I think a lot of people would go for that style of vehicle. IMHO 100 miles ev range in all conditions, so a 40-50kwh pack would be plenty. Also 4x4 and with better ground clearance than a sedan.

I know I would buy one and I would prefer it over a full ev even with 300+ mile range. Then I could do 95+% of my daily driving as electric and no delays due to ev charging on long trips. I know a lot of people feel that long road trips are ok with current long range ev’s. To me it still takes too much extra time. Using the Tesla trip planner my trip last weekend would have taken an extra 5-6 hrs for charging. That would have made that trip 2 days instead of one.

 

I just traded my trusty 2014 Volt on Saturday. It was an excellent car and I would consider a future version(if there was one), but not a pure EV. Gas is cheap. I purchased a 2SS V8 Camaro conv to enjoy the FUN factor. Our daughter intends to keep her 2017 Volt long term as she hates to pay for gas.

 

With California's Air Resource Board distorting the market so badly there is zero incentive to build or sell a good PHEV in the US. CARB's ZEV credits are a perfect example of why Cap-n-Trade carbon emissions doesn't work.

 

Like above, it's not about practicality or emissions, it's about CARB's twisted and often lobbyist written policies that will determine the fate of PHEVs or EREVs.

A 200HP single electric motor will give plenty of umph for most duties required of a pickup or large SUV.
Add an i4 turbo engine rated appropriately for HD use, about 250HP out of 2.4L, and you have as much peak power as the meanest trucks at a modest weight penalty.

If you ever want a 40 mpg 400+ HP work truck or full size SUV with no limitations, this is the only way to do it under $50,000.

Some interesting thoughts:
With the battery, EV motor, inverter, aft of CG, the weight balance and handling improves. With the i4 running the front axle, there is no floor hump necessary. So 6 passenger CC pickups. 4 wheel independent suspension and vector drive for turning sharper in the dirt and sand at low speeds. High powered 120/240v option easily created. Regen down hills saves brakes.

 

Most people drive in EV mode 95% of the time with Volts 40 to 60 mile range, why would you want a truck to drive 300 miles? If you are driving more than an hour to work you need to move closer to work unless you are living in a megalopolis. If you spend that long or longer during the work day when are you getting any work done unless you are a foreman/inspector that is spending a few minutes here and a few minutes there? If you are delivering goods then that is a different story/application. How many people who drive trucks actually do so for that one time a year they have to haul something. I had a truck (traded two Beetles for it and $400) which I used to haul my goods and self to another province and I used it to take garbage to the dump once a week and a load of doors twice but when I sold the business I sold the truck. Buying a truck for that once a year road trip or event doesn't make sense.

 

You obviously haven't spent any time in Texas. Having a truck there is simply par for the course. You don't have to haul anything -- ever, and most people don't.

 

There's hardly a person on this forum that would not be happy with what you propose. But your engineering challenge is a bit far fetched, and your concept vehicle simply costs too much money for anyone to want. Remember that the Volt is sold at a loss. So add 10K for a profit motive, then add another 10K for the larger battery to get to even 120 miles of range, then add another 5K to take the Volt from a compact to a mid-sized SUV, then take another 10K to re-engineer the drive train in some as yet un-invented magical way. Your concept now becomes a $70K msrp vehicle -- and it's only a Chevy or Toyota. For 70K you can buy an EV sedan for around town, and a decked out RAV4 to rid yourself of range anxiety on long trips.

No one is building (or even thinking of building) this vehicle because the economics simply aren't there.

 

The problem is that this is based on things today. I would submit that, tomorrow things will be different. I believe there will be in not too many years, a RAV4/ CRV/ Equinox class vehicle with a 300+ mile EV range selling from $25-30k. I would be willing to pay around an extra $5-8k to this price to have a range extender gas motor on board (could drop the EV range in exchange for lower sticker price).

The concept isn't magical or un-invented, it is well established and simpler in approach where you treat the gas motor purely as an electrical generator, not the complex tie it into a transmission sort of beast. If you look at how a fuel cell vehicle drive works, you would have a better idea.

