Reev cars, what are Range Extended Electric Vehicles

An electric car with the advantages of a hybrid. This could be summed up as the Reev car, an acronym for Range Extended Electric Vehicle but above all an 'Egg of Columbus' to guarantee real low carbon emissions and generous autonomy.

Range Extended Electric Vehicles are conceptually electric cars with a smaller battery to make room for the fuel tank and equipped with an internal combustion engine, which is only used as a current generator to recharge the accumulator when the charge level is low. A key feature of a range extender car is where the traction needed to move the wheels comes from. To be categorised as a Reev, traction must be exclusively electric, with the combustion engine used solely to supply power to the on-board generator, which in turn will either recharge the battery or directly power the electric motor.

The most recent example comes from the Leapmotor B10 Reev, characterised by an operating scheme such as the one just described, where the electric motor with 218 horsepower and 240 Nm of maximum torque is the only one to provide traction to the wheels without recharging anxiety thanks to the power supply through a socket but above all thanks to the 1.5-litre four-cylinder heat engine used as a generator and fed by a 50-litre tank. This architecture results in an all-electric range of 86 kilometres and an overall range of around 900 km. Charging can be up to 6.6 kW AC and 46 kW DC, while the 50 kW on-board generator recharges through braking and the combustion engine. Another range extender application comes from the Mazda Mx-30 R-Ev, and it is recharged, unique among production cars, by an 830 cc, 75 hp Wankel-type rotary engine. There is an electric motor to drive the front wheels and the possibility of also being recharged from the charging stations. A similar application is e-power technology, where the combustion engine in most situations recharges the traction battery and powers the electric motors.