Hybrid Hellcat??

jmodge

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Not only the gearheads, I wonder what the parties that are heavily invested in the fuel industry are thinking. I wonder if the changes toward electric powered drivetrains have any affect on keeping gas prices down to steer the public from buying electric vehicles in mass.
 

tikal

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While the fuel prices remain relatively low in the US any news related to the electrification and/or hybridization of passenger vehicles will be mostly anecdotal and not statistically significant growth on a normalized basis.
 

nwdiver

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While the fuel prices remain relatively low in the US any news related to the electrification and/or hybridization of passenger vehicles will be mostly anecdotal and not statistically significant growth on a normalized basis.
I think that's part of the point... they're going electric for no other reason than the fact that performance is simply much better. Physics can take you a lot further with electric than with ICE.
 

jmodge

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Agree, but economics plays a strong point also, which was the point of my comment. A lot of money floating around the fuel industry, I would think they will do what they can to keep their industry going for as long as they can.
 

tikal

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On a per capita basis growth, I can see Western Europe, South Korea, Japan, China, Singapore and some other parts of the world, minus the US, leading in the positive trend of electrification and/or hybridization of all types of passenger vehicles considering environmental laws (and other types of regulation), the laws of physic and the laws of each individual/family pocket book.

The inevitable cost-benefit analysis will most likely lead to the above scenario considering current trends in regional fuel prices.
 

turbobrick240

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Well, we can be proud that an American automaker is leading the charge (hehe) to develop the future. Our current political miasma won't linger forever, and there will be further regulation here as well.
 

GoFaster

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The new (DT) Ram trucks have FCA's new eTorque mild hybrid system as standard equipment on the Pentastar V6 and optional on the V8, with the battery pack behind the rear seatbacks on those trucks. They've got a new turbo 4 cylinder with eTorque mild hybrid in the Wrangler. Every single one of those engines will bolt up to the ZF 8-speed transmission and fit in any of the LX platform cars, all they need to do is find a place for the battery pack somewhere.

I don't know if eTorque + supercharger is a compatible combination, but even if it's not ... the V6+automatic powertrain is the high-volume one in those cars, and the regular (non supercharged) Hemi+automatic is next highest, with the Hellcats being a pretty small part of the overall picture. And, the LX cars are due for an overhaul in the next couple of years. It appears that the overhaul will be a makeover and a round of weight-reduction on the current platform, as opposed to a complete redesign (e.g. to use the Alfa Giulio platform).

I would expect that overhaul to involve making room for that battery pack, and for the eTorque system to be on the high-volume powertrains (V6 and non-supercharged V8, maybe the new turbo 4 cylinder).

Further in the future, the ZF 8-speed is a modular design that allows a motor-generator to take the place of the torque converter and a clutch to completely engage or disengage the engine to take the place of the torque converter lock-up clutch.

Test report on a Jeep Wrangler with the turbo 4-cyl eTorque ... https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/fi...drive-2018-jeep-wrangler-rubicon-etorque.html
 

tikal

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Thanks Brian for your informative post regarding hybrid systems on trucks which I would think would be 'sell-able' in North America.

Going back to the OP, I would agree that, in the US, for specialized applications, for high end performance cars and for some trucks people would be willing to pay pretty much any price to go from 0 to 60 MPH in the least amount of time. If electrification gets you there (and indeed it will in a much less complex way than an ICE vehicle) then who cares if you paying $2 or $6 for a gallon of fuel. Right?
 
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GoFaster

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Hybrids are a tough sell in the pickup market. GM found that out. The eTorque system is a lot simpler and it's being sold as a performance improvement...although CAFE is the real reason.
 

oilhammer

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There are just too many to list....
The GM trucks were a glorified stop-start, they were not a real hybrid... it was kind of a joke actually. And the whole system was switched off if the A/C was turned on anyway. I went a training session on those, because a local fleet was preparing to buy a bunch of them and we had to service them. It was a complete fail. The only neat thing about them was the power outlet in the back, which (with the 4.8L V8 gasser.. the only engine available in them... running) allowed things like power tools to be operated.

