How is the PB more powerful?

[amschind]

Probably the most oddball logic I've found with the PB is that when in park with the ICE running, if you stab the throttle, the e-motor assists in 'revving' the engine and then eats the flywheel / engine inertia regen'n it into the battery. Since the motor is connected when it does this, I guess it's eating offsetting its clutch's and rotors inertia too?

Sometimes it's worth some gasoline to feel manly at a stoplight? I dunno, thats all I got.

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[rtf150]

So can someone explain to me, like Im 11yrs old how this is supposed to be...?
So the PB is supposed to be more powerful than the EB, cuz it has a battery. The battery is ridiculously small and nothing like the ultra fast Tesla Plaid, Rivian or even the Ford Lightning with true EV batteries. It also supposedly increases 30HP and 70ft lbs tq....
Well how is that even possible when the battery only lasts about 5 seconds? For me? I back out of my driveway 53ft in battery mode (Electric), put it in Drive and immediately go into engine mode.
So if I'm hauling my boat or trailer, I may get the 'boosts', temporarily but it sure as heck isnt going to be constant. And if Im on a 1/4 mile start line and I spool up those turbos, how long is that little battery going to last me when I got the pedal floored? Five feet?
I personally dont care much about the PB. It was the color and bed length I wanted in a Plat. I rarely tow, but Im just trying to understand how they stand behind this marketing... and Im a guy who is used to flowing heads and trying different valves and port sizes to maximize HPs and torque out of a little 289 closed chambered head.... Something just doesnt add up... maybe I am missing the asterisk and small fonted footnote

430hp and 570tq*

*for the first five feet of travel.

Like you’re 11… Dad drives a PB. You’re riding along…cause you’re 11.

Pull up next to a Raptor…”Hey dad punch it when it turns green and let’s see what happens.”

Dad only needs this little push since mom isn’t around…and hits the throttle!

Then it happens.

Oh! Dad! That’s how the PB is more powerful.

DO IT AGAIN!!!! ?

Enjoy your truck man!

 

[HammaMan]

I'm calling it "better" because I think that all of the aims of the PB are more fully realized by the Aviator's VERY similar version of the technology. The one area where I would prefer the PB is the battery size, as the Aviator has a 15 kWh battery: for an F150, in 10 years the replacement cost of a 15 kWh battery pack may total the vehicle. That risk is very low for a 1.5 kWh battery, and PROBABLY acceptable for a 4-5 kWh battery.

My thoughts on "path 1" would have been to lift the e motor from the aviator which is likely a ~370v platform, and increase the PB's batt to the proper voltage which would increase it roughly 33%, and since it'd require a little less than double the amps, double the resulting batt. Rough math puts it around 4kWh assuming sufficient cooling. (anyone actually connect up to one and read the batt voltage by chance?)

The c rating of the PB under load is around 24c which is well outside of normal EV realm. The MME for instance in its performance trim ends up not even touching 5c, which it can do for a whole 5 seconds before it reduces power usage to around 2c citing "unmonitored" thermal loads. The PB's batt is a hair under 5.5ah while delivering ~130 amps to the traction motor. It's supposed to provide braking (aka generation) power of ~145 amps, but I haven't seen that flow into the BECM. My guess is that figure is arrived at if the AC and DC/DC are consuming the surplus. That high 'c' performance has the benefit in that in a few short accelerations / braking events in cold weather, the HV batt rapidly comes up to temp. Which is an obvious expectation from pulling a load on a batt that could completely empty it in under 150 seconds, if its full capacity was able to be utilized.

I still prefer path 2, which turns the PB into a PHEV with a 20kWh batt, keeping the 3.5 as well as offering the 5.0. I'd probably opt for the 5.0 if for no other reason than the poor boost mileage due to an overly rich fuel curve. With another 250-350lbs of additional mass, we'd need to see the lightning's front suspension carry over, as well as the HDPP springs with a ~8.4klb GVWR. That'd make a rather attractive vehicle when even heavily optioned as a 4x4, a 2klb payload would be easy to hit. More could be done with the 3.5 however with better tuning. There's little things that could be done via GPS and other variables like downshifting before speed bleeds off on inclines. More proactive than reactive. Such programming is already showing up in EVs for accurate range prediction.

