W. Heath,

You've just said: "VFC: would require a massive, extraordinarily expensive hydrogen infrastructure development."

Say what, brother? What expensive hydrogen infrastructure development? Please read my previous posting carefully, or let me repeat it again regarding INTEGRATED H2 production and dispensing center:

"Produce the H2 locally and dispense it all in the same location to avoid cost and inefficiency associated with H2 transportation. A city with 10mi x 10mi area will need but one integrated H2-production-AND-dispensing center in the middle, thus necessating on average, under 4-mile one way trip to get a fill up. Thus, 1 station every 100 square miles.
H2 can be produced by gasification of dried cellulosic biomass transported to the center. The 800-degree heat by-product of gasification of biomass can be used for further H2 generation at the same center by high-temp Solid Oxide steam electrolysis using wind or solar electricity from the grid in order to double the electrical efficiency of electrolysis in comparison to room-temp electrolysis of water.
For wind electricity with whole-sale cost of $0.05/kwh, making H2 via the high-temp electrolysis will cost but $1.50/kg. Adding another $1 for profit and cost of facility and equipment and taxes, and renewable H2 from wind can be sold at ~$2.50/kg, thus renewable H2 energy competitive with gasoline cost of today!!!
Since H2-FC-HEV can travel twice as far as a comparable non-hybrid gasoline car of today, you can see that the potential energy cost for the end consumer can be reduced to HALF of today's gasoline cost.

Brother Heath, talking about infrastructure, the manufacture and recycling of millions of battery packs for BEV's will require a lot more infrastructure set up than putting one H2-generating-and-dispensing station for every 100 square miles of urban areas. In fact, the presence of a gas station in every street corners is a big waste of infrastructure, but, it is supported by private investment money. As more and more H2-Vehicles will arrive, more H2-generating-and-dispensing center will be opened, such that we will see one station every 10-20 square miles instead of one every 100 square miles, but all developed on "pay-as-you-go" basis by private money from entrepreneurs or investors.

And, brother Heath,if you are still of the belief that H2 economy is "exceedingly difficult & expensive and inefficient hydrogen storage...", please consider the fact that Quantum compressed H2 storage costs ~$15-$17/kwh with gravimetric energy density of 2,000wh/kg, whereas Lithium battery costs ~$500/kwh to $1,000/kwh for the 9kwh Valence battery pack for the PHEV Prius, and Lithium battery safe enough for cars has much lower energy density at 120-160wh/kg.
You can fill up a 160kwh H2 tank in 2 minutes, but can you charge up a 80kwh battery pack in 5 minutes with the current electrical grid? NOPE!!!
Nearly all major car mfg's are proposing H2-vehicles, while none are proposing pure BEV's.
"nuff said!

No matter what because of the differences between biofuels and h2 and battery there is a solid market for all 3.

That is what people are missing. They assume one will win. Just like now we have gas and deseil andcruder fuels for transports and such we will use various fuels n the future.

Because even gas the uber fuel didnt handle everything.

Wintermane,
It would be best to use biomass gasification to make H2, and the heat of gasification combined with wind and solar electricity for high-temp electrolysis to make more H2. Then, you would combine the FC with the battery into one FC-PHEV like this Ford HySeries vehicle. Voila, the best mix that has all 3: biomass energy, wind and solar energy, all combined into H2-electricity and battery electricity!

Or more economically, you can use the low-purity H2 from gasification process to burn in the H2-ICE-HEV, and reserve the ultra-pure H2 produced from high-temp steam electrolysis from wind and solar electricity for FC-PHEV. There, even lower-cost H2 utilization, without the more expensive process of scrubbing all the CO and other trace impurities from the syngas product of gasification in order to make 99.996% pure H2 necessary for PEM fuelcell stack.

Brother Pham, I’m really and truly sorry you’ve been taken in by the Oil Company, Big Auto & Bush/Cheney “we love oil” Administration Hydrogen Sucker Trap. I know that their brainwashing efforts are insidious and pervasive, but please, please Brother Pham, for your own sake, free yourself, do not allow those demons and their agents to invade your brain cells.

