The key part is electrified and not pure electric.
https://www.drive.com.au/news/electrified-vehicles-have-offi...
Hybrids aren't running around doing 30 miles a day with a 300 mile battery like most EVs. Talk about inefficient!
Since the short trips can all be done very efficiently on battery (recovering all the braking, too), I guess the weight isn't much of an issue for commuting if you can have the rest -half of the total driven miles- on EV with a full battery vehicle.
I wish I could find numbers on eCO2/miles for the short vs long trips.
The future of BEVs (and the most practical today) is also charging at home, and available chargers can grow slowly with BEVs used for road trips. Tesla is pretty close to there already. So, chargers don’t need to ubiquitous, just a bit more available on less common road trip routes.
They screwed public transit and entire nations just for profits. I love my Subbie and I'll keep that until it breaks apart and replace it with an EV. Maybe today there's many downsides to an EV, but I hope it evens up and maybe becomes even better to get one.
Looking at Doug Demuro reviews it has one the worst weekend score and one the best daily score. Amazing.
>“Many of the problems with EVs and plug-in hybrids are because they are newer designs compared to gas technology, so some kinks still continue to be worked out,” says Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. “By comparison, hybrids have been around for nearly three decades, and the technology is tried and true.”
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...
[1] https://www.carscoops.com/2025/10/toyota-accuses-rivals-of-s...
> In 2025, 34.4 per cent of Porsche cars delivered worldwide were electrified (+7.4 percentage points), with 22.2 per cent being fully electric and 12.1 per cent being plug-in hybrids.
My hunch is there are some laws or regs somewhere that kept hybrids from really taking off (or rather, they were taking off.. then suddenly were suppressed). Which is why I don't interpret headlines like these to mean "consumers have crossed the tipping point" - in many cases it is incentive-driven, not pure consumer demand.
The EU is committed to the full EV route and that is not changing. But it's not taking hold in the US, and over the next few years the big thing we will see being sold is actually EREVs, which are BEVs with a gas generator attached to charge the battery (yes, really).
Source: in the industry
Being able to shed the ICE bits from the car's powertrain eliminates multiple entire classes of maintenance burden. With hybrid and EREV you get the problems of both types of powerplant and drivetrain, and even though ICE has evolved to be fairly reliable, it's still a very complicated assembly and basic wear-and-tear still is still a challenge.
There will probably be parts of the country where hybrid or EREV make sense for some period of time due to the distances involved and the incredible energy density of gasoline, but a lot of the driving that happens day to day can already be handled with pure EVs as long as you have a 120V plug accessible to your car.
I don't know but is this a uniquely US (and/or a few other such countries) thing, because of the high volume of daily driving?
Here in India we send our (ICE) car in for a service somthing like once or twice a year? And that too is mostly because "the engine sounds a bit off", not "the car isn't starting".
Less maintenance sure is nice, but I don't think it's consciously a "problem" for many.
All the other maintenance I do would be the same with an electric vehicle (suspension fixes, flat tires / new tires, brake pads / brake fluid, etc).
ICE car maintenance isn’t a problem for me either. That alone isn’t going to make me buy a new $40k EV with no physical buttons because it’s one giant unusable touch screen that is a safety hazard to me and anyone else around me.
(Looking at you Polestar - your entire interior UX is garbage.)
Hybrids are a better option for me since I don’t have a charger at my house nor do I want one, but they’re also very expensive.
I had one car where the timing belt broke unexpectedly and because it was an 'interference' engine, that led to damage to the engine head and a piston rod (and could easily have been bad enough to have been irreparable had the timing been a bit different).
Second car, had a loud noise from the engine that resolved on its own while driving up a hill. That car model later has a recall for the engine catching fire. Did I just get lucky? Who knows.
My first car (a minivan), the rear exhaust plate fastener broke while driving and make a noise that could be heard from a mile away... right as I was driving past a bunch of cops on heightened DUI enforcement night. Now I wasn't drinking but I still didn't appreciate my car not only breaking ostentatiously, but buying me a ticket in the process.
