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I never understood the big push for full EVs over hybrid. Roughly speaking, a hybrid gets double the MPG of an ICE car, and a BEV gets double the MPGe of a hybr

I never understood the big push for full EVs over hybrid. Roughly speaking, a hybrid gets double the MPG of an ICE car, and a BEV gets double the MPGe of a hybrid. But BEVs require you to add a plug to your garage to get a rapid refuel, when your whole neighborhood gets them it strains the grid, you are range limited, etc... My hunch is there are some laws or regs somewhere that kept hybrids from really taking off (or rather, they were taking off.. then suddenly were suppressed). Which is why I don't interpret headlines like these to mean "consumers have crossed the tipping point" - in many cases it is incentive-driven, not pure consumer demand. The EU is committed to the full EV route and that is not changing. But it's not taking hold in the US, and over the next few years the big thing we will see being sold is actually EREVs, which are BEVs with a gas generator attached to charge the battery (yes, really). Source: in the industry

dmix 9mo ago
The main issue will always be price. Whether that's purchase price, resale, or maintenance. Even the budget brand cars from South Korea and Ford can figure out the basics of interior/exterior design where customers are happy. That mostly just leaves the price and it's only gone up. Car prices have increased well above the rate of inflation over the last decade and even used cars are more expensive than ever. Average new car price is $50k, mostly because EVs are so expensive https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a69047202/average-new-car-price-rises-above-50000/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a69047202/average-new-car-...
- CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
  > The main issue will always be price. You're right. There isn't a single legacy auto manufacturer in the US (Ford, GM, Stellantis) that can profitably sell an EV. Yet they make them anyway, and sell them for huge losses ($billions per year) because they have to meet mandates.
  - bruce511 9mo ago
    For foreign (read Chinese) cars a big piece of the price charged to US customers is the tarrifs (taxes) which US customers pay. Elsewhere in the world EV prices are steadily coming down. They're not as low as ICE yet, and maybe never will be, but a nice entry level ICE car here is circa $15k, and a nice EV entry level is circa 25k. Factor in fuel and maintenance costs and the real price is getting very close....
- MarioMan 9mo ago
  >Car prices have increased well above the rate of inflation over the last decade This is a fair concern, but also, looking at the rise of average car prices is like looking at the rise of average iPhone prices. That is to say, cars (and iPhones) are providing increasingly premium offerings that didn’t exist decades ago. If you look at the entry levels of both these things, you find that the bottom-line price broadly keeps pace with inflation. And for cars, that’s with the addition of now-standard safety and convenience features. When you match cars feature-for-feature (an unrealistic comparison, as there aren’t really bare-bones cars on offer anymore), you’d see that cars are increasing in price much more slowly than inflation, and in other words, are effectively cheaper. Ultimately, whether car prices are rising or falling depends a lot on how you calculate things. I’ll also add that EV pricing doesn’t have to mean insane car costs. The US market has the Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf each selling for about $30k new and can be readily bought for half that with used inventory.
sitharus 9mo ago
Don't most people already have a plug in their garage? All mine certainly have. There's no need to get full EVSE for most people, a 2.4kW outlet as found almost everywhere outside North America will easily handle daily driving needs for anyone who's not in a travelling job. Also if everyone in your neighbourhood turning on a space heater strains the grid you have bigger problems. Utilities have plenty of ways to solve that. We already have electric water heaters on demand controlled circuits and electricity billing that incentivises off-peak use. And as for range? 400km is plenty for all but one trip a year, if that's an issue for your use perhaps EVs are not for you.
- pixl97 9mo ago
  >Also if everyone in your neighbourhood turning on a space heater strains the grid you have bigger problems. Welcome to Texas. And with Texas a 200 mile+ driving day is just more common than people from smaller places experience.
  - mlinhares 9mo ago
    People can't possibly be driving 200 miles a day, that can't be real.
    - bruce511 9mo ago
      Sure it can :). Probably not 7 days a week, but a couple days a week, sure. And of course not everyone. Maybe 10%? Not that it matters. What do I care about the needs of some Texans? (I mean that non perjorativly). I mean just because ranchers still need horses doesn't mean the rest of us have to use them. The world will go EV, even much of the US will go EV, regardless of what some folks need.
      - mlinhares 9mo ago
        If you have to drive 200 miles a day to go to/come back from work its a policy failure and we should care about it.
thelastgallon 9mo ago
Its not an unsurmountable problem as Americans think. Just works like how you plug in your phone. Most of the world has electricity at home.
triceratops 9mo ago
> BEVs require you to add a plug to your garage to get a rapid refuel You hardly ever need a rapid refuel in your garage though. That's where your car spends most of its hours. And most of the world has 220/240v mains supply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country. Regular wall outlets can charge a car fast enough outside North America.
- NetMageSCW 9mo ago
