There are rumors that Mercedes + a big firm in turbochargers, make an addition of an electrical motor that reduces or eliminate the lag in the power supply.
There are rumors, too, that new motors around 2.4 liters with turbo could serve to a line of Subaru cars, including BRZ + GT86, offering you a power around 270-280 horsepower.
That's it, better motors with around the same or minor emmisions.
Was not predictable that petrol industry + gas services + mechanical services + autodealers + car industry + satisfied consumers hit back to the regulators of electric future???
From your Subject, there is no question about Subaru + Toyota. That already happened back in February 2020. Toyota raised its stake in Subaru. Toyota does not own Subaru. See:
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The article mentions Subaru moving to [hybrid] electric vehicles, but those aren't in my foreseeable future. I'm in an old house that would require rewiring to 200A service to support charging a car. Even if that happens, I'd only look at hybrids because I do take my Subies offroad, and there aren't plug-in stations in the forests. What buyers seem to neglect is that, yeah, they safe on fuel costs but the huge and very expensive batteries need to get replaced every 5 years, so add battery replacement ($3000 to $8000) to the Cost of Ownership for an electric vehicle. Pretty much eliminates the savings of going electric.
I didn't address your mention of Mercedes and some vague reference to a turbocharger manufacturer since those are off-topic here. Same for your rumors.
Can't address your last paragraph since it rambled with no point. A condensed version is "Was not predictable hit back to the regulators of electric future?" Who are these regulators of "electric future"? How would they get impacted from increased sales of electric vehicles? By getting busy in regulating the efficiency, pricing, and recycling of the batteries?
Consumer reports reviewed the Crosstrek hybrid a while back and said the extra couple of mpg's was not worth the extra cost of the vehicle. I'm getting 30 mpg off my Crosstrek, mostly local trips, and with what little driving I do a hybrid or electric car are not in my future either.
Scotty Kilmer makes a lot of comments on hybrids and advises against buying a used one because of battery cost plus extra costs of repairs.
He also does not like turbocharging as it wears out a small engine faster. He also mentioned that if transmission is not built up to take the turbocharged engine it can wear out faster.
Don't know if this is what you mean but there are several companies working on electric superchargers or e-superchargers (not turbochargers) which substitute an electric motor for the usual belt drive to the compressor stage. In theory it is simpler and can reduce the load on the engine so less power is taken to drive the compressor for short spurts of power as it is coming instantaneously from the car's electrical system and battery. Like any other technology there are a few problems, many of them in the engine management. I do believe I read something about some German makers working on these systems but probably only in vehicles with the 48V electrical systems. Haven't seen anything on that front with Subaru and, as conservative as they are, they probably wouldn't approach it unless it was pretty well proven.
Before I buy an electric vehicle from Subaru, they'd have to up their warranty to be similar to Kia.
Kia Bumper-to-bumper: 5 years, or 60K miles Powertrain: 10 years, or 100K miles Roadside assistance: 5 years, or 60K miles Subaru Bumper-to-bumper: 3 years, or 36K miles Powertrain: 5 years, or 60K miles Roadside assistance: 3 years, or 36K miles Total Cost of Ownership (per Edmunds): With a $1K for the above (Subaru is higher), about $40K over 5 years.
But then you look at the cost to replace the LIon battery after 5 years. For Kia's Niro, it's $8900 excluding tax and fees. Subaru doesn't have a hybrid offering, but I doubt it would be much cheaper. Edmund's TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) calculator doesn't cover Kia Niro. Edmund's TCO includes fuel costs (for gas cars). Add in the LIon battery, and TCO goes up 25%. Their TCO for an Outback 2020 is $6259 over 5 years. The cost to replace the LIon battery far exceeds any savings in gas, plus you had to pay for the electricity to charge the LIon battery.
Also, we trade one pollution source for a different one. Instead of car emissions, we end up with lithium storage. Only 50% of lithium batteries get recycled (a Finnish company upped that to 80%, but just for themself, not industry-wide). With more hybrid and all electric cars, we deplete lithium faster and end up stockpiling old crap faster.
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June 2015) "Can lithium batteries scale up? According to this quick and purely speculative math, the short answer is, with current reserves, not just no, but hell no. With known lithium ?resources? at 39.5 million tons, we get about 50 years of supply with 100 Gigafactories, which is a bit more comforting, but still not exactly a viable long-term solution."
About the same expectation for when we run out of petroleum. Guess we'll have to switch to coal-powered steam engined cars for the next 100 to 250 years. Coal will get depleted faster as the coal-powered electric plants will have to handle the added load of more and more [hybrid] electric cars or if forced to go to coal-powered cars.
Considering that I keep my cars for over 20 years, I'd only have 2 hybrids for when they'd have to get scrapped.
This sounds like you're talking about Mercedes' Formula 1 technology known as ERS-H (Energy Recovery System - Heat). There are two different ER systems on an F1 car, the ERS-H and the ERS-K (ERS - Kinetic). The Kinetic one recovers the energy of braking and puts it back into the battery.
The ERS-Heat is the one which takes the spin of the turbocharger, and converts it into electricity and stores it back into the battery. It also has the additional benefit of taking the electricity out of the battery and spinning the turbo back up when the throttle is closed, which eliminates all turbo lag. ERS-H is also known as e-turbo in road cars.
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Subaru just updated all of their engines to the next generation, gone are the old 4-cylinder engines (EJ-series, 2.0L & 2.5L) and the old
6-cylinder engines (EZ-series, 3.0L & 3.6L). They've both been replaced by the new 4-cylinder FA-series (2.0L & 2.4L, including turbo versions). The 2.4L Turbo replaces the old 6-cyl 3.6L naturally aspirated. But the turbos are conventional turbos, not e-turbos.
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