The weight is a benefit for traction, but there’s only so much weight the rail can handle anyway.
Why haven’t we seen many diesel PHEVs?
- Thread starter SubieRubyRoo
- Start date
Force = Mass * Acceleration
Work (energy needed) = Force * Distance
A heavier car needs more fuel to run is the same reason a heavier train needs more diesel.
Trust me, traction is a much bigger issue. We’re moving 20,000 ton trains with 8,800 horsepower which is 2 engines. A heavy battery isn’t going to affect it unless it’s beyond the rail’s weight limit. It’s a completely different set of requirements than a road going vehicle. Some of the locomotives themselves weigh 220 tons. They even have added weight ballasts in spots for traction. We can go 60 mph but it may takes us 3 hours to get there, no joke.
You’ll never see weight savings in the railroad unless it’s to add more cargo. If you would see the industry from the inside you’ll see while they’ll go on about saving fuel all they’d rather do is overload trains and use less engines.
The comparative weight of the battery (even 4000lbs) in the locomotive vs the entire weight of a multi-car (126000 to 150000lbs PER CAR)) train is negligible.
No I would agree - I wouldn't see them replacing diesel locomotives either - just suplementing. Possibly even for specific applications - like the long climbs out west - use the battery to help climb - recharge it on the ride down the other side. Would seem to maximize efficiency.
Nope, I’m talking full EV with battery, plus the diesel generator. Figure a Tesla Model S with a diesel generator under the bonnet.
The tier 4 rating is for off-road devices so no- the little kohler, or Kubota wont make the cut once it goes on road.
Because the base engine - diesel has become a non starter as a contribution power plant because of its initial starting price and complexity.
In every vehicle that uses them DPF's and DEF system and their complexity raise operating and service cost to a level thats hard top get an ROI from under regular circumstances.
I love diesels I have 2 in my driveway.
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That's what Fisker did with the Karma with a GM 4 cylinder gas engine. With the batteries depleted it was only good for 20 mpg. It did have a much smaller battery though, so that depletion happened much sooner. There's just more loss without a direct connection. Locomotives do it because it's tougher and more reliable, not to mention the amount of slipping of a clutch or other method blend in power until speed comes up would just eat up whatever transmission setup would be necessary, but economy will suffer running it generator only. It just has more losses than some form of directly connected drivetrain.
No a car by any means, but about 10-15 years ago I remember RJ Corman out of Lexington had some hybrid diesel-electric locomotives. Doing a bit of follow up research I see that apparently Corman now owns Railpower Technologies. A little bit of digging also says that GE(one of the two big players in diesel locomotives in the US) has a few offerings of similar capability.
They basically were/are meant for railyard use, a place where it makes sense at least to me because that involves a lot of stop and go. At the same time, depending on the size of your yard(Corman's main yard in downtown Lexington-it's back behind Rupp Arena and pretty easily viewed from US 421-is not overly large) fully electrifying the yard with overhead or 3rd rail doesn't sound like a huge project to me but then I don't know the ins-and-outs other than as a railfan/rail follower for most of my life. When Rick Corman was still living, he loved showing off and doing things no one else did, plus in a lot of ways really always came across as a big kid playing with his real trains(not faulting him a bit-he carved out his niche and built a hugely successful business and had the money to do things like buy and refurbish a steam engine from China). The Railpowers were sort of that, but also if he could make press and save money by doing full electric in his most visible operation, I suspect he would have.
I'm not sure if anyone has ever tried road-going hybrid locomotives-in real use I don't know how much advantage there would be outside of the mountains, and that's a lot of extra weight to carry around in batteries. Diesel-electric has gotten along very well for 80+ years now by dumping electricity generated in "dynamic braking"(running the traction motors as generators) into air cooled resistor grids on top of the locomotive. I thought it sounds a huge waste when I first learned about it and wondered then if that could be stored and reused, but practically speaking the amount of battery you'd need to capture and then use a meaningful amount of it would be astronomical.
Not totally on topic I realize, but the premise of diesel hybrids made me think of this. Before really thinking about the logistics I always thought diesel hybrid locomotives made sense considering that 99.999% of the locomotives in operation in the world are electric and just differ in where they get the electricity(on-board diesel generator vs. overhead/3rd rail power).
