Last year, Li Xiang, the founder of Li Auto Test, publicly bombarded PHEVs, believing that car companies that insist on multi-gear PHEVs will switch to the technical route of range extender in the next one or two years, and use this node in 2025 as a verification. It is now 2024, and there is still a year to go before the node Li Xiang said, but Li Xiang's judgment on the range extender and multi-gear plug-in hybrid seems to be about to become a fact.
I can be bold here**, this year and next, range extender and single-speed hybrid may compete with each other, while the share of multi-gear plug-in hybrid will gradually decline.
Many people's first reaction when they see this is impossible, multi-gear plug-in mixing is obviously more advanced than the range extender, why is the advanced one eliminated? You're talking nonsense! I know you're in a hurry, but don't worry, listen to me.
The competition between range extender and multi-gear plug-in hybrid models is not just the competition of two technologiesIt is more of a dispute between the electric drive and the oil drive-based route。With the price reduction of power batteries and the advancement of electric drive technology, multi-gear plug-in hybrid will gradually become a "thankless" technology in the future, which is the core of my opinion.
The matter of building a car has never been as advanced as possible, otherwise in the era of fuel vehicles, everyone is on mechanical supercharging, why can naturally aspirated Japanese cars become popular, and why is the share of CVT and dual-clutch transmission, which is considered backward, gradually rise? Because building a car is the art of balanceThe core point of choosing a range extension or a multi-gear plug-in hybrid solution lies in how to balance fuel consumption, cost and performance.
The extended-range power technology is relatively brainless and simple, and the simple understanding is that the tram has a fuel charging treasure, which is essentially an electric vehicle, with a low technical ceiling, but it solves the problem of energy replenishment and battery life of the tram at low cost, and at the same time, the energy consumption in urban areas has an advantage over fuel vehicles.
PHEV is a pure electric driving of the oil car, compared with the range extender The biggest advantage is that some working conditions can be directly driven or driven in parallel, multi-gear PHEV ensures that there will be no power fault under different working conditions and different speeds, and there will be no high-speed driving, internal combustion engine power generation and then electric drive "take off your pants and fart", but the multi-gear plug-in hybrid system has a complex structure, a long research and development cycle, and a higher cost.
The reason why the range extender will rise is mainly because the power battery has been greatly reduced, and the cost of a 100-degree battery pack is less than 50,000 yuan. In the future, large battery range extender models will inevitably appear, and three or four hundred kilometers or even, four or five hundred kilometers of pure electric battery life are also commonplace, which will have three major impacts:
1. In the case of a substantial increase in pure electric battery life, the probability of using an internal combustion engine has been reduced a lot, whether it is a range extender model or a plug-in hybrid model, the dependence on oil drive will be greatly reduced, and this itself is contrary to the original design intention of the multi-gear plug-in hybrid model, in other words, the multi-gear plug-in hybrid on an internal combustion engine and multi-speed gearbox, is to play more of the role of the internal combustion engine, now you use electricity most of the time, what is the point of using such a complex structure?
2. In almost all urban road conditions, users will use pure electric driving, and even run high speed as long as there are charging conditions, the owner will charge and drive with pure electricity.
3. The biggest disadvantage of the range extender compared with the multi-gear plug-in hybrid model, that is, the problem of high-speed energy consumption, has little impact on the car experience, and when you use less than 2 tanks of oil a year, will you care about the high-speed fuel consumption of one and a half liters?
Some people say, can't the multi-gear plug-in hybrid model have a big battery? Isn't that better than a range-extender model with a big battery? Yes, but there are a few issues to solve:
The first question: how to balance the internal combustion engine and the battery? If the internal combustion engine is strong, then it will inevitably encroach on more space in the engine compartment, and the front-mounted dual-motor structure itself is in a contradictory state with the more powerful internal combustion engine setting in terms of space requirements. In other words, under the same size, there is a certain gap between the power battery capacity that can be put down by multi-gear plug-in hybrid models and the range extender.
The second problem is that costs can spiral out of control. The single-gear plug-in hybrid engine can completely ignore the low-speed road conditions and only consider the high-efficiency operating range, while the multi-gear plug-in hybrid model should take into account the medium and low speed, and consider the smoothness and responsiveness of switching between gears, and the more complex structure itself will bring higher costs, then, either sacrifice profits, or reduce battery capacity, or reduce motor power, will inevitably make trade-offs. As a result, the advantages of multi-level plug-in hybrid in terms of performance and energy consumption will become a disadvantage.
All in all, a general trend is that as electric drive technology becomes more and more important and plays an increasingly important role, then in order to make trade-offs and balance cost and space, the inevitable result is that the internal combustion engine will often become the one that is "sacrificed". For example, a pure electric range extender model with a range range of 400 kilometers, and a multi-gear plug-in hybrid model with a pure electric range of 200 kilometers, if ** is close, guess which one will sell better?
Therefore, I am sure that multi-gear plug-in hybrid models will inevitably appear in the future, with a decline in market share, and even a direct transformation of the range extender, if you don't believe it, we will wait for 2025 to see, and I also expect me to be slapped in the face, but with a high probability, my judgment will become a reality.