14 ms·

>This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) The performance of pretty much every PHEV I've seen is a

by tw04 5y ago

>This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) The performance of pretty much every PHEV I've seen is abysmal. The people buying a Model 3 or Model S to replace their BMW or Mercedes aren't interested in something with the performance of a geo metro. So, while on paper a PHEV solution might look better, in the real world it would result in those people just going back to regular ICE. If you outlaw ICE/make those cars unavailable, you'll find plenty of political headwinds and set the entire movement back a decade IMO.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> The performance of pretty much every PHEV I've seen is abysmal. The people buying a Model 3 or Model S to replace their BMW or Mercedes aren't interested in something with the performance of a geo metro. How many people take their cars to race tracks to be able to tell the difference in performance? If it can get to 70 mph in some reasonable time, which almost any production car can, then what more is there to ask for on a public road?
- tshaddox 5y ago
  There’s a wide range of “reasonable times” a car can get to 70 mph and the differences can definitely be noticed by normal drivers on public roads.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Doesn't matter. Consumers like the specs, and showing off how quick they can get to 40mph on a residential street.
- usefulcat 5y ago
  I guess that’s a rhetorical question? Because clearly many people do actually prefer a BMW to a geo metro, despite the price difference.
- Armisael16 5y ago
  There’s an extremely obvious difference in 0-60 times between a Prius and a Model 3, and that matters on an on-ramp. (Replace 0-60 with 5-60 or 25-60 or whatever you measure of acceleration you prefer). Is it necessary? No, obviously, people aren’t dying left and right trying to merge in Priuses. It is very noticeable, however.
  - zenexer 5y ago
    I have been driving Priuses for a good chunk of my life now, and there’s really no way I could safely max out their acceleration while merging. Typically the right-lane traffic on highways here flows at 75 MPH when there isn’t much congestion. Why would you benefit from greater acceleration? It makes very little sense from my perspective. What am I going to do, cut someone off? Floor it and merge with no consideration for the trajectories of other vehicles? It’s not that difficult, and I live in an area with notoriously short on-ramps. You’ve still got plenty of road to match the speed of the cars on the highway and shift your position so you land between two cars. Accelerating as you’re about to merge just makes that more difficult, especially with a short on-ramp. Yeah, sometimes people don’t know how to drive and stop or slow down on on-ramps. I don’t care how fast my car can accelerate; if the person in front of me isn’t reaching the same speed as the cars on the highway, I’m going to stop much farther back on the ramp, wait for them to do their thing, and resume proper merging once they’re out of the way. I don’t want to have to deal with flooring it and trying to time everything while accelerating.
    - philistine 5y ago
      Have you ever driven a plug-in Prius (the Prius Prime here in Québec)? It's got wonderful acceleration when using the all-electric mode.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        What opportunity do you have for dramatic acceleration driving legally on a public road? 0-60 in 3s vs 20s how much time can that really add up to shaving off your drive?
- gifnamething 5y ago
  Driving for fun on public roads is safe, legal, and popular. You won't wish it away.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
brightball 5y ago
Our Pacifica plug-in hybrid minivan is fantastic. We go months without refueling.
multjoy 5y ago
The met police use a variety of PHEVs as response vehicles including BMWs and Mitsubishi. Performance is not an issue.
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
My Volt has 300lb/ft of torque and accelerates quite lovely. Sport mode is a fun drive. Much more pep than the VW diesel I used to have. And the car drives for 80-90km on battery without touching the ICE. I go months without filling. I drive 93% electric, only using gas for road trips. You've looked at the wrong PHEVs.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > You've looked at the wrong PHEVs. You’re looking at a PHEV that no longer exists.
aserr 5y ago
I would guess that performance isn’t the main consideration for most folks, but you should check out the BMW 330e and 530e. Both are plug-in hybrids with very respectable performance numbers. You can even get them with the M-sport package (not that it makes them faster, but it makes them a little sportier).
