How many Amps Hybrid and The Dirty Secret of Hybrids

Just how many amps are going thru the hybrid batteries and is the Prius as efficient as people say it is?

[@eby6114]

So in case you didn't catch it the Prius is going from mechanical to electric then from electric to electric mechanical while also running mechanical direct to wheels. Big waste. Think about it

[@pritambissonauth2181]

If it had a bigger battery capacity, the energy could have been stored for later use. There is also the planetary gear device which is another source of mechanical energy wastage. It also seems that MG1 needs electrical energy to control the gear ratios! I wonder why Toyota is still stuck with using the NiMH battery chemistry which is a battery technology from the mid 1990s. It seems it has an agreement or legally bound with Panasonic to continue purchase this technology until the latter has recouped its investment in its R&D.

[@TheLogika]

Congrats on your efforts. I hope your system is still working but I hope to address some design issues and confusion within your presentation in order to assist you and others understand what they are seeing. There are two issues. 1. You mention the load being shared among the cells. This is true if you want to determine overall power share but the only number we need to consider for the load argument is amperage or current. Divide current by cells in parallel to determine share, for example at one point the meter shows 110A. Your 2P configuration means that the cells are coping with 55A each. At 6Ah this is a ~9C rate. Not many cells are designed for this sort of use absent active cooling. Of course it does peak higher, also including peaks during regen charging so your cells are likely seeing peaks in excess of +15C/-15C. The average is closer to 2-3C, totally reasonable for LiFePO4 cells but the extremes belie information about the strength of your cells. At the 110A point mentioned above the voltage was 183V or 2.6V/cell--still within spec but it bounces back to ~233V afterward, so at that moment your batteries dropped 50V@110A, or loosely you can say it created 5500W of heat in that second. Over time this excess heat leads to more rapid degradation of battery performance. LiFePO4 are very robust, however I'm familiar with a number of manufacturers but I don't recognize the ones you've selected offhand. Based on their performance I judge them to be similar to CALB brand. Compare to A123 for the potential performance of LiFePO4. 2. The dirty secret is a trick the Prius uses to ebb and flow input at highway speeds as can be seen on the energy flow MFD screen (aisyk, electric-only mode cuts off at 40mph or under heavy acceleration) and saves fuel due to the efficiency of electric propulsion. Absent this, the Prius would get about 37-38mpg highway in gas only mode.

[@rhiantaylor3446]

Nor sure that is such a negative as you suggest, it uses the electricals to act as an efficient torque converter i.e. to allow the gas engine to run at its most efficient speed which may be higher than the road speed and mechanical gearing requires, then using the electrical energy produced to add back torque above what the gas engine alone is producing.

[@eby6114]

@@rhiantaylor3446 it's converting a mechanical energy to electrical energy running it through your batteries back into the inverter to convert it back into mechanical energy there's obviously going to be a great deal of loss and heat involved in this entire process You might try driving down the road and while the vehicle is running disconnect the hybrid battery the engine will go into a three or four thousand RPM load because it cannot and will not do it without the hybrid battery. The only issues I've ever had with my batteries and excessive amps was while operating at highway speeds just running down the road there's no way it should have been active once fully charged and those batteries will fully charged. In any case it would have been much better for the vehicle to bypass the batteries or use only a minimal amount of voltage supplementing but it doesn't appear that the vehicle will work in this fashion.

[@Thissandthat]

Yeah the hybrid system on the gen2 Prius really isn’t very efficient on the highway, although I’ve noticed much lower amp draw in mine with the NiMH battery. The gen4 really really improves highway efficiency both on paper and in real life. Many owners get well over 50 on the highway.

[@eby6114]

When I can scrap away some time I've got an idea that will this vehicle way better

[@charleshorseman55]

It may seem like a dirty secret, but the entirety of the rest of the vehicle is powered by the traction battery, and as such regardless of whether you are or aren't accelerating/decelerating the radio/ac/coolant pumps/ecu etc etc require the traction battery to be feeding voltage. Could they have reduced the output of the motor-generator through a reduction in the programming for the planetary gear? Sure, probably, and I'm sure they did. But if you "cut off" the charging from the motor-generator while at highway speeds, you would run your traction battery down to nothing quickly. Also, the ICE is a more efficient power source (under load) ie acceleration/uphill, whilst coasting with minimal drag, the electric is more efficient. But again, back to the necessity to maintain the traction battery. Furthermore, NiMh self-discharges at a relatively high rate (certainly not as high as lead acid, but more than lithium).

[@servingme09]

Good info, thanks.

[@grandmasgermankitchen7850]

Thanks for doing this video.

[@egn83b]

If you ever get a chance test drive a 4th generation prius. I got a prius prime, i get 70 to 80 mpg just in town without charging my battery. When i do charge the battery i go 30 miles most times just on electric only. I would love to build a 2nd gen into a purely electric car and ditch the engine to make it short distance commutor car with 30 miles range just on junk yard parts.

[@eby6114]

On the computer board. If you catch it before the motor starts you can disable the engine and run electric only. You only have to Jump two pins via a switch. I'd love to see what it can do with just electric motors on the highway. The new Prius must have some major overhaul to achieve the current abilities. For now I'm focused on either all electric or all fuel. To many parts to break down having both.

[@mohamadsweed4987]

Hello, do you have a video of installing cruise control for a 2008 Prius or give me a link for that, thank you

[@eby6114]

The 2008 has cruise standard. If it's not working it could be simple like a bad vacuum line or the vacuum actuator is going bad. Sometimes you can get it working by tapping the break lines. The break switch also controls the cruise but in a reverse way. Any fault in that system will also cause the cruise to not work

[@mohamadsweed4987]

@@eby6114 Thanks for the quick answer, but does it need to be connected to the car's computer or not? Thank you again

[@eby6114]

@@mohamadsweed4987 It probably is. It is involved with a lot of systems

[@mohamadsweed4987]

@@eby6114 Thank you, I'll try to see. Maybe the wiring is wrong. Thank you

[@steliansoveja6469]

Lil, hello ,how much watt per 1 km consum????

[@scottdaniels5165]

What is the name of that meter; how do I get one? Ditto the cell phone hookup in the first video and this one?

[@eby6114]

I believe that it's called a column meter. I bought it from Amazon. The other is an obd 2 adapter with Torque Pro, a cheap one time purchase app, then you add widgets.