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.
Part of the reason sentiment towards range extended EVs is so sour in the US is regulatory.
In order to maximize the advantages for tax and fleet emissions in the US, a range extender can’t be powerful enough to operate the vehicle indefinitely on ICE power as a series hybrid.
This has created a substantial disincentive to build what seems on the surface to be the obvious best and easiest path forward to more combustion emissions free miles driven
David, David, David…Aren’t you the copy editor? Sheesh.
A good use for AI. Hey ChatGPT, please read this text and flag any errors. Don’t let it rewrite, just fix the damned typos.
I use it like that all the time. Flag errors, typos and any places lacking clarity. Provide the reason why it’s highlighted and 3 alternative examples.
I had a 2nd generation Chevy Volt for many years until someone ran into it and it was totaled. It often got better than the rated 53 EV miles of and it was very efficient in EV mode. We saw on average around 4 miles per kWh in EV mode. A slightly bigger vehicle with 50-60 miles of EV range would be a very useful for a lot of people until EV charging infrastructure is built out and pure EV cost some down a bit.
With hindsight, GM’s decision to go all-in on BEVs wasn’t the best call, but they had some good reasons to make that decision at the time:
Correction to #1:
ConsumerInvestor sentiment –Car buyersTrend-chasing investors were more excited about pure-EVs than hybrids. In March 2020, when GM announced the Ultium Platform,everybodyhedge-fund manager was going gaga for Tesla.Make no mistake, this 99% of the reason many mainstream mfgs made huge investments in BEVs.
Investors are a major force. They like EVs because it’s something new (re: hype) and because they represent potentially greater profit margins. However, it is absolutely a consumer draw. EV market share of new cars sold continues to grow by a couple percentage points every year.
Investors wouldn’t be so all-in on BEVs if there was no consumer appetite. This isn’t like “AI” or “blockchain” booms where companies can slap a buzzword on existing products or startups can continually promise vaporware until the VC bros find something else. Nikola and Lordstown Motors both tried that and failed miserably. There has to be some kind of real market support for the concept before the investors start making those demands.
Oh no doubt they weren’t just going by the seat of their pants; some of these make a lot of sense.
I’m not sure, though, that I agree on point 1. Tesla is Tesla. An anomaly. Just because everyone talks about Elon and his EVs doesn’t mean everyone wants a GM EV. It doesn’t work that way.
To many, making the jump from gas to BEV is a humongous one given infrastructure/charging rate/price limitations. A plug-in quells those concerns, and has always seemed like the way to get the most people driving electric as quickly as possible.
The Ramcharger seems great.
Do you have any concerns about it being a firstish offering of that type from Stellantis?
Because, while I might buy that vehicle, it makes my teeth itch thinking about the manufacturer.
Long as they work with a solid supplier and do their DFMEAs right, they’ll hopefully build something that lasts
I think we tend to overemphasis the cult of Tesla and their anomaly status – especially post Model 3. That’s when they showed there was sustained mainstream interest in BEVs even beyond the tech set. If I’m GM and I see that little guy that bought my crappiest old factory jump 300% YOY and start outselling brands like Acura on the strength of an appliance grade BEV sedan, I’d see a pretty strong case for near-immediate demand.
I don’t think you’ll find many people here that disagree. Charging infrastructure is woefully inadequate, even if EV hotspots like Socal/Bay Area. Initial cost of acquisition is also too high in most cases. GM was clear in their announcements they thought they could drive down costs rapidly through the Ultium program. Poor charging infrastructure was a major oversight and they should have had better plans to address that concurrently with BEV rollout, but automakers aren’t used to having to worry about something like that since about 1915.
Even if you don’t like Elon and I for one don’t agree with his politics, Tesla is the only auto maker that has built a BEV that can replace a gasoline vehicle. I’ve had 2 Teslas and all we drive is EVs now. It is literally no problem to hop in the Tesla and drive a 2000 mile trip without any worries or any special planning. Just put the destination into the nav and go. No other EV can do that currently. Tesla figured out that you need a reliable and widely available fast charging infrastructure to make an EV a practical car. I’d happily consider a non-Tesla EV as soon as that manufacturer has a NACS charge port and can use the Tesla Supercharger system. Until then no other EV is viable. I’ve cancelled my Cadillac Lyrik reservation but will be taking a look in a year or so when they have the NACS port. We had a Volt and know that GM can make efficient electrical powered vehicle. At some point 3rd party fast chargers will be reliable and widely available but counting on them now can be a gamble.
