[honeybee]

My back-of-the-envelope calculations show that if I get 40% more FE and I have to pay 80,000/- for the revolo kit, with petrol at Rs. 61, my payback would be three and a half years. Still not bad if the technology indeed works. If indeed the batteries are charged through regenerative braking and other such techniques, it will help you cut down fuel consumption in the traffic jams. In my daily travels at least half an hour of every day is spent in traffic jams. Many times the jams are actually moving very slow, in which case you can't switch off the engine. A battery driven system would help greatly in these circumstances. It's actually better than a plugged in system.

The price of petrol won't anytime come down, with the recent Arabian (bad) Nights saga unfolding. If the price went up to Rs. 80, your payback would also be down to just two years!

[jigbarai]

Interesting.

How frequently would one have to 'replace' the batteries ? I'd suspect every 2 yrs.
Where would that figure out in the investment 'payback period' ?

OT - Need to watch the stock price of KPIT Cummins now

[dot]

With shale gas coming in the picture, crude oil prices cannot sustain high prices for long. The current uptrend (technically still a corrective bounce) may last for another few years, till the dollar is weak and shale gas production is low. And then we are also witnessing a different market force -battery powered automobiles, making very rapid inroads. What that means is expecting petrol prices to continue to rise forever may not be justified.

Coming back to Revolo, the payback time for individual users may be very long as most of you have pointed out, unless daily running is very high. Revolo can be a very good option for commercial vehicles.

Having said all this, I would still buy the kit if available, just for the heck of it. Many folks spend lakhs on ICE, alloys, mod kits. Why not this.

[honeybee]

Originally Posted by jigbarai

Interesting.

How frequently would one have to 'replace' the batteries ? I'd suspect every 2 yrs.
Where would that figure out in the investment 'payback period' ?

OT - Need to watch the stock price of KPIT Cummins now

Car batteries don't necessarily go bad after two years. So even the Revolo kit may not always need battery replacements in two years. Since the batteries are gel-based and sealed, they are maintenance free.

Even if you factored in a Rs. 20,000/- battery replacement cost in two years, I guess the payback would simply extend by another two years or so. Not so bad. The Santro in its eighth year is actually running pretty good and barring anything unusual I am expecting it to run well for another five to six years. So a longer payback wouldn't be a problem.

Reva, the electric car, is coming out with li-ion battery packs now. Maybe in two years' time the li-ion batteries will become cheaper and more easily available, pushing down the costs of the lead acid batteries. Also barring occasional corrections, I personally don't think the oil prices will be coming down too much. The biggest factor today influencing the oil prices is the supply issues, not particularly a rising demand. The supply issues have mainly arisen out of political instability. Going by what happened in Iraq, any instability and regime change in the oil producing and exporting nations will likely affect the oil supplies for at least a few years to come. Whether the new regimes will continue to be part of OPEC or will continue to pump out the equal amount of crude is anybody's guess.

On the other hand, a major drive should be seen in the power generation sector. With nuclear power plants being firmly on the roadmap of the central government, within the next few years we may see power production going up. Even if the cost of power were higher than what we are paying now, it would still be cheaper than petrol. And with power production and supply increasing, we might also be looking at charging stations and other similar infrastructure. If you could plug in your car in the night and get it charged up, it would work out much cheaper than having the batteries charge from the engine.

The other day, I read that Maruti is working on injector technology for CNG. They would launch dual fuel vehicles with an injector technology that will optimize the running for both types of fuel. This would give further savings as the CNG consumption would also reduce and give better performance. A similar thing can happen with the Revolo kit if it starts shipping in vehicles as OEM fitment. You could see a hybrid Eeco or Sx4 or some other car in a few years' time. Using Revolo the existing auto manufacturers can launch hybrid versions of their existing models without making significant investment in the R&D. A perfect fit for someone looking for readymade solutions.

[dot]

It seems that one proposal of the union budget 2011 was to reduce exercise duty of hybrid conversion kits like REVOLO. Came in papers couple of days back, found it today. So does this mean that the expected prices of REVOLO may become lower?

[honeybee]

It may, provided Kirloskar and Bharat Forge are really interested in selling it as an aftermarket fitment. I haven't yet heard back from them on my email, and their website doesn't carry much info. I am guessing they are only interested to become OEM partners at this stage.

[dinu2506]

Originally Posted by honeybee

Reva, the electric car, is coming out with li-ion battery packs now

I don't think Li Ion is available for the Reva in India. They still run Lead Acid. Li Ion is still not commercially viable in India.

[sushantr5]

Yesterday, in Hinjewadi, Alto with Revolo sticker was spotted. REVOLO was written all over alto. I think that was test mule.

[vinair]

A new Hybrid KIT for Alto to enhance fuel efficiency!

Read one - With prices of a tank of petrol now fast approaching that of a good bottle of single malt whisky, the timing for KPIT Cummins, makers of India’s first aftermarket plug-in hybrid kit, couldn’t have been better. But who is KPIT Cummins and what does this kit really consist of?

KPIT is a software firm that was set up by a couple of chartered accountants in India to design accounting software for the car industry. Soon they began working on software for cars, got together with Cummins Infotech and then went on an acquisition streak, gobbling up six specialist software firms around the globe. Today this 300-million-dollar company works with 60-plus automobile companies around the globe, has filed more than a dozen patents in the area of hybrids and is about to give Indian customers a chance to significantly chop their fuel bills. The company’s aftermarket plug-in hybrid system, called Revolo, simply uses a set of batteries in the boot, a charger that can be plugged into a wall socket and an electric motor that helps to push the crankshaft of the engine via a belt-driven pulley.

Full Story here - How to make an Alto do 20kpl - Feature - Autocar India

[srishiva]

Maybe Maruti should offer a KPIT Cummins edition with this thing bolted on in the factory.

[sumeethaldankar]

Isin't it possible for a Alto to achieve 20kmpl without the hyrbrid kit with just a careful bit of driving?

[k_nitin_r]

I see two practical uses for this system - your car can 'limp' back to the nearest service station if the engine conks off, and you can accelerate faster when overtaking on the highway without illegal modifications.

[DReddy]

I hope the National electric mobility mission plan (NEMMP 2020) benefits this product and makes it more economical.
This product has great scope to reduce overall emissions if we can emulate the bangalore solar home model. Solar power meeting the needs of the entire house and also creating excess which is fed back into the grid is what this person has achieved.

[RS_DEL]

This EV convert into a parallel hybrid is IMNSHO ( apologies @phamilyman for plagiarising your abbrev ) a sub optimal solution.

Here is a link to one of my earlier posts on the subject i.e. Revolo and Parallel Hybrids.

A much better option if one is going PHEV route is to go for a series hybrid a la the Chevy Volt from GM.

[DReddy]

Originally Posted by RS_DEL

This EV convert into a parallel hybrid is IMNSHO ( apologies @phamilyman for plagiarising your abbrev ) a sub optimal solution.

Here is a link to one of my earlier posts on the subject i.e. Revolo and Parallel Hybrids.

A much better option if one is going PHEV route is to go for a series hybrid a la the Chevy Volt from GM.

The technology is not entirely green. Infact if one were to calculate GHG emission wise, maybe the overall emissions due to the usage of coal based electricity would be even more.
What this kit will do is bring affordable EV technology within the reach of everyone and people to start accepting that alternative technologies can be given a chance.
The introduction of Civic hybrid clearly proves the point. In a country like ours where a path breaking product like the NANO is written off as a failure by people who have never even sat in it, we cannot take the risk of introducing a pricey series hybrid and then delaying the entire technology by a decade or so.