BEV's or battery electric vehicles like the Tesla Model 3 or Tesla Model Y are very popular & made in America. Tough several issues plague purchasers of such vehicles.
~ Expensive tires that only last 10,000 & often much less than that. Replacements $2000-4000
~ Expensive Registration because of Gas Tax Loss EV Taxes states add to registration fees for EVs.
~ Expensive Insurance because of the aluminum intensive design that makes repairs very costly.
~ Slow Recharging Taked 10X longer than Gas Station Fuel Refills
~ Battery fading or loss of capacity with charging cycle, use & time, made worse faster by 100% saturation full charging which causes lithium to be lost stuck in the carbon, sulfur, or silicon nano wire anode materials. Additionally, dendrite formation causes progressive soft shorting through the electrode separator film that keeps the cathode lithium nickel aluminum cobalt manganese mixture from electrically shorting with the anode carbon, sulfur or silicon nanowires.
~ Flammable electrolyte made of oily solvents that cause many hobby LiPo RC drone batteries & battery packs are well known to swell up or puff up with internal gas pressure & if the mylar film containing the hobby cells rips, especially when mostly fully charged, a vent with flame & lots of blue, white toxic smoke emitted accident occurs.
In EV's a battery fire much worse because of the size of the battery pack, often 200-1500 lbs of lithium-ion batteries in series & parallel packs usually underslung beneath the vehicle, such that Tesla even installed a titanium battery protector shield under the Model S after news reports of Model S striking road debris later catching fire because of damage to the battery pack.
HEV's address most of the Pure Electric Vehicle issues because they are mostly gasoline powered & only use the electric motors & traction battery to help the gasoline engine, since electric motors make torque instantly, while gasoline engines are better at making torque at higher RPM & sustained output & peak power for mountain pass climbing at 80 MPH which would sap an EV battery rapidly.
Thus hybrids enable advanced start stop, energy recovery, brake regen, e-boost assist, torque assist, power assist, and can help to make up for all the power curve output problems with the gasoline engine, typically a long stroke shortened compression stroke Atkinson cycle engine designed to reduce pumping losses & improve thermal efficiency, the way that many Toyota Prius models for more than 20 years have been enabling people to get 40-60 MPG on regular unleaded gasoline with nearly 600 mi of range on 11.9 gallons of unleaded 87 octane gasoline, often E10 with 10% ethanol in the USA.
PHEV blend the best of both an EV & a traditional Hybrid Electric vehicle. With a smaller traction battery than a pure electric vehicle, but a traction battery 4-10X bigger than a traditional hybrid battery, this means PHEV can travel for 10-60 mi in electric mode, then revert to running on gasoline for 400+ more miles of range in hybrid mode.
This enables the PHEV to behave like a low local emissions BEV to reduce local air pollutants, while still enabling long range winter mountain pass climbing road trips & other sustained higher energy modes where rapid battery depletion causes range anxiety to people attempting such trips in purely electric vehicles with 300mi best case scenario range from the ~100kWh battery.
In reality, worse case winter mountain pass climbing at 80 MPH with a full SUV, means that long range EV SUV that claims 300mi of range, more like 140mi of range worst case, with a newer battery. Those numbers get worse with time as the EV battery suffers loses of capacity with both regular use cycling, level 3 DC fast charging, high heat exposure, deep prolonged cold that causes the battery heaters to run 7kw of load to keep the battery warm since Li-Ion do not work well below 40 F & are dangerous to charge if frozen because that can result in electroplating lithium inside the cell, which causes a battery to catch fire when charged frozen cold below 32 F or 0 degrees Centigrade.
Many Hybrid vehicles have the lowest Total Cost of Ownership when compared to gasoline vehicles of the same model, size or class. Toyota hybrids for example have been in high volume production, sold by the tens of millions worldwide for more than 20 years now & are proven to have Legendary reliability, excellent fuel economy & pleasing operation. Hybrids regularly save 3X more in fuel costs than the price premium they cost upfront vs the gas only versions.