So, you’re describing a Mazda MX-30 with range extender… a vehicle that is widely derided as “why did they bother” in the same vein as the criticism of GM decision making at the beginning of the article. Maybe it would be more helpful and make more sense on paper, just as a diesel Equinox, or GM’s two-mode hybrid trucks and full-size SUV’s of the mid-2000’s did, but that clearly doesn’t guarantee market acceptance
The MX-30 launched here as an expensive, low-range BEV, which doomed it.
Didn’t the BMW i3 launch the same way?
It was at least launched about 10 years earlier, so that is at least more acceptable.
Meanwhile in China, Wuling (one of GM’s local partners) offers a hybrid sedan that does almost 100 miles of pure-EV range (and DC fast-charges) for less than 15K USD. I’ve seen them in the flesh on the streets, they’re absolutely not vaporware. Can’t GM license the tech and bring/build it stateside for less than 30K?
If they could federalize it reasonably, I don’t see any reason why not. I highly suspect GM is going to lean heavily on their Chinese partners for components, sub-assemblies, R&D assistance, and event completed vehicles. I don’t see any reason why there couldn’t be a handshake between SAIC-GM and GM-Korea where Chinese PHEV tech is grafted into existing models like the Encore GX, Envista, Trax, and Trailblazer for the North American market.
If anyone in the Big Three is going to rely on their Chinese partners for PHEV tech it’s probably gonna be GM. SAIC and Wuling are going all in on PHEVs and BEVs, from dirt-cheap to uber-luxury. Changan (of Changan-Ford) is doing a decent job in the Chinese EV race, while Jiangling (of Jiangling-Ford) doesn’t seem to be doing anything EV-wise. Meanwhile all Chrysler/Stellantis does here is sell Wranglers and Maseratis (They did do a deal with Leapmotor so they’ll have some connections there)
Article is spot-on, and I agree but it does give me a bit of pause…
Doesn’t our ethanol-mixed gas go bad in some of the timeframes we’re talking about here? When you go through one tank of gas in six months do you start to worry about the gas clogging injectors and whatnot? Is diesel a better option here just for longevity of the fuel?
That was solved with PHEV’s over a decade ago by forcing the engine to run every once in a while for just that purpose, and hasn’t seemed to be an issue since the engine still starts occasionally for things like providing heat in the winter when more efficient to do so etc. Plus, its not like gasoline (with or without ethanol) suddenly becomes inflammable or instantly junks stuff up in that timeframe, its just that it absorbs some moisture which can mean the amount of fuel injected needs to increase for a certain amount of air to keep the AFR correct, and the spark timing may need to be advanced to account for the slower flame speed, both of which are well within the closed-loop capabilities of modern engine controls.
Running the engine every now and then doesn’t solve the fuel going stale issue unless it runs enough to burn a whole tank of fuel relatively frequently, which kinda defeats the purpose of a hybrid that burns a minimal amount of fuel.
I bet it depends a lot on humidity, but in my dry climate, ethanol fuel usually lasts a year plus if stored well. I imagine the 6 months or less happens in humid places.
Part of running the engine is meant to consume the stale fuel, so yes, it does. At least in the Volt, the engine will be forced to run once a year or so enough to burn through a tank by design to avoid this specific problem. One tank per year is still pretty minimal…
Ome tank a year is pretty minimal, but as discussed, in some places fuel goes stale in as little as three months. So the engineers would probably want to be conservative and make sure it burns through fuel at least that fast. Which, depending a LOT on your driving habits, could be a 100% increase in fuel used.
Is gas going bad actually an issue in the real world? I’ve heard lots of talk about it, but mostly of the “everyone says” variety.
Looking at my spreadsheet for my hooptie fleet, one did 456 miles last year, another did 842 miles and both did similar numbers in 2022. I haven’t had any issues with gas going bad.
Exactly, I think real-world degradation over these timespans is a lot lower than people generally think, and the way in which it degrades over that time is different. I’ve had times where either the RX-7 or RX-8 hasn’t run for a while (about 2 years for the RX-7, 10 months for the RX-8), and I didn’t take any special precautions regarding the fuel. In both cases, once the engine was back together and in the car, they fired up without issue and ran fine.
