When the hybrid 'Vette goes on sale later this year, it will be the quickest of them all.
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Here’s everything we know about the 2024 Corvette E-Ray hybrid
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Why does it seem like people always try to make up completely useless, frivolous shit to try and make the Corvette look inferior to European sports (or super) cars?
First it was the completely useless HP/L bullshit, now it looks like we've shifted to the completely useless "it's too big for narrow, twisty, mountain roads" bullshit. The first one is completely, 100% useless and indicative of nothing, and the second one is completely, 100% untrue.
The Corvette is a world class car. It straddles the line neatly between sports and super car, and more than holds its own in either category against just about anything you can throw at it by any metric that is a) actually true, and b) actually matters.
First it was the completely useless HP/L bullshit, now it looks like we've shifted to the completely useless "it's too big for narrow, twisty, mountain roads" bullshit. The first one is completely, 100% useless and indicative of nothing, and the second one is completely, 100% untrue.
The Corvette is a world class car. It straddles the line neatly between sports and super car, and more than holds its own in either category against just about anything you can throw at it by any metric that is a) actually true, and b) actually matters.
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Dr. Gitlin could perhaps offer some context and remind the readers of GM's record with hybrids (trucks and cars), and extended range EVs (two and a half, then gave up), also if any of that experience was applied on the E-Ray.
The McLaren P1 and the Porsche 918 Spyder from a decade ago, and even the current Ferrari SF90 Stradale managed to include a plug and offer performance.
The McLaren P1 and the Porsche 918 Spyder from a decade ago, and even the current Ferrari SF90 Stradale managed to include a plug and offer performance.
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The Prius and similar hybrids are particularly efficient even the battery is depleted. That is important because the battery is tiny and thus gets depleted often.
This is achieved by using a particular hybrid architecture (power split) combined with an engine optimized to to run with that type of transmission (one of the results being the Prius having the most efficient engine in a production car).
This Corvette is a parallel hybrid with a conventional transmission. And of course a gas guzzling high performance engine.
Fuel savings may be... less impressive.
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As with many of the high-performance European hybrids, fuel economy, if it improves, is a nice byproduct, but not the intent of the hybrid architecture. As with race cars, the purpose is more power for acceleration and handling, without having to boost the ICE further. The type of hybrid setup in this 'Vette is commonly used for that. See several Porsches, BMW i8, etc.
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No one is expecting 50mpg. But there's a significant peak power bump thanks to the electric motor without changing the ICE. So you're not going to see the improvement you'd get from switching to a lower power engine running the Atkinson cycle, but I definitely expect a little bump in city MPG. And again, that comes alongside a boost to peak power. That's efficient. To get the same power out of the ICE alone, you'd be burning more fuel.
The Prius is a parallel hybrid as well. And despite calling its transmission an CVT, it's pretty much a normal planetary automatic, just with an electric motor shoved into it. Granted that's still very different from the dual clutch in the Corvette.
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Indeed. Analog style displays are better at conveying certain info but that does not require mechanical instruments. All the info has been available from the vehicles computer(s) for decades, readable by wire or Bluetooth dongle from the OBD port.
I'd like to see UI options like we have on phones and PCs rather than one standard interface.
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It's not a parallel hybrid.
Part of the power from the combustion engine flows to the wheels mechanically as in a parallel hybrid, part flows electrically through the generator and electric motor as in a series hybrid.
Hence it's something else (which I like calling a power split hybrid).
The only commonality it has with with a planetary automatic is that it has a planetary gear set.
In practice it has more in common with an open differential than with a planetary automatic transmission.
And it is indeed continuously infinitely variable providing any ratio between neutral and top gear.
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I hate this car. I hate this car, and I'm going to rant a little. IMO this is not the time to be introducing a non-plug-in hybrid Corvette. This isn't even the right time to be introducing a pure battery-powered EV Corvette. That time would have been a couple of years ago. The C8 should have been a BEV on a purpose-designed BEV platform.
All the hype about a mid-engine Corvette chapped my hide. GM had absolutely beautiful prototypes of mid-engine sports cars as far back as the 1960s. Even as late as the 1990s or 2000s it could have been a sensible evolution for the Corvette. But in 2020, really? After many other sports car makers have been doing mid-engine for decades, and everybody by that time knew the automotive world is going electric? A dozen years after the original Tesla Roadster shipped, even?
