aitchjaybee said:
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no, it will fire up and drive the wheels (4wd). It can act as a generator if you press the dedicated 'charge' button, but it's a 120bhp 2.0 litre petrol engine by default.
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That is a bit misleading. There is no proper gearbox between the petrol engine and the wheels, and there is no propshaft, so the engine can never power the car directly in 4WD and is can only power the car directly at relatively high speeds.
It's default behaviour is to run in electric mode, drawing its power from the battery pack, until the battery is flat and then to switch to petrol engine mode. By default, it will not make any serious attempt at charging a flat battery from the engine, though it will dump any surplice power into the battery rather than waste it.
Without a mechanical gear box, it can only couple the engine mechanically to the wheels at relatively high speeds - it has effectively got 4th gear only and some sort of clutch mechanism that allows it to engage that for high speed cruising. At lower speeds, it uses an electrical transmission - the petrol engine drives a generator and the output of this drives the electric motors. When the battery is flat and the car is moving at speeds below something like 50mph, this is the way it moves. At higher speeds, the engine is mechanically engaged to the front wheels, while the rear wheels are driven via the electric motor drawing power from the generator (assuming that the battery is flat).
The "Charge" and "Save" buttons allow you to modify this behaviour if you want.