Because people are allergic to hybrids and I don't know why
"Electric is short range, fuel is expensive, guess I have to pick one"
The ideal drivetrain was invented over 20 years ago by Toyota and apparently nobody but me and Honda noticed it!
"Electric is short range, fuel is expensive, guess I have to pick one"
The ideal drivetrain was invented over 20 years ago by Toyota and apparently nobody but me and Honda noticed it!
I drive a Toyota hybrid and while it's a step up from a purely combustion propelled car, I still have to do oil changes and its fumes still smell bad when it's running rich for whatever reason.
The problem is hybrid drivetrains are complex. You don't save anything on the complexity of a combustion engine and exhaust train (over 1000 individual parts that have to be machined at extremely low tolerances), but add a more complex transmission (it needs to be able to work with two distinct inputs) and an electric drivetrain on top of that.
It is worth it in terms of energy efficiency and acceleration stats since even a small electric motor can supply a lot of torque at low speeds until the high-horsepower combustion engine catches up (virtually all modern cars have a turbocharger that needs time to spin up), but it's technically challenging to actually build into a modern car design - unlike 90s cars with ample space available to stuff components in, in a modern car every cubic centimeter is accounted for due to crash resistance.
And of course, there are plug-in hybrids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_hybrid
It's a lot easier to add enough batteries to match the range of an ICE car. Range anxiety is largely manufactured at this point. The cars know how far they can go and where the chargers are. A gasoline powered generator would be a huge extra cost with no real upside other than averting a non-problem.
The power split device isn't an ordinary transmission, it's a set of planetary gears with a fixed gear ratio between three shafts. One goes to the wheels, the other two to the engine and the electric motor respectively. The ratio of the engine speed to the wheel speed is then set by the speed of the electric motor connected to the third shaft, which gives you a CVT with no belts, clutches, torque converters or even synchros.
The transmission is "more complicated" only in the sense that it contains electric motors. In every other respect it's simpler, more efficient and more reliable than an ordinary transmission. Meanwhile those electric motors mean you don't need a starter motor or an alternator because the engine can be started by the electric motor through the transmission and an electric motor is a generator when operated in reverse.
A series hybrid still requires you to have a gas engine with all that entails, but now the gas engine needs its own dedicated electric generator/motor and you can't deliver power from the gas engine directly to the wheels, so the traction motors have to be bigger in order to supply 100% of the torque used in acceleration instead of the gas engine and electric motors both contributing. That makes series hybrids heavier, slower and more expensive, so they're basically useless. Probably the main advantage would be that you could offer the generator as an option on what would otherwise be a full electric vehicle and then only people who need the extra range would pay for it.
In practice they also allow the engine to run at higher speeds under heavy acceleration because the peak efficiency RPM and the peak power RPM are different and the assumption is that if the driver is stomping on the accelerator they want to resolve the power/efficiency trade off in favor of power right now, which is another thing the series hybrids can't do.
Any references?
This is not really true in the US, but maybe moreso in Europe, where engine displacement is penalized?
> that needs time to spin up
Porsche's latest 911 does something very cute here ("T-Hybrid"): they have a small electric motor in the turbo. They use the high-voltage hybrid battery to rapidly spin up the turbo on demand to significantly reduce turbo lag (one of the major drawbacks of a turbo engine). Then, at lower load, they can also regen the battery using the exhaust gases and that same motor.
They're also made by more than Toyota and Honda. The American automakers have been offering vehicles with a similar hybrid powertrain for around two decades and the German automakers for only a little less than that. But they're generally not a separate model like the Prius is, so the only exterior difference is a hybrid badge on what is otherwise visually identical to the non-hybrid car/truck of the same model.
I bought and drove a 2005 Prius for about 10 years. Loved it. But I would never buy another hybrid. My family now owns 3 EVs. Hybrids are better than pure ICE vehicles. But EVs are much much better than both of them. I could tell you about all the benefits of EVs, but until you own one, it may not sink in.
Hybrids are good for some people. Apartment dwellers without a place to charge an EV.
It includes fuel & upkeep costs.
("ditching already paid for" - probably not the case. Vs. leasing, or selling the hybrids on, or something.)