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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

As great as it is, remember that hybrids are exempt. And the law is very lax when it comes to a definition of a hybrid - Range Rover has a model with a whooping 1 mile(!!!) of electric range, but of course it has an electric motor so it qualifies as a hybrid and could still be sold under this ban. I expect very very soon we'll see this kind of extremely minor electrification coming to all kinds of vehicles, where a tiny electric motor integrated into the transmission provides few extra HP of power just to call the car a hybrid.

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> Range Rover has a model with a whooping 1 mile(!!!) of electric range, but of course it has an electric motor so it qualifies as a hybrid

"Just 1 mile of electric range" is true for most hybrids that don't plug into to charge (from Ford, Chevy, Toyota, etc). Obviously more miles would be even better, but this isn't a terrible thing on it's own.

The base non-plug-in Toyota Prius Hybrid has had "just 1 mile of electric range" for over a decade now, that hasn't stopped it from getting 50mpg ratings (a full 50% decrease in emissions from the current average US fleet MPG at ~25mpg).

This. Think of the battery and electric motor in a hybrid like a caching system that makes the power-train able to use energy a lot more efficiently.

It's like a solid state version of a giant flywheel under the car. Bonus in that there's no extra angular momentum.

Electric motor needs to be large enough to absorbe the momentum of travel, though. You saved momentum storage but not size.

> that hasn't stopped it from getting 50mpg ratings

Is this the "50mpg under ideal laboratory conditions driven by an AI" or "as driven in a real city/highway by a human"?

50mpg as tested by the EPA - https://www.epa.gov/vehicle-and-fuel-emissions-testing . Real world drivers tend to report similar numbers - http://www.fuelly.com/car/toyota/prius

Obviously, you can stomp on the throttle and get worse numbers if you want. But US MPG ratings are reasonably real-world accurate. (And the US fleet number comes from the same testing from the same group using the same metrics -- so they should be fair to compare)

I get 49 MPG in mixed mode driving on a Euro III emissions compliant diesel every day. Newer diesels are even more efficient. And I don't spare the accelerator either.

Right, but it's diesel... you never know what else you're exhausting into the environment.

Euro 3 means you're probably not eligible to enter a good chunk number of European city centres - and for good reason.

As for MPG are you talking US gallons or imperial? Also what's your car's segment?

U. S. gallons. My car is a large luxury performance sportwagon.

There are no cities with full bans on Euro III diesels or any diesel yet that I'm aware of or been denied entry in Sweden, and those few cities in Germany that do have them have only implemented partial restrictions.

The bans are not real, it's all just political maneuvering in order to get cheap votes.

Do you trust Bosch and your vehicle manufacturer to be honest to you, when they lie to your government?

I do, because my manufacturer is a supercool Japanese company. Japanese diesels for life!

I trust physics and chemistry, that's what I trust: when you elongate the exhaust manifold and manage to cool the exhaust down enough, you end up not even needing to inject Urea and still have an Euro VI compliant diesel.

It's the only company selling diesel passenger vehicles in Japan right now, with such a good motor that it's beloved by taxi drivers there. Which company is it, and what is the engine called?

My 2016 Camry Hybrid consistently gets 39mpg. There are all kinds of situations where you don't need an engine, and it shuts off completely - like coasting downhill, on a ramp from one freeway to another, at 42 mph. Engine shuts off, and regenerative braking slows the car as much as everyone else is braking.

You would be surprised how many times you use that one EV mile during the average 30 mile commute. In traffic and cities, you often don't need more than the 40 HP given by the transmission alone.

Hybrids have a torque curve that starts like an EV, then continues like a gas car. This means great torque from 0 mph through highway speeds.

And then there's idle at stop lights, the biggest waste of fuel and a huge cause of pollution. Modern engines use 6 seconds of fuel when starting, but most cars idle for minutes at a light.

Interesting bit about the Range Rover model, but from the fourth paragraph:

> “In just 12 years, we will prohibit the sale of new diesel and petrol cars. And in 17 years, every new car in Denmark must be an electric car or other forms of zero-emissions car,” Rasmussen said, implying that hybrids will be phased out in 2035.

So hybrids are not as exempt as earlier discussion would suggest.

