The father of Prius to become the next Chairman

Why not "quit smoking"? LOL
Volt without an ICE seems perfect to me, it would give room to a 5th place, and increase a lot MPGe.
Get rid of the patch

 

Correct, the ICE is disconnected most of the time, so in CD mode it produces no drag and has no wear. Since the car is expected to spend most of its driving time in CD mode, that was a major concern.

@ hill.. so its not really about getting around patents.. its designing the car to be EV +ER. Once one decides to be able to cluch the ICE out of the way, the rest becomes pretty obvious deductions in terms of which elements go where on the epicentric gearing.

 

Without the patch, the 40-50 mile range becomes 25-30 miles. I don't think it would actually help the MPGe significantly to remove the ICE and I don't need the fifth seat.

You should look into a Spark.

 

Or, change patch to a less harmful one.
That's the point. If you have to carry an ICE, that "burden" should be as most efficient as possible.

 

Actually 3 clutches. In CD the ice is always disconnected by a clutch and is off. In CS mode you only have to worry about 2 modes and 1 clutch.

In the city epa cycle and most low speed driving mbb is connected to the wheels and mga is simply a serial hybrid with the ice. The advantage of this layout is the driving feel does not change from EV to CS. The only difference to the driver should be a little engine noise. The disadvantage is the electric transmission ice -> generator -> electricity -> traction motor is slightly less efficient. Since in most cases the driver can avoid this mode by driving less than aer or using the ice on the highway and saving charge for the city, the efficiency of this mode is not as important.

The other mode where the ice is clutched in as per the motor trend diagram, has similar characteristics as the hsd. There are slight trade offs, but these are small and should not greatly affect efficiency. I do have to disagree with drinnovation on this mode not being effected by patents though. The rumors out of gm were the engineers were waiting to turn this mode on in software for the lawyers. This likely reduced the development time in specifying the motors and ice. I hate it when lawyers hurt the development effort.

There are a few technically superior things in the volt layout for a PHEV, but the prius wasn't designed to use outside electricity. The prius phv does remarkably well for a car converted over to plug-in.

 

The term 'slightly' may be a value judgement:

Having looked closely at the electrical path efficiency in the Prius, ~82%, I'm seeing a pretty significant.

Still, the Volt gas-only mileage does look more inline with their existing vehicles. GM may be happy with 'good enough' and we should not anticipate anything radical from GM any time soon.

Bob Wilson

 

That is somewhat ridiculous. Why spend any additional money on a more efficient ICE?

Over the course of 300,000 miles a 50mpg vs 38mpg only saves about $1500 in gasoline for a EREV. Not worthwhile IMO. I would rather see $1500 used to increase the 3.3KW charger to 6.6KW and get faster opportunity charges, increase the EV% and displace another 400 gallons of gasoline with electricity.

You really need to get in the mindset of a BEV with a range extender rather than a hybrid with a plug to understand.

 

The question really is what percentage of the time will the vehicle use this mode. If it is only in CS serial hybrid mode 10% of the time - 1500 miles a year is 35 mpg city a big hit? 35 mpg is significantly better than most existing non-hybrid vehicles. That's less than 14 gallons per year versus prius 51 mpg city, in a heavier car with 17" wheels. Think about your long trips. Do you go more than 38 miles in the city (volts aer range)? Since the volt allows you to switch to cs on the highway this number should not be bad.

 

Did GM decide to "not to" spend additional money on a more efficient ICE, or they intend to put any ICE in, "like...don't care?"?

What you need to understand is "efficiency" as key. My regular Prius probably gives the same MPG as if I used a Volt (given many 200mile trips I do), but with no electrical consumption. Does that cenario fit in an "ultimate" ou "superior" eco-design???

For some, it may work.
But technically is a minus not to be adequate to some (many?) profiles or users.

 

I'm not privy to GM's decision making but from what I understand they used an existing ICE.

I also have a 07 gen II prius. We drove both vehicles on a 180mile trip together and the Prius used more gasoline. Yes, I spent 14 cents to fully charge before we started on the trip. On my daily driving, I typically go 800 miles EV between using any gasoline, 3000 miles between gasoline fillups.

For most it works. The 40 mile EV range matches up to something like 60% of daily drives (which is multiple trips) with a single overnight charge.

 

For those who want pure electric, the Volt ICE sounds like a fix for 'range anxiety' that was possibly required for marketing. In which case, ICE efficiency probably has not really been an issue for the Volt adopters. Even less for the Fisker which reminds me, we're getting close to the next monthly sales report(s).

