The advantage of electric vehicles is to reduce carbon emissions and these can be charged at home and if you are lucky may even be charged by a solar panel on your roof. Excellent.
But some hybrids do not have a home charger socket and also no way of switching on to electric only when in city centres.
Can someone please explain to me how these hybrids can be more efficient than an identical none electric car which does not have to carry an extra battery etc?
Until late last year I had a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV.
The Outlander’s transmission is somewhat different to that described above. It is similar to that found in most normal BEVs. It has two electric traction motors, one driving the rear wheels, the second the front. Both are directly connected to single speed transmissions. As it is a hybrid it also has a petrol engine, directly connected to a generator and this can also supply power directly to the front wheels at speeds above 43 MPH.
The vehicle has three modes of operation:
On a motorway run, with minimal battery, I found it would switch between all three modes. When in Parallel mode spare power would charge the battery, enabling the car to fall back to EV Mode. Series Mode would also kick in from time to time as required. As a driver I was only aware of this by monitoring a display, the car drove the same in all modes. The car would automatically decide which mode to use, though there were controls to make it save battery - kept the battery charge at constant level - to allow EV Mode at the end of a journey and charge to charge the battery from the petrol engine (generally to be avoided) and on later models a control to prioritise EV Mode.
On a full battery it was possible to do around 25 miles in Full EV mode, though the petrol engine could kick in for a number of reasons including:
(the petrol engine would start if more than 50% of the maximum power was required)
The outlander is quite a big heavy beast, with the aerodynamics of a brick, my long term fuel consumption was around 85 MPG - during lockdown around 220. Motorway consumption was around 45 MPG.
I purchased the Outlander to see if I could live with an electric vehicle - the answer to that clearly yes, with the smoothness of transmission (No Gears) and general ease of driving persuaded me I would never want to go back to an ICE car. Late last year I went the whole hog to BEV with a Hyundai Kona Electric, which has been nothing but a pleasure to own.
Until late last year I had a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV.
The Outlander’s transmission is somewhat different to that described above. It is similar to that found in most normal BEVs. It has two electric traction motors, one driving the rear wheels, the second the front. Both are directly connected to single speed transmissions. As it is a hybrid it also has a petrol engine, directly connected to a generator and this can also supply power directly to the front wheels at speeds above 43 MPH.
The vehicle has three modes of operation:
On a motorway run, with minimal battery, I found it would switch between all three modes. When in Parallel mode spare power would charge the battery, enabling the car to fall back to EV Mode. Series Mode would also kick in from time to time as required. As a driver I was only aware of this by monitoring a display, the car drove the same in all modes. The car would automatically decide which mode to use, though there were controls to make it save battery - kept the battery charge at constant level - to allow EV Mode at the end of a journey and charge to charge the battery from the petrol engine (generally to be avoided) and on later models a control to prioritise EV Mode.
On a full battery it was possible to do around 25 miles in Full EV mode, though the petrol engine could kick in for a number of reasons including:
(the petrol engine would start if more than 50% of the maximum power was required)
The outlander is quite a big heavy beast, with the aerodynamics of a brick, my long term fuel consumption was around 85 MPG - during lockdown around 220. Motorway consumption was around 45 MPG.
I purchased the Outlander to see if I could live with an electric vehicle - the answer to that clearly yes, with the smoothness of transmission (No Gears) and general ease of driving persuaded me I would never want to go back to an ICE car. Late last year I went the whole hog to BEV with a Hyundai Kona Electric, which has been nothing but a pleasure to own.
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