Indeed, as at first I thought it was just like Honda's IMA, which removes the starter entirely, and replaces the whole flywheel with an electric motor[0]. Here'

Indeed, as at first I thought it was just like Honda's IMA, which removes the starter entirely, and replaces the whole flywheel with an electric motor[0]. Here's a graph [1] showing the huge low-end torque boost of the CR-Z electric engine. It's clear that putting a regular turbo (like Ford is doing) would certainly help torque on higher revs. Toyota's HSD has two motor-generators, one to boost low end torque (MG2 or MG-T), and one higher up for speed (MG1 or MG-S). They do not operate in the same mode at the same time, one acting as a generator for the other that acts as a motor. As such it resembles the principle of a supercharger, in that it takes unused energy to apply it somewhere else on the drivetrain. Both motors do slip and they actually use that as a CSV transmission to replace the torque converter in a auto gearbox. Contrary to Ford's solution where the electric "supercharger" motor drives the driveline, there is no actual uninterrupted physical connection between the engine and the wheels. While we're doing a round up of hybrid technologies, Peugeot insisted on creating a hybrid diesel engine and could not overcome reliability problems when designing an engine similar to IMA, so they went back to the drawing board and simply made the two systems independent yet synchronized: the electric motors drive the rear wheels while the IC engine drives the front as usual. [0] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Honda_Insight_IMA.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Honda_Ins... [1] http://www.automobile-sportive.com/guide/honda/crz/crz-graph.jpg http://www.automobile-sportive.com/guide/honda/crz/crz-graph... (power in orange and torque in red, bold line is with electric and thin without)