Breaking news! Chevy volt technically driven by gas engine!

[MetroMPG]

Future ecomodders will be disappointed they won't be able to simply yank the Volt's ICE, plus all the other ICE related components, and stick in some more batteries. ... or leave the ICE hole and just enjoy the benefits of reduced weight.

Seriously - one of the first responses I read on the EVDL about the Volt was someone's idea to do just that.

[RobertSmalls]

Originally Posted by Daox

Whats the 2nd one?

A two cylinder, 30-45kW electric generator from Getrag. For some reason, it has an alternator and a two-speed transmission as well.

Green Car Congress: GETRAG to Exhibit Boosted Range Extender at METAV; Electric and Mechanical Drive

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

Future ecomodders will be disappointed they won't be able to simply yank the Volt's ICE, plus all the other ICE related components, and stick in some more batteries. ... or leave the ICE hole and just enjoy the benefits of reduced weight.

Seriously - one of the first responses I read on the EVDL about the Volt was someone's idea to do just that.

Ha Ha- I've seen several comments to that effect too. Like hoards of people were going to run out and gut new $41,000 cars

[NeilBlanchard]

Hi,

Originally Posted by Daox

Whats the 2nd one?

It's a GETRAG serial/parallel hybrid drive unit:

Green Car Congress: GETRAG to Exhibit Boosted Range Extender at METAV; Electric and Mechanical Drive

GETRAG Boosted Range Extender | Electric Cars Report

Here's another view of it:



And the electric motor with the 2-speed transmission:

[Randy]

A simple gear drive will beat motor/generator set pretty easily in terms of efficiency. Like >95% vs <90%. Plus gears are orders of magnitude cheaper per watt. Normal transmissions are inefficient because they need lots of gears, plus a torque converter or slipping clutch to keep the engine in operating range.

I never got why GM insisted the Volt wasn't a hybrid. It was especially dumb once they said the motors and engine were one unit. Either their engineers were stupid or their ad men were.

If Toyota had modified its Prius drive with a couple of clutches and more electric power, it wouldn't insist that it's a 'range-extended electric' and absolutely not a hybrid. But people would be stoked about a plug-in Prius that doesn't need the engine at any speed, even if it was $40k and there were reports of only 30 mpg from some lead-foot testers. So I give GM the benefit of the doubt on this one.

[NeilBlanchard]

Originally Posted by dcb

but it doesn't make a locomotive a hybrid

How about capacitors?

Electric double-layer capacitor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://leiwww.epfl.ch/publications/d...er_pesc_04.pdf

http://www.elit-cap.com/files/pdf/22SD.pdf

A diesel electric train locomotive is a hybrid drive train:

HowStuffWorks "How Diesel Locomotives Work"

Hybrid train - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hybrid Locomotive Gains Traction

Freight Trains Double Fuel Efficiency Since 1980 – Gas 2.0

[dcb]

I'm not saying that a locomotive couldn't be made into a hybrid, with some serious batteries (or capacitors, same thing basically) and controller. It should be pretty obvious that is all that is missing to make it a hybrid. But the typical diesel-electric is not a hybrid. Saying it uses a "hybrid driveline" only confuses the issue, something GM would do

From your own link:
Clarke estimated that there are 7,000 diesel locomotives in branch operations in North America.

"We plan to turn some into hybrids," he said.

[basjoos]

That "Green Goat" is a recently developed hybrid switchyard locomotive used to move small numbers of rail cars around in a switchyard. It would be the railroad equivalent to a mail delivery truck or garbage truck, i.e. traveling short distances with small loads at low speeds with lots of starts and stops. The long haul locomotives and most of the existing switchyard locos are all still non-hybrid diesel-electrics. The challenge is developing a hybrid battery system that can handle the massive number of amps that would required or generated when accelerating or decelerating a 100+ rail car train. Current hybrid technology can handle the demands of a switchyard loco, but is not yet up to managing the energy flows of those mile long freight trains.

