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Comment by fpoling | Hacker News Reader

The article mentioned that plug-in hybrids slow down pure EV transition. But that is kind of expected.

It is strictly cheaper to make a car that can drive on a battery 30 km and then switch to gasoline than a pure EV that can drive 500 km and it will be so for few more years.

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Its an interesting optimization problem too: is it better to switch more cars to pure EV, or ensure more miles are driven electric even while hauling around a few gallons of gasoline?

If it's cheaper to get PHEV into more hands, and more commutes are driven on battery power, that may be a better result than trying to subsidize the production of BEVs to outcompete them

Is it? Well comparing 30 km range to 500 km almost certainly, but what about comparing 30 km to 150 km? Plug-in hybrids basically have two complete drivetrains in one car, which adds a lot of additional complexity, weight, and cost. A large enough battery will still be more expensive, but as battery prices come down the crossover point gets pushed up. I predict that eventually both plug-in hybrids and traditional hybrids will make no economic sense, and there will only remain ICEs and full EVs.

The Toyota hybrid system is substantially less complex than a typical ICE. there are no belts, no clutch, no alternator, the ICE engine is a direct drive into a planetary gear set splitting power with the traction motor, with the power ratio modulated by a second smaller electric motor

It's basically the best of both worlds, and not at all "two complete drivetrains"

The Prius power split device is indeed very clever and I think that making a plug-in hybrid version of the Prius was a good idea. However at present the Prius Prime (44 mi range) sells for $33k, the regular (non- plug-in) Prius sells for $28k, and the Nissan Leaf (149 mi range) sells for $29k.

I suspect that an electrical car with a range of just 150km using the latest battery technology is already cheaper to manufacture than ICE. But triple the capacity and the cost of extra drivetrain will be cheaper.

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