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Comment by ajford | Hacker News Reader

I really think the path forward for a majority of people is plug-in hybrids. Most people have daily commutes under 50mi round trip. For those people, a car with 50-80mi electric range, then a reduced fuel range is perfect. My spouse drives a Chevy Volt (a sadly now discontinued model), which works well for her 40mi daily commute. Most weeks, the car never fires up the ICE, and we've put probably less than 4 gallons in the last two months. However, we're still able to make long-distance trips with the 7-8 gallon gas tank that gets us around 300 miles with the ~40MPG efficiency of the ICE.

That completely eliminates range anxiety, since once the EV range has run out, you still have a perfectly normal car, and can refuel at any station. And with the spare factory EVSE in the trunk, I can generally recharge at my destination when staying overnight.

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For 2-car households, an EV car and an ICE (or plugin hybrid) will increasingly make a lot of sense, especially if the ICE is a bigger vehicle of the sort that people often want for roadtrips.

If there's just one car, my experiences may be flavored by the fact that I go to some relatively remote areas, but I just don't see an EV making sense for many people. I don't see renting a car even every few months because I need it for a wilderness trip. FWIW, Prius plug-in hybrid sales seem to be quite strong. It's not really an elegant solution compared to an EV but it's probably pragmatic.

I want to think that the future involves avoiding having to own bigger cars entirely and lease/rent an EV car plus credits for short-term rentals of different vehicles when needed.

Need a big SUV for skiing or camping? Swap your small EV for the weekend.

There's too many people I know that make vehicle purchasing decisions based on edge cases to avoid having to rent something different when they actually need it. We need to figure out how to give up large SUVs that only drive around a single passenger.

I get what you're saying but, for many of us, renting a car for the weekend is a significant hassle and time sink. And then the rental probably isn't set up with a roof rack for canoes, etc. If it were a once a year thing? Sure. But it's not. It's every few weeks at least. (There's also picking up home improvement stuff etc.)

It doesn't always need to be a big SUV either. There are somewhat smaller vehicles that are almost as good for a lot of activities. People are going to keep buying vehicles that they can use for most of their activities.

> renting a car for the weekend is a significant hassle and time sink

That's the real problem to be solved, and not by stationing one of those cars permanently in each person's house.

Evolving tech might enable at least three scenarios: self-driving cars can be summoned on demand; cars can be piloted remotely to the customer's location (a matter of legislation at this point); electric scooters can make it feasible for a driver to deliver and return to base at a reasonable cost. I'd pay a premium to have a standard-issue rental car at my door at the press of a button.

If you want to enable remote driving through populated areas it will take a lot more changes than just legislation. Our cellular data networks lack the reliability, latency, and bandwidth that would be needed for the level of streaming video to make this safe.

The problem is that everyone wants to go skiing on the same holiday weekends so the rental agencies have all their AWD SUVs booked weeks in advance at high prices. But they can't afford to add inventory because there's little demand for those vehicles at other times. The rental solution doesn't really scale.

That's only because you know wealth/high class people. I assure you there are plenty of people who will cram a family of five in a compact for a road trip, haul plywood on the roof of a sedan, throw a sofa in/on a station wagon, haul gravel with a compact pickup, etc, etc. They're just not people who are employed by tech companies shop at whole foods and browse HN. Shoehorning a vehicle into a use case for which it is a less than perfect fit is not how white collar professionals making tech money are expected to act.

Vehicle suitability for any given task is inversely proportional to the average net worth of the occupants. The only way you get a free pass is if the vehicle is environmentally friendly and plastered in the kind of bumper stickers you expect on the back of a university professor's EV conversion project car. Then you're just "eccentric" and not low class.

Maybe that's common in other countries, but in the US I see a lot of low wage workers driving large, practical vehicles like older model F150s and Chevy Tahoes. Sure they burn a lot of gas, but they can do everything and are relatively easy to repair.

It's just a lot of extra engineering and cost to have two discrete motors in a car. You're probably going to have a seriously underpowered ICE in it as well since available speeds are reduced which makes it less suitable to highway driving. Not to mention the additional costs on maintaining both of those engines.

> You're probably going to have a seriously underpowered ICE in it as well (snip) which makes it less suitable to highway driving

Why? You can put a powerful ICE in it just as easily.

My Chevy Volt can easily do 90+mph on the freeway, irregardless of whether it's on battery or gasoline. (Of course, I've never personally verified that...)

And yet Prius plugin hybrid sales are up almost 50% YoY. Pure EVs are probably the future at some point. But in the here and now, plugin hybrids are the pragmatic choice for a lot of people who mostly drive shorter distances and can charge at home but do longer trips also.

That's why the Volt didn't have an ICE, it had a gas-powered generator to run the electric motors. It's such a smart design that it's a crime they're killing the line.

It had an ICE-powered generator that could also be connected via clutches directly to the drivetrain for better efficiency at highway speeds.

ICE -> Generator -> Inverter -> Electric Motor is worse for efficiency at constant speed on the highway than just connecting the ICE directly to the wheels.

https://www.plugincars.com/exclusive-chevrolet-volt-chief-en...

OTOH going the generator route allows you to avoid quite a bit of drivetrain - a transmission, differential(s), etc. Wouldn't surprise me if actual efficiency comes quite close considering you shed 200lbs or so of weight. More than that if AWD.

The Volt's gas engine also engages directly with the wheels under some circumstances.

That's still an ICE though.

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