Bob Wilson

 

Bob, if you have seen the market research on the leaf, you may note that limited range is a major problem for the sales staff to overcome. This is not an imagined problem. If the battery loses capacity, or there is a power outage, or there is very bad weather, or many other reasons you may occasionally want more range. With an ice range extender this is not a problem. People have had dueling power points claiming people don't need the extra range, they can rent/borrow cars, etc, but people buy cars for capabilities real and imagined Desire for longer range is real.

drinovation popped up a stat that 20% of miles are on trips over 100 miles. With a short range BEV, you need to chose a different vehicle. With a phev, that is not necessary. Often these vehicles are inside the household, but will get worse mileage not better than a volt. What if the owner of such vehicle also must take a different long trip on that day?

But you are absolutely correct, for most volt buyers the city mpg is not an important figure. Even the prius phv range would greatly reduce my fuel consumption. To me the 51 mpg epa mileage estimate is a joke, as most of my city trips are short and have warm up penalty. Most city driving days are less than 20 miles completely, and many trips for me could be accomplished by the phv's 11 mile range, leaving warm up needed only once per day, instead of 4 times. With the volt's range, I would never actually turn on the ice except for long trip days.

 

I guess the difference in the amount of gas in your case was not so different after all...but you threw away 14 cents of energy - (you pay little for 8kwh don't you??).
Besides, you have used a 07 Prius, 3Gen Prius you could make even better.

Just to remind you, 8kwh equals roughly to 6 people shower baths hot water energy...

But "I have to understand"...LOL (not)

 

before you continue to misquote me ...

Yes, I pay 14 cents per day for a charging subscription and a full charge is 12kWh rather than 8kWh.

The gallon of gasoline contains the equivalent of 33.7kWh, enough for an entire village to take hot showers.

The gasoline savings from my daily driving more than offsets the gasoline used for the occasional longer trips.

 

Cheers telmo. There are very regional differences. In austin we use natural gas to heat our water, and often water comes to the house fairly warm. I pay a lot more for the water than to heat it. We also are trying to get people to use renewable electricity for transportation instead of gasoline. There are flat rates available for a month, and this is very cheap. If you don't use much electricity during the day, and recharge at home, and are willing to use utilities choice, electricity for night charging is free on some plans. There is a $6/month fee on everyone's monthly bill in austin to help pay for these programs as well as electricity subsidies for the poor and efficiency programs.

In your case, your driving pattern is quite different than typical here. I'm sure your gasoline and electricity is much more expensive. You also seem to be a much more high mileage driver than a typical european. I don't think a phev is for you.

 

By "Not being effected" I meant it does should require licensing, especially not any licensing from Toyota. That does not mean lawyers would not be involved, they love to stick their noses in it. But if it was beholden on the patents then the lawyers would likely have said no to using it or we would have heard of a license deal.

 

That kind of sentence comes from cheap electricity you pay.

Definitely we do have different POV.

In yours, electricity is almost free, and comes from free to the planet.

Cheers AG

I would take many advantages of using a Prius PHV, but not of a Chevy Volt model.

 

So true. That's why an ICE should use it efficiently!

 

When I was in college living in a dorm, the campus power and steam plant was across the street. I once wondered what sort of drag racer it might be if put on rails and tractor tires. Having seen the Mythbusters piece on exploding hot water heaters, I now realize it could potentially be a pretty good 'steam rocket:'


The reason I bring this up is a coal or natural gas fired power plant is just another engine like the one in our Prius. However, the fuel-to-generator efficiency of a power plant looks pretty close to what we get with our Prius engine.

Power plant operators have a fuel advantage, lower cost per BTU, and a different tax structure. But they are burdened with transmission line losses, a variation of 'well-to-wheel' efficiency. Best of all, a local source of waste heat gives the home owner the option for other utility relief.

Mechanical engineering gives one a 'different point of view' which sees whole system efficiency as the goal and biases how I see reality. So I tend to see 'the man behind the curtain.'

Some of us share telmo744's point of view ... especially considering the cost to extract, process, and deliver the gasoline to the point of sale.

Bob Wilson

 

So what is more efficient. Travelling 50 miles with a gallon of gasoline or 38 miles with 12kWh of electricity?

Bob,
my charging subscription is powered by wind turbines. no fossil fuel conversion needed.