General Motors makes some really, really confusing decisions sometimes. For example, the company somehow thought customers buying a sensible car like a Chevy Equinox crossover would be interested in a diesel variant (a total bust, and everyone knew it would be); GM somehow thought it made sense to offer an Opel-derived Buick convertible (a very slow seller, and everyone knew it would be); and GM somehow thought that skipping hybrids in favor of fully-electric cars made sense (a silly move, and everyone knew it would be). Luckily, GM has now reversed course on its no-more-PHEVs stance, and now we’re getting new GM plug-in hybrids. Plus, we can expect many more from competitors as well, as everyone wisens up to the obvious fact that PHEVs make sense for the U.S., especially given battery-sourcing limitations. But here’s the thing: So far, America’s PHEVs haven’t been good enough. Here’s what I mean.
You’ll have to excuse me for giving GM a hard time. Maybe there was some carbon credits reason for the Equinox diesel; according to Automotive News GM does claim that the Buick Cascada “played its role in the portfolio perfectly, outselling many other premium convertibles while bringing in [six of every 10] buyers from outside GM” even though I don’t buy that it was anything but a flop; and maybe GM’s “no PHEVs” policy was based on some kind of solid data, but all of those seemed dumb at the time, and they ended up indeed being dumb in the end. Anyway, for this very first installment of the “David’s Takes” weekly Sunday op-ed, let’s have a look at the pure-EV range figures of some of America’s most popular plug-in hybrids:
- Jeep Wrangler 4xe: 22 miles
- Ford Escape plug-in: 37 miles
- Chrysler Pacifica PHEV: 32 miles
- Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe: 26 miles
- Hyundai Tucson PHEV: 33 miles
- Hyundai Santa Fe PHEV: 31 miles
- BMW X5 xDrive45e: 31 miles
- BMW 330e: 23 miles
- Toyota Prius Prime: 44 miles
- Lexus RX450H+: 37 miles
These numbers are pathetic.
Many of these cars don’t even have enough range to get the average American to work and back without recharging, and even if you can plug in these low-range PHEVs at work, plenty of Americans will still not be able to do a full home-work-home commute.
I myself have a 17-mile commute to work (that’s a little more than average, which I’ve seen listed at between 12 and 16 miles), and I own an electric car with 25 miles of range — similar to the Wrangler and BMW 330e PHEV. I can tell you straight up: That range is just not enough if you want to drive in EV-mode the vast majority of the time. If I can’t charge at work, I’m screwed; and if I’m going to go to the grocery store after work or pick up a friend from the airport or drive across town to hang out with friends on the weekend? Forget about it.
You might still be thinking: “Who cares? It’s a gasoline car that I can drive in electric mode sometimes to save gas, and if I have an at-home charger I can save money every day; it’s perfect!”
But that mentality is precisely my problem with the current crop of plug-in hybrids: They’re clearly gasoline cars first, electric cars second. The 30 miles or so of EV range is considered a nifty feature of someone’s otherwise gasoline vehicle. The issue, in my eyes, is that in America there are no plug-in hybrids that are electric cars first, gasoline cars second, and that needs to change. And I think — and this is just an opinion, as this is the first installment of the “David’s Takes” weekly Sunday op-ed — that transition point from gas car first to EV first starts to happen at about 50-100 miles of range.
And you know how many mainstream plug-in hybrids in the U.S. currently offer more than 50 miles of range? Zero.
I believe that the fastest way to get as many people driving electric as often as possible (ostensibly the U.S’s goal, since it should theoretically have positive climate change implications) is to offer range-extended electric cars — in other words, PHEVs that are electric cars first, gasoline cars second. And I think not offering these cars has jeopardized perhaps one of the biggest opportunities the auto industry has at having a positive climate impact.
The current crop of cars offered in the U.S. forces people interested in driving electric to choose between 30-mile PHEVs and fully electric cars. Lots of people don’t want to buy fully electric cars; this has been established, especially in recent news stories about softening demand and infrastructure concerns and range anxiety and cost, and on and on. So those people will buy a gas car and keep shooting CO2 and NOx into the air every time they get behind the wheel, or they’ll buy a 30-mile PHEV like the ones mentioned before.
Here’s the issue: PHEV critics argue against the technology because people just don’t charge enough. In fact, Consumer Reports writes that PHEV fuel consumption is higher than what’s on the sticker because of how infrequently PHEV owners plug in their vehicles:
“The fuel consumption of PHEVs in real-world usage is, on average, more than twice as high as EPA estimates,” says Georg Bieker, a researcher with the International Council on Clean Transportation Europe who studies PHEVs. That difference is largely because most PHEV drivers don’t charge frequently enough to maximize driving time on electricity and thus rely too much on the gas engine. Bieker says that, unsurprisingly, drivers who choose PHEVs with higher electric-only ranges tend to get higher real-world mileage.
