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#engine#range#battery#gas#generator#electric#car#don#more#charge
Discussion (55 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Usually seen as a stop-gap until they can get the power upgraded in the depot to support multiple charging buses.
A lot of range anxiety would go away if their EV tech wasn't crap.
I don't know about anyone else, but I always needed a short break after 450km or so. Those 390 miles are more than I would ever use without stopping to charge.
Usually on long trip stops I charge to 75% because after that it becomes painfully slow to charge the rest of 25. And I rarely stop below 20%, because of, eh, low battery stress.
So in reality I have to stop at half of the advertised range.
Hybrids can just run on gas and not have to worry about the distance to the next charging station.
Because the latter was used in the trolleybuses since forever. I remember riding one on this mighty emergency power during some local blackout only to realize that it would be faster to walk :)
"not your average hybrid whos gas-powered motor directly..."
In some ways it is, yes. The engine design is not the same, it doesn't need gearbox, variable power output etc to charge battery. In some ways it can be more efficient.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt_(first_generati...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus
No, this design is not totally new. Despite the article implying this.
Either way, the cost is that the vehicle has the complexity of both systems. The benefit is variable, YMMV (Your milage may vary). There must be cases where it's a good idea. Especially at present, while the energy supply systems are in transition.
To me it looks like it has the complexity of a pure EV with generator in the back seat, and the charging cord plugged into the generator. Which does away with much of the complexity, in part because the generator doesn’t have to turn the wheels.
because it obviously has both a battery+electric motor system and a gasoline storage+ICE motor system? It has both systems. It can only be much more complex than a pure EV.
I take the point that EREV could be simpler than other designs that have both motor systems - the PHEV option, in the "it could always be worse" sense. But pure EVs are actually much simpler than ICE vehicles or hybrids.
> WSJ catering to the anti EV crowd to get them to say "Har har look at those silly EVs, needs a gas engine now."
there are EVs! with a backup generator.
but are EVs so they get all those sweet incentives
It explains why PHEV is actually a very clever idea and now it simplifies things not complicates them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnUFH5GX_fI
The BMW i3 used what was basically a scooter engine. The Ampera/Volt used what was essentially an Opel Corsa engine (from memory).
Toyota's approach of using a small battery and modified atkinson cycle engine seems to have paid off. Taxi drivers love them and fuel economy is pretty consistent. But the engine is a core part of the process. So it isn't dead weight a lot of the time.
The real question is whether an 'Extended Range EV' is using a motor intended to work efficiently as just a generator or whether it's another parts bin special.
This seems to be a huge investment to make just to try and market the same technology but better this time.
However, the first vehicle to have this at all was some 1901 Porsche model...
FWIW, now you have all the same joys of engine maintenance that one has with a traditional ICE car: oil changes, oil filter changes, spark plug replacement, starter replacement, coolant, probably an alternator, etc, along with needing to worry about an IG bolted on to the side of the engine connected to an MV bus. It is a complex design.
The maintenance on these will be quite expensive.
I have a PHEV where the engine has about a thousand hours on it my previous car driven about the same would have had about three thousand hours on it. But there are definitely plenty of reports of people who have the plugging hybrids who never actually plug it in it so don't see this advantage.
I can tell you from experience it really isn't much less. Stale gas, dry-rotted hoses, dry/cracked seals, failed starter, fried ECU, fried coolant pump. Also account for the entire other subsystem, the IG. A complex subsystem with an entirely different set of warts: shredded splines, cracked coolant lines, corroded LV/MV connectors, leaky coolant lines, fused contactor.
Perhaps the most salient point is how it isn't great for the battery. Your BMS system needs to be amazing to make sure the battery cells charge relatively evenly or you'll start frying cells. Even if it is amazing, you'll probably fry cells.
It works extremely well at adding range to an EV ground vehicle, I saw it work and it was really cool. The amount of headache it added relative to a pure EV vehicle was just incredible.
Edit: to add, a PHEV is only notionally comparable to this system. Your engine probably ran every 2nd-erd time you drove it. If people don't start and run their engine once a month, just like a home generator (and nobody does that) the problems multiply.
I don't wish to argue with you, this was my day job for a long time, spent as much time with a meter as I did writing software on that program, it was really fun. The reliability was pretty meh.
The reality is a modern engine is very reliable in general and yes, seals will go out but that's more a matter of time and I expect to see that in any car in 10 years. Although I have no information on the particular engine in the case here and so maybe this is a particularly bad engine but that's not an indictment against the concept itself. If a modern gas engine car can't go 300,000 miles, it's because the body has failed, not because the engine failed. Sure, you'll have some maintenance, but it is well known and fairly cheap considering all the work the car is doing.
I don't find it surprising or disappointing that ppl aren't bothering to go read the article because of the two factors in conjunction above
Or when we tried to have a civilized discussion about low powered ICE engines, versus 2 ton luxury heavy battery cars?
The green crowd always mainly ran on low effort shit posts with state sponsoring. It is just laws of physics and politics did not really worked out as you imagined!
It’s charging facilities being down far too frequently, whereas gas stations are rarely bone dry.
It’s sites lying about charging port availability, leading to wasted range on red herrings (thanks for lying about NACS chargers, Sheetz!).
It’s the anxiety of not knowing whether a charging area will be safe to hang out in for half an hour, unlike a gas station where you can pump and run pretty quickly if necessary.
The anxiety doesn’t come from a “limited” range (especially when gas vehicles get comparable or worse ranges); it’s the experience surrounding charging itself that needs improvement. One series of service stations offering reliably available charging ports with both plug standards and offering clean bathrooms, hot food, and space to wait in, is what’s needed to soothe “range anxiety”.