There would be some variation in old vs. fresh gas, but nothing that closed-loop O2 correction couldn’t handle. You’ll likely see some loss of volume due to vaporization (most of which is captured in a modern vehicle), and what’s left in the tank would skew slightly towards heaver HC’s which could be harder to vaporize when cold.
However, injectors still tend to do a good job at this, especially high-pressure direct injection systems. Plus, those lighter HCs are trapped in a charcoal canister and are typically released into the intake during starting and warm-up to help combustion stability already.
Add some ethanol, and it can absorb water, further diluting the fuel, but again this would be compensated for by the closed-loop O2 correction. The ethanol could also separate from the fossil gasoline if you left it a very long time, but recirculating-type fuel systems will pretty quickly re-mix it even if the vehicle is stationary.
Fuel economy would probably be a little bit worse depending on speed and load due to a longer burn duration and non-ideal spark timing, but not enough to be very noticeable. Its not like gasoline suddenly turns to sludge after 3 months that’ll plug up any fuel injector and pump it comes into contact with.
Most of the negative experiences I’ve had or run into with gasoline either involved sitting for much longer or carburetors plugging up. Carbs are much more susceptible to this than fuel injection too, due to the small jet sizes used in combination with the lack of any injection pressure – any pressure difference is due to manifold vacuum and the venturi effect, so at most you’ll see about 65 kPa (~10psi) difference, and only at idle when most of the carb’s fluid circuits aren’t working. Most port-fuel-injection systems run at 3-4 times this, and are a constant offset from manifold vacuum so they’re much more capable at clearing out debris and deposits despite also having very small orifices.
I am glad to hear this. My project cars haven’t run in a while.
I have a 2022 Wrangler 4xe lease and my only complaint is I wish I could stay in EV mode longer. The 2025 powertrain upgrades that are on the way I’m hoping mean that a larger battery is on the way to get the full EV range closer to 40 miles. I will say I have friends tell me though that they feel if you’re gonna get into the 100 mile threshold for range, you might as well go full EV instead of PHEV. I do agree with that statement, but I live in the south and there is not enough DC fast chargers to get me comfortably moving on a road trip just yet.
I live in rural VA, and there are a lot of places I’d go that I just can’t get to with my BEV. To the point where I’m considering buying a beater just for mountain bike trips, but I’d really rather not have another car.
“if you’re gonna get into the 100 mile threshold for range, you might as well go full EV”
Yeah, unless you need to go more than 50 miles from your house, ever.
Can’t you choose when you go EV on those things? I always pictured it as a way to get to your destination, but then go off-roading quietly.
I’d never considered it as a daily driver, I guess.
I had a 2013 Volt and it’s 30 miles of range was almost exactly enough for my 14 mile back road commute, a 2017 with the 50 mile range would’ve been great, but I went with an EV with 260 mile range(Bolt) and that’s more than enough now.
I think 50-75 miles is the sweet spot, the 20-40 mile range the current available ones have is a little weak, but think 100 miles is a little much. You do want to be using the gas engine a little more to keep the fluids cycling, maintenance should still be much lower overall, with 100 mile range the engine and all it’s support would not get enough use to justify carrying the several hundred pounds that could just be battery weight.
They’re too damn expensive. Our current crop of PHEV’s is a good compromise, as long as you can charge at home. Plug it in at night and save 1gal/day of gasoline. That adds up. The problem is the PHEV costs so much more than a normal hybrid that it’s hard to justify the extra cost.
I just had my first experience with a PHEV. I rented a Grand Cherokee 4xe and did a bit over 1k miles in 4 days. I was pleasantly surprised by it. Drove nice, got decent fuel economy, fairly powerful engine/motor combo even if it was a bit rough. But boy was I disappointed that I couldn’t charge at a lot of places because it had a J1772 plug. It would have been nice to be able to just plug in while I grabbed lunch or stopped at a tourist trap, but most travel areas only had Tesla or CCS chargers. J1772 ended up being kind of hard to find honestly. For the whole trip I was only able to run the initial 25ish miles on electric each day after charging at my hotel where they did have free chargers with J1772 plugs. So in total, I got about 75 miles of electric and 1000 miles on gas. Before ever driving a PHEV, I would have thought I could have at least picked up 5 or 10 miles here and there every time I made short stops. I guess that’s what I get for just seeing a charger and never paying attention to the plug on the end.
