why not electric with a diesel motor to charge the battery when needed, diesel motor runs as optimum revs so not chucking out oodles of soot?

Problem with hybrids is the complication is more than just a petrol car – hence liked by the aftermarket industry.

Nissans image of the future looks like a dystopian nightmarish hellscape. Not sure it’s the best image to sell their concept.

Wheelchairs will still be manually powered. Which seems very odd.

why not electric with a diesel motor to charge the battery when needed, diesel motor runs as optimum revs so not chucking out oodles of soot?

What you need is a free-piston linear generator. No need to make an engine that produces rotating motion anymore.

Nissans image of the future looks like a dystopian nightmarish hellscape. Not sure it’s the best image to sell their concept.

Wheelchairs will still be manually powered. Which seems very odd.[/quote]

Nah, it’s simply that walking has been abolished, that fella in the wheelchair is just a fitness fanatic working out the guns…

HoratioHufnagel – I was looking at one of those in the flesh the other day. Bit more advanced though. Combustion chamber at both ends of the piston, tuned to run on hydrogen.
I suspect vibration might be an issue. Maybe a bank of them running physically out of phase?

“why not electric with a diesel motor to charge the battery when needed, diesel motor runs as optimum revs so not chucking out oodles of soot?”

The Vauxhall Ampera ran on this model (except petrol) and was a fantastic car – still the best hybrid ever built despite being designed almost 10 years ago.
Obviously they stopped building them or researching the tech further because….well just because.

The BMW i3 REX has a small petrol generator (moped engine!) but the engineering isn’t nearly as sophisticated or crucially, as robust as the Ampera despite the fancy looks.

As for petrol hybrids being more complicated – well yes and no. They do have an electric motor and batteries but as any EV driver will tell you, they aren’t the bits that go wrong very often. They don’t have a gearbox, clutch, starter motor, common rail, turbo charger etc etc and those bits tend to break on modern cars. Toyota hybrids have a pretty bombproof reliability record with many many examples of Prius going well over 200k miles with no real problems

Obviously they stopped building them or researching the tech further because….well just because

this is how the forthcoming transit PHEV works… fully electric drive with their 1L eco petrol engine on board as a generator to charge the battery when required.