Prius Hybrid Drive Explained

excellent, thank you!

 

correct, i'm watching it now. your graphics are well done though.

 

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.

 

This is most excellent!

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

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

 

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.

 

Just a niggle, between Gen 2 and Gen 3 the chain was replaced by gears. This is excellent!

 

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!

 

Very impressive. Well done. Thanks for posting.

 

My brain is full, but that was a marvelous video. Danke!

 

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!

 

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.

 

I second the motion for stickyhood.