tl;dr: my PHEV does change gears when in EV mode, as weird as it sounds
So, I drive a Hyundai Ioniq Plug-in Hybrid EV. It’s a hybrid with a larger battery so it can plug it in and drive full-EV on the battery for ~30 miles/50 kilometers. The freaky thing is that the EV motor is connected to the transmission, so it does switch gears sometimes and you can feel it when it does. Even freakier is that this also applies to regenerative braking: when you slow down from a high speed, you can sometimes feel it switching gears while you brake. That all isn’t too bad since it’s got a dual-clutch transmission and so it switches gears pretty quickly, but it can still be a bit freaky at times.
Additionally: there are some people who have converted antique cars to EVs, but to save money they didn’t touch the transmission and instead elected only to replace the engine. They still have manual transmissions in them, though I suppose you could probably just find a suitable gear to leave them on 100% of them time. Still, you can, in principle, switch gears on them.
bitwaba@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I imagine you “can”, it’s just not very effective. Like, if they allowed you to switch it to regenerative breaking and let it roll down a hill. The problem is you can’t get out any more energy than you put in. So if the battery is dead and you roll down the hill you won’t be able to rull any farther up the other side than you started (even less when you factor in mechanical -> electrical -> mechanical. You’d probably better off putting it in neutral [if that’s a thing for electric cars] and just let it roll)
zurohki@aussie.zone 11 months ago
No, you actually can’t.
For safety reasons, the 400V main battery isn’t hardwired to the car. There’s a couple of contactors powered by the 12V battery that connect it to the car.
If your 12V battery dies, the contactors open and the car is completely dead. You have to jump it or replace the 12V battery, then the contactors pull in, then the main battery can start charging the 12V.
Even plugging it in doesn’t work - the car won’t take a charge if the electronics are dead.
If the main battery is dead but the 12V hasn’t died yet, you can try regenning down a hill or plugging in or whatever. But if you lose the 12V, the car’s bricked.
ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 11 months ago
just bridge them with a screw driver
bitwaba@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah, obviously there’s technical reasons why. I was just approaching the problem theoretically. And then showing why the theory is stupid. It makes sense that they would implement other things for safety, especially if avoiding them only enabled a completely useless solution to a dead battery.
ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 11 months ago
We just need to make all roads go downhill
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Both ways.