  Even in the US a regular wall outlet is enough - most people don’t commute far enough every day to need more than L1 charging overnight to keep up.
marcus_holmes 9mo ago
Every time an EV driver charges their car at home, a gas station loses a customer. Eventually this compounds and gas stations start closing. That accelerates the switch to EVs because gas becomes hard to find. Which accelerates gas station closures, and so on. The point at which it becomes impractical to drive a gas-fuelled car is approaching. It will hit different countries at different times, but it's there. 10 years, 30 years, whatever, but it's coming. Long before that point, a hybrid is just an EV that has to carry around a chunk of useless engine that is hard to fuel.
- nielsbot 9mo ago
  How has this played out in Norway? (If you know) They're at 90% EV market share, right?
  - marcus_holmes 9mo ago
    Good question, I have no idea.
  - jabl 9mo ago
    Might be 90% of current sales. Still a lot of ICE cars on the road.
    - nielsbot 9mo ago
      Yes, that's what I meant. Was just curious how the market for gas has changed (or not) in NO given that.
      - bluGill 9mo ago
        In the US the average car is 12 years old. I don't know Norway, but I expect similar. Which is to say I don't expect this to have made any difference in the number of gas stations yet. Gas station owners are watching numbers, but and are likely to open less in the future (not zero, some new development/locations will be important, but some locations that previously would have got one will not longer be worth the investment. Or maybe they put in the station without gas pumps - people still need those snacks (again I don't know the market in Norway, in the US that is how it would be). Gas stations are also trying to figure out how charging fits in. While people are expected to charge at home, there will still me some demand for on the road charging. This is a place that hasn't worked out yet (I personally expect people will go for a nicer meal and sit down for an hour charge - but this might be my bias)
bruce511 9mo ago
>> I never understood the big push for full EVs over hybrid Weight, space and reliability. Dragging that generator (and fuel) around costs weight and space, reducing range. Exhaust, fuel tank, radiator- all the support systems the ICE motor needs. Which leaves less space for batteries, which reduces range. Plus, the maintenance burden is still there. All those ICE parts still need all the maintainence etc that full ICE needs. One of the joys of EV is that maintainence is sooo much simpler. So yes, hybrid is much more efficient than gas only, but a poor cousin of full EV. By contrast full EV has range limitations. And yes distances in Europe are much shorter than the US. No that's less of an issue there. But even there we're seeing range go up, and charging come down.
- NetMageSCW 9mo ago
  Don’t full battery packs weigh more than an ICE system? Plus, weight is a minimal factor in efficiency anyway. Today, a PHEV is the best of all world’s, but full parity for BEVs (in the US) is almost here. Reliable trip charging (NACS, SuperCharger network) and available destination charging will be enough pretty soon.
  - bruce511 9mo ago
    The weight I'm referring to is the weight of both systems, which is typically heavier than 1 system. In terms of ev weight overall, it's typically close to ice weight. (Obviously a lot of differences between vehicle class and range). An ev has motor, batteries, plus controllers. Ice has engine, gearbox, fuel tank, radiator [1], exhaust. [1] Evs also have a radiator, but its a much smaller system running at lower Temps, with less water. I'm converting an old vehicle now to EV and the overall weight difference is not significant.
sheepybloke 9mo ago
My uncle works in the industry and was getting a new car recently. His two options were all electric or all ICE, because from his experience, EHEVs have the problems of both ICE and BEV vehicles.
- NetMageSCW 9mo ago
  His experience is biased because studies have shown that hybrids have fewer issues than pure ICE or pure BEV.
mpyne 9mo ago
> I never understood the big push for full EVs over hybrid. Being able to shed the ICE bits from the car's powertrain eliminates multiple entire classes of maintenance burden. With hybrid and EREV you get the problems of both types of powerplant and drivetrain, and even though ICE has evolved to be fairly reliable, it's still a very complicated assembly and basic wear-and-tear still is still a challenge. There will probably be parts of the country where hybrid or EREV make sense for some period of time due to the distances involved and the incredible energy density of gasoline, but a lot of the driving that happens day to day can already be handled with pure EVs as long as you have a 120V plug accessible to your car.
- user_7832 9mo ago
  > Being able to shed the ICE bits from the car's powertrain eliminates multiple entire classes of maintenance burden. I don't know but is this a uniquely US (and/or a few other such countries) thing, because of the high volume of daily driving? Here in India we send our (ICE) car in for a service somthing like once or twice a year? And that too is mostly because "the engine sounds a bit off", not "the car isn't starting". Less maintenance sure is nice, but I don't think it's consciously a "problem" for many.
  - Esophagus4 9mo ago
    Same here in the US - 10,000 miles per year, so an $75 oil change every six months. Change the spark plugs myself every 4 years for $20. No big deal. All the other maintenance I do would be the same with an electric vehicle (suspension fixes, flat tires / new tires, brake pads / brake fluid, etc). ICE car maintenance isn’t a problem for me either. That alone isn’t going to make me buy a new $40k EV with no physical buttons because it’s one giant unusable touch screen that is a safety hazard to me and anyone else around me. (Looking at you Polestar - your entire interior UX is garbage.) Hybrids are a better option for me since I don’t have a charger at my house nor do I want one, but they’re also very expensive.