Actually, I’m not a big fan of the BEV, or even the PHEV. I’m a believer in the Series Hybrid EV, which does include FCV’s, they would be fine with me if and when they are ever practical. As it is, not even the ~20 times more economical Home Fuel Cell is practical yet, and the Home Fuel Cell has far more wide reaching advantages than the Vehicle Fuel Cell does. I will also point out your comments on batteries apply even more so to the FCV than the regular Series HEV since the high cost of VFC’s implies a need for a much larger battery. In any Series HEV, there is an economic trade-off between battery size and generator size.

The fact is if even 1% of the Oil/Big Auto/Pro-OIL Gov. funding was put into R&D for Series HEV generators, we would long ago had generators for Series HEV’s in the needed 10-50 kw range with efficiencies of at least 50%, comparable to or even higher than FC generators. Consider with miniscule private funding (none from Oil/Big Auto/Pro-OIL Gov), companies like Reg Tech have developed the RadMax rotary Diesel engine, with 1.3 hp per lb, FlexFuel, high efficiency – the StarRotor FlexFuel external combustion Brayton cycle engine is 45-60% efficient, the Free Piston Power Engine/Generator with 1 kw output per kg and >50% efficient, and Gas Turbines have been built with 62% efficiency. As an example of what can be achieved, with funding that is nil compared to HFC & Hydrogen Production & Storage expenditures, the series hybrid based on the Free Piston Power Engine, with four 50 kw wheel motors, all wheel drive, turns on a dime by running one side wheels reverse to the other, 0-60 mph in 5.2 secs, and 147 miles per US Gal. And a much simpler, more reliable design that will burn gasoline, bio-diesel, ethanol, LPG, etc.

There is zero doubt in my mind that Auto Companies could build a two seat commuter car, series hybrid, made with light weight composite materials, 0-60 in < 9 secs, 1-2 kwh battery, 25-50 hp electric motor, top speed 70 mph, high efficiency FlexFuel engine/generator of 8-10 kw output, with >200 mpg fuel economy, probable production cost in volume of ~$10,000, and a >25 year life expectancy, with minimal maintenance. It could be built if even a miniscule fraction of the money poured into Hydrogen/HFC R&D was put into it. And as far as I’m concerned, big vehicles should pay a hefty fee to travel into the city cores, unless with > 3 passengers, as is done in some European cities. This could be done now, not 20 years in the future (if all goes well). For the average 30 miles vehicles travel per day, such a vehicle would use <570 ml of fuel (say alcohol) a day. Many people drink more alcohol than that. You could go to Wal-Mart, buy a 4 gal jug of alcohol, and that would take you 800 miles. That’s easier than buying milk or beer. With fuel economies of over 100 mpg ( which could even be accomplished with Series HEV SUV’s), and ethanol/methanol/biodiesel/syngas fuel the Greenhouse Gas, Peak Oil, Oil Dependence problems are all effectively solved in the transportation sector, with simple already available technologies, and the consumer would save money in the process.

I do like your idea of neighborhood H2 production. An even better idea is home roof based H2 production in bacteria panels or tungsten nanotube converter panels, the H2 could be stored in home, and burned in a HOME H2 FUEL CELL of 1-1.5 kw is adequate, not your 15-50 kw vehicle fuel cell. This would be a far superior use of H2 and Fuel cells. I would envision every home having a Plugin Hybrid sized battery or ultra-capacitor bank of about 10 kwh, and a Synchronizing Inverter of 1-2 kw connected to the utility and a regular Inverter of 25 to 50 kw (about 10% to 50% of the size of an EV or HEV’s PEM and simpler) connected to household power. This battery bank could then provide a quick recharge for PHEV’s and about a quick 25% (50 mile) recharge of BEV’s, but more importantly would revolutionize power production & distribution. Now the typical household average grid energy requirement is 1-2 kw, that is 4 to 9 amps @ 240 vac. As such each home would only need a feeble #16 cable to tap into the utility, instead of a heavy 2/0 cable and a large 100-250 kva transformer tied to a 4,160 – 13,800 volt utility distribution feed. A similar, but larger installation could be done in buildings. Gone would be the days of major power blackouts, brownouts and fears of terrorist or environmental disaster caused power failures. This distributed energy system of course would inevitably lead to distributed energy production, in particular CHP (Combined Heat & Power). Home solar stations of modest size, or home or neighborhood windmills, and home natural gas fed microCHP furnace/hot water/power generators, which could be small 1.5 kw natural gas fed fuel cells (not like your 15-50 kw automotive hydrogen fed fuel cell) or stirling engines or even small diesel engines with heat exchangers (which can generate power with >80% effective efficiency and no distribution losses). This is where your neighborhood H2 production could thereupon fit into the energy mix – for Electricity, Hot Water & Heat production for homes & buildings, not for vehicles, where cellulose based ethanol / methanol & biodiesel large production facilities located near Agricultural & Forest sector waste outputs, would be a much more efficient way to produce & distribute vehicle energy.

