I don't know why hybrids weren't standard issue 10 years ago. Federal fuel efficiency standards should have mandated them, but instead they spent years locked in a political / culture war battle over this.
I wish we could have a carbon tax instead of efficiency standards but voters vote based on gas prices so...
Edit: You’re also still paying for oil changes, transmission changes, and any other regular or unexpected maintenance on the ICE drive train with a plugin hybrid.
I think this is very doable with sodium ion in advanced lfp.
I think the issue for investors with a car company is that it represents a lack of ability to handle the evening transition and so it really does Mark your company as a dinosaur and keeps them from properly innovating and transitioning.
With sodium ion and advanced lfp, the cost of a very very capable EV is going to permanently drop underneath an ICE. There's simply too much simplification of the drivetrain in EVs once batteries become cheap.
This seems like an easy win for legislation: we just mandate that every consumer vehicle has to have a 35-mile minimum all-battery range with plug-in capabilities; the same way we mandate that consumer vehicles have to have catalytic converters.
It’s an entire second drive train and fuel system. It’s going to cost money.
I also forgot to add in the fact that you still have full ICE maintenance costs with a plugin.
1) A decent plugin hybrid has the EV drivetrain: fantastic low end torque and sufficient horsepower to do highway speeds, but without an oversized battery. With a bit of rocket equation, it should be 1/3 the size for a 50-100 mile all-electric EV, or less, considering that 500 mile EVs exist
2) the ICE part gets to run in atkinson cycle and at the ideal RPM for maximum efficiency: it exists to recharge the battery. I almost wonder if a lawnmower motor could generate enough recharge rate (especially if you had a "long range" mode where the recharger kicks in almost immediately after the first 10 miles to start recharging) considering the higher efficiency of modern EV drivetrains.
3) the braking is mostly regenerative, so out goes most brake maintenance. The engine runs at ideal RPMs, and only on long range trips, so the oil life is much longer: the ideal is the engine only runs on long distance trips, and close to 90-95% of miles (certainly in an urban setting, rural would still be heavily served by a battery if its 50-100 miles) are in all electric. It's pretty basic math, if the engine only runs 5% of the time and runs in highway efficiency only, then it's maintenance lifetime is probably 20x longer than a normal engine's use.
4) hopefully it would eventually transition to a fuel cell for more efficiency, flexible fueling, and zero-pollution (aside from carbon in the case of hydrocarbon fuel), which I think if hybrids were mandated 25 years ago would have had an outside chance of happening within 10 years.
To the point of "ideal RPMs", my ICE car already does that on a flat highway and it doesn't suddenly double or triple it's mileage. It gets about 33, while the overall average is about 26. Go test it yourself. Find a stretch of highway where you can maintain 60mph without fluctuation, and see what "ideal rpm" means.
My point in all of this has been lost anyway. My point is that the more efficient you make the gas engine of a plug in hybrid, the less important is the battery component.
Plugins are not a bridge between ICE and EVs, and they are definitely not superior to either. They are a distraction.
Hybrids significantly reduce wear and tear on the ICE engine. The Prius is one of the lowest total cost of ownership vehicles ever made. It still amazes me that Prius-style non-plug-in hybrids aren't standard equipment at this point across the entire vehicle fleet.
With a plug-in hybrid, ICE maintenance costs are even lower, assuming it's actually plugged in, which apparently many aren't, per an EU analysis that lowered the effective WLTP mileage based on actual usage. The ICE in a regularly charged plug-in hybrid gets used so infrequently that they have "maintenance cycles" built in that fire up the ICE just to circulate the lubricant and gasoline.