Everyone thinks hybrid cars are good and they are in general correct. The problem today is hybrid car designs are backward. Almost every car company started with the internal combustion engine (ICE). When they create a hybrid they focus on adding batteries and an electric motor to an ICE-based car.
Hybrid goals are fuel efficiency and saving the environment. But people don’t want to sacrifice performance and convenience. Having a hybrid with a 4.5-liter V8 engine is crap as a good environmental custodian.
The latest Electric Vehicles (EVs) meet our expectations for performance and convenience. A Telsa can out-accelerate some of the highest-performance muscle cards with a V8 ICE. The biggest problems people complain about are the range of the EV and the initial cost. I don’t think the range is a real issue for most people, it is a perception that there is a problem.
How much power does an EV use to move?
The small Nissan Leaf has an EPA range of up to 149 miles with a 40kWh battery. That equates to an average of 0.27 kWh (power) per mile driven. 40(kWh)/149(Mile) = 0.2685 kWh/Mile.
Starting with the power requirements for an EV to operate. We take the battery capacity and divide that by the listed range for the car. Like we did above with the Nissan Leaf 40kWh/149 miles = 0.2685 kWh/mile. Looking online the average power consumption listed across EV models we get a range of 0.24 kWh to 0.87 kWh per mile. From <https://ecocostsavings.com/electric-car-kwh-per-mile-list/>
For this discussion, I will use 0.35 kWh per mile. To give another reference, one horsepower is 0.74569 KW. If used over one hour that is 0.74569 kWh. This means the average EV uses (on average) about 1/2 of one horsepower to drive around.
The lowest horsepower car I found on an internet search was a 2019 Mitsubishi. It has 78 horsepower. That is 78/0.5 or 156 times the horsepower average needed to move an EV car. This is the average driving power, not the power needed to speed up a car. The EV cars include the need for acceleration in the average power usage. I use that to say the actual power needed when cruising is less than the average listed.
What is your commute distance?
The average commute mileage I could find is 41 miles round trip. The lowest configuration Leaf can commute for three days before needing a recharge. I don’t view three days of driving as a reason to claim range as a problem. Those three days allow about 1/2 day of power to deal with rush hour issues. [11kWh] 40/11 = 3.6364. Every night, at home, the car can charge with an extension cord.
Another argument is I can’t use an EV, because I need to go long distances a few times. That is a choice you make when you decide on a vehicle. You don’t try and pull a 20-foot 5th-wheel trailer with a BMW Mini. You wouldn’t use a flatbed truck to drive the kids to soccer practice. No one vehicle will fill every driving need, so why must an EV?
Why are they designed backward?
How did we get here? In 1860 Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir patented the internal combustion engine. In 1908 Henry Ford changed our interaction with the horseless carriage. The Model T production line produced a new car every 12 seconds. The first step of the assembly line is installing an ICE into the frame of the car. Today it is not the first step, but close. All the thinking starts with an engine and building a car around it.
So how do you design a hybrid? Let’s take an ICE-based car and add an electric motor and a battery. The Internal combustion engine is still the key. The ICE is one of the most expensive components, but it is also the key to energy, power, and motion generation. Making the ICE the center of the design becomes the main problem. The focus on ICE is preventing real innovation and improvements in mileage. Now let’s get back to thinking about a backward hybrid design that solves these problems.
How should a hybrid be designed?
Don’t start with an internal combustion engine, then add batteries and a motor. Start with an EV and add a BATTERY CHARGER. The battery charger will need to provide enough power to charge the batteries while the vehicle is moving.
Use the batteries to speed up and cruise while driving. Use the battery charger always running at peak efficiency to charge the batteries. You will extend the range of the vehicle while getting the benefits of the EV.
Why don’t car companies do this?
To answer the question of why car companies don’t do this, I will give a different industry example. Established companies may not transition and fail when a fundamental technology shift happens. One of the clear examples in history started in the 1980s. At that time Kodak was the top photography company. They dominated in all areas of photography. Kodak created some of the first patents for digital photography.
The company culture was chemical film. When digital photography battled for resources, it lost. Now Kodak is trying to survive. Today chemical film is a very small niche product. Others now control digital photography which Kodak could have dominated.
Now take a car company built on the internal combustion engine and tell them to make a hybrid or an EV. That company will have the same internal cultural issues that Kodak had.
There is some goodness to talk about. Full EV companies like Tesla are showing what is possible if you don’t start with an ICE as your core, your culture. Also, the fact Ford CEO Jim Farley (@jimfarley98) has split the company into two divisions. A group focused on EVs gives the team freedom to design cars without requiring the ICE.
Think about a car designed as an EV with a 1kW fuel cell and a fuel tank that will drive 500 miles. You now have a car that has a 200-mile range on battery plus a 500-mile range on the fuel cell. 700 miles with no sacrifice for convenience or comfort.
Today car companies design hybrids backward. Every car company can choose to change its approach. Create a car meeting customer requirements for efficiency, environmental needs, and convenience.
