How Hybrid Cars Work - Part 1: Inverter and Battery Electronics

Here's how a hybrid car works to save you fuel!

A hybrid car consists of a battery, inverter/converter and electric motors that are connected to the drive wheels. These work in combination together to aid the internal combustion motor in propelling the vehicle and recouping spent energy to charge its battery.

In this video, we completely teardown the electronics in the Gen 2 Toyota Prius Hybrid. We take apart the battery module, to examine its cells and control circuits, examine the inverter, including the capacitor, diodes, insulated gate bipolar transistors, inductor boost coils, control circuitry and cooling system. In the next video of this series we will be tearing down the electronic continuously variable transmission to examine the operation of the hybrid drive with the motors and internal combustion engine.

Key hybrid components include the battery control module, along with its battery cells, temperature sensor, ventilation ducting and fan, vapor vent tubes, auxiliary 12V battery, high voltage ECU, contactors, relays and resistor.

Under the hood there's a cooling circuit that uses part of the radiator, separate from the internal combustion engine's cooling circuit. This helps to cool the inverter and CVT assembly, using electric water pumps, a coolant reservoir, the fins in the inverter casing, a coolant pressure tank and hosing.

Inside the inverter there's a smoothing capacitor (to help excite the boost inductor to boost current going to the motors, and also to help smoothen out the AC as its being converted to DC during regenerative braking), a control motherboard that controls the IGBT's, the transistor - diode assemblies themselves that are PWM controlled and produce 3-phase AC to power the motors, the boost controller as well as a DC to DC converter and A/C compressor driver.

Learn how the Honda IMA mild hybrid system works with this video here:
   • How do Hybrid Cars Work?  

Here's how car electronics work:
   • Why Car Electronics are so Complex  

Prius 500,000km internal combustion 1NZ-FE engine teardown:
   • What's inside a 500,000 km Toyota Eng...  

Prius Engine removal:
   • How to Remove an Engine   Toyota Priu...  

Prius Electric Steering system:
   • How Electric Power Steering Works  

Skip to section in the video:
0:00 Introduction
2:15 Inverter Teardown
10:44 DC Converter Teardown
14:40 Cooling System
17:57 Hybrid High Voltage Battery
22:27 Conclusion

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