Up close and personal with an electric Subaru

There is no such thing as a Subaru EV unless you are talking about the Subaru BRZ plug-in hybrid developed by students at Mississippi State’s Center of Advanced Vehicular Systems. This is a series hybrid that incorporates a 850-cc two-cylinder snowmobile engine to charge 13-kWh-worth of batteries from A123. Dual 160-kW electric motors power the car to a 0-to-60 mph time of 5.7 sec. The snowmobile engine is visible in the front of the engine compartment. The batteries reside where the transmission once sat. The modified Subaru weighs a bit less than 100 lb more than a stock version. The electric motors sit in the rear, and students say they didn’t need to encroach on the trunk volume to fit the motors in. The view shown here is what lies under the trunk floor where the spare tire once sat. Batteries get cooled by a low-temperature radiator mounted in the front, via proprietary heat exchangers in the battery pack. When it gets cold, the electric heater normally used for the heater core can route warm coolant via a bypass valve to the battery cells.