Horse ICE-es BEV
Hello dear Wonderers,
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How far we have come in only a few short years! I remember vividly driving a converted VW Golf that had its engine ripped out to turn it into an electric car for lack of mass produced alternatives. That was less than 20 years ago. Now Horse, the joint-venture of Geely and Renault specialized in combustion technology, has created an engine specifically to retrofit electric platforms.
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Everyone knows that you can only get the full potential of an electric drive train when you start from a bespoke electric platform. Given the tremendous expense of developing those platforms, that puts traditional manufacturers in a bit of a bind. Unless they ditch their existing business entirely they have to use sub-optimal solutions to electrify. Some are building their EV's on platforms that were conceived from the start as being able to house the necessary plumbing for combustion versions. Not ideal but at least they can flexibly react to the market. Others go down the route of a multi-platform strategy, building almost identical looking vehicles on two completely separate underpinnings. Some even use both solutions at the same time, as Mercedes does with the CLA family (one multi-use platform) and the GLC (two platforms for ICE and BEV).
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What happens then when you have taken the jump, spent tremendous amounts of money on that future oriented electric platform and.... the market doesn't move quite as quickly as you had imagined. You have the perfect technology to produce fully electric cars, but that won't keep your company in business. Well, Horse has created the perfect solution. Their new engine is incredibly compact and can fit into the space that is usually taken by the rear electric motor on an electric car. The unit contains a four cylinder engine, hybrid transmission and two electric motors. Call it the wonder box for hybridization of a BEV platform. Depending on what the manufacturer is looking for, the options are very diverse. The engine can be used as a pure range extender feeding the battery, a serial hybrid where it is still the electric motors pushing the car forward or as a "real" hybrid with a direct connection between the combustion engine and the wheels. There is even the option of adding a turbo to the system to drive the power up to 120kw (from 70 kw).
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As with most things in life, it's good to have options. Horse give manufacturers, especially young Chinese ones, a plug&play system that allows them to adapt their strategy to customer preferences. That can only be a good thing. The current conditions on the global energy markets make it easy to forget that only a few months ago electrification was moving much slower than anticipated.
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Media link.
Grtz
Pieter
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