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Toyota Is Right: We Need More Hybrid Cars and Fewer EVs. Here’s Why
- dotcoma 3y agoHow about: We need fewer cars. Full stop.
- xracy 3y agoI have a conspiracy theory that the moment the California HSR project finishes and the next project starts... It will be the beginning of the end. Right now people just love to hate on it cause "it's over budget, and road projects never go over budget."
- tomcar288 3y agoYes, that would be the most environmentally friendly option. I think, a lot of people miss the fact that a lot of the oil is used in the production of the car and battery. there's a breakdown on this somewhere. Personally, I think a big part of the issue is the size of vehicles that have been mandated by regulatory agencies. Why don't we move towards micromobility?, something between a E-bike and a super light weight car. that would require far less lithium, and far less oil.
- paraselene_ 3y ago> between a E-bike and a super light weight car Like, a e-scooter/motorcycle? I see hundereds of them during my daily commute. Costs around $3000, and about $20 in monthly charge costs.
- tomcar288 3y agomost of those are all gas powered. the ones that are electric are usually limited to 28mph or just a little more than that. also, very few if any are 4 seaters.
- Loughla 3y agoI would kill for an ultra efficient, all-wheel drive, lightweight car the size of a smart car at most. But with a top speed of 70 or so. Also, a small trailer hitch so I can hook a small wagon on for groceries and other things to pack around. Edit: Unironically, something like the P45 (https://topgear.fandom.com/wiki/P45 https://topgear.fandom.com/wiki/P45), but maybe with a bubble instead of my arms out.
- xnx 3y ago> I think, a lot of people miss the fact that a lot of the oil is used in the production of the car and battery. You are not going to be happy to learn where the $128 billion for California's high speed rail and other mass transit infrastructure goes: concrete, asphalt, steel, and lots and lots of dirty fuel for the mining equipment and earth movers. Salaries for high-paid consultants on the project may be spent on air travel or other luxuries.
- OldManRyan 3y agoThe amount of hoop jumping people go through to avoid saying we should invest more in public transit is insane. You see it on HN every time someone mentions density or transit. No one is saying you can't have a car or should live in a downtown apartment, we just shouldn't build everything around having a car.
- Aloha 3y agoWe should invest more in public transit, but there is literally 100 years of built infrastructure which has fueled patterns of development which make taking transport unattractive. So we can invest more, just dont expect it to result in many fewer cars.
- Shawnj2 3y agoMore bus lanes would be a cheap and easy start. The problem with current car centered cities is that taking transit is slower than taking a car so people with the means use the fastest transit option by driving. If you remove minimum parking laws and increase bus lanes which let transit users bypass traffic, this is a low cost way to encourage more transit usage.
- Spivak 3y agoNobody actually disagrees with this take, but here's what happens. This has happened now three times in my hometown. 1. Some Politician: We need to invest in public transportation. 2. Planning Commission: Okay but it's geographically infeasible to blanket the city in busses, the only thing that is going to work is a rail system to cover the long distances and have busses to cover the last mile. 3. Sounds great! Let's put together a proposal. 4. Politician: Hahahahahahahaha we can't afford that. Also people will riot if we eminent domain literally thousands of homes. 5. Politician: What if we just added really annoying bike lanes to like 3 roads that will sit there empty because a dedicated lane wasn't what was stopping people from riding their bikes? 6. Planning Commission: But that won't actually he.... 7. Politician: LOOK AT HOW WE'RE INVESTING IN PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION!!1 MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. GREEN. ENVIRONMENT. Like good lord if they would actually commit to more than just some symbolic non-solutions I would volunteer to swing a hammer to lay tracks.
- ActorNightly 3y agoForcing everyone to public transport is horrible. People should have the option to not depend on anyone or anything for transportation. That isn't to say more public transport investment is bad, but there are other alternatives. For example, make ebikes cheap and make inner cities be ebikes only. In places like NY or Boston, everyone on ebikes would likely result in faster trip times.
