Why aren’t all hybrid cars plug-in hybrids?

541 viewsOtherTechnology

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

10 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most of the gains of a hybrid come from the ability to store energy when slowing down and reinject that into the drive-train when you are accelerating again. It gives them much better city mileage and crucially doesn’t add much weight to the vehicle.

A standard Prius has a 1.3kWh battery of which half is useable – that’s about 1% of the available capacity of something like a Telsa. The hardware to allow that to be wall charged would probably add as much weight as the battery itself, and the extra efficiency of always leaving the house fully charged would be very small.

You are viewing 1 out of 10 answers, click here to view all answers.