Have you ever driven the clarity? For one, for the intents of this discussion, yes, the clarity is a series hybrid, direct drive mode is irrelevant during cases of sustained high load. Second of all, you can only make the argument that the clarity doesn't keep a big enough buffer of battery, but even if it did just that it would be depleted eventually. You cannot just keep on draining a battery, and when it's depleted just keep on draining it further without incurring permeant damage to the battery. The engine WILL be where all the power has to come from at the end of the day unless you plug it in, the battery is not a perpetual motion machine. It is a BATTERY.
PHEVs to Rule Trucks?
- Thread starter David Towle
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Wow
Just wow
Way to prove you do not understand the subject
Serial hybrid
it will never have less power until the battery runs out of juice
not for a second
bigger ICE engine will do precisely nothing
Nothing
Software is king
Put it in 'I am towing a trailer up a mountain' mode so it does not let the battery fall below, say 40 percent, [rather than 5 percent of a tiny I3 battery] and how long of a sustained incline before the battery fails to power the vehicle?
That is your design parameter
https://trucksontriangles.com/steep-grades/
CA I80 5-7 max grade for 40 miles.
worst I could find
I looked it up, according to Clarity owners the only problem is when you run it high efficiency mode and the battery gets very low and you then need to drive on the highway.
User error.
The mode is apparently intended for when you drive around town
And this has nothing to do with a vehicle with a giant battery
Yes... Until the battery runs out... The battery is not infinite... Is it that hard to understand?
No, but apparently you do not understand it at all
Why and where would the battery run out?
Why do you keep posting nonsense about the battery running out?
Uhh, when going up a long hill, or at high altitude where engine power is reduced? Or while you towing something??
Ok, fine work this out for me
With a 90kwh battery and any kind of 10 year old writing the software, how long of a hill towing what load would you run out of battery? Remembering of course the generator will be running all the time, replenishing the battery
How long how steep of a hill before you need that much charging power to replenish the battery?
It is marketing, not engineering, get over it
Well, let's first of all get out of the way that this is a plug in hybrid, it's probably going to use 80 kWh before automatically switching to gasoline. If your towing something of any significant weight, especially up a long incline and at high altitude, those remaining 10 kWh (assuming all 10 remaining are usable) aren't going to last long. Unless you get some really highly stung turbocharged 4 cylinder, it's just going to make more sense to use a V6. Even if you could meet the power demand with a 4 cylinder, it would be loud.
Well, if you want to make bizarre and illogical assumptions from the get go, well, fine but understand it is not convincing
Why would you market a truck as 'infinite' range and then kneecap it?
As I said, with software written by a competent 10 year old it is fine.
A 4 cylinder does not have to be loud
the number of strange assumptions required in your line of thinking is....well strange
Towing mode=fire the generator at 50 percent
4 cylinder that does not drive the wheels does not need a broad torque curve so it can be optimized for a single rpm and the sound deadening/balancing done for that rpm
Almost any engine being rung out near max power is going to be loud, or buzzy. And optimizing for a single rpm is great and all, when it's practical to run at that rpm. Up an incline with a depleted battery? Your going to be running the engine at a higher rpm than you normally would to get more power. I'm really struggling to see what your even trying to argue at this point, the only valid argument you could really make here is "well, most people don't use trucks like a truck, therefore designing it with the capability to tow things on an extended incline is irrelevant".
And yet you continue to make things up and ignore the central question, why on earth would you be heading up hill with a depleted battery?
User error not insufficient generator size is the only rational answer
Well, for one even if you started at a full battery, it would eventually be depleted, secondly saying your "driving the car wrong" is a stupid argument.
