Hacker News Reader

BEVs are likely already cheaper to produce than ICE/PHEV and that trend is going to continue. In automotive there is a pretty long lag between what is happening in new product development/the supply chain and what is reflected in products and prices in the current market. As an automaker you have to skate to where the puck is going.

Particularly the Chinese have mastered the truly low cost BEV which is being copied all over the globe (yes with North American crash standards). So many interesting things are happening in China in the EV/battery space.

Road tripping an EV in America is actually not that bad in a lot of regions. With NACS rolling out everyone will have access to Superchargers. I’m in the Northeast and fast charging is very dense here.

I think the price has always been the reason why PHEV never took off, especially in Australia.

My last three cars have all been Hybrids and I'm still not comfortable with EV and range anxiety etc. I'd happily swap to a PHEV if I had a decent option (in australia) but the range of options is very few and very pricey and with poor options/capabilities in the ranges.

If you actually use the batttery for daily driving, smaller battery means you have many more battery cycles for a given distance, meaning the battery degrades faster.

I’ve been in favour of EVs or plugins with small batteries myself. But in the long term I’m wondering if it’s a bad idea if the battery doesn’t last as long as the car. Replacing them is very expensive.

Maybe with it’s more responsible with modern LFP battery packs. They should handle many charging cycles fairly well

Wouldn't the faster degradation be offset by the fact that the battery is smaller, and hence cheaper, to replace?

That leaves the fixed cost of labour for the replacement, but if the battery is designed as a planned-replacement item, that can be reduced to a minimum. It's a lot easier to swap out a few cells or battery modules than a full frame-integrated battery. And Tesla demonstrated doing the latter in under 60 seconds.

Again, the upside is not having a huge, and for once a correct usage of the term, massive battery pack you're lugging with you, accelerating, braking, and tire-wearing all the time.

Why would it be so much easier to replace a smaller, but still heavy battery?

Seems to me you would need more or less the same tooling.

After all, you’re not replacing either by hand.

At least for a Prius, it can be done by hand, even DIY. The battery only weighs about 100lb and doesn't require any special tools.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHaYXBFnJo

OTOH, replacing the Rav4 hybrid's battery is apparently much more difficult and I couldn't find anyone doing that DIY.

Most of the replacement cost is the battery itself and you're still only going to do that maybe 1-2 times over the lifespan of the vehicle

Tesla batteries are so large and massive (~ 0.5 -- 1 tonne) that they're integrated into the frame as the entire floor of the automobile. This, incidentally, makes for a very low centre of gravity and high stability of the vehicle, though also a high kerb weight. Replacement is possible, and quickly, though requiring specialised equipment.

On hybrid petrol-battery EVs, the cells are included as modules, typically located under the rear seats (where the fuel tank of a conventional petroleum-fueled passenger car would be), which can be slid out in a matter of minutes as a DIY proccedure.

The batteries themselves weigh about 100 kilos and are rated for 100k -- 150k miles, which makes audunw's argument specious.

Toyota hybrid Camry DIY battery replacement: <https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=nlvibjNUAXQ>

Toyota hybrid Prius DIY battery replacement: <https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=FPXY0AqHHzI>

Toyota hybrid Camry battery warranty 10 year/150k miles: <https://pressroom.toyota.com/toyota-extends-battery-warranty...>

FYI, Toyota warranties its 2020 hybrid batteries for 10 years / 150k miles, which largely moots your hypothetical.

As I've noted downstream, replacement takes about 15 minutes and is possibly as a DIY: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39921047>

> This article says some plugin hybrids qualify as 0-emission vehicles, but it’s not clear to me if that’s in all states.

Its true under the “Advanced Clean Cars II” as adopted in CA, which a number of other states have adopted directly (including some states that have modified it by only adopting the timeline through 2032, stopping just short of a total phase-out of non-ZEVs, probably specifically to avoid the headline of “banning sales of gas-powered cars”.)

https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/cars-and-light-tr...

What is a zero-emission vehicle?

Zero-emission vehicles (ZEV), in the context of the Zero-emission Vehicle regulation, include battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and fuel cell electric vehicles.

A BYD Seagull is $10K, a Dacia Spring is €15K, an MG4 £27k, a Model 3 $33k (after rebate). Why would anybody spend more on Prius Prime? It's less car for more money.

Battery prices are predicted to drop below $70/kWh this year. Electric drive trains are cheaper to build than ICE, HEV or PHEV equivalents even if you include a massive 60kWh battery.

BYD and Tesla both just released horrible Q1 numbers. Both companies have shown they'd rather lower prices than cut production. EV prices are going to drop significantly over the next few months.

non-plugin HEV's make sense. If you can't plug in at home, electric cars are inconvenient and you'd probably run a PHEV on mostly gas anyways, so you might as well save the PHEV premium and just get a standard HEV.

Niche PHEV's make sense. The Ramcharger makes a lot of sense for rural use.

To address your points:

2. An electric car is very good at knowing at knowing what level your battery will be at when you reach your destination. Range anxiety is not a lack of knowledge.

3. Superchargers are now available to Ford & Rivian owners, and will be available to everybody else within the next few months. I've done tens of thousands of kilometers of road trips in an EV, and our EV is a far better road trip vehicle than our gasoline car.

4. The engines and complexity of PHEV's make them cost more then BEV's in 2024.

5. If you don't need >120V to run almost fully electric on a PHEV, you don't need >120V for a BEV either. With 120V you can add 5 miles of range per hour of charging, so can easily cover daily driving with a night of charging. Sure, you can't charge from 0-100 overnight, but how often do you do 300 mile road trips on subsequent days? 120V will let you do 40 miles/day every weekday and 300 miles every weekend with overnight charging. If you every need more than that you can use a supercharger.

2. An electric car is very good at knowing at knowing what level your battery will be at when you reach your destination. Range anxiety is not a lack of knowledge.

The EV cannot predict the future like unexpected detours, sudden change of plans, traffic jams on a hot/cold day where you need to keep the AC/heater running for long periods, and so on. A whole state is a big place and many areas have very sparse charger coverage - it took a hundred years to build up all the gas stations we have now. And its not enough to just build charging stations because the electric generation capacity in many area will also eventually need to be increased (not cheap or easy) as thousands and then millions more EV tap into them for power. This is a very big infrastructure issue and it is a bad idea to increase the EV population faster than the its supporting infrastructure can handle.

Sure, but you know what your margin is for the unexpected. If it says you will have 100km of range at your destination, that's how much range you have for detours etc.

120V plugs are everywhere and far more common than gas stations and work great for those once in a decade type experiences. The infrastructure already exists.

> unexpected detours, sudden change of plans

Applies to ICE cars too

> traffic jams That actually reduces battery use

> on a hot/cold day

That indeed is predicted already

I haven’t driven Volt, but Tesla obviously did leapfrog auto industry.

Obviously for some drivers or types of vehicles phev is still be better option.