This is particularly true when gasoline prices are higher, resulting in a faster payback of the Hybrid drivetrain price increase over the ICE or gas-powered car or SUV. When energy or fuel prices are higher, premium efficiency devices that cost more upfront but have radically lower long term operating costs tend to sell better.
This means heat pumps are being integrated into HVAC, appliances, vehicles & many other applications because of their superior & unmatched ability to heat & cool efficiently. Some heat pumps can achieve a COP or coefficient of performance of 7.1 meaning 1 unit of electricity can move 7 units of heat for cooling or heating.
HEV & PHEV are more complicated to make & work on than ICE vehicles. They have higher resource requirements upfront & thus higher costs, like pure EV's, so there is a break-even carbon neutrality point after 4-12 years of operation when the premium efficiency vehicle produces less net carbon & pollutant emissions because of its superior fuel economy & lower emissions.
If the inverter or battery of an EV, HEV or PHEV fails outside the OEM warranty which is often 8-10 years from new sales date, these electromotive vehicle parts can be complicated or expensive to replace, especially given the depreciated value of the vehicles after the hybrid battery & drivetrain warranty expires.
HEV & PHEV & EV make brakes last longer than ICE since slowing down often runs the traction motor as a generator to charge the battery to add 10-15% more EV mode range. Brake Regen captures energy that would normally be wasted scrubbing metal or carbon ceramic brake rotors with brake pads applied in a gripping manner by a hydraulic brake caliper with hydraulic pistons that press the brake pads with clamping force against the rotating surface of the brake rotor, which can be solid, slotted or drilled for better heat dissipation. Brake fade is cause by the brake rotor overheating, which causes gas emissions from the surface that keep the brake pads from creating friction to slow down the vehicle, causing a soft feel in the brake pedal known as brake fade. Even our E-bike has hydraulic brakes!
Less noise at low speeds means less noise pollution, plus the automakers of BEV, PHEV & HEV do more to reduce noise than they do on typical ICE vehicles. This makes less NVH inside the vehicle cabin, so a quieter ride, and less noise outside to disturb other people or animals nearby. In technological terms, this similar to being considerate or thoughtful. Besides, pollution not nice to anything living. Worse, pollution toxic & harmful to people, animals & nature. It does not matter if burning fossil fuels causes climate change, we need to decarbonize to reduce public harm cause by combustion pollution emissions.
Vehicles like cars & SUV & trucks are eco-toxic. They cause emissions at the manufacturing level & making one for 8 billion people causes a lot of toxic emissions, not just of carbon dioxide. While catalytic converters reduce harmful emissions by 95%, they are not perfect & wear out & are expensive to replace if they are stolen.
Why does a catalytic converter wear out. With exhaust gas at 1000 degrees, the ceramic honeycomb structure with high surface area for the noble metal slurry gets red hot, so the platinum, palladium, rhodium, copper, nickel & other catalytic metals can reversibly provide electrons to remediate the pollutant into non-toxic substances. For example, Oxides of Nitrogen which are poisonous toxic pollutants are broken down by a fully hot operating catalytic converter into Oxygen & Nitrogen, natural components of air. This is why fuel injection + emissions controls radically reduced vehicle pollutant emissions.
You might wonder why generators & lawnmowers & other gas-powered products lack fuel injection & exhaust emissions controls. Cost! Also, the hot exhaust gas slowly boils off the rare metals in the catalytic converter. After 10,000 hours of engine operation the cat mostly depleted of its catalytic elements. That also means these metals, platinum, palladium, rhodium, are present in the exhaust as tiny components of the Un remediated HC pollutants or hydrocarbon vapors that given exhaust its characteristic smell, the same blow by products that squeak past the piston rings & fuel engine oil. This is why regular oil changes radically improve an engines net lifetime operating life.
