They are also the only practical solution for many people until the EV charging infrastructure is far more developed.

EVs don’t make sense for people who don't have reserved parking spaces with charging. Until that problem is solved, hybrids are a pretty good idea.

Actually disagree, plug-in hybrids will run on battery for most short trips in the city. It’s cutting out all the low hanging fruit for pollution. Most of your trips on 20/30mph roads where fuel efficiency is poor. Stop and go traffic. Sitting at a stoplight. If you’re running on battery in those scenarios, I’d say you’re making a huge improvement.

And then you still have gas for a longer trip somewhere with no charging infra. But those trips will hopefully be rarer. And when you’re going 60+ mph on these longer trips, you’re only ever burning fuel at the engine’s better efficiency.

I think there’s a good place for this tech in some lifestyles.

EVs are obviously the future, but intermediate vehicles to help people get into EVs aren’t bad. If someone chooses a plugin-hybrid over gas, but would have chosen gas over EV for range and charging reasons, it’s a good improvement

They work fairly well for some use cases. I know a few people who have plugin hybrids with maybe 50km battery range; they typically commute entirely on the battery (short urban commutes) and use the petrol engine maybe once or twice a year for long journeys. The plug-in hybrid is, of course, much cheaper than an electric car that could handle the occasional long trips, but most of their driving is on electric.

If you live in a city and mostly use the car for commuting/shopping, this can make a lot of sense, and that's not a small market.

One problem with this usage mode is that it can leave the petrol engine unused for very long periods, which will ultimately lead to problems (I think some hybrids will now deliberately periodically run it for a bit to deal with this).

Disagreeing too... Neighbors here both have plug-in hybrids. 50 km autonomy officially, when they actually do 40. Thing is: when your daily commute is 20 kilometers or less, this means you don't need the ICE. But you have it when you need to do more than 40 kilometers and there's no "range anxiety".

They can go for weeks without turning the ICE on.

I do also think it's not a bad stepping stone to bring people towards full electric cars: they get used to a car that you charge at home. Meanwhile the charging network gets better and better and cities/countries get the time to adapt too (there's no way everybody can charge a full electric car at home without changes to the current grids).

I don't see what's wrong with ICE -> plug-in hybrid -> full electric.

I thought so too, and bought a cheap EV, but also kept a raggedy old civic for taking longer trips. Caring for 2 cars got old quick. Sold both and bought a cheap used plug-in hybrid and haven't looked back.

Even a non-plug hybrid isn't really the worst of both worlds. The battery replacement is relatively cheap when it eventually needs it, it's gentler on the gas engine that and ICE car, and won't waste gas running the engine while you're not moving.

As for anemic/not exciting to drive, yeah, true. It's not that important for me to have an exciting car, and I think most people don't see that as a top priority.

Disagree. It’s the 80/20 rule, the PHEV will get you to 80% of your destinations on electricity. Paying $20,000 more for a battery for the added range to make those last 20% or trips isn’t worth it. (And with the state of charging, there are probably trips your EV can’t make that a PHEV can)

I own an EV (Ioniq) and believe this is the future. But Toyota Hybrids have been known to drive 400k miles without major hiccups. There exist use cases that EVs just can’t fulfill right now. So why not save 30-40% fuel while battery production is ramping, which will take a few more years.

> They are the worst of both worlds: anemic, still burning fuel

You should back up these strong opinions with some facts. Hybrid batteries which minuscule compared to EVs, put out 25kw+ instantaneous power. More than enough to beat ICE cars across the intersection.

I drive a PHEV (Ford C-Max) and I don't get the claim that it's anemic. It spins the tires just fine taking off, and I've never felt it was short of power except the couple times I tried to quickly get up to highway speeds in 'EV Only' mode. But running in EV Only mode at highway speeds uses the battery too fast anyway. It's better to use gasoline to go fast and electricity to go slow unless I was expecting to have enough electricity to do the whole trip. You can still put it in 'EV Now' which will mostly use the battery but turn on the engine when you need it for acceleration.

Combustion maintenance intervals are doubled on the PHEV vs a conventional gas only vehicle. And the transaxle shouldn't require any service (although Ford had some manufacturing defects and a recently got a new one under warranty).

Battery manufacturing improvements would improve a PHEV too. Smaller batteries would take up less storage space (C-Max design is suboptimal) or allow for a bigger EV range with the same volume.

> They are the worst of both worlds: anemic, still burning fuel, hybrid complexity and combustion maintenance.

As someone who has neither a garage, nor a driveway, I have to park on the street. So I have no convenient place to charge a vehicle at home.

And probably neither does anyone else in a community built pre-WW2:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

Many people will be charging their vehicles in the evening after being out for the day. In the US, this time of day is already a large power draw just as solar power starts to wane for the day. If the cars delays charging until after this peak, solar and wind won't be as prevalent either.

Your heat pump comment makes my point for me. This is additional draw on top of what homes already draw today. Yes, it's just a 20-50amp draw, but this is a new draw and will be there year around, along when a heat pump may also be running.

And while you point out that there is regulation around the sale of electric vehicles, is there regulation around the production of clean energy? What to expect to happen with Russia cutting off natural gas, and the US slowing down or stopping the permitting of new drilling locations of natural gas. Where do you expect all of the energy to charge these electric vehicles to come from as the world seems to push back against fossil fuels for powering our grid. World leaders are still hesitant about nuclear. But they're also fighting fossil fuels at the same time. Solar, wind, and hydro will not be enough to cover this increase demand plus normal growth.

>An EV is already cleaner burning coal than a petrol vehicle

That is a patently ridiculous claim.

The most efficient coal power stations approach 50% thermal efficiency. Near 15% of that is lost in power line transmission, and another 15% or so in EV charging cycle losses.

Modern diesels approach 40% thermal efficiency.

Also, this completely ignores one of the main benefits of EVs - that is, externalising emissions and pollution away from the point of use.