No shit. Am I really going to recharge my PHEV every 25 minutes of highway driving during a road trip? That’s just far too much stopping; I’ll only be saving 1.5-ish gallons of fuel (depending upon the car) by plugging in, so the incentive just isn’t there. I’d rather just keep driving.
As for commuting, if I have at-home charging, sure, I’ll plug in. And even then, as I mentioned before, I probably won’t make it to work and back in my Jeep 4xe or BMW 330e. And in the winter if I lived somewhere cold? I might not make it to work and back in EV mode in any of the plug-in hybrids available on the market today. Not to mention, if I don’t have at-home charging, am I really going to run to a public charger every single day, or multiple times a day, to fill my little battery up? There’s no way in hell.
Now imagine a PHEV that — unlike those in the bulleted list above — is an electric car first and a gas car second. A car like, say, a 2014 BMW i3. It has a range of about 75 miles in pure electric mode. That will get me to work and back easily, and if I have to grab groceries or do an airport run, I’m still only ever using electricity. On road trips, I have an incentive to charge up, because that’s going to save me three gallons of gas (and as the PHEV range increases, so does this incentive. A 2020 BMW i3, for example, will go 120 miles, making plugging in even more worthwhile during a road trip). Plus, with my i3, I only have to plug in once every hour or so, and not once every 25 minutes as with a modern PHEV.
With my i3, if I have at-home charging, I just plug it in every night and I’ll basically never have to use gasoline unless I go on a rare road trip. If I don’t have at-home charging, the range is high enough to where I only have to go to a public charger at most, once a day, but if I’m just commuting I can charge once every two days and still only use electric-mode.
But with the death of the i3 (and the second-gen Chevy Volt, which actually offered 53 miles of EV-only range; quite impressive), if I want a car today that I can comfortably drive in EV mode 95 percent of the time, I have no choice but to buy a BEV. It means I’ll have to spend a bunch of money on a big battery that I’d probably use less than half of on a daily basis, meaning I’d be dragging around hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds of expensive, relatively-dirty-to-manufacture weight just so I can occasionally go on a road trip. This is silly.
Honestly, the way the industry has been trending towards humongous batteries so that folks can have long-range vehicles is absurd, and it’s not just me saying it. Here’s a quote from Jim Farley, via Green Car Reports, talking about how it doesn’t make sense for automakers, either:
“I have no idea what’s going on in this industry right now. All I hear is all these announcements of 450-mile range, a 500-mile range, there was another one today about a three-row crossover, it’s going to go electric. These batteries are huge; if you have those kind of batteries you will not make money.”
So if not everyone wants to drive a battery-electric vehicle (maybe because the range isn’t high enough, and that’s not something that will be fixed anytime soon without shoving in a massive battery, which we’ve established is dumb), but we as a society want to get lots of people sometimes driving electric as soon as humanly possible, the current PHEVs will work. But if we want to maximize the product of how many people we get driving electric and how often they’re driving electric (which is what would have the greatest climate impact), then it seems to me that we need to focus on higher-range PHEVs. And I think range-extended PHEVs make the most sense.
Range-extended PHEVs basically just use the gasoline engine as a generator. There’s no transmission, there are no driveshafts, the engine’s revs/load is a lot more predictable (meaning it can theoretically run at an efficient operating point more often than a typical ICE) — it’s simple, and it saves space, which is good, because that lets you easily fit in a battery that will get you 50 to 100 miles. The modern PHEVs on the bulleted list, though, are set up like gasoline cars — with transmissions and drivetrains that take up a lot of space. This adds complexity and, you would think, cost.
Actually, there is one brand that’s heading in the right direction in my view, and that’s Ram. The upcoming 2025 Ram Ramcharger will have a relatively modest 92 kWh battery (this is modest because EV pickups set up for towing have much larger battery packs to handle the range-hit. The Ram 1500 REV’s pack is a whopping 168 kWh) that will get you 145 miles in pure-EV mode when unladen. That’ll get me three or four days to and from work without having to recharge. This is reasonably practical whether I have at-home charging or not.
But when I need more range when towing or road-tripping, instead of having another 76 kW worth of expensive and dirty-to-mine lithium-ion batteries that I lug around for no reason 95 percent of the time, I have a V6 engine that I lug around for no reason 95 percent of the time. Depending upon how often one uses the gas motor, I bet this setup could be even environmentally friendlier than the fully-electric Ram 1500 REV with its huge battery pack, and part of me guesses that it’ll be cheaper, though that’s hard to know. (Maybe integrating that gas engine and generator is pricier than another 76kWh worth of batteries, but I don’t know).
Even if it’s not cheaper, this electric-first PHEV will be hugely appealing to folks not ready to make the full-EV plunge, and yet it will get them driving in electric mode probably 95 percent of the time. And isn’t that what the goal is (at least, in theory)?
