It is a well-known fact that hybrid cars are blooming today. As you may know, hybrid cars are divided into plug-in hybrid cars and hybrid cars with oil and electricity. The representative brand of plug-in hybrid car is unheard of now, and the representative of hybrid car is Toyota. I believe no one will refute this. In fact, Toyota is not only the representative of hybrid vehicles, but also the first car company in the world to realize large-scale shipment of hybrid vehicles. It is also the first car company in the world to decentralize hybrid technology to a price of about 654.38+0.5 million. It is no exaggeration to say that Toyota is a pioneer in the field of hybrid vehicles, or to boast that Toyota is the big brother in the field of hybrid vehicles.
No matter what technology is to be known and enter the public's field of vision, there must be a large enough number of carriers to carry it. Corolla car series is undoubtedly the carrier for Toyota hybrid technology to enter the public's field of vision and realize positive feedback of public opinion and sales. Corolla has derived two cars with different names in China, one is Corolla of FAW Toyota (formerly known as Corolla) and the other is Lei Ling of GAC Toyota. As for the complicated historical relationship between the naming of these two new cars, I won't say it here.
In fact, in a sense, Lei Ling can even be regarded as one of the representative works of joint venture hybrid vehicles. However, recently, considering the strong public opinion and technology explosion of domestic brands in the field of hybrid, especially plug-in hybrid, joint venture hybrid has obvious disadvantages in public opinion, technology and market share.
Recently, Toyota's fifth-generation THS hybrid system was officially loaded in Lei Ling, which seems to mean that the joint venture camp began to counter the new energy vehicles of the domestic camp.
In fact, the plug-in hybrid technology adopted by most domestic cars at present, regardless of the various technical improvements derived from the original plug-in hybrid system, is basically the same: by increasing the pure electric endurance of the vehicle as much as possible, and optimizing the energy transfer efficiency of the internal combustion engine-motor drive system, the motor is the main one, supplemented by the oil engine. In turn, it will achieve a longer comprehensive cruising range, exceeding 1000 km. Now quite a few joint venture car companies are taking this technical route.
Car companies represented by Toyota are taking another road: by balancing the output modes of electric and oil power systems under various vehicle working conditions, the average fuel consumption of oil engines is reduced, and the battery life of 1000 km or more is realized.
To put it bluntly, this is a game of "motor priority" and "oil engine priority". From the perspective of pure technology, these two technologies are not absolutely good or bad. As I have emphasized many times in previous articles, technology only serves the needs, and there is no absolute difference between good and bad. Therefore, in order to achieve the ultimate goal of "breaking thousands of kilometers of battery life", whether the motor is mixed first or the engine oil is mixed first, it is actually the same.
Since the purpose of these two technologies is the same, why is there a saying that "blending is better than oil blending"? In fact, the reason is simple. Under certain working conditions, the fuel consumption data of 100 kilometers can be better than that of mixed oil. Because the plug-in hybrid vehicle has the concept of motor priority, the motor is used to drive the vehicle first, so the oil engine basically does not need to be started when the battery is fully charged or highly charged, and naturally it can record very good fuel consumption results.
Mixing oil is based on the concept of giving priority to oil motive, which requires oil motive to directly participate in driving vehicles under most working conditions. The technical advantage of mixed oil is that the inherent characteristics of low speed, large torque, high load and low speed of the motor itself are just complementary to the inherent characteristics of gasoline engines that tend to exert force at high speed. Therefore, the motor part of mixed oil system is suitable for low speed in daily working conditions of the whole vehicle, but the efficiency of the motor decreases after the speed comes up, and the oil engine reaches high efficiency working conditions. The theoretical support point of this system is the rotational speed of the oil machine. Because the frequency of engine intervention is much higher than that of plug-in, the mixed oil system cannot achieve the "ridiculously low" fuel consumption data of 100 kilometers.
