Switchblade: Kinda cool concept in progress

[A64Pilot]

4 hours ago, Fly Boomer said:

It's a strange design.  I remember being slightly alarmed when I learned that, regen or not, my brake pedal is in no way mechanically connected to the brakes.  Weird.

There are a lot of things that I didn’t like. They were determined that it should drive just like any other car, that’s why the complex braking system. Tesla and I assume other EV’s go into max regen if you lift your foot off of the go pedal, they call it one pedal driving and I’m a fan as it really works, and you have normal as in master cylinder brakes. If you open the door on a Prius you will hear a buzzing for several seconds, that’s the hydraulic pump charging the hydraulic brake accumulator.

The Prius when you put it in “drive” it would creep requiring you to hold your foot on the brake, that was purely software, Toyota fed power to the electric motor to make it creep. Once you drive a car with one pedal driving and you get used to it, you realize just how obnoxious it is to have to hold the brake the whole time at a long red light, and Toyota made the Prius creep when it’s natural state would be to remain stationary like a manual car in neutral.

I put drive in parenthesis as it has no gears, it’s a planetary system that the gears are always engaged, so there is no neutral, no reverse. The car is driven electrically to go backwards, the engine can’t drive it in reverse. In forward the gear ratio is constantly variable based on torque inputs from one of the two  electric motor / generators and the gas engine.

Decent video explaining the power split device, but it’s just one piece the Prius inverter is so large and powerful it has its own cooling system

 

[Fly Boomer]

2 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

Decent video explaining the power split device, but it’s just one piece the Prius inverter is so large and powerful it has its own cooling system

In my car (wagon) there are separate coolant reservoirs.

 

[A64Pilot]

10 minutes ago, Fly Boomer said:

In my car (wagon) there are separate coolant reservoirs.

 

Yes it’s that way in all or was anyway. Mine was a 2010, past that I have no knowledge, but the thing when I started digging into it fascinated me. It’s a mechanical marvel and draws not much from a conventional car. For instance it has 5 different distinct stages of operation, explained here. They rewrote the book with the Prius, not much like a regular car.

https://priuschat.com/threads/the-five-stages-of-prius-hybrid-operation.12919/

One of the hardest things for a Hybrid is when city driving it’s difficult to keep the engine warm it runs so infrequently, the older Prius when the engine shut down would pump all of its coolant into a thermos, the newer ones ran the coolant through the catalytic convertor to extract its heat. In cold Wx the Prius fuel mileage drops because the car will keep the engine running when it’s not needed for propulsion just to supply heat.

[Fly Boomer]

16 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

Yes it’s that way in all or was anyway. Mine was a 2010, past that I have no knowledge, but the thing when I started digging into it fascinated me. It’s a mechanical marvel and draws not much from a conventional car. For instance it has 5 different distinct stages of operation, explained here. They rewrote the book with the Prius, not much like a regular car.

https://priuschat.com/threads/the-five-stages-of-prius-hybrid-operation.12919/

One of the hardest things for a Hybrid is when city driving it’s difficult to keep the engine warm it runs so infrequently, the older Prius when the engine shut down would pump all of its coolant into a thermos, the newer ones ran the coolant through the catalytic convertor to extract its heat. In cold Wx the Prius fuel mileage drops because the car will keep the engine running when it’s not needed for propulsion just to supply heat.

That's a good article.  I used to read PriusChat all the time.  These days, I just drive it like any other car.  Regarding the cold weather driving, I notice that my mileage really goes to crap when it's cold -- ICE runs constantly.  Still getting in the mid 40's, but way down from spring or summer.

[A64Pilot]

10 hours ago, Fly Boomer said:

That's a good article.  I used to read PriusChat all the time.  These days, I just drive it like any other car.  Regarding the cold weather driving, I notice that my mileage really goes to crap when it's cold -- ICE runs constantly.  Still getting in the mid 40's, but way down from spring or summer.

Several things about Prius chat, first it’s heavily based on exactly how the car operates, why it does what it does, it’s a wealth of information with lots of smart people hacking the software to see inverter temps etc. Plus it’s sort of moderated by Toyota, unofficially but as in the link I posted a Japanese poster came on and corrected some of the incorrect assumptions. Many forums are this way. I’ve not been on Priuschat for years so I don’t know if it’s changed.

So when I bought a Tesla I scanned a few of the Tesla forums. To be kind, those people are idiots, they know squat and just repost whatever is on the internet, way off on battery care and have no idea or interest on how the car works, none.  

The hot topic was that Tesla had gone “Vegan” with it interior and how great that was, one posted was trying to decide on replacing the steering wheel with a new one, or should she get a new car. Either way she was getting tired of having to wear gloves because she just couldn’t bear the thought of having her bare hands on the skin of some poor dead animal.

Then one discovered Tesla was lying, they weren’t truly Vegan. Seems there is an egg product in the glue used in the car. 

Huge uproar and discussion on whether they should cancel their orders etc. Oh God how could Tesla use an animal product?

That was is 2021 when Musk was worshiped by the Greenie’s, now of course he’s Satan.

Oh and I’m certain Tesla went to “Pleather” as a cost saving not to be Vegan, but it does seem to be good Pleather.

So I’ve not been on a Tesla forum since