True. It cannot provide more power then the motor's rated max power (around 60hp or ~40KVA), but the battery cannot provide enough juice to run the motor at that level, only the ICE can. To move enough amps to get 60 HP would require much bigger wires than could be reasonably be fitted on the FEH.

60 HP is a lot of power. I can move my motorcycle with me (I'm 6'6") my girlfriend and a whole lot of gear down the road easily at 120 miles per hour with 75 Horsepower (of course she doesn't talk to me for a while after I do that). I think 60 HP should be able to back my FEH up a 15% slope for a few feet, but on battery only it is not going to happen, even with all the torque the EV motor has a low RPM. I think we probably can only get 25-35 HP (20-24 KVA) from the EV drivetrain without the ICE running, but I am really just guessing.

Using the ICE to generate power for the EV motor is STILL more efficent than using that same motor to operate a standard drivetrain by the way, so anytime the ICE generates power for the EV motor (on hills and such) you are still saving gas.

Chris Brown

No drilling required on the Hidden Hitch from etrailer for FEH - remove the spare first to make installation easier. Have patience when fishing.

C&J the Gas Pirates

I'm the Captain of this ship and I have my wife's permission to say so.

Well, we just got the hidden hitch that we purchased from etrailers.com installed.

Took a bit longer than an hour, but some of that time was spent trying to figure out what torque wrench to use (mine was too big, but a friend had one that was the right size).

Fishing the bolts through the body was a bit of a challange, but when we figured out that the bolts and the flange plates don't need to stay together until the bolt actually comes out the hole it went a lot smoother.

The diagrams provided were pretty poor ... your basic engineering diagram, which is kind of hard for a non-engineer to understand. I would have prefered more than 3 lines of instructions.

All in all, if you've got better than average mechanical ability (I had two mensa members helping), you should be fine. If you're leary of doing more than tightning a screw, then I would suggest having a professional doing the install.

Now I have to go buy a bike rack.

david
(who's off to the local REI store)

What weight can the hitch handle? Is it different for a trailer vs. bike rack? We have a 4-bike rack (can't remember the name), and the down load would be at least 100 lbs counting the rack itself, which is heavy. Two adult commuter bikes, two kid bikes and I think about 100 lbs. Did you find other hitches? If so, where. Thanks for any advice.

According to the install instructions (and I use that term rather loosely), maximum trailer weight is 3500lbs, max tongue weight is 350lbs.

david

The owners manual says 1,000 lbs, which is a class 1 size. I hope you don't plan to go over that. I bet that it is a class 2 hitch (3,500 lbs) because the non-hybrid can handle that amount and the vendor did not want to develop a new, lower-rated hitch. They just modified an existing model without reading any owner manual. Did you need to remove the bumper or go into the battery compartment for mounting?

Nope ... it just bolted on to the frame. The hardest part was getting the bolts into position.

I'll try to post some pictures tonight.

david

This is NOT true. The way the PSD is setup, there is NO WAY for the gas engine to directly power reverse movement.

HOWEVER, it is possible to fire up the gas engine to generate electricity to power the traction motor in reverse.

There is no reverse gear in any PSD based hybrid (i.e. Ford or Toyota systems) so there is no way for reverse to be anything but electrical in nature.

In what way was what I said not true?....I said the gas engine kicks in and away you go. I did not say the gas engine drives the vehcile using the PSD.......

The details of that I said were flushed out by later posts.

The Engine does in fact assist reverse when it is needed - otherwise it would be quite possable to get stuck in the FEH.

Chris

My bad for not reading the whole thread first. It is true however that you cannot get more torque in reverse than the maximum output of the traction motor, since it's the only thing providing reverse propulsion.