For quite some time, due to the information barrier, most people only know that the fuel consumption per 100 kilometers of plug-in hybrid vehicles is much lower than that of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, but they don't know that plug-in hybrid vehicles also have something called feed fuel consumption. To put it bluntly, the engine should not only charge the battery when it is dead, but also take into account the work of driving the vehicle. Considering that the battery of plug-in hybrid vehicles is generally much smaller than that of real electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles have always been in a feeding state in daily use, and the fuel consumption of most plug-in hybrid vehicles is not low, even if it is well optimized, that is, the level of pure fuel vehicles of the same level. If some plug-in hybrid vehicles are not optimized well, it is normal that the fuel consumption of feed is higher than that of pure fuel vehicles at the same level.
No matter our own long-term testing of various plug-in hybrid vehicles for many years or the opinions of plug-in hybrid vehicle owners, the fuel consumption performance of plug-in hybrid vehicles in daily use is actually impossible to reach the surprisingly low data advertised by the government. On the contrary, it is a hybrid vehicle, because there is no so-called "oil intake state" in the working mode of hybrid vehicles, so the average fuel consumption of hybrid vehicles can basically be kept relatively low in long-term normal use.
Now more and more people are beginning to realize what I mentioned above. Users are re-examining these two technical schools, users are becoming more rational, and the wind direction of the market is also changing. Especially after entering 2023, this trend can be clearly seen.
Users are looking for real long battery life and low energy consumption, rather than optimized data under specific working conditions. This demand has never changed. No matter what kind of hybrid power, it will eventually transition to pure electricity, which is also a recognized fact in the industry, and countless facts can confirm this.
However, under the real needs of the above users, how to continue the pain point of this "real long battery life and low energy consumption" user demand in the era of large-scale pure electricity popularization that will inevitably come in the future? At least what we are seeing at present are two completely different ideas. One is some domestic car companies-especially the "big battery" faction headed by some new forces. The idea is simple. By enlarging the body size and simplifying the suspension structure, a larger battery can be inserted as much as possible, and at the same time, the energy density of the battery can be improved through technical research and development. This is the most direct way to increase the cruising range of the pure tram itself.
But at present, from the pure trams released or about to be released by many joint venture car companies including Toyota, we have seen another idea. They think that the chassis space of a car is limited, and the suspension and subframe are related to the rigidity and driving experience of the car. They believe that the most important thing to do is not to plug the battery blindly, but to reduce the power consumption data of vehicles by developing new motors, developing a new generation of electronic controls and optimizing the aerodynamic structure of vehicles. On the premise that the size of the battery itself is limited, the overall battery life data is improved.
In fact, this can be compared with the example of an oil tanker. Facing the pain point of users' "insufficient battery life", the solution of domestic brands is to increase the fuel tank. A larger fuel tank can hold more gasoline, and the battery life will naturally become longer. At present, the practice of joint venture car companies, including Toyota, is to reduce the fuel consumption of engines through technical means under the premise of unchanged fuel tanks, thus improving battery life. These two ways can't say who is right or wrong. As mentioned above, technology is neither good nor bad. However, from the actual use point of view of users, the measures to optimize the power consumption of the whole vehicle for 100 kilometers are naturally better than simply increasing the battery, and users will be more worry-free and save money in use.
In fact, it is not difficult to find that no matter in the hybrid era or the pure electric era, joint venture brands have similar ideas, that is, by emphasizing the structural technology optimization of the car itself, users can have a relatively more worry-free and money-saving experience under any circumstances, rather than simply making "targeted" changes for data.
While keeping the data of all aspects of the hybrid system unchanged, it is actually obvious to miniaturize the whole hybrid system and reduce the "black weight", focusing on the measures of vehicle structure optimization. This is also the core of Toyota's fifth-generation THS hybrid system. As the first Lei Ling equipped with this hybrid system, we can almost think that this will mean the beginning of a counterattack against domestic cars in the hybrid market. And this confrontation will continue until the era of pure electricity. Twenty years ago, Toyota led the global wave of new energy for automobiles, and in the near future, as the ancestor of hybrid power, Toyota will inevitably cause another wave.
This article is from Professor Hao, the author of Good Che Yi, and the copyright belongs to the author. Please contact the author for any form of reprint. The content only represents the author's point of view and has nothing to do with the car reform.