At the beginning of the development of new energy vehicles, the range extender was considered a backward technology, but after years of development, today's range extender is much higher than the growth rate of plug-in hybrid models, and in 2023, the growth rate of the range extender will exceed 170%.
Many people criticize range extenders for just a few reasons:
The range extender is gasoline to generate electricity, and then use electricity to drive the vehicle, which is equivalent to taking off your pants and farting, I have no desire to refute this point of view, because if you can say it, there is a high probability that you have not studied high school physics.
There is also a fact that the high-speed fuel consumption of the extended range is higher than that of the plug-in hybrid, which is a fact, but I think the high-speed fuel consumption is one and a half liters higher, which has little impact on the car experience and car purchase decision, most people run long distances are a minority, urban commuting is the norm, and the urban fuel consumption is not weaker than the plug-in hybrid.
In addition, the extended-range engine can not participate in the drive, it is also a black spot, you see you can only drive the motor, there can be both motor drive, the engine can also intervene, not much stronger than you? There are many people who hold this view.
But I have to tell you that in the era of electric drive, the development idea of range extender is right, it is the trend of the times, plug-in hybrid models, you have to play the leading role of the internal combustion engine, this kind of thinking is against the trend, is the real pants off fart.
Many people must be unconvinced, how did the most advanced become anti-trend? Because you have been brainwashed by car companies and many half-baked car critics, why does the more complex it is, the more advanced it is? Why the more modes means the more advanced, multi-gear plug-in hybrid is driving the reverse of history.
The idea of traditional car companies, in fact, is very simple, that is, they do not trust the motor drive, and feel that the single motor drive may drop the chain in the case of power loss and rapid acceleration, and their own car companies have been working in the field of internal combustion engines for decades, and it is not a pity to completely lose the internal combustion engine, so it has caused plug-in hybrid, and in the field of single-gear plug-in hybrid, there are already Toyota's THS planetary gear hybrid, BYD's DM-i hybrid, so the road of single-gear plug-in hybrid is basically blocked, and it can only be done multi-gear plug-in hybrid. On the other hand, it is also to make better use of the performance of the internal combustion engine.
And how to achieve multi-gear plug-in mixing? On the gearbox, 2-speed DHT, 3-speed DHT upwards, so, at a speed of forty or fifty per hour, the internal combustion engine can participate in the drive, high-speed driving, the internal combustion engine can also be directly driven, in this way, it is indeed better to play the role of the internal combustion engine, but at what cost?
In terms of the first cost, the cost of multi-gear DHT plug-in hybrid is higher than that of the range extender, which is undoubted, not only the cost of hardware, but also the tuning cost of the internal combustion engine to participate in the drive.
The second is structural, multi-gear DHT occupies more interior space, which leads to the pure electric range of multi-gear DHT plug-in hybrid, which is generally lower than that of the range extender, and there are several extended-range models with a pure electric range of more than 300, while the highest pure electric range of multi-gear DHT models is only 215 kilometers. In addition, the more complex structure brings a theoretically higher failure rate. At least for now, the probability of stalling in plug-in hybrid models is far greater than that of extended-range models.
The third is the driving experience, the internal combustion engine is more involved in the drive, and then the gearbox is added, resulting in the problem of new energy vehicles, no matter how good the tuning is, it is also incomparable with the ride of the fully motor-driven model.
So you see, some people only talk about the shortcomings of the range extender, not the shortcomings of the multi-gear plug-in hybrid, and I will tell you that the range extender has disadvantages, such as the engine can not be driven, and the power performance in some scenarios is weak, but it can be made up for with a larger motor, for example, the high-speed fuel consumption is a little higher, but the pure electric battery life is higher, and a liter and a half liter higher is not a fatal problem, so the shortcomings of the range extender can be made up, but the shortcomings of the multi-gear plug-in hybrid are basically unsolvable.
To put it bluntly, multi-gear plug-in hybrid models, just like fuel vehicles that can be driven by pure electricity, are essentially built with the idea of fuel vehicles, and the range extender is more like an electric vehicle carrying a fuel charging treasure, the motor plays a greater role in it, and the power battery cost is decreasing, and the motor technology is becoming more and more powerful.