  - mpyne 9mo ago
    ICE engines aren't a problem right up until they are. I had one car where the timing belt broke unexpectedly and because it was an 'interference' engine, that led to damage to the engine head and a piston rod (and could easily have been bad enough to have been irreparable had the timing been a bit different). Second car, had a loud noise from the engine that resolved on its own while driving up a hill. That car model later has a recall for the engine catching fire. Did I just get lucky? Who knows. My first car (a minivan), the rear exhaust plate fastener broke while driving and make a noise that could be heard from a mile away... right as I was driving past a bunch of cops on heightened DUI enforcement night. Now I wasn't drinking but I still didn't appreciate my car not only breaking ostentatiously, but buying me a ticket in the process. A fourth car, also a minivan, had an issue with its automatic transmission where it would struggle to upshift going from first to second gear sometimes. At least once every couple weeks, sometimes more frequent. It was never resolved by the manufacturer or any mechanic we could take it to before we sold it. Now I did make sure to mention that ICE has evolved a high degree of reliability for a reason, but the fact is that even when the odds of things going bad is low, when there are a multitude of different independent ways for things to go bad (as there are with an ICE engine and drivetrain), the birthday paradox makes it inevitable that something will eventually be an issue. And even though I had an issue like that with every ICE car I have ever owned, even those I didn't have to take to the mechanic for an issue outside of routine maintenance twice a year. They were more reliable than that, but that wasn't enough to keep them from falling prey to various issues.
toephu2 9mo ago
A bit sad that you're in the industry and you don't understand why pure EVs are better than hybrids. Full EVs: Less moving parts = less maintenance required = less issues to worry about (think no oil changes, no timing belt changes, no spark plug replacements, no belt/filter changes, no exhaust system checks, etc). Also zero emissions = better air quality around you. Bonus: it's like waking up with a full take of gas every morning I've owned my full EV for almost 10 years now and had 0 maintenance done whatsoever (apart from tire rotation and window wiper fluid replacement). I would never go back to an ICE vehicle.
- julianeon 9mo ago
  I also can't help but think but the decade over decade improvement in EV goodies is going to be steep: more sensors, more ability if not to fully self-drive then to take over this aspect of driving (like backing up), etc.
- bluGill 9mo ago
  > Full EVs: Less moving parts = less maintenance required = less issues to worry about (think no oil changes, no timing belt changes, no spark plug replacements, no belt/filter changes, no exhaust system checks, etc). The above is a tiny part of the costs of an ICE. Sure you have to do it, but either it isn't common, or it is cheap. ICEs have gotten very reliable over the decades. Meanwhile most of the parts of a car a common between an ICE and EV. You have tires either way, which need to be rotated (do you?) Shocks/struts, rust, tie rods, AC compressors, just to pick a few random ones.
IrishTechie 9mo ago
I rented a hybrid recently while my car was in for a service. Picked it up, drove home (25 mins on motorway) then returned it the next day. It spent all of that time burning petrol while popping up notices about all the reasons it couldn’t use electricity right now (too cold, too fast etc). All ICE cars should have been hybrid from 5-10 years ago but it is a stepping stone we should already be stepping off.
wilg 9mo ago
Well, a hybrid doesn't solve the problem. We don't need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we need to zero them out. You can't do that if you sometimes burn gas.
- Esophagus4 9mo ago
  You know car emissions are like 15% total greenhouse gas emissions in the US right? And half that worldwide. This is just the most visible source for a bunch of people who have made their conclusion unencumbered by the data. The emissions from powering and heating your house are several times what your car emissions are. So go solve that one and leave my Corolla alone.
  - korhojoa 9mo ago
    That is some whataboutism. You do realize that net zero homes are buildable? Even in surprisingly challenging climates. There are so many ways to make better use of the energy we have available than to waste a bunch of it to pollute the air.
    - Esophagus4 9mo ago
      Zero greenhouse emissions isn't a remotely achievable goal. I hope you have never run a technology project this way by starting with a goal that simply can't be accomplished; you would have set it up to fail, demoralized your team, and chased the wrong priorities. The goal is net zero, meaning, emissions added = emissions removed. There must be an allowance for some emissions. Industrial human life cannot continue without some amount of greenhouse emissions. For that goal, I am way better off driving less than buying a new EV - it releases greenhouse gases to produce the plastic in your Tesla and the battery in your Nissan Leaf. I walk to the supermarket. I work from home. I don't eat red meat. I'm careful with my home electricity consumption. For the third time in this thread: my old 4 cylinder Corolla is not the thing standing between us and existential doom. Focus on more important things. I don't understand the myopic focus on car emissions: is it because Elon talks about it? Is it because it's the most easily seen for you?
moogly 9mo ago
This comes off like "I never understood why not everyone still uses landlines".

