Hacker News Reader

Comment by tormeh | Hacker News Reader

Tbf a plug-in is just an EV that somehow runs on petrol 4 times a year. In practice the vast majority of driving is done on battery power.

View on HN

sadly thats not true at all. In practice, on average as a category, PHEVs barely save any real world emissions over gas (~20%).

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-...

https://electrek.co/2026/02/19/biggest-study-yet-shows-plug-...

If you include PHEVs along with pure EVs the total is around 12% total sales for 2025, and 4% total on the road. I'm not sure when PHEVs became available overseas but they haven't been an option here for that long. Heaps of hybrids are being sold but for now still mostly of the traditional non-plug-in type.

As alliao says, this is partly because of the way road user charges (RUC) currently work, though that is slated to change in the future.

Hybrids and PHEVs are more complicated given that they are both ICEs and EVs. A pure EV is much cheaper, and many places in the developing world don't have easy access to oil anyways.

Even in the US, our overpriced EVs are cheaper than comparable ICE.

They’re mostly big, and compete with 20mpg models. At $4/gallon, you’ll spend $40K on gasoline to drive a new ICE car 200K miles. The EV premium is typically $10-20K. These are all luxury cars, so a trimline upgrade is often $10K.

EVs have particularly poor resale value (the technology improves rapidly), so if you’re price sensitive you can get a much better deal by buying something a few years old.

In places where competition is allowed, EVs are much cheaper than ICE. That’ll eventually be true in most places. If NZ lets the Chinese models in, I’d expect them to take over immediately.

Model 3s are Honda Accord class, so compacts, not sub-compacts. I haven't seen many sub-compact EVs in the states beyond the Leaf and the Bolt. I’m kind of excited about the new BmW i3, which will be a more normal 3 series size and shape vs the old i3. I won’t buy it of course, I’ve decided I’m not replacing my i4 before a real self driving car is available.

I can't imagine why NZ doesn't allow Chinese EVs in already like Australia has. I would guess it isn’t really about restriction but rather the smaller size of the market.

We do have Chinese EVs here in NZ, the comment above is incorrect.

Although curiously, Nissan has stopped selling us the Leaf.

At my current 6000 miles per year that would take over three decades. I’ve never owned a car longer than 10 years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com