Older but interesting article on Toyota brand recognition

There is a prime example of hybrid electric drive sitting at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It's called the U-505.

Do they still have the coal mine exhibit?

I remember that from when I was a kid....

Yup, and the U-505 exhibit was recently re-done.

Mostly, our fleet submarines of WWII were electric drive, as were some of the battleships.

However, I'd be very surprised if submarines were the widest use of hybrid electric drive; I expect it's railway locomotives.

Does GM have a hybrid on the road? Today? That's worth a damn?

But the point is not that the technology was invented by Toyota. It was practically adapted by Toyota. You're not going to fit a huge 18 cylinder diesel in a Corolla, the engine is longer than a typical Corolla. The bank of batteries used is also quite huge. Also the same technology has been used in diesel-elecric train engines since about 1935 and they're pretty big, also.

I had ABS on my 95 S-10. It SUCKED. I very nearly wrecked the thing a couple times because ABS was only on the rear and it pulsed at a relatively slow rate I also had ABS on my 95 Previa. You can't hardly tell when the ABS is kicking in and I never feel like I'm losing control of the vehicle. My idea of Toyota is sort of like BASF, they don't really invent anything totally new, they just make it better.

Charles of Schaumburg

What's really sad is that GM basically developed the diesel-electric locomotive back in the 1930's. You would have thought that they would have been first in making it for cars, too.

Charles of Schaumburg

How far do you go with "adapting" before it becomes "innovating"? IMHO, Toyota's hybrids have evolved the basic idea of "big diesel driving an electric generator, which then feeds electric power to distributed electric motors" into a whole new species of beast.

It depends on how you look at it, but I think there's a good case for saying the diesel-electric submarines were basically electric powered, from batteries charged by diesel-driven generators. The batteries _could_ have been charged by a cable from the dockside, though that _would_ have been a crazy way to run a navy. To be a "hybrid", I think the vehicle (car, whatever) has to rely on more than one-way straight-line relationship between drive components.

Dissenting opinons, anyone? :-)

That's basically the same way diesel-electric train locomotoves are run, as well. The electric motors actually drive the train wheels, the diesel motor drives the generators. But as much power as the locomotive puts out, you would have to have overhead cables or 3d rail everywhere to run it without the diesel. I think they tried that in the NorthEast Corridor for a while.

Charles of Schaumburg

For the subs, I think it depends on the sub. I am fairly certain that, at least in some, the propeller shaft could be driven straight out of the diesel(s).

My working definition of "hybrid" is combustion and electric together. Whether or not the Chevy Volt would meet Andrew Stephenson's definition is doubtful.

From what I can tell, hybrid diesel-electric ships (it's not limited to submarines) appear similar to railway locomotives. A diesel engine runs at near-constant RPM, providing power to electric motors.

I thought that was how the Prius worked, but was wrong.

The interconnections between modules don't have to be elaborate, just something more than (as said) a straight-line relationship. Some kind of feedback, integrating everything, so the system can know to activate the primary energy source (diesel, petrol, gas, solar, nuclear &c), plus other feedback loops to regulate lesser intermediate functions, like battery charger and electric motor. Toyota's hybrid cars definitely qualify. Don't know about Chevy Volt (as in "got no info", not "doubtful about using the term"). Am fairly sure that a WW2 submarine with engineers hovering over switches, watching for battery bubbles, is a stretch.

I don't think battleships were electric drive!

Several of those classes (the Tennessee, New Mexico and one other, I think) were listed as "Turbo-Electric".

I'll check around and see if I can learn what that means for certain.

And I did. There were several. The Tennessee and New Mexico, for sure. The steam turbines drove a generator, which then powered an electric motor on the propeller shaft. No mechanical coupling between steam turbine and propeller.

For a little more info:

Toyota.Aisin and Ford are cross licensed to the same hybrid technology that they developed together. Fords diesel truck engines in the US are made by Navistar, not Ford.. The only diesels Ford builds are for farm equipment.

mike

Mike Ford has been out of the Farm equipment business for almost a decade. Ford does build diesels for automotive applications in Europe.

Ed