If you're interested in that route, there are a ton of used Chevy Volts on the market now for $15-20k. And PHEVs are great for people in areas without good public charging infra, or who can't afford the current crop of high-range EVs (the latter being my case).
If instead you live on i.e. the West Coast, and can afford a high range pure-EV, you can go almost everywhere on electricity alone.
And there's significant East Coast charging infrastructure. I bought a used Leaf (first gen, I needed 5 seats for my wife's car since the first gen Volt only has 4) for $10k a year or two ago and have used Chademo charging several times without problem. The low range of the Leafs is a little annoying, but the Chademo charging capability compensates fairly well. With a >200 mile range EV, I wouldn't even need the fast charging.
If you can charge at home, you realize how annoying it was to go to the gas station all the time. When I travel and rent or borrow a gas car, I always find it annoying that I have to go to the gas station regularly. It's just not convenient compared to just habitually plugging it in when I get home. It also smells.
Can the gas in the tank go bad? I know modern fuel has a lot of preservatives.
Has anyone experienced any issues with summer vs winter blends? You're potentially carrying out of season gas in your tank.
The gas tank is pretty small (9 gallons), so it's not a big issue and only a tiny amount of fuel is used for these things. I normally keep about a quarter to half a tank in there, which is enough to be more than comfortable but not enough that I'm burning a lot of gas to keep it from going bad. It automatically keeps the average age of gas in the tank from going over 6 months.
This is something that is occasionally mentioned in speculative apocalyptic scenarios. It will go bad, after about a year you wouldn't be able to use any random car without swapping out its gas with some from a better preserved source.
EDIT: Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xktrYDny_lc
It's a Chevy...so expect some pretty bad engineering defects with everything but the engine/drivetrain.
In 2013, the Volt and Cadillac CTS shared the highest score (3.00) of any General Motors vehicle in Consumer Reports Reliability Index (excluding the Pontiac Vibe which is really a Toyota rebadge).
For comparison: 37 (of 41) Toyota vehicles scored the same or better than the Volt.
I am on electricity 99.9% of the time for any commuting or local drives, but it enables me to do trips of practically any length which is great for me. It's a good stepping stone and my next car will be a pure BEV, but the convenience (and backup gas generator because I don't have in-home charging, I live in an apartment complex) is a lifesaver sometimes.
It can barely keep up at true highway speeds. It can keep up at ~60-70 mph on flat ground, but just barely. Given highway speed limits are 60 mph minimum in most places (meaning traffic goes at 70 mph), this means I usually am losing charge on long journeys. If I lived in a place like TX where the speed limit was higher, then the REx wouldn't be able to keep up at all and there'd be a net loss in charge.
However, I have hold state-of-charge (HSoC) on-demand coded to my car (in the EU, you can enable the REx any time you want. CA regulations prohibited this in the US, but it can be enabled via an ODB-II adapter). If I am going on along journey, I enable the REx with a button at 80%.
I've done 600-700 mi trips without charging the car by filling the gas, as long as I'm conscious to begin looking for a gas station when the gas tank is ~10% (which is about 10 miles, and I've found that within 10 miles is about the max you'd find gas stations apart on a major highway).
By the time I get home, I'm down to 40-50% charge on the car (from 80%, since I can't turn on HSoC/REx at 100%, so the first 20% doesn't count for determining whether the REx can keep up) if I'm paranoid. This also is through the Cascade mountains in WA, so the real world usage holds up even over mountain passes. Going up the pass is a real pain since there's a high net loss of electrical charge, but going back down is basically "free" thanks to regen.
So the best PHEVs tend to be those that look more like BEVs with an accessory motor/generator, which is the Volt (sadly now discontinued) and the i3 Range Extender (Range extender models discontinued in EU).
I think at some point things might flip around, with non-plugin hybrids being the economy option, pure BEVs being the mid-priced option, and BEV with a range extender being a premium option for those who want all the advantages of both.
Also those 100k will be on the road only by 2030, and 10k by 2022 according to the other tech-crunch article [0]
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/amazons-climate-pledge-com...
Tesla built the Roadster which is a toy. Then the Luxo Model X and S Sedans followed by the affordable Model 3. Nissan built the affordable but limited range Leaf and just kept increasing the range every other year or so.
They basically started each with one type of suck (Tesla=Price, Nissan=Range) and worked to reduce over time.
As it is, Nissan has cemented the Leaf = bad range association in people's minds.
So, I am not sure if they are actually moving the right direction vs introducing new car with better specks and keeping the leaf as cheap as possible.
PS: I am guessing a reverse halo effect is going on.
But interesting to see what happens with the Leaf Plus over the next couple of years. (200 mile range more power).
Plus these will have tons of commercial customers who get to depreciate it on schedule, and the longer term lower maintenance and fuel costs come into play more.
... assuming the design goes well.
let's take 100,000 vehicles with (I'm conservatively guessing) a 100 kWh battery each, that's a 100,000,000 kWh load each night! 100,000 Mega watt-hours is roughly the output of about 10 nuclear power plants in a 24H period.
Unless a lot of new capacity comes online, it could easily overwhelm the existing electrical grid's capacity.
Let's hope this is a gradual transition.
Edit That would be between 400 to 500 km a day. I would be surprised delivery vans need that much
Except for Saudi sweet. There is plenty of very high quality oil in Saudi Arabia, which is no doubt in the heart of the "middle east". (Iraq and the UAE also produce sweet crude.) The really nasty stuff, the really energy-intensive gunk, is the tarsand bitumen from Canada. Saudi oil is positively green in comparison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_crude_oil
>> The term sweet originates from the fact that a low level of sulfur provides the oil with a mildly sweet taste and pleasant smell.
https://www.oilandgasmiddleeast.com/drilling-production/3496...
""" Saudi crude is generally a mix of heavy to medium sour oil, which is generally high in sulfur and yields a decent amount of residual fuel and vacuum gasoil. """
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sour_crude_oil
""" The major producers of sour crude oil include ... Saudi Arabia """
I wasn't meaning they have no sweet light crude oil, only that it is the overwhelming minority of what they have.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-middle-east-crude/analysi...
Technically the 6kWh of energy spent on refining (or any other work) is itself subject to inefficiencies in generation, transmission, etc. It would also suffer from inefficiencies in the electrical storage and motive portions of an electric vehicle as well. And at the end of the day even if there were perfect 100% conversion it would still only be 6kWh of energy available vs 33-34kWh.
Regarding the 6kWh number, I have been having a lot of trouble confirming it. Some stuff I have read says that refineries are major consumers of grid electricity. Others claim that they can produce most of their energy needs from the oil distillates on-site. My best guess is that it probably depends on how old the refinery is, because it seems like the older reports/estimates tend to mention the electricity consumption, whereas the newer ones mention the 'on-site' energy generation/consumption. I think a lot of the energy demand of the refinery is used for heating, so burning the oil distillates would be way more efficient than using grid electricity for that. So, it may just be the case that older refineries are way less efficient than newer ones, and the 'EV vs ICE' comparison depends on how modern the refineries are in your area.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-emissions/u-s-vehic...
Which gives to a mere 4Wh of additional power extracted from gasoline.
* The extremely loud engine and exhaust. (They are loud and unpleasant to listen to - it ain't no Ferrari)
* The slamming of the doors open and closed.
If I hear a loud agricultural sounding engine and then a loud slamming sliding type door... I know it's UPS - 100%. I don't even need to look outside.