And now we get an old-fashioned, non-plug-in hybrid. What happened to industry leadership, GM? What happened to skating where the puck will be, not where it is now? Or as Lee Iacocca famously said, "Lead, follow, or get out of the way!" GM's sports car strategy seems to be all about getting out of the way.
I'm sitting here with money in hand, and I want a new electric sports car. Electric car, not hybrid. What company am I going to buy it from? Well, there's basically nothing in production at this moment. Tesla are working on one—expensive, long delayed, and still nobody knows when it'll really be produced. Lotus are working on one. Polestar are working on one. MG are working on one. Porsche are working on one. (No, the Taycan is not a sports car, even though they keep calling it one in all their press material. It's a porky sedan.) And GM are. . . not working on one, apparently.
But man, bodging some hybrid bits into a C8 and hyping it like mad; that's something they can do.
All the hype about a mid-engine Corvette chapped my hide. GM had absolutely beautiful prototypes of mid-engine sports cars as far back as the 1960s. Even as late as the 1990s or 2000s it could have been a sensible evolution for the Corvette. But in 2020, really? After many other sports car makers have been doing mid-engine for decades, and everybody by that time knew the automotive world is going electric? A dozen years after the original Tesla Roadster shipped, even?
And now we get an old-fashioned, non-plug-in hybrid. What happened to industry leadership, GM? What happened to skating where the puck will be, not where it is now? Or as Lee Iacocca famously said, "Lead, follow, or get out of the way!" GM's sports car strategy seems to be all about getting out of the way.
I'm sitting here with money in hand, and I want a new electric sports car. Electric car, not hybrid. What company am I going to buy it from? Well, there's basically nothing in production at this moment. Tesla are working on one—expensive, long delayed, and still nobody knows when it'll really be produced. Lotus are working on one. Polestar are working on one. MG are working on one. Porsche are working on one. (No, the Taycan is not a sports car, even though they keep calling it one in all their press material. It's a porky sedan.) And GM are. . . not working on one, apparently.
But man, bodging some hybrid bits into a C8 and hyping it like mad; that's something they can do.
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Seems more like Porsche is an outlier here than the Corvette.
That being said, "how does Porsche make smaller mid/rear engine cars" is an interesting question. I suspect part of it has to do with the flat-6 design, it's quite compact even compared to the small block v8s. Another part of it could be practical - the engine bay on a Cayman/911 is truly crammed. Quite possible the Vette engineers decided on a more accessible layout to keep service/repairs a little bit simpler.
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vdiv, perhaps you can remind us how much the McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, and Ferrari SF90 Stradale cost in comparison? The Corvette, at least since the C5, is about big bang for your buck. It was never intended to beat the world in every possible way. That would be impossible at its price point. Yeah, I do feel sometimes like a defender of the make since my C5 was such a great car in so many ways ("leaf springs?").
There is also some tradition inertia over specifically the Corvette. The C8 was polarizing to the existing ownership community when it was first announced. This is another big step forward for the platform. AWD is a huge first for it. Getting rid of a V8 engine entirely is another leap for some of the intended audience.
There is also some tradition inertia over specifically the Corvette. The C8 was polarizing to the existing ownership community when it was first announced. This is another big step forward for the platform. AWD is a huge first for it. Getting rid of a V8 engine entirely is another leap for some of the intended audience.
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As far as performance per dollar, you can go further back-- When the C4 first came out it was pretty impressive:
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15141822/1984-chevrolet-corvette-c4-archived-road-test/The roadholding on this new machine is so advanced that we recorded the highest skidpad lateral acceleration—0.90 g—ever observed with a conventional automobile by this staff. That figure practically trivializes the previous high-water marks, in the 0.82-g range, generated by such exotics as the Porsche 928 and assorted Ferraris.
It is hands-down the fastest American automobile, capable of 140-mph top speeds, 0-to-60 times under seven seconds, and 15.2-second quarter-mile forays at 90 mph. In fact, these figures qualify the Corvette as one of the half-dozen fastest production automobiles in the entire world!
