Quote:
Originally Posted by oil pan 4
A hybrid truck with anything over a 10kw pack would likely be a plug in hybrid and would have a starting cost around $10,000 higher than the non hybrid.
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Well, let's examine this a bit more...
What would be the ideal pack size to provide enough energy to pull a load up a mountain pass? What is the ideal power output of the electric motor to give the needed acceleration given an undersized ICE engine? What would be the ideal pack size to soak up the enormous amounts of power that regen would create?
Perhaps 20 kWh would be the ideal battery size? That's roughly the size of the gen I EVs such as the Leaf, Spark, and i3. The i3 has a 170 horsepower electric motor, which should be plenty for a hybrid truck.
Battery cost is somewhere around $190 per kWh, so a 20 kWh pack would be $3,800. If the truck could run on EV alone, which it should if it had a 170 horsepower motor, it might get 50 miles of EV range.
Who knows how much the other hybrid components would add to the cost? From what I'm finding, hybrid technology adds about a 10% premium to a vehicle.
It seems to me that a 20 kWh battery and 170 HP motor might add $6,000 to the price of the truck, but that doesn't factor in the cost savings of a smaller engine and transmission, and no driveline to the rear.
Based on my estimate of fuel savings above, it would take somewhere around 12 years to recover the extra cost, but that doesn't factor in the fact that trips under 50 miles could be completed on EV power alone.
I'm just spitballing here, so what are your thoughts on battery size, motor size, and cost?