Hybrid cars was always the way to go.
It took a while for the acceptance of hybrid vehicles. But at least they didn’t cripple the purchase of gasoline for ICE vehicles while doing so.
Hybrids are typically the worst of both worlds. Double the weight and slower than both ICE and EVs.
And fuel efficiency isn’t that great, especially if you get one that has some power. Then the batteries go bad and it costs a ton to replace them. All the negative of both ICE & EV.
Hydrogen or Natural gas would be better.
I rented a Jeep plug-in hybrid in January. They did a pretty good job of integrating ICE and battery. The change over from a pure battery start to ICE at about 15 mph was seamless. But the drive-by-wire creates a weird driver experience because things just don’t respond as you are used to with a pure ICE.
The other strange thing is the rental companies require you to return the car with a full gas tank, but there’s no such requirement for topping off the battery. When I drove away from the rental lot, the battery was on 0% and I returned it at the same charge level. It seemed to have enough juice to go from 0 to 15 mph and that was the end of the battery propulsion. I thought regenerative braking would have charged the battery up somewhat, but nope — no additional charge.
Maybe I should have RTFM, but I’d much rather jump in a rental and go rather than spend 30 or 40 minutes reading the book-size manual.
My experience was so-so. I wouldn’t go out of my way to rent a plug-in hybrid again.
The overall user experience behind the wheel was horrible. The auto makers just keep making it more and more difficult to figure out how to do anything, even the simplest things.
I’m from the pre-electronics era where you had two heater control levers, one for temperature and one to select where the air went and a knob to control fan speed. You punched the radio button to change stations. You mashed the button on the floor to get high-beams. It was simplicity perfected. You never had to take your eyes off the road, much less try to hold your finger tip steady to tap a pin-head size button on a big LCD screen.
The US Gov’t need to stay out of the way of business. Let minimum wage seek its own level. When the auto industry builds a competitive EV car that will economically stand up to gas burners, Americans will buy them. Obozo/Biden need to get the hell out of the way, Let Capitalism do it own work.
When the rebates for EV’s runs out so will sales it’s that simple.
A replacement battery for a hybrid costs thousands.
Potential bad fires starting on their own. Minor car accidents result in insurance company writing off the car. Higher insurance for home and car.
No resale value.
I’m surprised we’re not hearing more about the experimental research into producing hydrogen fueled vehicles.
I happened to hear an American auto corporation executive interviewed a few weeks ago. He said the CEOs were going to Biden’s people to ask (sounded like beg pitifully) that the mandatory government quotas for production and sales of EVs could partially be met by lowering the bar to “and hybrids counted as EVs.” If DC said no then the companies could not possibly meet the EV regulations.
Similar to the old mileage averages so selling some little cars could make up for the large ones Americans really wanted to buy.
Ford and GM, in particular, want to focus on large, expensive vehicles. They are leaving the mid-size and smaller markets, because it seems they want to make a net profit based on higher gross profit dollars from a smaller number of vehicles.
Which makes sense if you are saddled with an expensive workforce. Fewer units of production, fewer workers needed.
They’re still no “greener” than ICE vehicles because of the redundant overhead. You’re still paying for the design and manufacture and and maintenance for two propulsion systems when on got the job done.
Toyota the largest automaker in the world is only selling its flagship Camry as a hybrid from this point forward 2025 model. Every other Toyota model will follow shortly.
Why? because it’s mechanically.cheaper to have two electric machies a simple epicyclic single gear between them and two sets of silicon inverter/rectifiers vs ten plus gears, fluids, torque converters all that 20th century stuff. With a single platform Toyota can cover all the various cases of use.
There is no less than five means of powering a electric drivetrain. The obvious is to link a very efficient ICE to the input of one of the electric machines. You run it at peak efficiency when every you can and let the motors handle the peaks and valleys of the drive cycle. This more than doubles city mpg and 30% more on the hwy. You only need a tiny battery pack 1.5kWh or so. It only takes 600watt hours to slow a Camry sized car from 60 to zero using electric motors instead of throwing away that energy as heat and brake dust.
Mode two is upsize the battery to 15kWh or so this allows for using wall electricity for the first 60 miles of use. Since 75% of Americans live in high density cities the avg trip distance per the DOT is 30 miles or less accounting for 94% of all American drives. Electricity is five to ten times cheaper per mile vs gasoline.
Mode three on the same platform is to use a large 60kWh pack and no other power source on board at all. This gives a 240 mile range but opens up fast DC charging since you can’t push a pack much past 5C charge rates. 60*5 is 300kw the current V4 fast DC standard. You can go from 10% to 80% in 8.4 min at 300kw that puts 170 miles in the pack. Given that most people as in 75% only drive 40 miles or less per day this ability is meaningless what matters is that they would need to fully charge once a week to 100% and it would take 30 minutes. Uber drivers and cabs would use the 8 min charge at most 2 times a day I have never meet an uber driver who drive more than 500 miles in a day.
Mode four is investing for the 15kWh or the 60kWh power train you can use a fuel cell to power the base load and use the pack for peaks and valleys. Ceramic platinum free fuel cells are just now becoming economical. You can feed them hydrogen gas, or reform methane,ethanol,ammonia or any of the light hydrocarbons into H2 and CO2.
Mode five is a personal favorite. You can power the 15kWh/60kWh version with a small high speed turbine driving a tiny 400hz generator a 50kw turbine run at its peak efficiency point is 40% nearly what a fuel.cell puts out but turbines will burn anything liquid or gas you throw at them with virtually no emissions. A 50kw turbine would be the size of a automotive turbo charger and a 400hz generator would be the size of a large coffee can. The 777 has a 177kva generator that is the size of a watermelon and that includes the geartrain.
This is why Toyota is going electric drive trains it became inevitable once electronics could cheaply handle 800+v and 1000+ amps silicon carbide diodes make mechanical transmissions obsolete.
The power generation market should also go hybrid and be ready to handle at least 48 hours of no wind, hydro, or solar power generation. It’s absurd the ideas being implemented that don’t account for the risks of renewable power generation sources. It’s as if they really have some other agenda in mind besides the environment.
I’m for both, especially PHEV. But hailing slowish EV sales is a little goofy since the dominant maker had a major production shutdown and couldn’t come close to keeping up with demand. The Model Y has so far this year sold 109,000 cars. Model 3 is the 2nd best selling US-made car and has hold 42,000. The Model Y has outsold the NEXT best selling US-made car by almost 3 to 1.
The idiots in the Detroit haven’t figured out that Americans don’t want EV minivans; they want EM cars so that they don’t need to buy minivans. Those battery packs are expensive, but buying a minivan when you only need a car but CAFE standards won’t let Detroit sell you a roomy car is a lot more expensive.
The Toyota Sequoia I wanted came with a Hybrid. The engine is a 3.4l V-6, Twin Turbo Hybrid. 440HP, 800’s torque. I’m liking it very well. Took some getting used to driving around with the engine not running and not reacting to the engine starting. In a matter of days, I no longer noticed if the engine was running or not. The hybrid in this configuration is more about low end performance to move the vehicle until the boost comes up on the small displacement motor.
I can see this engine not being for everyone. It is a high performance, small displacement motor. It is throaty, you can hear the turbos and it is very “sit you back in the seat” quick. It starts like an INDYCAR in that the hybrid motor turns the crank and it fires when fuel is turned on. You don’t hear a starter motor whirring. While I enjoy those traits, some might not. I can haul 8 and get 22mpg.