this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2025
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Electric Vehicles
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How is this different than a hybrid?
It is a hybrid, but there are categories of hybrid called Serial and Parallel. Parallel hybrids use both power from electric and ICE motors for traction while Serial hybrids use exclusively electric traction motors.
Serial hybrids were tried a few times but they were designed by committee and sucked ass. The first generation Chevy Volt was mentioned in other comments, but no one mentioned how awful it was to drive. The car was super cramped for your average american and it has an extremely undersized electric motor that only output 88 kW. But the gas economy was great - you could reasonably get 100 mpg.
Tesla was only just beginning to gain popularity and show that a BEV with a properly sized motor is a great vehicle. So, naturally, Chevy decided to take that lesson and ignore it when they redesigned the second generation Volt to be a parallel hybrid. Idiots.
Btw when purchasing a hybrid, consider that it has the drivetrain of two cars - twice as many failure points and it requires specialist mechanics. BEV *should* be 1/3 the parts and 1/5th the failure points of their PHEV counterparts.
That aside, there are a few other projects out there that are planning to add a range extending motor to a BEV. Notably the new Scout SUV is going to have that option. Honestly I'm pissed that we haven't seen this approach in more performance oriented vehicles where they could optimize to have the battery sized for roughly 50 km of high intensity driving with a lightweight generator to give it a normal range. I'd fucking love a Miata of that style. Instead all of the performance vehicles have a battery the size of a house and they make it a CUV. Uhg.
Hybrid systems can be more reliable than traditional ones. Hybrid transmissions can be much simpler than traditional transmissions because the electric motors are capable of providing a lot more low end torque than an IC engine. The engine may still be used to drive the wheels but the load on the engine is much more consistent due to the electric motors taking the grunt of the load under acceleration/deceleration.
It's not more reliable if you still have the ICE engine. They've got a million friggen moving parts for the sake of allowing for efficiency and a wide torque band. There's a reason old vehicles are looked at as more reliable - even though they still fail, they have fewer parts to maintain and replace. Modern engines are an insane jumble of "why's this there" and everything is crammed into the smallest package possible.
I notice this in mine. The electric motor does most of the speed changing work. From stop to start is obvious, but also while changing speeds once moving. The tachometer reads pretty consistent, but the electric motor adds the speed.
@wetbeardhairs has a good explanation, but i wanted to highlight the single key difference.
Extended Range means the engine doesnt connect to the wheels. All the engine does is spin a generator. No trans or torque converter. Its not really part of the powertrain anymore.
Just a bigass generator under the hood. The engine powers the HV lines on the car, so it can charge the battery or power the traction motor.
Electric generators/motors are pretty efficient, so you dont actually lose much power in this process, and the systems controls on series HEVs is easy. Just turn on the engine if the battery is low
At a guess, the drivetrain is electric only and the "gas generator" outputs DC power either to the battery or directly to the electric motors.
I thought some hybrids were doing that already.
This category normally is considered EV rather than hybrids because of the ICE not being connected to the wheels. They are usually called "EREVs" for Extended Range Electric Vehicles. The BMW i3 with the optional range extender of the first generation Chevrolet Volt / Opel Ampera are examples of it.
PHEVs (Plugin Hybrid-Electric Vehicles) are what they're called when you can charge the vehicle as well, but the internal combustion engine is connected to the drivetrain rather than just the battery.
It's called a series hybrid.
A series hybrid is something else. The BMW X1 PHEV is a series hybrid. The gas motor drives the front wheels, the electric motor drives the rear wheels.
that's called a ttr hybrid
Some models of the BMW i3 and Chevy Volt could do this but were still referred to as EVs.
The names are based on the powertrain and not whether they have an electric and/or ICE motor?
That's silly.
In a hybrid, the ICE is attached to the wheels.
They have been since at least 2013 if you only count the range extender BMW i3, and even earlier if you count PHEVs that mostly act that way but occasionally mechanically link the engine and wheels
I think the generator charges the battery vs ICE using the gasoline directly. This is more like all the benefits of an EV with only the downside of fuel does bad from the ICE.
So it's a Chevy volt or BMW i3 style PHEV?