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A PHEV seems like the ideal vehicle to me. Most people's daily drives are probably around town, which will be all EV, but for longer trips you don't have to bother with slow, potentially crowded charging stations at limited locations. Initially I thought it's a bit of a waste to haul around an ICE that you won't use most of the time, but the alternative is a long-range EV hauling around a battery that you won't use most of the time. Seems like a wash.

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100%. Plug in hybrids really do seem to be the best of both worlds, at the cost of some weight+space+complexity.

I wish they would go a step further and develop some kind of modular engine insert where you could put a gas engine in your frunk, plug it into the car, and run off the generator directly.

The problem with that would be weight, heat dissipation, and output wattage. I've seen some people carrying a diesel generator in their model x trunks for off grid Regen, but those don't have enough wattage to power the car while driving (nor does the recharge interface support such).

It's a lot of engineering challenges, but it would be cool to not bring the generator (ICE) unless you need it, and I like the redundancy of two power sources for the same drive train (and with motor per wheel, you effectively have multiple independent drive trains).

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