The automakers are lazy or greedy, because they know how to make gasoline engines with 70% thermal efficiency using recuperation generation just like most stationary natural gas power plants do.
Onboard engine oil recycling using exhaust heat & distillation + filtering could make engine oil last 5X longer. But this a complicated system. Inside the crankcase oil splashed & sprayed around the crankshaft, con-rods, piston skirts, bearings, up in the head for the valves & camshaft, wherever metal on metal friction an oil film makes the parts last 1000x longer. Crank case vapors are usually pipped back into the intake to be burned, to reduce the combustion temperatures along with the EGR supplied exhaust gas that also reduces combustion temperature.
Reducing the combustion temperature reduces complicated chemical reactions in a way that reduces toxic emissions. At higher combustion temperatures more kinds of chemicals are produced & higher thermal loads make the cylinder walls, pistons, piston rings & other parts of the engine to wear out faster. This is also why water-cooled engines have longer useful life that air heatsink oil cooled engines that lack water cooling.
To illustrate why the automakers are greedy or lazy, consider a long-life APU or auxiliary power unit from a commercial airplane. Turbine APU are the most power dense & most reliable portable power generators. In an PHEV or RE-EV range extended EV, and APU would be a superior range extender.
BMW i3 REX for example makes use of a Maxxie Scooter 650cc twin engine from one of BMW powersport vehicles, as a 22kW range extender in the truck of the range extended REX i3. This adds a few hundred pounds to the REX models which makes them accelerate & handle worse but gets rid of the battery range anxiety. This is similar to the gasoline engine motor generator set in a PHEV.
Range Extended Electric Vehicles & Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles. Similar concepts by mixing gasoline engines, electric motors & generators with EV batteries, to offer a premium efficiency solution with the limitations of limited lithium-ion batteries alone.
Our 22 Corolla Hybrid has the 2ZR-FXE 1.8L Atkison cycle inline 4 that Toyota used in the 3rd & 4th Gen Prius & many other vehicles. The dual electric motor PSD mixes the gasoline engine, traction motor, and generator motor together with many blended operation modes. A tiny 0.75kWh lithium carbonyl battery pack used to store brake regen energy, to help the engine with e-boost early torque, to enable advance engine auto start-stop.
0W-16 thinner synthetic motor oil helps the engine avoid wear with the frequent start stop cycles. I am getting well over 60 MPG in the Corolla Hybrid using safety focused light hypermiling. With every trick I learned from Wayne Gerdes, I can get the Corolla Hybrid to yield over 80 MPG. Even in ICE vehicles, auto-start-stop can boost city fuel economy 10-30%.
Take the 50 MPG Prius & compare it to a conventional ICE with the same capacities that averages 34 MPG. Thats 16 MPG better for 200,000 miles. The gas savings alone more than pay for the entire price of the Prius. Same with the 33 MPG Corolla vs 55 MPG Corolla Hybrid. Thats 22 MPG better, so it also radically reduces operating costs & more than pays for the price difference in fuel savings quickly.
Gas hogs are fun high-performance vehicle but getting hit for $100 at the gas pump every few days means spending thousands of dollars for fuel per month. Thats not wise or intelligent for commuting in traffic. Sure, the WRX fun for rally racing dirt & gravel roads in rural areas WRC events, but a 6-speed manual WRC in stop & go traffic on congested highway 900 nearby would be a total pain. Sure, you could leave the WRX in first gear & trolley along at 4 MPH leaving a big space buffer between the front of the WRX & the vehicle you're following in stop & go traffic congestion, but you would be getting like 17 MPG in such conditions & WRX turbo motor requires premium fuel that costs more.
The fueling costs to use the WRX in congested areas would be a huge price premium. But at a weekend mud toy with exceptional AWD, Subaru sells the best AWD vehicles. Turbo puts more stress on the WRX motor, so while the 2.5L + CVT of the current Cross trek can last 200,000-300,000 miles according to Scotty Kilmer the expert mechanic on his YouTube channel. He says he does not like turbocharged engines because all that forced induction stress makes the engine use more fuel & wear out faster.