I am not sure it is well established that the Volt was losing money as of Feb 15th, 2019, however it probably was losing money early on (Bob Lutz said as much). Remember that Lithium battery prices have fallen by a factor of 10 since the Volt started. What I am suggesting is that there is a point in time when a plugin hybrid might have large EV performance and still be price friendly. The idea here being, start with the new platform now, and perhaps the range on a new platform is only 65 miles EV, then the next model in the future is 100, then 135, and so on ... At some point when the EV range gets large enough, this would have a great appeal to me as an option to a pure EV. It makes the vehicle have extreme utility. And the idea that a large number of the vehicle parts are the same parts as the Equinox could mean very good parts support and availability as it is a high volume vehicle.

 

Audi just announced 4 new plug-in hybrids coming in 2019 including Q5, A6, A7, A8. Battery pack capacity will be 14kWh; EV range will be up to ~25 miles. https://insideevs.com/audi-new-plug-in-hybrid-q5-a6-a7-a8/

 

I think what's interesting about this announcement is that the A3/A4 are not included. The way they make this technology viable is to insert it into higher end cars with larger profit margins.

 

The future of the PHEV is alive and well as long as we wait awhile for other manufacturers to fill in the large hole being created by GM's discontinued Volt. Note the recently announced 330e from BMW to sell in Europe this summer for the US equivalent of $54,000 without tax incentives. It will only have half the ev range of the Volt but will catch up quickly. It is scheduled for US distribution in 2020.

Then there is the VW Passat PHEV and about 10 others by different manufacturers. The Honda Clarity is probably the closest PHEV to the Volt. It is in it's second year of US sales at $34,000 MSRP.

Car buyers in the US won't tolerate hours of down time waiting for charging while on vacation road trips. The PHEV will be our preferred path forward. Don't listen to the short sighted GM bean counters who have gloom and doomed their way onto a BEV only path. The first time Honda shows a TV ad with their PHEV flying past a BEV family stuck at a charging station while the BEV kids cry and complain might make GM realize it's mistake but, I won't hold my breath.

 

Current marketing photo for the BMW 330e PHEV.

 

There's a lot of weight and manufacturing cost in this proposal. The things you normally get rid of on an EV that save weight and cosy to make up for the battery cost you still need - and usually the cost difference between a half sized engine/catalytic converter and a full size one is a lot less than the cost of the half size.

The one thing that might make this practical is something like MiTRE. Some British companies believe they can build a ~30 kW micro turbine range extender that's 30+% thermal efficient and clean enough to not need a converter and much smaller/lighter than a comparable ICE for less than a thousand in production costs.

That's aggressive, but not entirely implausible - the major moving part needed isn't much different from your average turbocharger, and the technologies needed are mostly well understood.

If they manage it in a few years (scheduled to be part of the 2020 Ariel Hipercar among others,) then making range extended EVs of all kinds would be simple and could make financial sense.

 

I would trade the ICE for a 50 kWh battery plus a fuel-burning heater (Webasto or similar) to maintain winter range.

 

The technology has already bypassed the PHEV. 450Kw charging stations, price of batteries. All there. They just have to be built. Both the cars and the infrastructure. We've gone from 50 Kw to 150/175 Kw. chargers now with 350 Kw at Porsche dealers. 300 mile EV's and the soon to be 400 mile Rivian. Once this critical mass is reached there will be no reason for them when you can pick up 350 miles in 15 minutes, the length of time it takes the kids to go to the washroom. We have the technology now. Car planning is five years in advance at the minimum. Plans that are 1 to 2 years to fruition have been in the works for a while now whether the plans are released or not. And this doesn't even what's down the road with SS Li when they resolve the five issues (2 to 3 which are already solved), down the road meaning 5 to 10 years baring breakthroughs. You don't plan ahead with yesterday's (or today's) technology or by the time you get to vehicles on the showroom floor they are already 5 year out of date.

 

Apparently GM had 2010 plans to make a Crossvolt, but it was nixed by Dan Akerson. I count this as a big screw up.

CrossVolt

In fact, Chevrolet developed a crossover version of the Volt, showing off a concept car dubbed the CrossVolt in 2010 that was scheduled to go into production by mid-decade. But the project was scuttled by former GM CEO Dan Akerson in 2010, according to Sam Abuelsamid, a senior analyst with research firm Navigant.

