I used to like hybrids, and obviously series hybrids are the coolest kind of hybrids, but now that I’m driving a budget EV, I honestly don’t see the point anymore. Just get the EV and skip the awkward half-way step that inherits the most expensive and complicated parts from both designs.
Seeing a sleek modern car pull away whisper quiet and then start the ICE 3 seconds later with a stutter and a puff of water vapor from underneath is the most schizophrenic sight, it somehow feels more dated than actual ICE cars.
Unless you live in bumfuck nowhere with expensive electricity, zero solar power and a daily 5 hour commute, an EV will likely work just fine for you.
Given that you only really need 240 volts (or maybe 3 phase longer term), I don't see why every parking space, street, public and private can't have a power socket.
It's already happening in some places, maybe one day it'll be mandated.
I briefly worked with some people trying to "solve" this in the US. There's two major obstacles:
1: The power company is slow as molasses making new connections.
2: The networking protocols used for billing are "creative" and unreliable. This is why many EV charging stations don't work or don't take credit cards. (Basically, the protocol has too many options and spends far too much effort on pointless certificate exchanges.)
Building on that...
> I don't see why every parking space, street, public and private can't have a power socket.
Because if everybody plugs in at roughly the same time (think of everyone arriving home from work in the evening,) load will go much higher than the electrical service can handle. No modern apartment building or parking garage simply has enough wiring and transformers to handle all that: It requires the chargers to coordinate among themselves to artificially slow themselves down to keep the load low enough so it doesn't trip a breaker somewhere.
> It requires the chargers to coordinate among themselves to artificially slow themselves down
This alone would be a deal breaker for me - get home from work and plug-in to get ready for a long drive later that evening or the next morning only to find that the charging was slow and I wasn't fully charged? No thanks.
No residential charger, whether that's home or apartment building, is powerful enough to charge your vehicle that fast. You would need to go to a supercharger or equivalent. (Edit: A charge that fast would require more than 200 amp service.)
Besides why would you drain your battery during the day, go home, and then drain your battery again? That's a lot more mileage than you realize. (Edit: You got to stop to pee sometime, that's when you charge.)
Anecdotally, I've never heard this. I have an American hybrid from 10+ years ago with 90K miles and it's been super reliable. (Knock on wood...)
This isn't born out in the data, non-plugin hybrids are more reliable than ICE according to Consumer Reports.
> 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.
A lot of EV/PHEV problems likely come down to them being much newer designs with issues that still need to be to work out, but hybrid vs. ICE is pretty clear. The e-CVTs, HV accessories, and simpler, less-stressed engines (no turbos which are quite common in efficiency focused ICE) enabled by hybrid drive-trains are big boons for reliability.
Toutouxc · · focus · HN ↗
Seeing a sleek modern car pull away whisper quiet and then start the ICE 3 seconds later with a stutter and a puff of water vapor from underneath is the most schizophrenic sight, it somehow feels more dated than actual ICE cars.
Unless you live in bumfuck nowhere with expensive electricity, zero solar power and a daily 5 hour commute, an EV will likely work just fine for you.
gwbas1c · · focus · HN ↗
IMO, if you have a place to charge it, go EV. (I have a two-car garage for mine.) Otherwise, stick with ICE until the charging situation improves.
nutjob2 · · focus · HN ↗
It's already happening in some places, maybe one day it'll be mandated.
sugarkjube · · focus · HN ↗
Where I live many requested powergrid connections are put on hold permanently due to lack of capacity.
Schiendelman · · focus · HN ↗
gwbas1c · · focus · HN ↗
1: The power company is slow as molasses making new connections.
2: The networking protocols used for billing are "creative" and unreliable. This is why many EV charging stations don't work or don't take credit cards. (Basically, the protocol has too many options and spends far too much effort on pointless certificate exchanges.)
Building on that...
> I don't see why every parking space, street, public and private can't have a power socket.
Because if everybody plugs in at roughly the same time (think of everyone arriving home from work in the evening,) load will go much higher than the electrical service can handle. No modern apartment building or parking garage simply has enough wiring and transformers to handle all that: It requires the chargers to coordinate among themselves to artificially slow themselves down to keep the load low enough so it doesn't trip a breaker somewhere.
vdqtp3 · · focus · HN ↗
This alone would be a deal breaker for me - get home from work and plug-in to get ready for a long drive later that evening or the next morning only to find that the charging was slow and I wasn't fully charged? No thanks.
gwbas1c · · focus · HN ↗
No residential charger, whether that's home or apartment building, is powerful enough to charge your vehicle that fast. You would need to go to a supercharger or equivalent. (Edit: A charge that fast would require more than 200 amp service.)
Besides why would you drain your battery during the day, go home, and then drain your battery again? That's a lot more mileage than you realize. (Edit: You got to stop to pee sometime, that's when you charge.)
booty · · focus · HN ↗
enragedcacti · · focus · HN ↗
> 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.
A lot of EV/PHEV problems likely come down to them being much newer designs with issues that still need to be to work out, but hybrid vs. ICE is pretty clear. The e-CVTs, HV accessories, and simpler, less-stressed engines (no turbos which are quite common in efficiency focused ICE) enabled by hybrid drive-trains are big boons for reliability.
<a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/electric-vehicles-are-less-reliable-than-conventional-cars-a1047214174/" rel="nofollow">https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...