So a quick calculation, using some rational assumptions
the listed 40 mile climb I linked to above,
comparing range tests of other electric trucks, making an assumption about effect of grade
assuming you arrive at the bottom of that hill with 50 percent charge, because you are not a moron and neither is the software engineer who wrote the code in your truck
some loosy goosy numbers bring me to think that you will get about .57 miles per kwh on that 40 mile climb
you will need about 70kw of juice to make it up.
you have 35
you need to create 35 more
it will take you 40 minutes to drive that far at 60mph
you will need a 53 kw generator to replace the battery used
71 hp
lets just double that to take up the slop
about 142 horsepower
please do take issue with my numbers, after all i did make them all up, but I doubt they are 100 percent off
the listed 40 mile climb I linked to above,
comparing range tests of other electric trucks, making an assumption about effect of grade
assuming you arrive at the bottom of that hill with 50 percent charge, because you are not a moron and neither is the software engineer who wrote the code in your truck
some loosy goosy numbers bring me to think that you will get about .57 miles per kwh on that 40 mile climb
you will need about 70kw of juice to make it up.
you have 35
you need to create 35 more
it will take you 40 minutes to drive that far at 60mph
you will need a 53 kw generator to replace the battery used
71 hp
lets just double that to take up the slop
about 142 horsepower
please do take issue with my numbers, after all i did make them all up, but I doubt they are 100 percent off
What!!!!??
it is going to be depleted, with your generator running full bore?
on what planet?
You do not have to create 100 percent of the possible load, because just like batteries don't last forever, neither do hills
A trio of selectable EV modes (Electric+, E-Save, and Eco) as well as separate drive modes such as Off-Road, Snow, Sport, and Tow, dictate how early the ICE intervenes.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a45734742/2025-ram-1500-ramcharger-revealed/
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a45734742/2025-ram-1500-ramcharger-revealed/
Would you agree the Clarity is a "series hybrid" vehicle? It is, except during the few minutes in a Clarity's life when engine-drive mode is in effect.
If the engine can drive the wheels it is not a series hybrid
The vehicle is designed such that the ICE engine is needed to motivate it in certain situations, so direct comparisons to the Dodge are not possible.
So 'lack of power, look at the Clarity' is not a meaningful argument
That seems to be a reasonable figure. A fully charged battery and full fuel tank in the Ramcharger will store approximately 360kWh’s of deliverable energy. Each gallon of gas will convert to roughly 10kWh’s in an ICE driven generator, regardless of displacement size.
Stellantis appears to have calculated ~7/10ths of a mile per kWh. Of course a number of variables exist. A dump trailer will have a different aerodynamic profile than a box trailer or TT. Rolling resistance will differ between 2-axle and 3-axle trailers. No one is going to find 250 miles of flat road outside of Florida, be able to maintain 65mph for the entire drive, or travel in a vacuum with no wind.
Also unknown, is the level to which the battery and fuel tank will be depleted to achieve the stated range. If the battery is depleted to 20% SOC, it will need to be fully recharged in order to repeat the task.
The best bet on a long trip, towing or not, would be to preserve battery energy in situations where charging is impracticable or unavailable. The Jeep PHEV’s have an e-Save mode which does exactly that. Alternatively, charging on the fly would restore energy to the battery at the expense of burning more gas. Adding more gas takes minutes, rather than hours, so it’s a quick fix.
Oops! Looks like we have a depleted battery. Needed 70, had 35, generator provided an additional 35, now at zero. All this with a 10 year old writing software and a genius driving.
What about a depleted battery being nonsense? You’ve just created the scenario to produce that result. Now you’re driving a 7000lb truck, pulling a 14,000 trailer with a 106kw generator and depleted batteries. Let’s all pray to the goddess of electrons that there won’t be a call for too much power until the batteries have had a chance to recharge a bit.
But wait! You just built a truck with a 106kw generator. The marketing department at Stellantis designed a truck with a generator rated for 130kw of continuous duty. Maybe you’re on to something here. Perhaps a career in marketing?
Another thing the marketing department surely knows is to size an engine to run between 60-80% of its rated output, to power a generator at its continuous duty rating. A 130kw rating, or 175hp, would be powered by an engine that is rated between 210-290hp. Where on Earth would the Stellantis marketing department find such an engine?
They’ll probably just ask an ignoramus.