ELECTRIC VEHICLES - The internal technology
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Click on the image below to download a slideshow (pdf format)about the evolution from fuel cars to EVs.
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Written version: What's the difference between an EV, a hybrid, an extended range vehicle?
| INTERNAL COMBUSTION: |
A gasoline engine directly provides the energy to
turn the wheels.
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| PURE EV: |
An electric engine, fueled by electricity that
is stored in the batteries, provides the
energy to directly turn the wheels.
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| HYBRIDS: | Before getting from internal combustion to EVs, the industry (or shall we say Toyota) created a transition technology: hybrids. The name itself shows that this technology mixed a bit of each of both worlds - electricity and gasoline. There are basically two kind of hybrids, even if nowadays these technologies are also being combined. | ||
| PARALLEL HYBRIDS: | The first Toyota Prius for example. Here, the car has two engines: a gasoline engine and an electric engine that can both directly provide the energy to turn the wheels (at the same time or not). Typically, at slow speed, the electric engine works alone, and when going faster, the gasoline engine kicks in. Obviously, parallel hybrids have a gasoline tank to fuel the internal combustion engine and a battery pack to provide energy to the electric engine. The gasoline tank is fuelled at the gas station, while the batteries get their electricity from the kinetic energy recovered when decelerating, as well as from some quantity of energy provided from the gasoline engine that does not goes to the drivetrain but to this other purpose. | ||
| SERIES HYBRIDS: | In this case, we have again two engines (an internal combustion one and an electric one), but only the electric engine provides the energy to turn the wheels. Instead, the gasoline engine is there to fuel a generator that creates electricity to pump the electric engine and charges the batteries. We still have a fuel tank and a battery pack. The electric engine has therefore two sources of power: the electric generator and the batteries. We can see that there are many ways to combine those different elements (electric engine working only through the battery, or getting also electricity directly from the generator before it is stored in the battery, etc.). This illustrates what we mentioned at the beginning, that these technologies are getting melted in order to extract the highest benefit. | ||
| EXTENDED-RANGE EVs: | Actually an evolution from hybrids (series or parallel). The Chevy Volt is a series hybrid extended-range. The addition here is that the battery pack can also be directly charged with electricity, through any plug. The aim is to avoid using the gasoline engine at all, but to keep it as an insurance for when the batteries are depleted. | ||
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