The 2010 Geneva Motor Show has been a showcase for the green cars of tomorrow – but few are as technically astounding as Nissan Infiniti’s new M35 Hybrid.
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The vehicle uses an original parallel one motor/two clutch hybrid system along with a 3.5litre V6 engine, a 50kW electric motor and a seven-speed transmission.
According to Owen Thunes, the senior project engineer for Electric, Hybrid and Fuel Cell Vehicles at the Nissan Technical Centre, the vehicle will be able to deliver fuel economy similar to that of a compact car while also significantly improving fuel efficiency in highway mode when compared to conventional systems.
Nissan has opted for a design that sees the first clutch installed between the 3.5litre engine and the electric motor. It allows full decoupling of the V6 when the system is in either electric or power regeneration mode, and so reduces mechanical drag and boosts efficiency. According to Thunes, the system was chosen after a thorough modelling comparison on a range of hybrid systems while focusing on fuel consumption and acceleration. Nissan found that on a V8 5.6litre system the two variants of the parallel system – a 7AT one motor-two clutch and a 7AT two motor-two clutch – were able to outperform all the other systems. The study also found that the one motor parallel system had the most attractive cost structure.
However, to implement the system, Nissan had to develop an integrated control technology that could regulate the battery inverter, motor, clutches, engine and transmission at the same time. As such, a high output lithium-ion battery was employed that could switch between charging and discharging rapidly.
Thunes states that the ability to connect and disconnect the engine has numerous benefits – for example at high speed, the engine can be used in the efficient operating range by generating power with the motor and high final gear ratio.
The Nissan Infiniti M35 Hybrid will arrive in Western Europe in spring 2011 and will be the first Nissan hybrid offered in the US, European and Japanese markets.