dmix 9mo ago

The main issue will always be price. Whether that's purchase price, resale, or maintenance. Even the budget brand cars from South Korea and Ford can figure out the basics of interior/exterior design where customers are happy. That mostly just leaves the price and it's only gone up. Car prices have increased well above the rate of inflation over the last decade and even used cars are more expensive than ever. Average new car price is $50k, mostly because EVs are so expensive https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a69047202/average-new-car-price-rises-above-50000/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a69047202/average-new-car-...

CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
> The main issue will always be price. You're right. There isn't a single legacy auto manufacturer in the US (Ford, GM, Stellantis) that can profitably sell an EV. Yet they make them anyway, and sell them for huge losses ($billions per year) because they have to meet mandates.
- bruce511 9mo ago
  For foreign (read Chinese) cars a big piece of the price charged to US customers is the tarrifs (taxes) which US customers pay. Elsewhere in the world EV prices are steadily coming down. They're not as low as ICE yet, and maybe never will be, but a nice entry level ICE car here is circa $15k, and a nice EV entry level is circa 25k. Factor in fuel and maintenance costs and the real price is getting very close....
MarioMan 9mo ago
>Car prices have increased well above the rate of inflation over the last decade This is a fair concern, but also, looking at the rise of average car prices is like looking at the rise of average iPhone prices. That is to say, cars (and iPhones) are providing increasingly premium offerings that didn’t exist decades ago. If you look at the entry levels of both these things, you find that the bottom-line price broadly keeps pace with inflation. And for cars, that’s with the addition of now-standard safety and convenience features. When you match cars feature-for-feature (an unrealistic comparison, as there aren’t really bare-bones cars on offer anymore), you’d see that cars are increasing in price much more slowly than inflation, and in other words, are effectively cheaper. Ultimately, whether car prices are rising or falling depends a lot on how you calculate things. I’ll also add that EV pricing doesn’t have to mean insane car costs. The US market has the Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf each selling for about $30k new and can be readily bought for half that with used inventory.