Seriously, if the government’s goal is what they say it is — to get folks driving electric — then we need higher-range PHEVs, ideally relatively-simple, range-extended models that are clearly EVs first, gas cars second. If we can get reasonably-priced, 70-ish-mile PHEVs out there, I bet we’d see a lot more folks driving electric sooner than we think.
You nailed the reason I still driving a dino fueled car today. I considered a Volt, both gen 1 and 2 but the ev range did not meet half my commute in the summer. The charging infrastructure up here in the great while north sucks even today. As you pointed out there are no other realistic options available. In spite of not having to commute any longer, I do not anticipate jumping into the phev or bev market anytime soon as the manufacturers are not addressing my use cases.
Great kick of for a new feature!
Plug in AWD minivan
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I’m waiting on Ford to release an AWD PHEV Maverick. I hope it comes one day.
I don’t think it has the packaging room for that. I could be wrong
Ah, GM… The home of brilliant, forward-thinking engineers and automotive designers… Constantly hobbled by bean-counting, MBA-thinking, marketing-fad-driven management.
The Chevy Volt — and even earlier the all-electric EV1 — really show what GM is capable of doing with electric and hybrid vehicles. When EMD (Electo-Motive Division) was part of GM, they led the world in diesel-electric locomotives — the foundation of todays series hybrids.
They spun off EMD years ago because GM didn’t want to spend money on cleaning up the diesel engines that powered the electric drivetrains. They pulled back the EV1 fleet and killed the project even though the public was clamoring over what was one of the first modern and practical electric cars for fear that it would cannibalize their ICE fleet. They had everything they needed to lead the way, but as always, shortsighted management killed it.
At least every once in a while, GM lets R&D and engineering loose (or at least is too distracted to notice what they’re up to…) and they slip out some amazing cars into production that, collectively, enthusiasts get to enjoy for however long the ride lasts. Wouldn’t it be great if somebody at GM woke up and realized they ought to do that all the time?
Accurate take. Most PHEV’s don’t have more range than a 2011 Chevy Volt (35 miles). I had a 2014 Volt and was able to do most of my driving on electric and would often go months between trips to the gas station. I used around 40 gallons a year for my 5 years of ownership.
Our current 330e is a great car, but I’d love more than the 20 mile range (we have the xdrive, so it’s a bit less than the rwd). My wife has a 1 mile commute, but we make 2 trips to the high school per day (about 7 miles round trip each) and various errands, so we often use all the range in a day. We still manage to go about 5 weeks between fill-ups, but a bigger battery would be welcome, especially in the winter when the range drops to around 10 miles if we want to be warm in the car. I’d still buy the car again though. But I would have bought another Volt too, if that had been an option.
The thing a lot of people miss about the Volt, is that the battery took up the damn middle of the rear floor seat. Heck, the first gen was only a 4 seater. I’m not shitting on the Volt, but it’s obvious it had to make those compromises to get the range it had. And it’s obvious that most cars today aren’t going to do that. Now, given technology improvements, they should be able to hit ~35 miles of range without sacrificing interior packaging…
I think the practical limit to PHEV battery size is what can be fully charged overnight on a standard 15 amp 120V outlet. The Prius Prime takes 11 hours already, so there is not much more that can be done outside of higher efficiency.
Thought about this. I think most people who can afford PHEVs can afford a level 2 charger at home though
No need to upgrade electrical in the garage is a big selling point of the US. Some people like me have a detached garage where a level 2 is going to require trenching. I would suspect that the gasoline saved by extra people who would buy a PHEV that if it requires the least upfront investment possible would be greater than the gasoline saved by the people who would consistently use the extra range.
Level 2 charging is just another name for 220V that one uses for the dryer. If a person owns the land, it shouldn’t be a huge deal. Apartments / hoa is another story.
I charge my EV outdoors. If things go side ways, I want the first responders to have as much access to the EV and away from any structure as possible.
My detached garage that I get to from the alley is further away from the house than the driveway, so a car in the driveway on fire would almost certainly spread to the house which is 2 feet away but would be much less likely to spread from the garage that is 10 feet away from the closest point of the house. The panel upgrade and the trenching required to bury a new 240V line is going to cost multiple years worth of fuel savings even with the tax credit. Compare that to the immediate savings from using the plug that is already in the garage.
If I was going to go through the trouble of electrical work and contractors I might as well just get an EV like a used Bolt. This is not a unique situation where it would be much easier to just use the existing wires where the car gets parked. The number of people who have level 2 charging but need a PHEV is much lower than the people who have level 1 and want to make as little additional effort as possible. It is the path of least resistance.
I get what you’re saying. We didnt opt for a level 2 installation due to the fact that we never run our PHEV on gas on a typical day. It doesn’t provide any added convenience. I think our quote to have an electrician run the wire from our panel and install a 220V plug was $1200 or so excluding cost of the charger itself.