A fourth car, also a minivan, had an issue with its automatic transmission where it would struggle to upshift going from first to second gear sometimes. At least once every couple weeks, sometimes more frequent. It was never resolved by the manufacturer or any mechanic we could take it to before we sold it.
Now I did make sure to mention that ICE has evolved a high degree of reliability for a reason, but the fact is that even when the odds of things going bad is low, when there are a multitude of different independent ways for things to go bad (as there are with an ICE engine and drivetrain), the birthday paradox makes it inevitable that something will eventually be an issue.
And even though I had an issue like that with every ICE car I have ever owned, even those I didn't have to take to the mechanic for an issue outside of routine maintenance twice a year. They were more reliable than that, but that wasn't enough to keep them from falling prey to various issues.
Also if everyone in your neighbourhood turning on a space heater strains the grid you have bigger problems.
Utilities have plenty of ways to solve that. We already have electric water heaters on demand controlled circuits and electricity billing that incentivises off-peak use.
And as for range? 400km is plenty for all but one trip a year, if that's an issue for your use perhaps EVs are not for you.
Not to mention parking garages for daytime parking at work.
Not to mention mall parking lots.
The garage is an obvious starting point, because your car spends a lot of time there, but there are lots of opportunities elsewhere.
Once upon a time 44 million households didn't have electricity. Things change.
So now you’ve added another thing I have to worry about - finding charging somewhere along my 10 minute errand route?
EVs are a bad solution to a problem I don’t have. Hybrids are much better.
For the small amount of driving I do, driving my commuter ICE car with a tiny, 35-mpg 4 cylinder engine is fine… why are the EV cultists so convinced their way is the only way and the rest of us are living in prehistoric times?
Plus, your EV is heavier than my ICE, so your tires shed rubber particulate more quickly than my tires due to the weight, which is also an environmental pollutant (that is toxic enough to kill wildlife, btw)
Your car lives somewhere when you're not doing errands. Expect a charging point there as demand for that grows.
Not to mention charging points at the mall, shops, restaurants and so on.
Clearly it will be a long time before EV replaces ICE completely. There was lots of horse infrastructure which changed when cars appeared.
But the pendulum is swinging and each motion there opens up new opportunities.
Also each motion has an impact on existing infrastructure. Expect gas stations to be less common, ditto for mechanics and so on.
>non-exhaust emissions on an ICE vehicle are roughly 1/3 brake dust, 1/3 tire dust and 1/3 road dust. EV's have almost no impact on road dust, 83% lest brake dust and 20% more tire dust.
https://electrek.co/2025/05/27/another-way-electric-cars-cle...
My point exactly. Your new EV has more tire dust (and probably more brake dust) than my old, smaller ICE.
> But who is saying we have to "stop" oil and gas?
People who are concerned about climate change? Should we not be?
The people in this thread have lost their minds in a cult of EV.
I don’t know why EV has to be the answer to every question. There are plenty of economical hybrid options.
It's a lot more comfortable though. It's been a great addition to the home to get an EVSE, even a small single-phase one.
Good point, most people without garages should continue buying hybrid or ICE, because EVs aren't for them yet.
That way I wouldn't need to stress over finding a charging place so often.
Welcome to Texas.
And with Texas a 200 mile+ driving day is just more common than people from smaller places experience.
Probably not 7 days a week, but a couple days a week, sure.
And of course not everyone. Maybe 10%?
Not that it matters. What do I care about the needs of some Texans? (I mean that non perjorativly). I mean just because ranchers still need horses doesn't mean the rest of us have to use them.
The world will go EV, even much of the US will go EV, regardless of what some folks need.
There are a lot of people driving more than 200 miles a day for work though. Many of them are in cars because their unique skills are why they need to be there (as opposed to delivery drivers who are bringing cargo).
There are also people who drive a long distance once a week. I know of a rural hospital that pays a lot of doctors to drive in on Thursday so locals don't have to go to the city. (they keep an ER, but the rest of the hospital is empty other than a few nurses the rest of the week)
In an average year I'll have 40+ days where I drive that much. Not for work, just for doing random things.