You should also understand that the Oil/Big Auto/Pro-OIL Governments that are funding H2 & H2 FCV R&D, have no interest in your neighborhood H2 production. First & Foremost H2 is a case of Greenwashing for them. Spend money from their advertising & disinformation budget on H2, come out smelling like roses, yeah – were pro green, while companies like Chevron buy up the NiMH battery patents and bury the technology for vehicles and home energy uses, and finance political campaigns to suppress realistic green technologies. Chevron right now has a mega-buck advertising campaign falsely claiming Energy Independence is impossible. Secondly, after they have successfully forced the consumer to buy all of their expensive Oil & Gas, then they will use taxpayer funded high temperature gas cooled nuclear & also coal plants to produce H2, and they will have total control over production & distribution of H2, which will only be available in service stations that they own. Of course, previously to that they will use up our precious Natural Gas reserves to convert it to H2, as they are doing now.

If the Oil/Big Auto/Pro-OIL Governments were really serious about H2 & FCV’s, the only logical course of action would be to first build & mass produce the series HEV, with efficient engine/generators – improve the cost & efficiency of them to the max. At the same time go full out to develop & mass produce the natural gas and methanol (in particular for homes & buildings that don’t have natural gas) Home Fuel Cell CHP generator. Once the cost & efficiency & demand is sufficient for the former, than if the large VFC can compete in cost, then it is a trivial matter to swap the GenPak in Series HEV for a Fuel Cell. And thereupon if H2 storage & production can fairly compete with ethanol/methanol/biodiesel/syngas in vehicles without massive public subsidies, then I’m fine with that.

Brother Heath,

You have a great point there, regarding CHP, esp. using FC. But, you've quoted a price of $100,000 for a 1kwh unit hotwater heater in Japan, while the Japanese website mentioned only~500,000 yens, which is ~$3500 USD. Far more affordable, with lifespan of ~40,000 hours.

Also, ethanol won't have much of a future, either, due to the extensive use of low-grade heat for the distillation and processing steps which cannot be efficiently recycled by steam turbines for electrical generation, unlike biomass gasification using high-temp heat that can be recycled, hence greatly increase the overall efficiency of the process. Ethanol can't be pumped in existing pipelines, and its corrosiveness forces replacement of existing pumps and fuel lines at gas stations, a major expense that will make you wonder why not just jump right onto H2 instead for comparable infrastructure investment cost.

WRT series hybrid EV using much-downsized genset like you are proposing, such a device is only recently made practical by much more durable nanotech Lithium battery (A123) with thousands of charging cycles. In the past, series hybrid EV like in diesel-electric locomotives still needs a large diesel engine to provide peak power due to lack of durable electrical storage means. Without a large and durable battery pack, you will need a big engine, big generator and big motor to get the power to the wheel, and that would cost a lot more than a mechanical transmission unit used in most cars up to now, without any gain in overall efficiency. The Prius, which uses a serial-parallel architecture with reduced-size generator, reduced-size motor because the engine provide a portion of torque directly to the driving wheel, is still more expensive than a non-hybrid vehicle of comparable size. If the Prius is to be made a serial hybrid, you'll need a larger generator and larger motor and a larger batter pack, and that will inflate the price so much that it would no longer sell well in the market place.