But if we needed more than 12hrs*12A*120V (typical evening of charging on a 15A circuit) = 17kWh per day, I think the $2-3k in level 2 charger would be worth it
Depending on your setup the L2 charger could be as little as 500 dollars. For 150 bucks my electrician dropped a 220 plug on the opposite side of my panel (which was in my garage) and I picked up a “juice box” from Craigslist for 250, so my L2 charger cost me 400 bucks. Parked in the driveway and ran the cord out to the car…. If you have an unused 220 dryer hookup (which I do in my current house) you could just be out the cost of the charger, which a new one right now at Walmart under 400.
I forgot, you can also get a federal tax credit of 30% for the purchase and installation of the charger..
That $1200 quote is not that bad. Let us try to estimate the payback period for a Prius Prime for that mythical commuter who could actually use 70 miles of electric range 5 days per week. This would be 25 extra electric miles per day, so 6500 extra miles per year saving 125 gallons of gasoline per year.
The gasoline would cost $412 at $3.30 per gallon and the extra electricity would cost $220 at $0.13 per kWh, so the savings is $192 per year. There would likely be some charging losses here so there should probably be a correction factor applied because the actual electric costs would be slightly higher. Even ignoring charging losses and the discount rate (putting that $1200 in an interest bearing account) we are looking at a payback period of 6.25 years. It is pretty hard to get people excited about saving money 7 years from now.
I am surprised to hear a Prius Prime takes 11 hours to charge on a 120 volt outlet. I can charge my Model 3 from 30 to 80% in around 14-15 hours on a 15 A 120V outlet, which gives me around 120 miles of range.
I don’t think 120V outlets should limit battery capacity, though. Realistically, cars spend a lot of time parked at home – presumably more than 11 hours most days. Even if you can only add 4 miles of range per hour (which is low from my experience owning a Leaf and a Model 3), a PHEV with a large battery would allow you to do the vast majority of driving without using gas since you wouldn’t use the battery’s full capacity most days. You can catch up on charging on days you drive less.
I’m dubious of this. A 15A 120V outlet is only rated to supply 1500W continuously, and 15 hours at 1500W is only 22.5 kWh. I don’t know exactly what your Model 3’s battery size is, but I’m pretty sure it’s more than 45 kWh, which means you are not getting 50% charge in that amount of time. Also, a full EV will be able to do a partial charge much faster than a PHEV can do a full charge, even for the same number of kWh, because the PHEV will have to slow down dramatically as it gets close to full.
My battery capacity is around 47 kwh (smallest possible battery with around 12% degradation). My last few charges were 40-79% in 12 hours, 23-76% in 16.25 hours, 32 to 80% in 14.5 hours, and 21-81% in 18 hours. I guess it is more like 15-16 hours to get ~50% of charge (which makes sense if an outlet is rated for 1500 watts continuous), assuming my app is accurate.
Whether it is 14 or 16 hours, though, my point is that a 120V 15A outlet can provide enough energy to allow you to cover most (if not all) of your daily driving needs. PHEVs should get bigger batteries.
Battery capacity where it can fully charge in 14 hours is the optimal amount. Charging plus 8 hours work plus 1 hour commute each way is 24 hours. Any more than that it will be more expensive than it needs to be for the greatest number of people.
I see your point, but my concern is that focusing on 120V charging time will lead to some PHEVs being less useful. A battery that can fully charge in 14 hours is going to be relatively small (~20 kwh). That would be a great size for small cars that get 3.5-5 miles/kwh, but far less useful for trucks/large SUVs that get closer to 1.5 mi/kwh.
Large SUVs/pickups will also benefit the most from being PHEVs. A pickup with an EV range of 80 miles will save the driver a lot of money on gas ($6.40 in electricity vs ~ $16 for gas to go 80 miles). You might need to install a 240V outlet to charge that truck, but the cost of that will be rapidly offset by lower fuel costs. Also, the added expensive of a larger battery will pay for itself over time in fuel savings in trucks (unlike in small cars where there is little economic benefit for a larger battery).
Trucks are probably unique because customers are less sensitive to initial purchase price. The lower fuel economy also makes the savings greater. With a Prius Prime charging for 14 hours that would be about a 60 mile range, and anything beyond that is 52 mpg. Going 80 miles would only require less than 1/2 gallon, so the savings for an infrequent activity are small.
Trucks would only have a 32 mile range. This might be enough for a base model with a larger battery pack as an option for people that would use it regularly. There are a lot of people with trucks that use them to commute less than 16 miles each way everyday just so they can use them to tow their boat during the summer (my brother is one of these people). When doing the savings calculations I think it needs to be 80 miles minus the 32 miles on a level 1 charger (marginal cost), so (using proportions on your numbers) 80 miles would cost $2.56 in electricity and $9.60 in gasoline for a total cost of $12.16 per 80 miles. Extra costs to go 80 miles compared to all electric are $5.76. Using this capability 25 times per year is $144 annual savings, so an extra 20 kWh of battery capacity at $120/kWh is going to take nearly 17 years to pay off even assuming the level 2 charger is free. The larger battery option would make sense if the extra capacity is getting used 100s of times per year, but for occasional out of town trips it is probably not worth it.
