Comment by trollbridge
2 hours ago
Certainly not the case for hybrids like Priuses. The battery system lasts 10-15 years and 150k-200k miles. Any ICE car on the market now should be expected to last a lot longer than that; I drive cars that are 25+ years old and really don't need much significant in the way of repairs.
Hybrids are the worst of both worlds when it comes to maintenance. They have their benefits and are key to fighting climate change, but mechanically you inherit all the problems from both sides.
There is no way you are driving a 25 year old car without serious maintenance like exchanging the timing belt. Add the frequent oil changes and all other yearly maintenance and it does add up.
Compared to a BEV, where you literally only need to change the break pads, and you may or may not need to change the battery, and the batteries keep outperforming the expected lifespan. BEV are simply mechanically much simpler devices.
Changing a timing belt is not serious maintenance. Just something that needs to be done at 100k. I just did the timing belt and water pump on my 300k tundra over the course of a weekend for 100 bucks.
> Hybrids are the worst of both worlds when it comes to maintenance.
While this seems intuitively true, I have some pushback, and I think that the reliability record of e.g older generations of Prius backs me up.
While you do have effectively two cars (an EV and an ICE) crammed into one, you’re not actually using both at full capacity all the time, which cuts down a lot on wear and tear. Your ICE is almost never run under load before it warms up, and is kept running at its most efficient rpm most of the time, your transmission is running under less load since it has help from the electric motors, and is often simpler (the aforementioned Prius does not have a reverse gear for example).
No it’s not nearly as simple as a BEV, but a well implemented hybrid system is absolutely an upgrade from a full ICE vehicle.
Personal experience backs up. Had a 2009 Prius, let it go because I did a terrible job handling rust buildup. Was still running great on the original battery pack with nearly 200k miles when we sold it.
Only significant problem was pothole related damage.
Unless it's -40F, modern cars don't need to "warm up".
>you’re not actually using both at full capacity all the time, which cuts down a lot on wear and tear.
In theory this should be true. In reality hybrids eat motors compared to the same engine in an ICE. That's just what happens you have two ways of making the vehicle go to potentially mask "something's funny" type issues and your customer base is people who are buying an appliance based on an MPG number and some math.
With competent ownership (fleet vehicles provide a lot of examples, lots of hyrbrid Fords from the 00s and early examples still around) they come out about the same as an ICE car so you essentially get the hybrid system "for free" from a maintenance perspective. But that's not the median consumer.
A modern Toyota hybrid doesn't have a transmission -- it's "eCVT" is basically a differential with a couple of embedded motors. It doesn't have a serpentine belt. It runs its engine in a highly efficient, highly reliable Atkinson cycle.
A modern Toyota hybrid is far more complex than an electric car, but the fact they are more reliable than a gasoline car is by design, not just good manufacturing.
> mechanically you inherit all the problems from both sides
Not really. The transmission is an e-CVT in hybrids which has no torque converter, the main part that breaks first in an automatic transmission. Unlike a regular CVT, the e-CVT has no belt, either. The e-CVT basically never breaks, so you basically never have a transmission go bad in a hybrid. On top of that, because the traction battery is so small, it's replaceable for $1-2k instead of $10k+ for a BEV. If anything, hybrids are the best of both worlds. Had you specified plugin hybrids you would have been correct.
> Compared to a BEV, where you literally only need to change the break pads
If you are not replacing your tires after decades, you and those around you should be fearing for their lives.
The Prius up until about 2016 uses a NiMH battery that is different than Lithium ones.