05-09-2020, 01:00 PM
Personally, I think it's all quite exciting...
While I can understand why people like hybrids, I've always seen them as a bit of a stopgap in the path to full electric. As far as I can tell, the benefits of a hybrid are mostly felt in city driving, where they can make most use of the electric-only mode - this obviously should make things quieter, smoother and improve air quality. As someone who ordinarily cycles to work, that's something I can get behind. But of course, if your journeys are mostly higher speed A-road and motorways, then the ICE is needed much more, and the benefits are less clear, especially when you consider the the extra weight combined to a conventional ICE powertrain. There must be some changeover point where ICE wins, but I don't think it's easy to come up with a quick and pithy generalisation for Marketing to use, and it will be different for every vehicle anyway.
Plug-in hybrids are an interesting development, and make a lot more sense to me. Still a complicated beast, but at least the energy isn't coming entirely from the petrol.
I've always wondered how well the ICE will cope with never getting up to temperature on shorter runs. Those of us of a certain age will remember the days of engines that behaved quite differently when cold, and it's hard to forget about those sometimes quite dramatic experiences! Of course, today's fuel and ignition systems make points and carburettors look like stone age artefacts, and the internal tolerances on engine parts are really very good today. But even with those challenges overcome, engines still require more fuel when cold. The impetus to make engines warm up quickly has led to some notable cases of marginal cooling systems and cost-cutting - such as the early Ford Ecoboost engines (see the "degas pipe" problems).
This year we've changed both our cars, but have stuck with petrol. Our last cars were really well built and gave us 17 and 20 years of service each, and it's hard to believe that the replacements will do the same. I've no doubt that our next cars will be fully electric, and I'm sure that'll be within a decade. In the meantime, I'm impressed with how far petrol engines have come - my car is a heavy estate with a 2 litre turbo engine that'll do 0-62 in 7 seconds (for what that's worth), yet returns between 40 and 50 mpg, depending on the journey. Obviously it'll do a lot less if you drive it like you stole it, but that driving style has no place on public roads IMO. The other car is a 1 litre turbo engine that has more torque and horsepower than the 1.8 in my last car, but without really trying has returned 50mpg so far (only just got it). I was lucky to see 40mpg in the 1.8 - it mostly did mid to low 30s - and that car was about 150kg lighter. But a brilliant drive, so I could forgive it, especially give the low mileages we both do. If fuel consumption were our only criteria, we could have done even better while sticking with petrol. As I say, it's impressive. If only people would learn to drive economically and stop buying SUVs! In my humble opinion
All of this does make diesel passenger cars seem rather silly. I was never a fan, but had to concede that if you wanted a large-ish estate car, petrol engines often struggled for torque. However, the turbo fixes that. Modern petrols are so torquey, and so efficient if driven sensibly. In top gear at 70mpg, my 2 litre estate is running at just 1,500 rpm. Even the little 1 litre is only doing 2,500 rpm at 70, and there's plenty of poke there for uphills or getting out of trouble. My wife loves it - the last 1 litre she had was a mk2 Polo with 45 BHP and only 4 gears!
Back to hybrids, I could be tempted by a mild hybrid. They add much less weight, cost and complexity than a "traditional" hybrid. I was recently reading about Ford's take on this, and my first reaction was "why bother", but the more I read and thought about it, I can see that it's not a bad idea. I first noticed this when I saw that they have dropped the 1.5 petrol Ecoboost from the current Focus range, which is a shame, as it's quite a nice engine - not much thirstier than the 1.0, but quite a bit more peppy (but relatively rare second-hand, sadly). It's been replaced by a mild hybrid which appears to be just a motor/generator bolted onto the existing 1.0 Ecoboost. Literally just connected to the crankshaft with a belt. The 48V battery is small enough to sit under the passenger seat. It's not possible to drive the vehicle on battery power alone, but the motor adds to the ICE output to give a bit more torque. In addition to working in parallel with the ICE, it helps to "fill in" below the point where the turbo can kick in, which helps with efficiency and drivability. It also allows them to lower the compression ratio and fit a larger turbo, which apparently improves efficiency again - and the resulting turbo lag is covered by the mHEV motor. And the mHEV motor replaces the standard starter motor, which is a good thing if you want to use the stop-start function (I struggle with that idea in our new cars, especially on short journeys - I know everyone says that the starter motors are designed to cope with it, but if you plan to keep the car longer than the warranty period, I personally worry it might be a bit of a gamble). This engine already had cylinder deactivation, but the electric motor will allow that to happen more often. So the system brings a number of incremental improvements that allows them to drop a larger engine from the range, lowering their fleet average CO2 emissions. But expectations need to be managed here, as the marketing can be misleading. It's not what most people understand a hybrid to be. Rather it's an efficient petrol engine with some extra technology to improve efficiency and the driving experience. I haven't driven one yet, but am impressed with the basic 1.0, and could well be tempted by one in the future if the promised benefits are delivered in practice. But ideally, I'd rather go full-electric. Just need to be patient...
I also like automatics. IME, I'm not fully convinced by DSG or CVT autos, but modern torque-converter boxes are very good indeed, and are a good match for larger vehicles.
