7 ms·

Another part of the point is that you can pack a much smaller and more efficient ICE and then substitute the missing power and torque from electric motors when

Another part of the point is that you can pack a much smaller and more efficient ICE and then substitute the missing power and torque from electric motors when needed. Most cars are not used at max power all the time. You need max power only at short times when accelerating. With pure ICE there is the tradeoff - a bigger engine will get you more max power / max torque but is going to be less fuel efficient because of internal friction.

mort96 1y ago
And, you can make much lighter and lower range electric cars without all those heavy batteries, and boost the range with diesel when needed. Very attractive in principle. Most cars are not using their full range all the time, for a lot of people a 50 mile range car would be more than enough 98% of the time, but that remaining 2% means that people end up buying 200 mile range cars instead. But then, do you end up removing enough battery weight to offset the weight of a whole ICE?
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  Smaller cars have always been available, but people have shown a preference for bigger cars where they can sit higher up, even though it costs them more.
  - mort96 1y ago
    I'm not talking about size, I'm talking about range and weight. You can have a huge car or a smaller car, going from a 90kWh battery pack to a 30kWh battery pack is gonna have the same weight saving in both
  - andrepd 1y ago
    Maybe they should be at least charged for the catastrophic externalities that that "preference" results in.
  - eldaisfish 1y ago
    does "preference" equate to endless, manipulative advertising from car manufacturers? Or, perhaps, the "preference" of higher profit margins from larger cars, pushing manufacturers to entirely abandon reasonably sized cars?
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      "Everyone who doesn't want what I want them to want has been brainwashed by corporate interests" is not a robust assertion under even the most casual scrutiny. I hate to break it to you but something like a Rogue or HRV does circles around an Altima or Civic when it comes to daily flexibility and utility for a fairly paltry additional cost. It doesn't take a degree in rocket surgery to figure out why they fly off the shelves. For the average person they're a good combination of attributes.
      - eldaisfish 1y ago
        The North American market now only includes a handful of sedans. Meanwhile, Hyundai and Toyota somehow manage to sell “tiny” cars in Korea, Japan and lots of developing countries. A practical car is a station wagon, not an SUV, many of which have less storage space. Please, cut the needless snark. People do buy vehicles for edge cases but the lack of smaller, practical vehicles is driven is large part by manufacturer profit.
        potato3732842 1y ago
        Many of those tiny foreign cars are unfortunately not economically useful to sell in the regulated markets of the rich west, and even when they are they often aren't without the developing nation sales volume to amortize a lot of the fixed costs over. I agree that there's a lot of stupidity going on when it comes to station wagons vs crossovers vs compact SUVs and the OEMs really do SUV-ify a lot of things that ought not to be. The shape of these vehicles is fairly preordained by the nature of the fuel economy regulations and wind resistance and other regulations that apply equally to all of them. You're not gonna find "more space" in something like a Subaru Outback by squashing it on the vertical axis unless you stretch it in another dimension or find somewhere else to find space. Maybe you might be able to eek out a slightly better angle on the hatch or something but it ain't gonna be much. Fuel economy regulations make cars with thicc asses like the big sedans and station wagons of yesterday nonsensical. The snark is not needless. It is tautologically impossible for the overwhelming majority of people do be "doing it wrong" on a matter that is in large part a subjective one of preference. If someone wants to assert that then I will talk down to them. People buy these small SUVs left and right because they're seemingly the best option when it comes to well rounded boring A to B vehicles.