They were all extended cab, because that was where the hid the lead acid batteries, just extra large marine type batteries, nothing special, under the rear seat. They were all short beds. They were all 2WD. They were all a higher trim level (no W/T or Cheyenne versions), and of course they were all V8 automatics.

They had an electric motor to run the PS pump, but no electric motor to run the A/C compressor. Now I am no expert, but it seems like if you were STOPPED in traffic, you'd want the A/C to continue to work and wouldn't care about the PS. GM evidently thought otherwise. No starter or alternator, that was done via a ring shaped armature in the bellhouse, next to the torque converter. They had an electric ATF pump in the otherwise unmodified 4L60E slushbox, so that there was no hydraulic delay if the engine needed to restart to get the truck moving again.

Oh, and these things were like 10 grand more than a regular Silverado with the same cab/box/eng/trans/drive/trim configuration. Fail on so many levels. :rolleyes:

I think they may have added a 4WD version right before they axed the whole program.
 

compu_85

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Hm, I'd assumed the trucks had the same setup as the Tahoe from back in the day. Those could drive themselves a little bit on electrons. They had the 6.0 V8, that could also run as a 3.0 4.

I saw a video of someone trying to get one of those early hybrids working after a minor fender bender... the SRS system detected the bump and set codes all over the place, and the GM scan tool didn't seem to have an auto-scan feature so finding all the "crashed detected" codes and clearing them was a pain.

-J
 

oilhammer

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There are just too many to list....
Nope, the SUVs hybrid system is different. And the cylinder deactivation is on all the truck V8s and V6s now, aside from some HD stuff. It bleeds oil pressure off to some of the hydraulic lifters, and is a constant headache. There is essentially a valve body under the intake that gets gunked up.

They also have a cam-within-a-cam system, another lame attempt that suffers from gunked up passages. Even some of the very last of the 60 degree car V6s had that.
 

tikal

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If electrification and/or hybridization of an American 'brute-force' muscle car is a sign of things to come in the mainstream automotive world for the US then, why not?
 

oilhammer

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There are just too many to list....
If electrification and/or hybridization of an American 'brute-force' muscle car is a sign of things to come in the mainstream automotive world for the US then, why not?
I totally agree. However, by the same token, why haven't hybrids in general become "the norm" by now? I would have expected it, Toyota certainly did. But after some 20+ years, they still seem to not only be somewhat rare, but even their systems are not even spilling over in great numbers to non-hybrids. I would have thought for sure we'd have more mild hybrids by now, sort of a glorified (but FAR better executed than the ill-fated GM C-trucks) start-stop setup.

We have more and more start-stop vehicles, but they are just using software, no real hardware changes. To me, one of the true hybrid's best attributes is its lack of a conventional starter and generator. They are integrated together into the bellhousing in one slim compact and generally trouble free unit. You could do this, and have a better, more reliable, FAR more durable start-stop feature, without actually employing the expensive and heavy high voltage battery pack of a conventional hybrid.

And this would, I would think, be not as huge of a cost increase, and would eliminate the specter of expensive battery pack service which we do on Priuses now almost weekly.

We DO have some pretty good use of electric steering assist. But beyond that, nothing. Still reliant on mechanically driven water pumps. Still reliant on engine driven A/C compressors.

With an integrated M/G setup, but without the battery, you wouldn't be able to employ regenerative braking to power the motor to get the vehicle moving again, but you could certainly use it to better manage the electrical loads. So every time you press the brakes, all the loads are "powered" by inertia. With modern computers, we already do this to some extent, but it is still done via an old fashioned mechanical driven alternator. Which is still run by the engine.
 
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oilhammer

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There are just too many to list....
GM tried those, too. Complete failure. The early Malibu and some Saturn hybrids had those miserable things. Like an add-on JC Whitney start stop system, belt driven.
 

tikal

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What is worth it to you?

OH, good point in your post # 16. For me it goes back to the cost/benefit analysis the American buyer does pretty quickly in his/her mind:

1) 'Joe Doe I' says: Pump fuel prices adjusted for inflation are at the lowest since the 1980's (link); why should I bother with a hybrid and/or electrical vehicle as a daily driver?

