Edit: corrected a mistaken assessment here. Yes, Volt is closest on the market but it's a horrible car.
My point is that every single car produced from VW to Ferrari can get 50% better fuel efficiency if the auto manufacturers changed their approach to the problem.
50%? That is only in the worst case of stop and go traffic.
The volt and pirus are a small aerodynamic cars. They would get in the upper 30mpg range with a traditional power train. On the highway they could get better mpg with the right traditional power train (0-60 times would be in the 20 second range - there are obvious reason nobody does this). That hybrid system is just extra weight once the battery is exhausted so you need a slightly bigger engine to haul it around on pure highway driving.
Don't get me wrong, hybrid makes sense for most people. However it isn't that the system is more efficient for everything, it is that for the way most people [want to] drive it pulls in enough advantages to be worth the negatives.
One word: customers. People wouldn't buy them. The cost to add a motor/generator and storage battery to a car is substantial, and for most buyers, they'll never recover the cost in fuel savings over their ownership.
Close, except for they lobbed a motorcycle engine into an electric car and called it a "range-extender" but the engine can't generate power to meet maximum demand of the car's electrical system.
So, instead of putting the motorcycle engine in as an afterthought take a 1.5l turbo as the primary source of electricity generation.
> So, instead of putting the motorcycle engine in as an afterthought take a 1.5l turbo as the primary source of electricity generation.
This is kinda what they did on my new 225xe.
7(?)kWh battery, decent electrical drive, and said 1.5l turbo for if the car needs more power or range.
Under real-world conditions, the battery seems to be good for about 40km of electrical driving in my current temperate climate (where I don't really need cooling or heating).
The 225xe looks like a completely different system, it's not a series hybrid where the ICE feeds into the electric engine, it's a parallel hybrid with completely separate drivetrains, the electric engine in propulsion and the ICE in traction (which can be used at the same time for 4WD).
Why put a bigger motor in? You really don't need to meet the max power consumption of the electric motors, that's what the battery is there for.
However, I will point out that the i3 REX gets relatively poor fuel economy when running on gas -- only about 40 mpg, nowhere near what a parallel-hybrid Prius can get.
My point is that every single car produced from VW to Ferrari can get 50% better fuel efficiency if the auto manufacturers changed their approach to the problem.