The money spent on Hydrogen development (Freedom CAR)were thought by the BUSH Adm as a ploy to divert funding from PNGV (and more-promising petroleum-sparing PHEV technology) were not wasted, either. We are gaining fantastic H2 technologies that can, in the near future, really replace petroleum with biomass and wind and solar energy. Again, the law of unintended consequences. To paraphrase a Rafael's statement: "Never underestimate what magic a research scientist or engineer can pull out of a hat!"

Brother Pham: Regarding the Tokyo gas fuel cells, I seem to recall seeing an actual cost to them of $100,000, but they were leasing them to customers for about $1000 per year on a 10 year contract. Does sound high to me since you can get 250 watt methanol fuel cells for ~$3500 now. Definitely this could be the way to go for microCHP, I want one right now if you can sell it to me for $2000, people where I live have $300 power bills per month (electric hot water heat) and $400 fuel bills per month in the winter.

I don’t buy that ethanol/methanol corrosion argument, you buy it at Wal-Mart in a flimsy plastic jug (they wouldn’t allow you to buy gasoline in a container like that). Water is more corrosive than ethanol / methanol & all pipelines are exposed on their larger surface area outside to water so what’s the problem on the inside. Recall BP letting their Oil Pipelines corrode away to the point they leaked, vastly more toxic than ethanol, oil onto the landscape. And Brazil is commonly using ethanol in vehicles without any problems. And I don’t think it’s that uneconomical, since Bill Gates & Richard Branson are both sinking large amounts of money into cellulose ethanol production. I don’t believe H2 would be anywhere nearly as economical for transport or storage than ethanol, methanol. biodiesel or SynGas derived liquid fuel. There is the absurd case of BMW showing off their Liquid Hydrogen powered ICE vehicle, here’s a quote:

“First, the hydrogen tank takes eight minutes to fill and it takes up most of the boot space. Even then, the hydrogen tank provides a range of only 125 miles. To get enough hydrogen into the fuel tank it has to be chilled and liquefied. Gradually it warms up and boils away, so if you don't use the car over the weekend you'll find less in the tank. Park up at the airport while you take your three-week holiday and when you get back it'll be nearly empty. The fact that the hydrogen has to boil off for safety reasons may be why hydrogen vehicles are illegal in France. Even over here you are advised not to park the vehicle in an enclosed car park. You cannot see hydrogen, you cannot smell it and it burns with an invisible flame. Like petrol vapour, when mixed with air it is highly explosive. At least you can smell petrol! “

Regarding the series hybrid, I keep having to explain to people that charging cycles are related to the %utilization of the battery. So the Prius uses a 1.2 kwh NiMH battery that is only 25% utilized, because it does a cycle every time the vehicle is accelerated. A series hybrid sedan type vehicle only needs a 1 kwh battery which would need to be good for probably 5-10,000 cycles like the Prius battery, because it is doing the grunt work of absorbing braking and normal downhill energy. In order to add the capability of brief high speed highway travel (say > 90 mph) and hill climbing in the mountains, the series hybrid would need an additional 4 kwh of battery size, which the happy coincidence is also provides the 25% utilization factor for absorbing braking energy and normal downhill energy (except 4 times the energy that the Prius can absorb). The other consideration is the Power to Energy ratio of the battery, in order to absorb & deliver the high currents of braking & acceleration, which again the 5 kwh Series Hybrid battery pack is much more capable than the 1.2 kwh Prius battery pack.

Regarding diesel locomotives, for long distance travel the diesel engine is sized sufficiently to pull the heavy train at speed, low accelerations, mostly continuous speeds and fairly flat rail, leaves little advantage to a series hybrid. Nevertheless, a couple companies are producing series hybrid switching locomotives, with Lead-Acid batteries no less, and diesel engines 1/10th the size of a comparable non series hybrid locomotive. See http://www.railpower.com/products_hl_howitworks.html

