Hacker News Reader

Not as inefficient as using a 1.5 ton vehicle to move 1 person around.

It's somewhat ironic to see that question posed as a genuine concern, when presumably you already made the choice to travel by automobile, the least efficient form of transportation.

Least efficient in economic/environmental terms, not necessarily in time/safety terms.

This purist talking point infuriates me, but aren't you lugging those 50kw battery when you are not traveling 200 miles and only 30 miles. PHEVs are not your enemy. I see the criticism and some of it is fair, but most of it is not.

That provides redundancy. Redundancy is an insurance. Insurance is inefficient in term of resources but very useful in unforeseen situations.

There's lots of different hybrids out there. You can get buses that only use the electric part when moving from a stop. In that case, you get the main advantage of electric (torque) and then combustion takes over for normal running conditions. I think something like that is more sensible.