Comment by pjc50
20 days ago
Apart from Toyotas, hybrids are kind of unpopular precisely because they're a compromise. Not many people who do make the switch to EV go back.
Additional tipping points will come when cities start banning combustion engines on emissions grounds. Then gas stations start closing. After a while you get the reverse condition to EV range anxiety: having to drive further and further out of your way to fill up. Maybe you get a script-flipping service, an EV comes to the few remaining unconverted combustion vehicles with a small bowser of fuel.
But that is far in the future, long after my recently purchased ICE needs replacing.
The 1970s suggests that when gas stations start closing they may close a lot faster than people expect. Gas has a weird margin and is often something of a "loss leader" to convenience stores (or now full supermarkets). On the supply side it is capital-heavy and demand-driven in interesting ways that will respond to demand drops in terms of a "ratchet effect", in which many types of temporary shutdowns will result in permanent shutdowns that will be more expensive to restart than there should be investment interest.
Gas logistics is fascinating with how many possible places exist for disruption (in the negative sense more than the tech sense) to cause domino chains.
Things have the possibility to get "very interesting" in a unique shutdown spiral. I don't know how soon we'll see it, or if we'll see it, but if it happens I don't think it is "far" in the future, even as the 1970s starts to feel too far out of cultural memory to use as an allegory.
This is nonsense. Hybrids are outselling EVs in the US.
Hybrid adoption in the US is soaring. It's doubled in just a few years. They're hugely popular in the US precisely because they're NOT a compromise.
They are hugely popular in the US because there are more of them for sale and they have a lot of momentum from Toyota getting lost in the Hydrogen distraction.
From the perspective of a BEV with a modern range, hybrids have terrible all-electric range (if they even have true electric range) and worse maintenance schedules/cost of ownership. That's the compromise: less weight for good batteries for pure electric range and higher cost of ownership for high weight moving parts that you don't need in trips below electric range.
>and worse maintenance schedules/cost of ownership
Sorry, but this is simply incorrect. The Toyota Prius has the most reliable powertrain on the American market in most studies. This is the decades old Toyota hybrid planetary gearset engine and eCVT. It has less moving wear parts than an ICE engine, a generous warranty, absorbs brake wear, etc. It's pretty umambigious at this point, so I'm not sure where you're sourcing your facts from (vibes?).
Given this fact wasn't understood, there isn't much more content to engage with. Modern hybrids are popular because they're very good and side-step all of the myriad problems with electric vehicles.
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Almost everyone I know with an EV also has another car right now.