WIP Beta released ETK800 Hybrid 8.1.0

Interestingly, I found that the good mileage is significantly affected by the driving style. Prius engineers had used the so-called "Hybrid System Indicator" to persuade drivers to save fuel unconsciously. Therefore the MPG is overrated.
I tried the ETK856 hybrid and the BeamNG-official 856, in the same course with the same driving style, the MPG only increased about 1/3. Not as high as Prius compared to other cars.

 

One has to understand that the Prius even beyond the Hybrid system is a car that is far more optimized for low fuel consumption than most. Even without they Hybrid system the Prius would be a very efficient car.... it is just that optimized.

 

Just wanted to drop in here with a status update! I recently watched some deep-dive videos on the more recent planetary eCVT transmissions to learn how they've developed over the years. My initial eCVT design was based on the written information I could find on the internet specifically about the Prius. Sadly there isn't a whole lot of recent information in writing, so what I found was fairly old and applied only to Gen 1 and 2. The deep-dive videos I found from WeberAuto are amazingly educational and they have videos about the latest-and-greatest transmissions including the Gen 4 Prius/Prius Prime. I've been working to update my simulation to more closely resemble the characteristics of newer designs to make the simulation more accurate.

I created an "eco hybrid" version of the ETK854 (which I've branded the "854eh"), that is to say, an economy-focused 4-cylinder (non-turbo) hybrid version of the ETK800. I based the performance parameters of the hybrid system for this model very closely on the Prius Prime transaxle, and the results were extraordinarily similar. The weight of the ETK800 in the game is within a few hundred pounds of the Prius Prime, and the 0-60 time of the 854 with the same power ratings was almost identical to the Prime as well. This means the performance simulation on my latest iteration is extremely accurate.

After fine-tuning the revised design a bit, I then took to rewriting some of the control logic for the hybrid system in-game to optimize how power flows in various states of charge. It's now much easier to achieve high mileage in the 854eh (35+ in town is easily achievable). I'm convinced that the fuel consumption numbers in the game are way off from real life, because the stock 856t in the base game gets around 9 MPG when I drive it in down, which is abysmal. My mom's RAV4 gets three times that without even trying. That being said, if the fuel economy numbers in the base engine were to be fixed, the mileage of the 854eh would most likely be much closer to what a real-life Prius gets.

Once I got the new 854eh working in a way with which I was happy, I then added a new "Sport" model which takes the place of the previous regular "Hybrid" model. I also updated the Race model so its performance remains approximately the same as before with the new design. So, there are now three hybrid models of the ETK800: the 854eh "Eco Hybrid", 856sh "Sport Hybrid", and 856rh "Race Hybrid".

This new system is adapted to the Citybus as well. I still have a significant amount of tweaking to do on both the ETK800 and the Citybus before I can release a new version for either, but an update is coming fairly soon. I also want to make a better HUD (UI app) to resemble the power flow display seen on most modern hybrids.

 

Nice, we would like to see 100% ICE power in "heretical mode"
Also somewhat I managed to ride a Prius, and I noticed when the ICE is already running then slowed down to lower than 40km/h and the throttle is below 20% the ICE will shut off. In 856th The ICE will not shut off even at 5km/h if the throttle is at 1%, you have to lower the throttle to 0% to shutdown the ICE

 

They must have changed that in the newer ones. The last Toyota hybrid I've driven personally was from 2006 and you had to almost completely let off the throttle for it to kill the engine. I can't recall off the top of my head if I made that a configurable threshold; it'd be trivial to do so, so I'll revisit that next time I get a chance.

Also, can you elaborate on what you mean by "100% ICE power in heretical mode?" If you floor it, the ICE will be providing 100% of the "capable torque" to the wheels, part of it transferred directly and part of it transferred electrically through MG1 to MG2.

