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The spring of plug-in hybrids has arrived?
Author: Liang Zhihao
Under the foil of car companies and the rendering of the media, the automobile market that is alternating between fuel and electrification can be described as full of gunpowder: on the one hand, fuel vehicles with a thick mass base always use the advantage of "replenishment" to reduce the dimensionality of electric vehicles; on the other hand, electric vehicles that represent the future trend are ahead of many fuel vehicles of the same price in intelligence and driving experience. The "fans" of the two sides can always easily find the point of friction, so that one polemic after another and even scolding the street have erupted on the Internet.
However, what many people have not noticed is that while the "fuel car" and the "electric car" are fighting each other, the snubbed PHEV plug-in hybrid model has quietly ushered in an outbreak.
01
The controversial plug-in hybrid
For quite some time, plug-in hybrids were not so popular in both the market and the industry. First of all, for consumers, as a product between fuel vehicles and electric vehicles, it needs to carry out regular maintenance like a fuel vehicle with an internal combustion engine, and the daily use of it has increased the need to charge the trouble, which can be described as the biggest drawback of the two.
For car manufacturers, plug-in hybrid models are only transitional products after all, even if you "play out the flowers", plug-in hybrid will one day be replaced by pure electric vehicles, and more importantly, because of the variety of drive methods, so the engine, motor, generator and the calibration of the three working together, it has become more tricky. The cost of tuning is high, the production cost is high, and the experience is difficult to guarantee, which is why plug-in hybrid has not been paid attention to by domestic manufacturers before.
To take a very typical example, the old BYD Tang PHEV model, because of its powerful motor, so the acceleration performance when fully charged is perverted, even the sports car to see the fear of three points, but once the power is too low, the SUV weighing more than 2.2 tons can only be driven by a 205 horsepower 2.0T engine, the overall driving experience will immediately fall from heaven to hell.
"There is a dragon with electricity, a worm without electricity", which is the best portrayal of the previous plug-in hybrid models.
02
Domestic plugs usher in spring
However, in the past two years, with the appearance of new technologies of major independent brands, plug-in hybrid has once again ushered in its own spring. One of the most familiar to us is definitely BYD's DM-i super hybrid technology. Yes, although in the past, BYD's plug-in hybrid models that adhered to the P2 hybrid (the motor layout between the engine and the gearbox) had many imperfections in the experience, but with the advent of DM-i technology, this situation has been fundamentally reversed.
Although in terms of power, the DM-i model has a big regression from the previous BYD plug-in hybrid model, but in exchange for the vehicle's excellent fuel economy under full working conditions - whether it is full power or power loss, congestion or high speed, DM-i model can provide a consistent driving experience and stable fuel consumption. In addition to drivability and economy, compared with fuel vehicles, the identity of DM-i plug-in hybrid has allowed it to obtain policy support for new energy vehicles, which obviously has great temptation for car buyers in large cities.
Although BYD has done its best with a DM-i technology and "monopolized" half of the domestic plug-in hybrid market, other brands have actually handed over their own high-scoring answers. For example, the Great Wall also released its own DHT lemon hybrid, compared with DM-i, the Great Wall's lemon DHT hybrid on the basis of series + direct drive, but also added a two-speed transmission, which means that the engine direct drive conditions can cover a wider speed area, in terms of complexity, even better than DM-i.
Although in terms of sound volume, the Great Wall's hybrid system is not as loud as BYD, but according to the feedback from all parties, the overall experience of this system is already a high level in the industry, even in the face of competition from Toyota, Honda and other hybrid professionals.
Chery, which has always been shown as a "science and engineering man", under the trend of domestic plug-in hybrid, has also "tinkered" with its own "Kunpeng hybrid", and took the lead in being installed on the Tiggo 8 PLUS e+ model, and Changan, which did not have too much accumulation in hybrid technology before, also recently released a new iDD plug-in hybrid technology on the UNI-K model.
Overnight, the originally silent plug-in hybrid market suddenly became lively, and even directly entered the stage of close-quarters hand-to-hand combat.
03
The most nationally appropriate motivation
The sudden rise of plug-in hybrids, in my opinion, actually has two major reasons: First, a patent on the hybrid system series parallel system belonging to the American PAICE company has officially expired in 2019, and a barrier that was previously placed in front of independent brands no longer exists, so everyone can finally let go of efficient hybrids.
This is the technical reason, but it is not the only reason, after all, iDD like Changan did not adopt the relevant technology, but continued to use the simple P2 motor layout mechanism to achieve efficient hybridization, but said that the expiration of this technology patent is indeed a great reduction in the detours that independent brands need to take.
Compared with technology, what can promote the "renaissance" of hybrids is perhaps the market's preference. After the "beating" of the market and policy, many consumers have found that although plug-in hybrid is insufficient, it may be the most in line with our "national conditions" power system. On the one hand, being able to use gasoline drives normally means that plug-in hybrid models do not have any mileage anxiety, even if the fuel consumption is slightly higher, it is far from lying down.
On the other hand, most families in China can only own one car, which also means that this car will have to assume more roles, it will pick up and drop off children to and from school, will commute in congestion, and will also pull a family to travel out on holidays, then the advantages of short-distance electricity and long-distance oil can be fully utilized. This is why we can find that in addition to ordinary family cars, even if it rises to the price of luxury cars of 400,000 or 500,000, there will still be people who choose models such as BMW 5 Series plug-in and Volvo XC60 T8.
After all, for users at this price point, policies such as purchase tax exemption and green card are not important, but more important is the daily use experience.
However, although plug-in hybrid is "very fragrant" to some extent, our independent brand has just officially launched its power, but in fact, there is not much time left for plug-in hybrid. As the country wants to continue to promote the process of electrification, we can find that the policy tilt that plug-in hybrid can obtain has become less and less, for example, Shanghai has planned to officially stop the free issuance of plug-in hybrid indicators at the end of 2022, and the national tax exemption policy for new energy vehicles is about to stop, and the advantages of plug-in hybrid compared to fuel vehicles in the follow-up will be sharply reduced, and the gap between plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles will be further widened.
In the future, after losing the blessing of the policy, plug-in hybrid models can only compete with fuel vehicles by virtue of their experience advantages, but in terms of the current momentum of independent brands, perhaps plug-in hybrid vehicles will replace the status of pure fuel vehicles in the future, and it is really not "fantasy".
Today's topic
Which electric car, fuel car, plug-in hybrid car will you choose?
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