Posted on 04/06/2024 12:49:48 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Battery electric vehicles like Teslas are fast, sleek, jewelrylike cars that capture the imagination. Hybrid cars, at least in the U.S., often bring to mind the Toyota Prius, long seen as a dawdling, egg-shaped vehicle for shuttling back and forth to Trader Joe's.
But quietly amid all the BEV hype, automakers' hybrid fleets took broad strides forward. Car buyers flinched at the challenges of EV ownership. And sales of hybrid cars, led by Toyota Motor (TM) and Honda Motor (HMC), ramped up to outpace those of the flashier electric vehicles.
Now carmakers are in overdrive to respond as analysts take a red pen to their BEV forecasts.
The revision in consumer preferences, and the expense of making and selling battery electric vehicles, has forced General Motors (GM) and Ford Motor (F) into an abrupt shift. Both legacy automakers are interrupting their highly publicized and expensive transitions to battery EVs to reemphasize hybrid cars.
Tesla (TSLA), struggling against rising strength of EV competitors in China led by BYD (BYDDF), risks losing market share as hybrids surge. More precarious startups including Rivian (RIVN) and Lucid (LCID), which sell electric vehicles in low volumes and have no hybrid models to ride out the storm, face a darker outlook. And the change could signal the death knell for the weakest of the EV players, most notably Fisker (FSR).
The most recent models of hybrid cars strengthen the technology's image. They offer eye-popping performance and mileage claims. In other words, they bust the old hybrid image of being underpowered and overpriced.
“ You have vehicles with great fuel economy, as hybrids have always had, but the latest hybrids are also just better vehicles," said Keith Barry, an editor at Consumer Reports' Auto Test Center in Colchester, Conn.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
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.
We bought a Lexus hybrid several years ago. Great car. Gas mileage is fantastic. 35 mpg+. No issues with the car at all. The battery is warranteed for 10 years.
I had a hybrid ONCE. Someone cut me off and I crashed into the jersey wall (sandwiched). But the reason it happened was the Hybrid didnt’ have enough power to speed up and get around the truck pulling a large trailer. I will never own a weak powered car again.
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.
Not for me, but then I looked at the price of a replacement battery.
I hear you. And like Dr. Sivana, I was concerned about the dual complexity of a hybrid. So my wife and I like having one BEV car and one ICE pickup. It's the best of both worlds. And neither one has weak acceleration.
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'd be interested in a hydrogen fuel cell car that operates more like a plug-in hybrid. The HEV's already operate like that, but I'm saying one that can run on battery alone for hundreds of miles before needing hydrogen.
With my home solar I can charge the battery. There are times I'd like to use the BEV through charging deserts. A hydrogen fuel cell would add more miles but add little weight (the weight of hydrogen gas tank) compared to adding a lot more battery. But producing my own hydrogen with an electrolyzer would be inefficient for regular use, so I'd prefer to use the hydrogen only on trips with charging deserts. So I'd prefer to build up hydrogen gas with my home solar only on days I have so much solar that my home is powered plus my home batteries are fully charged plus my EV's battery is charged and I have nowhere else useful for the excess solar power to go (run an electrolyzer to build up hydrogen for the next road trip).
“Hydrogen or Natural gas would be better.”
Gasoline better yet. Don’t fix what ain’t broke.
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.
RE: Hydrogen or Natural gas
That reminds me I should put on the first Led Zeppelin album.
Album sleeve was a classic.
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.
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