I've idly wondered what a 'self charging' hybrid is? Surely every hybrid ever made charges its batteries?
Just more adspeak?
some hybrids are capable of driving the wheels mechanically from the engine, ones with a range extender can only charge the battery from the engine and run the motor from the battery ...
I see that Geely (old London Taxis International) are now producing a van version of their electric taxi, which might do alright for them I suppose?
A pretty big Amazon Prime electric van whispered past delivering round here the other day so people are using such things. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
Yes - adspeak. But also to distinguish from PHEVs which, at least theoretically, never need to charge themselves. Things like the Outlander PHEV.
(Mind, it has been said that a lot of them have never been plugged in. They were bought, despite higher price and being heavier vehicles, because of the tax advantages.)
Nissan Leaf segues into the E-NV200 series vans and combis which can be ada pted as camper vans.
When you see how many times the little red Royal Mail vans get stopped and started every day, and that both hybrids and electrics are particularly goo d in such usage situations, it seems very sad that every RM van appears to be diesel. (They might have some non-diesels somewhere, but I don't see any .)
There are only a few major battery manufacturers, but AIUI all the battery packs being made are custom for a particular platform. They have to be shaped to fit the chassis, and the thermal management is specific to a chassis too.
While some batteries (eg Tesla) are made of what are essentially laptop cells (18650 then 21700) they need them in such quantities that they make them themselves rather than buying them in. That allows them to optimise on system costs (no need to have a safety valve per cell if you can handle that in the pack).
To a first approximation the car *is* the battery pack, so as you design the chassis you're also designing the pack.
That said, sharing a common platform between different models is the norm these days, and the same goes for electric. There's also a disintermediation trend: rather than going to a long supply chain of Tier 1,
2, etc suppliers to design components, Tesla builds a lot in house (or designs and then contracts out manufacture). In the old world those parts (brake pads, electrical bits, spark plugs, etc) might be shared across multiple brands if they came from the same supplier, while they're all custom for Tesla.I don't know about motors - Bosch will sell you motors, but I suspect they are custom too, at least for the big volume vendors anyway. An electric motor doesn't need so much R&D and again they need to be customised to the chassis.
If you're making a boutique sports/kit car, there are kits of power train parts you can buy from Bosch et al but that's not cost effective for volume production.
Theo
I did wonder if it was adspeak for a hybrid which had a reasonable range running battery only. Even the original Prius used battery only for some things. But not for long.
A delivery vehicle doing a similar mileage every day would seem ideal for battery only. Think milk floats. ;-)
Neighbour had an original prius (and now has a plug-in prius) the original rarely reversed off their drive before the engine started, the new one goes something like 30 miles I think.
our local postal sorting office is nearly 3 times as far away as the dairy depot used to be. Would they make it back?
?Self charging? is a lot catchier than ?not as good as a plug-in hybrid?. ;-)
Indeed.
Tim
Andy Burns wrote in news:ho2q5pFu65dU1 @mid.individual.net:
Often the car will realise it may need air conditioning or the engine getting to temp so the engine will run.
Or just take too long? The local sorting office is 20 miles/30 mins away in a van. Milk float at 5 mph = 8 times as long or 3 hours and that's before the round(s)...
Both charles and Dave have made pertinent points with which I agree.
I can also see that RM might well value the possibility of one vehicle bein g able to do a double-round for various reasons. A multi-hour recharge time makes that impossible. (Yes, I know there are some quick-charge to 80% opt ions. Also, some have problems doing more than one quick recharge.)
Of course - with enough battery capacity. The point being if you know the sort of miles it's going to do each day and it's fairly consistent you can design for it.
London taxis seem to manage pretty well. And the numbers are increasing. Can't see a London cabbie paying out for something that gave him grief.
Amazon's own deliveries just seem to use anonymous white transits (or whatever) round here
On a 1970s milk float, maybe not. However things have moved on just a tad in terms of speed and range...
Theo
And were generally only tested to the max at Xmyth with even longer working days (and so less time on the charger) and bigger loads (~3 tonnes I believe).
'Rural' milk deliveries were always done by IC powered vehicles from what I've seen.
And whilst stop-start roles are better in some roles (like fork-lifts and pallet trucks), I'm not sure you would get such good range from your EV compared with constant speed (not sure regen breaking would be much advantage in those situations), unless you were delivering newspapers in America (when you don't need to stop), but that 'inefficiency would be built into the spec and still be 'better' than all the clutch / brake work, noise and kerbside emissions etc.
Cheers, T i m
p.s. Mate and I bought an old Smiths electric flat bed tipper truck between us and used to run it round his farm (~40 years ago?). It was also very handy for picking the apples from and taking them back to the farm.
Yep, the non-PHEV Prius will start its engine after 7 seconds to get the catalytic converter up to temperature to meet emissions rules. You can press the EV button to stop it doing that, but unless you're making a very short journey you're going to need the engine so it's better to keep the battery for when it's most efficient.
In non-PHEVs ('self charging hybrids' being Toyota adspeak) the battery is just an energy buffer for shifting energy around different parts of the acceleration/braking curve - it all comes from the engine at the end of the day. There's no point fitting bigger batteries to them unless you're going to be doing lots of mountain descents where there is a lot of energy to regen (bigger batteries being heavier and making performance worse at other times).
Theo
This is a repeat (from 11/05/2020) but in case you are interested:
Today, 9:15pm - 10:15pm on Channel 4 +1 How to Build British Series 1 Episode 4: The London Cab
The classic black cab goes green, as we see how a 21st-century electric Lon don taxi is made, from the aluminium chassis to the all-electric £60,0
00 eco-cab.HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.