Any thoughts on converting a hybrid to an EV?

Edit: The engine cavity should be able to hold a lithium battery ~250+ lbs, and the 1.6 kWh NiMH battery is another ~250+ lbs that can be replaced with another lithium battery pack. If a Powerwall were used for each, the car would have 27.4 kWh, which I think would power my Camry Hybrid only about 30 miles. So maybe not very feasible until after another battery technology upgrade.

The 2019 Range Rover hybrid has an all electric range of 31 miles. Maybe an older model has a 1 mile electric range? That didn't pass the smell test so I had to look it up.

Yeah the new 400e has more range. The original that came out few years ago had only 1 mile range, as mentioned in the brochure:

https://www.landrover.com/Images/HYBRID_FAQ_GUIDE_Intreactiv...

"How far can my Range Rover Hybrid travel using just the electric motor?

When Electric Vehicle mode is activated manually using the EV button, the EV light on the instrument cluster will glow green. The Range Rover Hybrid will drive silently at slow speeds for a distance of up to 1 mile/1.6km provided the hybrid battery is fully charged when EV mode is activated"

That's actually plenty of storage to be useful to a hybrid vehicle. Remember, that battery is always charged by the engine so the trade-off of less weight also means longer range.

The vast majority of the efficiency gains in city driving from a non plug in Hybrid is regenerative breaking. Sure, slowing down across a huge mountain represents a lot of energy, but making stop an go traffic vastly more efficient takes very little storage.

> Remember, that battery is always charged by the engine so the trade-off of less weight also means longer range.

True, but this car is already so extremely heavy that the added battery is 4-5%.

At first that sounded ridiculous but actually it might be just right for an SUV in suburbia. Day to day driving is electric, then long distance is combustion. Pretty much what I would need in Australia.

Indeed. Mercedes has already announced that it will "electrify" 300 models over the next decade or so, and I expect at least 280 of those to work exactly as you said, not just for the purpose of exploiting this kind of legislation, but also for marketing purposes ("An electrified car is basically just the same as an electric car, right?").

> 1 mile(!!!) of electric range,

Other people have talked about this, but I'm wondering if the change to having electric drive motors and an engine just for generating electricity is more efficient and easier on the engine. (regenerative breaking aside)

No, but you don't need a complex drive train, like modern plug-in hybrids have.

This is how hybrids work at low speeds. They use 2 motor/generators - 1 to push the wheels, and the other to refill the batteries.

Most hybrids use a slightly different engine, which is more efficient but generates less force. The hybrid transmission can add torque when accelerating or going uphill.

The engine must get less wear. My Camry Hybrid only needs an oil change every edit: 10,000 miles.

   My Camry Hybrid only needs an oil change every 5000 miles.

That's not an impressively long oil change routine - pretty typical for a newer car, was that the correct number?

The Chevy Volt is like this -- drivetrain is electric, gas engine is just a generator.

What you are describing is a “series hybrid”. The Chevy Volt is not a pure series hybrid, it has an elaborate mechanism to connect the gas engine to the wheels when it is efficient to do so. For example highway cruise where the gas engine can run near its optimal rpm.

> And in 17 years, every new car in Denmark must be an electric car or other forms of zero-emissions car,” Rasmussen said, implying that hybrids will be phased out in 2035.

But then aren't hybrids better than BEV, given a few miles of range?

Why make a 90KwHr battery for a car, if you can make 3 cars out of it. After all current reserves of Cobalt, nickel, and lithium are finite.

Cobalt is the most finite one of those, and once lithium prices go up it is likely someone will begin harvesting it from sea water

Or fising carbon to make lithium.

I assume that despite the one mile figure, it will still decrease the amount of fuel burnt. Not having to burn fuel for every stop and go will save a bunch of carbon I bet.

Car manufacturers are now looking at using 48v powered turbochargers to eliminate turbo lag. I wonder if that could be seen as an electrification of the powertrain?

A turbocharger is a funny shaped air compressor. So let's put an air compressor in the trunk and pipe the air to the intake manifold. And if there car is a hybrid, that battery can power the compressor too.

Actually the centrifugal compressor is pretty common in many applications, so more typical than funny looking.

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