Gen2 Volt is about 12 hours, which is basically “plug in when you get home, unplug when you leave”. That’s at a 12A rate, but a dedicated 20A circuit could do 16A and cut that down even further to ~8.5hrs. That’s about 30-60 miles of real range overnight.
what we really need is a small car that can haul 4 people + a couple suitcases for 100 miles without recharging. That looks a lot like a 2-row SUV with a small motor turning a generator, and a battery sufficient to do the range.
A good thing to consider would also be automated charging, like a pad in the garage floor that charges the car by induction, or some other such.
I still do enough truck stuff in my life that I need a truck. I currently have a Ford Ranger which is about 90% of my needs covered, and a big battery in one of those is only going to reduce my payload, so while I’m kind of intrigued by a PHEV or even a full EV truck, we’re not there yet for me.
But the SUV I described above would be great for my wife.
We have a Pacifica PHEV and a manual 2019 Alltrack and GTI. I can’t think of the last time I drove one of the VWs. Something very satisfying about driving on electricity especially with our 10kW solar array. I am broken.
Yeah, would to see a 40-60mi range but even then we wouldn’t use it more than 1-2 times a month
We have a 2nd gen Volt as our wife mobile. It’ll reliably do 60 electric miles spring and fall. Summer and winter, with a higher HVAC load, it’s closer to 50. In our use case, the difference between a battery good for ~30-40 miles and one good for ~50-60 is the difference between her using gas almost every day and her almost never using gas. And IMO my wife’s use case is pretty boringly typical of a whole lot of commuters.
Every month GM emails me a basic little statistical report. Last month the car was driven a little over 900 miles and used a little under a gallon of gas.
It’s an absolute crime that GM put that powertrain in one and only one vehicle and then gave up on it. Just insanity.
They put variations of the Voltec powertrain in a few other cars in the US, but they weren’t big sellers (CT6 PHEV, ELR, and the Malibu hybrid). But still a crime that it wasn’t used more and that they didn’t continue their lead in the tech.
They weren’t big sellers because they only put them in (relatively speaking) slower selling configurations. Back when the Volt came out, SUVs were already getting extremely popular and sedan sales were shrinking year after year. I blame the majority of the Voltec’s death on the fact they never put it in a CUV/SUV. I’d bet good money that a voletec powered Equinox would have greatly outsold the Malibu hybrid, same goes for the XT5 or XT6 vs the CT6 and ELR.
I’m with you David. We Australians love our Hilux and Ranger sized pickups and our Landcruisers and Patrols. Most families own 2 cars, so one could be electric for commuting, and one could be diesel for towing. (This is what I personally intend to do eventually). For some reason though, the mentality is every car “needs to be able to do everything or it’s useless!” So we end up with F-150 Lightning type trucks that weigh as much of a planet and get terrible range when towing.
Why not equip these big vehicles (one of which I own, as my handle suggests) with a locomotive style, diesel electric drivetrain. Give it enough battery for 100km or so of city range. Then, on the weekend when you want to tow your boat or caravan, or go off roading, fill the tank of the “generator” with diesel. Win-win!
Why diesel? If the engine is not actually connected to the wheels, any advantage that diesel has over gas goes away. Is diesel fuel cheaper than gasoline in Australia or something?
Diesel fuel here in Australia is now about as expensive as the highest-octane petrol option at the pump.
Most work vehicles (SUVs, vans, dual-cabs) are diesel or come with a diesel option because it has been preferred here for decades, especially by farmers and mining as they get various incentives on diesel and it makes it easier to run a business like that with just one fuel type in the storage tanks for big trucks/tractors on down to the small engines.
Diesel could work just as well for a hybrid, though with the Prius famously using the Atkinson cycle I don’t know if it would be more efficient than petrol.
With Atkinson cycle the efficiency would be close to the same, and requires less expensive emission control equipment. In the US at least fuel costs and maintenance costs would both be higher using diesel.
Yeah, good question. Typically diesel is more popular for these large pickups and 4WD’s as they get better fuel economy than their petrol powered alternatives. My diesel Pajero, for example, gets 9.0-10L/100km whereas the gasoline V6 alternative will use 15-16L/100km. (So we’re talking 23-26mpg for diesel vs 14-15mpg for gas). I don’t know if this would be the same for a series hybrid setup, like I mentioned, in a locomotive but given they are diesel and stationary generators are, I’m willing to bet it would.
I haven’t been over to the US (only Europe) but my understanding is all fuels are orders of magnitude cheaper in America than they are here.