 

[Samson16]

I prefer the bottom end of the 2.7/3.0 over the 3.5.

You are going to further add to a low end you prefer with more low end? It pulls 10,000lbs right to the closest charging station lol. No thank you. Say hello to walnut sandblasting without port injection. Where are all the easily tuned 2.7's tearing up the road? I love all the ideas, but I'm becoming more and more impressed with the Ford engineers

Don't take my wicked fast 3.5TT from me. I just found her!

 

[Snakebitten]

You are going to further add to a low end you prefer with more low end? It pulls 10,000lbs right to the closest charging station lol. No thank you. Say hello to walnut sandblasting without port injection. Where are all the easily tuned 2.7's tearing up the road? I love all the ideas, but I'm becoming more and more impressed with the Ford engineers

Don't take my wicked fast 3.5TT from me. I just found her!

I'm just a fan of how stout Ford built the bottom end of the 2.7 right out of the box when they released it.
It's also very cleverly designed without exhaust manifolds bolted to the heads, so that's intriguing as well.

Again, I have been a huge fan of the F150 in both Ecoboost flavors, and with the addition of the 3.0 to the mix, I can't help but see it as an attractive meeting-in-the-middle, so to speak.

Also the 3.0 has recently gotten some really cool tuning options in the Explorer ST. Features that aren't available for either the 2.7 or 3.5. (yet?) (switching between calibrations on the fly, for example. And launch control for the hooligans!)

I'm just dreaming, that's all. I'm absolutely thrilled with the fully loaded whiz-bang Powerboost that I've now enjoyed for better than a year. But it's irresistible to also ponder a next generation rolling grid land yacht. ?

 

[Samson16]

That'd make a rather attractive vehicle when even heavily optioned as a 4x4, a 2klb payload would be easy to hit.

Just not as good as a F-250 Tremor Diesel. 10,800 GVWR. 2,736 Payload. 15,000 tow rating. Runs cool under load and loves to idle with the AC running

Joking aside, great ideas sir, I just think bloated cumbersome weight is killing the Aviator and would hate to see the PB fall into that same trap.

 

[HammaMan]

Just not as good as a F-250 Tremor Diesel. 10,800 GVWR. 2,736 Payload. 15,000 tow rating. Runs cool under load and loves to idle with the AC running

Joking aside, great ideas sir, I just think bloated cumbersome weight is killing the Aviator and would hate to see the PB fall into that same trap.

Nah, the f150 sized pickup market is where the play is, no matter how much ford wants you to pay more money for a truck with a little more steel in it. The lightning is a 8550 GVWR. At 8500lbs the vehicle class changes slightly so it's perfectly reasonable to sneak up via 8.4k GVWR (with max tow of 14klbs). I suspect we'll see other manufacturers take the '15' series trucks up into the 25 series ratings. Personally I think they should just change over the 15s to 20s with the ranger slotting into F100, in code-name at least. I'd happily support an even more powerful motor moved to the rear of the trans to simplify some aspects. A PHEV F150 well optioned would be in the 6200lb range as the PBs as they sit now are ~5900lbs. One point to really focus on for such a PHEV would be to have adequate regen for down-hill speed holding. That should be a dev point -- take a 10k box trailer down a 6% grade and between regen and ICE engine breaking, it should be able to need no friction brakes.