- JohnFen 3y ago> People should have the options to not depend on anyone or anything for transportation. They do: walking. Even ebikes keeps you dependent on electricity. Bicycles keep you dependent on consumables for maintenance (oil, etc.) and spare parts suppliers. I bicycle as my primary transportation, and I have to admit that I've been increasingly irritated by ebikes. They drive on the bike paths (even though that's not legal here), and when doing so they drive far too fast and don't even try to warn others using the path that they're passing. I've seen a half dozen cases of ebikes slamming into pedestrians and bicyclists in the last few months. I think the people advocating ebikes need to start educating people driving them about how to do so without endangering people, or this is going to turn into yet another flash point between groups who should be on the same side.
- germinalphrase 3y agoSpeed limits exist, but people do not fear enforcement because there is little enforcement infrastructure.
- JohnFen 3y ago(For clarity: I'm talking about off-street bike paths here) The problematic ebikes are already breaking the law by driving on bike paths where motorized vehicles are prohibited. All they'd really have to do to both be legal and to avoid endangering and angering other users of the path is to not use the motor while on them. Since they don't, I don't think they'd care anything about speed limits, either.
- ryukafalz 3y ago
- matthoiland 3y agoMore trains please. High-speed rail between cities, lightrail between suburbs, streetcars between neighborhoods, and better shoes for everywhere else.
- CamperBob2 3y agoYes, fixed rail at a time when people no longer have to crowd themselves into cities. That's the ticket.
- kcb 3y agoMake cities decent places to live, grow a family, and hang out instead of just workday commute destinations.
- bitwize 3y agoMore people should be living in cities. We need not only fewer cars but also fewer freestanding, single-family homes. Continental Europeans trounce Americans in land management in part because continental Europeans do not abhor density the way Americans do.
- CamperBob2 3y agoDon't worry, your opinion will change about 12 seconds after your first child arrives.
- bitwize 3y ago1) I'll probably never have children. 2) Childbearing couples seem to function just fine in relatively dense European urban housing. The idea that we somehow need space to spread out is largely confined to the Anglosphere, which is why land management problems are so much worse in the Anglosphere.
- adastra22 3y agoIf you've ever been to Tokyo, Taipei, or any old European capital, you'd know that "crowding people into cities" can be a good and beautiful thing, when the infrastructure is there.
- jmclnx 3y ago>How about: We need fewer cars. Full stop. This, people need to get out from behind the wheel and walk, bike. In the long term it will greatly benefit them. The funny thing is, with auto prices so high, many people cannot buy new, and quite a few cannot afford even used. So maybe a trend is starting.
- chroma 3y agoHas any country voluntarily decreased car usage? Even the Netherlands has seen per capita private car ownership increase over time. Cars are very compelling and useful products. That’s why they’re preferred by heads of state and rich people. Car usage will only decrease when someone invents something better.
- bittercynic 3y agoThey're compelling and useful largely because of enormous public investment in supporting infrastructure. Without gigantic roads they'd be much less appealing.
- wizofaus 3y agoDepends how you define "voluntarily", but it does appear some developed countries have slightly lower kms-traveled-by-private-vehicle per citizen now than they did 10 or 20 years ago (e.g. there was a study done in the UK in 2012 showing a 4% drop since the late 90s). It'd be good to find some more recent and easily accessible references.
- closeparen 3y agoAlmost none of America's existing stock of buildings is usable without every adult driving a car. It's going to take a while to demolish and rebuild the postwar developments where hundreds of millions of people live. We can and should 10x the supply of housing in walkable neighborhoods, but even then it would still be extremely unusual to live in a walkable neighborhood.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoI'll take some downvotes for this opinion: I hate public transportation. I hate dealing with crowds of people. I hate waiting for whatever conveyence I'm going to ride on. I hate feeling like I need a full bath after riding on said conveyence. I hate dealing with the inevitable schizos, drug addicts, mental illness, and other malcontents that will undoubtedly pan handle or beg. And no, it isn't my problem to care or deal with them. Once I got enough money to ride in my own car to and from work, I stopped public transit and never looked back. If I somehow become stupid rich(doubt), I would charter private jets for the same reason. I see you're from Italy and will concede that European public transit is better when it comes to frequency so there's less waiting but that's about it. Still have the drug addict schizos and cleanliness problems. I still owned a car when I lived in Europe and if I do it again I'll be owning another, especially now with kids.
