My hesitation with hybrids is that I keep all the associated maintenance costs of an ICE engine. Now I have two power trains and energy systems to maintain instead of just one.
Other systems, think Volvo, pop the EV bits in the back of the car and replace where the drive shaft used to be with batteries. That seems like a decent trade to me as well. Still have a transmission, but at least it's not purely additive.
AND one man's added complexity is another's redundancy. If the charging module goes bad in a hybrid, you can still drive. Or if you run out of gas.
All that said... I still prefer EVs to hybrids. Do one thing, do it well, I say!
You don't even need to limit it to the lower end models with Subaru. The top trim Outback and Ascent have a CVT these days. If you want an automatic transmission in your WRX, same thing - a CVT. Anyway, you're not wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_transmission#/media/...
Modern ICE are also extremely complex. Turbo systems, sensors, air management, heat management, the list goes on.
So yeah, a modern transmission is complex but a modern ICE isn’t simple. By comparison they’re very similar in terms of complexity, the ICE possibly being even more complex.
I don't disagree with your posts greater point, but I disagree with this.
There is an endless amount of variable complexity in the engineering behind friction materials, actuation styles, the control systems within the computer control, the material selections.. the list goes on.
I mean entire branches of metallurgy were more or less founded in the pursuit of finding stronger alloys for gearbox work. entire branches of metrology were developed for the sake of gearbox failure analysis -- there is a lot of complexity.
It's stupid to get into a pissing contest between engines and transmissions, they're both astoundingly complex.
Transmissions are complex but so are a lot of things. Internal combustion engines are more complex than transmissions.
Pages in a shop manual are a proxy for the complexity of service, not of the component itself.
But all those costs are correlated with engine hours, in a hybrid used most of the time for commuting, ICE engine hours would be really low
Suppose 90% of your miles are electric. After you've put 250K miles (400K km) on the car, you've only got 25K miles (40K km) on the engine. Rarely do you have significant engine trouble at that mileage.
Also, the engine design can probably be simplified if it's just acting as a generator. You don't need a turbo to provide extra bursts of power. Nor things like variable valve timing for good performance across a wide range of RPMs. Maybe you could even use an air-cooled engine like old VW Beetles and Porsches.
That said, they certainly have tow-behind generators, and they're certainly available for rent, it's just without modification you'd have to stop in order to charge. I've seen people with a model X doing exactly this out in the desert. Seemed to be an ok solution honestly, because they were camping and had genset power for camping needs, assuming of course that the whole electricity while camping thing is something you're into.
I know the Chevy Volt had an all-electric power train, and the ICE is purely a generator that dumps power into the electrical system, and the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid has a dual power train, but I wasn't able to find a concise list of which hybrids have taken what strategy.
I apologize for forgetting the benefits of parallel hybrid systems, but i know there are some, including needing a smaller ICE, all things equal.
For climate control, they are nearly identical to a gas Toyota.
Their engineering is just that insanely conservative. They just make giant, absurdly understressed engines. You can pull a 2.5L 4cyl engine out of a Camry, designed to make 180 horsepower, replace only a few components, and make 400hp with the reliability you would normally expect from an engine built for endurance racing. They are super popular in drift racing leagues.
Only other thing is that it is consuming more oil now so needs topping up every few thousand miles.