With a move to 48v LV architecture (which is more in the mid 50s in terms of voltage), the whole notion of belt driven accessories should just vanish. Move all ICE vehicles into 'mild' hybrids via a ~10kW starter / generator / power booster, standardizing on as many parts as possible. (I'd wager this will be something that starts to go mainstream just after 2030). This could be done via 2 series batts for amperage's sake. Some accessories feed on pack 1, some on pack 2, charging and acceleration is achieved via series '98v' means as well as power steering and AC. With a center of pack disconnection means, basically creating 2 48v packs, it'd be safe for even non-EV techs to play with. With the disconnect in-place, there's just 2 48v packs.

Eventually 'econo' EVs will be coming and even a 135hp / 270tq (100kW) electric motor would be plenty for them. There's even a possibility of making them 2 speeds via a low-priced clutched single planetary gear. That's how automatics work now, but they need torque converters so that the ICE can still run while in gear, but with stacked planetarys things get more complex. Electric motors only run while the vehicle moves.

 

[Samson16]

This could be done via 2 series batts for amperage's sake

You have put some serious thought into this. Very interesting indeed! I'll head back to my 30,00ft consumer altitude, but how about using a Li-ion HVB for super fast current dumps and a second LiFePO4 HVB for the more constant current needs? Might be a cost and weight saving win win?

 

[Samson16]

Here it is folks:

Get rid of the 7.3L Dinosaur option for the SuperDuty and replace it with a 5.0 PowerBoost utilizing the Aviator emotor and battery pack and a 50A pro-power package.

Bam!

 

[Gros Ventre]

It's worth considering the power curves for gasoline engine versus electric motors. A gas engine doesn't reach peak power until upwards of 3,000 rpm, while an electric motor produces max power at zero rpm. So these two complement each other. It is not uncommon for an electric motor to produce a starting power of 2 1/2 times running power, so your 47 Hp motor in its start mode may well produce on the order of 120 Hp, briefly, when first punching it.

 

[Samson16]

It's worth considering the power curves for gasoline engine versus electric motors. A gas engine doesn't reach peak power until upwards of 3,000 rpm, while an electric motor produces max power at zero rpm. So these two complement each other. It is not uncommon for an electric motor to produce a starting power of 2 1/2 times running power, so your 47 Hp motor in its start mode may well produce on the order of 120 Hp, briefly, when first punching it.

That's my thinking for the 5.0PB SuperDuty because the 5.0 is a high revving engine that would be complimented by the electric low rpm torque.

 

[amschind]

My thoughts on "path 1" would have been to lift the e motor from the aviator which is likely a ~370v platform, and increase the PB's batt to the proper voltage which would increase it roughly 33%, and since it'd require a little less than double the amps, double the resulting batt. Rough math puts it around 4kWh assuming sufficient cooling. (anyone actually connect up to one and read the batt voltage by chance?)

The c rating of the PB under load is around 24c which is well outside of normal EV realm. The MME for instance in its performance trim ends up not even touching 5c, which it can do for a whole 5 seconds before it reduces power usage to around 2c citing "unmonitored" thermal loads. The PB's batt is a hair under 5.5ah while delivering ~130 amps to the traction motor. It's supposed to provide braking (aka generation) power of ~145 amps, but I haven't seen that flow into the BECM. My guess is that figure is arrived at if the AC and DC/DC are consuming the surplus. That high 'c' performance has the benefit in that in a few short accelerations / braking events in cold weather, the HV batt rapidly comes up to temp. Which is an obvious expectation from pulling a load on a batt that could completely empty it in under 150 seconds, if its full capacity was able to be utilized.

I still prefer path 2, which turns the PB into a PHEV with a 20kWh batt, keeping the 3.5 as well as offering the 5.0. I'd probably opt for the 5.0 if for no other reason than the poor boost mileage due to an overly rich fuel curve. With another 250-350lbs of additional mass, we'd need to see the lightning's front suspension carry over, as well as the HDPP springs with a ~8.4klb GVWR. That'd make a rather attractive vehicle when even heavily optioned as a 4x4, a 2klb payload would be easy to hit. More could be done with the 3.5 however with better tuning. There's little things that could be done via GPS and other variables like downshifting before speed bleeds off on inclines. More proactive than reactive. Such programming is already showing up in EVs for accurate range prediction.