Imagine they’d put a small range extender like a gas-turbine (something running at constant speed for optimal efficiency) in the frunk of a Tesla. Doesn’t need to charge super fast, even say 25 kW per hour would be fine, driving or parked, so you can keep driving even at high speed. You’d be burning gas but still less than a conventional ICE since those aren’t as efficient as a gas-turbine running at constant speed. The problems of course are ; gas-tank (fuel hazard), plumbing needed for cooling (radiator, coolant hoses), some sort of lubrication, extra alternator/dynamo etc ; it all quickly adds up. I could envision some sort of air-cooled system (Porsche style) to avoid water cooling and perhaps a closed system could get run of any oil lines and what not.
One could make that device in the frunk even ‘removable’ so you could use it as a portable generator with 25 kWh output (or a bit less, depending on the cooling available).
I think that’s what Mazda is thinking with their renewed push on rotary R&D. Small rotary engines are already used as auxiliary power units in such applications as trains. A rotary has the same advantages as a turbine (smooth operation, good for running at a constant efficient RPM) but it would be cheaper and more compact.
A small gas turbine is not likely to be as efficient as a 4 stroke ICE, if both are running at their optimal efficient speeds. Turbines are better in large installations where they run at constant speed and have a smaller footprint than an equivalent 4 stroke ICE. There is a reason that naval ships run a mix of diesels for cruising and turbines when high speed is required.
Turbines are also much more expensive, although that would change if they were put in mass production.
Afaik a gas turbine would be much lighter than any ICE, but I could be wrong.
https://newatlas.com/outdoors/arc-turbine-microgenerator/
“…an ultra-portable generator that packs an 8-kW punch. The ARC microturbine generator measures about 17 x 27 x 52 cm (6.7 x 10.6 x 20.5 inches) and weighs just under 9 kg (19.8 lb).”
Imagine if you have more space and less weight restrictions and you can easily have a 80 kW generator with less than 100 kgs. Including plumbing/radiators etc etc.
I know some small engines (e.g. karting) are also small, but they don’t make 80 kW. Even the 1.0 cyl Ford Ecoboost which is really small is at least 200 kg for about 88 kg.
Kilowatts per hour lol
Sorry what is wrong there? If I have a battery pack of 50 kWh capacity and I charge with 25 kW per hour power, then it takes 2 hours to charge it fully. If a generator can provide 25 kW during an hour, then you can drive roughly 25 x 0.2 = 50 miles per hour since a Tesla uses about 200 Watt-hour of energy per mile, on average.
Not a native speaker here and it’s late here, let me know what I wrote wrong.
Watts, and kilowatts, are a measure of rate of energy flow. It already includes a time component.
Which is why if you want to talk about a fixed amount of energy, you use kilowatt hours, meaning the amount of energy that you get if you flow 1000 watts for one hour.
That’s all, I just thought it was funny that you had energy per time per hour.
Ty
Family of 4 with school aged kids. I have owned a BEV (Kona) for the last 7 months. It was purchased to be and has always been our “second vehicle”. We have not don’t any long road trips in it (self defined as 5 hours +), but do lots of 200+mile days. despite not being our “primary vehicle”, it has received about 65% of the families milage in the last 7 months, because it is just so nice to drive, quiet, fun, and meets 99% of our driving needs. I can do weekend trips, 100 mile airport runs, and 200 mile one way work trips without any issue. We fought over who got to drive it on any given day, and our other car was a BMW.
We loved it so much that it pushed us to replace our “family car” with a PHEV. The RAV4 prime clocked all the boxes, but the wait and markups was crazy, and I didnt know about cold weather performance in EV mode. Through my work we got a killer deal on an XC60 T8 PHEV and pulled the trigger last month. After 1800 miles, 35 days of ownership and 1x 6 hour each way road trip, we have used one tank of gas on the Xc60.
The 35 miles of EV range is a touch less than I would prefer. To me, 40 is the magic number, but it covers all of our daily commutes on full EV . It also covers 95% of our weekend errands. But for those weekend day trips, airport runs, 200 mile over nights… We like to use the Kona. EV droving has become addictive. and to Jason’s point, it is easier to put EV miles down in the Kona than the Xc60. When we get home from work/picking up kids and have an evening event. The Kona will get us there and back with 0 concerns. The Xc60 will also do it , but that second trip will be 80% ICE because the batter is already ‘used up’ on the work/childcare part of the day.