[NeilBlanchard]

They have two kinds of motors (aka power sources), that are used together to move the vehicle.

If two sources of energy are required to be a hybrid -- then there are NO hybrids sold in the USA; zero, none. The energy in the batteries of Prius' and Honda hybrids comes from the gasoline; so just one energy source.

Only plug-in conversions meet that criteria...

Take away the battery in the Volt (or don't charge it) and it turns into a conventional car? I think it would still be called a serial/series hybrid.

There are (obviously) a lot of variations in the bits and parts and combinations and different types of hybrids. Who's to say what parts are required to "be" a hybrid?

A hybrid vehicle is a vehicle that uses two or more distinct power sources to move the vehicle.[1] The term most commonly refers to hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), which combine an internal combustion engine and one or more electric motors.

No mention of batteries, or plugging in...

[MN Driver]

Based on the article above where they were discussing very good MPG and the 35-40mpg from I-don't-know-where type single-source speculation to a real world number. I'm not going to look at this until I see forum posts on the gm-volt site with owners showing what the car is capable of. A planetary drive is more simple than a transmission that needs to shift or a CVT with bands that move so if it is designed well(time will tell), it should last a long time. It seems the PSD in the Prius wasn't a major failure, sure there are a few failures but you see that on every forum for every type of transmission, even manual transmissions. Extra parts do leave more room for failures but I'm not sure if it is something to be expected just because there is a transmission shoved in place.

Does it bother me that GM said one thing and did another? Yes ...I had a hunch though because there was a video of them assembling an IVER that I saw MONTHS ago and I saw output shafts on the transmission that was connected directly to the engine so I figured they had something to do with it and then saw the few articles about it so I've let the idea sink in a little.

I would prefer the car to stay in EV mode during its charge-depleting mode of operation even if that means limited passing power on the 70mph highway that is within a short distance from my house if it means that my round trip would still have power in the pack and I don't need the gas power. Even if it were less efficient, and I don't think it is when in a full EV mode under a grid charge, it's most certainly cheaper either way when powered by the plug.

I'm not looking to buy this car, far too expensive but my opinion of it still exists and right now there is too much speculation over the MPG but in reality most people don't need the car for more than about 40 miles and I'm sure that most of the hypermilers on this forum could easily top 40 miles of range with no problem driving efficiently. The biggest concern I have is the idea that the ICE might power up to heat the battery when leaving work and provide limited EV power favoring gas power. I live in an area that gets -20f and in a state that has dropped to -40f/-40c as a record. If it performs well and doesn't fire the gas engine up everyday in the cold and gets roughly 50mpg, has a battery with a decent lifespan, it would be better than a Prius for anyone would would primarily be driving it using the electric power.

If someone in interested in this car primarily thinking of how it operates outside of its most efficient mode for any reason other than having it as a single car that you want to include on longer trips, than this car is OBVIOUSLY not for you. If you drive 50 miles and drive aggressively and get 30 miles off the electric, you might still win out owning this car.

This is coming from someone who buys used cars though so I figure the price would drop to a reasonable level before buying it, again I'm not buying it.
...at least not the whole car. I wouldn't mind buying the battery from the junkyard though and putting that 16kw of prismatic lithium into a different car as a pure EV though. *ahem* If the prices will become dirt cheap like all the hybrid NiMh, I'm all over those cells.

EDIT/ADD ...and I'm trying to figure out what the big deal is over terminology. Not calling the car a hybrid was used as a PR move to try to differentiate the car from a Prius in that it doesn't fire up the gas engine immediately getting on a highway or sharing the load extensively where all motive power is directly or indirectly provided by gasoline and not being able to grid charge. I deal with similar issues trying to tell people that my 1st Gen Insight doesn't run on EV mode and doesn't require the IMA battery to be in the car for it to actually operate and all it does is lose a little power and the regen and autostop functions, more or less. Getting into a big, "this is a hybrid and this isn't" flame war is beside the point, the car is what it is, done differently than the rest but yet similar with many concepts of the design.