a beating (sure, take a whole lot longer to fuel up, but more 'instant' range and far safer/cleaner overall). Would like to try it out, if not for the heinous cost of it all... if only such things were mass produced... the price would come down (there'd be a bourgeoning market for reconditioned batteries amongst those of us who currently buy £500 cars... suddenly the brand-new frame and motor wouldn't be the most expensive thing, but the "fuel tank"... electricity is cheap - storing it isnt)

However, I would like to find out if any oko-polos are still running about, getting three times my economy at much the same speed.. the only mention i've seen so far is of an american VW nut who found one sitting motor-less on a dockside, after the DOT decided that, economical or not, the diesel somehow wouldn't fit with current emissions regulations and tossed it in the ocean, leaving it to rot and the would-be owner a bit too cheesed to collect it. (He then converted it to a 1.05), and some scanned magazine articles from the 80s showing all the technical bits and bobs.

And any electric mk2s that have gone before of course

After all, it should be getting a bit plain that our oil supply is definately in decline at the moment. Put all the current/recent news reports together (including Shell drastically cutting it's reserve estimate) and run up a graph of petrol prices over the last 18 months.... a switch is needed pretty damn fast.

Electric cars have been around since the late 1800's/early 1900's and were considered seriously back then. I've been following the motor industry since the mid-1980's (1985 to be precise) and everyone's had an electric concept car that never makes it into production.

In the late-90s, and around year 2000 hybrids were all the rage but that fad's passed too.

I guess if we stuck Nokia Lithium-polymer batteries somewhere in our cars then electric would work, I mean the technology definitely is there for lightweight and high-capacity accumulators. What we lack is political will, or perhaps a good marketing strategy.

I think the only viable alternative to petrol that's ever been put in mass-production was alcohol, in Brasil, in the 1970's, 80s and early '90s. We developed this back in the '70s and it's relatively simple, ethanol-powered cars running on sugar-can ethanol. The first models appeared in 1977 and by 1985 92% of all cars sold in the country were alcohol-powered (I remember the 1986 Fors catalog where only one version of the Escort, the 1.6 GL, was available with a petrol engine and only by special order). No imports were allowed back then, and many of our cars were 1970's throwbacks though some contemporary models like the Escort, Uno, Astra etc. were available.

Alcohol engines were similar to their petrol counterparts but ran at higher compression ratios, hence the sometimes substantial increase in power (from 81bhp to 90bhp in the case of VW's 1.6 "AP-600" engine fitted to 1980's Gols). However, as a fuel, alcohol contains about 15% less energy per unit than petrol, so fuel consumption was higher (by... about 15%!).

Because of that, alcohol production was heavily subsidized, though when sugar prices soared in 1990 or 1991 sugar/alcohol factories simply forgot about the subsidies and produced massive amounts of sugar for export. The result were long queues and the end of subsidies in 1991.

After that, the alcohol engine has all but died, and where only five years earlier you'd have to special-order a petrol car, now you had to special-order your alcohol car, usually mounting a 1980's engine.

All petrol stations in this country have alcohol pumps along with petrol and diesel ones, even though these cars now account for 5% of the market, and alcohol fuel is usually less than 15% cheaper than petrol (the 'fuel economy' threshold).

Oh, and alohol cars are a pain in the winter.

They're coming back big time now with flex-fuel technology developed locally: engines that run on either petrol, alcohol or any mix of the two. So you can play with the prices at the pump. All VW Foxes are flex fuel, all Chevrolet Corsas, Astras and Zafiras, plus a handful of Fiats (Palios and Stilos mostly, plus the ghastly Doblò).

The government is studying a law that would force all cars sold in the Brazilian market to be flex-fuel, but that won't pass as it'd amount to the manufacturer's dream scenario of a 1980's-style closed market. The de facto market's already closed at the current exchange rate at import duty levels (can be up to 60% if you're importing personally), but I don't think the WTO would allow that, plus the consumers are showing a trend to stick with their 90's cars instead (the 90's were a time when our models were exactly the same as in Europe thanks to the then-open market, as opposed to the old and unsafe models we're getting now. Talk about de-contenting!) so closing the market even further would help finish the local car industry.

So there, an essay on alternative, practical and sustainable fuel technology that's available today, and also on why governments should regulate car safety and not the market itself.

As for electric/hybrid/hydrogen, we still have bout 40 years of oil supplies and I bet most of it will end up coming out of car exhaust pipes, unfortunately.

It's 40 years supply, but it's not an instant cut-off kind of thing. The extraction will peter out slowly (but not THAT slowly, think sucking the remains out of a coke... no, a milkshake from mcdonalds), at different times and speeds in certain fields, and there's some right now that aren't being drilled because it's uneconomic..... at current prices. There's already sign that the fall off is starting in some major oil fields, and they are unable to totally keep up with rising demand (largely from industry in emerging asian states*, and 4x4s on american roads).

The suppliers will begin to restrict supply to hold on to what's left in the major fields, and raise prices both to limit demand and to fund drilling out the less accessible fields... then we'll really see the hold that oil has on the world economy, trade, travel, food/goods transport, electical generation etc. Look out for a stock crash coming soon...
Just hope you're not in an area that relies heavily on tourism to fuel it's economy when it happens, because boy, that'll be the first to go. Already British Airways and some other airlines are considering upping prices because of a dramatic increase in airfuel costs and the amount that those birds burn off (never mind a hybrid car - what about a hybrid plane nah... its no good... they never get stuck in traffic). Ryanair and the like may well just go straight to the wall. Get in your cheap deals to Prague while you can (my mum is...).

