this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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Plug in hybrids make a lot of sense during this transitional period of rapidly advancing battery technology and incomplete deployment of charging infrastructure.
Building a small, relatively cheap factory for manufacturing a small number of super expensive, pavement princess trucks is less risky than making a large investment in a megafactory capable of producing a meaningful number of affordable cars. That big car factory would need the market to demand its products for a long time for the investment to pay off. For example, if there's a big leap in battery tech in the near future, the car manufacturer would take a loss - either they continue to offer outdated EVs and sell fewer than projected (only utilizing a fraction of the factory's maximum output, while still paying taxes and maintenance on a larger facility), or they throw away their expensive, brand new factory tools and build expensive new ones for manufacturing cars with the new batteries.
Meanwhile, charging an EV at home still isn't possible for a lot of people, and quick charger stations aren't available yet in a lot of areas. However, a plug in hybrid can be adequately charged overnight by a standard home electrical outlet, letting it act like an EV for quick trips around town. Meanwhile, longer trips into not-yet-electrified areas are still possible thanks to the ICE, and the range can be quickly topped up at a gas station. More plug in hybrids on the roads also generates demand for building charging infrastructure - if someone just has $5 to spend on gas, they could get more miles by spending it on electricity at a quick charger.
Honestly plug in hybrids are the worst of both worlds.
There was a study recently from Europe that found the vast majority of people with plug in hybrids hardly every plugged them in, and drove them like normal cars. That defeats the entire point of a plug in hybrid, and now you are carrying a heavy battery everywhere that you are not fully using. Which makes the car less efficient than a normal hybrid!
You can't fix stupid. You can argue plugin hybrids are bad on the pragmatic argument that people don't charge them and that's fair, but to say they are the worst is just wrong. The have the potential to be the best.
Well let me clarify a bit why I think they are the worst.
They have the full complexity an an ICE car, with the added difficulties that arise in a full EV
You need to build and design a car that has all of the downsides of ICE cars. Complicated engine, emissions management, fuel, air intakes.
With a lot of the downsides of an ev. Large heavy, expensive batteries.
Meanwhile you get limited upsides. Evs get lower maintenance and transport costs and ICE cars get range.
Plug in hybrids will have harder maintenance than either, while not getting the fully reduced transport costs as it's not as efficient as a full ev.
Here's where traditional hybrids win out, their battery can be really small, correspondingly cheap and more efficient.
Lugging all that extra weight around decreases the efficiency of the vehicle, where for full ev that matters a lot.
When running in full gas mode your lugging around a heavy battery for nothing, and in a full ev mode your lugging around a heavy engine for nothing.
The High-medium range of full gas would be better served by a traditional hybrid, and the low-medium range would be better served for full evs.
I'm sure there is a narrow window for plug in hybrids, but again that is going to be rare and shrinking as evs get better.
While you can't fix stupid, we do have to think about how a product actually gets used vs it's design.
If nobody is plugging their plug in hybrid, then maybe the manufacturer should remind them, even if its only outlet level power.
To me it is also a symbol of overconsumption. Buying a vehicle that will cover 100% of your use cases vs buying for 99% and renting a more suitable option for that 1%.
I do think this argument for me would change if manufacturers took a different approach. If they took something like a traditional hybrid, like a Ford fusion, and stuck a modern battery in and added a simple plug would be great. Then increase the efficiency a bit and maybe someone could get 10 miles of battery from a regular outlet.
I get a lot of engineers at my job who don't understand the concept but they react to it in extreme ways. Like when we talk about plasma, there would always be someone bringing up how you can't use certain materials near plasma or near heat or in vacuum. Yet some how the machines we make work and you even have on your hands a little TV screen powered by all sort of circuitry that shouldn't exist because x or y factor that some guy always thought wouldn't work because they were not in the team that actually made the thing work. But do keep telling us how plug-in hybrids don't work. I only spent a decade in that industry actually developing motors, gear drives battery packs etc, and just so that some guy over here who maybe had one or drove one last week and has some options now controls the conversation. To me. Seeing is believing. I drive a little hybrid, I watch the gauge and it tells me, hey you got 57 mpg! Yey! But what I believe is that I do maybe 14 trips a year to go get gas and it's way cheaper than when we fill up the van. As a user of my Toyota hybrid, that's the bottom line regardless of my engineering degree and years of experience in the matter.