Quote:
Originally Posted by Jetboy
Normally the EV portion should be more reliable than the gas engine. Imagine as an example - unlimited water fording depth. They should operate perfectly fine underwater. You could just plug your intake, put in EV only mode, and go as deep of water as you please with no fear of it not working.
I would also love the idea of the ability to use the battery system to power my camp. And it should be capable of auto-recharge in the back country so you'd end up eliminating any need for a generator or probably even any reason to have a solar setup. A 10kwh battery pack would run a fridge for months. You could winch for miles before running out of juice too!
And the low end torque would probably eliminate any reason at all to have a two speed transfer case or low range. It's basically the equivalent of unlimited low range. Front dig? No problem. Rear dig? No problem. Drive only the two left side tires for a skid turn? No problem. Electronic drive opens up a world of options that we could only dream of doing with current drive trains.
I think there are a lot of good reasons to go for a hybrid system for off road use. If it's done right it could be a quite a significant improvement over a gas or diesel powered vehicle for both expedition/overland and for the hard core stuff. But... it has to be designed with that in mind. And it'll have to have some method of allowing access to the battery bank output for camp/winch/etc.
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Good points.
I get you on the fording depth, but again, no appeal to me. Probably not to most because who wants to drive through 3+ feet of water that often? It'll get inside somewhere.
Available electricity for back-country camping - no argument there.
If you eliminate the transfer case, then you're placing all your off-roading onto the 4 electric motors that you'd need instead. So your 4Runner would be two-wheel-drive mechanically as far as the gas engine drive portion is concerned (could be all-wheel-drive, I suppose). While that may eventually work, we're nowhere near there today - maybe. But I totally get the future possibilities that tech will eventually offer.
Either way, that Rav4 looks good, and from what I read, has no direct competition at the moment.