"If they had done the CrossVolt they might have had just the right vehicle for the current market," he said.

More ...

Expect more hybrids

While GM has decided to get out of the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle game, the technology is far from dead. If anything, there is a flood of new models coming to market. Audi plans to unveil four of them at next month's Geneva Motor Show, alongside a new all-electric model, the Q4 e-tron. Mercedes-Benz has almost a dozen different plug-ins available worldwide. And BMW is developing a new vehicle platform that will allow it to offer conventional hybrid, plug-in hybrids or all-electric options for all future models.

Meanwhile, GM's cross-town rival, Fiat Chrysler, announced Tuesday that it will add at least four plug-in hybrid Jeep models over the next several years.

Cheaper batteries should help those manufacturers enhance the appeal of the technology and they're betting that many buyers will still appreciate the idea that once their batteries run down they'll be able to keep going without the hassle of lengthy charging.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/may-the-chevy-volt-rip-tesla-helped-kill-it-but-gm-learned-a-lot.html

 

Wow, I'm sorry to hear that plans for a "CrossVolt" were scrapped just when they were needed most. The next 5 years will see offshore PHEVs popping up like daisys. 2019 and 2020 will have bumper crops. Isn't it ironic that unlimited range PHEVs will be plentiful in compact Europe just when US domestic manufacturers dither and risk forfeiting the market that the Chevy Volt pioneered. I can see the Honda, Toyota, Volvo, Audi, VW, BMW marketing now;

Mom and Dad and the two kids decide to drive 450 miles each way from CT to VA to Grandma and Grandpa's house for a one week Christmas vacation. They decide to take their new Chevy Bolt thinking that the 320 mile range will only need one 30 minute fast charge stop each way. So they pack up, which requires a cartop carrier due to luggage and Christmas gifts that they don't want to cramb into an already tight Bolt. An hour into their trip Dad notices that the estimated battery range has dropped significantly. Mom breaks out the 400 page Owners manual and discovers that cold winter temps reduce battery capacity and Highway speed driving further reduces range. She also reads that using the electric heat reduces the EV's range. So they pull in earlier than planned to a highway rest stop for a charge, but the holiday traffic puts them in a waiting line for access to the packed 4 fast chargers. An hour later they get their turn at one of the chargers where they do the 30 minute "fast charge" which only gives them an additional 90 "summer city miles". So after all that time, they get back in the Bolt. Not wanting to go through another huge charge delay, they don mittens, hats, blankets and turn the heat off. The windows fog up, on goes the defrost and off goes the mittens, hats and blankets. They slow to 50 MPH to realise more range. All to no avail. They have to pull over for another charge. Fortunately there is one at the next Highway rest stop but this time the line is longer. This charge takes 2 hours thanks to the waiting line. The Christmas spirit has worn thin. Once back underway, they still aren't getting the range they should be getting and a strap on the rooftop carrier starts slapping again. It now dawns on Dad that the range must be further handicapped by the roof carrier negatively affecting the aerodynamics.

They finally make it to Grandma and Grandpa's. The typical 7 hour drive took 11 hours. They no longer brag about their new "green" car. In the meantime, Honda shows a similar family journey made without delay in their Clarity PHEV for less expense.

BRING BACK THE VOLT

 

Couldn't agree more with the above.
First post here because as I just purchased a new 2018 Volt.
I'm a car lover, and have 2 high powered V8 in the garage, but the Volt makes so much sense for my daily needs of transportation.

The Volt was ahead if its time, and other PHEV are now right in their time and GM is pulling out of the market, sad.

I think Pure EV are a bit ahead of their time, battery price needs to come down, gas needs to go up (even though, I'd hate to see that) and more importantly, charging time needs to come down... tough equation!
Teslas and such are really great cars, luxurious, high performance, loaded with awesome technology but I wouldn't use it for trip beyond its range, but they are building blocks of the future.

 

I think there will always be some sort of market for PHEV in the future. Even with the large capacities and fast charging solutions coming up there will be a measurable percentage of users that just can't use or tolerate a straight EV for their job or commute. The fast lane truck just showed how compromised mileage is on a Tesla X towing a very small and light trailer.

