The Prius has 2 electric motors and the ICE connected to the "PSD" planetary gear set. Its very similar to the Volt, except the volt has clutches in the system to allow parts to disengage completely.
You will note the Prius CAN be driven with the ICE removed, however it cannot be driven on the ICE alone.
http://eahart.com/prius/psd/
I would argue that the very good diagram you linked to demonstrates how different the implementation of the two cars is, even ignoring battery size and power outputs. They use the PSD design in fundamentally different ways. The Ford hybrids ARE basically the same in implementation as the Toyotas.
As a user experience, the Volt is completely different. The Prius architecture as it exists is not capable of behaving the same way no matter how big the battery is made.
Regardless, I always find this line of discussion puzzling. By the definition others are using, a '78 Malibu is just like a CTS-V. They're both V8 powered RWD four door sedans! They have 4 wheels! The Malibu is basically the same except for the supercharger. Heck, the Malibu is MORE like the CTS-V than the Volt is like a Prius IMHO.
steved033 wrote:DaewooOfDeath wrote:But wait....we ALL have other/another car/cars.....so EV's make sense to you! sjdmfennell wrote:I really would like to try one out. EVs make a lot of sense to me, if you have another car for long trips. The Volt is basically an EV without the need for another car. My criticism is really mostly for hybrids like the Prius or Lexus LS600h.Chris_V wrote:I've been in an '11 TDI Golf several times. I would not swap my Volt for one. To be fair, the Golf owner would not trade it for my Volt either. :) Aside from being surprisingly fun to drive, I have grown to really love exchanging 3 seconds/day plugging it in for buying gas. Perhaps its a personal malfunction but I just hate buying gas, which I did a whole lot of before the Volt. My personal record is nearly 4 months between fill-ups. Aside from a few ozs here and there, I only use gas on long drives where I'll be stopping at a rest area anyway.DaewooOfDeath wrote: I've never driven a Volt, so I can't say for sure, but I have a very hard time believing it's anywhere near as much fun to drive as a playful, torquey, fast warm hatchback.Your first sentence said it: YOU haven't driven one, which makes you rather ignorant on the subject. You really should drive one, 280 lb ft of torque right off idle is nothing to sneeze at, along with a low center of gravity for very planted handling.
I only have one car.
In reply to mfennell: th point of Pointing out the similarities :D is to counter the constant "the volt ONLY uses the ICE to charge the batteries so it's better because it an electric car with a generator" and the "the ICE is NEVER connected directly to the wheels unlike a prius."
Everybody wanted the volt to be an electric car with an onboard generator with no physical connections between the two except for wires and still tries to pretend it is. The way they did it works better and should be acknowledged for what it is.
The Wife, baby, car salesman, and myself piled into a Leaf today. Big stroller fits in back with room to spare. It was rush hour so I was a bit worried about merging into the 4 lane hwy the dealership sits off from. The nissan had no problems scooting out.
I am sold. Just gotta walk SWMBO through the numbers.
bastomatic wrote: The Wife, baby, car salesman, and myself piled into a Leaf today. Big stroller fits in back with room to spare. It was rush hour so I was a bit worried about merging into the 4 lane hwy the dealership sits off from. The nissan had no problems scooting out. I am sold. Just gotta walk SWMBO through the numbers.
Nice!
The hatch area is bigger, at least in useful area, than the PT Cruisers was. I like it.
MrJoshua wrote: The volt and prius both use electric motors, an ICE , planetary gearsets and a battery pack. The volt uses a large electric motor and a large battery pack and relies on that as much as possible. The ICE is mainly used to charge but occasionally used to assist in motive force and at that time is indeed connected to the wheels. Most of the time it is not. The prius uses a tiny pack and smallish motors and relies primarily on the ICE with electric assist in all but a few instances. The ICE can be disconnected from the wheels but usually remains engaged. Both are similar designs but drastically different in implementation.
Very good way of putting it.
I sure did start a lively discussion.
The prius can most certainly drive around without its ICE on and lots of owners do, including me, today. The reason the ICE comes on so much is because the motor/generators are smaller than a volt's, as is the battery pack, as is befitting its price point. If you were to make a Volt's motor/generators and battery pack the same size as prius, you'd see similar ICE usage too, and a more similar price point. The similarities in the 'transmission' are supremely obvious. And btw:
By locking the generator electric motor (the Volt has two electric motors, remember, one primarily used as a generator) to the ICE so that the ICE drives the generator motor which then assists the primary motor. This is quite a bit different than the Prius setup, which, as you indicated, has the primary drive (the ICE) directly connected to the wheels, with the tiny electric motor (it only has one) assisting at low speeds.
