Just a thought. Why aren't there diesel-electric cars?

10 Feb 2016

I’m from a railway family and I can tell you that the diesel engine in locomotives doesn’t turn the wheels, it turns a generator to power the electric traction motors to turn the wheels, this is known as diesel-electric. The diesel engine isn’t mechanically connected to the driving wheels at all. I’ve heard of buses using a diesel-electric set-up, but why haven’t we seen cars use this? Electric motors have their advantage in day to day driving.

Comments

There are Mercedes E classes as Bluetec(Diesel) Hybrids actually

Locomotives have diesel-electric drivetrain because it’s very hard to create normal gearbox that could transfer all that torque. Just imagine how hard the clutch pedal would be with manual transmission!
Electric drivetrain is actually less efficient than normal gearbox, it’s used in trains simply because it’s the easiest way. That’s why it’s not widely used in cars.

As someone says there are a few parallel hybrid diesel-electric, mostly Mercedes. The reason they are not so widespread is that the diesel engine is more expensive and more bulky than petrol engines. They need injector, turbocompressors, intercoolers, egr, fap/dpf, while a N/A petrol engine it is much less complicate.
You speak mostly of series hybrid or range extended. Since this tecnhology relies mostly on the electic motors and on the batteries, if you add the complexity and the cost of a diesel engine the price will go skyrocketing.

Mazda tried to make an electric car with a rotary generator, but there hasn’t been a word on it in years.

Chevy Volt actually works this way, but doesn’t use the Diesel engine, it uses a small gas engine to do the same thing.. Only issue is that fuel economy is crap.. In the winter on gas, i get about 10MPG. in the summer on full ev without using the backup generator i get 349MPG. there is quiet a big difference..