While I can understand why people like hybrids, I've always seen them as a bit of a stopgap in the path to full electric. As far as I can tell, the benefits of a hybrid are mostly felt in city driving, where they can make most use of the electric-only mode - this obviously should make things quieter, smoother and improve air quality. As someone who ordinarily cycles to work, that's something I can get behind. But of course, if your journeys are mostly higher speed A-road and motorways, then the ICE is needed much more, and the benefits are less clear, especially when you consider the the extra weight combined to a conventional ICE powertrain. There must be some changeover point where ICE wins, but I don't think it's easy to come up with a quick and pithy generalisation for Marketing to use, and it will be different for every vehicle anyway.
Plug-in hybrids are an interesting development, and make a lot more sense to me. Still a complicated beast, but at least the energy isn't coming entirely from the petrol.
I've always wondered how well the ICE will cope with never getting up to temperature on shorter runs. Those of us of a certain age will remember the days of engines that behaved quite differently when cold, and it's hard to forget about those sometimes quite dramatic experiences! Of course, today's fuel and ignition systems make points and carburettors look like stone age artefacts, and the internal tolerances on engine parts are really very good today. But even with those challenges overcome, engines still require more fuel when cold. The impetus to make engines warm up quickly has led to some notable cases of marginal cooling systems and cost-cutting - such as the early Ford Ecoboost engines (see the "degas pipe" problems).
This year we've changed both our cars, but have stuck with petrol. Our last cars were really well built and gave us 17 and 20 years of service each, and it's hard to believe that the replacements will do the same. I've no doubt that our next cars will be fully electric, and I'm sure that'll be within a decade. In the meantime, I'm impressed with how far petrol engines have come - my car is a heavy estate with a 2 litre turbo engine that'll do 0-62 in 7 seconds (for what that's worth), yet returns between 40 and 50 mpg, depending on the journey. Obviously it'll do a lot less if you drive it like you stole it, but that driving style has no place on public roads IMO. The other car is a 1 litre turbo engine that has more torque and horsepower than the 1.8 in my last car, but without really trying has returned 50mpg so far (only just got it). I was lucky to see 40mpg in the 1.8 - it mostly did mid to low 30s - and that car was about 150kg lighter. But a brilliant drive, so I could forgive it, especially give the low mileages we both do. If fuel consumption were our only criteria, we could have done even better while sticking with petrol. As I say, it's impressive. If only people would learn to drive economically and stop buying SUVs! In my humble opinion
All of this does make diesel passenger cars seem rather silly. I was never a fan, but had to concede that if you wanted a large-ish estate car, petrol engines often struggled for torque. However, the turbo fixes that. Modern petrols are so torquey, and so efficient if driven sensibly. In top gear at 70mpg, my 2 litre estate is running at just 1,500 rpm. Even the little 1 litre is only doing 2,500 rpm at 70, and there's plenty of poke there for uphills or getting out of trouble. My wife loves it - the last 1 litre she had was a mk2 Polo with 45 BHP and only 4 gears!
Back to hybrids, I could be tempted by a mild hybrid. They add much less weight, cost and complexity than a "traditional" hybrid. I was recently reading about Ford's take on this, and my first reaction was "why bother", but the more I read and thought about it, I can see that it's not a bad idea. I first noticed this when I saw that they have dropped the 1.5 petrol Ecoboost from the current Focus range, which is a shame, as it's quite a nice engine - not much thirstier than the 1.0, but quite a bit more peppy (but relatively rare second-hand, sadly). It's been replaced by a mild hybrid which appears to be just a motor/generator bolted onto the existing 1.0 Ecoboost. Literally just connected to the crankshaft with a belt. The 48V battery is small enough to sit under the passenger seat. It's not possible to drive the vehicle on battery power alone, but the motor adds to the ICE output to give a bit more torque. In addition to working in parallel with the ICE, it helps to "fill in" below the point where the turbo can kick in, which helps with efficiency and drivability. It also allows them to lower the compression ratio and fit a larger turbo, which apparently improves efficiency again - and the resulting turbo lag is covered by the mHEV motor. And the mHEV motor replaces the standard starter motor, which is a good thing if you want to use the stop-start function (I struggle with that idea in our new cars, especially on short journeys - I know everyone says that the starter motors are designed to cope with it, but if you plan to keep the car longer than the warranty period, I personally worry it might be a bit of a gamble). This engine already had cylinder deactivation, but the electric motor will allow that to happen more often. So the system brings a number of incremental improvements that allows them to drop a larger engine from the range, lowering their fleet average CO2 emissions. But expectations need to be managed here, as the marketing can be misleading. It's not what most people understand a hybrid to be. Rather it's an efficient petrol engine with some extra technology to improve efficiency and the driving experience. I haven't driven one yet, but am impressed with the basic 1.0, and could well be tempted by one in the future if the promised benefits are delivered in practice. But ideally, I'd rather go full-electric. Just need to be patient...
I also like automatics. IME, I'm not fully convinced by DSG or CVT autos, but modern torque-converter boxes are very good indeed, and are a good match for larger vehicles.