>a policy failure and we should care about it.
We should, but we won't because Oil/Gas/ICE cars spend an epic fuckload telling you that anything not related driving more is communism.
Eventually this compounds and gas stations start closing.
That accelerates the switch to EVs because gas becomes hard to find. Which accelerates gas station closures, and so on.
The point at which it becomes impractical to drive a gas-fuelled car is approaching. It will hit different countries at different times, but it's there. 10 years, 30 years, whatever, but it's coming.
Long before that point, a hybrid is just an EV that has to carry around a chunk of useless engine that is hard to fuel.
Elbil: 31,78 prosent
Diesel: 31,76 prosent
Bensin: 23,90 prosent
Hybrid (not plug-in): 5,38 prosent
Plug-in hybrid: 7,18 prosent Electric: 31.78 percent
Diesel: 31.76 percent
Petrol: 23.90 percent
Hybrid (not plug-in): 5.38 percent
Plug-in hybrid: 7.18 percentIn US, gas stations barely make any profit on gas, its all from the convenience store, beer, water, lottery tickets, trinkets, souvenirs, etc. Costco, HEB, Walmart, etc also have gas and can run it as a loss leader for customers to compete with Amazon. As the number of gas consumers go down, gas stations everywhere will start shutting down, except the Costco/HEB/Walmart, because gas stations can't compete with those prices.
The U.S. saw over 210,000 stations in the early 1990s, dropping to around 145,000 by 2022, and potentially as low as 115,000 by 2020, according to various data points. Some estimates suggest a potential 50% reduction in traditional stations by 2050 in some regions: https://boosterusa.com/from-the-experts/the-inevitable-death...
Gas stations are also trying to figure out how charging fits in. While people are expected to charge at home, there will still me some demand for on the road charging. This is a place that hasn't worked out yet (I personally expect people will go for a nicer meal and sit down for an hour charge - but this might be my bias)
As for what would happen with gas station when EV's dominate, what already seems to be in progress here (not due to EV's, but other factors in the market) is that the "traditional" gas station serving stale coffee, snacks, and windshield wiper fluid are on the way out, replaced by either unmanned cold stations with just the pumps, or then by major roads large full-featured mini shopping malls with groceries, half-decent restaurant (sometimes several), and other shops. I think in a future EV world the cold stations would disappear but the higher end service centers would do fine.
You hardly ever need a rapid refuel in your garage though. That's where your car spends most of its hours.
And most of the world has 220/240v mains supply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country. Regular wall outlets can charge a car fast enough outside North America.
Car prices have increased well above the rate of inflation over the last decade and even used cars are more expensive than ever. Average new car price is $50k, mostly because EVs are so expensive https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a69047202/average-new-car-...
This is a fair concern, but also, looking at the rise of average car prices is like looking at the rise of average iPhone prices. That is to say, cars (and iPhones) are providing increasingly premium offerings that didn’t exist decades ago. If you look at the entry levels of both these things, you find that the bottom-line price broadly keeps pace with inflation. And for cars, that’s with the addition of now-standard safety and convenience features. When you match cars feature-for-feature (an unrealistic comparison, as there aren’t really bare-bones cars on offer anymore), you’d see that cars are increasing in price much more slowly than inflation, and in other words, are effectively cheaper. Ultimately, whether car prices are rising or falling depends a lot on how you calculate things.
I’ll also add that EV pricing doesn’t have to mean insane car costs. The US market has the Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf each selling for about $30k new and can be readily bought for half that with used inventory.
You're right. There isn't a single legacy auto manufacturer in the US (Ford, GM, Stellantis) that can profitably sell an EV. Yet they make them anyway, and sell them for huge losses ($billions per year) because they have to meet mandates.
Elsewhere in the world EV prices are steadily coming down. They're not as low as ICE yet, and maybe never will be, but a nice entry level ICE car here is circa $15k, and a nice EV entry level is circa 25k.
Factor in fuel and maintenance costs and the real price is getting very close....
Full EVs: Less moving parts = less maintenance required = less issues to worry about (think no oil changes, no timing belt changes, no spark plug replacements, no belt/filter changes, no exhaust system checks, etc).