We may end up with rationing again... or worse (look at argentina) just glad i've still got my bike.

As for alcohol engines - wasn't it an 80% petrol, 20% alcohol mix anyhow? Modern ones seem to run on about 85% alcohol for the better engines, and some at 100% (sorry, just some other numbers i ran across on an electric vehicles page... they had stuff about biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen, etc). But I think you can put me right on that.

hey now there's an idea - Eco-Polo type 2 (streamlined and lightened mk2), mildly hybridised and running on biodiesel.

You could even have a very mild type hybrid that only costs a couple thousand pounds plus fitting - there's a type of electric moped you can buy both in the states and europe called the e-GO 2... got a hub-motor on the back wheel that puts out 2hp and a range of about 25 miles (top speed ~20mph) on the included battery. Costs $999.95 each. They have demo videos on the site demonstrating it's from-rest torque by having it tow a 4 door saloon car uphill... It doesnt take off SO fast, but take two of them... mount the motors on the rear wheels of a Mk2 (may need to play around with the brakes etc for this) and the batteries over the wheel arches (like you ever fit anything there anyway!), slave the two of them through the one controller taken off a bike and put e.g. where the centre console ashtray or tape-holder might go, and, i dont know... maybe some kind of squeeze-grip near the screen washer stalk for throttle That should take off briskly enough to keep up with city traffic, might be modifiable to do 30mph under it's own steam, and could help with overtaking if the speed limiter is totally disabled when the combustion engine is running.

Range would be awful, even if you shell out for a pair of extra battery packs and run them in parallel, but if you get stuck in a tailback more than 10 miles long you may as well either park up and walk, or throw economy to the wind and run the motor anyway. At least, the motors are regenerative, and you could hook a 110v inverter (uses less current, slower charge) between your alternator and the packs for a bit of trickle topping when properly underway again.

With a diesel up front (even the regular 4-cylinder, 48hp one - that managed some fairly impressive figures, up to 70mpg if driven carefully) running on filtered waste chip-fat or sesame oil from the chinese takeaway, you could go quite a long way on not very much money.. and be environmentally friendly at the same time.
Wheeeee...

(hey... my dad has two similar, but cheaper/more rubbish bikes of that type he's looking to get rid of... may buy them from him... hybridisation on a lowwwww budget.. worth an experiment i think, even though as far as i can tell they're not regenerative)

As for alcohol engines - wasn't it an 80% petrol, 20% alcohol mix anyhow? Modern ones seem to run on about 85% alcohol for the better engines, and some at 100% (sorry, just some other numbers i ran across on an electric vehicles page... they had stuff about biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen, etc). But I think you can put me right on that.

Nope. It goes like this:

- 100% alcohol, that's your alohol-powered car sice the '70s. Engines had to be reinforced for corrosion and pistons etc. modified for the different caracteristics of alcohol fuel.

- 78% petrol, 22% alcohol: that's what ALL petrol cars here are running on at the moment, including my Polo. God only knows what this mix does to our engines. Electronic engine management is tuned to account for the acohol but I don't think the manufacturers spend the extra money on protecting the engine from alcohol aggression.

There's no particular reason to add 22% alcohol to petrol. Government claims it reduces emissions but the reduction is minimal. The real reason is to keep all those alcohol mills built for a market where 90% of cars ran alcohol in bussiness when the market has turned to petrol cars.

On a separate note, what happened to the ELKO engine?

they could just export it at twice the price and still make a bundle
I'd be more than pleased to buy alcoholic products at the price I pay for petrol

Thanks for clearing that one up, never quite sure how real the figures you get fed by friends-of-friends are til you get the truth from someone on the front line

and our survey said............... 5 votes, split all ways

oh well

..i reckon it should be a legal requirement of manufacturing a car now to include some kind of hybrid power or ignition-cutting system... even a hybrid along the cheapass lines i'm thinking of (whack a couple leccy motors on the back wheels, that are best used for motion at low speeds but can tolerate being freewheeled/used as regenerators at 80+).

reason 1: going by the Small But Tough Polo advert in the current M & S magazine (dont laugh, it was sitting open on the kitchen table when i got home), the economy figures for our favourite vehicle have altered VERY little since the Mk3 (5.7 to 10L/100k urban? assuming that includes the diesels and all sports models, thats WORSE!... granted, the 48hp diesel isnt used any more!), which is just rubbish in my eyes and VW really should have a better go at making the engine more efficient and the car lighter/more slippery. anyway, hybridisation is a fairly easy and cheap way of upping those figures (and improving emissions too).

reason 2: safety/failsafe/breakdown feature. for example in the case of a knackered clutch/transmission of almost any sort. in the case of my car, if i had not got it to the garage when i did - complete loss of power transmission from engine to wheels. in case of a workmate's car recently - something going sproing inside the clutch (the "ratchet"?) having much the same effect as the clutch cable snapping on mine... being able to engage gears, but crunch-shifting and no easy way to transition from standstill to idle speed in 1st or back again. electric drive on rear wheels, especially if ability included to parasite some/most of alternator power as well as batteries, could provide emergency motive power, at least to 5-10mph. enough to move an unpowered car off of railway lines or off a dangerous junction, or to provide enough forward speed to engage gear without tricky starter-motor take-offs.

(dont like to revive dead topics that much, but it kind of all gelled in my head this morning when coming across those two "problems" in quick succession)

course it wont happen til petrol hits pound-a-litre, or maybe even fiver a gallon (cant be long).. then the battle of how far your green note gets you begins.