I'll be one of those people too. I own and use a pickup truck. I also use it for actual truck stuff. It has 100k miles on it and the trailer it tows has about 85k miles on it. It only gets used once or twice a week but I usually have to make trips in the 200 to 300 mile total range. Any of these 300+ mile electric pickup trucks coming out will probably need charging in the 150 to 200 mile range. It could be as low as 100 miles towing larger loads or towing in colder weather. I'm not going to deal well with stopping for an hour every 100-150 miles to recharge. Or stop every 75 miles to get a quick 50% fast charge. That takes away from productive work or time needed for other things.

I'll take a straight electric car or small SUV all day long. But any vehicle that will be tow rated needs to be a PHEV to handle range loss under load. The only exception may be for the manufacturers to design their own trailers to minimize aero and friction losses or provide ideal shape and dimensions for towable items that minimize EV loss when used with their particular vehicle.

 

I'll be one of those people too. I own and use a pickup truck. I also use it for actual truck stuff. It has 100k miles on it and the trailer it tows has about 85k miles on it. It only gets used once or twice a week but I usually have to make trips in the 200 to 300 mile total range. Any of these 300+ mile electric pickup trucks coming out will probably need charging in the 150 to 200 mile range. It could be as low as 100 miles towing larger loads or towing in colder weather. I'm not going to deal well with stopping for an hour every 100-150 miles to recharge. Or stop every 75 miles to get a quick 50% fast charge. That takes away from productive work or time needed for other things.

Totally agree! That's why I have a reservation for the Workhorse W15. It has a 60 kwh battery that's big enough to go about 80 miles under load, probably twice that unloaded. That's enough to easily handle most of my trips, but it also has a range extender that's powerful enough to take a fully loaded truck anywhere. The design concept is dirt simple, a battery EV powertrain supplemented by a powerful gas driven range extender for journeys further than the battery can handle. It's a pure serial hybrid, no transmission, just a battery driving four hub motors supplemented when needed with an ICE turning a generator. The range extender is the only conceivable way for my wife and I to take a month or two off and head out to do some boondocking camping in out of the way places in an electric pickup.

 

I had high hopes for the Workhorse W-15 also but don't hold your breath. I just got an email from Pax Lindell from Workhorse last week. Seems the W-15 as it was may be no more.

Quote from his email.

"....Regarding development of the W-15 pickup truck, Workhorse has been in discussions with GM and a newly-formed private entity for an electric pickup to be built by a partnership between the companies. While not directly involved I believe the new platform will be a 100% electric version and will not have the range extension engine on board......"

 

Quote from his email.

"....Regarding development of the W-15 pickup truck, Workhorse has been in discussions with GM and a newly-formed private entity for an electric pickup to be built by a partnership between the companies. While not directly involved I believe the new platform will be a 100% electric version and will not have the range extension engine on board......"

I got less interested in Workhorse when they started talking 100% BEV.

 

I recently got a 2016 Equinox for my snowmobile, go to the dump or home improvement, etc. vehicle. Every once and a while and when my 2014 Volt goes in for service, the dealer wants to talk to me about trading in for something new. My Volt still works and looks essentially new and I tell them they aren't offering anything I want. If they made an Equinox with Voltec with similar range to my Volt and awd, I would trade in for a new one of those. The Equinox gets better gas mileage than the SUV it replaced but a Voltec version would see nearly identical duty cycle as my Volt and consume 1/10 the gas. Why wouldn't I want an SUV with essentially the same performance as the one I just bought, but got 250+mpg?

 

PHEV will be around for a while. Ask the people in California who drive Teslas how it's going when the power company decides to shut the power down. Sure the people that can afford Tesla Power cells in their house can weather it out but what about the others. Here in Florida we have hurricanes and a couple of years ago the power was out for over two weeks in some places. That's why the Volt makes so much sense. Man I would love to have a conversion kit for my ELR to give me 150-200 mi electric range.


