are the car batteries the same as non-hybrid cars? if it’s lithium batteries, why are there no charging ports like ev vehicles?
In: Engineering
it depends as there are many different implementations of hybrid cars.
Generally the most common you would find is that the car has a normal 12V battery that runs all computers, lights and anything else a regular car has and then there is a separate battery thats much larger and usually a higher voltage that is used to run the electric motors and in many models also runs the air conditioning and is used to start the combustion engine.
These larger batteries will typically be anywhere from 48V to 240V and the most commonly used battery chemistrys are NiMH and Li-NMC.
There are plug in hybrid variants of many hybrid vehicles which you can charge with a charge port like EVs but these usually also have a much larger battery capacity.
They use a planetary gear system, which allows multiple sources of spinning to power a crankshaft. This means the crankshaft can be power by electric motor or gas engine.
There are two main types of hybrid vehicles.
Plug-In Hybrids are basically a combo of a “normal EV” with a normal ICE vehicle, with a battery & electric motors, as well as a gas engine and transmission. Depending on the driving conditions, either (or both) systems can be working at any given time.
The other type of hybrid is generally called a “generator hybrid”, which has batteries and electric motors to drive the wheels, and a gas engine to recharge the electric battery. These are generally shorter-range vehicles, intended to not have to use the gas generator as much. Their batteries are like other electric vehicles (though often smaller), and they can also have charging ports.
Yes batteries for hybrid’s are generally the same type as in ev’s but generally much smaller in size. Plug in hybrids do exist but may not be as common as self-charge only for a few reasons. Plug-ins generally have larger batteries then self charge only which increases the price. Plug-ins also have to have extra electronics to manage the plug. Plug-ins advantage is they can do like a full ev does and drive only on charged power but the cost savings vs self charge only will vary depending on what someone’s driving looks like so the extra cost may never be recovered.
>are the car batteries the same as non-hybrid cars?
By “non-hybrid” do you mean gas cars or electric cars?
All cars (including electric cars) have a standard 12V car battery. Electrics and hybrids also have an additional high voltage battery that powers the electric motors. Though it’s significantly smaller in hybrids.
>if it’s lithium batteries, why are there no charging ports like ev vehicles?
Plenty of hybrids do have charging ports. They’re called “plug-in hybrid” vehicles. These still don’t have batteries as large as a pure electric car, but large enough that you could make short trips on purely electric power.
Non-plugin hybrids don’t have one simply because it’s cheaper and the battery is usually too small for it to make much difference, so it’s not worth the expense to include charging ports and charging circuits.
There are many different types of hybrid systems which use different technologies. The common thing among them is that they have both an electric motor and an internal combustion motor. They typically have a similar type of battery as you would find in a fully electric vehicle. But it is smaller so the battery range is very short, and of a slightly different build which gives more power but less range. The battery in hybrid cars are just intended for short distances or to give a boost during heavy acceleration. It is not intended for a full drive, this is where the range of the petrol or diesel engine comes into play. This is also why there is no charging ports on most hybrid cars as the battery is quite small so you would not be able to charge it very much. The battery is just there to help the engine run more optimally giving you better fuel milage.
Of course there are exceptions to this. You can get plug-in hybrids as well. And some hybrids do have a descent range on the battery so you can get from your home to your work without using any fuel. Some hybrids are built more like a fully electric car but with a small engine to extend the range when needed. So there are all sorts of different things which fit into the hybrid car category.
So let’s start with a Prius. The ‘first’ hybrid. It uses a differential gear, like in your wheels, which is a gear that allows one input and two outputs. Ie an engine is the input and it can turn wheels at different speeds so the car can go around the corner. The Prius flips the differential around and two inputs with one output. Then there is one electric motor and one gas engine . Both can contribute to one output ( there still is a differential in the drive train).
Now, if you spin and electric motor with magnets you can generate electricity this means you can charge the battery by using the same electrical motor running without electricity. This is called regeneration or regen. So when the battery is empty the electric motor spins and regenerates electricity. Regen due to the law of thermodynamics is not as efficient as charging so some cars plug in to charge the high voltage battery faster.
More modern cars such as the Chevy volt and Honda hybrids use planetary gears in the transmission to switch and combine the motors to either discharge ( and provide power to the wheels) or charge ( regen either with the engine or by slowing the car down ie breaking). The larger high voltage battery such as 100v, 200v etc is used for the hybrid engine. The electronics are powered like other cars with a 12v system.
To address the part about not having charging ports, I guess what you meant to ask is where the power comes from?
When braking in an internal combustion engine (ICE) car, the kinetic energy from the moving car is converted into heat in the brakes and then the heat is dissipated into the environment (energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted into other forms). In a hybrid, the kinetic energy is used to turn an electric generator inside the car that converts the kinetic energy into electric energy again. Some models also do this when the car is coasting, but that usually results in the car decelerating more quickly when coasting. This process is called “regenerative braking”, lots of good resources on youtube explaning how that works.
Pure electric cars do this too, but it’s not enough to fully charge the much larger batteries to offset the energy used to move the car. Hybrids have much smaller batteries, and the internal combustion engine is used in conjunction with the electric motor, so there’s a smaller demand for electricity, allowing the car not need a charging port at all.
You can’t get infinite energy from this, because there are energy losses during conversion. Don’t quote me on the exact number but I read somewhere that about 60% of the energy is recovered during regenerative braking. Of course, this depends on the specific technologies and techniques used.
Hybrid and electric car owners like going downhill because it recharges the battery. It’s not free energy because they would’ve had to use energy to get up that hill in the first place.
Great questions! Hybrid cars use a combination of an internal combustion engine and an electric motor. The batteries in hybrids are often different, typically nickel-metal hydride or lithium-ion. They charge through regenerative braking and the engine, so no need for external charging ports like full EVs.
There are 2 types of hybrid. Series, and parallel. In a series hybrid, the wheels are only driven by the electric motors. The gas engine has no mechanical connection to the wheels. It only exists to act as a generator and charge the battery. These are usually able to be plugged into the wall so in theory, if your daily drive was short enough, you could never use the gas engine. In a parallel hybrid, both the gas and electric motor(s) drive the wheels. This can be done in a couple of ways. The electric motor could be mounted on the output shaft of the engine/transmission, or the gas engine could drive one set of wheels, usually the rear, and the electric motor(s) could drive the front wheels giving a psudo all wheel drive effect. Though, it’s worth noting that the psudo all wheel drive thing is really only done on preformance cars as far as I’m aware. Generally speaking, a parallel hybrid will have a much smaller battery and thus smaller range then a series hybrid. In my opinion, a series hybrid is the perfect every day car, at least in the present day. You can get 90% of the benefit of a full ev, while not having the range anxiety and added charge time for longer trips.
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