That is absolutely not true. Each car has two electric motors and an ICE.
The ways that the Volt is different, and y'all have basically said this while trying to disagree with my point, is that it took the same basic ingredients and shuffled stuff between columns A B and C to make it feel and act more like a purely electric car. Nevertheless, it is MUCH more similar in construction to a Prius than it is to a Leaf or i-miev or other full EV and if you shuffled the apportionment to columns A B and C in a prius you could basically get a Volt driving experience from that as well. Even if you compare it to other hybrids, a Volt is vastly more similar to a Prius than it is to many other hybrids like an Insight or a Highlander or a Malibu or a Vue, etc etc.
Really, i dont see any reason to dispute this other than if you are clinging to 'different-ness' as some sort of status thing. 
I am sold. Just gotta walk SWMBO through the numbers.
Nice!! Here's hoping. 
Can anybody tell me why EVs don't usually have transmissions? The "range falls off at higher speeds" and "weak accelleration above 50 mph" things seem to be the pretty obvious consequences of having a motor with maximum torque at zero rpm and a torque curve that looks like this.
Tesla Roadster ^
Volt ^
Leaf ^
Is there a reason, for example, that you wouldn't want the Leaf to be turning 3,000 rpm all the time at WOT?
In reply to DaewooOfDeath:
For lots of reasons:
They are lossy, so any efficiency gains are going to be lost with friction and weight.
EV motors don't have much rotational inertia. This means that shifts are going to have to be done automatically or with no-lift shifting schedules to be realistic.
EV motors make a lot more torque than your graphs show at 0 RPM. That's brutal to a clutch or synchro.
Lots of other reasons, I'm sure, and I'm sure they will be overcome eventually, but for now, they are great as around town vehicles. I've gone 70 or so only once or twice now.
Are the losses that big through a transmission? I believe those charts reflect factory torque limiting programming.
I would think that a CVT would address all the other problems.
Talked Leaf with the wife last night. She's on board in theory and acknowledges that it makes total sense for her commute. The problem is that she thinks the car is lame. You can't possibly save enough gas to convince her to drive the Leaf over the 911.
She said all they have to do is repackage the leaf so it's an awesome looking 2 seater and we'll get one. It doesn't have to be technologically any different, just visually.
If you happened to be rewiring a garage from scratch, what would you put in in anticipation for the upcoming electric cars?
mazdeuce wrote: If you happened to be rewiring a garage from scratch, what would you put in in anticipation for the upcoming electric cars?
At this point, I'd just make sure you have a 220V line hooked up to an L6-30 outlet. That'll be all you need for any EV. If you wanted to buy your own EVSE down the road, you can, but they're expensive.
In reply to Klayfish:
Cool, that was the plan. The big thing I was going to do is make sure I had outlets in each of the two main parking spots.
DaewooOfDeath wrote: Are the losses that big through a transmission? I believe those charts reflect factory torque limiting programming. I would think that a CVT would address all the other problems.
I have no data here next to me, but the losses from a CVT are on the order of 10%. They are very lossy things.
Vigo wrote: That is absolutely not true. Each car has two electric motors and an ICE. The ways that the Volt is different, and y'all have basically said this while trying to disagree with my point, is that it took the same basic ingredients and shuffled stuff between columns A B and C to make it feel and act more like a purely electric car. Nevertheless, it is MUCH more similar in construction to a Prius than it is to a Leaf or i-miev or other full EV and if you shuffled the apportionment to columns A B and C in a prius you could basically get a Volt driving experience from that as well. Even if you compare it to other hybrids, a Volt is vastly more similar to a Prius than it is to many other hybrids like an Insight or a Highlander or a Malibu or a Vue, etc etc.
Basically you're saying that a VW Caddy and a Chevy Silverado are the same things, beause they both have 4 wheels and a pickup bed. Sorry, not gonna cut it. I've been studying the engineering of the Volt since 2006. it's an EV with a gas generator for backup, not a fancy Prius.
In reply to Chris_V:
In your version you would be arguing that mechanically the drivetrains of two different ICE rwd manual transmission vehicles are drastically different despite the fact that both have all the parts in the same order and location.
The volt and prius are VERY different, but the differences are more subtle when it comes to the mechanical design of the drivetrain.
MrJoshua wrote: Everybody wanted the volt to be an electric car with an onboard generator with no physical connections between the two except for wires and still tries to pretend it is. The way they did it works better and should be acknowledged for what it is.