- pmg101 1y ago
  I thought about PHEV but in the end went full EV simply because it seemed to me with two whole power trains that's 2x the components to go wrong/need maintenance.
  - happyPersonR 1y ago
    This. This times 100x . Also, it’s not like each powertrain has an independent failure mode. If either break, your car is a brick until it’s fixed.
    - silverquiet 1y ago
      I have a friend who drives a Chevy Volt with a dead ICE engine; she just charges the battery and uses it as a (rather short range) pure EV vehicle. Not ideal, but it works for her until she gets something else.
      - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
        If she was in California she wouldn't be able to pass smog at her next inspection, which is a funny problem considering she drives in pure EV mode now.
  - mort96 1y ago
    Oh I agree completely. I'm driving an old diesel now but I have no desire to get a hybrid, I'd get a pure EV if I were to buy a new car. But there are some tempting things in principle about plug-in hybrids
  - m_fayer 1y ago
    That same insight applies to regular hybrids, and yet Toyota’s hybrids are legendary for their durability. There’s a reason half the cabs where I live are Prius station wagons, and it’s not their efficiency, judging by how they’re driven.
    - bryanlarsen 1y ago
usrusr 1y ago
On paper, yes, but did that ever happen? Sorry for being sarcastic, but where I live the frugal hybrid is exceptionally rare and the "same big engine, but driving a much heavier car" hybrid is omnipresent. The kind of people who might buy the frugal one buy second or third hand while almost all buyers of factory new pick the "same big engine" option, and those are the ones who decide what's available on the second hand market.
- terramex 1y ago
  Omoda 9 (SUV) is sold in Europe only as plug-in hybrid with small-ish 1.5L 143HP engine + 394HP electric (145km of pure electric range, 35kWh LFP battery). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeed_Yaoguang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeed_Yaoguang
- scns 1y ago
  > did that ever happen? In 2010 with the Chevrolet Volt.
  - robertlagrant 1y ago
    I think the question is "is that overall effect the reality, or do most people buy a very heavy hybrid?"
  - Tagbert 1y ago
    Which only had a 1.4l engine. It was not as efficient as the gas only Prius but could be more efficient overall as the Volt of 2010 had a 40 mile EV range.
- graemep 1y ago
  I wonder whether people actually understand that they need a smaller engine for the same performance?
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    Despite my overall low estimation of people's ability to fluidly reason about engineering tradeoffs, I think they generally do understand this one well enough, at least for the decisions that they will face. They're only deciding which car to buy, not what engine specifications are required to make a car successful in the market. They go test-drive cars, probably glance at performance specifications and/or read/watch a test drive review of the cars. They can look at the 0-60mph/0-100 kph times and get a feel for "this car will be able to get out of its own way" vs "this car will be a rolling roadblock". So "actually understand"? Maybe not, but "understand enough to guide their purchasing decision?" and therefore enough for the actual automobile product teams to design to accommodate? I think they do.
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
This reminds me of the short lived dilbert cartoon when Dilbert is complaining about how pokey his Prius, and when he hands the car over to Dogbert, he somehow is able to rip out of the parking lot at high speed. Seriously though, hybrids seem like a bad compromise to just getting an EV. Hybrids have an electric drive train with an ICE drive train, and somehow that double complexity will be worth it? In the long run, EVs are winning on cost alone (especially in China where making cheap EVs is a thing).