mattlondon 5y ago
Many I've seen in Europe are pretty fast - Merc 350e for example has 0-62mph of 5.9s and top speed of 155mph. BMW 330e is 6.1s and 140mph. Granted some are slower, but no one ever bought a brand like Toyota etc expecting high-performance, so it is not surprising if they are slower (FWIW my Toyota non-plugin hybrid is actually pretty fast from a standstill, but won't win any races beyond 20mph) 6s to 62mph is pretty nippy - if you need faster than 6s 0-62mph then you are likely in a fairly small niche group. Looks like the base Tesla 3 is 0-62 in 5.8s and 140mph top speed so pretty comparable.
- tw04 5y ago
  A model 3 performance does 0-60 in 3.2 seconds with some guys going faster on a track with sticky tires. Someone looking at a Benz (at least in the US) isn’t buying the base model 3. The Benz starts at $54k in the US, that’s definitely model 3 performance territory.
  - mattlondon 5y ago
    In the UK, a Tesla 3 performance is £60k. A base Tesla 3 is about £43k. An equivalent Merc 300e is £45k. Base Tesla 3 and base 300e appear to be mostly the same price and mostly same 0-62 performance at 5.8s and 6.1s.
afbadfatdh 5y ago
>The performance of pretty much every PHEV I've seen is abysmal. The Chevy Volt was pretty sporty (damn the suits who killed it), and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI-DUULV1tE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI-DUULV1tE >The people buying a Model 3 or Model S to replace their BMW or Mercedes Well there's your problem. The fact that EVs are toys is making you think PHEVs are also toys. There are PHEVs currently on the market that can compete with the Ford Focus and the Honda Accord.
pandaman 5y ago
BMW's and Porsche's PHEVs are pretty good, why other companies cannot follow the same formula (add batteries and electric motor to a regular car without crippling the existing drivetrain) is a mystery. It appears most want you to buy their BEV so they intentionally make PHEVs unappealing.
- matthewdgreen 5y ago
  We looked at the BMW X5 Hybrid recently and it’s kind of a joke. There’s a large (24kWh) battery pack but it only gets 31 miles of range on a full charge. The charge itself takes eight hours on a 240V circuit because they only installed a 16A charger (the i3 has a 32A charger.) Meanwhile it’s gas mileage is lower than the equivalent ICE version. It does not feel like a serious effort to move a lot of customers onto EV usage, more like a compliance car. No idea about the Porches but I understand those to be at an even less affordable price point.
  - pandaman 5y ago
    The message I replied to was about performance, not range. PHEVs do not have 300 miles electric range, even BMW. I have an 45e and have no problems with it: it fully charges in ~7 hours, I drove about 6K miles last year and filled total 5 times (not full tanks, I live in an apartment building with shared chargers that go out of order for weeks so I fill up when charger is broken and I have less than 1/4 tank), it still has 90% of tank filled in the early November.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    I live in a rural area and 31 miles of range is enough to drive into the largest town where everything is, and back again, without the ICE coming on. That's not a "joke."
    - matthewdgreen 5y ago
      31 miles with a small/light/inexpensive battery and reasonably rapid charging would not be a joke, particularly if you also got some gas-only efficiency benefits. But the X5 has a relatively huge and heavy 24kWh battery pack - nearly 1/3 the size of a Model Y, a car that gets 10x the electric range. The result is a substantial cost increase over the gas-only X5, plus gas mileage that is actually worse. Moreover, the internal charger is so weak that you can’t add any substantial range by charging at your destination unless you occupy a charger all day long (the Model Y charges at up to 42 miles/hr on AC, the BMW will add maybe 4.)
VintageCool 5y ago
I've carpooled in a Prius and a Honda Civic Hybrid. Both of those cars seemed to be extremely capable of accelerating to pass other cars on the freeway. I was riding in the Prius one time and my friend was complaining about the Prius being slow, when we got stuck behind a car going 60 mph. Beep boop, he idly jumped up to 80, passed the guy, dropped back to 67, and went back to complaining that his car was slow. I was terribly impressed; my car would've had to put more work in to do that.
ypzhang2 5y ago
Panamera turbo s e-hybrid or the cayenne turbo s e-hybrid certainly doesn’t have “abysmal” performance