Anyways remember those cars that rode on the electrified plastic highway. You pulled the control trigger and they would go round and round? It would be nice if they did the same for the national highways. Lay down some induction charging or a way to keep the car running both on battery and electric like the transit trains. Once you go off the highway your car runs on battery alone.

 

You do realize that when the power in an area is out that the gas station pumps don't work either. So when you are out of fuel (gas or electrons) you are still stuck. And if you can get to somewhere where the power is on, you can go to a gas station there, or a charging station there.

 

BTW i'm not crapping on Tesla in fact I think Elon is one of our times greatest people. I don't understand why Tesla gets so much hate. It's an American company that is at the forefront of the Electric car revolution. Not including the SpaceX wing of his company. I'm just saying that PHEVs are still the best way to go in many parts of the country.

 

Tesla gets hate because for many years they promised the EV for everyone, at 35K, $28.5K or less after credits. That's mid-range Toyota Camry money. They did not deliver on it AT ALL until their credit began to phase out, and then they made that vehicle all but impossible to obtain. So the cheapest Tesla most people can actually get is now $12,000 more than it was supposed to be. It's a mid-range 3 series, not a Camry.

I realize that some of this is due to unanticipated things like supply constraints and production issues. But Elon is very clearly a smart guy, and he should know with a project like this that one needs to expect hiccups. That's why legitimate companies don't announce vehicle pricing until they know what it is. They announce targets and ranges rather than make promises. They don't promise things they can't build. That's a kickstarter model. Tesla has clawed its way back from it, but it was a major misstep and I will need to see a lot more from them in terms of long term support and reliability before I am willing to put any money into a Tesla product.

 

Most gas stations have generator back up for power outages.

 

Not here in the Gulf South. And we get our fair share of power outages due to hurricanes.

 

I read in Henry Payne's column in the detroitnews that the 2020 Escape hybrid starts at around 29000 (SE model, that's a decent trim level) and the media testers got 35 mpg. No tax credit needed to be "affordable", and with a fuel cost of less than 10cts/mile I'd guess not many would want to spend a big premium to get a PHEV version.
Also stated Ford needs to sell these so expect some very attractive lease deals.

 

I visited NYC recently and there are a surprising number of older Ford Escape Hybrid vehicles in use as taxis. I expect that the new Ford Escape Hybrid will be put into taxi service, replace the aging Escape Hybrids. NYC taxi regulations limit the age of older taxi vehicles. This helps get unsafe, worn out vehicles off the street and encourages newer, more efficient vehicles.

 

Read an article about these a while back and apparently taxi drivers just freaking love the old Escape hybrids. They discussed the efficiency decreasing a bit but said otherwise the things had been rock solid for more than 500,000 miles in some instances.

 

If anyone here read LA Times today it reviewed the new Volvo XC40 Recharge SUV (full EV). The most interesting takeaway is Volvo's plan to eventually drop PHEV's. The production cost of an EV compared to PHEV is 1/3, the numbers are not conducive for PHEV's future. I'm a 2019 Volt owner (second Volt) and probably will keep till it dies. I love the idea of being able to "Gas up" when necessary. All this noise about EV's replacing ICE is ridiculous! Present time the WORLD has barely 3% of EV's on the road. I doubt anyone on this forum will be alive if or when we even hit 25%.

 

I think I read the article you're referencing and it seemed to only analyze the amount of labor time that went into making these drivetrains without discussing material costs. While obviously important, its only a small part of the total production cost picture. I've long wondered how much the battery cells themselves cost as compared to the costs to house and heat/cool them, and how those figures scale with size. That article really didn't address that.

Of course you may have been referencing a different article entirely.

 

Related to this, Mazda finally unveiled their first EV yesterday at the Tokyo Motor Show. As they had hinted, the first version of the new MX-30 will be a EREV with about 200km electric range, and a Wankel rotary engine as the onboard generator for extended range. Still think the Gen2 Volt looks better (RIP).

 

At first glance, it's hilarious. Combining a decent EV range with the noted fuel economy of a rotary engine. But if they can give it one that's SMALL enough, it'll still have plenty of power to spin a generator, and the fussy torque curve won't be an issue if they let a computer control the RPM for the needs of the generator and don't depend much on power-splitting.