sitharus 9mo ago

Don't most people already have a plug in their garage? All mine certainly have. There's no need to get full EVSE for most people, a 2.4kW outlet as found almost everywhere outside North America will easily handle daily driving needs for anyone who's not in a travelling job. Also if everyone in your neighbourhood turning on a space heater strains the grid you have bigger problems. Utilities have plenty of ways to solve that. We already have electric water heaters on demand controlled circuits and electricity billing that incentivises off-peak use. And as for range? 400km is plenty for all but one trip a year, if that's an issue for your use perhaps EVs are not for you.

pixl97 9mo ago
>Also if everyone in your neighbourhood turning on a space heater strains the grid you have bigger problems. Welcome to Texas. And with Texas a 200 mile+ driving day is just more common than people from smaller places experience.
- mlinhares 9mo ago
  People can't possibly be driving 200 miles a day, that can't be real.
  - bruce511 9mo ago
    Sure it can :). Probably not 7 days a week, but a couple days a week, sure. And of course not everyone. Maybe 10%? Not that it matters. What do I care about the needs of some Texans? (I mean that non perjorativly). I mean just because ranchers still need horses doesn't mean the rest of us have to use them. The world will go EV, even much of the US will go EV, regardless of what some folks need.
    - mlinhares 9mo ago
      If you have to drive 200 miles a day to go to/come back from work its a policy failure and we should care about it.

thelastgallon 9mo ago

Its not an unsurmountable problem as Americans think. Just works like how you plug in your phone. Most of the world has electricity at home.

triceratops 9mo ago

> BEVs require you to add a plug to your garage to get a rapid refuel You hardly ever need a rapid refuel in your garage though. That's where your car spends most of its hours. And most of the world has 220/240v mains supply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country. Regular wall outlets can charge a car fast enough outside North America.

NetMageSCW 9mo ago
Even in the US a regular wall outlet is enough - most people don’t commute far enough every day to need more than L1 charging overnight to keep up.

marcus_holmes 9mo ago

Every time an EV driver charges their car at home, a gas station loses a customer. Eventually this compounds and gas stations start closing. That accelerates the switch to EVs because gas becomes hard to find. Which accelerates gas station closures, and so on. The point at which it becomes impractical to drive a gas-fuelled car is approaching. It will hit different countries at different times, but it's there. 10 years, 30 years, whatever, but it's coming. Long before that point, a hybrid is just an EV that has to carry around a chunk of useless engine that is hard to fuel.

nielsbot 9mo ago
How has this played out in Norway? (If you know) They're at 90% EV market share, right?
- marcus_holmes 9mo ago
  Good question, I have no idea.
- jabl 9mo ago
  Might be 90% of current sales. Still a lot of ICE cars on the road.
  - nielsbot 9mo ago
    Yes, that's what I meant. Was just curious how the market for gas has changed (or not) in NO given that.
    - bluGill 9mo ago
      In the US the average car is 12 years old. I don't know Norway, but I expect similar. Which is to say I don't expect this to have made any difference in the number of gas stations yet. Gas station owners are watching numbers, but and are likely to open less in the future (not zero, some new development/locations will be important, but some locations that previously would have got one will not longer be worth the investment. Or maybe they put in the station without gas pumps - people still need those snacks (again I don't know the market in Norway, in the US that is how it would be). Gas stations are also trying to figure out how charging fits in. While people are expected to charge at home, there will still me some demand for on the road charging. This is a place that hasn't worked out yet (I personally expect people will go for a nicer meal and sit down for an hour charge - but this might be my bias)

bruce511 9mo ago

>> I never understood the big push for full EVs over hybrid Weight, space and reliability. Dragging that generator (and fuel) around costs weight and space, reducing range. Exhaust, fuel tank, radiator- all the support systems the ICE motor needs. Which leaves less space for batteries, which reduces range. Plus, the maintenance burden is still there. All those ICE parts still need all the maintainence etc that full ICE needs. One of the joys of EV is that maintainence is sooo much simpler. So yes, hybrid is much more efficient than gas only, but a poor cousin of full EV. By contrast full EV has range limitations. And yes distances in Europe are much shorter than the US. No that's less of an issue there. But even there we're seeing range go up, and charging come down.