I love having a PHEV and a BEV. I think it is the best situation for the average American family given todays charging infrastructure . But we are fortunate to be able to financially swing that kind of vehicle fleet.
The volvos powertrain is crazy, with a mild hybrid turbo 2.0 liter putting out 312hp to the front wheels AND effectively a fully separate 145hp, 18kwh EV powering the rear. In EV mode, it is fully sufficient, great in town and a little pokey on the freeway, but again, sufficient. In power mode it is stupid fast, and that I think is funny. Anticdotically, the majority of T8 powertrain drivers ( a 455hp 520lbft monster). Bought the car because it is a good PHEV. Decent range allowing the EV infection to take root. The crazy power is nice, but I argue that most current owners would prefer a 100hp+ cut if it bought them 5mpg when running the ice. A 100hp cut for an extra 10 miles of EV range. It’s funny to me that myself, and others strategize to eek our a 37 mile trip on a mild mannered EV mode, to avoid unleasing a 455hp beast as soon as the battery dies.
All that said. Full size pickups nee to follow the ramCharger model. Big three can use the EV rear axle from their full size EV truck. Give us a 50-100 mile battery, and then drop in a mild hybrid transverse in the front axle like Volvo does, or go series hybrid like Ram. I would buy that truck over and BEV truck in a heartbeat. Truck buyers don’t want to sacrifice on their once a month boat trip/ RV trip/ car hauling weekend, whatever. So PHEV is where trucks should live.
Mercedes-Benz GLE350de is available here in the EU. Diesel engined PHEV with 31.2kWh and range of 90km / 56 miles. And because it’s diesel, consumption will remain decent when the battery is drained.
GLC hybrid has even longer range, but it’s gasoline powered.
Volt has a lot more range than the models you listed. Volt is a sedan which we know is now a non starter for most consumers. The majority of the models (except for the 3er) you listed are SUV / Vans that have large frontal area, no amount of aero tricks you employ will make them have the aero efficiency of a sedan.
The 3er uses 7.6kwh battery, vs 24kwh for the X5 45e. (The base model for a Model 3/Y has LFP battery capacity of 66kwh for reference). To solve the problem, it would be easier to get people to buy the vehicle they need vs the vehicle they want. Maybe persistent higher interest rates can solve that issue. I just don’t know how feasible it is for SUV type PHEV vehicles to have DT approved efficiency before the aspirational of death of the ICE car deadline of 2030? I mean BMW PHEV use flywheel / based EV motor that was announced a decade ago (I remember it was in a SAE Automotive Engineering that was printed on paper). Do you think the industry can change that fast in 6 or less years?
This is the only pro hybrid/ev take… I’m not overly pro ev, but I’d take a Ramcharger hybrid if everything else was an engine in drive hybrid
I suspect most of these issues will slowly get solved as batteries and charging infrastructure gets better. Right now we are still in a growth stage where attaining the most perfect engineering compromise using the technologies of the moment is yielding goofy results.
I love me a good series hybrid. It is after all a rather mature technology in shipping and railroading. However, automobiles require much more responsiveness than ships or locomotives so they weren’t really appealing to auto manufacturers until they were forced by efficiency and emissions concerns becoming priorities. Cue the Prius. It had a few miles of electric only drive built into its system just by virtue of optimizing efficiency. Now we have plug-in Prii out of even greater concern for emissions. This trend should continue with better battery technology to the point where the range extender is finally obviated. Until then, I agree. Give me a range extender series hybrid with 90 miles of EV range, a 15 minute fast charge time, and at least a 10 gallon tank for liquid fuel.That would be okay.
Sidebar: Jim Farley talks about a 3-row crossover. Isn’t that just a full-size SUV?
Crossovers are defined as being built on unibody car platforms. Full-size SUVs are built on body-on-frame truck platforms.
Well, a lot of three row crossovers don’t count as a full size SUV because they’re not very big amd don’t actually have three usable rows. Remember you can order a Model Y with three rows, two of them useful for people!
I take a really big issue with the unibody vs body on frame distinction for real SUV vs crossover, mostly because that makes the Jeep Cherokee a crossover, which is obviously very wrong.
