Hello everyone this is John again. What I'd like to talk about today is what I'd
like to see in the next generation of Niro plug-in hybrid.
This is brought about by a video that I saw by Alec, on Technology Connections,
where he talked about his Chevy Volt and whether a Chevy Volt-like car has a place
in today's market. I will have a link to that video in the
description as well as on the end card. The Niro currently has an 8.9 kWh
Lithium ion battery and that is good
enough to barely meet the needs for somebody who
wants a plug-in hybrid. It doesn't make it a good bridge between
the electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles. It makes it more of
a hybrid with a longer battery rather than an EV with an extended range.
One of things I'd like to see is, as Alec mentioned,
a version of the Niro that has a larger battery.
The Niro EV has about a 64 kWh battery
and if i took that battery and divided it into four pieces
I could make four plug-in hybrids each with a 16 kilowatt hour battery.
I could take the current battery and double it, and that would give me 17.8 kWn
The slightly larger 17.8 kWh
battery would give me a 56 to 72 mile range or 90 to 116 km range.
This is a significant improvement over the range of the current battery.
Another thing the larger battery pack would provide is the ability to heat the
cabin in winter time. I'm not talking about heating it when it
gets well below freezing, but it would be nice to be able to heat
the cabin on electric power as it gets close to freezing. That way I
would have a longer portion of the year that i could
just use electric and not have to worry about burning gasoline.
Now, as you can tell there's no room back here for
twice the battery. This 8.9 kilowatt hour battery takes the entire sub-floor
and so we'd have to find a better place to put that. Fortunately
the chassis for the plug-in hybrid the hybrid and electric vehicle are all
the same and so in the electric vehicle what KIA chose to do
was underneath the car is where they put the storage for
the battery pack. This means we already have a location that could hold
the larger battery pack needed for an extended range plug-in hybrid. What that
also means is the emission control system, where the
catalytic converter and exhaust is currently, that's running through the
center of the vehicle. That would have to be pushed off to one side
and that's what Ford is doing with their Explorer
plug-in hybrid. In addition to the longer range you would also have a faster
charger. The current Niro plug-in hybrid charger
is 3.3 kilowatts and that's mainly because the batteries
can't handle a larger charge rate. Doubling the battery would
allow us to at least double the charge rate so this could go to a 6.6 kilowatt
charger. This means you could charge the battery from empty to full in the same
amount of time with the higher density battery as it does currently.
One of the things that i have talked about in the previous videos
is how the motors interact. If you went to a more
Chevy Volt or even the Toyota P{rius style
powertrain or drivetrain, you would have to completely redo
the engine compartment here. You'd still need to have your power converter,
but the engine part would not have to be nearly
as large. The current engine is situated such that it can provide the
power needed to drive down the highway or to
accelerate quickly. If we turn the engine into primarily a generator
then that could stand to be about half the size it currently is,
which would help save engine compartment room. Another thing is
electric motors are smaller than gas engines,
so if we took the 40 kilowatt-hour electric motor that we currently have,
turn that into the starter/generator. What that allow us to do is,
that can be tied directly to the gas engine,
when the gas engine runs it drives that 40 kilowatt engine as a generator
and charges the batteries. It also means that
you would have room for an 80 kilowatt engine
which is roughly the same size as the gas engine right now.
Based on the needs of the car, you'd use the 40 kilowatt engine to drive.
If you need quick acceleration it can change over to the 80 kilowatt engine.
If it needs to charge a battery then it turns on the gas engine
and drives the smaller electric motor, and life becomes a lot easier.
Unfortunately, the way this is designed is a quick and dirty conversion from
a gas engine to a hybrid. You would have to redesign
the power distribution system. The Toyota
uses a power split device, so we can have the two electric motors and the gas
engine connected at once and redirect power as needed. Ii don't
know how the Chevy Volt worked, but either way
that would allow you to redo this and hopefully save
a little bit of weight, because you don't need as much of a gas
engine. Yes, you do have a slightly larger battery, but
that is not overly large concern. This last piece I'm pretty sure is
something that's only important to me, but i want to see a passenger seat
that is as adjustable as the driver's seat. I understand that that is a very
common thing in vehicles that the passenger seat, these
are either manual or far less capable in the driver's seat.
At least in the Midwest, if I'm driving, it tends to be a four
hour drive, it's not a half hour drive, it's not a
local commute. With that, the comfort for the passenger
is important. I know that KIA makes right hand drive
versions of the Niro, so they do have fully adjustable seats in
this position. It'd be nice if i could actually go out and buy one
as part of a package, because this basically means that I can't take
my family distances. We have to take a different vehicle, which means we have to
have two cars when one could normally do.