He did say that when the Turbocharged engine WRX driven gently, it can get better fuel economy than the non-turbo engines of other Subarus. This is known as early shifting for torque peak hypermiling with a manual transmission. He had a customer with a WRX that was able to get 44 MPG going 80 MPH over a mountain pass, using lift off the throttle in 6th gear energy efficient driving techniques where you stay in the right lane while lightly slowing down such that you're going just a tad less than the speed limit at the peak before going back down the mountain where you let gravity assist help speed you back up to just over the speed limit.
When they make a smaller engine like the GR Corolla make 300 HP, that means 21 city & 28 highway fuel economy ratings from the EPA. If you shift like a bat out of hell & are hard on the throttle, it can be way lower MPG than that. In stop & go traffic, it could dip to 12 MPG or worse. Especially if you have to deice the car by warming it up for 10 min. In these cases, the fuel being burned & the vehicle not moving so negative MPG. This is why start stop systems improve fuel economy so much, they turn the gasoline engine off all the time to reduce idle fuel waste in ways that boosts fuel economy while lowering emissions.
Adding Auto Start Stop to an ICE vehicle only costs an automaker a few hundred dollars. They could have been doing this with a 48v combined alternator starter years ago. But back in 1999 gasoline in the USA was about $1/gal, so consumers put no pressure on Automakers to include costly fuel efficiency features that would make cars & SUV's a bit more expensive up front.
Start Thinking Like a Profitable Business
Not just the upfront price of the vehicle or capital cost
Fueling costs, regular maintenance, repairs, reliability, insurance, registration, tires & more
Think about the Total Cost of Operation or Lifetime Total Costs / TCO or LTC
What if you get into an accident that is not your fault, the vehicle you love can be totaled
If you fail to maintain your vehicle, it will wear out faster & higher repair costs.
Chaning the engine oil more regularly the best way to improve your vehicles operating life.
Driving slower & more gentle, smooth steady safety focused makes vehicles last longer.
Driving hard with fast acceleration & full throttle makes vehicles wear out faster.
Naturally aspirated engines last longer than turbo-charged engines, in gasoline powered vehicles.
There are examples of 20,000 engine life turbo-diesel engines in commercial vehicles.
Aircraft high bypass turbine turbofan engines have 20,000-hour operating life before teardown rebuilt.
Some HD diesel electric train engines can operate for 20,000-hours before teardown rebuild.
Many ships prime mover engines have teardown intervals of 10-15 thousand hours.
Many racing vehicles have their engines taken apart for inspection & wear part replacement within a few hundred hours of operation.
Gasoline 44 megajoules per kilogram as a liquid fuel, much better than any commercial battery!
A typical gasoline fueled vehicle owner can add 350 mi of fuel in less than 7 minutes.
Gasoline in synthetic forms can be made from natural gas & coal gasification for 300 more years.
Bio-gasoline a renewable fuel made using GMO yeast & bacterial in large steel tanks at commercial scale to enable emerging renewable fuels & alternative fuels more economical for worldwide use.
Synthetic Gasoline burns much cleaner like propane & has a 10-year shelf life, when conventional E10 gasoline starts breaking down in a gas can after 3 months. Old conventional gasoline forms waxy strings as it oxidizes the alkanes present in the fuel. You can red oily fuel stabilizers to your gas tank to improve gasoline shelf life to 2 years.
Synthetic gasoline costs more than $7 per gallon, so it only sells well in niche applications.
Commercially synthetic gasoline made using Shell GTL or gas to liquids high volume fuel making processes invented in WWII Germany since there were no local oil resources in Germany to make fuel for the German Military. TheNazi party funded Fischer & Tropsch, two petrochemical chemical engineers to develop a way to make jet fuel, kerosine, diesel, & gasoline for gasified coal gases.
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