2) 'Joe Doe II' says: Man I want one of those Hybrid Hellcat that can put to shame the gasser version!!!!!! SOLD! Here is the check/down payment/collateral/previous muscle car ...
 

oilhammer

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There are just too many to list....
The "hybrid = performance" angle isn't anything new to me. I was working at Lexus when the RX400h debuted. And I can tell you from a standing start it will tear the paint off a standard issue RX330, and they both used the same 3MZ-FE 3.3L V6. And the hybrid GS450h, which uses the same 2GR-FSE 3.5L V6 as the GS350, is even more brutal with performance. That car is seriously fast, although obviously just in acceleration... but shoot, it gets into the illegal side of the speedometer so quickly that it hardly matters if its top speed is no better than the non-hybrid version, both of which are probably limited to a specific number anyway.

But Toyota had to be careful, because on one hand they were working hard to make all the greenie feel good people want a Prius, so they couldn't exactly flaunt the performance attributes of other hybrids. And the Prius is the exact OPPOSITE of performance. A Corolla with a trunk full of sand and a weak cylinder could beat a Prius in the stop light to stop light gran prix.

And so I think, to some extent, the Prius... the darling poster child of the hybrid mindset (let's be honest, most folks now, when you think "hybrid", you think "Prius") has in some ways tarnished the idea of a performance hybrid even though it doesn't necessarily mean it should be so. The ill-fated hybrid Jetta is another one that is a seriously zippy car, but consumers here surveyed by Volkswagen during the Moonraker project showed Americans equated hybrids with slow, dorky, awkward little cars. In a later survey, they found the same results, and is why they specifically touted the Jetta hybrid's performance, with lots of use of the word "turbo" in their marketing. Yet it still sold poorly.

Prius still sells well, despite the fact that later in life they are not without their faults. Here are some of the more recent Prius Fails we've addressed here:

Inverter water pump and cooling system control valve:

(this, along with a mechanical water pump drive belt... unrelated... is nearly a $1k repair, and this car hasn't even traveled as far as a TDI of the same year would have gone to require a timing belt replacement)

Transmission:

While these never outright "fail", the CVTs the Priuses use are very good in that respect, they have coolant flowing through them to cool the M/G, and there is a seal in the bellhousing that fails and causes a leak out the bottom. This requires the ENTIRE gearbox be taken apart to fix, and Toyota does not even sell any parts of these anyway, so even if I wanted to just replace the o-ring, I can't. This one *just* made it to 100k miles.

And of course, the ever popular hybrid battery pack:

We do a TON of these. Fortunately, in the last couple years, Toyota started an exchange program, which reduced the cost considerably... so much that we no longer mess with used ones or piecing cells together to make a good used one. This is still not a cheap job, and they did NOT make it easy to do, half the rear portion of the interior of the car has to come apart.

We are also starting to see a bunch of evap cores leaking on them, which is a complete dash removal job. :rolleyes:

And then all the things that allow the engines to blow up. Electric water pump quits working and the engine overheats? Death Triangle comes on. Run the engine out of oil and the oil pressure drops? Death Triangle comes on. No actual warning light, no gauges, no nothing. Just the Death Triangle... and people drive them until they die. Seriously, they went through all the effort to make the dash look like a 1980s Colecovision gameset, you'd think they could have put in a warning message "HEY, MORON, THE ENGINE IS OVERHEATING, STOP DRIVING!" or "HEY, YOU, WITH THE $11TY CUP OF STARBUCKS, THERE IS NO OIL REMAINING IN THE ENGINE, STOP DRIVING!" but no, just the gentle Death Triangle. They should have at least put a dollar sign in the middle of it.

Sorry about the Prius rant... been a busy week with them, and I am not even done yet.

But I still think if we took some of the better attributes of the hybrids, and integrated them into "mainstream" cars, without actually making them a hybrid, we could get most of the benefits without as much of the cost and long term misery.
 
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Jetta SS

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While Ford and GM are going with smaller displacement / turbo, FCA is taking this different route and keeping their V8's.

It'll be interesting to see which strategy comes out winning.
 