Its braking, thanks to an advanced Girlock four-wheel-disc system, makes the car stop as if it had been dropped into a sand bank. Our 70-to-0-mph brake test produced a stop in a mere 173 feet—seven feet shorter than the best 1982 distance of 180 feet, recorded by a Porsche 928, and not far off the all-time record of 165 feet, set by a Porsche 930 Turbo!"
Performance-wise, it was on par with cars that cost 2-3x as much (if not more). And I don't think the story is much different when the C3 and C2 came out.
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And the C4 ZR-1 maintained relevance for decades. When I was racing a Honda S2000 in the early 2000's the SCCA had it in the same Solo2 class as the ZR-1. I happened to race against a driver of one for a season and our comparison was indeed close, with both of us believing we had similar skill. On those lower-speed tracks the ZR-1 had more grunt and I had slightly higher cornering speed, very competitive. The early (AP1) S2000 was notably less forgiving than his ZR-1 if I went past the limits (so-called snap oversteer).
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I'll take one. On a side note I'm putting together a crew for a heist, LMK if you're interested and might have useful skills.
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We'll see what Porsche creates with the electric Boxster, but at this point, nobody's building electric sports cars because they can't. It's not because they won't, it's not because they're afraid to, it's because if a car weighs 4000lb or more it's unavoidably going to drive like a grand touring car at best, not like a sports car. The Polestar 4 is not going to be a sports car. The MG is not going to be a sports car. The Tesla Roadster, if it ever goes on sale, isn't going to be a sports car. And the electric Porsche 918, I fear, is not going to be a sports car either.
I mean, what is a sports car? At least in my mind, a sports car absolutely must be light on its feet, nimble, and quick to shift its weight and change direction. There's a fucking reason Colin Chapman said to simplify and add lightness. It's not about speed - a Tesla Model 3 that drives like shit will walk a Miata or a Boxster. And it's not about sheer lateral Gs. To be a little trite, it's about how it feels. Take the Taycan, which you dismiss as a porky sedan. Rightly so! I've driven one on a track, and while it drives like a real Porsche and looks fucking great and reels in a long straight like nobody's business, it's not a sports car. It's a lot more like a 928 or a Panamera - a very capable GT for storming down a twisty country road. So why do you think anything about that driving experience is going to translate to a sports car worthy of the designation?
I feel like there's this automatic, unquestioned assumption that EVs are the only way from this moment forward and if a brand is not making pure EVs in every segment, it's behind the times, but I think that's kind of bullshit. You're getting all het up about GM not building an electric sports car, but what is it you think you're asking for, and why do you think an EV drivetrain is the highest and best and most technologically pure way to achieve that? And why is a minimal battery, a compact and lightweight MGU, and a volumetrically efficient and very powerful V8 not?
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Yeah, narrow roads, like Europe tends to have. Makes sense a German company designs around those dimensions. Why should the Corvette, particularly since practicality and usability for American buyers has been a major part of its design brief since day one?
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I'm seeing this as a Corvette i8. And actually what the BMW i8 should have evolved into. But it won't (and is not intended to) satisfy the EV fanatics - it's not an EV, even though it can sneak out of the neighborhood in the morning on electric power alone (if it doesn't need to warm the engine up first, and the battery's full from the previous day's driving). So ... a great car, but arguably just an evolved dino.
That said, it's also not the time for a Corvette EV yet. The battery tech needs a bit more evolution, including solid-state batteries that don't have to be gathered in a lump for practical manufacturing. Suspect that once Ultium gets to a 2nd or 3rd gen the batteries will the there to do the job, replacing the engine in the center of the car and making, essentially, an affordable Rimac. They're not quite ready yet, though.
That said, it's also not the time for a Corvette EV yet. The battery tech needs a bit more evolution, including solid-state batteries that don't have to be gathered in a lump for practical manufacturing. Suspect that once Ultium gets to a 2nd or 3rd gen the batteries will the there to do the job, replacing the engine in the center of the car and making, essentially, an affordable Rimac. They're not quite ready yet, though.