There are 2 reasons the diesel gets fuel economy. The fuel itself contains more energy, and the engine operates at higher efficiency. In a series hybrid set up, the gas engine can be tuned to have less power and only be run at the most efficient engine speed, so it is much closer to the efficiency of the diesel.
In the US diesel is much more expensive, even on an energy content adjusted basis. I thought there might be some cultural differences going on.
Cultural? Nah! Unless our collective tendency to enjoy saving a buck counts as cultural.
As Lawrence said, generally Diesel has price parity with premium unleaded. Though some days, like today, diesel is cheaper than regular unleaded. And the moment in my city diesel costs around $1.95/litre, regular unleaded is $2.11. So the regular unleaded is $AU 7.78 per gallon, (or $US 5.21) as of today.
The other factor at play is we have very lax emissions and fuel economy standards here – the lowest in the developed world. The filthy, sooty vehicles that can be sold here would never fly in North America and would make Europe blush! Our diesel fuel itself is also dirty, having more sulphur content than other developed nations.
The political will to change all this is currently not there. While there is talk in parliament right now of bringing our fuel efficiency and emissions standards up to something less disastrous, the last time the party currently in power proposed the such things, it cost them an election. They will not have forgotten this.
The station down the street from me is selling regular gasoline for $3.28 per gallon and diesel for $4.20 per gallon (3.78L). This is actually the lowest spread I have seen in years, so the diesel shortage must be easing. If I am doing my conversions right, this is $AUD 1.33/L for gasoline and $AUD 1.70/L for diesel. If you are lucky you might save enough in fuel costs with diesel to afford the $3.99 per gallon DEF fluid.
DT is dead on. If Mazda brings the MX-30 R-EV here, that should give around 50 miles of pure ev range with that sweet rotary range extender. What it needs then is the right marketing campaign. EV all the time except long trips or something like that. Makes everyone happy. Take that road trip to the sticks without fear. Then run pure ev for your commute when you get back.
I had a Pacific PHEV for a couple weeks while our van was in the body shop and the 30 miles on EV was (in most cases) enough to handle a day of driving without having to use gas. I only used an 8th of a tank of gas the whole time I had it and this is with us being a one car household at the time.
If 30 to 40 miles on EV alone means a much more affordable PHEV then I’m for it. I would also appreciate Toyota and Honda to offer a PHEV van…
I’m also surprised (but also not) that GM invested so much in the Volt without bothering to bring that tech to other vehicles. Imagine the head start they could have had in the PHEV game. But I blame the shortsighted MBA bean counters on that one. The same type that have pretty much ruined Boeing.
I’m not so sure the government’s goal is what they say it is. But I do know that Stellantis’ goal is to make money and if they are making a PHEV truck you can bet it will make money.
I will say the pentastar 3.6 seems large for its purpose. Don’t they have something smaller sitting in the parts bin somewhere?
I wonder if that’s a marketing thing, and they think truck buyers wouldn’t go for a smaller engine even if it’s just being used as a generator?
I suspect it needs to be bigger because trucks have to be able to generate enough power to tow at their rating and probably up a sustained grade too. So it’s very different than a PHEV car. If I buy a RAM PHEV it would be used to tow our camper.
Interesting point, I wonder what are the requirements to determine PHEV tow rating, EV only? Gas only combined? Maybe we can get an article on it on the Autopian.
It probably depends on how much buffer they leave in the battery. In the Volt, it had a mountain mode button that you were supposed to hit about 10 minutes before going up a mountain and it would run the engine to charge up the battery to give it enough battery to assist because the engine couldn’t run the electric motor at full power. During normal operation it would just use a buffer in the battery for acceleration and then restore that buffer through braking or running the engine.
They did have one, the 3.2 used only in the Cherokee, but it never got the 3.6’s upgrades for efficiency. It was a basic, generic V6 that revved to 6,750rpm.
In ’16/’17, the 3.6 got a host of updates and upgrades, including the full ability to run the Atkinson cycle, which is what the Pacifica hybrid already rocks IIRC. That’s probably the reason why they’ll use the 3.6: run it in Atkinson permanently.
I seem to recall a lot of the 2nd gen Volt fans crowing about how they only had to fill up maybe twice a year and even that was only because the car was programmed to consume the gas to keep it from going bad.
If that’s true 53+ miles of EV only range should be just fine for most anyone.
America’s Plug-In Hybrids Aren’t Good Enough
On this though I agree. PHEVs need to be able to power and heat a house during a blackout, preferably while running on NG or propane.
The best PHEVs for efficiency start as what amounts to city BEVs with <100 Mile ranges, with a quality range extender engine.
The Future I’d want for PHEVs is little generator units that are X size dimensionally with a built in fuel tank, cooling system, etc. like a regular generator. That way if your generator unit needs to be serviced, replaced, etc. all you need is an engine hoist and 15 minutes of time for removal and installation. Diesel, gas, propane, natural gas, hydrogen, the fuel possibilities are endless. If you don’t want an ICE generator option an electric variant of the same thing, or chose to use the empty space for storage.