GoFaster

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Charger/Challenger/300C continue to sell decently in part because FCA has built halo high-performance versions of those cars. (There's another one coming next year, I know what it is but I can't talk about it LOL) People come into the showroom because of Hellcat or whatever, but then they discover that a regular one actually fits their budget and still does what they need it to do and it still projects that certain image (even if what's under the hood of what they actually buy doesn't actually live up to it). The bulk of those cars are built with the V6. Is a V6 Charger really a "better" car than a Chevy Impala? Well, probably not, and there is a fair argument for the other way around. But the Impala is going away, and the big ole rear-drive (optional) V8 Charger is sticking around.

FCA does have a new turbo 4 cylinder engine (with eTorque) available in the new Wrangler. We'll see what that does. Bear in mind that most Jeeps are mall crawlers. Even if you do off-road trails ... It's still puttering around most of the time at part load, which is where the downsized turbo engines do okay.

For the trucks ... I know plenty of people who have trucks and use them as trucks (not mall crawlers). Evidence thus far has been that the turbo downsized gas engines don't save fuel in real world driving compared to a somewhat bigger but more mildly tuned non-turbo engine.

What the pickup trucks need is to become lower, and lighter, with less frontal area and less drag. (Lots of people who buy trucks, don't actually need a truck.) BUT ... Tell that to the people who buy them. A big tall impressive beast with a huge shiny chrome grill and big wheels and tires is what sells in that market. You just try doing otherwise. (See: Honda Ridgeline.)
 

turbobrick240

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It will be interesting to see if the new Ford 7.3 gas V8 can match the fuel consumption of the old 7.3 powerstroke- not that it would take a huge feat of engineering. They must be looking for the halo effect in the truck market. The 6.7 powerstroke has also received some significant tweaks and should be more powerful than the current 450hp/930tq. Seems ridiculous, but everyone loves a powerful engine.
 

GoFaster

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There is no possibility that a port-injected gas V8 that big would approach the efficiency of a diesel engine, but it will do better than an old carbureted 460 (which is close to the same displacement!) by a long shot. The new engine has variable valve timing, etc. It WILL use more fuel than a PowerStroke diesel would. But ... It won't be subject to all of the emission-control-system headaches that have plagued the PowerStroke for years, and it ought to be less expensive to buy thanks to not having all that stuff, and no turbo and no intercooler etc. The emission control system will be the same as any gasoline engine ... 3-way catalyst, and the evap system, and that's it.

People who have traditionally bought diesels, but have gotten fed up with downtime and high maintenance costs, will buy these ... especially in this era of cheap fuel costs.

The large displacement and lack of forced induction means this engine shouldn't really be working that hard ... which means they should be better able to stay out of thermal-protection mode (i.e. running rich) ... which has been the bane of downsized turbo engines and I believe this is why a 3.5 Ecoboost F150 towing a trailer uses more fuel than a 5.0 F150 towing a trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8CafR1YxqE
 

turbobrick240

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Of course you're right, the new 7.3 won't have diesel efficiency, but cost of ownership will likely be better. My 7.3 F250 averages around 15 mpg. I wouldn't be surprised if the new 7.3 can do 13-14 mpg. Once you load them down though, the diesel widens the FE gap.

Now I'm curious what FCA has coming. Maybe a good ol' 440 cube pushrod V8. :eek:
 

GoFaster

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Hah. My posts above were written before finding this. My guess was right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FtNlfAbc2w

The 7.3 is designed to operate at stoichiometric right up to full load. Mentioned around 3:45 in. Ecoboosts won't, and can't, do that. Too much heat concentrated in a small space.

It's not direct-injection, but the injectors are installed in the cylinder head rather than in the intake manifold, presumably to get the injection point closer to the port.

It's designed to be matched to the 10-speed automatic transmission.
 

oilhammer

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There are just too many to list....
So Ford took a step backwards with this new engine. Because I assume they are ditching the 3V 6.8L V10, and there is no "new" modular 10 cylinder version of the newer SOHC V8s.

Hey, FoMoCo, 1985 called, they want their tech back. LMAO. But hey, it works, and gas is CHEAP, so...
 
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