NetMageSCW 9mo ago
Don’t full battery packs weigh more than an ICE system? Plus, weight is a minimal factor in efficiency anyway. Today, a PHEV is the best of all world’s, but full parity for BEVs (in the US) is almost here. Reliable trip charging (NACS, SuperCharger network) and available destination charging will be enough pretty soon.
- bruce511 9mo ago
  The weight I'm referring to is the weight of both systems, which is typically heavier than 1 system. In terms of ev weight overall, it's typically close to ice weight. (Obviously a lot of differences between vehicle class and range). An ev has motor, batteries, plus controllers. Ice has engine, gearbox, fuel tank, radiator [1], exhaust. [1] Evs also have a radiator, but its a much smaller system running at lower Temps, with less water. I'm converting an old vehicle now to EV and the overall weight difference is not significant.

sheepybloke 9mo ago

My uncle works in the industry and was getting a new car recently. His two options were all electric or all ICE, because from his experience, EHEVs have the problems of both ICE and BEV vehicles.

NetMageSCW 9mo ago
His experience is biased because studies have shown that hybrids have fewer issues than pure ICE or pure BEV.

mpyne 9mo ago

> I never understood the big push for full EVs over hybrid. Being able to shed the ICE bits from the car's powertrain eliminates multiple entire classes of maintenance burden. With hybrid and EREV you get the problems of both types of powerplant and drivetrain, and even though ICE has evolved to be fairly reliable, it's still a very complicated assembly and basic wear-and-tear still is still a challenge. There will probably be parts of the country where hybrid or EREV make sense for some period of time due to the distances involved and the incredible energy density of gasoline, but a lot of the driving that happens day to day can already be handled with pure EVs as long as you have a 120V plug accessible to your car.

user_7832 9mo ago
> Being able to shed the ICE bits from the car's powertrain eliminates multiple entire classes of maintenance burden. I don't know but is this a uniquely US (and/or a few other such countries) thing, because of the high volume of daily driving? Here in India we send our (ICE) car in for a service somthing like once or twice a year? And that too is mostly because "the engine sounds a bit off", not "the car isn't starting". Less maintenance sure is nice, but I don't think it's consciously a "problem" for many.
- Esophagus4 9mo ago
  Same here in the US - 10,000 miles per year, so an $75 oil change every six months. Change the spark plugs myself every 4 years for $20. No big deal. All the other maintenance I do would be the same with an electric vehicle (suspension fixes, flat tires / new tires, brake pads / brake fluid, etc). ICE car maintenance isn’t a problem for me either. That alone isn’t going to make me buy a new $40k EV with no physical buttons because it’s one giant unusable touch screen that is a safety hazard to me and anyone else around me. (Looking at you Polestar - your entire interior UX is garbage.) Hybrids are a better option for me since I don’t have a charger at my house nor do I want one, but they’re also very expensive.
- mpyne 9mo ago
  ICE engines aren't a problem right up until they are. I had one car where the timing belt broke unexpectedly and because it was an 'interference' engine, that led to damage to the engine head and a piston rod (and could easily have been bad enough to have been irreparable had the timing been a bit different). Second car, had a loud noise from the engine that resolved on its own while driving up a hill. That car model later has a recall for the engine catching fire. Did I just get lucky? Who knows. My first car (a minivan), the rear exhaust plate fastener broke while driving and make a noise that could be heard from a mile away... right as I was driving past a bunch of cops on heightened DUI enforcement night. Now I wasn't drinking but I still didn't appreciate my car not only breaking ostentatiously, but buying me a ticket in the process. A fourth car, also a minivan, had an issue with its automatic transmission where it would struggle to upshift going from first to second gear sometimes. At least once every couple weeks, sometimes more frequent. It was never resolved by the manufacturer or any mechanic we could take it to before we sold it. Now I did make sure to mention that ICE has evolved a high degree of reliability for a reason, but the fact is that even when the odds of things going bad is low, when there are a multitude of different independent ways for things to go bad (as there are with an ICE engine and drivetrain), the birthday paradox makes it inevitable that something will eventually be an issue. And even though I had an issue like that with every ICE car I have ever owned, even those I didn't have to take to the mechanic for an issue outside of routine maintenance twice a year. They were more reliable than that, but that wasn't enough to keep them from falling prey to various issues.

