I wonder if hybrid being more reliable than gasoline cars is simply a function of most of those being Toyota, versus any effect stemming from the car being Hybrid.
A standard hybrid (of the sort that a range of companies make, handwavingly a parallel hybrid with creep capability, which a PHEV is just a supersized version of) eliminates a huge swath of things that go wrong with ICEs.
First and foremost, the transmission replaces the rather staggering pile of complexity of a modern automatic transmission, typically, with "a few motor/generators, some planetary gears, maybe a band that only engages when a motor is already stopped, and some power electronics." Compared to the 9+ speed automatics, this is dramatically simpler. Quite a few hybrids don't even have a mechanical reverse gear, it's just using the electronics for that brief period.
But, beyond that, you generally aren't asking the engine to idle, or to provide "starting torque" for the car - the hybrid system handles that sort of thing well. On at least the Gen 1 Volts, the motor "idles" at about 1200-1300 RPM, vs the ~750 RPM in most other vehicles, because it's almost never needed at low speed (heating in the dead of winter is the one time I notice it). But you don't have low speed, high load operation on the engines (which is a hard regime to operate in), and you don't have rapid speed changes with gear shifts (which is certainly more stressful than smooth speed changes or continuous speed operation).
You have less brake system wear, and... it goes on.
I know there's this popular "Hybrids/PHEVs are the most complicated of both worlds, so they must be the most unreliable of all worlds!" thing going around, but the data is quite clear that they're exceedingly reliable in actual use, and the "most complicated of all worlds" things tends to zoom out far enough to avoid looking at the transmission or engine design at any level of detail.
> "First and foremost, the transmission replaces the rather staggering pile of complexity of a modern automatic transmission, typically, with "a few motor/generators, some planetary gears, maybe a band that only engages when a motor is already stopped, and some power electronics." Compared to the 9+ speed automatics, this is dramatically simpler. Quite a few hybrids don't even have a mechanical reverse gear, it's just using the electronics for that brief period."
There are very few PHEVs that aren't using the same automatic gearbox as the plain-ole ICE model. You are describing the architecture the Prius uses I guess? In almost all cases the manufacturer just wraps a small electric motor around the output shaft of the same automatic gearbox connected to a small battery.
Mazda PHEVs - same auto gearboxes
BMW PHEVs - same auto gearboxes
Volvo PHEVs - same auto gearboxes
Mercedes PHEVs - same auto gearboxes
etc
There are probably some other exceptions i'm missing, but few PHEVs have a custom gearbox. While they may be just as reliable in many cases, they are almost always more complex designs than their ICE variants.
Toyota and US brands tend to adopt Series-Parallel hybrid system. European tend to adopt Parallel hybrid system like you listed, and Mazda/Hyundai want to be like an European. Japanese tend to adopt Series hybrid system.
Series-Parallel and Series hybrid remove transmission so possibly there's an reliability advantage. For Parallel hybrid, it's electric addon so I don't know there are reliability advantage.
"There are very few PHEVs that aren't using the same automatic gearbox as the plain-ole ICE model."
Except the most popular hybrid, the prius, which admittedly does t have a non/hybrid counterpart because it was done from the ground up to avoid unnecessary legacy technology
Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV uses a GKN 'multi-mode dedicated hybrid' transmission with some notable differences than a standard auto gearbox.
Some Lexus & Toyota hybrids and PHEVs use the eCVT transmission, which uses 2-3 electric motors inside to adjust torque rather than a belt.
The Subaru Crosstrek PHEV (internationally also called the e-boxer platform for the Forester hybrid) uses a Toyota eCVT variant that also still facilitates symmetrical AWD instead of a separate electrical motor driving the rear axle.
As I said, there are exceptions, but broadly its just slap motors on output shafts. The motor is usually designed to bolt onto an existing automatic transmission housing.
Are you using PHEV as "Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicle" in the sense of "Has a long range on battery only"?
The ones I'm familiar with (which, admittedly, don't cover the ones you use) are all "parallel drivetrain" sorts of things, with a Prius-type transmission. Though I'm really only familiar with the Prius and Volt type drivetrains.
No - I'm using it in the exact same sense Consumer Reports did here and the car industry at large does - Hybrid cars that have a CCS charging port or similar and can run on electric only propulsion for some period of time. There are far more PHEV models on sale than just the Volt and Prius. If I recall correctly, the Volt isn't even sold anymore.
