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  • Author Author: rscasny
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Seeking your Opinion: Is the Market Headed to Fully Electric Vehicles or 48V Hybrids?

Recent news that Tesla is going to produce an all electric vehicle for $35,000 didn't surprise me that much. Sooner or later Tesla would have had to produce an electric vehicle in the price range that most people could afford.

 

But what really turned my head was the $ billions that Ford plans on investing electric vehicles in the next few years. GM is also responding to the electrification trends of the day and is expanding its electric car portfolio in China. And Volvo is planning on have its entire lineup electric vehicles.

 

But wait a minute.

 

Is the global market ready for full vehicular electrification?

 

What happened to the hybrid market?

 

Specifically, 48V hybrids that offer more torque, faster acceleration, and better performance than the older generation 12V hybrids, while at the same time maintaining fuel economy and emissions standards compliance.

 

Hybrid vehicles use a high voltage DC bus to supply power to the motor. To accomplish that, 48v hybrids use a bi-directional current/voltage converter, which is needed to provide power between the 48V and 12V batteries in a hybrid vehicle (i.e., boost 12V to 48 or buck 48 to 12). Some studies say the potential market for 48V hybrid vehicles is great, yet at the same time, some countries such as India and China expect to skip hybrid and go directly to full electric. 

 

In your opinion, where do you think the market is moving towards: fully electric or 48V hybrids?

  • in reply to rsc

      wrote:

     

    BTW, I owned a Prius for 9 years and didn't have any issues with the HV battery.  My average gas mileage was around 45 MPG, dropping to about 32 in the winter. or on long highway trips.

    I have a Honda Insight which gets 62-57 miles average per gallon. The heat hurts more than the highway.image

  • Well, it depends on the country.

    • China is going full bore electric. I was there over 1 year ago and saw a large electric car plant. At the moment the government is subsiding. The pollution is the problem in major cities like Shanghai, Beijing, etc.
    • But in the US, we go hybrid due to the range issues. In the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolis, an all electric vehicle cannot handle distance across the area without more charging stations. And the standards for charging vary especially Tesla.
    • Other countries may line up on either side. Time will tell

  • Hybrids are just a waste of time.

    Unless it has a very small battery the driver gets used to driving on electric only, soon you find that lugging around a petrol engine that gets only occasional or almost no use.

    Drivers rarely go to the petrol station just to refuel, they buy something to eat, stretch their legs, wait to get served etc, an EV or plugin hybrid can recharge while this is happening.

  • Regular cars are most likely going to switch from 12V to 42/48V in the future for various reasons.  The manufacturers have been working on this for many years already and some standards have already been generated.

    The main reason is cost and weight of copper wires.  Higher voltages can use smaller wires for the same power consumption. I don't imagine Hybrids running solely on 48V due to power restrictions.

    Think about a 50Hp motor:  50Hp x 750W/Hp = 37,500W    37,500W/48V = 781 Amps (need some huge power feeds!)  37,500W/400V = 93 amps (1 or 2 AWG wire)  That's why Electric vehicles run on high voltage batteries.

    Scott

     

    BTW, I owned a Prius for 9 years and didn't have any issues with the HV battery.  My average gas mileage was around 45 MPG, dropping to about 32 in the winter. or on long highway trips.

  • in reply to michaelwylie

    I'm with you

    Here in NZ we have the electic vehicles not paying a cent towards Road User Tax like every petrol or diesel vehicle does, so once that goes, the costs will increase.

     

    Our electricity is mostly Hydro but there is still an issue at peak power times in the winter ... and there are no new stations coming online to fix that.

     

    Fuel Cell Technology allows for solar to do the work and the result is stored ready for quick 'refuelling' rather than this long wait.

     

     

    In the meantime I have this on the back of my car.

    image

     

    Mark

  • in reply to wolfgangfriedrich

    Hi Wolfgang,

    The grid is already near maximum capacity.

    If you introduce large numbers of electric vehicles you will over tax the grid.

    To upgrade the power grid gets you into all types of political, economic and land use issues that will become another nightmare.

     

    DAB

  • What @DAB said. The vehicle itself is only a small part. If the number of vehicles grow faster than the grid, nobody will be happy. And what is feeding the grid?

    - W.

  • In the near term I see increased prominence of hybrids driven partly by range anxiety about full electrics and a paucity of charging infrastructure.  Plus, as DAB mentioned, charging an EV using coal fired electricity makes GHG issues worse, not better.

     

    In the longer term, I can see a switch over to full electric (maybe some room for fuel cell) as range improves, the grid adopts more renewable sources, and charging infrastructure becomes more ubiquitous.

     

    In the more distant future, I can imagine a switch to mobility-as-a-service where car ownership is a thing of the past.  Autonomous chauffeurs (probably electric) are summoned via app or AI algorithm to provide you with a ride to your destination, then off they go to serve the next customer. This scenario also brings with it massive infrastructure changes (don't need traffic lights if cars communicate with each other and with infrastructure), also don't need parking lots, personal auto insurance, gas stations, consumer facing automotive retailers, etc.  Wow.  Not sure I'm ready for that level of change.

  • in reply to DAB

    Re-charging time is also an issue. My friend is a London taxi driver and he has recently bought a hybrid taxi. The batteries will give him about 30% of the mileage he needs to do a full day's work so having a hybrid is essential. Whereas he can fill up with petrol in five minutes, even fast charging takes a couple of hours. What is he going to do for those two hours? We have quite a lot of charging points in London but it is not always practicable to leave your vehicle charging. Overnight is fine if you have one near your house. While you do your shopping is OK if it's a long shop and a fast charge, but if you are en route somewhere, do you really want to wait two hours to "fill up"?

  • I'm interested in the research that is still on-going in this field.

    Electric might not be the full solution right now, but over time it looks like it will get better.

     

    I just noticed, as one example, that Tesla bought out Maxwell, and seeing that they have super capacitor technology is very interesting.

    Supercaps will help with quick-fill and re-gen braking, and maybe allow smaller overall battery packs to get similar range for the average commuters.

    Or maybe future hybrids will use supercaps instead of batteries.

     

    I know "long tail-pipe" pollution is an on-going concern, but that doesn't apply to all areas of the world, especially for areas using hydro or wind power, and where alternative energy setups are being implemented.

    For areas with coal power, however, the power plants can be made more efficient (that's already happening) - plus it'll likely be easier to capture pollution at one source rather than at millions of small sources.

     

    What I think is a big part of the problem, electric or ICE, is that the big auto makers seem to have control over what is allowed on the roads. Take low-speed electric vehicles as an example - for a short while our province allowed electric vehicles to be used on city streets at speeds up to 60km/hr, similar to scooter speeds. City speed limits tend to be 50km/hr here, and due to congestion it's often less.

    These vehicles were essentially fancied up golf carts and the price was half of a cheap economy car. Because of their smaller size and lower speeds they had small battery packs and super fuel economy. And super cheap to maintain of course.

    The government then suddenly changed their minds on it and shut it all down. They cited safety concerns, but given that scooters are far more dangerous, I don't believe that very much.

    Very disappointing, as these little things are perfect commuter vehicles for most of the urban population.

     

    Cheers,

    -Nico