ff:
I'm not taking it personally at all, and I get that you're not saying that the HSD cars suck. And while much of what you are posting is obviously correct and reflective of understanding automotive tech, some is incorrect. Take this statement for example:
Quote:
The HSD still slips based on planetary gear ratio slippage. It is a compromise trying to blend power sources. However, the hybrid is the reason the efficiency is so high, NOT the transmission. In city driving only, because of the regenereative braking and better efficency of the HSD over an automatic.
Now, we may be having a semantics problem here (in defining "slip"), but no, the HSD transmission does not ever slip. At least not the way a conventional auto does. In a conventional auto, when you're stopped (as in my example above), the transmission is slipping in the sense that the torque converter is allowing the engine's output to be totally wasted by converting it to heat instead of motion. In the HSD cars, the ICE's output, applied to the "middle" of the PGS can go only one of two places (or both at the same time). It goes to the outer ring and moves the car, or the inner shaft and gets converted to electrical energy, which is then stored. It is mechanically impossible for the ICE to run and have BOTH the ring AND the center shaft stopped at the same time.
I suppose you could say what I'm describing is "slippage" in that the ICE is running, but the car isn't moving, but in my view, the term "slippage" includes the concept of "wasted movement," and in the HSD, the movement is certainly not wasted, since the energy involved is recaptured for reuse.
Now, as to the "control" thing, I must stubbornly disagree (and wonder if you're a "control freak"
). We're talking about a street car here, not a race car. Frankly, I feel MORE in control (for transport driving) of this car than I do with other cars. There's never any of the neck snapping "bwaaaa" downshifts you often get with cars with small I-4s bolted to slushboxes. And I simply never need the sort of control that's arguably there with a manual on a racetrack. And why do high tech racers often have the paddle shifters? So you don't have to take your hands off the wheel. I don't have to take my hands off the wheel to shift -- ever. How many street manuals offer that control advantage?
Last point, though this is probably as much a programming thing as it is an inherent advantage. On the highway, the HSD advantage is much more pronounced than most who've never driven one understand. The car is rarely, if ever truly "steady state". Even on flat ground, steady cruising, it's constantly cycling. It'll run ICE-heavy for a while (with mpgs lagging a little and the battery SOC climbing), then it'll subtly shift the emphasis to the motor-generators (and mpgs climb and SOC declines). In other words, the car constantly makes the most of it's two drive sources.
