GM says Two Mode Hybrid System Trumps Competition

GM has much bigger problems than worrying about their next car:

http://www.slate.com/id/2111294/ GM's Debt Crisis

Key point from the long but quite informative article:

"GM rolls over tens of billions of dollars in debt each year. If it borrows $30 billion next year, and the rate it pays for new debt rises 1 percent—which it certainly will if it drops to junk status—that translates into $300 million in additional interest costs. And since interest has to be paid first, higher interest costs mean less money for important things like executive compensation, investment in new plants, marketing, and developing hybrid engines."

The biggest of the big 3 is falling, and while "I told you so" is certainly accurate here, I don't think it's worth celebrating when another group of hundreds of thousands of people trying to survive get screwed by a few rich bastards trying to get richer. Merry Christmas indeed!

-m.

 

Evan what did you bang you head on this morning??

 

As much as I'm impressed by Toyota's technology, there are (inevitably) some areas where it's not optimal. For example, the PSD is not as efficient as a transmission at freeway speeds, largely because of the inverter/MG losses that are subtracted from the 27% of the ICE power that flows that way.

A clutch that locked out the MGs at freeway speeds (when the power isn't needed) would, indeed, result in noticably improved mileage. Whether the rest of the GM/Chrysler system would provide similar performance can't be determined at this time.

I wouldn't count them out, though. GMs automatic transmissions have always been world-leading (mostly because so little of the rest of the world uses them .

Clutches are not especially prone to failure, BTW. Automatic transmissions have several of them, and the failure rate on those is extremely low (at least that's what the data said when I interned at Hydra-Matic some 20 years ago or so).

 

After reading this article on GM Two Mode Hybrids my first impression was what a crock this is. And my second thought was, Boy GM must really be scared shitless over the Toyota Prius. Clearly they have pulled out all the spinners they can to help fend off the Prius.

Sadly, for many American's this will work. They will think, I'm not buying a Prius, because in 3 years GM will have something tons better.

But all those who have been paying attention, and by that I mean Priuschat readers, we know this is a crock. GM won't be even half caught up to Toyota in 3 years, never mind pull ahead. And in 3 years, I wouldn't be surprised if the EV "alone" mode on the Prius goes up to 30 miles, and up to 50 MPH, up from the current 1 or 2 miles and no more than 20 MPH or so.

And I also read that Slate article about the major money problems of GM. Fascinating.

 

I'm sure that's true but I'll bet that Toyota has explored other options but either found them of little benefit or haven't solved the technical and economic issues with them yet. I'll betcha that once they do, you will see more advanced versions appearing in the future.

The idea that GM could just jump in and immediately have everything figured out is a rather naive view.

Their dervishes are working overtime.

 

man what happened with the 400R that almost broke GM with all the bad publicity, I'm on a bit of a break from work where I left 3 AT's all apart with burntout clutch packs, making about 40 over hauls this year alone. I don't want a clutch pack in my CVT for any reason. If I wanted one I'd go back to a manual tranny. Sorry for the possible 2 mpg gain it's not worth the trouble and expense.

 

There are always bad designs occasionally, no matter who or what you're talking about. Anyway, I betcha most of those were the reverse gear clutch, or people who otherwise abused their tranny, right?

In any event, how many of them had burned out torque converter clutches, because that's the kind of stress level we're talking about on a clutch with this particular purpose.

I take it you work at a transmission shop? Just out of curiosity, how many people would you estimate are served by your shop (number of people in your area times your market share)? 40 a year could be anywhere from a .001% to 100% failure rate...

 

actually that's for Toyota forklifts which is what I do for a living. All I know is any clutch pack material that leaves the disk is very abrasive and will cut thru hard surfacing on gears and on pumps. The PSD without any abrasive components is very durable and long lived. Our market share is probably about 60% and I'm only one of 4 mechanics in the shop that overhaul them. We do probably about 15 ICE's and about 200 tranny's a year. Almost all are do to clutch pack failure. We have about 1000 in the rental/lease fleet and about another 600-700 in customer owned trucks. Not to mention the other makes that we also repair. Yes I've seen them go 20,00+ hours without failure and seen them go a lot less. I'd say the average time is in the order of 3000 hours, maybe a bit less. And yes I know this is not represenative of the auto industry but one of our service vans has had it's tranny overhauled in under 80,000 miles and the delivery truck in about 45,000 It's almost exclusivly driven by a woman and I've seen her on the road and she's no hot foot. Clutch pack, nope, sorrry not for me.

 

Their two mode hybrid system sounds more like Honda's IMA with some stealth(battery powered) ability. Their system will require complex traditional transmission just like IMA. On top of that, there will be Power Split Device like Prius. Added complexity seems counter productive for their low-cost goal by the use of smaller electric motor.

They are trying to spin their design with a small electric motor as a good thing. A small and weak electric motor will probably do stealth for very low speed(1-10mph) and they can claim it is a full hybrid.

Let me state a very basic hybrid principle. The more a hybrid car can stay in electric only mode, the less fuel(gas) it is going use. Larger electric motor can enable a full hybrid to stay in stealth mode longer and higher speed. I think there is a correlation between electric motor size and fuel efficiency for hybrid cars.

