In a typical hybrid car (that’s not a plug-in hybrid), the batteries get charged from the engine running and from regenerative braking. They then power an electric motor to assist with locomotion. You might park your car in the garage with the batteries at 90% capacity, or 70%, or 50%, or whatever.
When you pull back out, the batteries are then still at that “whatever” level. Doesn’t really matter. So how does the car’s battery bank know or care whether it was topped off via shore power while parked in the garage? Why is having an onboard charger for shore power (or a plug for a wall charger) such a difficult engineering feat? Seems like it would just require the addition of a part that costs a few hundred bucks.
RVs and boats have a “house” battery bank that generally functions this way. Maybe it’s getting charged by the alternator, maybe by solar panels, maybe by shore power. But hybrid cars having a shore power option (i.e. PHEV) seems like a real premium option that is not easily built.
What am I missing? Why does the battery bank care where it got its charge from?
In: Technology
A non-plugin hybrid just has a much smaller battery. This is because for that model of car the price and efficiency decisions came out that way. The cost, weight and environmental impact of the charger are not worth any gains that topping it off at home would have. It’s not that it’s technically difficult to add, it’s that it was intentionally left out because adding a battery big enough to make the charger worth it would place the model in a different price point than the manufacturer wanted.
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