I get your point about the NA 5.0 being more fuel efficient in practice than a turbo option, but I interpret that data as being an argument for decoupling the ICE from the wheels (which I believe we agree on). In the context of this thread only, I'm thinking about near term, "what parts do we have to assemble right now?" solutions rather than "what should be possible given the tech that we think we can build?"

Phrased more broadly, the graph of load vs RPM requirements for a road vehicle is too broad for an ICE to efficiently manage. A light truck is even worse: it might be yanking 5 tons forward from a dead stop or hauling one person and a weekend bag at 75 MPH. There's just no way to optimize one system for both of those scenarios, BUT from a pure economics standpoint, the fuel cost of one suboptimal system getting pressed into both roles is lower than the cost of buying two more optimized systems (i.e. a Honda According Touring Hybrid and a Superduty). Thus, you wind up with one F150 doing a 75% job at both roles; this is my exact use case.

If I were to cut my argument in favor of the Aviator's system down to one sentence, it would be that the Aviator more closely approximates a series hybrid. I think that ties in with my preference for turbocharged engines, despite the frequent performance benefits of an NA engine in real terms. Fundamentally, a turbocharger takes energy that an NA engine throws away and uses that to 1) reduce pumping losses and 2) increase the effective compression ratio. 1 is far more useful than 2 for our current (i..e spark ignition 4 stroke) use case, but in a compression ignition engine 2 directly raises your thermodynamic efficiency. A turbo is also more or less a pre-requisite for a 2 stroke engine, with the ultimate goal of a SCCI 2 stroke gasoline engine driving a generator and connected to a series hybrid.

Is it better to advance a technology that's 85% as good today but has the potential to be 135% better in the future or stick with the better option for right now? I'm not sure. I think that sometimes I get lost in my own thoughts about what the best path from "what we can do now" to "What should we do in the near term?", particularly because those decisions aren't always easy.

 

[HammaMan]

I get your point about the NA 5.0 being more fuel efficient in practice than a turbo option, but I interpret that data as being an argument for decoupling the ICE from the wheels (which I believe we agree on). In the context of this thread only, I'm thinking about near term, "what parts do we have to assemble right now?" solutions rather than "what should be possible given the tech that we think we can build?"

Phrased more broadly, the graph of load vs RPM requirements for a road vehicle is too broad for an ICE to efficiently manage. A light truck is even worse: it might be yanking 5 tons forward from a dead stop or hauling one person and a weekend bag at 75 MPH. There's just no way to optimize one system for both of those scenarios, BUT from a pure economics standpoint, the fuel cost of one suboptimal system getting pressed into both roles is lower than the cost of buying two more optimized systems (i.e. a Honda According Touring Hybrid and a Superduty). Thus, you wind up with one F150 doing a 75% job at both roles; this is my exact use case.

If I were to cut my argument in favor of the Aviator's system down to one sentence, it would be that the Aviator more closely approximates a series hybrid. I think that ties in with my preference for turbocharged engines, despite the frequent performance benefits of an NA engine in real terms. Fundamentally, a turbocharger takes energy that an NA engine throws away and uses that to 1) reduce pumping losses and 2) increase the effective compression ratio. 1 is far more useful than 2 for our current (i..e spark ignition 4 stroke) use case, but in a compression ignition engine 2 directly raises your thermodynamic efficiency. A turbo is also more or less a pre-requisite for a 2 stroke engine, with the ultimate goal of a SCCI 2 stroke gasoline engine driving a generator and connected to a series hybrid.

Is it better to advance a technology that's 85% as good today but has the potential to be 135% better in the future or stick with the better option for right now? I'm not sure. I think that sometimes I get lost in my own thoughts about what the best path from "what we can do now" to "What should we do in the near term?", particularly because those decisions aren't always easy.