toephu2 9mo ago

A bit sad that you're in the industry and you don't understand why pure EVs are better than hybrids. Full EVs: Less moving parts = less maintenance required = less issues to worry about (think no oil changes, no timing belt changes, no spark plug replacements, no belt/filter changes, no exhaust system checks, etc). Also zero emissions = better air quality around you. Bonus: it's like waking up with a full take of gas every morning I've owned my full EV for almost 10 years now and had 0 maintenance done whatsoever (apart from tire rotation and window wiper fluid replacement). I would never go back to an ICE vehicle.

julianeon 9mo ago
I also can't help but think but the decade over decade improvement in EV goodies is going to be steep: more sensors, more ability if not to fully self-drive then to take over this aspect of driving (like backing up), etc.
bluGill 9mo ago
> Full EVs: Less moving parts = less maintenance required = less issues to worry about (think no oil changes, no timing belt changes, no spark plug replacements, no belt/filter changes, no exhaust system checks, etc). The above is a tiny part of the costs of an ICE. Sure you have to do it, but either it isn't common, or it is cheap. ICEs have gotten very reliable over the decades. Meanwhile most of the parts of a car a common between an ICE and EV. You have tires either way, which need to be rotated (do you?) Shocks/struts, rust, tie rods, AC compressors, just to pick a few random ones.

IrishTechie 9mo ago

I rented a hybrid recently while my car was in for a service. Picked it up, drove home (25 mins on motorway) then returned it the next day. It spent all of that time burning petrol while popping up notices about all the reasons it couldn’t use electricity right now (too cold, too fast etc). All ICE cars should have been hybrid from 5-10 years ago but it is a stepping stone we should already be stepping off.

wilg 9mo ago

Well, a hybrid doesn't solve the problem. We don't need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we need to zero them out. You can't do that if you sometimes burn gas.

Esophagus4 9mo ago
You know car emissions are like 15% total greenhouse gas emissions in the US right? And half that worldwide. This is just the most visible source for a bunch of people who have made their conclusion unencumbered by the data. The emissions from powering and heating your house are several times what your car emissions are. So go solve that one and leave my Corolla alone.
- korhojoa 9mo ago
  That is some whataboutism. You do realize that net zero homes are buildable? Even in surprisingly challenging climates. There are so many ways to make better use of the energy we have available than to waste a bunch of it to pollute the air.
  - Esophagus4 9mo ago
    Zero greenhouse emissions isn't a remotely achievable goal. I hope you have never run a technology project this way by starting with a goal that simply can't be accomplished; you would have set it up to fail, demoralized your team, and chased the wrong priorities. The goal is net zero, meaning, emissions added = emissions removed. There must be an allowance for some emissions. Industrial human life cannot continue without some amount of greenhouse emissions. For that goal, I am way better off driving less than buying a new EV - it releases greenhouse gases to produce the plastic in your Tesla and the battery in your Nissan Leaf. I walk to the supermarket. I work from home. I don't eat red meat. I'm careful with my home electricity consumption. For the third time in this thread: my old 4 cylinder Corolla is not the thing standing between us and existential doom. Focus on more important things. I don't understand the myopic focus on car emissions: is it because Elon talks about it? Is it because it's the most easily seen for you?

moogly 9mo ago

This comes off like "I never understood why not everyone still uses landlines".