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"A plug-in hybrid would have added a lot more weight and cost for diminished performance returns."
This car already has the battery, motor and controller. Adding a plug would be minimal extra weight and cost.
A PHEV doesn't need to have a big battery. I -like- small batteries as they're lighter but adding a plug even at this battery size would make the existing performance more accessible as you could deplete the battery using all that extra front axle power and and then simply plug it in to do it all over again without having to regen the battery the hard way. Not to mention those ICE free short hops that PHEVs are best at.
(I'm a 330e owner for this reason and think BMW has struck a reasonable compromise between battery capacity/range vs weight)
This car already has the battery, motor and controller. Adding a plug would be minimal extra weight and cost.
A PHEV doesn't need to have a big battery. I -like- small batteries as they're lighter but adding a plug even at this battery size would make the existing performance more accessible as you could deplete the battery using all that extra front axle power and and then simply plug it in to do it all over again without having to regen the battery the hard way. Not to mention those ICE free short hops that PHEVs are best at.
(I'm a 330e owner for this reason and think BMW has struck a reasonable compromise between battery capacity/range vs weight)
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I feel a lot of readers are missing the magnitude of the performance upgrade. Most rwd sportcars are traction limited in first and sometimes second gear. 650hp custom engine or 350hp junkyard LS, doesn't matter. That means about 0.65 to 0.7 g's longitudinal acceleration, and that's even with 200 treadwear tires that can reach 1.2 to 1.3 g's. Conversely, awd cars easily reach 1g longitudinal off the line, but often only through the magic of short gearing on a small engine. E-ray breaks that problem. Now you can put 400-500 lb-ft of torque to good use at non-felony speeds. And have 500 hp for strong acceleration at high speeds. Having driven and raced both styles, this really is the ideal of power AND traction. Faster than a Z06 for all but dedicated track days.
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Imagine the negative comments if this was a PHEV with a 1.9 kWh battery. Sometimes I find the things people post in comments here to be utterly ridiculous.
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Just the hassle of plugging in the car so that you could be guaranteed to have a couple of miles of electric range... uggh.
Most PHEVs are like 20-40 mile ranges, if this has an EV range of 3-4 miles as-is, we're talking about a battery that is 5-13x bigger (so 10-25 kWh)... At 5kg/kWh, we're talking about +40-120 kg!
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It's unlikely to be any more expensive than the cost to service the basic 'Vette with the 6.2L V8. Which is the engine in the e-Ray. GM's electrified models in the recent past (~10 years) have been less than reliable, but most of that has been driven by assembly, infotainment, and ICE-related (in hybrids) issues that are common in the rest of their products, not electric-specific.
Yes, the Bolt (like most EVs, actually) has a bad reliability rap from CR and the other reviewers. That's driven to a considerable extent by the recalls several EVs have been subject to. My anecdata about a Bolt is that yes, it's needed several recall-related dealer visits. Most have been at most a couple of hours for a software update. Even the Big Battery Recall visit was a day, and they got me a rental with Lyft to/from the rental office on the dealer's account - the way loaners are done now. The seat belt pretensioner recall that I'm waiting on a fix for is the first that hasn't been related to the battery issue, and they won't schedule me for that until the parts and instructions are issued (just don't hit anybody hard
). At least it doesn't have Takata airbags (I think). Otherwise, the maintenance schedule has been minimal, and I haven't experienced other issues of any consequence in any greater amount that in older ICE vehicles I've had. If the electric side of the e-Ray is behaves like that, it should have no real impact on the vehicle's reliability.
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The article was very clear that this hybrid system is performance-oriented, and any benefit to fuel economy is welcome but incidental. You probably won't notice it. PHEVs are not done for performance purposes: the weight of the larger battery commonly reduces performance even with a more powerful electric motor than in the standard version. And when running on gasoline (after the short EV time) PHEVs usually struggle to reach the mpg that a "standard" hybrid can do. So since GM was making a performance car, not a high-mpg commuter, the decisions made were appropriate. And hey, if it can do 3-4 miles of neighborhood/parking lot trundle, that's better than a Prius (non-PHEV electric range is usually 1-2 miles, at very low speeds).
