Category: FCA group cars

Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid runs the engine on traffic lights. It would not be surprising if it was a hybrid by Toyota. Chrysler Pacifica is a PlugIn hybrid – the only one that makes sense * -Why? Because apart from charging, only when braking or from an internal combustion engine, it has the ability to recharge the battery from a 230V socket

Good-size lithium-ion batteries: Pacifice is sufficient for about 60km range in full electric mode. Unlike Toyota equipped with ridiculously small NiMHs known from ‘historic’ Nokia, the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid can be called an electric car. 60km is a distance that most Polish drivers do not travel even in two days, commuting only to work. Charging from 220V takes no more than 2-3 hours. Thanks to that, covering greater distances per day, we are able to connect and charge the car fully, even during dinner or shopping at the supermarket.

Why is Toyota Hybrid fake?

Because driving a few or several hundred meters on a Toyota electric motor is possible only in the parking lot, or pulling a string of pissed off drivers. Each little bit more powerful brush of the accelerator pedal immediately ignites the internal combustion engine. Which means that the Toyota Hybrid turns out to be only a VERY expensive car equipped with START-STOP functions. Equipping the car with NiMH batteries costing over PLN 1 thousand, which is not able to pull heating or air conditioning when stopping at traffic lights. And the whole so much publicized hybrid drive, in fact, turns out to be an internal combustion engine equipped with a large and heavy electric generator, mainly used to recover energy from braking and as a starter for an internal combustion engine.

Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid runs the engine on traffic lights problem

Therefore, the fact that the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid starts the engine when the vehicle is stopped at traffic lights can be considered a defect.

We can count it as a defect, which we would expect, to see as a DTC (Diagnostics Trouble Codes) error after connecting the computer. An interesting fact was that the car had only a few small, recorded errors. Among the few active, the most serious seemed to be a warning of low tire pressure. Although for a moment, I already suspected Chrysler about the system of filling, punctured wheels, which certainly would require firing the compressor powered on the belt from the engine shaft, but I decided to look under the hood of the Pacific.

Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid runs the engine on traffic lights? The cause of the problem was so funny that I think I can organize a competition;)) Guess what might have been missing, add that I didn’t add anything 🙂

*) Why, I am convinced that PlugIn is the only hybrid that makes sense? For what, keep two propulsion systems since one basically does not serve. The hybrid is a very complicated propulsion system, plus all the costs of operating an internal combustion engine.

Toyota hybrid is on average 20,000 more expensive than its combustion equivalent. He slept on average 5 liters per hundred with a delicate leg. Assuming a daily distance of 100 km per year, we spend PLN 7,000 on fuel, another PLN 1,500 for periodic review of internal combustion engines: oil, filters, V-belts replacement for older cars, service costs increase significantly: candles, timing, lambda courts, clutches, bearings, gearboxes … only everything much more difficult to access because it is equipped with separate cooling and control systems, hundreds of cables and sensors. After a few years, when you finally think that Hybrid has returned, the “Check Hybrid System” light comes on. After visiting the site, you find out that you need to replace the batteries for PLN 14,000.

How does it look compared to the Fiat 500e?

For comparison: the annual cost of charging a Fiat 500e with a daily mileage from 100km to 140km is PLN 1,400 per year. Apart from the suspension system, which in the case of Toyota I did not count, it is the total annual cost of maintaining an electric car such as the Fiat 500e. You will tell me how the battery will fall after 4 years. Well, you can’t compare a NiMH micro from a 100V Toyota hybrid, covered with a carpet in the trunk to over 10 times larger almost 400V HV Battery – consisting of almost 100 Lithium-Ion cells with full cell temperature control. That is, from cooling through a heat exchanger with air conditioning to heating in winter. Thanks to the large power reserve in the Fiat 500e HV battery, this package is not overloaded like a “poor” NiMH from Toyota, which is loaded with huge currents at each start to help, a small and of course exhausted combustion unit. Whether during braking, when there is a huge amount of energy to be taken from the engine, unfortunately in a short time. All this, in turn, increases the temperature of the battery and this consequently causes accelerated wear.