by tw04 5y ago

chrisseaton 5y ago

> The performance of pretty much every PHEV I've seen is abysmal. The people buying a Model 3 or Model S to replace their BMW or Mercedes aren't interested in something with the performance of a geo metro. How many people take their cars to race tracks to be able to tell the difference in performance? If it can get to 70 mph in some reasonable time, which almost any production car can, then what more is there to ask for on a public road?

tshaddox 5y ago
There’s a wide range of “reasonable times” a car can get to 70 mph and the differences can definitely be noticed by normal drivers on public roads.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
alisonkisk 5y ago
Doesn't matter. Consumers like the specs, and showing off how quick they can get to 40mph on a residential street.
usefulcat 5y ago
I guess that’s a rhetorical question? Because clearly many people do actually prefer a BMW to a geo metro, despite the price difference.
Armisael16 5y ago
There’s an extremely obvious difference in 0-60 times between a Prius and a Model 3, and that matters on an on-ramp. (Replace 0-60 with 5-60 or 25-60 or whatever you measure of acceleration you prefer). Is it necessary? No, obviously, people aren’t dying left and right trying to merge in Priuses. It is very noticeable, however.
- zenexer 5y ago
  I have been driving Priuses for a good chunk of my life now, and there’s really no way I could safely max out their acceleration while merging. Typically the right-lane traffic on highways here flows at 75 MPH when there isn’t much congestion. Why would you benefit from greater acceleration? It makes very little sense from my perspective. What am I going to do, cut someone off? Floor it and merge with no consideration for the trajectories of other vehicles? It’s not that difficult, and I live in an area with notoriously short on-ramps. You’ve still got plenty of road to match the speed of the cars on the highway and shift your position so you land between two cars. Accelerating as you’re about to merge just makes that more difficult, especially with a short on-ramp. Yeah, sometimes people don’t know how to drive and stop or slow down on on-ramps. I don’t care how fast my car can accelerate; if the person in front of me isn’t reaching the same speed as the cars on the highway, I’m going to stop much farther back on the ramp, wait for them to do their thing, and resume proper merging once they’re out of the way. I don’t want to have to deal with flooring it and trying to time everything while accelerating.
  - philistine 5y ago
    Have you ever driven a plug-in Prius (the Prius Prime here in Québec)? It's got wonderful acceleration when using the all-electric mode.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      What opportunity do you have for dramatic acceleration driving legally on a public road? 0-60 in 3s vs 20s how much time can that really add up to shaving off your drive?
gifnamething 5y ago
Driving for fun on public roads is safe, legal, and popular. You won't wish it away.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

brightball 5y ago

Our Pacifica plug-in hybrid minivan is fantastic. We go months without refueling.

multjoy 5y ago

The met police use a variety of PHEVs as response vehicles including BMWs and Mitsubishi. Performance is not an issue.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

My Volt has 300lb/ft of torque and accelerates quite lovely. Sport mode is a fun drive. Much more pep than the VW diesel I used to have. And the car drives for 80-90km on battery without touching the ICE. I go months without filling. I drive 93% electric, only using gas for road trips. You've looked at the wrong PHEVs.

tshaddox 5y ago
> You've looked at the wrong PHEVs. You’re looking at a PHEV that no longer exists.

aserr 5y ago

I would guess that performance isn’t the main consideration for most folks, but you should check out the BMW 330e and 530e. Both are plug-in hybrids with very respectable performance numbers. You can even get them with the M-sport package (not that it makes them faster, but it makes them a little sportier).

