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This is why I believe that plug-in hybrids will last much longer than people expect. I know most techno-geeks think that PHEVs (Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles) are "stop-gap" technologies.... but they solve the range problem AND solve the "batteries are heavy" problem very elegantly.

Lets be frank: Li-Ion batteries may have gotten dramatically lighter, but they're no where close to how light gasoline is. PHEVs allow gasoline engines to operate at their optimal power-generation band as a gasoline generator (optimizing your gas milage), while also using standard electric connections to charge on a daily basis.

So you don't need many Li-Ion batteries for PHEVs (lighter car, cheaper to make). You still get the flat torque band of EVs, and if you manage to charge your vehicle within 50-miles, you won't use any gasoline either.

In the long term, gas stations will grow less profitable as electricity becomes sufficient for 80+% of driving cases. But it seems more sustainable to downscale gas stations in the USA rather than to build out a supercharging network.

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Pure-electric high performance cars like Model S will be fun toys for those who can afford it. But PHEVs are the ones that seem to make financial sense for the majority of consumers. Be it the Prius Prime, Chevy Volt, or Honda Clarity.

This seems unlikely given that the Volt has been canceled and much of the momentum is moving towards electric only platforms, even from the major manufacturers.

The technology for the Volt still exists. Rumors are that an SUV-version of the Volt is coming (just like the electric-SUV version of the Mustang is allegedly in the works).

Sedan marketplace is shrinking, SUVs are growing. GM doesn't want to waste its hybrid technology, but also doesn't want to bet on the Sedan market anymore.

EDIT: Note that a 20-mile range PHEV (the typical one) is insufficient. 50-mile range PHEV seem to be the sweet spot for me.

The Volt was cancelled because the Cruze was cancelled so it doesn't say much about the PHEV market.

With the new Tesla Model S Long Range (400 miles of range on freeway), you can drive non stop between LA and San Francisco.

Isn't the real problem with using EVs for long distance travel the charging time, though? My petrol engine car has finite range as well, but if I'm running low, I can easily find somewhere to fill up and it takes less than five minutes. If you have an EV, how easy is it to find a charging station, and how long does it take to recharge? Some of these practical issues still seem to be a long way from being solved, and until they are, pure EVs seem to have more potential for reducing emissions locally in congested urban areas than as long distance transportation.

With EVs that you can charge at home, that means that for your normal driving that you probably do 80 to 90 % of the time, you NEVER need to stop to "fill up" because you charge every night at home. The tradeoff is that when you do decide to drive more than 250 to 350 miles in one trip, you'll need to take at least one break where you charge.

If you optimize only for the long journeys, you miss out on the benefits from normal driving which you probably do a lot more often.

If you optimize only for the long journeys, you miss out on the benefits from normal driving which you probably do a lot more often.

Please be careful with that sort of assumption, though. For example, I work from home and have a lot of day-to-day facilities quite nearby, so on any given day I might not drive anywhere at all. If I'm driving, it's probably either because I need to carry a lot with me to some local event or because I'm travelling a longer distance. There are certainly efforts to encourage more of this sort of lifestyle in planning new residential areas in my country (the UK) and reduce the need for routine daily commuting over short-to-medium distances by car, so if we're taking a long-term view then we should allow for that.

You’re never more than 150 miles from a Supercharger in the US, and it takes ~30 minutes to fully charge on road trips (which is a fair compromise for never going to the gas station day to day).

What about the rest of the world, though? Granted the US has a greater problem with harmful emissions than almost anywhere else combined with a culture of big, inefficient vehicles that make these alternatives particularly attractive. But people in other places are asking about the future of transportation and how to make things more sustainable and environmentally friendly too, and the arithmetic doesn't necessarily work out the same way if you're starting from a more normal baseline.

Electric busses, scooters, and taxis for urban areas, electric cars for private owners and suburban/rural areas.

I agree with the basic sentiment that EVs have potential but aren't quite there yet.

One issue that I've seen raised a few times now is how honest the environmental credentials of these EVs really are. Sure, you aren't emitting pollution from your petrol/diesel engine as you drive. However, you have the emissions from whatever electricity source you use for charging instead, which obviously depends on how environmentally friendly or otherwise your power supply is. Crucially, you also have the effects of manufacturing these vehicles. Particularly when it comes to the batteries, those are still very significant. On top of that, batteries for EVs are heavy, and shifting all that extra weight around has a cost as well.

Just last week, there was a study being widely reported that suggested the true overall lifetime CO2 emissions given typical lifetime and usage levels for a car would make an electric vehicle worse than a diesel one of otherwise similar specification, much of this due to the hidden costs in mining key elements used in the battery.

Given that some of the materials involved are also relatively rare (or at least relatively difficult to supply viably in large quantities) I think the jury is still out on whether the modern generation of EVs will bring the big improvements that some of the environmentalists are hoping for.

Edit: To those anonymously downvoting, it would be more constructive and probably a lot more interesting to discuss actual facts and scientific evidence. For example, if you know of substantial, robust research on the environmental impacts of mining the materials needed for EV batteries on a scale where these vehicles become mass market rather than a niche product, please share it so the rest of us can learn something. Likewise, if you have substantial knowledge about the likely efficiency of improving EV technology, charging facilities and the sources behind them compared to other new or evolving models for powering vehicles over the next 10-20 years such as hybrid models or alternative fuels, please comment accordingly.

If you want to look at it that way, you also should include the emissions/environment impact included in acquiring the oil, building refineries, the emissions during the refinery process, and the shipment of the fuel around the country.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/electric-car-well-to-wh...

