I'm pretty shocked at the low adoption of hybrid cars. Why don't people want them?
PHEVs are the worst of all, in my opinion, because on top of everything else, they tend to clog up public charging stations.
BEVs with decent range (the Chevy Bolt, Tesla, and some upcoming models) are the real solution. Charge at work and home - and only use DCFC (high current) public charging for trips.
Background: I've had a LEAF for 4.5 years as my daily commuter car; it's got (32K miles). For trips last year we got a Tesla Model S (24K miles).
As I essentially only use my car for weekend road trips, how is the long-distance experience hopping from charger to charger? How about country driving--is the density high enough you can check out some nature?
Current generation Leaf, Bolt, Tesla? The range would be pretty adequate and comfortable.
Not sure about long desert stretches, you could have an idea here: https://www.evtripplanner.com/planner/2-8/
Also of note is that a major drawback in the US is the high highway speeds. Drag increases to the speed squared, so going 60mph vs 80mph makes a huge difference. We don't notice as much in internal combustion engines, because a gas tank has so much energy – we may notice in our pockets though.
Not necessarily. At least in a Toyota hybrid you won't find a regular transmission but a much simpler planetary gear set.
Also everything that can be powered by the battery - like power steering, AC, water pump etc. - is, so less fluids, pumps, belts etc.
Lastly there's no starter motor and I think there's no need for a stepper motor since load and thus RPM can be regulated by the motor-generator pair.
I did consider the Toyota Prius and all it's variants; the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV; and Nissan's e-power series. Several negatives. Both the Prius and Outlander 10% to 20% more expensive then the Leaf. After government discounts; manufacturer discounts; and dealer incentives they ended up nearly 60% more expensive. All of these hybrids had the shortcomings of ICE (internal combustion engine) of dealing with fuel, oil changes, belts, plugs, and others.
The PHEV (plug in hybrid electric vehicle) would have worked in my use case as the battery has 30km range. Just recharge daily at home but the price was a turn off.
The perceived negative with the Leaf was range. But just the other day I've made a 300km round trip and the three 30 minute breaks to charge the battery was just fine. Japan is easy with such good density of chargers: https://www.plugshare.com/
We rarely use the charger at home. The Leaf gets charged at the local market whenever it's below 50%. Charge time is limited 30 minutes at the public spots and it's enough to get the charge to over 80%. This means that even for people without access to a charger at home easily use the public spots. The salesperson used the same pitch, saying that Leaf owners regularly drop in for a 30 minute charge and hang out at the lounge with free soft drinks.
Anyways, this was my reason and experience on getting BEV instead of a hybrid.
150 miles is the EPA range, not 150km.
JC08 (Japan's rating agency) rates it at 400km (248 miles). Even the dealer says this is wildly optimistic.
At 100% charge, my car reports 220 km. It's starting to "learn" my driving style.
My lead foot, my preference for 25dC (77dF) cabin temperature when it's 40dC (104dF) at 90%+ humidity drags this down to real world 150km (93 miles).
I'm sure if I drove more conservatively during more reasonable weather conditions, I could easily get over 220km. But with fast charge stations no more then 50km apart, no need to hypermile. It's good to take a break hour and half or so. (Speed limit in Japan is maximum 80kph (49mph) on highways.)
As long as China and India have little incentive to fix their pollution issues, the impact of even the entire state of California is literally a drop in the bucket.
The thinking is “why should I suffer” when the developing world pretty much does whatever they want. A bunch of Bay Area techies driving electric has about as much impact on climate as a whale farting in the ocean. The sky might be falling, but it isn’t going to be stopped by Americans driving electric.
Why do you say that? I can understand people need to look after themselves, but I can have my own hopes at the same time. Why would you want me to not hope to address this problem? The market certainly isn't going to provide any hope; that's why emissions are considered an externality, because people don't approach the problem rationally (as a society). Tragedy of the commons should be a descriptive trait, not a justification.
In a few years, when gas prices are high again I'm sure we'll see the EVs start picking up, and at that point I suspect the charging station issue will solve itself.
Parent said hybrid.
Even if you are, 50mpg vs 35mpg is just not that compelling when it costs so much in terms of money, mechanical complexity, and driving dynamics.
(Unfortunately, automakers seem to be making hybrids less fun, rather than more, until you get to the very high end).
Perhaps you meant the Chevy Bolt which is fully electric with no transmission or gasoline engine?
Is the only downside that you can't get a combined peak power from ICE+electric that's higher than the electric on its own?
Am electrical engineer, not mechanical, so I'd be interested in someone who knows about these things chiming in.
As to the mountains statement, here's a piece of anecdata. My boss, who was a big fellow, said he had a really hard time driving through mountain passes with his first gen prius. It just didn't have enough power to drive up steep grades at freeway speeds carrying 300 lbs. He said he was constantly being passed by semi trucks hauling loads...
Gasoline engines lose power at altitude, as it happens.
The old timers dislike them for being "different" and the ones who want the new tech want 100% of it, not just 20% - they want the ideal solution in this new paradigm. As such, hybrid tech is doomed from the start.
For the same reason I think the end state of cars in the forseeable future will/should be PHEVs, not BEVs. People who disdain the former in favor of the later are responding to vague, illogical ideas of purity and simplicity, in my opinion.
If you have a BEV the drive train is almost childishly simple, and that means fewer things that can go wrong and the things that do go wrong are mostly simple to replace, which in turn means your maintenance costs are low.
All the time you're driving a PHEV you're hauling the ICE power system around, even if you don't use it for days, weeks, months, or indeed ever. That's an ongoing cost drag compared to the equivalent BEV.
Anti air-pollution and anti climate-change rules will punish PHEVs. Not at first, because a PHEV is better than ICE, but gradually a PHEV is going to be paying surcharges and subject to access rules that don't apply to BEVs, rather than try to distinguish whether your specific PHEV would be a problem on this specific occasion it's simpler to just say "No, buy a BEV".
I think you're exactly wrong about this, lots of people are going to dip their toes in the water with a PHEV, expecting to use ICE mode a lot, then when it comes time to replace it they'll think back to the few times the PHEV "paid for itself" by running in ICE mode, and all the times they were fine on battery, and they'll eye the latest BEV with more range, and they'll say to themselves hell with it, let's buy a BEV, we hate spending 8+ hours at a time in a car anyway so let's just make it impossible rather than unpleasant.
You seem to agree that a PHEV doesn't need to and won't use much gas on average, which means its environmental impact is not a lot greater than a BEV. And something you are ignoring is that a PHEV needs a significantly smaller battery than a BEV, which counterbalances the cost of the engine as well as its environmental impact.
Hybrid big rigs on the other hand, could be game changing. A Prius is a statement car more than an actual exercise in frugality. A Honda Civic is a nicer car, doesn’t look like a squashed bean and costs less with more features and plenty of fuel-efficiency. But then a Civic doesn’t give people the same sense of superiority as does a Prius.
In the Bay Area replace Prius with Tesla and Civic with Audi and you can make similar arguments.
How? I believe most of the efficiency of the Prius and other hybrids is realized with city (stop and go) driving. In highway driving it is not any more efficient than any other car with a similar 1.3L engine and aerodynamics.