They basically were/are meant for railyard use, a place where it makes sense at least to me because that involves a lot of stop and go. At the same time, depending on the size of your yard(Corman's main yard in downtown Lexington-it's back behind Rupp Arena and pretty easily viewed from US 421-is not overly large) fully electrifying the yard with overhead or 3rd rail doesn't sound like a huge project to me but then I don't know the ins-and-outs other than as a railfan/rail follower for most of my life. When Rick Corman was still living, he loved showing off and doing things no one else did, plus in a lot of ways really always came across as a big kid playing with his real trains(not faulting him a bit-he carved out his niche and built a hugely successful business and had the money to do things like buy and refurbish a steam engine from China). The Railpowers were sort of that, but also if he could make press and save money by doing full electric in his most visible operation, I suspect he would have.
I'm not sure if anyone has ever tried road-going hybrid locomotives-in real use I don't know how much advantage there would be outside of the mountains, and that's a lot of extra weight to carry around in batteries. Diesel-electric has gotten along very well for 80+ years now by dumping electricity generated in "dynamic braking"(running the traction motors as generators) into air cooled resistor grids on top of the locomotive. I thought it sounds a huge waste when I first learned about it and wondered then if that could be stored and reused, but practically speaking the amount of battery you'd need to capture and then use a meaningful amount of it would be astronomical.
Not totally on topic I realize, but the premise of diesel hybrids made me think of this. Before really thinking about the logistics I always thought diesel hybrid locomotives made sense considering that 99.999% of the locomotives in operation in the world are electric and just differ in where they get the electricity(on-board diesel generator vs. overhead/3rd rail power).
Just for all the folks talking trains, I’m talking specifically about automobiles… 
I think the diesel-battery-electric concept with solely electric drive would be an EV worth the time and effort.
I think the diesel-battery-electric concept with solely electric drive would be an EV worth the time and effort.
It’s interesting, but, you still get losses each time you convert energy from one form to another. The concept only would work if one has a large enough battery to be a PHEV, charging at night and running the diesel only on long drives—where I suspect the stack of losses will rear their ugly head and yield a lower than expected mpg. Maybe if you could get the diesel connected directly to the wheels, but… that’s not series hybrid then.Just for all the folks talking trains, I’m talking specifically about automobiles…
I think the diesel-battery-electric concept with solely electric drive would be an EV worth the time and effort.
Plus everyone on BITOG would complain about unnecessary complication of having all that unnecessary junk.
Hey the proof is in the pudding. I am pretty sure all of us said the same thing when the Prius came out. It’d never be reliable, it’d never get good mpg, and it certainly wouldn’t last. Stupid idea.
It's what pays my bills so I'm just familiar with it and why it's used. The lack of efficiency would likely be why we've never seen it catch on in consumer vehicles. Could you imagine how much of a torque monster a diesel/electric HD pickup could be? It would probably get 8 mpg, but I'd use it to do the responsible thing. Burnouts!Just for all the folks talking trains, I’m talking specifically about automobiles…
I think the diesel-battery-electric concept with solely electric drive would be an EV worth the time and effort.
Edison Motors is doing a diesel electric drivetrain in addition to a pure EV. The diesel (CAT C9) just turns a generator for when the batteries get depleted. They actually managed to shave 200Kg off their conversion vs the diesel only truck. They’re aiming at vocational trucks though, not OTR at the moment.
https://www.edisonmotors.ca/
https://www.edisonmotors.ca/
Everyone seems to have forgotten about the Chevrolet Volt. (not Bolt, but the earlier Volt).
The Volt was an electric car with a 40 mile range battery. It had an on board gasoline engine that was connected to a generator. But not to the wheels.
When the battery ran down, the engine would start to provide electric power to the battery, and from the battery, to the power train.
The Volt was an electric car with a 40 mile range battery. It had an on board gasoline engine that was connected to a generator. But not to the wheels.
When the battery ran down, the engine would start to provide electric power to the battery, and from the battery, to the power train.
That’s not entirely accurate of how it worked. It was mostly a generator but the gear set could apply power to the wheels from the gas engine in certain conditions. The first generation seems like it tried to avoid using the engine to turn the wheels though. The later ones were a bit closer to what a standard hybrid did.
This is a big reason. A lot of people think of "diesel" as being synonymous with "dirty" because their idea of something with a diesel engine is a big dump truck, an 18 wheeler, or your local retarded high school douche out rolling coal. There's a lot of people in the US (possibly even more than half the population) who don't even know they make small diesels for cars. I've come across a lot of them.
Exactly diesel has a bad reputation as being dirty. Spot on about the HS Douche out rolling coal, I've seen a few adults take that title too.
Nothing quite as noxious as the smell of a warm Summer’s Eve and unburnt diesel mixed together, is there??
I thought CAT was strictly off road emissions these days. (And .gov seems to want onroad for everything)
