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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

They are the worst of both worlds: anemic, still burning fuel, hybrid complexity and combustion maintenance. BEVs or bust, anything else is window dressing on tech we’re leaving behind.

BEVs will get cheaper faster as battery manufacturing ramps. No need to waste any more effort on combustion technology and infra.

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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).

How does that make any sense? What those people need is a cheap EV with 50km range, and then rent a lnog-range vehicle for those few annual long trips. Why load your EV with several 100kg of ICE gear?

I mean, possibly that's the case, but in reality, I think you'd have trouble selling an EV with 50km range (and in practice manufacturers don't try). People would feel very insecure about that.

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

> 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.

That's true in theory. Unfortunately in practice - at least where I live - Hybrids don't get charged at home. People buy hybrids for the tax/other benefits but just park them on public roads. Which means that you get the worst possible state where you have pseudo-green ICE vehicles that run with a lot of extra weight in the form of a basically useless electric motor. (Except for recuperating but that's not worth it)

Perhaps these people don't have means to charge their vehicles so they would not be able to charge a BEV too? I cannot imagine why anybody who has access to a charger would intentionally leave a PHEV uncharged, what is the point? Are you in an area where hybrid is cheaper to run on gas?

Often these are company cars (with private use allowed), where gas is paid for by the company

Looks like it's a problem with the "unintended consequences" of the taxation and not the PHEV per se.

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.

I used to think this but on reflection my driving pattern would be served fine if I plugged in once a week while grocery shopping.

If you're doing ~30 EV miles per week, sounds like a bicycle would be a fantastic addition to your personal transportation plan.

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.

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 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.

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'd rather see those KWHr distributed to as many vehicles as possible, able to prevent 80% of the CO2 emissions that they would generate, then hoard that capacity in a single high end vehicle that won't even tap into it.

Hybrid gas engines should be sized to only operate the vehicle on flat ground at highway speeds, so around 10-15KW tops.

The gas engine should be able to handle a mountain pass in hot or cold weather, closer to 150KW. That avoids needing to carry enough battery for that use case.

That is a ridiculous amount of power. You realize you just said that a car needs a 200Hp motor. A 1990 Toyota Corolla (as new) has a 100Hp motor.

Battery plus a 10KW ICE can get you over a mountain pass. Going slower is always an option.

Not ridiculous, I had a 130HP / 100KW car that could do it only with protest, and modern cars are heavier. To do the same drive mostly on battery you'd need something like 50KWh which is much more than any of the current plug in hybrids I'm aware of. There's not that much weight or cost penalty going from 100HP to 200HP but quite a bit going from 15KWh to 50.

I suppose it depends on what your pushing over that mountain. Fiat Pandas are awesome mountain cars that handle anything (in the car) at 50-80hp.

Those look fun. Figure a 2x heavier car and US freeway speeds (70 mph / 112 km/h) and I think you would end up wanting a lot more power. Even if the number seems high you only rely on about half given altitude effects and protecting engine reliability. Notably even on something as light as the i3 BMW tried using a tiny engine for their range extender and ended up switching to a larger 170HP unit.

> 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.

>Hybrid batteries which minuscule compared to EVs, put out 25kw+ instantaneous power.

Which is exactly the problem with hybrid batteries - the peak power demanded from them is about the same as a pure EV, but each cell is put under much greater load because there are fewer of them. Those tiny, over-stressed hybrid batteries will not last very long. Not that many people will notice, as they just want a car that can take them where they want to go.

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.

> 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

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