- ryandrake 3y agoHave an upvote. For public transport to really replace personal vehicles, it has to beat personal vehicles in at least a few, if not all, of the killer features: 1. It has to take me directly from the front of my (rural) house to directly in front of my destination. My vehicle does this. 2. It has to do this as fast as or faster than my vehicle. 3. It has to be available in the time that it takes to find my vehicle's keys. 4. It has to be as comfortable as my vehicle. 5. It has to smell as nice and be as clean as my vehicle. 6. It has to not put me in more contact with crazy people than my vehicle does. 7. It has to be as cheap or cheaper per mile than my vehicle. 8. It has to be able to haul my belongings when I need to move them, with at least the capacity of my vehicle. A few alternative to cars can check a few of those boxes, but nobody gets them all: Walking and Bicycles: 1, 3, 7 Busses: 7 (maybe) Trains: 2, 7 (if long distance) Taxis: 2 Rideshare: 1, 2, 4 (maybe), 5 (maybe), 6 (maybe) Car/Truck rental: 2, 6, 8
- wizofaus 3y agoJust for reference, as someone who doesn't live rurally, the only point that a bicycle can't reasonably fulfill above is 8., and indeed, when I do need to move heavy belongings around (pretty rare), or take other people (not too often thankfully) I'll use a car. Most of the journeys I take on my bike would take twice as long in a car, including time to find parking, walking to/from where car is parked etc., so a bike easily wins on 2. But sure, on 4. it loses out in rainy/cold weather. Otherwise the physical pleasure of riding a bike far exceeds that of driving a car. I'm curious why you come across so many crazy people riding bikes, or why your bike would smell so bad... EDIT: on my commute to the office I managed to think of at least 4 other reasons people prefer driving over riding: prestige, safety, theft risk and restrictions around suitable clothing (particularly when there's a lack of end-of-trip facilities).
- m463 3y agoThis might be like trying to save yourself rich.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago> Again, this is the question we want to answer: What’s the best use of a limited battery supply? A less limited battery supply? Or to flip it around, what should we do to best make use of a limited gas supply? Well obviously we should move to EVs, and preserve that limited resource.
- tomcar288 3y ago>>> "Electric vehicles generate fewer carbon emissions than those powered by combustion engines over their lifetimes, and what you’re about to read doesn’t dispute that. But EV adoption is tripping over range limitations, patchy charging networks, and high prices resulting from the cost of the batteries that power them." It sounds like EVs are the best option long term: it's just that in the short term there's a few snafus along the way. Personally, I'm only going to buy another EV and nothing else will do, even if I have to wait a year, two years or even 5 years. I've got an electric bike and I know how to use it.
- ActorNightly 3y agoWhich is why the "correct" way to build a hybrid vehicle is an electric vehicle with an optional gas powered range extender. Im not sure why this isn't more common.
- germinalphrase 3y agoIsn’t this exactly how most PHEVs are designed?
- jackmott42 3y agoyes, or approximately so. many can also have the generator drive the wheels.
- newaccount74 3y agoI think most of the PHEVs (at least in Europe) are hybrids that have a normal gas engine and a small electric engine.
- Toutouxc 3y agoThat’s called a series hybrid and very few cars use that configuration. BMW i3 had a series hybrid version that was discontinued a few years ago, and there was the Chevy Volt (also discontinued).
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- glonq 3y agoWe are a two-car family. I'm very happy with my EV, but a hybrid probably makes more sense for our #2. Especially for those days when you need to drive long or drive far.
- meatjuice 3y agoEU wants to prevent Japanese car vendors from occupying the market.
- mertd 3y agotl;dr the amount of batteries we can produce is finite. PHEVs need smaller batteries. It makes more sense to put batteries in more cars to reap their benefits. Conclusion: PHEVs are good. OK...
- kwhitefoot 3y agoExcept that plug in hybrids are just compliance cars that are rarely plugged in.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoThe usual oil industry drivel that pretends to be even handed while ignoring the energy and subsidy costs of producing and distributing hydrocarbon fuels.
- timbit42 3y agoBy having 10 times more PHEVs than EVs, we would use 1/9th the fossil fuels. Why would the oil industry want that?