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The link below is where I got 3-4 miles from:
https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/...de, meanwhile, allows,to 4 miles, said Franz.
"The Stealth Mode, meanwhile, allows E-Ray to run purely on electrons for somewhere between 3 to 4 miles, said Franz. It can run up to 45 mph, at which point the V8 automatically fires up."
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That said, the Prius HEV 1.3 kWh battery uses a 40% SoC window, so only has ~0.52 usable kWh. So if we assume an EV range of about 1 mile (at <45 MPH) that 1.9 miles/kWh.
For comparison, the Prius Prime has an 8.8 kWh battery and uses a 75% SoC window (I think). So it'd be 6.6 kWh usable. The Prime is listed with a 25 mile range which would be almost double that of the HEV.
Does that pass the smell test? I guess I thought the Prius HEV and PHEV were very similar aside from the size of the battery and being able to plug them in...? Or does it suggest the HEV has closer to a 2 mile range following whatever the EPA did to get their 25 mile estimate for the PHEV?
For the sake of arguments, let's split the difference and figure 1.5 miles for the HEV on it's 520 Wh. And let's just go with the E-Ray being a similar rate.
So then 3-4 miles would be 1.04-1.56 usable kWh, which would be a SoC window of 55-82% on the 1.9 kWh pack. That might be a bit high for a small hybrid pack, but then there is a pretty big difference between a Prius where typical might be 150-300k miles for it's lifetime and a Corvette where 100k miles isn't super common (my 1993 is still under 75k).
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For PHEVs we have all electric range/consumption values as per EPA standards.
For the Prius PHEV that's 25 kWh/100 miles and 25 miles range. This is similar (or better) than many pure BEV so it makes sense.
And it's coherent with your estimate of 6.6 kWh usable battery (which seems confirmed by other sources).
That said
1) EPA standards do not apply to the all electric range of the HEVs. So the values floating around may not be apples to apples.
2) You're assuming the all-electric range of 1 mile for the all-electric range. I'm confident you're under estimating it.
3) You end your post by calculating range/bulk capacity which you can't use to compare different vehicles because they'll have different usable capacity.
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Nice theoreticals, that aren't TOO far off of real life. Note that Prius (plain HEV) has traditionally used NiMH batteries (not sure if it still does) with capacities around 1 kwh (my 2014 is actually rated at 0.9). They can't maintain EV-mode operation at speeds above 25 mph for long enough to be useful. EV mode is mostly useful for trundling around parking lots and neighborhoods, and the occasional terminally stop & go "LOS G" (for GOD-awful, as one consultant once put it) traffic jam. And in summertime the a/c after a hot-soaked start can easily burn down a "full" battery in the NiMH HEV in less than 5 minutes, leaving the ICE as the only power source. The Prime PHEV has more electric HP (see Weber Auto's Prius transaxle discussions for details), and can run electric-only with careful acceleration (push too hard and that ICE starts up) up to decent speeds (45-60 mph), with a range (in modest-speed use) of around 25 miles, using a Li-Ion battery instead of NiMH. The new Prius (see recent articles in Ars and elsewhere) appears to use a drivetrain more like the RAV4 and Camry HEVs and PHEVs, with Li-Ion batteries for all and much more capable EV modes and EV ranges.
Edit: note that HEVs and PHEVs (especially the former) operate their batteries in a fundamentally different fashion than BEVs. They don't store a lot of energy, being essentially ICE vehicles, with electric assist and braking energy recovery. Some HEVs are charged ONLY from braking, and all use it for most recharge with ICE contributing only when the battery is fully discharged. The batteries are routinely fully if not overcharged, and fully (within their designed range) discharged - the kind of operation that in a BEV would condemn the battery to rapid deterioration (as was apparent in the compliance car BEVs). That the batteries in the (P)HEVs still last 10-15 years and well over 100K (commonly 15 years and 150-200K in the NiMH Prius) is therefore interesting.
ISTR something recently about California moving to require all BEVs to meet the PZEV hybrid battery warranty requirements (which the older Prius falls under): 10 years or 150K miles. The current 8 year/100K miles requirement is federal; California has often required emission-related systems to be guaranteed for longer than the basic federal requirement.
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