Featured Daimler Battery Plans

And we've yet to seen a full hybrid system acceptable enough among fuel savings, work performance, and cost to be embraced by the land barge buying public.

 

they DO have an SUV plugin - T8? iirc, 13ish ev miles, good reviews AND comfy.
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I see a 2 to 5 MPG increase on my commute with just shutting off the engine at long lights.
Unlike basic start/stop systems, these mild hybrids now shut the engine off while coming to a stop instead of waiting until completely stopped to do so. A basic ICE car can make good use of DFCO, but I know in mine when the speed drops below 25mph or so, the DFCO stops, and the car starts idling the engine again.

If I didn't state it before, I don't buy the fuel savings potential of these systems coming from the system manufacturers. I suspect they are comparing the efficiency of their 48volt system on an engine with other advanced efficiency technologies to that of a low tech, 'cheap' engine. We do have EPA results for the eAssist pick up trucks, and the 1 to 2 MPG gain on the window sticker over the model without the system seems reasonable. For those that do a lot of steady speed cruising, the $500 for the mild hybrid may not be worth it, but those are a minority of drivers on US roads.

A full power-split hybrid will get bigger efficiency gains, but it comes at a cost. A cost most Americans are unwilling to pay. The only such hybrid with ICE siblings doing well is the RAV4h. The full parallel hybrid might solve the 'hybrid premium' issue for full hybrids. Hyundai claims its cheaper, and Ford is talking about such a system in a F150.

Two-mode was costly, but it is still being put into buses, and possibly into other commercial trucks. GM has multiple hybrid patents, and the system in the Volt and Malibu is a type of two-mode hybrid. Like the first Accord hybrid, two-mode might have arrived too soon for the market. The huge hybrid decal was just dumb though.

Couple interesting reads on two-mode.
Revenge of the Two-Mode Hybrid
A 2nd Look at the 2-Mode Hybrid - It Could Have Saved More Gas Than The Prius

A high mileage XC70 fits my needs and budget better. Plus, I'd like 4WD or symmetrical AWD to access the semi-local beaches, and I'd just feel bad taking a new car into that type of environment knowing what the annual miles the car will see.

A used GM two-mode and Jeep Liberty with the Mercedes diesel are also options.

 

The point is not efficiency per $. It is about emissions and making cars start/stop compatible as well as reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of all the electronics in a vehicle today. Lots of new rules coming into effect ensuring that all vehicles are start/stop compatible so that while sitting at a light, the engine is off. That's the end of it. No it won't achieve hybrid performance or efficiency. It will however turn off the engine at a light and that's the goal. Leaving a 12v system it is just too much of a strain on the starter motor to turn over a random ICE hundreds of times a day. Another advantage is that a 48v bus allows for increasing power demands of all the modules and sensors around the car with thinner wire. "High Voltage" systems in the 80VDC and up range will never happen in any user accessible part of the car because there is too much liability. And it would scare the living crap out of people like the average Joe to have safety interlocks and disconnect switches off of every powered accessory plainly visible and accessible the event of any accident. Doesn't matter if it is safe or not, we are talking about educating the masses and it won't happen. By sticking with basically the highest "normal" voltage that is not considered "high voltage", all that goes away.

There are also lots of reasons why 48VDC will happen and not 120V or 240V or 400V+. Price. There are lots of semiconductor fabs setup with processes that can make 48VDC parts all day long that can absorb 60V over-voltages, and 80V or 100V energy spikes for short times like required in automotive. Keep in mind today with a 12V bus, you need to design for 38V... When you get high voltages, isolation barriers increase. More silicon per square area, larger die size, more expensive part. In an assembly level, running 100V+ onto a board requires connectors with a wide enough pitch to keep the gap even when whiskers form on the substrate. Isolation channels on the board make the design larger as well, increasing the size and cost of each module. In a car basically every little box attached to a vehicle is taking that 6V-38V input (what you would call the 12V bus) and bucking down to 5V, 3.3V, or lots of times 1.8V. Every single ECU has its own power regulation. It is also really difficult to do a single stage high efficiency buck converter from 100V or 200V down to 1.8V. There is a minimum switch time that needs to happen, and a cheap automotive part isn't going to do it. The industry has been perfecting the 48V to "core voltage" process for decades because that's what the internet is built on. Very large companies that have warehouses full of network appliances that route the internet where each box sells for a quarter million dollars, 40-80 per rack, thousands of racks per building, they use 48V. And when you are supplying that kind of power the difference between 99.5% efficient and 99.2% efficient could be millions of dollars a year in power consumption, excess heat and air conditioning charges as well as reduced life-span of components due to the heat. This is now what will be in your car. A near perfect buck converter taking 48V to 0.8V in a single step with a single inductor, and 1 or two FETs. You can't do that with super high voltages.

All of these types of things are why 48V is the new standard. Not an "if", this is happening. And it has absolutely nothing to do with hybrids other than it helps the starter motor when you use it all the time.

 

The lower the voltage, the higher the Joule losses. 48V seems good for electronics, not traction.

 

This has nothing to do with "the market". This is a direct result of regulation requiring certain features. It is too expensive to design wildly different vehicles for different markets. Changing some bumpers or bolting on Engine A vs. Engine B, sure. But the base will be the same. Therefore the car will be designed with the tightest regulated market it is designed to be sold in as the standard. Meaning you can count on every German vehicle, and soon every Japanese vehicle having this type of system. The American vehicles might not for a while since nobody buys those outside of North America.