And with electric cars, the ongoing CO2 emissions can be limited by where you get your charge. If you have solar for example, your not contributing any additional emissions beyond what it took to produce your solar setup. With an internal combustion engine, you don't really have much choice on how your fuel is produced.

If you want to look at it that way, you also should include the emissions/environment impact included in acquiring the oil, building refineries, the emissions during the refinery process, and the shipment of the fuel around the country.

Yes, we should.

As I said, so far it looks like the jury is still out. The problem with many of these reports, including much of last week's commentary on the study I mentioned and also including the source you linked to in the parent comment, is that the popular summaries are often light on key details so it's hard to make meaningful like-for-like comparisons based on the available reporting alone. And so far, it has often been remarkably difficult to track down and evaluate the primary sources behind a lot of these reports, on both sides.

It's also worth observing that some of these claims aren't necessarily contradictory. It's certainly conceivable (without seeing more data to confirm either way) that the average petrol/diesel vehicle in the US is relatively big and inefficient compared to those in say Europe or Japan. Meanwhile, the environmental impact of an EV is going to depend on how environmentally friendly the energy supplies ultimately used for charging are, which apparently varies dramatically across the US based on your linked source, and presumably varies elsewhere as well.

If our national power grids and/or local microgeneration facilities at homes and offices continue to move towards more environmentally friendly sources, and if the environmental costs of the batteries do not increase significantly as more EVs are produced, then it seems reasonable to assume that at some point it would become more environmentally friendly in terms of emissions to use EVs. So far, I see a lot of loaded arguments and cherry-picking from both sides of the debate, which makes it difficult to know whether we have yet passed that point in any given set of circumstances.

This is a common argument, but I think it's a great example of perfect being the enemy of good for a couple of reasons.

1) Cars (especially diesels) emit far more particulates and carbon in real world driving conditions compared to idealized testing. The sort of stop and go, light to light driving we do on a daily basis running errands while the engine is cold is the worst edge case for an internal combustion engine. It's also the sort of driving EVs really shine at, since a big chunk of the energy spent getting up to speed is recaptured during regen braking and sitting idle uses no energy.

2) CO2 scrubbing, heat recapture and other techniques to reduce emissions are far more practical and economical at grid scale. Mandating better emissions on cars only affects new sales, but new rules for power stations can be retroactive.

3) EVs get cleaner as the grid does. ICE cars only get worse at emissions over their lifespan. The shift to EVs is really a two pronged approach, with improvements to the grid as another major focus.

Yes, this is all true. However, it's also fair to say that a lot of "green" technologies have been oversold over the past decade or two, with their realistic environmental credentials at the time of use not necessarily living up to either their long-term potential or the hype in the promotional literature. Moreover, some (not all, of course) green advocacy groups are among the worst offenders when it comes to distorting science and cherry-picking evidence to build an argument around their preferred world view.

It is important that we look to the future, and it may be necessary to accept some compromises along the way as we transition to technologies and lifestyle choices that will be better in the long term. No-one is disputing this, at least not in this discussion that I can see. But I don't think this is a perfect-vs-good argument. It's more a good-vs-not-good-yet argument, and trying to move ahead with a technology on a large scale before it's ready isn't necessarily a good option at all. As ever, we should be guided on such matters by robust scientific evidence and strategic long-term planning as much as possible.

The very simple thermodynamics of green technology are this:

You set a PV panel out in the sun, you get free electricity as long as the sun shines. For ever.

You set up an otto cycle engine to burn something and generate power: you get nice power. As long as you keep digging up and procuring fuel, and dealing with (or forcing someone else to deal with) the waste products. Good luck with that.

This has been the physics of renewables since I first learned about them, since I was a child, about 45-ish years ago. The politics of it have also been: "we can't switch to renewables now, we've got too much invested in burnables now - so lets transition gradually."

And, in fact - we haven't transitioned gradually.

It's not that it's not ready.

It's that the people who don't want change - aren't ready. And frankly - I'm tired of them already. And their enablers and apologists.

Unfortunately, simplistic explanations that are understandable to a child don't always model reality. If it were that easy, we'd have solved energy security and climate change a very long time ago.

The (real) arguments about transitioning gradually have very little to do with past investments in fossil fuel production and much more to do with whether we yet have the ability to manufacture and deploy better alternatives efficiently at scale.

Once upon a time, those PV panels you mentioned cost more in resources to develop, manufacture and install than they were likely to save over their working lifetime. Of course, the technology has come on a long way since then, but if we'd all gone out and stuck panels all over our roofs in those early days, it would have been counterproductive.

Today we face some similar questions with the lithium batteries currently used in popular EVs. It's all very well looking at Tesla aiming to manufacture a few hundred thousand vehicles per year, but total global car supplies (and remember, cars aren't the only vehicles on the road) are approaching one hundred million per year. Even assuming we could magic up 100 Gigafactories to produce that many batteries -- and keep in mind that Tesla's first Gigafactory is on a five-year build programme that hasn't finished yet -- we'd need about a million tonnes of lithium per year to sustain production using the technology and processes we have today. That's an order of magnitude more than the current annual global supply, and at that burn rate we'd deplete the entire known global reserves in 1-2 decades. There are analogous concerns over the availability of other essential elements for the production of current technology EV batteries, such as cobalt.

So if you think we are ready and anyone who says otherwise is some sort of apologist, I invite you to explain how we're going to scale up battery production, gather enough raw materials to go into those batteries, and presumably develop a suitable recycling programme, so everyone can be switching to EVs within the kinds of timescales that environmental lobby groups are currently calling for. Otherwise, you're really just arguing for changing our infrastructure to use a different set of natural resources that still has a finite supply that we'd be in danger of exhausting.

I just want to thank you for an incredibly insightful comment.