mattlondon 5y ago

Many I've seen in Europe are pretty fast - Merc 350e for example has 0-62mph of 5.9s and top speed of 155mph. BMW 330e is 6.1s and 140mph. Granted some are slower, but no one ever bought a brand like Toyota etc expecting high-performance, so it is not surprising if they are slower (FWIW my Toyota non-plugin hybrid is actually pretty fast from a standstill, but won't win any races beyond 20mph) 6s to 62mph is pretty nippy - if you need faster than 6s 0-62mph then you are likely in a fairly small niche group. Looks like the base Tesla 3 is 0-62 in 5.8s and 140mph top speed so pretty comparable.

tw04 5y ago
A model 3 performance does 0-60 in 3.2 seconds with some guys going faster on a track with sticky tires. Someone looking at a Benz (at least in the US) isn’t buying the base model 3. The Benz starts at $54k in the US, that’s definitely model 3 performance territory.
- mattlondon 5y ago
  In the UK, a Tesla 3 performance is £60k. A base Tesla 3 is about £43k. An equivalent Merc 300e is £45k. Base Tesla 3 and base 300e appear to be mostly the same price and mostly same 0-62 performance at 5.8s and 6.1s.

afbadfatdh 5y ago

>The performance of pretty much every PHEV I've seen is abysmal. The Chevy Volt was pretty sporty (damn the suits who killed it), and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI-DUULV1tE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI-DUULV1tE >The people buying a Model 3 or Model S to replace their BMW or Mercedes Well there's your problem. The fact that EVs are toys is making you think PHEVs are also toys. There are PHEVs currently on the market that can compete with the Ford Focus and the Honda Accord.

pandaman 5y ago

BMW's and Porsche's PHEVs are pretty good, why other companies cannot follow the same formula (add batteries and electric motor to a regular car without crippling the existing drivetrain) is a mystery. It appears most want you to buy their BEV so they intentionally make PHEVs unappealing.

matthewdgreen 5y ago
We looked at the BMW X5 Hybrid recently and it’s kind of a joke. There’s a large (24kWh) battery pack but it only gets 31 miles of range on a full charge. The charge itself takes eight hours on a 240V circuit because they only installed a 16A charger (the i3 has a 32A charger.) Meanwhile it’s gas mileage is lower than the equivalent ICE version. It does not feel like a serious effort to move a lot of customers onto EV usage, more like a compliance car. No idea about the Porches but I understand those to be at an even less affordable price point.
- pandaman 5y ago
  The message I replied to was about performance, not range. PHEVs do not have 300 miles electric range, even BMW. I have an 45e and have no problems with it: it fully charges in ~7 hours, I drove about 6K miles last year and filled total 5 times (not full tanks, I live in an apartment building with shared chargers that go out of order for weeks so I fill up when charger is broken and I have less than 1/4 tank), it still has 90% of tank filled in the early November.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  I live in a rural area and 31 miles of range is enough to drive into the largest town where everything is, and back again, without the ICE coming on. That's not a "joke."
  - matthewdgreen 5y ago
    31 miles with a small/light/inexpensive battery and reasonably rapid charging would not be a joke, particularly if you also got some gas-only efficiency benefits. But the X5 has a relatively huge and heavy 24kWh battery pack - nearly 1/3 the size of a Model Y, a car that gets 10x the electric range. The result is a substantial cost increase over the gas-only X5, plus gas mileage that is actually worse. Moreover, the internal charger is so weak that you can’t add any substantial range by charging at your destination unless you occupy a charger all day long (the Model Y charges at up to 42 miles/hr on AC, the BMW will add maybe 4.)

VintageCool 5y ago

I've carpooled in a Prius and a Honda Civic Hybrid. Both of those cars seemed to be extremely capable of accelerating to pass other cars on the freeway. I was riding in the Prius one time and my friend was complaining about the Prius being slow, when we got stuck behind a car going 60 mph. Beep boop, he idly jumped up to 80, passed the guy, dropped back to 67, and went back to complaining that his car was slow. I was terribly impressed; my car would've had to put more work in to do that.

ypzhang2 5y ago

Panamera turbo s e-hybrid or the cayenne turbo s e-hybrid certainly doesn’t have “abysmal” performance