451–460 of 783 posts
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On paper, yes, but did that ever happen? Sorry for being sarcastic, but where I live the frugal hybrid is exceptionally rare and the "same big engine, but driving a much heavier car" hybrid is omnipresent. The kind of people who might buy the frugal one buy second or third hand while almost all buyers of factory new pick the "same big engine" option, and those are the ones who decide what's available on the second ha…
I wonder whether people actually understand that they need a smaller engine for the same performance?
They go test-drive cars, probably glance at performance specifications and/or read/watch a test drive review of the cars. They can look at the 0-60mph/0-100 kph times and get a feel for "this car will be able to get out of its own way" vs "this car will be a rolling roadblock".
So "actually understand"? Maybe not, but "understand enough to guide their purchasing decision?" and therefore enough for the actual automobile product teams to design to accommodate? I think they do.
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which is the whole point of hybrids Part of the point, not the whole point. Regenerative breaking is absolutely a win; but there can also be a significant benefit from allowing the ICE to remain in the RPM "sweet spot" rather than moving around a larger range.
Afaik that’s pure series hybrid and that’s almost non-existent in cars (outside of range extenders, not that there are that many of those). There are a handful but most hybrids are either parallel or series-parallel. I assume because the power range is so low that the conversion losses are way too noticeable compared to a mechanical drivetrain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLUIExAnNcE has more info.
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On all the fuel injected engines I have owned there is a physical cable that controls the position of the throttle plate. There is an airflow mass sensor the other side of the plate to measure the amount of air and therefore how much fuel needs to be injected. So interestingly in these sort of engines you're really just controlling airflow to the engine rather than fuel/air mix like on one with a carburettor. More mo…
I've got both at the moment on my two Hondas. Both manual, one with a throttle cable and one with throttle-by-wire. There's quite a bit of difference in how they handle off throttle. The cable will just slam the throttle shut if you just jump off the pedal (obviously) and it jerks pretty hard. The throttle-by-wire car hangs the throttle a little when letting off and doesn't just immediately start decelerating. Then i…
The OEMs try real hard to prevent this because the amounts of emissions byproducts that aren't water or C02 they're allowed to produce are on the order of single digit grams per multiple miles (you can mentally file it as "about the baseline air quality in urban areas" though the rules are hugely more complex than that) so these edge cases matter.
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I am just excited because the more EVs mean fewer idiots in hot rods running without mufflers.
Well there are new classes of idiots I see pretty frequently - a typical tesla driver going 90 in 120 region of highway without any reason, presumably saving last bits of battery (that has at least some rationale, if they do it due to ie fear then they should not be driving or having license). Over say 50km part of highway, maybe 2000 cars need to overtake such almost stationary object (to regular traffic which gener…
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What are you doing to your tires that they only last 10k miles? I think that might be a driver error issue, because my EV (a heavier sedan) basically never needed tire replacement barring me running over a screw or something.
Just normal driving, it wasn’t quite so bad on our previous car which was a Nissan Leaf (with 30kWh battery) but our current Kia Niro just has a lot bigger batter (64kWh) and it is a lot heavier I suppose, the tyres just don’t seem to last as long. I’m pretty sure I’m using summer tyres all year round (I live in the UK) this was recommended by the dealer
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which is the whole point of hybrids Part of the point, not the whole point. Regenerative breaking is absolutely a win; but there can also be a significant benefit from allowing the ICE to remain in the RPM "sweet spot" rather than moving around a larger range.
> […] but there can also be a significant benefit from allowing the ICE to remain in the RPM "sweet spot" rather than moving around a larger range. Which is why I'm surprised electric cars with range extenders aren't a bigger thing: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_extender Have the powertrain be all-electric, and have a battery pack, but for those with range anxiety have a small generator as an option that woul…
Re: maintenance, small engines typically are pretty needy. That one wants an oil change, spark plug gap adjustment, and spark arrestor cleaning every 100 hours of use. The latter two are only usage-based, but the oil is time-based as well (6 months) since it oxidizes, and suffers from fuel dilution. Then there’s the fuel: god help you if you put ethanol gas into a small engine and let it sit for any period of time. It’s often difficult to find E0 fuel, and while there are external fuel tanks for generators that can hold quite a bit, they also tend to vent vapor in the heat (as does any tank, including a car’s), which is unpleasant when it’s in your frunk.
Finally, engines of all kinds really don’t like being left sitting for months on end unless prepared to do so. Generally you want to run them monthly, getting them up to operating temperature, putting a load on them for a bit to fully exercise all components.
I say all this because I have an EU2200i and dearly love it, but am also painfully aware of its limitations and needs. I got it when I lived in Texas because the power outages were getting to be absurd, and my house wasn’t plumbed for natural gas, so a whole-house was out of the question. The 2200i was plenty to power two fridges, a deep freezer, TV, fans, and my server rack. I got really good at quickly running extension cords (which is a whole other discussion on ensuring proper amperage ratings and calculating voltage drop, something most people ignore).
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You don't engine brake with the clutch, you engine brake by downshifting and using the higher engine RPM in lower gears to brake the car via wasted compression.
And that downshifting involves a clutch operation, moving the engine into a higher RPM. That most certainly wears down the clutch, talking as someone who's replaced quite a few of them.
It wears the clutch but clutch wear is massively dominated by starts from a stop or other cases where you actively slip it any noteworthy amount so just rowing the gears up and down doesn't do much.
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Curb weight of a Tesla Model (Long Range) is only 9% over a comparable BMW 3 Series. That's nothing compared to all the savings (tail pipes emissions, break dust, noise, ICE maintenance issues…). And we're just getting started with battery chemistries and renewables energy. This can only get better.
> Curb weight of a Tesla Model (Long Range) is only 9% over a comparable BMW 3 Series. Which means 40% more road maintenance. > And we're just getting started with battery chemistries and renewables energy. This can only get better. Which implies it is better to delay switching until we have better batteries
Let's discard everything but road maintenance?
No thanks. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-mitigation-15c
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> Effectiveness of regenerative braking depends on having an extremely large battery that can sink enough current to stop the car. An EV can do that, hybrids at best help the brakes out some. You just can't charge the battery fast enough doing anything but a very slow rolling stop. This seems a bit exaggerated. Staying regenerative-only does require sticking to about half or so of how fast I could stop, but so far th…
It's just that Tesla didn't spend skill points on brake blending tech unlockable. Some people confuse it as being a piece of technology of its own. Every other EVs and HVs assign first half of brake pedal for regen and bottom half for mechanical brakes. Tesla uses bottom half of gas pedal for the same, which eliminates the need to accurately determine the appropriate pedal force that corresponds to intended braking f…