I always thought of the volt as twice the complexity, twice the responsibility.
You still have to keep track and change the oil, and the coolant. You still have a water pump and spark plugs and all this other stuff to keep track of.
Yes and no. The powertrain is big and expensive, but it's a fairly small fraction of the car's complexity. (And some parts of the cabin climate system are probably also high-voltage for power and packaging reasons, but that doesn't change the discussion here.)
But everything else, the instruments, the infotainment and telematics, the ADAS, the windows and wipers and headlights, seats and airbags and lock solenoids, the list goes on... That represents a lot of complexity and cost, a lot of moving parts, and it's all still 12-volt. Partly for legacy reasons, partly for safety. (There was a push 20 years ago to go 42 or 48 volts to make the wire thinner while still being LV/SELV safety, but legacy held it back.)
Plus all the undercar stuff, wheels and bearings and control arms and bushings, half-shafts and CV joints and boots and swaybars, wheels and tires and stuff, that just never changes, and since EVs tend to be heavier, they tend to be harder on all that stuff than their ICE counterparts.
So there's plenty of stuff you can service with good old mechanic skills and tools, and plenty of it needs servicing.
The Volt is even more complex; IIRC in some scenarios (such as when driving at high speed with a low battery) the internal combustion engine can also provide power to the drive train through mechanical means.
The Volt may not be simpler (Not saying it isn’t, but many of the parts you listed are in regular ICE cars, just in different proportions) — but that’s not inherently because it’s a hybrid.
Look at Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive. It is rather beautiful in its simplicity, and bypasses the need for a traditional automatic transmission — a part so complicated the big auto makers have mostly given up on designing in-house. Toyota’s HSD scales from the tiny Prius to Hylander, something a CVT can’t do reliably.
Hondas’s hybrids are also mechanically simpler by bypassing a transmission as well, and the ICE motor driving the wheels directly at highway speeds.
Failing transmissions are often the cause of a totaled older car, because it is an extremely complex and expensive part to replace.
I think it is a fallacy that EVs are simpler. You have just moved mechanical regulators to software so the complexity is hidden. I.e. instead of a timing belt you have an inverter etc. Instead of a water pump driven by a belt you habe an electrical pump cooling the batteries and motor.
At 48 volts you start running engine accessories off of the electrical bus instead of belts and pulleys. That means the engine isn't necessarily responsible for keeping everything under the hood running at all times. You might not need a water pump or the AC when the engine is off, except to keep the cabin comfortable. But you still need things like power steering and power brakes, stability control and other safety systems.
Also, you start getting economies of scale with all-electric car components that pull down the price of EVs over time, because they can use the same components.
it is ironic that while mechanically EVs are much simpler, they are only shipped with all the complexity from electronic side.
i am not an automobile engg, but the core parts required to run an EV (motor control, battery management, etc.) has to be comparable to the ECU that are in decades-old Hondas and Toyotas.
> The beauty of the Volt is: you are in an EV all the time.
Not entirely true, though it certainly gives you the impression of that. When out of battery and in Gen 2 especially the combustion engine does in fact transmit power to the wheels in most hybrid driving modes. It doesn't just generate electricity, it also provides motive force.
Maintenance, planned and breakage, is a huge differentiator in favor of EVs- there are simply less moving parts and the EV ones are usually simpler and more reliable.
Yeah, but electric cars have so many fewer moving parts that they just don’t need much maintenance at all. As someone who has an EV now, I’m never going back because EVs are just so much better overall.
Well, I think the idea is that while it would be difficult to work on an EV motor yourself, it's also much less necessary, as electric motors are much simpler, with far fewer moving parts. I don't know if we have enough data yet to evaluate, but EV's should be much lower maintenance in that regard.
Outside of the powertrain, seems like the rest of the car should be similar though, like tires and brakes, right?
I don't know enough about all the parts of the car, but generally speaking, many people have argued that an electric car is much simpler than a mechanical car. (Something to do with the complexity of the engine, gear, drive train etc).
If I recall, one study indicated that maintenance costs on an ev are a fraction of the current costs for that reason.
That said, a lot of EV have transmission and more fluids due to the need to improve temperature control. Until someone solves the battery chemistry problem again.
The Volt has a planetary gear system that is engaged at highway speeds when the gas engine is being used anyway. At certain speeds, it uses less gas to maintain speed that way instead of generating electricity and using it. When it is more efficient for the engine to supply electricity only, that is how it is done. I don't view this as a compromise at all. It wouldn't make sense to chose a less efficient path just to maintain some sort of purity.
Definitely, I saw this from working on hybrids when I was a mechanic. The transmissions were simpler, the engine rarely needed any work since they ran less than a gas only car. They barely needed any brake work since the electric motor does most of the stopping.
A full electric pretty much eliminates all the work besides replacing tires and replacing the brakes maybe once in the car's lifetime.
Some customers with older evs will need new batteries but the price of a battery is so expensive that dealers won't have a lot of room for markup and it only takes a few hours to replace one.
Whoever is saying electric vehicles has reduced complexity has no idea what they are taking about. Literally none. It’s complete fantasy.
The THEORY you could make an EV less complex is probably true, but the REALITY is not.
There isn’t a single EV in the world today that is less complex than it’s non-EV relative.
Chrysler and GM EV and HEV specially I’ve worked on both have entirely separate bus systems just for the power train, this is on top of the already existing PT bus that the ICE vehicles all have. The battery heater, the battery pump/cooler, the multiple charging systems, the additions to the transmissions systems, the ABS systems in ICE that handle stability control were already complex, now more so because they are entirely new devices that bring in regenerative braking and efficiency. All the software has changed around target torques/rpm/target gear for mileage. There is no other brand that defies my assertion.
Literally everything in an EV is more complex. Didn’t have to be, but is.
Priuses are with the dual drive train. Chevy Volts are not, the generator is much simpler than a normal car engine. You are trading a normal ICE for an electric + generator combination, which is mechanically simpler (transmission is basically non-existent, for example). Not as simple as an EV, but can be simpler than a normal ICE.
You still have to keep track and change the oil, and the coolant. You still have a water pump and spark plugs and all this other stuff to keep track of.
AND you have all the EV worries like the battery.
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