The LH4 Prototype at the Open House Event in Loveland, Colorado. Photo by Jonathan McGrew.

The LH4 Prototype at the Open House Event in Loveland, Colorado. Photo by Jonathan McGrew.

Friday evening I took another drive up to the Lightning Hybrid facilities in Loveland, Colorado for their Open House and technology demonstrations of the prototype LH4. The day before I was up at the facility to check in on the progress of the prototype and reported back to all our readers. The open house was to have the prototype on display for the public to see and include demonstrations of the hydraulic hybrid technology.

I arrived in Loveland at about 6 o’clock to find a good crowd of people around the LH4, which indeed looked quite spectacular in its metallic grey paint. Many of the Lightning Hybrids staff were on hand to answer questions and explain how the hydraulic hybrid system works. The unfortunate news was that one of the couplers had failed during testing right before the beginning of the open house. Due to this they weren’t able to give actual demonstrations of the hybrid system. Bonnie Trowbridge, VP of Business Development, explained that the failure wasn’t like your standard car. Since they are developing this car from the ground up, when something fails, they have to go back three levels and work through the debugging process.

There were many people in and out of the Lightning Hybrids Open House during the 4 hour event. Loveland was the place to be on June 26th, 2009.

There were many people in and out of the Lightning Hybrids Open House during the 4 hour event. Loveland was the place to be on June 26th, 2009.

The bright spot in this story is the dedication the Lightning Hybrid team has to the car, technology and the hybrid market. There are a couple of hydraulic hybrid systems out in the market, but they are for large commercial truck applications. UPS currently has a portion of their new fleet using a hydraulic hybrid system; the difference here is that no one has tried to scale down the system the way Lightning Hybrids is trying to do. It is important to remember that since the car is still in prototype stage there will be plenty of development that will continue during the run up to the Progressive X-Prize competition.

Bottom line—There are people who are already on the waiting list to have one of these cars once they go into production and the technology could prove to be one of the most versatile and reliable.  With that said Lightning Hybrids is still trying to raise funding, so if you are interested in helping visit their website and contact them. You could be a ground floor investor in the next wave of automotive technology. 

 

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