As it stands currently basically every current PHEV out there is useless without a functioning engine due to the low BEV only range and the fact that the engine is an integral part to modern PHEVs.
That being said so long as PHEVs are going to have dedicated ICE engines and the batteries are liquid cooled I’d make sure to make use of the engine coolant for heating of the battery pack on cold days and such.
This is a fairly complete assessment of where we sit at the moment. Thank you, David. I think what we need to emphasize, is that series PHEVs, like the upcoming RamCharger are where it’s at. Both for simplicity in design/operation, and because they will be inherently less expensive to build and maintain. Regarding the ‘lugging around the V6 engine’ bit though. This is where moving to a combined rotary/genset which is designed to run at peak efficiency will really pay off. Much less weight than a piston engine per unit output, and easier to package as well. Also, when you consider that the ICE engine and fuel are otherwise going to need to be replaced by battery packs, the genset and fuel weight actually would be less than a comparably increased capacity battery. So in the end, it would still probably be lighter. Additionally, it would be possible, with something like Ford’s Lightning, to have a removable ICE genset in the frunk area which could just be dropped in when you needed it. Of course, that would require garage storage, and a mechanism to lift/drop. But for jobbers with a couple trucks and a garage already, that is still a doable sort of thing.
DT you forgot the Volvos.
I’ve got a 2016 XC90 T8–> It’s got 44 miles of range and 400hp. Utterly fantastic vehicle. It’s got the most complicated drivetrain I’ve ever seen in my life, so it astounds me how smoothly it all integrates together.
Big fan of the Volt and that really bothered me that they dumped it for the Bolt, which was a very different vehicle.
Many of these PHEVs had to work to complement a platform that was primarily ICE, so to me that’s why we see what we see on the market. For example, the Volvos were primarily FWD cars, and the EV portion mainly activated the rear wheels. The primary drivetrain of the platform was an ICE and the EV portion was indeed shoehorned in as a secondary engine. Now that we’re starting to get comfortable with EVs, perhaps GM and others who bet the farm on EVs might start offering the opposite–vehicles that were primarily EVs with the ICE range extenders for it’s PHEV versions.
The least expensive and least complicated way to do this is to make a series hybrid that has a traction pack sized/selected to continuously make the peak power of the electric motor, while a small gas tank and low-powered/small-displacement gasoline ICE can be turned on at the operator’s discretion. This would necessitate a battery pack that is light and with good power density, but may only be 10-12 kWh in size. Enough for a streamlined 5-seat sedan to get 80+ miles highway range and 50+ miles city range, without having to turn the gasoline ICE on.
The gasoline ICE only needs to be large enough to make enough power required to sustain the maximum cruising speed the operator is expected to use. Lets say, 5 mph more than the highest legal speed limit in the USA. So 90 mph cruising speed would be a good target to shoot for. The vast majority of the population drives well below this.
In turn, this also means that a more aerodynamic car can make use of a less-powerful engine, and that engine can be sized to run more efficiently than a larger one(less pumping losses, less friction losses, ect.). And because the ICE is not powering anything directly, it doesn’t need a transmission and can be run like a generator, at constant speed but with varying torque. So a more slippery car will compound the efficiency of using fossil fuels on longer trips.
The 1st gen Chevrolet Volt, for all of its faults, did some things right.
Another advantage of making the car an V first, ICE second, is that makes producing/selling a pure EV variant with long range even easier. The platform and parts can be mostly shared, keeping production value high, allowing the economy of scale to reduce manufacturing cost.
I think BMW has your last point figured out. I remember them getting a lot of flak initially for not going all-in on skateboard EV chassis, but their currently class of platforms seems to let them do the whole spectrum from pure ICE to pure EV without compromise.
I’m curious what you think the Volt’s faults are. It could’ve become the default vehicle of taxi fleets and ridshare operators if they’d squeezed a fifth seat in. Even so, I think it’s arguably the best piece of engineering in modern GM production history.
I’d say its biggest faults are having complex proprietary software that lock out DIY mechanics, coupled with choosing style over low drag. Like the Bolt that came after it, its Cd value is worse than the average new car, and this leads to it having less all-EV range and less fuel economy when using the ICE(40 mpg isn’t exactly remarkable). Which in turn leads to consistent deeper-discharges on the battery than would otherwise be experienced, leading to a reduction is service life. And the fact that DIY mechanics and local mechanics without special tools can’t replace the battery or EV drive system in the car if something goes wrong, means many of these Volts ended up as landfill fodder in spite of the vast majority of the cars having mostly excellent parts.
Albeit, I suppose the DIY EV crowd should be thankful for all of the surplus drive systems and Volt battery packs available in salvage yards to strip for parts. I know of a lot of ebike builders that have taken apart Volt packs and repurposed them, and EV conversion hobbyists that have done the same with both packs and drive systems in classic cars with great success.
