Less maintenance the traditional engine. well assuming you plug it in of course but if you're plugging it in you're only using the edge for longer trips and so you're going to save a lot of money while still having range to make longer trips. Of course there is some worry about the gas going stale if you never run that engine. On the other hand gas engines get more efficient the higher the load and so a generator optimized for the engine gets everything running at optimal is going to get roughly 40% fuel energy efficiency versus a normal car which is going to be close to 20 - that was the main promise of a hybrid all along.
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.
Mechanics often have a skewed perspective, though, and so I don't necessarily trust your experience because you see that bad cases.
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'm not clear what you were doing with an engine then. Unless you were part of the design team finding and fixing bugs and making the engines reliable for the rest of us.
Given your current prose, I don’t really feel like engaging much anymore. Engines speak CAN. We needed software to interface with the engine, along with DC/DC converters, coolant pumps, motor controllers, the IG, and about 20 other components.
Comments
Less maintenance the traditional engine. well assuming you plug it in of course but if you're plugging it in you're only using the edge for longer trips and so you're going to save a lot of money while still having range to make longer trips. Of course there is some worry about the gas going stale if you never run that engine. On the other hand gas engines get more efficient the higher the load and so a generator optimized for the engine gets everything running at optimal is going to get roughly 40% fuel energy efficiency versus a normal car which is going to be close to 20 - that was the main promise of a hybrid all along.
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.
Mechanics often have a skewed perspective, though, and so I don't necessarily trust your experience because you see that bad cases.
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’m a staff software engineer. :)
I'm not clear what you were doing with an engine then. Unless you were part of the design team finding and fixing bugs and making the engines reliable for the rest of us.
Given your current prose, I don’t really feel like engaging much anymore. Engines speak CAN. We needed software to interface with the engine, along with DC/DC converters, coolant pumps, motor controllers, the IG, and about 20 other components.
Have a nice day!