This is the same definition wikipedia uses too:
"A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is a hybrid electric vehicle whose battery pack can be recharged by plugging a charging cable into an external electric power source, in addition to internally by its on-board internal combustion engine-powered generator."
> I know there's this popular "Hybrids/PHEVs are the most complicated of both worlds, so they must be the most unreliable of all worlds!" thing going around, but the data is quite clear that they're exceedingly reliable in actual use, and the "most complicated of all worlds" things tends to zoom out far enough to avoid looking at the transmission or engine design at any level of detail.
The article suggests plug-in hybrids are nearly 150% more prone to issues than regular cars though? I mean, I have one, and it seems good so far, but it contradicts your assertions.
Hmm, I don't have the numbers to compare and draw any conclusions, but aren't many (most?) Toyota hybrids using CVT transmissions? The newest Yaris doesn't have a "real" CVT (eCVT with planetary gears instead) but the old one does. Those are not used in the none hybrid Toyotas at all as far as I know. Also CVTs have huge reliability problems, at least in some cars (Honda comes to mind).
Hybrid motors take a lot of stress from the ICE during load changes. This makes the ICEs potentially live much longer. A lot of taxis areound here are older hybrid Toyotas. They must have at least 400,000km mileage already.
A taxi driver in Vancouver had a 2004 Prius and drove it 1 million kilometres with only regular maintenance and no failures. Toyota bought it back from him and took it to Japan to study it.
It looks like it wasn't the 1+M km version that they bought back, but the chap was an early adopter of Prius in that taxi role, and they bought back (exchanged?) his first one from 2001:
> For those working on the next generation Prius 2004 model, Grant’s taxi held invaluable information about wear and tear.They struck a deal: Grant sent his 2001 model back to Japan for testing and had a brand new 2003 model delivered.
I thought maybe it was from mostly keeping the ICE engine in a comfortable power-rpm band, rarely making it lug at low RPM's to get the car going, rarely reving up to high RPM's, and never idling the engine, it's either running under load to charge the battery (or drive the car), or turned off.
My Toyota hybrid reliably does not start after 4 weeks not driving. The 12 volt (1 year old) battery is drained too much after such a period of inactivity. I was not expecting this from Toyota, pretty disappointing.
This is true of basically every car ever. Lead acid batteries can’t maintain a charge forever. Get a battery tender if you aren’t going to drive for long periods of time. If you only drive once a month do you even need to own a car? Just rent/uber when you occasionally need a car.
Is it the stock battery or after-market? Even if you bought it one year ago, when was it filled with acid? Many auto parts stores sell sealed lead-acid batteries as "new" when they've been sitting on the shelf for a year and the clock starts ticking when the acid goes in. You can get higher quality AGM batteries that will last far longer, but know they are quite expensive. Alternatively, you have a parasitic battery drain going on with your car.
Happened to my wife's ex-Toyota CHR hybrid (not plug-in hybrid) after 5 weeks of vacation. I hooked a CTEK charger to it for 8 to 12 hours and all was good again. I didn't leave the car on the CTEK charger for five weeks because it was parked outside and not at our place.
Otherwise CTEK chargers are really nice. Certain car brands like Porsche while sell you a "Porsche charger" for two or three times the price but it's just a CTEK charger re-branded with the Porsche logo on it.
If you've got a garage with electricity, it's an option. If you don't want to let the car on the charger during 5 weeks, just connect it as soon as you come back and in a few hours the car is ready.
I have a VW bus that doesn't see a lot of use and with a bit of fiddling it was easy enough to run a (fused) connector to just behind the grill with a little rubber lid to make it waterproof. That allows me to plug in a trickle charger without having to open the hood. That little trick has saved me multiple batteries already.
I could have gone that route but it would require the cable to go into the interior from the outside so that's why I hardwired it to the front. It also helps that I park it with its nose to the garage so the wire is very short and I just let it dangle down when it isn't in use.
My Honda Hybrid is the same way, sometimes I go weeks between drives and if I park it for more than a couple weeks, I plug it into a 12V battery charger to keep the 12V battery topped up.
But I blame the car's smart features (that use the cell modem to allow remote start, etc) rather than it being a hybrid. I suspect that the non-hybrid model would be the same.
My 1991 Honda motorcycle does this too. I can promise you that it has no smart features. It doesn’t even have a fuel pump. Lead acid batteries just don’t have long shelf lives.