Actually if the Prius was made a Series Hybrid you would need a much smaller generator of about 18 kw, it needs only be large enough to run the vehicle at maximum continuous highway speed. At 80 mph the Prius should use about 18 kw, does it really need to travel that fast continuously? The battery size of 5 kwh would be ample, which is worth max of an extra <$1000 in NiMH. The larger electric motor would and electronics would maybe cost an extra $2000 but the much smaller engine, no complex transmission, and much simpler control would easily make up for that. And of course you would eliminate efficiency losses due to engine acceleration & below optimal performance and transmission energy losses which would be comparable to the conversion & battery charging losses for the series hybrid. In addition you would gain a much larger portion of braking & downhill energy recovery. The much smaller simpler standardized generator (no reason it could not be standard with all series hybrid vehicles and all generators made in the world) with no acceleration or torque requirements would inevitably lead to engine/generators that would be much more efficient than the Prius’ Atkinson engine. Pollution controls are much more effective and efficient as well on a constant rpm engine. And addition the all electric drive would mean much better acceleration, as electric motors are far superior to gas motors in that respect. And the much simpler design would lead to much lower maintenance costs, indeed most of the maintenance cost would be on the small engine/generator pack which can easily be removed and changed to any type made by any manufacturer.

I see no reasonable relevance of H2 for vehicles. It could be great if home or neighborhood produced, for home or building fuel cell CHP but if Auto companies (& their Oil Company masters) were really serious (which they most definitely aren’t) about vehicle fuel economy the typical vehicle would easily be made 100 mpg, using the series hybrid & lightweight construction. The Loremo sports vehicle has 152 mpg just using light weight construction (contrary to what Detroit claims it is very easy and affordable) & a diesel engine. No series hybrid to capture the braking & downhill energy or to run the engine at optimal efficiency. See http://www.loremo.com/daten_en.php . At those levels of fuel economy it is trivial to dump a few gallons of alcohol or biodiesel or SynGas fuel into a plastic fuel tank and be good for like 600 miles of travel. At that level it is more significant the amount of oil products used in packaging and clothing.

An additional comment on the NiMH battery which has been around for 10 years: Way back in 2000 the chairman of ECD Ovonics stated they could produce it, in volumes of 20,000 or more, for $250 per kwh, which would be $2250 for the Volt battery pack. He also stated he expects they are on track to produce them at $150 per kwh. Which for the Volt would be $1350. Of course, this was all before the Terrorist Funding Miscreants at Chevron shut them down, just when the battery was ready to explode on the marketplace. University of California, Davis also determined that present cost in volume would be $220 per kwh.

A comment on the Series Hybrid Volt for your information. This is from the GM-Ovonics website in 1998:

“GM's series hybrid (using an electric motor to drive the front wheels) uses a compact micro gas turbine generator system to charge the GM Ovonic NiMH HEV battery pack while driving, which provides an effective fuel economy of nearly 100 miles per gallon (MPG) of reformulated gasoline! This is based on GM's anticipation that the series hybrid owner will plug the vehicle in overnight while parked in the garage (grid charging), leaving in the morning with the HEV batteries fully charged. Operating as an HEV only (no grid charging), the hybrid obtains 60 MPG highway and provides a 350 mile driving range. When the generator is running, tailpipe emissions are one half of California's stringent ultra low emission levels (ULEV). The very high power to energy ratio GM Ovonic NiMH battery provides ample power for acceleration (zero to 60 MPH in nine seconds) and offers a zero emission, EV only, driving range of 40 miles, significantly more than other HEV battery types can provide."

Brother Heath,
I admire your tenacity regarding serial hybrid (SH)!

However, I have some questions for you: Why don't you couple the engine torque directly mechanically to the electric motor during cruise, thereby wasting no power loss due to resistance in the winding of the generator and the motor, plus eddy current loss in the core as well? Direct mechanical coupling have zero loss, you know! Plus, you are avoiding the wear and tear in the motor and generator circuitry.

When acceleration is needed, currrent from the battery is sent to the motor, and when the car is coasting, the generator will receive the engine torque to recharge the battery to avoid powering down the engine. Thus, even in the serial-parallel hybrid (SPH), the engine is always operated in the most efficient regime, in nearly-wide-open throttle to avoid pumping loss. When the vehicle runs so slow that the engine would be out of its most efficient regimes, then, the engine will be disconnected from the motor, and shut off and let the vehicle run on pure battery power electric mode!

The SPH takes mechanical advantage of the engine torque to downsize the electric motor and to reduce the size of the battery. Thus, no duplication of effort. Efficiency of the SPH is higher than SH due to the absence of electrical loss from the generator-motor route, plus a lighter and lower-cost vehicle due to reduced motor and battery size. Don't you think that Toyota has already considered this when they designed the Prius and the rest of their line of HEV's?