For HSD design in Prius, a sufficient sized electric motor provides low-end torque(295lbs-ft) to allow the use of Atkinson cycle ICE to achieve ~15% better fuel efficiency and lower emission. Remember, this efficiency gain applies to both low or high speed. It does not seem like their two mode design will be able to take advantage of Atkinson cycle ICE. They are claiming that pure mechanical output on highway will improve highway mpg than single mode(HSD) hybrids. We'll see if they can get ~15% extra by going pure mechanical on highway.

Dennis

 

It took GM 13 years to come up with a Mini-Van (Chevy Venture) that was good enough to compete with the Caravan/Voyagers. If it took them that long to build a simple mini-van how long do you think it will take them(and how many goofs) to come up with a decent hybrid. I'm not holding my breath LOL

 

I've been sitting here for 10 min trying to write a comment about how late GM and DC are to the hybrid party. Atleast Ford had the guts to admit they needed some help and good for them because that takes courage and executive leadership.
So here's my idea. The Pres of GM should go find out who wrote the "I love hybrids" memo, take them to lunch and ask what other ideas they have and implement them. Then find the person who killed the "I love hybrids" memo and fire their sorry, no-vision, no leadership, bad econometrics nice person.
Just an idea.

 

I'd help pin the tail on that donkey.

 

oh my this article is RICH!!

the only part that i agree with is the use of the word "Lost" in each of the first two paragraphs...

one lost should be for GM and the other should be for the author.

clueless would be a good alternate choice.

 

all this said: don't write the General off. Not by any means. They are one of the biggest companies in the world and like most behemoths once they get rolling it'll take a lot to stop them. I for one don't expect them to go Bankrupt, and with all their divisions working on a problem it'll get solved very fast. Fast=good, well sometimes yes sometimes no. But like Bill Gates back in the early 90's, one evening I watched him say the internet will never amount to anything. When they see the light, things can happen. If they get off the hydrogen "kick" and on to something that uses the facilites that already exist, maybe they can pull it off. I'd like to see them get it right the first time if they do, and not damage the hybrid reputation.

 

Waahahaha... It has a "friction clutch" in it... Friction! That sure sounds like something that's eventually going to wear out and need servicing...

Whatcha wanna bet that the planetary drive system on our Priuses are going to outlast their "friction clutches"?

Dave

 

physics: what goes up must come down.

come down quickly GM!! QUICKLY!!!

 

From what little can be gleaned from the article, and from what I remember of transmission design (a fair amount, but it's not like I work in that industry any more), I'd say it sounds like the are talking about mostly a PSD-style "transmission" with a single clutch that engages at speed to remove the inefficiency of the PSD during times when it isn't needed.

And, yes, truck transmissions are in the category I would call "abused" . Every extra bit of weight grinds on the clutches at every shift... inertia sucks. Seriously, though, car and consumer-grade light truck automatic transmissions are pretty reliable, as in: they tend to outlast the rest of the car most of the time.

BTW, I'm not trying to say that GM's design will be great. Who knows until we see it? I'm just saying that the basic idea is a good one, and I wouldn't count GM out when it comes to transmissions (now the rest of the car is another matter). Toyota will probably figure out how to implement it before they do, though . It's the one remaining really obvious source of inefficiency in the HSD.

To the poster that claims that the more a car is in EV mode, the more efficient it is, this is only very vaguely true. A more accurate statement would be: the more that EV-mode operation and the presence of a high-torque electric motor lets the engineers relax some of the constraints on the ICE design, the more efficient it will be. EV mode in itself doesn't save you very much, at least with the size of batteries and the conservative charging cycles in the Prius. All that power comes from the ICE in the long run.

If it were a plug-in hybrid, that would be a different matter.

 

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I understand that you can't get more energy out of something then is put it, and the only energy put into the Prius is gasoline. But when I spoke of the possible future increase in the duration and speed of the EV mode, I was talking about a culmination of Toyota research.

Last I heard, only 13% of the energy that is in gasoline is used to propel a vehicle forward. I don't know what the percent is for electricity, but I suspect it is a lot higher. Those numbers are the key and when we get the gasoline number up to 40 or 70%, that is the day we will be energy independent and those with endowment "issues" can still buy their Hummers.

The gasoline engine wastes energy in heat and idling and other ways. Toyota takes a lot of that energy that, when it's not propelling the car, it is converting it into electricity. Toyota takes the wasted energy of gasoline and converts it. Further research in that regard will simply convert more and more of that energy into electricity and over time batteries will get more and more capacity.

The culmination of that will be an EV mode up to 40 miles and at high MPH. Who knows, Toyota's research may end up making the ICE irrelevant.

Picture this, batteries that allow us to go 500 miles at real highway speeds in full size cars and trucks. The car owner does not own the battery but instead, when you go for a "fill up", the robot filling station takes the battery out of your car and puts a fresh one in. It takes 10 seconds.

Giant tractor trailer trucks might change 5 batteries at once. But everyone uses the same battery and they all come out of our cars pretty much the same way.

And where did these batteries come from? The culmination of Toyota and Honda, and yes, maybe even a little bit of GM research. (But GM would have been forced down that path by Toyota and Honda.)

One of the reasons I CONSIDERED the Prius was/is to in some small way help facilitate the research that will get the oil monkey off our back, and I like the ocean right where it is. Of course, I BOUGHT the Prius after driving my daughter's Prius and realized just how wonderful the car was in and of itself.

Thanks Cristin, and thank you Toyota too.