What happens in a PHEV when you run out of charge – step by step demonstration #phev #whathappensif

In This video we drive a plug-in hybrid Hyundai Tucson until it runs out of electric charge to see what happens afterwards with Brian Doolan at Fitzpatricks garage Kildare

Common question so i want to try and answer it lots of people ask on phevs that’s a plug-in hybrid um what happens when it runs out of charge uh or what happens if you don’t charge it so i’m going to drive a phev that’s a plug-in hybrid which basically means it’s a hybrid car which means it can run in battery and engine uh for small periods but which is like

A normal hybrid and but this one because it’s a plug-in hybrid also gives you it’s a slightly larger battery than a normal hybrid which means it gives you the ability to run about 40 to 50 kilometers on full electric drive so a lot of people ask then what happens if you don’t charge it or what happens once it runs out of charge so this is going to be a pretty

Quick video uh apologies now it is quite dark so this is a plug-in so it’s plugged in so what i’m going to do is take that out oops and i’m going to take it out from the car as well over here i’m going to chuck that in the booth somebody’s got a really noisy fan belt which they need to fix but right so this is the entry model so it has the analog clock but the

Main thing that’s important see over here i have a full battery which means that if i toggle through the menus here let’s have a look to see how much range have i got on the car which we can see over here then the car is saying it’s got 77 kilometers of fuel it’s got 59 kilometers of battery and if we come over here to the center then that means that the car has

We’re going to energy information and it means i’ve got 59 of electric i’ve got 77 of fuel so i’ve got a total range of 136 kilometers so that means and here’s the thing and i’ve answered this before in a different video if you want uh to know what it is just let me know and i’ll send you a link but i can basically store this electric energy so what i can do is i

Can actually drive the car on hybrid mode and keep that 50 odd kilometers of electric driving until later in this for the sake of the video i’m going to start off by using the electric mode pretty much quickly and just wear it out just to show you what happens after we run out of full electric driving remember with these plug-in hybrids i have a little button down

Here and that allows me to toggle through an automatic mode which chooses when the best time to use electric or hybrid is or i can go to hybrid mode which means all it’s going to do is use a marginal small amount of battery to assist the petrol engine uh or else i can go to this full electric mode and you can hear the engine has stopped now as well where i’m using

Full electricity uh i’ve been driving through this weekend so just put fuel in the car so just if anyone’s wondering the top range when you’re looking at this up here 368 that’s composed of obviously a petrol hybrid amount plus the battery as well so anyway i just don’t think that people might wonder uh how that works so uh let’s go driving let’s go into ev mode

And one thing i’m going to do another video by the way if you have the heating on it messes up the electric mode on these uh while they’re driving so you see where the engines actually cut out if i start this back up engine is going to come back in so electric mode you can hear it electric mode struggles a little bit that’s for another video anyway i’m going to go

Through that uh there’s loads of reasons it’s interesting i’ll go through all that which in another video so we’re going to go into electric and i’m going to have to kill the heater for the moment just to use up that electric so i’ve got about 90 or so kilometers to drive so in about 60 times an hour or 60 kilometers time we will have lost the ability to do full

Electric driving kind of i’ll explain it to you a bit better so i’m just going to use up this electric range first and i’ll chat to you soon just while we are driving actually a really common question that people ask is what speed can you do in an ev well i’m doing what 121 there at the moment and you can see up here uh ev so we are cruising quite comfortably at

I’ve never i don’t know what the top speed is i can’t you know legally find out um but the main thing about this is as long as i don’t really floor the throttle that much and i just maintain the speed and i’m going up a hill here um it’ll quite comfortably cruise in ev mode no problem at these kind of normal speeds i have another video if you’re curious about the

Acceleration just let me know and i can send you a link uh as to what kind of speed or what kind of acceleration level these phevs can do when they’re in full ev mode just another point and i will cover this in another video like you’re saying to you up here you can see the green ev if i turn on the heating okay so uh turn on the heating i want to clear the front

Windscreen this can be a problem for people front windscreen i’m no longer in full ev mode i turn it back off give it a sec little ev has popped back up here again so i guess what i’m saying to you is it actually does make a difference on these i think for some people that are going to do a short hop in the mornings on a phev this is going to be a problem because

They’re going against the car they want to keep the windscreen clear they want to heat the car um and the phev is not going to be able to run the full electric mode in some of the cold weather at certain types again i’m going to cover in another video it was just a point to note an observation at the moment anyway we’re down to about 37 kilometers let’s keep

Going but remember that’s not to knock these cars these are an awesome car to drive four wheel drive 265 horsepower combined with the 1.6 turbo engine the bigger battery they feel really short for it i suppose the whole thing about the phev is there’s a time and a place so yeah if you live in really cold weather or certain times of the year the full electric

Part may not be as effective but once you get up to operating temperature and the cabin’s warm it becomes completely usable and i suppose there is going to be times of the year where it’s quite warm and you won’t need as much heating in the cabin and that’s where you’ll be able to use electric mode more or in this case where i’m driving i’m uh using electric mode

Here at the start i could have heated up the cabin a bit better and then started using electric so do you just have to be a little bit flexible to get the most out of these phevs but still a really really nice car to drive so we’re getting close now we’re down to what eight kilometers uh of battery left but look at the battery gauge over here on the left that’s