- hedora 3y agoComparing to the F-150 hybrid is strange. It increases MPG from 20 to 25, which is good. However, older pickups were already above 20MPG, and diesel trucks are way better than that. On top of that, the F-150 is now aluminum, and isn't matching the fuel economy of the old steel frames. So, they're clearly wasting a lot of full economy on something. Anyway, the 2023 Prius has a 13.6 kWh battery in it, so even Toyota appears to be abandoning the hybrid (vs PHEV) approach. First-generation EVs had a bit over twice that many kWh, and for all the graphs in the article that compare apples-to-apples PHEV and EV, we see a halving of CO2 emissions per car. So, PHEV vs EV looks like a wash. That's why the article argues for more hybrids, which would make sense if we replaced all ICE cars as quickly as possible until hybrids built today are also retired. If you're betting that lithium supply won't ramp fast enough to meet demand (and that none of the non-lithium technologies on the horizon pan out), then they have a point. However, betting against capitalism's ability to cost optimize products and mine stuff is usually a bad idea. The article also points out that hybrids only have a 5.5% market share at this point, and they've had decades of non-battery-limited time to penetrate the market. That suggests there's a demand problem (probably due to perceived reliability and other maintenance issues).
- jjkeddo199 3y agoleaded vs unleaded gas is the answer you are looking for.
- jrm4 3y agoThis seems obvious on its face; it's just optionality.
- rockemsockem 3y agoMore demand for EVs will let EV automakers take advantage of economies of scale more and provides very clear incentives to resolve the battery shortage, either by finding and mining more lithium or finding alternatives. Fewer EVs sounds like a very dumb idea.
- yonaguska 3y agoThe article points out that the Federal tax incentives played a large part in driving demand for EVs. I would like to take this opportunity to lambast those tax incentives as being really dumb. They are rebates, which means that only someone wealthy benefits, and they are pretty much all targeted at luxury vehicles. The lower/middle class driver being given incentive to purchase a much cheaper hybrid would have a much more pronounced effect on reducing emissions, than subsidizing EV sport cars does. This article also fails to discuss the C02 emission cost that goes into producing the battery, which for an EV will probably never be recouped. At least for the lifetime of that vehicle.
- matthewdgreen 3y agoThe goal is not to slightly reduce emissions, it’s to get to net-zero emissions by midcentury, while preserving our ability to have modern conveniences like personal cars. Hybrids don’t accomplish the latter.
- generalspecific 3y ago> This article also fails to discuss the C02 emission cost that goes into producing the battery, which for an EV will probably never be recouped I don't think that's true, source: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths#Myth2 https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths#Myt...
- namdnay 3y agoThose vehicles will trickle down through the market. In 5 years’ time there will be lots of second hand electrics, as their rich owners trade in for the latest and greatest. Do you have any links about the CO2 footprint? I don’t see how the total lifetime footprint could be higher than a fuel burner
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y agoThat's why you tax co2 incrementally every year so the market moves away from it
- ericd 3y agoIn order to avoid the really catastrophic scenarios, the goal is to get to zero CO2 emissions by 2050, not to reduce it as much as possible as quickly as possible. To do that, we need to be selling only pure EVs by ~2040 at the latest, hybrids will never get there unless we have a massive breakthrough in synthetic fuel. The CO2 emission cost that goes into producing the battery is typically wildly overstated, it doesn't take very long to be recouped.
- teeray 3y agoI think PHEVs make a lot of sense in the more rural areas I frequent. It’s harder to get the supporting infrastructure to charge EVs there, and the risk of getting stranded can be deadly in the winter months (the ICE’s waste heat is a huge boon here).
- ChumpGPT 3y agoHave a Ford Fusion Hybrid. In the city it barely uses the engine and when it does it's for a short time and charges the battery while driving. On a full tank of fuel I can typically get 1000-1200km. I fill up about 0nce every 3 months. When driving on the highway, I get about 100km to 3ish liters of fuel. Great car and never have to plug it in.
- happytiger 3y agoI feel like it’s left out that the overall trajectory of civilization may need correction. What if instead of more efficient 20th century technologies we moved away from motor vehicles as a transportation class and into more livable, higher density and more nature preserving cities. How come that’s not the first conversation? I do agree with the common sense argument that less impact earlier is better that’s described in the article, but the entire conversation seems to have stalled out on “better version of what we have now” instead of a more radical but much more long-term sustainable vision of society transformed to be in balance with natural life support systems. The conversation around sustainability is always about merely adjusting the system that has wrought profound destruction to the planet — always smart sounding but not particularly wise.
