[bennelson]

Hello!

Has anyone heard of any DIY hybrid conversion starting with either a 4-wheel or all-wheel drive vehicle and converting one of the sets of wheels to electric, while keeping the other with the original gas engine?

I got the idea from electric front wheel bicycles. What's so nice about that is the front wheel hub electric motor pulls you along, and the back of the bike is unmodified. The chain still works, you can pedal as much or as little as you like.

Would a similar system work for a home-brew hybrid? For example, have a 4 wheel drive pickup truck, disconnect the drive-shaft to the back, and replace that with an electric motor. Truck pulls itself along with gas on the front and pushes from the back with the electric.

I am no car expert, please tell me if this is a completely unreasonable idea.

I recently saw an electric trike which was a motorcycle front end mated to a Chevy S10 rear axel spun backwards with a 9" motor chained to it.

Why couldn't a vehicle have seperate drives for the front and back like this?

Alternatively, could a front-wheel drive car have the rear wheels replaced with a pickup rear axel with an electric motor attached?

Do differentials cause the driveshaft to spin while the tires spin? IE - would pulling a vehicle along on gas power from the front cause an electric motor attached to the rear differential to spin the entire time?

The main problem I can think of with this type of a setup is that you might need two gas pedals - or keep the original gas pedal and add a hand-throttle for the electric. Also, you now have two systems to maintain instead of one like you would in a pure gas or pure electric system.

The only homebuilt hybrids I know of are serial hybrids, such as an electric pickup with a generator sitting in the bed.

Web searching for home-built hybrids, I only found a few serial hybrids, but no parallel hybrids with the main exceptions being the 5th Wheel Insight and Mr. Sharkey's pusher trailer when it's hooked to his electric Rabbit.

Is this whole concept reasonable? Seems like it should be just like an electric car conversion, except that you don't remove the internal combustion engine!