I hope this video is the Ultimate Explanation of Toyota's hybrid drive. Not that you need to understand it to drive it - but it's a beautiful piece of engineering that deserves to be explained. If you wonder about my accent: I'm Dutch. Sorry for mangling your language. Enjoy!
Niels, your the man! Excellent video. BTW Bisco can spot a good thing before it gets to the credits. And talking of credits, you deserve a shedload for all the research you undertook to produce this explanation.
I really like this! Wow. Note to self: learn Blender.... One little quibble: I noticed you mentioned the 1971 TRW patent, but I thought it was even cooler to see how clearly you can recognize the basic idea (with the planetary connections rearranged a little and some other minor differences) in John Godfrey Parry Thomas's patent filed in 1908. Like fuel injection (another turn-of-the-20th-century idea), it was basically an idea in waiting just until there were small-enough, fast-enough computers and electronics to handle the control demands. (Re: fuel injection, I actually picked up a turn-of-the-20th-century automotive engineering book and read a section about fuel injection, which basically said "this will inevitably supplant the carburetor as soon as there is some kind of technology able to control it with the necessary speed.") -Chap
Hybrids in 1908... I didn't know that. Thanks for posting it! I keep being amazed by how old some of our technology is. I tend to think that electronics were developed in the 1960's, but I keep forgetting that electricity is not electronics, and that even quantum physics dates back to 1905.
This is an excellent production elaborating the inner workings of Toyota's hybrid drive. Good work Niels. @Danny, could this thread be made sticky?
Very nice! I noticed you said the 4th generation has a second planetary gear set but that's not right. It is correct for the 3rd generation. The 4th still has gear reduction on MG2 but they no longer use a planetary to do that. Instead, they use simpler gears that have less internal friction. One interesting trivia item is that the gear ratios on the power-split planetary have never changed since the very first Prius.
Another reason for replacing the second planetary set of the gen3 with helical set in the gen4 was to make the system more compact horizontally, enabling them to move the auxiliary battery to the engine bay.
Bottomline: I'm wrong about the third and fourth implementation. I thought the chain was replaced by gears after the 3rd generation, and I thought the 4th was still inline. I might beat both Trump and Clinton in a fact-check-faceoff, but being an engineer, I hold myself to a higher standard. In politics, an idea consisting of flaws and fallacies might be an "opinion" that has to be "respected" - but in engineering, a plane with a flaw will crash, if it ever manages to leave the ground. I'll see if I can put a "WRONG" banner over my falsehoods, with a reference to the right info. I should have stayed away from the 4-gen. Still: I have 88 views now, and not a single death-threat! I'd expected some strong language by now, like "MY PRIUS IS NOT A PARTYTRICK! U R ****** AND I HOPE YOU ********* **** ****! YOU ARE **** AND SO IS YOUR MOTHER!" Just half kidding - I've been flamed for using thermodynamics as an argument, in explaining how wind-energy does not heat up the planet. I'm happy to be corrected though, and flattered that you guys take the time to watch my movie - even though many viewers appear to know more about the hybrid drive than I do. Thanks, people! Keep the fact-checks coming!
1) That few corrections is a marvel, we are born nit pickers. 2) You do not just illustrate how it works, which is common, but what problems it is solving, which is unique. 3) Do not become discouraged!
I'll have to watch that a couple of times to make sure I do understand. Thanks for putting that together. I can only imagine the seemingly endless hours that must have required. Keep up the good work!
It's been many hours indeed, but they're hours well wasted. It's time someone else might spend on sudokus or computer games. I'm now working on a simulation of earth, and specifically how the tides move around the oceans. Just for the hell of it. Why climb a mountain if you can model one?
Excellent job! When we got our first Prius the frustrated engineer in me spent hours working to understand all the details. My daughter now has that 2011 Prius and does not care about how it works and just drives it. The other day I took her to get new tires and reminded her that at some point she needed to budget for new brakes. She looked at me quizzically and said I thought you said it had "electric" brakes and they don't need replacement. Apparently she heard some of what I said about how it works. The other day I parked our 2015 Prius next to an expensive traditional luxury car that was the same size and color. As I walked away thinking about the engineering behind both I could not help thinking that the engineering in the luxury car was a dinosaur by comparison with the Prius.