Well I get that lead acid batteries experience self discharge, my 2003 era car will go for over a month with around 20% discharge (it'll be around 12.4V), but after 2 or 3 weeks, my 2020 Honda will be at 50% discharge (around 12.0V).
I'd like to think that at some point the parasitic drain devices will shut down before they drain the battery completely, but I've never tested it beyond that point, I always plug in the charger if the car's going to be parked for more than a couple weeks. I installed a charger plug that comes out the front grill so I can plug it into the battery maintainer without even opening the hood.
> I always plug in the charger if the car's going to be parked for more than a couple weeks.
To this day, since ~1980, I disconnect the +ve battery lead if the cars not going to be used for a few days or parked up in the bush waiting for when we get back from a walk.
Stops parasitic drains and Heisenbug discharges when thermal expansion during a very hot day causes a hard to track short.
My 2019 vehicle's manual explicitly says not to do this, and that if the battery fully discharges you should make a follow-up service appointment to frobnicate the computers. I miss older cars.
Lead acid gel batteries hold their charge MUCH better than standard lead acid batteries. The difference is gel lead acid often self-discharge around 1% per month but standard lead acid batteries self-discharge on the order of 10% per month. I only use gel batteries on my small engine equipment like snowmobiles, motorcycles, and snowblower.
One thing I never understood is why hybrids have the 12 volt battery at all. Couldn't the entertainment system etc be powered from the 200V EV battery (after stepping it down obviously)?
Everything on the 12V system essentially is powered from the traction battery (the big one that can power the motors), once the car is turned on.
In Toyota, at least, the traction battery is completely disconnected (via a relay) when the car is off. The 12V battery is needed to power anything on the 12V system up until the car starts-- that includes the car's computer, which is what (after doing all its self-checks and whatnot) activates that relay and connects the traction battery to everything else in the car.
The traction battery isn't always connected probably mostly for safety reasons (having 400-someodd volts energized across the whole car even when it doesn't need it isn't great), but that also keeps it from getting excessively drained if something in the car malfunctions. It's pretty cheap to replace a 12V lead-acid battery if it's overdischarged after you left the lights on... the big hybrid battery, not so much.
Some EVs will monitor the 12V battery and periodically connect the traction battery to the DC-DC converter to maintain the 12V battery when the car is parked for an extended period of time. (On the older Smart EVs, this doesn’t have a limit, so the traction battery will kill itself trying to maintain a weak 12V battery. There’s a firmware patch for it.)
My Kia EV6 does that, and when the 800V battery pack is charging the 12V battery while parked, an orange light on top of the dashboard goes on.
This had me worried the first few times it happened. Then I found out it is a warning to mechanics/tow truck drivers/first responders that the high voltage system is energized.
There's a lot of Tier 3 supplier…stuff…in a car that was architected for 1978 and has never had a thorough re-think, because the profit margin is like nothing.
12v is such a common top-rail voltage for electronics of all kinds, I think its a bit more that than "car makers are too greedy to manufacture 400v headlights."
No. Or, at least, not easily. The high voltage battery isn't generally connected until "the computers are happy" with the state of things, for various hybrids/EVs/etc.
There's also a legal requirement that "marker lights and such" still work (presumably, also power locks and such) after a prime mover failure. Basically, if the engine quits, you should still be able to signal, get over, turn your 4-ways on, etc.
The easiest solution is to just put a lead acid 12V battery in the car for that. Lithium, in particular, is a problem below freezing because you can't safely charge it, whereas lead doesn't have that problem.
Because they want to completely disconnected the big battery when not in use to prevent phantom drain, and you need a little power to run passive systems that need to be on still (like remote keys etc).
Some EVs like Tesla now use a separate lithium ion 12v battery that should last forever, instead of a lead acid 12v battery with a limited life span.
Even if they don’t have a 12v battery they still have to have a 12v system for reasons others mentioned and because it’s a requirement to sell cars in the USA. My Porsche Taycan has jump start lugs for the benefit of other cars and so I can have my low voltage systems operate with some help from another car.
My mild hybrid Audi is the same way. Gas engine, 48v accessory belt run battery, and that 48v battery works in tandem with a small 12v battery for the low voltage system.
I own 3 Kia’s and they all have various problems, including really big problems, but this is an area they got right. On my daily driver, the Kia Niro, it has a battery button that instantly charges the 12v from the HEV battery. I’ve only needed it once, when I left a light on camping, but it was like magic.