Brother Roger, it is an old argument that direct coupling the engine to the wheels improves efficiency significantly. At cruise speed the losses on a fully optimized electric drive are 5% engine to DC bus, 5% DC bus to Motor, 5% Motor to wheels. The typical losses in a mechanical drivetrain, according to the US dept of energy are 30%. This is double the 15% series hybrid loss @ cruise speed, if wheel motors are used, and if a simple motor to differential system is used the losses will be about 15%. Still comparable efficiency, engine shaft output to wheels, as the Parallel Hybrid engine to wheels efficiency. And for that comparable efficiency, you are sacrificing an inherently simple modular construction, the engine/generator can be mass produced for any vehicle built by any manufacturer, and easily installed and swapped out.

As for the life of the motor(s)/generator, typical industrial electric motors & VFD’s are run continuously for years without service. That’s like over 1 million miles without any maintenance whatsoever. I’ve seen motors still running smoothly after 70 years of almost continuous service.

Consider, maybe you might beat the efficiency of a series hybrid by 5% with the parallel drive at cruise speed. But when you have a modular mass produced standard generator/motor pack, surely you can improve upon the 35% efficiency of a TDI Diesel engine by 5% (= 36.8% eff), when you have a much smaller engine than the typical ICE or Parallel Hybrid, it has no torque or acceleration limitations, and runs at a constant rpm and can be mass produced common to all vehicles and portable generators. Wouldn’t this open up practical high efficiency series HEV generator engines like the StarRotor Brayton cycle or the RegTech RadMax diesel or the Free Piston Power engine/generator or high efficiency ultra-compact turbines? Do you seriously believe, when these engines are claimed to have up to 45-60% efficiencies, with comparatively trivial funding (all private), that the 37% efficiency can’t be beat. And save on a very complex drivetrain & control system.

I admire the complex patented Toyota Synergy Drive, but they have already been sued for Patent Infringement. There are several reasons Toyota likely didn’t choose the much simpler Series Hybrid EV design. One is that Chevron/Cobasys successfully sued them for patent infringement for their Panasonic NiMH battery, and as part of the settlement they were limited in battery size sufficient (barely) for a parallel hybrid drive but not for a Series Hybrid. Chevron does not want the EV to succeed for obvious devious, immoral reasons, and the fact is a series HEV is a version of an EV. Also, Toyota knows that EV’s including series HEV’s require very little maintenance, and apart from the small simple generator engine and the $1000-$2000 battery pack, can be expected to last for 25 years or more. The automakers in Japan have already forced legislation through Japan Gov. make it very expensive to keep vehicles (I think its called a Shaker Tax) in Japan for more than 5 yrs. I have little doubt that automakers are avoiding using lightweight composite materials for Auto construction because they like the rust-away obsolescence, and of course their devious Oil Company masters want maximum fuel consumption. Even with an ICE engine a series HEV can easily be converted into a BEV, something that the Oil Companies hate, and the Auto companies and Auto Service industry fear like the bubonic plague.

The all electric drive has been chosen by the military for the new HumVee & Future Combat Systems propulsion (no ulterior motives) and diesel locomotives have long used it, where they could have used the direct drive quite easily if it paid. In remote mining camps, where all power is diesel generated, wouldn’t it make sense to use diesel engines to drive big 100-1000hp vent fans, 100-600hp compressors, or 50-200 hp pumps, rather than convert from diesel to generator through transformers & transmission lines to the drive motors and save on conversion losses? They many decades ago used to do that, but it does even come close to pay off. The simplicity, vastly superior reliability, and very easy control of all electric drives make the diesel drive option, long obsolete. We had an expensive 500 hp diesel compressor where I worked which never got used because maintenance & control issues made it impractical. So what you do, is put in a few high reliability, maximum efficiency Diesel Generators with heat exchangers to utilize the waste heat, and all your mechanical drives are electric motors, easily controlled by high reliability Frequency Drives and Programmable Logic Controllers. This industrial standard hasn’t taken over automotive yet, but be sure, it inevitably will.

