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Seems to be a series hybrid which is unusual. Most hybrids are parallel and connect the engine to the wheels. The electric double conversion of a series is less
by SigmundA 5y ago
Seems to be a series hybrid which is unusual. Most hybrids are parallel and connect the engine to the wheels. The electric double conversion of a series is less efficient than a direct mechanical connection especially at highway speeds. Somewhere in the 80% range for series double conversion vs 96% for direct mechanical drive. Also you have the weight of the dedicated generator vs using drive motors as generators in a parallel hybrid. Hybrids are usually not that useful for a vehicle that does mostly highway driving, in parallel hybrids the hybrid system is doing very little on the highway.
The van is obviously designed for urban routes with lots of stop and go so the series hybrid might make sense there, but with campers you are typically doing long distance highway travel and very little stop and go. Not much info on the drivetrain technology I can find.
Electric RV's will be great but they will need really big batteries. In the US you want a vehicle that can do at least 300 miles at highway speeds but really 500 miles for 8 hours of driving then charge overnight at a campground.
I wouldn't really be interested until there are Class A RV's with megawatt hour batteries and decent charging infrastructure (3 megawatt HPCVC) since that what I currently have and love to travel in cross country.
- ethagknight 5y agoClearly, this thing is designed for a leisurely jaunt across the UK, not the American road warrior long haul.
- SigmundA 5y agoSo in the UK is going across the countryside stop and go mostly?
- ethagknight 5y agoWhy sure, stop for a few days, go for 3-5 hours, stop for a few more days ;). This van is a conversion of their urban work van, because they saw people buying and up fitting their work vans for RVs, as noted in the article. The short haul optimization is clearly appealing to enough people to make sense.
- SigmundA 5y agoThe point was you would normally get higher efficiency and spend less money and have higher payload capacity with just a diesel van if your mostly doing highway driving. Was interested in seeing if they did anything special to get efficiency out of series hybrid which is normally a sub optimal design compared to pure electric or parallel hybrids.