V8-Ranger.com

http://www.greencar.com/articles/hot-el ... pickup.php

I'm impressed!

I liked the motor in wheel concept. Lets you convert a regular gas vehicle with minimal effort.

When I saw that, I immediately thought 2wd Ranger with motor-in-wheel setup for the front. While cruising, you could cruise off the front or rear depending on battery strength. This would be the simplest setup because it would maintain 100% of the existing engine/tranny RWD setup only modifying the front end to support front wheel torque application. With a charge on the bats, you'd be FWD. With a switch on the brake, you'd have regenerative braking. And when you got deep enough in the throttle to kick in the engine, you'd have AWD which would give you Electric + Mechanical HP spread across all 4 wheels for as long as the bats would hold out.

The HUGE negative with these hybrid batteries is they have less than 10 year life...and they are not cheap. But with the new plug-in craze, the battery-heads are finding all sorts of new exciting technologies that don't degrade so badly, hold more charge, and are lighter. That's just one of the many exciting new technologies smart people are coming up with. Direct Injection similar to diesels is another new technology. Algae based biofuel technology that produces GASOLINE, not ethanol is another. Wind and ocean wave electricity generation technology is another. It'll be really interesting to see what comes out of all this interesting and promising technology.

Yeah cool technologies for sure. 10 years is not bad though, much longer than a lot of engines last for that matter.