“ Enough for a streamlined 5-seat sedan to get 80+ miles highway range and 50+ miles city range, without having to turn the gasoline ICE on.”
That’s really not how EV range works. Consumption is almost entirely a function of speed (and drag is proportional to velocity squared), so highway mileage will almost never be better than city milage (barring edge cases like sitting in totally unmoving traffic in the freezing cold and having to run resistance heat).
With a slippery enough body, a midsize sedan could be made to consume 150 Wh/mile at at a steady 75 mph on flat ground. A larger car like the Mercedes Vision EQXX concept came close to that in the real world. There are other more obscure vehicles that prove the concept(eg. Dave Cloud’s “Dolphin”, getting 200 miles range on a literal ton of flooded lead acid golf cart batteries. And regarding Electrathon entries and overall vehicle efficiency, Dave Cloud is quite a rabbit hole to dive into regarding EV conversion history and custom vehicle lore).
I’m glad David put these thoughts in digital print so I can finally stop screaming pretty much exactly this into the void.
Long range PHEVs likely have the lowest cradle to grave CO2 emissions for the average American consumer. And unlike pure EVs right now, automakers already know how to make a desirable and affordable long-range PHEV. Chevrolet already did it, now RAM is doing it, and Toyota could give the Prime line the long range treatment.
And of course Mazda can continue promising a rotary-powered PHEV (or really a rotary-powered anything) and then breaking my heart by failing to release it in the US. Gets me every time.
I still think it’s coming. Stay strong. Believe…
They do not. But there’s enough overlap that it doesn’t change your main point.
This really all depends on use case. The RAV4 Prime is a great vehicle for my wife and I. She can commute to work and back twice on a charge, and we can take it on trips without relying on public charging. Where we live in southern NY, public charging (except Tesla) is unreliable to nonexistent. We have had ours for nearly two years now, and it has been great. We used public charging once in that time, and then it was really only for a better parking spot.
Take the Volt drivetrain with a bigger battery.
I bet the enginerds at GM have been having this discussion lately.
I have a 2nd gen Volt. My commute is 100km roundtrip, mostly at 115 km/h. In the summer I get 80-90 km of the commute on the battery.
I end up putting 25l of gas every 4 months.
GM has the recipe in it’s cookbook.
People will be happy to use EVs when they can stop at any Battery Swap station, pull through the swap lane drive-thru while a robot swaps out packs, then they can go park and go pee and get a snack and hit the road. It would not be all that different than that thing we call a gas station.
Of course it would take a mandated pack shape that is stackable (load 1-6 packs depending on the range you need). It would also need a mandated plug and voltage regulator. Imagine if a carmaker started building vehicles that also had swap stations. People might buy them since the car wouldn’t need the expensive battery. You could have a true $30k BEV and just rent the battery packs.
This will happen when hydrogen takes off — never.
You’re correct. Battery swap would require way too much human oversight on a continuing basis (thus making it far too expensive) to make it functional and reliable.
The untimely death of the Volt was a real blow to getting more people driving electric. It was viable, sustainable, and affordable. It was the perfect “gateway PHEV” people could actually afford and drive without any big penalty.
I don’t know what the majority of automakers are doing or thinking, except, presumably, something cynical or foolish.
This makes total, absolute sense. The industry designs entire product lines based on dumb marketing driven by features, as opposed to real world usage scenarios. So wasteful and sad – it’s an affluence thing, and combined with lack of public charging infrastructure – this is where we are today. I speak for the US only, of course.
Having driven a first gen Volt for about 7 years, and now owning a RAV4 Prime (my wife is the primary driver) I tend to think ~40 miles is about the right sweet spot in terms of a minimum.
The R4P gets more than 50+ for a good chunk of the year, so long as it’s not too cold.
But ultimately it just comes down to individual needs – how long your commute is, etc. During the life of the volt I had a 55 mile each way commute, a 5 mile round trip, and a work from home job – the vehicle was perfect for some of those situations…maybe not for others (had my company installed a L2 charger…the long commute would have been OK).
In my current situation, I just don’t drive much – except when I drive to northern Michigan (250 miles each way) 5-10x a year (to visit parents / do up north things). So even something with 20 or so electric miles would be just fine.
I’m intrigued by the new RAM you mention, but there is no way in hell I’m ever buying something that complicated made by Stellantis.
If the standard range for PHEV’s ever gets to 50-75miles…great. But I think the RAV4 Prime, and the Volt for that matter, were just about perfect in their approach. My only complaints with the RAV is the pathetic 3.3kw L2 charging, and the lack of one pedal driving. But the hybrid system works really great – the gas engine hardly ever kicks on. The Volt required less maintenance, and had a one pedal mode (sort of), but the engine would kick on a lot more.
David, I’ve been blowing this horn since the original EV1. I hope people listen to you.
one step forward, two steps back.