Still reading about a third which kind of is confusing and that’s where some people get tripped up um anyway i’m going to explain this a little bit better in a sec but when we get down to zero this battery gauge will not be empty and the reason it won’t be empty is it always maintains a little bit it maintains about 15 of battery so you never get to fully zero

With electric cars anyway even like a fully v when it says zero percent it’s not zero percent it actually in the background uh not on view to the public it keeps a little bit of charge behind that but when this gets down to zero down here we will still have some charge over here and that’s to maintain the hybrid driving so we’re down to two kilometers pretty much

Nearly running out of charge uh what’s interesting is i’ve averaged 1.2 liter per hundred kilometers like that’s like 600 million miles per gallon it’s like i suppose look it’s not realistic number i spent most of my journey in electric i used a little bit of the start of hybrid to heat the cabin um but it just goes to show like when you do an average out if i did

Another 50 kilometers on hybrid i still get some awesome fuel efficiency anyway back onto our gauge here which is telling us two kilometers left and we’re down to one kilometer left so if we look over here at our energy monitor i got 20 battery but i’ve got one um clunker left how’d you have to say the last two to three kilometers that’s three kilometers my god

They’ve gone on forever uh so anyway we have one kilometer left you see we’re in ev mode up here in the top so as we transition into zero and i know this is a little bit boring but i just want to watch what happens on the crossover back into zero uh so come on one kilometer this is a long kilometer uh so when it goes to zero we might still stay in a little bit

Of an ev mode because we’re driving reasonably relaxed and this is something i want to show people as well because sometimes people we had some people that asked well once this plug-in part this full electric part goes out that means it’s just back in petal right and i suppose no no is the answer it’s just going to behave like a normal hybrid uh one other thing i

Was going to say to people if you don’t plan on charging one of these phevs buy the hybrid and the non don’t buy the plugin because the plugin has a heavier battery it’s got a four-wheel drive system so it’s a heavier vehicle so it’s going to be harder on fuel and so you know only buy it if you plan on charging it but if you don’t plan on charging it just buy the

Normal hybrid still at one kilometer this is absolutely ridiculous this is like the world the guinness book records get them this is the world’s longest kilometer uh so i’m expecting this to drop into zero any second now we’re gonna watch though to see what happens on the transition so one kilometer 14 kilometers later we’re still in one kilometer um come on god

Almighty i don’t think i’ve ever waited this long there we go zero and we’re still in ev so if you look along here on the right hand side we are still in ev and that’s something i want to show people so because i’m cruising along nice and easily i can behave like a normal hybrid car here i’m up in ev as you see over here we’ve run out of electric charge it’s maintaining

15 percent of battery i.e the battery will not really drop down below that level uh it will stay there thereabouts to allow us to behave like a normal hybrid car so that’s what happens now okay it won’t stay at 15 it’ll drop down a little bit but it’ll continuously then get down to a level and it’ll recycle and pull itself back up but it’ll you know stay in around

That area so yes we are now gone back into a hybrid mode so looking at the energy flow on the car the engine is uh sending energy back up to the battery down here because it needs to charge it uh but it’s still also driving the wheels but eventually that will charge the battery sufficiently and would be able to go back into an ev mode granted a short ev mode where

Maybe we’re doing somewhere in the region of maybe uh one kilometer half a kilometer something like that or especially if you’re creeping in traffic it’ll allow you to use some electric driving but for the vast majority of higher speed driving or acceleration it’s going to use both as you see right now we’re going back into ev and if we look at the energy flow we’re

In full ev driving as well so hope this makes a bit more sense and then once i plug it in again it’ll charge back up to give me that 50 kilometer range and it’ll allow us to start cruising again like we did doing a lot of electric drive so anyway hopefully that video is useful basically what we’re trying to say here is if you charge the car use the full electric

Drive it’ll give you about 50 kilometers once you run out of that full electric drive um the battery will get down to a range or sorry the range will get down to zero in terms of full electric drive or you make the decision however at that point you could literally drive the car forever and never ever charge it ever again and it’ll behave like a normal hybrid

Car where in this case it’s using it’s maintaining about 15 battery and that’s where petrol engine and battery will work together most of the time especially at motorway speeds and all that kind of stuff for under acceleration however there is times where if you’re really feathering the throttle you’ll be able to do some electric driving and if you’re creeping in

Traffic and all that stuff you’ll be able to do some electric driving as well so like i said full charge gives the long range 50 kilometers uh once it’s run out of charge it’ll still be able to behave like a hybrid where it’s using the two power sources in a slightly different fashion hopefully that makes more sense and hopefully it’s answered some questions or if

It hasn’t let me know in the comment section and i’ll do my best to answer your questions uh better uh i don’t think the video is useful to give it like please be great uh anyway thank you for watching and hopefully it’s been useful and i totally apologize for the really crap camera work and stuff but it’s more just a pragmatic exercise uh to help people understand all right thank you

Transcribed from video
What happens in a PHEV when you run out of charge – step by step demonstration #phev #whathappensif By Brian Doolan at Fitzpatricks Garage Kildare