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- cross-posted to:
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No, electric vehicle sales aren’t dropping. Here’s what’s really going on::Tesla has been slashing prices. Ford just cut the price of its Mustang Mach-E, too, plus it cut back production of its electric pickup. And General Motors is thinking about bringing back plug-in hybrids, arguably a step back from EVs.
PHEV in my opinion is a really dumb idea. It got popular, because it was an easy way for car manufacturers to continue making large SUVs and adhere to even stricter fuel efficiency restrictions, while also benefitting from generous state subsidies. Now that those subsidies are either scaled down or completely removed the PHEV sector is shrinking fast.
The benefit of EV is not only that you can charge at your own garage but that you also have lower maintenance cost and even if the upfront cost is higher, your cost over time lowers the more you drive it and depending on electricity prices, etc. you can break even with ICE.
With PHEV, the maintenance cost is higher than ICE, because at the end you need to service and maintain two engines.
No. It all depends on how you drive it. If you just drive a PHEV around town and do the occasional road trip (which is how most people drive) then the ICE engine sees very little wear and requires very little service.
If you’re doing constant road trips and burning up the road, a PHEV is not for you. And neither is an EV, honestly.
An EV would work if the infrastructure was there. Modern EV batteries can charge full in like 15 minutes but it’s not even gonna take that long cause you’ll obviously not be plugging it in at 0%. The charger needs to support that amount of power throughput tho tbf.
Right, but it’s not yet. So a PHEV is a better option for most people (for now).
True but the issue is that your government isn’t doing anything about it. They could e.g. require every gas station to have an electric charger (Will be the case soon in Germany)
Okay. And until the government does something about it, a PHEV is an excellent choice.
I have over 110k miles on my EV in 5 years, and that’s including COVID lockdown and then moving to the city where I drive even less. The charging infrastructure is there for Tesla. I was able to drive across the country (Washington to Mississippi/Alabama) three times so far, down in rural Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, in the snow, through the Rocky mountains, through the cascades for hikes, etc.
It’s a no brainer. I’m never going back to anything with a combustion engine. If Tesla can do charging infrastructure that makes 99.9% of the US easily accessible, so can Ford or any other big EV manufacturer.
Bullshit. Being able to eventually get somewhere doesn’t mean the infrastructure is “there” unless your standard for “there” is low. Charging every 100-150 miles means a long trip will take literally hours longer. That is just unacceptable for most people. I’ve done the trip across Pennsylvania several times in a Tesla, and Pennsylvania actually has decent charger coverage. But my trip still took a solid HOUR longer than usual. And if I have to wait in line at a full Tesla charger, it’ll add even more than an hour.
The fact that you, personally, are okay with driving slower doesn’t mean everyone else is. And that argument doesn’t even touch the fact that you’re only saying the infrastructure is there for Teslas. What about all the other brands? Everyone in America has to buy a Tesla?
Woah. Why all the aggression?
I charge every 2-3 hours for 15-25 mins. So a 6.5 hour trip will take about 7.5-8 hours. For my latest cross country trip, it took 48 hours with charging from Seattle to Jackson Mississippi. Google says it’s a 38 hour drive. So it added about 25% but he drive was so much more enjoyable. We got food at all of our stops so it didn’t add that much time when you factor in stopping for food, gas, water, dog, etc. Sure it adds a little time, but it helps me stay awake.
Charging infrastructure is only going to get better and faster. Imagine a 500mile battery that charges to 80 in 15 mins. You’ll only stop every 4-5 hours for 15 mins. About the same as a gas car now.
Also, that’s why I said I can’t wait to have charging infrastructure with other automakers.
I didn’t say everyone should get an EV either. I’d much rather have better mass public transit. I’m just saying the infrastructure is there for EV charging.
IMO its a great idea right now because IIRC 90% of round trips are 50 miles or less. So if you have a 200 mile battery, 75% of it is dead weight most the time. PHEVs remove the range anxiety present in most parts of the US with poor charger networks. Plus if battery manufacturing becomes a bottleneck in the near future it will be good to reduce the amount needed per car.
Maybe in the future good charger networks and much cheaper batteries will solve the problem but for the next 20 years I think PHEVs will fill an important role.
At the same time, a PHEV is a good stopgap if you live in a place with poor charging infrastructure. You might be able to charge enough to drive locally, but not when going some place farther afield. For example, I may be able to charge enough to drive around the neighbourhood from my socket, but literally half the city does not have any kind of EV charging capability, making a BEV unsuitable.
A PHEV would do better there, since I could switch to petrol if needed, and run in EV mode otherwise, and when charging infrastructure becomes good enough that I can live without the petrol part, then it might be worth switching to BEV.
I’d argue that to be less of a issue with PHEV, since they weren’t all that common to start with, and more of an issue with things like Mild Hybrids where the motor is just there to give the ICE a little boost, and precious little else.
I would be curious if they are. ECVT systems don’t seem that much more complex than an equivalent automatic transmission, since the motor doubles as the starter and internal brake bands.
Maybe for the diesel-electric locomotive-type drivetrain that Opel’s Ampera-E uses, since it’s basically an EV with an onboard generator, but even then, maintenance costs could easily be offset by the ICE not running as often or as hard.
The catalytic converters of hybrid cars are often sought after because they are cleaner and don’t see as much wear as their ICE counterparts. It would not be much of a stretch for that logic to extend to hybrid engines.
It’s still more viable in regions where people don’t have personal garages, and their apartment parking lot doesn’t support retrofitting charging stands.