I agree, plug-ins like the Volt make a lot of sense right now. Internal combustion engines have become incredibly reliable, and carrying around 18 kWh of batte

I agree, plug-ins like the Volt make a lot of sense right now. Internal combustion engines have become incredibly reliable, and carrying around 18 kWh of batteries is a lot lighter and cheaper than carrying around 100 kWh of batteries. Software engineers like me tend to prefer the idea of making something as simple as possible though. I hate having a relational database AND Elasticsearch for full-text search. If I can get away with the database taking care of my search needs, I'll gladly rip Elasticsearch out of my architecture. Likewise, the idea of ripping the ICE and associated components out of the car feels satisfyingly simple. But, sometimes you need robust full-text search. And sometimes you need to drive a lot of miles in a short amount of time.