109
Battery electric vehicles lose their spark in Europe as hybrids steal the show
(www.theregister.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
109 points (86.1% liked)
Technology
57473 readers
3608 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Important to know that real-world testing shows that PHEVs are rarely plugged in and just burn oil much of the time
And burn even more than pure ICEs since they also carry the added weight from the electric stuff. At a time where we need much less cars overall, including EVs.
That's news to me considering the EPA-rated fuel economy of vehicles with both hybrid and pure ICE drivetrains is universally higher for the hybrid versions.
An ICE vehicle needs a much larger engine than is truly necessary due to the inefficiencies and limitations of mechanical transmissions, whereas a hybrid can have a much smaller, more efficient engine.
A hybrid can potentially act like a 'perfect' transmission, capable of taking in power from an engine running at its single most efficient RPM and, with the aid of battery storage, produce any combination of speed and torque that has an average power less than the output of the ICE.
Because they make certain assumptions. Fortunately the EU mandated that cars measures those things since various years. That caused a review of those hybrids. They're usually not charged.
Nothing in that comment discussed plugin hybrids though.
A non plug-in hybrid will be more efficient than a full gas vehicle because of the efficiency you can gain through minimizing the engine and tuning it for a more limited rpm range.
This ideally carries over to a plug-in hybrid in the same way even if it's never plugged in, if all the gas engine does is charge the battery it can be more efficient than a gas only car due to reduced engine size requirements.
And electric is better for acceleration, so you get the best of both worlds.