Also zero emissions = better air quality around you.
Bonus: it's like waking up with a full take of gas every morning
I've owned my full EV for almost 10 years now and had 0 maintenance done whatsoever (apart from tire rotation and window wiper fluid replacement). I would never go back to an ICE vehicle.
The above is a tiny part of the costs of an ICE. Sure you have to do it, but either it isn't common, or it is cheap. ICEs have gotten very reliable over the decades.
Meanwhile most of the parts of a car a common between an ICE and EV. You have tires either way, which need to be rotated (do you?) Shocks/struts, rust, tie rods, AC compressors, just to pick a few random ones.
Weight, space and reliability.
Dragging that generator (and fuel) around costs weight and space, reducing range. Exhaust, fuel tank, radiator- all the support systems the ICE motor needs. Which leaves less space for batteries, which reduces range.
Plus, the maintenance burden is still there. All those ICE parts still need all the maintainence etc that full ICE needs. One of the joys of EV is that maintainence is sooo much simpler.
So yes, hybrid is much more efficient than gas only, but a poor cousin of full EV.
By contrast full EV has range limitations. And yes distances in Europe are much shorter than the US. No that's less of an issue there. But even there we're seeing range go up, and charging come down.
Today, a PHEV is the best of all world’s, but full parity for BEVs (in the US) is almost here. Reliable trip charging (NACS, SuperCharger network) and available destination charging will be enough pretty soon.
In terms of ev weight overall, it's typically close to ice weight. (Obviously a lot of differences between vehicle class and range).
An ev has motor, batteries, plus controllers. Ice has engine, gearbox, fuel tank, radiator [1], exhaust.
[1] Evs also have a radiator, but its a much smaller system running at lower Temps, with less water.
I'm converting an old vehicle now to EV and the overall weight difference is not significant.
All ICE cars should have been hybrid from 5-10 years ago but it is a stepping stone we should already be stepping off.
This is just the most visible source for a bunch of people who have made their conclusion unencumbered by the data.
The emissions from powering and heating your house are several times what your car emissions are.
So go solve that one and leave my Corolla alone.
You do realize that net zero homes are buildable? Even in surprisingly challenging climates.
There are so many ways to make better use of the energy we have available than to waste a bunch of it to pollute the air.
I hope you have never run a technology project this way by starting with a goal that simply can't be accomplished; you would have set it up to fail, demoralized your team, and chased the wrong priorities.
The goal is net zero, meaning, emissions added = emissions removed. There must be an allowance for some emissions. Industrial human life cannot continue without some amount of greenhouse emissions.
For that goal, I am way better off driving less than buying a new EV - it releases greenhouse gases to produce the plastic in your Tesla and the battery in your Nissan Leaf.
I walk to the supermarket. I work from home. I don't eat red meat. I'm careful with my home electricity consumption. For the third time in this thread: my old 4 cylinder Corolla is not the thing standing between us and existential doom. Focus on more important things.
I don't understand the myopic focus on car emissions: is it because Elon talks about it? Is it because it's the most easily seen for you?
Your Corolla is worse than a BEV because it puts way more GHG in the atmosphere, making net zero harder. Your opinion that the Corolla emits less GHG than a BEV is not borne out by the data. Most of the pollution of your car is from using it, not building it. EVs flip that and only are only slightly worse to produce. And we have to replace pretty much every road vehicle with a zero emission one, and sooner is better.
Buying the new EV, selling your old car, and helping push ICE vehicles off the roads is better than not replacing it in any reasonable environmental accounting.
Also, 15% is... a very significant percentage. You have to do lots of efficiency improvements across every part of the world to make net zero happen. Not to mention that slice of the pie would grow to 30-40% if electricity goes zero-carbon.
And we simply have the technology to zero it out. But, like you, most people want to invent a reason the green technology is actually bad.
Does this mean that a non-plug-in hybrid would be in the "pure combustion-engined" bucket, or that they don't make those?
It’s probably just an incredibly small number of sales?