Hit the nail on the head David. Really hoping we see more PHEVs with greater range in the near future. We are starting to think about replacing our 14 Jeep GC with a slightly larger 3 row SUV. On the waitlist for a new GX but I’m now having a hard time stomaching its fuel economy (and a hybrid Landcruiser is only 2 rows). Got me looking at a XC90 T8 which I’ve always liked but they are a little long in the tooth as they say. Hoping some more/better options come out before we NEED to replace. Would love to go PHEV if possible.
We are in this exact situation. Have a Rav4 hybrid ending lease in a couple of months. Want PHEV as our entire town is about 10 miles end to end, so we can do 90% of our driving on EV mode. We own a house and can install a charger. We also take several long trips a year, either to Lake Tahoe (70 miles away), and to family that is about 750 miles way. We are the target audience for a PHEV. But, you knew this was coming, looking at the long term owning and selling situation (10 years out), no American brand is economical, and few European ones are either. That leaves the asian cars, and for resale Toyota/Lexus are at the top of the list. However, one can only get what gets shipped, not special orders. It may take many months before a Rav4Prime with the package we want arrives, or even a Lexus for that matter. So, we are at their mercy.
Now, if Ram decides to put their PHEV into a van, and is available reasonably priced (ha!) that would be my go to. EV around town, great for long trips and easy to camp when desired instead of a full day drive.
Would love to see that RAM PHEV power terrain put into a Jeep GC L or even a Wagoner.
The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV is a serial hybrid, like the RAM mentioned in the article, and I’ll bet you could easily find one available. But it has about a 30-mile EV range, so in that respect it’s not better than what David was lamenting.
David! This is EXACTLY why I went EV over PHEV. I had a 12 mile commute round-trip on the highway. Looking at most of the PHEV options, I was gonna have to charger every single night, and for many of them at work as well. With free charging at work, it saved me way more money and reduced my charging stress to get a 250 mile EV and only charge once a week.
Give me a 120 mile PHEV and it would be awesome. But I’m probably just gonna go the route you did and get an ultra cheap i3. With the federal 30% rebate and $4k from PGE it will be almost free.
I’ve put about 75,000 miles on my Clarity PHEV. That’s as much of an endorsement as I can give to any technology. I call it an “EV with training wheels,” in the most complementary way possible.
As a climate solution:
BEVs reduce lifecycle emissions by around 60%, PHEVs by about 40% compared to typical gasoline vehicles. In terms of 2°C targets: [MIT]
US climate strategy incorporates PHEVs. All those “EV mandates” you hear about include PHEVs as one type of zero-emissions vehicle. I think this is great, but there are legitimate criticisms:
Personally, I am not worried about these issues… yet. Fossil fuel bans (or steep carbon taxes, potayto potahto) would be in the mid 2040s at the earliest, so we have at least 5 more years to build PHEVs before we need to be concerned with their end-of-life circumstances.
As an engineering challenge:
PHEVs are not simple to make. Designing a vehicle with not one but two functioning powertrains is a challenge. Making those two powertrains integrate seamlessly and respond to each other is a bigger challenge. Packing those integrated powertains so tightly that they both fit in a normal sized car is an even bigger challenge. Making the resulting vehicle easy to construct and affordable to purchase is a herculean task indeed.
This is why few PHEVs are available on the market today, and why their prices tend to be very close to equivalent BEVs. There’s no conspiracy, it’s just faster and easier to design a BEV.
As a consumer product:
PHEVs can theoretically work for a much larger portion of the population than BEVs. However, PHEVs are optimized solutions that mostly appeal to the kinds of people who enjoy optimization problems. Fueling them is simple and requires little thought and zero planning, but realizing that takes a lot of thought. The people who would benefit the most from PHEVs tend to be the least likely to seek them out.
As a rule, PHEVs sell poorly.
As a personal experience:
I’m very happy with my Honda Clarity. For me, it was the optimal solution for cost of ownership and carbon reduction per dollar. The balance of gasoline and electricity gives a ton of advantages.
There are also a few disadvantages I’ll grudgingly admit to.
You’re completely delusional if you think there will ever be a ban on gas and if so there will be riots in the streets…if anything we’ll run out in decades or longer…what about every car that exists now and classic cars? Thanks for throwing away history…gasoline forever!
I would not be surprised if there was a ban on gasoline, in certain areas at least, in the relatively distant future.
