On this note: It was recently reported that Electrified vehicles in general outsold conventional ICE powered vehicles in Australia, claiming it has reached a 'tipping point' with consumers:
Consumers don't realize they are getting the worst of both worlds with added weight, complexity, repairs, inefficiency, and costs along with potential reliability (ex-Toyota) Not to mention studies that show PHEV owners frequently don't plug in.
Well those owners are idiots. That says nothing about the car. You can't exclude Toyota when you make the claim that hybrids are unreliable and inefficient either. They have proven that they can be reliable and efficient.
Hybrids aren't running around doing 30 miles a day with a 300 mile battery like most EVs. Talk about inefficient!
How many miles of long trips? A quick search gives me half of them are long distance (50+ miles).
Since the short trips can all be done very efficiently on battery (recovering all the braking, too), I guess the weight isn't much of an issue for commuting if you can have the rest -half of the total driven miles- on EV with a full battery vehicle.
I wish I could find numbers on eCO2/miles for the short vs long trips.
The problem is the limited charging infrastructure. Hybrid owners don't need to plug in for the vehicle to function so they yield available chargers to actual EVs. To get past this you would need ubiquitous charging infra.
PHEV owners only need to charge at home (and if they can’t, don’t need a PHEV) and use electric power for local commuting.
The future of BEVs (and the most practical today) is also charging at home, and available chargers can grow slowly with BEVs used for road trips. Tesla is pretty close to there already. So, chargers don’t need to ubiquitous, just a bit more available on less common road trip routes.
My main goal with buying an EV is to give the middle finger to the oil industry as they have meddled with the world too much.
They screwed public transit and entire nations just for profits. I love my Subbie and I'll keep that until it breaks apart and replace it with an EV. Maybe today there's many downsides to an EV, but I hope it evens up and maybe becomes even better to get one.
Indeed. I cannot charge my car at home so I drive a PHEV. I use public chargers when one is available on my street. If not, no problem. I’d say about 80% of my daily driving is done on the battery, which is a lot better than 0!
My Outlander rarely needed repairs and I always plugged it in. The car even complained about me needing to use the gazoline in the tank because it risked getting old in the tank and needed to be replaced. That was a great car. My new EV, a Subaru Solterra is great too though.
That’s simple not true. Studies have shown that historically hybrid vehicles have fewer issues than any other type, possibly because reducing the ICE use increases reliability overall more than adding the minimal EV complexity.
>Hybrids, which combine a gas engine, electric motor, and battery, have 15 percent fewer problems on average than gas-only cars. EVs and PHEVs have about 80 percent more problems on average than gas-only cars.
>“Many of the problems with EVs and plug-in hybrids are because they are newer designs compared to gas technology, so some kinks still continue to be worked out,” says Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. “By comparison, hybrids have been around for nearly three decades, and the technology is tried and true.”
About 2/3 of these are BEVs and the other 1/3 are PHEVs:
> In 2025, 34.4 per cent of Porsche cars delivered worldwide were electrified (+7.4 percentage points), with 22.2 per cent being fully electric and 12.1 per cent being plug-in hybrids.
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).
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
I have no garage and work from home. So no workplace to charge.
So now you’ve added another thing I have to worry about - finding charging somewhere along my 10 minute errand route?
EVs are a bad solution to a problem I don’t have. Hybrids are much better.
For the small amount of driving I do, driving my commuter ICE car with a tiny, 35-mpg 4 cylinder engine is fine… why are the EV cultists so convinced their way is the only way and the rest of us are living in prehistoric times?
Plus, your EV is heavier than my ICE, so your tires shed rubber particulate more quickly than my tires due to the weight, which is also an environmental pollutant (that is toxic enough to kill wildlife, btw)
>> I have no garage and work from home. So no workplace to charge.
So now you’ve added another thing I have to worry about - finding charging somewhere along my 10 minute errand route?
Your car lives somewhere when you're not doing errands. Expect a charging point there as demand for that grows.
Not to mention charging points at the mall, shops, restaurants and so on.
Clearly it will be a long time before EV replaces ICE completely. There was lots of horse infrastructure which changed when cars appeared.
But the pendulum is swinging and each motion there opens up new opportunities.
Also each motion has an impact on existing infrastructure. Expect gas stations to be less common, ditto for mechanics and so on.
>EV's produce 38% less tire & brake dust than ICE vehicles.
>non-exhaust emissions on an ICE vehicle are roughly 1/3 brake dust, 1/3 tire dust and 1/3 road dust. EV's have almost no impact on road dust, 83% lest brake dust and 20% more tire dust.
> though much of this is attributable to a vehicle mix that is more focused on larger vehicles, as it seems like every EV manufacturer is making huge SUVs and few are making small cars
My point exactly. Your new EV has more tire dust (and probably more brake dust) than my old, smaller ICE.
