As of this moment in the evergreen vehicle revolution, you still can't buy a purely electric car from a major manufacturer. Oh sure, there are plenty of exciting startups with headline-grabbing machines. Tesla's Roadster is one of the most promising, although billionaire CEO Elon Musk is the only one with a permanent plug-in for his garage (co-founder Martin Eberhard will follow with series production that began last month). Of course, startup companies like Aptera, Hybrid Technologies, A/C Propulsion and many more are on our radar screen—and are poised to produce some exciting stuff. But a handful of EV newcomers can't hope to handle the demands of an entire nation on their own. The major OEMs need to get on the bandwagon, too. But instead of pure EVs, the OEMs have chosen to put their eco eggs in the plug-in hybrid basket.
With few exceptions, these PHEV engineers and product planners seem to insist on one thing: The prime mover, the onboard engine (or fuel cell, or whatever), has to be powerful enough to move the car whether the batteries are charged or not. That means an engine—gasoline, diesel or E85—of 100 hp or more. That's not only enough oomph to get to work, but enough power to really drive, chirping the tires at traffic lights, zooming onto freeway entrances and passing lollygaggers on two-lane country roads.
You know what? I think it's time we re-examined that paradigm.
Do we really need—and can we still afford to indulge—our power-drunk lifestyle with every single vehicle on the road? Does a car taking one person 15 miles to work on flat Midwestern roads need a performance envelope that will let it blast past an economy car? Does a person living in Colorado Springs need his vehicle to climb 5000-plus ft. to Pikes Peak? Will $4/gallon gas finally make us rethink what we consider to be an acceptable family car?
I say: no, no, no and yes.
Every PHEV engineer I've talked to is planning an engine far bigger than the 1200 cc, 40-hp one in my old VW hippie bus. I've heard them say, "We want our customers to be able to drive their vehicle anyplace or anywhere regardless of the state of charge of the batteries." Hey, that microbus was my major means of transportation when I was in college. And let me assure you, performance was measured along a different space-time continuum. When you drive a Microbus, you get there—eventually.
I suggest the concept of a vehicle that takes a little inspiration from my bus—and little is the operative word. How about a PHEV with an onboard micro-generator of, say, 10 hp? That's just enough to propel the car (aero-optimized, of course) on flat pavement at a decent speed of 60 to 70 mph. The battery pack would provide most of the energy needed to do 98 percent of the driving cycle. The power grid would provide virtually all of the energy to charge the battery. The modest (and lightweight) engine would prevent you from getting stranded if the local charging station were busy or out of order.
No, this concept wouldn't beat a V6 Camry off the line. Heck, it probably wouldn't beat a Prius off the line either. But it would provide enough performance for most driving situations.
And my concept of a micro-generator PHEV would help with another major issue of pure-electric cars: heat. As in the kind of heat my old VW didn't have much of. And that's an issue that, so far, it seems no one else has really considered. Electric cars (and PHEVs running in electric mode) have no option for cabin heat except resistance heaters—giant electric heaters that will suck electricity like crazy. Californians can get along without much heat, but people along the northern tier of states need major heat to keep from getting frostbite. Some of that can be alleviated by heated seats and steering wheels—but you need major amounts of Btu to keep the windshield and back window clear. Add in windshield wipers and headlights, and that 40-mile PHEV range shrinks by more than half.
Remember, we're not talking about electric heat anymore, but about heat recovered from the cooling system and exhaust of our micro-generator. Sure, you could put a fuel-burning heater in the thing (like the gas heater in my old Microbus), but the generator will give you heat and electricity.
Why not just put in a much bigger motor, as in the Chevy Volt and Prius? It's extra weight. More than that, the whole concept of PHEVs is to run them as much as possible on energy from the grid (or solar panels if you really want to shrink your carbon footprint), not on the power from an internal-combustion engine burning dead dinosaurs.
Imagine a PHEV with a 40-mile range covering a 15-mile commute. You can get to work and back, and maybe even stop off on the way home and get a pizza, on a single charge—the engine never starts, and you burn no gasoline.
Now imagine this same scenario on a raw Detroit morning in January, with 4 in. of fresh snow and an outside air temp of 12 F. Now that battery has to run the heater, defrosters, rear-window defrosters, windshield wipers and headlights. That 40-mile range is now 15 miles or less, because all of that stuff sucks large amounts of current. So, the onboard engine has to run most of the way, burning a gallon of gasoline.
On a PHEV with a micro-generator, the electrical output would probably be enough to run all those accessories. But there's a side benefit—heat. Heat from the cooling system of the generator is more than enough to warm the cabin and defrost the windshield. Total fuel burned in this scenario is far less than for our conventional PHEV. That means you're using more energy from the grid and burning far less gasoline.
Now if I had only had that kind of heating system in my old VW—or any kind of heat, for that matter.
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