self charge EV

[conrail]

hi guys, considered EV's but as a round trip to visit son is 500 miles, EV's not practical, just over 2 hours each way, traffic depending, add to that charging and sitting it a service station for an hour it becomes unappealing,
saw an advert for a self charging EV, can someone please explain this system, to me it sound like once charged the vehicle would get me to my destination without having to charge part way,
as you will gather EV information is very basic

[MikeGC]

Essentially a self charging EV is a petrol car (e.g. Toyota RAV4; Honda HR-V) where the internal combustion engine charges the battery.
Many, like the Qashqai e-power, don’t travel very far on the battery alone because they have a relatively small battery.

It’s going to take a breakthrough in battery technology to get you to your son's house, although Toyota are working on solid state batteries that will hold more charge and be capable of faster charging.

Hope that helps

[BaggieBoy]

Probably the furthest you will get on battery alone on any self charging hybrid is a couple miles.

[roadster]

That's a marketing expression which is misleading at best. The purpose of a hybrid is to use petrol power as efficiently as possible although in the case of a plug-in hybrid a larger battery is fitted so that the owner can choose to fully charge from an external source to get a range of about 30 miles before the car needs to run the petrol engine. In very approximate terms a plug in hybrid has a traction battery ( usually lithium ) of about 1/10th of the capacity of an electric vehicle and therefore can travel on electricity only about 1/10 as far as a true EV.

The conventional hybrid has a traction battery which is a tenth smaller again thus giving it an electrical range of (say) a couple of miles under suitable circumstances. The Nissan group's E-Power is unusual in that traction power is only supplied by an electric motor. This gives it similar driving characteristics to an EV but the petrol generator under the bonnet needs to monitor the lithium battery and run whenever there is insufficient "spare" stored electricity to meet the car's/driver's demands.

Different hybrid manufacturers have different approaches to designing the internal combustion engine and transmission so that it makes the best use of the fuel. Nissans approach was to do away with the gearbox and connect the wheels through fixed reduction gears to the electric motor only. This means that the petrol engine can be operated only in its most efficient fuelling speed range because it can change speed completely independently from the road speed of the car. This is all dependent on computer control where the driver's input is the accelerator and brake pedal but the computer manages the engine, battery, and electric motor/generator.

[MikeGC]

As an illustration of some of roadster’s points
My mate has a Hyundai Tuscan plug in hybrid.
He gets 40 miles on battery power, as I understand what a Nissan salesman told me you can travel 2 miles on battery power with an e-power

[Harranold]

You would be hard pressed to get anywhere near 2 miles on battery alone , the batteries just aren’t that big and the whole concept is based on the fact that you don’t use the battery alone.

[egamar]

Why do you want an EV? Low mpg equivalent or environmental reasons?

If environmental reasons, a full EV is the only way to achieve your goal - using - one assumes - the most efficiently produced electricity to charge your vehicle overnight. As you observe, however, range is a problem as is battery longevity: there isn't really enough data about how your battery will hold charge over time. IIRC manufacturer guarantees are for 80% over 8 years - after 8 years if your range has plummeted you're in for a really expensive replacement.

If it's low MPG then the ePower CAN produce excellent figures, if driven sympathetically. 65+ mpg on long motorway drives at 55 is quite achievable. probably 25% less at 70. 45 around town. Short journeys in cold weather will show apparently dreadful mpg - but that's because fuel is used to power the 12v system for all; the heating and the impact of low temperatures on engine performance. Not much different to any other car, but thee Power reports your mpg to you after every trip - so it becomes more obvious and alarming to some people who haven't thought it through.

If it's low MPG on long drives then I wouldn't be at all surprised if a diesel would still out-perform the ePower, and a lot of petrol engined cars too. The ePower IS a petrol engined car, of course, with only some modest % of energy recovery from regenerative braking and some efficiencies in the petrol engine supported by the main battery essentially actings as a large capacitor to store "surplus" energy.

For its price, the ePower Tekna is an excellent drive, chock full of technology but not without its irritations. Just make sure you buy later in 2024 when the updated generators and batteries are in the production stream.

.

[panormus72]

In certain conditions (ext.temperature*, flat road,) i reached with e-power until 8-9km ( circa 5miles) in EV mode.

* I live in Greece,Athens