- glogla 3y agoOf course! But why would you think that this is achievable? Look at the enormous amount of hatred even a small change like "your car, your house heating and your stove will use electricity instead of compressed refined dead dinosaurs" got. Look at how many people when told "we need to change things or this planet is going to be uninhabitable in a few decades" stick fingers in their ears and say "nu uh" or actively start claiming this is all made up. I'd love to have more sustainable vision of the future, but since most people would rather see humanity end than give up tiniest comfort or accept any change (even a good one, like people in walkable cities are actually happier than people in suburbs). So we don't exactly have a lot of manoeuvring space.
- happytiger 3y agoWell the reason I wrote to post was to inject the point into the conversation as it’s sorely lacking usually. Also, it’s been my experience that people only change when they are in incredible amounts of pain, and I think that that’s true of this debate with climate change, and it’s impacts on earth. As soon as food and water supplies are threatened, and people are having to retreat from coastal areas in the next few decades, the conversation may finally shift to meaningful action. And that’s the reason for my “optimism.” Obviously, for those of us who actually study the issue like yourself know it may be far too late to do anything about it, because by the time these impacts hit, there will be a great deal of downstream consequences, but I do think people will change eventually. If for no other reasons than because they have to, or at least they will then. Just a little sad you can’t avert the inevitable consequences that are so clearly laid out because people hold onto iterating on simple extensions of the existing failed ethos and paradigm, which is why I generally try to inject a transformation instead of iteration comment into these types of posts on online platforms. They are polarizing ideas, but if more of us injected this bias at scale and with great frequency I believe it could gradually change public opinion. And that is how you bring about change — the environmental consciousness is profoundly different than it was in the 50s and 60s, when a visit to the forest camping with the kids or even backpacking often included USFS run burn pit and people scoffed at the clean water and air acts, and it was done with similar educational and outreach so it really can change things — we do have impact as collective individuals in sharing our perspectives and alternative belief systems. So I don’t generally feel the need to provide the answers to how because the purpose of this comment and my many others like it is to anchor an alternative opinion to allow for alternatives to the dominant paradigm not solve the execution issues in providing a visionary societal transformation as that far exceeds what one person can do. But I do believe we should be actively talking about transformation and not iteration of the existing system much more actively.
- johnea 3y agoNo, it actually is "heel-dragging from a latecomer whose first electric car was met with a lukewarm reception"... The Toyoda grandson of the founder was retired because he said the world needed to rethink the transition to EVs due to the impact they would have on Japanese auto factory workers (and of course, the people that make money off of those workers). Japan has the lowest EV adoption in the first world. For a country with 0 petroleum, you would think they would be more eager. But Japan, for all of it's renowned innovation, is actually very top down driven, and nothing happens unless it's going to benefit incumbent wealth/power. They actually still advocate for tobacco use, because diet members own the tobacco industry after it was privatized in the '90s...
- onewheeltom 3y agoI agree. Our Ioniq PHEV gets about 30 miles on pure electric. We have a level 2 charger at home and put gas in every 2 months or so. 90% of our trips are pure electric.
- kkfx 3y agoThe reasons to a convergence to electricity are the same that the one of the convergence to IP. CO₂ is just an excuse to market, the reason is that we need to do more, cheaply and en mass. Electricity is not the cheapest solution, but we need it anyway, so being able to run anything on it means being able to drop other form of energy, along their sourcing, logistics and storage. An EV is a far cheaper vehicle than an ICE or hybrid. It demand far less parts, far less precision to produce and assemble them. That's the point. EVs are cheap for the industry, in raw material terms, like electronic watches are far cheaper on scale than classic mechanical ones. Similarly a heat-pump is cheaper industrially speaking than a gas based heating system along with gas storage, logistic and so on. At scale run on electricity means far less raw materials needs, far cheaper large scale process.
- RickJWagner 3y agoI think we'll see more and more of this argument being made by the traditional auto manufacturing types. Tesla seems to have figured out how to make an affordable EV, and they make margin on every sale. They're also aggressively dropping the prices, making Teslas ever more attractive. The other manufacturers mostly lose money on every sale, so they're not eager to drop prices. Tesla's already got the 'best selling' title, something unthinkable a few years ago. So I won't be surprised to suddenly see more articles about how hybrids are better.
- lamontcg 3y agosmaller, hybrid cars.