Budget Performance Hybrid Conversion Questions.

6361 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by brian_, Aug 27, 2021

EcoLaunch

Discussion Starter · Jan 29, 2018

Hey guys, first time poster here! Sorry if Im clogging up the site with noob questions. I tried to find my own answers but was utterly swamped by info and got pretty lost.

Anyway, in the future I'd like to do a full conversion, but for now I have a different project in mind. I'd like to do a budget and way oversimplified version of this http://cdn.speednik.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/11/2016-11-10_22-55-29-640x427.jpg

My hope is to just give my old camaro some serious jump off the line with an electric motor helping to turn the crank but I have so many questions. Ideally I want the system to be as cheap and simple as possible.

For instance my car will redline at about 6000 rpm lets say. Then I would find an electric motor and lets say it redlines at about 5000 rmp. I would just have the gearing ratio for the belt that connects the two crankshafts accomodate for this so that both of them reach redline at the same time. When I go to launch my car the starting RPM is like 2000 lets say and both the electric motor and the gas one will work together at full blast to bring me up to 6000, then I shift and repeat. Effectively adding 50-100ft lbs to my torque at every RPM with the electric motor.

But I have sooo many questions. For instance do I need a controller at all? What if I just had a button behind the gas pedal that activated a switch and sent all the power directly to the electric motor when the throttle was fully depressed? Would that work? I would have one switch to activate the system then just that little "go button" that opens a switch to power the motor full blast when the throttle is fully depressed. Keeping the system extremely simple.

What about power? What can a used electric forklift motor handle if it only has to give output for a few seconds at a time? Can I take a 36v motor and have a 144v battery pack with a switch and just feed it all those volts at once for a few seconds in the absence of a controller? Can the motor just spin freely with the engine for all the times I'm not using it?

Alternatively could I just have a little "boost button" on the steering wheel, hit the button and the electric motor starts feeding into the crankshaft for a good launch. I don't see the need for a controller there just a high voltage battery pack, a switch, and the self control to lift my thumb off before things catch on fire.

Any suggestions would help greatly! Everything cheap and simple would be best. Even if it didn't have any regenerative system and It just ran low and I had to go home and charge it up before doing more pulls, that would be fine with me. Just any way to make it cheap and simple.

Sorry if I'm incredibly Naive! I just don't know a lot and am looking to learn.

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brian_

· #2 · Jan 30, 2018

The photo appears to be from this article:
SEMA 2016: E-Charger Bolt-on Hybrid System Draws Crowds

This is apparently E-Charger, a bolt-on parallel hybrid system. The general approach makes sense (most production hybrids are parallel systems), but the claims by this company are wildly unreasonable... such as 25% fuel economy improvement due to regenerative braking.

As long as expectations are kept low, this type of thing can work.

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Vwartenbenschnuggen

· #3 · Jul 29, 2021

Hi all,

Brian_, I think the claims that the E-Charger make are contingent upon plugging the car in, so it's actually a performance plug-in hybrid. I could be wrong about this. I personally really like the idea of a performance parallel hybrid that has additional power from the battery while charged from the wall, then performance is lessened when the battery is discharged. On top of this, the battery could be recharged by regen from the engine's power, just like a production hybrid.

EcoLaunch, you may be interested in this as well:

. This is a hybrid race car that this team has been working on for years. Unlike the E-Charger, this car puts the motor between the engine and manual transmission, acting a lot like a powered flywheel. This is similar to how honda's IMA engines work as well.

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brian_

· #4 · Jul 29, 2021 (Edited)

Vwartenbenschnuggen said:
Brian_, I think the claims that the E-Charger make are contingent upon plugging the car in, so it's actually a performance plug-in hybrid.

Using energy from a stationary charger is not a fuel economy improvement, it's just replacing gasoline with utility electricity. Unfortunately that sort of nonsense claim is common for plug-in hybrids.

Vwartenbenschnuggen said:
EcoLaunch, you may be interested in this as well:

. This is a hybrid race car that this team has been working on for years. Unlike the E-Charger, this car puts the motor between the engine and manual transmission, acting a lot like a powered flywheel. This is similar to how honda's IMA engines work as well.

There is a naming convention (more popular in Europe than here) to describe parallel hybrid configurations, in which this is a "P1" (or "P1r") hybrid, and the E-Charger is a "P0" (or "P1f") hybrid. Although placed differently, they are functionally the same (they work only with the engine running).

P0 (or P1f)	The electric machine is connected with the internal combustion engine through a belt, on the front end accessory drive (FEAD)
P1 (or P1r)	The electric machine is connected directly with the crankshaft of the internal combustion engine
P2	The electric machine is side-attached (through a belt) or integrated between the internal combustion engine and the transmission; the electric machine is decoupled from the ICE and it has the same speed of the ICE (or multiple of it)
P3	The electric machine is connected through a gear mesh with the transmission output; the electric machine is decoupled from the ICE and it’s speed is a multiple of the wheel speed
P4	The electric machine is connected through a gear mesh on the rear axle of the vehicle; the electric machine is decoupled from the ICE and it’s located in the rear axle drive or in the wheels hub

By the way, EcoLaunch disappeared after that one post more than three years ago, without even acknowledging my response. I assume that was just another one of those jerks who are not serious and just want someone to hand them everything they need to know, without doing any work and without anyone disagreeing with them.

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rsteinke

· #5 · Aug 27, 2021

brian_ said:
Using energy from a stationary charger is not a fuel economy improvement, it's just replacing gasoline with utility electricity. Unfortunately that sort of nonsense claim is common for plug-in hybrids.

Except that car engines are only about 20-30% efficient while a stationary utility power plant is 50-60% efficient. A stationary power plant can use a lot more heavy emissions control technologies than what can be carried on a moving vehicle, and the stationary plant can be located away from population centers so its smog forming emissions have less health effects than a car tailpipe driving in a city.

Yes, a plug-in hybrid doesn't make emissions go away completely, but it is an improvement.

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brian_

· #6 · Aug 27, 2021

rsteinke said:
Except that car engines are only about 20-30% efficient while a stationary utility power plant is 50-60% efficient. A stationary power plant can use a lot more heavy emissions control technologies than what can be carried on a moving vehicle, and the stationary plant can be located away from population centers so its smog forming emissions have less health effects than a car tailpipe driving in a city.

Yes, a plug-in hybrid doesn't make emissions go away completely, but it is an improvement.

Nice selection of worst-case auto engine efficiency to best-case utility power plant efficiency, and full points for completely ignoring automotive emission controls and assuming that all utility plants are ideal.

I think that all emissions sources should ideally be right in the backyard of the people using what is being produced, because no one gives a crap about what is being emitted to air they are not breathing, or water they are not drinking, or put in land they cannot see. Unfortunately "pollution by dilution" and "out of sight, out of might" are still popular approaches.

But the comment was about fuel economy, and tendency for plug-in hybrid fans to count only the fuel used, and not the energy from the plug at all (as electricity, or as the fuel burned to make it), when claiming a "fuel economy improvement". Look, I drove 50 km on stored electricity from the plug and a few steps on one millilitre of fuel, so I'm ignoring the electrical energy and calculating my fuel economy as 0.002 litres per 100 km! Morons and scam artists.

Yes, any plug-in (hybrid or pure battery-electric) potentially offers some real improvement in overall energy consumption and perhaps emissions even though the energy source is some fossil fuel.

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