Fair enough. The new BMW i3 with the optional range extender is of the pure-serial design everyone thought the Volt would be. It's 1000lbs lighter than the Volt, has a 35ish hp engine, and initial indications are that fuel economy will about the same when it's running on gasoline. It appears that you can play all the optimization tricks you want but you can't beat a mechanical connection (and the Volt isn't a pure, direct connection - you still need to spin the traction motor).
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DaewooOfDeath wrote: Can anybody tell me why EVs don't usually have transmissions? The "range falls off at higher speeds" and "weak accelleration above 50 mph" things seem to be the pretty obvious consequences of having a motor with maximum torque at zero rpm and a torque curve that looks like this.
TL;DR version: there might be some advantage but it would be small and everyone seems to make the same engineering trade that a multispeed gearbox is not worth the cost/weight/complexity penalty.
Electric motors are VERY efficient over a broad range of loads and RPM. The range falling off is a consequence of the effects of aero drag, not the loss of efficiency of the motor. Here's a Leaf efficiency chart:
The LOWEST efficiency number on that chart is 85% and the real meat of the curve is 90+. There's just not that much gain to be had with a multi-speed gearbox, certainly nothing like an ICE which has a comparatively very small island of maximum efficiency.
That said, there is some advantage. At light loads over 45mph, the Volt will spin both electric motors rather than just one. This is apparently worth 1 (one) mile of range with the car but remember that the Volt is already paying the freight of a more complicated drivetrain than a pure EV. I suspect you can't extrapolate the Volt numbers to a pure EV.
The new BMW i8 has a 2 speed gearbox for the electric motor part of its drivetrain.
BTW, here's what the entire 400hp Tesla Model S drivetrain looks like. It has about as many moving parts as an IAC. :)
What looks like two motors is actually the motor and the inverter. All the EVs on the market except the Tesla are based on platforms originally developed for ICEs. The ModelS really shows the packaging advantages of a dedicated EV platform.
Sonic wrote: The new BMW i8 has a 2 speed gearbox for the electric motor part of its drivetrain.
Germans...
I wonder if the i8's radiators will crack and fail every 60k miles.
Told my wife I may want a personalized plate for the Leaf if we get it.
She recommends:
I'm getting GOLFCRT for the Focus....
sjd
Can anybody tell me why EVs don't usually have transmissions? The "range falls off at higher speeds" and "weak accelleration above 50 mph" things
I just dont think there is the demand from consumers for high speed acceleration. I also think there's still enough price anxiety that adding cost to the vehicles is probably a losing proposition if all it does is make the car accelerate better full throttle at high speeds. As mentioned the small efficiency gain from turning the motor slower would probably be lost to the cost of spinning more transmission components so the only real gain would be high-speed acceleration. I love that stuff but i dont think the typical EV buyer cares.
and the Volt isn't a pure, direct connection - you still need to spin the traction motor
Not only spin, but power. The ICE also has to spin the smaller motor/generator to transmit power to the wheels, but the smaller M/G doesnt have to be powered or doing anything. It CAN be just a chunk of metal along for the ride.
Basically you're saying that a VW Caddy and a Chevy Silverado are the same things, beause they both have 4 wheels and a pickup bed.
Not analogous to my point. A chevy silverado does not have a small atkinson cycle 4 cylinder ICE and 2 motor-generators and 1 battery pack working through one planetary gearset to form a CVT-behaving hybrid powertrain powering the front wheels of a 4dr hatchback. Be serious.
We took the Leaf out to one of my favorite local-ish events to spectate at on Saturday. The Maryhill hill climb is on a private road that has some interesting history and beautiful scenery. There's a great overlook point where you can see more than half of the track, and it's very easy to access via the nearby highway.
Huge version for those interested:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7348/9899212616_40f9252d2c_o.jpg
We drove about 230 miles for the day. Our longest leg was 83 miles at 60 mph, a stretch on our Leaf. We charged 3 times for a total of about 70 minutes (30 minutes while we got lunch on the way there, 20 minutes while we got coffee on the way back, and 20 minutes while we sat in the car) during the day. These stops were all at AV fast charge stations, which are currently free to use. Had we taken our Saturn Sky (best gas mileage in our fleet), it would have cost us about $25 in gas and saved us 30 minutes.
More info on the road, for those interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryhill_Loops_Road
Just thought I'd share an example of using an EV for more than daily commute. This is our third road trip in the Leaf, the other two were over multiple days and greater distance.
Bryce
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