You won't have an option. The option is buy a vehicle that includes start/stop, or not buy a vehicle. This isn't an option for the market to decide on. It is the foundation for the next generation of vehicles and has been in place for a while. You can complain all you want, but there will not be a choice next decade. If the users' expectations are Prius like fuel savings, then there was a giant miscommunication somewhere. Again, "fuel savings" is not even a factor, it is emissions.

Again you are looking at this all wrong. The 48V system has absolutely nothing to do with hybrid vehicles, nobody is going to compete with a Prius because of it. You need to take the hybrid vehicle mentality out of the picture. It is all about the reduction of emissions while stopped. Not about savings while creeping in traffic or driving down the highway or anything like that. When the vehicle is stopped, and the car is on, there should be zero emissions. That is the goal. Full stop.

The side effect of this is that they become "mild hybrids" which suck at trying to be hybrids. But are actually not bad as a pure ICE vehicle that gets quiet at a light. A 48V system has all the power needed to turn over the ICE motor and in smaller vehicles actually creep it forward for very very brief segments.

I have insider knowledge about this and have for many years. The problem that is being solved with this solution is nothing like the problem you are asking to be solved. If the world just switched over to a planetary gear system like Toyota has and put that in every vehicle, it would be awesome for hybrids and vehicles in general. But it will still have a 48V intermediary bus, not a 12V bus.

 

I am not doubting you vis a vis the below question, but if what you say is the case, why in the world would they need to build a ½ $billion Euro battery Factory. That'd seem a bit much.
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You don't need to manage user expectations when it is standard equipment. The F150 will have start/stop standard on all trims for 2018.

A full hybrid will always perform better, but if few buy them, they will have little impact on fleet numbers.

Likely because they still also have to built plug ins. There is a post here somewhere about India only having electric cars in 13 years.

 

Only a (smaller?) part of the Accumotive factory will be for 48V batteries, they are primarily building it for EVs. The problem that I heard about those two factories is that they are not making cells but only assembling outsourced cells into batteries packs. Don't know if that is true.

 

Start/stop systems were available for years outside of the US before they arrived with the latest generation of Fusion. At first, it was a $295 option on the Ecoboost engine option. Then it became standard on that engine, and other Ecoboost engines in other car models. Now it will be standard in all F150s.

The market is complicated, and the sticks and carrots of regulation also have their sway.

I said here that the BAS system could save a lot of gasoline if GM made it standard when it first arrived. Cost and greed prevented that then, but it appears that it will come to be. Maybe not in the US, but the world is not us.

Two-mode didn't help those trucks EPA rating on the highway, but it did lift their dismal 15mpg city to at least 20mpg. That is huge. Cost was the biggest issue it faced. Even with the reductions through the years, cost is still the big reason people skip on the full hybrid option in the US.

 

It has been years since hybrids made up 3% of new vehicle sales, and when they were at that amount and higher, the BAS and two-modes were being counted for the hybrids. Even when counting plug ins, ICE car sales will still be the majority for some time.

On the individual level, a full hybrid is still the best option for emissions and fuel efficiency, but its acceptance rate is saying it isn't best option for US society in those regards. The 48v hybrid is just another tool for getting better efficiency out of the ICE in the cars all those people are buying, along side wide range variable valve timing, cooled EGR, direct injection, etc..

The arrival of these mild hybrids isn't going to result in Toyota cancelling all its HSD models. So the few willing to pay for the best option will still have the choice, and free to remain skeptical of mild hybrids. Just keep in mind that the best solution to a problem isn't always obvious to all, and don't let the existence of the best solution be the enemy of lesser solutions. They aren't at odds to each other.

 

Well, on the individual level, emissions don't matter one iota, and fuel efficiency only matters in terms of dollars per mile, inclusive of purchase and maintenance costs. A huge reason for the low acceptance rate of full hybrids, PHEVs, and BEVs is that most people don't care about their personal car's emissions, and fuel is relatively cheap, especially right now. Look at what happens when gas spikes - people ditch their SUVs for smaller, more efficient vehicles.

It's the societal level where emissions matter (and BEVs of some sort are the best option), and fuel efficiency also matters in terms of geopolitical impact, oil scarcity, and CO2 emissions (and BEVs of some sort are also the best option there).

A counterpoint is that Toyota may only be persisting as much as they are with the Prius in the US market due to requirements to meet their CAFE regulations. And, remember, they've lobbied to have those targets reduced, even though they have the technology to make their fleet actually meet those regulations. Why? Because it's cheaper to not do so. And, I mean, the Tundra is lagging behind even other vehicles in its class in efficiency, but every Prius sold means they can sell more guzzling Tundras, because the Prius helps their average.

However, because CAFE weights the averages properly (so that the average of a 15 mpg truck and a 50 mpg car isn't 32.5 mpg, but rather 23.1 mpg - think about it, if you do 50 miles in the truck, and 50 miles in the car, you'll have used 4.33 gallons to go 100 miles, or 23.1 miles per gallon), and sales-weights them, too, it does mean that a high MPG special needs to actually sell quite a few units to help, and there is an incentive to spread improvements through the line. Still, though, a high MPG special does help...

Ultimately, though, there'll have to be a pressure of some sort to force consumers to select more efficient vehicles. That can come in the form of making guzzlers more expensive to buy (CAFE both directly through fines, and indirectly through requiring them to subsidize more efficient models), or making them more expensive to own (annual taxation, fuel taxation). And, CAFE will likely end up dismantled, and gas taxes never get political support.