Dyno testing of modern car engine hp directly at engine shaft and at the wheel reveal a typical 17% loss thru all the drive train at high gear. The 30% loss reported by the DOE website is likely a composite loss in consideration of power going thru all the gears like in acceleration, or simply a reflection of data from older cars having Hydramatic transmission with lossy hydraulic torque converter instead of direct torque lockup like in modern automatic tranny.

But, I'm not discussing transmission power loss. A Serial-Parallel Hybrid (SPH) does not have a transmission unit, just like that of a Serial Hybrid (SH) with an electric motor geared directly to the differential. In a SPH during cruise, you simply clutch the engine directly to the electric motor and thus having NO loss whatsoever from the generator-motor coupling! When the engine is not running at its most efficient regime, the car computer simply de-clutch the engine from the motor, and now you have a serial hybrid, for use if the battery power is drained and you must accelerate. If you still have battery power, you do not have to disconnect the engine from the motor when accelerating, but simply power up the motor using current from the battery.

90% is an accepted efficiency figure for an affordable car electric motor at cruise, or a generator constructed out of affordable materials. 90% x 90% from generator to motor losses will get you only 81% efficiency, so, you've just threw 19% of the energy out of the window. Sure, some motors claimed 94-97% Peak efficiency, but that's peak, and not necessarily at cruise, or that's from more expensive motors using more exotic permanent magnets that may not be practical for mass production.

The claims of Star Rotor or free piston engine or RegTech RadMax having up to 60% efficiency are more likely hype!
There is nothing in Star Rotor Brayton's thermodynamic cycle that allows them to claim 55% efficiency. In fact, Brayton cycle is inferior to Otto cycle. Free piston engine operates either in Otto or Diesel cycles, so, how can they claim more efficiency than the best of long-haul trucker's engine? Free piston's downfall is in the mass balancing mechanism making it susceptible to vibration. The Prius' Atkinson cycle engine when lugged down to nearly wide-open throttle, or a turbo-diesel engine, will offer the most efficiency of any practical engine for automotive use. You can't find any more efficient engine than that for a PHEV genset!

Serial Hybrid for Humvee is due to the dusty environment in which it must operate, I would guess, whereas a Diesel locomotive needs electric drive due to the great numbers of wheels that must be driven to maximize traction. Mechanical torque transmission and coupling and differentials for all the wheels of a locomotive would be too complicated and would lack durability required for millions of miles of operation. Remote mining camp needs electric motors to run the fan because you don't want to get the diesel exhaust fumes down into the mine tunnels and causing carbon monoxide poisoning of all the workers.

But, what kind of transmission do Caterpillar tractors, or combines or 18-wheeler trucks use? Mechanical transmission, of course, to minize cost.

Your argument that automakers purposely making the ICE-transmission drive train less reliable or less durable for economic gain is simply not supported by facts or logic. Owners like to trade in their cars after 5-7 years to get a new car because they like the new interior, design, or for vanity reason. After 12 years or 150,000 miles, a car's interior is so worn out, the plastic and the fabrics all deteriorated, and that's often the reason the car is junked to a salvage yard, even when the engine-drive train is still working adequately. My last 1978 Chevy Caprice still ran well with original engine-transmission after 180,000 miles, but the car's interior deteriorates so bad that we had to give it up.

Most auto parts sold these days are rebuilt from generic part makers, not original factory items, or at least what I usually purchase to repair my cars. The automakers don't make a dime from these parts. No matter how durable BEV or PHEV drive train will be, the owner will throw the car out when the interior makes the car unsellable. In fact, automakers are striving to make their car more and more reliable to maintain a good reputation. Cars and components are subjected to strenous durability testing over and over again in the extremes of environment to ensure that their products won't give the maker a bad name!

why are all hybrids petrol/electric ?
............why not diesel/electric ?
the diesel can run on veg oil and the elecriic motor will increase the amount of vehicles that can run on the amount of available reg oil being produced at the current time
the technology has been around awhile to produce a car that is totaly carbon neutral, producing less carbon than ever before.....

hydregen vehicles will come into there own when seperating oxygen from hydregen can be achived in the vehicles, releasing the oxygen inside the vehical.