Edit: A friend of mine just got a free engine swap for her... 2012-ish Optima. It threw a CEL on the highway, had the appropriate trouble code, and bam, new engine from the dealership when she told them the code.
I did some analysis of the Tesla 12V system back in 2016, and I'm amazed the batteries lasted as long as they did with how badly they abused the lead acid battery!
Welcome to the motorcycling world! Today's cars continually start the engine - that's a huge draw. If you're going to leave your car sit more than a couple weeks then you should put your battery on a tender. Motorcyclists have been doing that for decades.
Yeah, I (not really) joke that everything on the hill gets plugged in. It makes life a lot easier.
Even with no idle draw, lead acid batteries self discharge over time. Life got way easier when I just accepted it, and now I've got a pile of 6V/12V battery tenders that go into just about everything (I have no shortage of 6V vehicles out here too). That and block heaters. The tractor and truck both appreciate them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a component. But I would be surprised if that’s a primary reason.
There’s just a lot more to go wrong with an ICE vehicle. You need oil and regular oil changes. A radiator, tubing, and antifreeze. An alternator. A carburetor and a catalytic converter. Timing belts. A exhaust system. None of this (as far as I know, IANAM) is needed for an electric vehicle.
A disproportionate amount of what’s under the hood of an ICE has to do with managing the consequences of the “C” component of that acronym (heat, combustion gases, electricity generation, lubrication, carbon deposits).
You may have misread the parent comment, which talked about HYBRID vehicles being more reliable than ICE-only vehicles. Hybrid vehicles include all of the comments of an ICE vehicle, plus they have electric batteries and motors, and may have a system of transferring power from either system to the wheels. Overall they have higher complexity than either ICE or electric-only vehicles.
They have higher complexity, but also more redundancy. Likely neither of the powertrains experiences the same rate of wear and tear as either would experience on ther own.
This is not true, at least for the most popular Toyota hybrid drive train. It's probably got fewer moving parts than the ICE counterpart by virtue of dispensing with the automatic transmission. See sibling comment:
Most of the images there are broken, all I see are some conceptual block diagram type things. Find a teardown of the hybrid unit and compare to a teardown of any automatic, look at the actual internal complexity and moving parts. I was surprised. Here's a video of the P710: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O61WihMRdjM
Slightly OT, but I recently found that here in Germany there is a service where you can go to just like to a car wash without making an appointment. They will do the oil change for you within ten minutes or so and you do not even have to get out of your car during that time. This makes oil changes so much less annoying.
Jiffy Lube had 1,000 locations in the U.S. in 1989. According to my experience in the 1990s (limited mostly to the Midwest), quick oil change shops were ubiquitous even in small towns.
I’ve never seen a shop that will let anyone stay in the vehicle while it was being worked on, even for something so simple as an oil change. Where did you find one?
In the US, this is really common. There a few big chains, like Jiffy Lube and Valvoline, but also a lot of local places. Just look for "drive thru oil change" on Google Maps
I don't think so. You're using two low load, low power systems combined. The least reliable ICE systems almost always correlate to the more powerful ones.
First and foremost, the transmission replaces the rather staggering pile of complexity of a modern automatic transmission, typically, with "a few motor/generators, some planetary gears, maybe a band that only engages when a motor is already stopped, and some power electronics." Compared to the 9+ speed automatics, this is dramatically simpler. Quite a few hybrids don't even have a mechanical reverse gear, it's just using the electronics for that brief period.
But, beyond that, you generally aren't asking the engine to idle, or to provide "starting torque" for the car - the hybrid system handles that sort of thing well. On at least the Gen 1 Volts, the motor "idles" at about 1200-1300 RPM, vs the ~750 RPM in most other vehicles, because it's almost never needed at low speed (heating in the dead of winter is the one time I notice it). But you don't have low speed, high load operation on the engines (which is a hard regime to operate in), and you don't have rapid speed changes with gear shifts (which is certainly more stressful than smooth speed changes or continuous speed operation).
You have less brake system wear, and... it goes on.
I know there's this popular "Hybrids/PHEVs are the most complicated of both worlds, so they must be the most unreliable of all worlds!" thing going around, but the data is quite clear that they're exceedingly reliable in actual use, and the "most complicated of all worlds" things tends to zoom out far enough to avoid looking at the transmission or engine design at any level of detail.