 

Heretical mode aka. overdrive mode, is where the MG1 has to run backward to reduce engine RPM below redline, if the MG1 is not powerful enough the ICE power will have to reduce to prevent engine damage. This is experienced in your mod. The ICE actual power (can be seen via "engineinfo" ui app) is noticably lower than the "torquecurve".
However if you set the MG1 power and battery power high enough to balance the ICE, the ICE should deliver 100% torque in overdrive mode, but I set this and still not getting 100% ICE power.

Please investigate this by increase MG1 and battery power high enough, and using both the "engine info" and "torquecurve" UI App and compare one to the other.

 

Hm; so it's mainly at higher speeds. It's possible that what you're noticing is that the output torque from the drivetrain is less because MG2 actually has generation drag on it in this mode, with its power being sent to MG1 to put load on the engine. I suppose if the battery is full enough, I should probably have MG2 be freewheeling or even delivering acceleration torque so long as it won't overload the battery, meaning the output torque will be at least 100% of the engine load plus whatever MG2 is able to accomplish. If the battery is too low, you will never get full ICE power in reverse-MG1 mode because of the fact that the system has to consume battery power to put load on the engine, and battery power must be limited when it's low (at least in a real vehicle).

 

But the problem I experienced is that.
The battery has high charge (over 75%), and the MG1 power is edited to higher power, and the battery is edited to higher power. But the ICE still cannot get full power at "heretical mode"

 

I would have to make changes to the system to make it work like I suggested. I'll play around with that next time I get a chance to see if I can fix it.

 

Arcanox updated ETK800 Hybrid with a new update entry:

Better and Smoother Power Management

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

ETK 1300 hybrid

 

The thought of automatically using the brakes to prevent rolling downhill is way ahead of time.
I'm saying this because I had seen numerous EVs or PHEVs that have idle creep. Unlike ICE automatic gearboxs that have one-way clutch, idle creep in EVs cannot prevent the vehicle from rolling downhill. Thus, people gonna have a bad time driving those EVs, because at shallow incline they have to use brake to control creep and at moderate to steep incline they have to use the accelerator pedal to prevent rolling down hill, this leads to confusion and contribute to Unintentional Sudden Acceleration accidents. Auto hold function only works if the vehicle has come to a stop via braking, and doesn't work when coasting to a stop.
Arcanox's smart brake, which automatically engage to prevent backward movement in D, or forward movement in R, does not appear in any modern EV or PHEV. If this brake function have implemented in real life EVs and PHEVs, driving them will be much easier, regardless of creep function.
--- Post updated ---

 

Glad you like it! I designed that system for the bus because I had a VERY frustrating time trying to climb the West Coast hills without rolling back, but it seemed un-intrusive enough to keep in all the vehicles

I do believe the Bolt EV has a sort of "electric auto-hold" if you come to a stop in "L", where it will use a little bit of power to keep the vehicle stopped on an incline, but I'm not sure how strong it is. I've never driven one; I've just heard about that part.

 

what about this kind of gauge

 

I've been wanting to make custom gauges for a while, but I'm not sure if it's possible without me having the source files of the etk800 model. If I can manage it by just swapping some textures and copy/pasting JBeam, I could do it, but I haven't looked into it in great detail yet because I've been focused on other features.

 

That's interesting, what about this

The 200EX actually has a tachometer needle linked with the throttle movement

 

The challenge is swapping the texture on the gauges. I'm not sure how involved that is, given that the textures are bound in the DAE model file. I would preferably like to avoid having to copy the entire interior model file to the hybrid version.

 

The ETKs already have swappable imperial and metric gauges, so the gauge cluster models and textures should be separate from the rest of the interior already. Of course, then you would have to learn the dark art that is texturing

 

When I press E or Shift + E, it does nothing, however it does work on the Citybus.

 

I'm guessing you have another mod installed that overrides the input_actions for the etk800 and it's taking precedence over mine. In my next version (4.1 or whatever I decide to call it), this will be fixed as I've moved all the hybrid actions to a separate input_actions_hybrid file.