The aviator and PB are very similar. In-fact somewhere around there's the same platform quite similar to the PB in hybrid version. Not sure where it shows up, but it's an explorer. I think the method has merit. The one issue I see with the current implementation is the tight size of the rotor without the benefit of additional gearing such as EVs have. The rotors of the MME at 210kW and the PB at 35kW are similar in size. For this approach which is limited in speed to that of the ICE, increasing the diameter while shrinking the length is a better approach.

As of yet ford isn't making the motors, they're still buying them. They need to really sit down and hammer out as few motors as possible for the widest adoption as possible. Tesla is happy with a single motor across all platforms, but of course is strictly EV use. When the parameters change in matching ungeared to an ICE, a larger diameter is a much better fit. It ends up more compact and more powerful. Shoehorning in COTS 3rd party parts will always leave performance on the table. Given the wide use of the 10 speed across their numerous platforms, this is something that should already be rolling off of the showroom floor.

They've made a lot of poor choices with discrete modules that could easily be consolidated into half as many without much fuss. The mach-e for instance has 6 different door modules. The TCU and GWM can be consolidated into a single part with the modem / wifi / blue tooth utilizing mini pcie cards. With the claim they're in-housing most of the parts now, we'll see what the future holds.

 

[amschind]

The aviator and PB are very similar. In-fact somewhere around there's the same platform quite similar to the PB in hybrid version. Not sure where it shows up, but it's an explorer. I think the method has merit. The one issue I see with the current implementation is the tight size of the rotor without the benefit of additional gearing such as EVs have. The rotors of the MME at 210kW and the PB at 35kW are similar in size. For this approach which is limited in speed to that of the ICE, increasing the diameter while shrinking the length is a better approach.

As of yet ford isn't making the motors, they're still buying them. They need to really sit down and hammer out as few motors as possible for the widest adoption as possible. Tesla is happy with a single motor across all platforms, but of course is strictly EV use. When the parameters change in matching ungeared to an ICE, a larger diameter is a much better fit. It ends up more compact and more powerful. Shoehorning in COTS 3rd party parts will always leave performance on the table. Given the wide us of the 10 speed across their numerous platforms, this is something that should already be rolling off of the showroom floor.

They've made a lot of poor choices with discrete modules that could easily be consolidated into half as many without much fuss. The mach-e for instance has 6 different door modules. The TCU and GWM can be consolidated into a single part with the modem / wifi / blue tooth utilizing mini pcie cards. With the claim they're in-housing most of the parts now, we'll see what the future holds.

Broadly I agree. I do think that electric motors are going to be purchased by the big OEMs. Borg Warner bought out an old starter motor OEM that had developed a very efficient motor called the HVH or high voltage hairpin, and they're combining that as a geared drive unit. I think that sets a floor for the big automakers, as if they can't beat it then they will spend R&D $$$ to get a worse part. I assume but do not know that Borg Warner isn't going to squeeze the automakers who are and have been its biggest customers for 50 years, as I don't think they want to be an automaker themselves. To that end, I think that the COTS part, in this case, may be generally be the most performant option due to its tech edge.

As for the proliferation of parts, I will again recall an interview with Alan Mulally when he took over. He realized that Ford made like 30 hood hinges, and demanded that they scale it back to like 6. There were a ton of similar examples, but that's the one that he used. The proliferation of similar parts is, to me, a symptom of crummy management and disorganization, and only better management and organization can fix that issue.

 

[Samson16]

BUT from a pure economics standpoint, the fuel cost of one suboptimal system getting pressed into both roles is lower than the cost of buying two more optimized systems (i.e. a Honda According Touring Hybrid and a Superduty). Thus, you wind up with one F150 doing a 75% job at both roles; this is my exact use case.

You are absolutely right. My PB does triple duty as my daily driver, long haul cruiser, and heavy mover. It's an amazing value.

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