This sounds amazing. I had no idea this was being developed. It's what I've been saying for 15 years now, that the proper place to implement hybrid technology is the heavy vehicles, not the Honda Insight.
That said, the real savings is going to come from being able to plug in and complete trips in EV mode only, because the truck only gets 20 MPG once the engine kicks on. That's not a terrible MPG rating, but it's only about average for that class of truck.
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Originally Posted by JSH
The battery size is a bit more of a mystery to me. At first look it seems way larger than needed as is the 150 mile range it provides. A battery half the size could still provide the range needed to cover more than 90% of trips on battery alone. Maybe they need that much battery to get the level of power they wanted. Maybe they still want to cover 90% of trips with a 10 year old battery in the dead of a Minnesota winter.
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You'd need a large battery to output 500+ HP, or to regen with payload.