No. It's really easy to install charging points on office parking space and supermarket. You don't need to plug at home when half of the day the car is parked at places with chargers.
Not half a day, but BEVs are impractical today if you don’t have home charging, but throw in restaurants, movie theaters, doctor’s and dentist’s offices, and L2 charging starts to become a practical alternative for many.
In the short run. When I replaced my minivan with a PHEV my gas bill went down $200/month, my electric bill went up $30. Chargers where people park is a long term investment in lower costs for everyone. Hopefully chargers are everywhere in the future so we don't need the ICE at all. (I just bought a EV, I've barely had it a week and already have run out of battery - I was just able to reach a charger, but it required changing my route since there were none along the route I wanted)
No? I haven't seen a "peak oil" article or prediction in at least ten years. It would be GREAT to reduce our dependence, to make them cleaner, to make them more efficient, and to increase the use of renewables. But who is saying we have to "stop" oil and gas?
I was being a bit facetious, but I guess when either they're fortunate to live extremely close to a charger, or they have one in building, but then it seems like they'd be fighting for parking and charging space, which doesn't seem to me to compete favorably in terms of practicality. Or the housing market finally crashes and there's a viable path out of renting for those that want to do so.
When L2 errand charging becomes enough that they can keep up with daily travel by plugging in where they go and park for a while - restaurants,
movie theaters, retail stores, doctor and dentist offices, etc.
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.
Almost nobody is driving 200 miles to get to work. Almost everybody will move if their commute is more than half an hour - this is through out history and includes hunter gathers deciding to move the tribe, peasants walking to their field... There are a few people driving that far in the US, but either they are planning to move soon, or they don't expect the job to last long.
There are a lot of people driving more than 200 miles a day for work though. Many of them are in cars because their unique skills are why they need to be there (as opposed to delivery drivers who are bringing cargo).
There are also people who drive a long distance once a week. I know of a rural hospital that pays a lot of doctors to drive in on Thursday so locals don't have to go to the city. (they keep an ER, but the rest of the hospital is empty other than a few nurses the rest of the week)
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.
In US, gas stations barely make any profit on gas, its all from the convenience store, beer, water, lottery tickets, trinkets, souvenirs, etc. Costco, HEB, Walmart, etc also have gas and can run it as a loss leader for customers to compete with Amazon. As the number of gas consumers go down, gas stations everywhere will start shutting down, except the Costco/HEB/Walmart, because gas stations can't compete with those prices.
The U.S. saw over 210,000 stations in the early 1990s, dropping to around 145,000 by 2022, and potentially as low as 115,000 by 2020, according to various data points. Some estimates suggest a potential 50% reduction in traditional stations by 2050 in some regions: https://boosterusa.com/from-the-experts/the-inevitable-death...
Last time I read the financial reports for a gas station it was about 1/3 each, gas, tobacco, and food. Tobacco has gone way down since then, but the other two are still important. Gas is low margin, but high volume and so they make a lot of profit on it.
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)
Quick AI search suggests average car age in Norway to be 11.1-11.3 years, so indeed quite similar.
As for what would happen with gas station when EV's dominate, what already seems to be in progress here (not due to EV's, but other factors in the market) is that the "traditional" gas station serving stale coffee, snacks, and windshield wiper fluid are on the way out, replaced by either unmanned cold stations with just the pumps, or then by major roads large full-featured mini shopping malls with groceries, half-decent restaurant (sometimes several), and other shops. I think in a future EV world the cold stations would disappear but the higher end service centers would do fine.
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-...
>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 $30k new and can be readily bought for half that with used inventory.
You're right. There isn't a single legacy auto manufacturer in the US (Ford, GM, Stellantis) that can profitably sell an EV. Yet they make them anyway, and sell them for huge losses ($billions per year) because they have to meet mandates.
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....
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.
> 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.
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.
>> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Your Corolla is worse than a BEV because it puts way more GHG in the atmosphere, making net zero harder. Your opinion that the Corolla emits less GHG than a BEV is not borne out by the data. Most of the pollution of your car is from using it, not building it. EVs flip that and only are only slightly worse to produce. And we have to replace pretty much every road vehicle with a zero emission one, and sooner is better.
Buying the new EV, selling your old car, and helping push ICE vehicles off the roads is better than not replacing it in any reasonable environmental accounting.
Also, 15% is... a very significant percentage. You have to do lots of efficiency improvements across every part of the world to make net zero happen. Not to mention that slice of the pie would grow to 30-40% if electricity goes zero-carbon.
And we simply have the technology to zero it out. But, like you, most people want to invent a reason the green technology is actually bad.