There are places banning the sale of new gas cars. There are places that ban driving existing gas cars in certain city centers.
Leaded gas was not required for new cars starting in 1973, and stopped being available about 20 years later. If California actually bans the sale of new gas cars in 2035, i wouldnt be surprised if they ban the sale of gasoline around 2055.
And yes, there would be riots in the streets. But if it all goes how they’re planning, there won’t be all that many people who care anymore, and it’ll be just a few hot rodders who are rioting.
I charge my BEV on Level 1, no issues there with a reasonable commute. I will soon install Level 2 just for those occasional times where it makes a difference and because incentives make it essentially free. Only issue I’ve had is one time I needed to make an airport run(80miles at 80mph each way) and I didn’t think about it and forgot to plug in an extra night before to get a 100% charge(I’ve got 250 miles of range so that airport run is pushing it at 80% or less).
Fellow Clarity owner here, love the car, amazed at the engineering that made it a reality, and disappointed that Honda (or any other manufacturer) couldn’t carry the torch forward with a new generation of PHEV after it was discontinued in 2021. My family’s second car is a 2020 Kia Niro EV, an underrated BEV if I’ve ever seen one, way overperforms its EPA range of 238 miles, even in New England winters, and will happily torch the front wheels with prodigious torque. The Clarity can get 50+ EV miles in the summer around town and a solid 25+ in winter, such a fantastic car. I agree with everything you’ve laid out here RE: living with the Clarity, but I haven’t experienced the loss of power you mentioned when the battery is drained.
There’s so much hand-wringing about EV charging these days, but we get by with a 120v outlet with both the Clarity and the Niro and have never had an issue. It would be a different story if we lived in an apartment and had to rely on public charging, however.
I get the side-eye for being a car enthusiast who is leaning into PHEVs and BEVs, but the engineering and technology is fascinating to learn about and experience, especially with how quickly it’s advancing.
What an excellent article, David. As an aside, you are the reason I became a regular reader of Jalopnik, and I followed you here to read more of your work. Looking forward to this weekly series.
I have been preaching the same gospel for years. Plug-in hybrids are amazing and we need more of them, for all of the reasons you outline above. The other reason that I think is often overlooked is that battery health always, in every case, declines over the life of the car, resulting in reduced range. So the 300 mile EV that, when purchased, has a range sufficient for most road trips, becomes progressively less useful as the years roll by and battery health decreases. Plug-in hybrids, on the other hand, will always maintain essentially the same range throughout the useful life even as electric only range declines. I owned a 2013 Ford Fusion Energi for a couple of years until it was totaled in a multi car pile up on the freeway, but I loved the ability to drive around on electric power while also not being limited in range. After 10 years, it only had 12–15 miles of EV range, but that was enough to cover my commute. Great car.
Now Toyota, please build me a plug-in Tacoma
The range is fine, there just aren’t enough cheaper options yet. I mean, the Prius Prime and Kia Niro are actually pretty reasonable after government incentives, although it looks like they’re still pretty hard to come by (and personally, my home’s electrical is still too garbage to want to plug a vehicle into just yet)
How bad can your electrical be to have issues plugging in a 12A Level 1 charger? I run that off an extension cord with no issues.
We’re still finding out – lots of hidden knobs and tube, assorted sketchy bare wiring, all in places unseen in a home inspection, so we’d rather not push our luck with something new (plus, no exterior plug on the house anyhow).
If you are putting in a dedicated 220 line for a charger, I don’t see how knob and tube would be an issue. The charger will go straight to the electrical panel and have nothing to do with the rest of the wiring. Unless I’m missing something, it shouldn’t be an issue at all.
I think the panel can’t handle another big item? It’s all going to be redone in time, but I can’t dictate a current car purchase around that schedule. I’ll be ready by 2035 (when the Canadian electrification mandate is due to kick in).
I’m no electrician but rather a carpenter and a long time Realtor so I’ve been adjacent to a lot of electrical work. Here is my (mildly) qualified take and ready to be corrected by any actual electrician. IF the service coming into the house is enough (likely 200amps or more) AND there is physical room in the box, you should be good. You could even add a subpanel, again, if there is enough juice coming into the house. I see that a lot. I did a lot of upgrades to my old home while at the same time searching for and isolating old knob and tube and removing it. Good luck!
> some really, really confusion decisions
Confusing*
You’re right. Those ranges are embarrassing.