mort96 1y ago

And, you can make much lighter and lower range electric cars without all those heavy batteries, and boost the range with diesel when needed. Very attractive in principle. Most cars are not using their full range all the time, for a lot of people a 50 mile range car would be more than enough 98% of the time, but that remaining 2% means that people end up buying 200 mile range cars instead. But then, do you end up removing enough battery weight to offset the weight of a whole ICE?

lotsofpulp 1y ago
Smaller cars have always been available, but people have shown a preference for bigger cars where they can sit higher up, even though it costs them more.
- mort96 1y ago
  I'm not talking about size, I'm talking about range and weight. You can have a huge car or a smaller car, going from a 90kWh battery pack to a 30kWh battery pack is gonna have the same weight saving in both
- andrepd 1y ago
  Maybe they should be at least charged for the catastrophic externalities that that "preference" results in.
- eldaisfish 1y ago
  does "preference" equate to endless, manipulative advertising from car manufacturers? Or, perhaps, the "preference" of higher profit margins from larger cars, pushing manufacturers to entirely abandon reasonably sized cars?
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    "Everyone who doesn't want what I want them to want has been brainwashed by corporate interests" is not a robust assertion under even the most casual scrutiny. I hate to break it to you but something like a Rogue or HRV does circles around an Altima or Civic when it comes to daily flexibility and utility for a fairly paltry additional cost. It doesn't take a degree in rocket surgery to figure out why they fly off the shelves. For the average person they're a good combination of attributes.
    - eldaisfish 1y ago
      The North American market now only includes a handful of sedans. Meanwhile, Hyundai and Toyota somehow manage to sell “tiny” cars in Korea, Japan and lots of developing countries. A practical car is a station wagon, not an SUV, many of which have less storage space. Please, cut the needless snark. People do buy vehicles for edge cases but the lack of smaller, practical vehicles is driven is large part by manufacturer profit.
      - potato3732842 1y ago
        Many of those tiny foreign cars are unfortunately not economically useful to sell in the regulated markets of the rich west, and even when they are they often aren't without the developing nation sales volume to amortize a lot of the fixed costs over. I agree that there's a lot of stupidity going on when it comes to station wagons vs crossovers vs compact SUVs and the OEMs really do SUV-ify a lot of things that ought not to be. The shape of these vehicles is fairly preordained by the nature of the fuel economy regulations and wind resistance and other regulations that apply equally to all of them. You're not gonna find "more space" in something like a Subaru Outback by squashing it on the vertical axis unless you stretch it in another dimension or find somewhere else to find space. Maybe you might be able to eek out a slightly better angle on the hatch or something but it ain't gonna be much. Fuel economy regulations make cars with thicc asses like the big sedans and station wagons of yesterday nonsensical. The snark is not needless. It is tautologically impossible for the overwhelming majority of people do be "doing it wrong" on a matter that is in large part a subjective one of preference. If someone wants to assert that then I will talk down to them. People buy these small SUVs left and right because they're seemingly the best option when it comes to well rounded boring A to B vehicles.
pmg101 1y ago
I thought about PHEV but in the end went full EV simply because it seemed to me with two whole power trains that's 2x the components to go wrong/need maintenance.
- happyPersonR 1y ago
  This. This times 100x . Also, it’s not like each powertrain has an independent failure mode. If either break, your car is a brick until it’s fixed.
  - silverquiet 1y ago
    I have a friend who drives a Chevy Volt with a dead ICE engine; she just charges the battery and uses it as a (rather short range) pure EV vehicle. Not ideal, but it works for her until she gets something else.
    - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
      If she was in California she wouldn't be able to pass smog at her next inspection, which is a funny problem considering she drives in pure EV mode now.
- mort96 1y ago
  Oh I agree completely. I'm driving an old diesel now but I have no desire to get a hybrid, I'd get a pure EV if I were to buy a new car. But there are some tempting things in principle about plug-in hybrids
- m_fayer 1y ago
  That same insight applies to regular hybrids, and yet Toyota’s hybrids are legendary for their durability. There’s a reason half the cabs where I live are Prius station wagons, and it’s not their efficiency, judging by how they’re driven.
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago

usrusr 1y ago

On paper, yes, but did that ever happen? Sorry for being sarcastic, but where I live the frugal hybrid is exceptionally rare and the "same big engine, but driving a much heavier car" hybrid is omnipresent. The kind of people who might buy the frugal one buy second or third hand while almost all buyers of factory new pick the "same big engine" option, and those are the ones who decide what's available on the second hand market.

terramex 1y ago
Omoda 9 (SUV) is sold in Europe only as plug-in hybrid with small-ish 1.5L 143HP engine + 394HP electric (145km of pure electric range, 35kWh LFP battery). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeed_Yaoguang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeed_Yaoguang
scns 1y ago
> did that ever happen? In 2010 with the Chevrolet Volt.
- robertlagrant 1y ago
  I think the question is "is that overall effect the reality, or do most people buy a very heavy hybrid?"
- Tagbert 1y ago
  Which only had a 1.4l engine. It was not as efficient as the gas only Prius but could be more efficient overall as the Volt of 2010 had a 40 mile EV range.
graemep 1y ago
I wonder whether people actually understand that they need a smaller engine for the same performance?
- sokoloff 1y ago
  Despite my overall low estimation of people's ability to fluidly reason about engineering tradeoffs, I think they generally do understand this one well enough, at least for the decisions that they will face. They're only deciding which car to buy, not what engine specifications are required to make a car successful in the market. They go test-drive cars, probably glance at performance specifications and/or read/watch a test drive review of the cars. They can look at the 0-60mph/0-100 kph times and get a feel for "this car will be able to get out of its own way" vs "this car will be a rolling roadblock". So "actually understand"? Maybe not, but "understand enough to guide their purchasing decision?" and therefore enough for the actual automobile product teams to design to accommodate? I think they do.

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

This reminds me of the short lived dilbert cartoon when Dilbert is complaining about how pokey his Prius, and when he hands the car over to Dogbert, he somehow is able to rip out of the parking lot at high speed. Seriously though, hybrids seem like a bad compromise to just getting an EV. Hybrids have an electric drive train with an ICE drive train, and somehow that double complexity will be worth it? In the long run, EVs are winning on cost alone (especially in China where making cheap EVs is a thing).