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- Hacker News
- For me anyways, range isn’t the issue.
It’s charging facilities being down far too frequently, whereas gas stations are rarely bone dry.
It’s sites lying about charging port availability, leading to wasted range on red herrings (thanks for lying about NACS chargers, Sheetz!).
It’s the anxiety of not knowing whether a charging area will be safe to hang out in for half an hour, unlike a gas station where you can pump and run pretty quickly if necessary.
The anxiety doesn’t come from a “limited” range (especially when gas vehicles get comparable or worse ranges); it’s the experience surrounding charging itself that needs improvement. One series of service stations offering reliably available charging ports with both plug standards and offering clean bathrooms, hot food, and space to wait in, is what’s needed to soothe “range anxiety”.
by stego-tech - Diesel-generated electrical propulsion in ships have been a thing for a long time. You can use several generators and only fire up the ones you need for the power you need and the ones running can do so in or near their optimal efficiency zones. You can also do away with the weight and mechanical losses from gear boxes because the electric motors don't need them.
- The REX issue is an interesting one.
The BMW i3 used what was basically a scooter engine. The Ampera/Volt used what was essentially an Opel Corsa engine (from memory).
Toyota's approach of using a small battery and modified atkinson cycle engine seems to have paid off. Taxi drivers love them and fuel economy is pretty consistent. But the engine is a core part of the process. So it isn't dead weight a lot of the time.
The real question is whether an 'Extended Range EV' is using a motor intended to work efficiently as just a generator or whether it's another parts bin special.
by ectoloph - Every time they try and do this, it fails. The math is very much against you with converting energy this way and obviously they haven't solved that.
This seems to be a huge investment to make just to try and market the same technology but better this time.
by fooqux - Sounds like what Mazda did with the MX-30 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_MX-30) which flopped hard. They used their new Wankel engine as range extender, perfect use case since the power:weight ratio of these is impressive.
- I worked on unmanned ground vehicles that did this... 10 years ago. In fact we designed them from scratch.
FWIW, now you have all the same joys of engine maintenance that one has with a traditional ICE car: oil changes, oil filter changes, spark plug replacement, starter replacement, coolant, probably an alternator, etc, along with needing to worry about an IG bolted on to the side of the engine connected to an MV bus. It is a complex design.
The maintenance on these will be quite expensive.
by irishcoffee - Less maintenance the traditional engine. well assuming you plug it in of course but if you're plugging it in you're only using the edge for longer trips and so you're going to save a lot of money while still having range to make longer trips. Of course there is some worry about the gas going stale if you never run that engine. On the other hand gas engines get more efficient the higher the load and so a generator optimized for the engine gets everything running at optimal is going to get roughly 40% fuel energy efficiency versus a normal car which is going to be close to 20 - that was the main promise of a hybrid all along.
I have a PHEV where the engine has about a thousand hours on it my previous car driven about the same would have had about three thousand hours on it. But there are definitely plenty of reports of people who have the plugging hybrids who never actually plug it in it so don't see this advantage.
by bluGill - Audi had a prototype of the Audi e-Tron with a compact Wankel gas engine as range extender. That was in 2010, but it was cancelled and never entered mass production.
https://www.carsuk.net/audi-a1-e-tron-wankel-range-extender-...
- BMW i3 REx with range extending petrol engine was released in 2014.by butterknife
- We have owned two. Trouble-free EV and trouble-free motor. The over-engineered little electrical actuators (for trunk, for gas-door opener) were our maintenance costs. The US only offers a single, dreadful tire in the correct size (Bridgestone Ecopia), which is the true achilles heel of the thing. The tiny tires seem to be made of discarded twix wrappers, are super expensive, and get destroyed by potholes and road hazards.
They're lovely little city bugs and just a pleasant place to be inside.
by schmookeeg - I drove an i3 rex, first generation. The gas motorcycle engine loved breaking down, due to disuse. Such an unreliable offence of crap. According to the dealership mechanic, the engine was packaged in a way that made the fluids collect in places they shouldn't.by derideor
- "New"? Like hybrids haven't been around forever?by guiriduro
- no no no no no no you don't get it.
there are EVs! with a backup generator.
but are EVs so they get all those sweet incentives
by monegator - Could be an obvious mistake in the title to drive engagement, or as someone said in the comments of the article:
> WSJ catering to the anti EV crowd to get them to say "Har har look at those silly EVs, needs a gas engine now."
by Jyaif - from the article: "Most plug-in hybrids on the road today are essentially gasoline vehicles with a battery shoehorned in to provide a small amount of all-electric range. EREVs [Extended Ranged Electric Vehicles] flip the concept. They are designed first as electric vehicles, and the engine solely acts as a generator for the battery, with no mechanical connection to the wheels."by obliquely
- It's new in that it's not really a hybrid. It isn't meant to take over when you run out of battery. It's meant as an emergency recharge for the battery to get you to the next charging station.
Hybrids can just run on gas and not have to worry about the distance to the next charging station.
by wccrawford - 3rd sentence: It is a fully electric car with the security blanket of a gas-powered generator to charge the battery. So not your average hybrid whos gas-powered motor directly drives the wheels.by stinos
- This is EREV (Extended-Range Electric Vehicle) where the fossil fuel engine is used solely to charge the battery, as opposed to a PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) where it can also drive the wheels.
Either way, the cost is that the vehicle has the complexity of both systems. The benefit is variable, YMMV (Your milage may vary). There must be cases where it's a good idea. Especially at present, while the energy supply systems are in transition.
- For people thinking that pure ev + backup generator is more reliable than PHEV, i recommend this video : Nobody understands the point of hybrid cars from Technology Connections
It explains why PHEV is actually a very clever idea and now it simplifies things not complicates them.
by vincnetas - I enjoy that guy, but I've found he is wrong about what he talks about in several situations. This is probably one of them, but we'll see once the EREVs are tested. His argument here is basically, "The Volt wasn't fuel efficient so EREVs can't be". Ignoring all the has been learned about EVs since then. Plus he ignores that PHEVs and Hybrids are more complex than an EREV because they need complex transmissions and other subsystems because they need to be both an EV and an ICE vehicle.
I have an EV and a hybrid, and the EV is so much better than the hybrid - I will happily swap the hybrid for an EREV when the time comes.
by gilbetron - Indeed this. A range extender engine will never be as efficient as hybridby hasperdi
- Stellantis is still producing 400V EVs with below-average efficiency. Their cars display estimated range based on their marketing number rather than real battery condition and driving history, so the range drops by 1.6 miles for every mile driven.
A lot of range anxiety would go away if their EV tech wasn't crap.
by pornel - Interestingly, brands like Mercedes do the opposite - a recent test by What Car? indicated that the real (UK) highway range of the GLC 400 4Matic Electric is just 1.4% lower than its WLTP rating - 390 miles vs 394.
I don't know about anyone else, but I always needed a short break after 450km or so. Those 390 miles are more than I would ever use without stopping to charge.
by Tade0 - Electric buses in the UK have been charged with diesel generators and there was a bit of an uproar about it at first, but a large static diesel generator running at a constant speed can be more efficient than multiple stop/start diesel engines, and therefore more friendly to the environment.
Usually seen as a stop-gap until they can get the power upgraded in the depot to support multiple charging buses.
by ddmf