There has never been a more difficult time to be a strategist, executive, or product planner at a car company. It’s too complicated a world, with too many unpredictable inputs and unexpected outputs. The noise is louder than the signal and separating the two sometimes feels impossible.
In just the last five years the industry has convinced itself of the following:
- A huge mass of people will want to subscribe to their car instead of owning it.
- Self-driving cars are inevitable and imminent, so not investing in self-driving tech will doom companies.
- Mass adoption of electric cars is inevitable and imminent, so companies need to pledge complete electrification of their portfolios now.
- Hybrids are a waste of time.
At least in the present, none of those predictions have panned out for any traditional OEM. Most subscription car services attempted in the last few years have been abandoned. Huge money has been spent on self-driving cars and attempts to get to Level 5 autonomy, but no one has done it at scale beyond a handful of robotaxis, which are all Level 4, at best. Electrification is growing, but not at the speed predicted even a few years ago. Hybrids are the fastest-growing powertrain option for new cars in the United States.
I don’t blame any company for following these trends, but in retrospect, it does seem like the best strategy was to just take it slow and commit to a plan. Otherwise, you end up like Volkswagen.
Today’s Morning Dump is about the knee-jerk reactions companies made and the sudden realization that maybe knee-jerk reactions weren’t the way to go. We’ll start with GM, which is trying to get people to think longer-term. What about Ford? Ford’s starting to wind back some of its aggressive electrification plans. Stellantis is slowing down. Lotus, too, sees a future with more EREVs.
‘What Is Normal?
Yesterday was the Barclays Global Automotive and Mobility Tech Conference in New York. It sounds like fun, but no one invited me. I was at a race track with a Miata, instead, so no pity necessary. Thankfully, the Detroit Free Press was able to listen in and filed this dispatch, which includes some interesting comments from GM CFO Paul Jacobson:
CFO Paul Jacobson said the automaker has learned to stop having a “knee-jerk reaction” to market shifts and instead takes a conservative and consistent approach to ups and downs. That means sticking to a long-term strategy no matter what short-term challenges might arise.
Jacobson, who spoke Wednesday at the Barclays Global Automotive and Mobility Tech Conference in New York, said he would often grow frustrated hearing the word “normalization” bantered about when discussing how to run GM’s operations.
“We banned the word ‘normalization’ inside the company because what is normal? Isn’t it possible we’ve established a new normal?” Jacobson asked. “We’ve learned a lot about the value of our products in consumers’ eyes: How to price them, how to not react with a knee-jerk reaction to what’s going on around us, and focus on our inventory, our demand and our execution.”
This is a reasonable view and I think what Jacobson is saying here is correct. Jumping from one idea to the next, chasing your tail, et cetera, is not great. Unless Elon Musk is correct and we’re all going to be taking Cybercabs everywhere in three years, consumer taste doesn’t move as fast as we all think.
Also, this is a little funny coming from GM’s CFO, right? I’m glad GM is learning the lesson, here, but GM is the company famous for quickly reacting to things and then just jumping away when the going gets a little tough. General Motors started making hybrids and then stopped. It made the original mass-market EV and then killed it. GM said a few years ago that it expected to double its revenue thanks to Cruise driverless taxis, subscription services revenue, and selling a lot more electric cars than it’s likely to sell.
Almost a year ago I was worried that the company’s plan to increase dividends and focus a bit more on shareholder value was a short-term decision with negative long-term results:
The world is a complex place and Barra deserves credit for winding her way through difficult times and restoring some faith in the company. But this is a huge step backward in my mind (and I‘m not the only one who thinks this is weird). Yes, the company’s truck and SUV business is very profitable and I also think their new EVs look very good, but if I were a GM shareholder I’d want them to invest as much as possible in hybrids and fixing their Ultium production. It’s nice that GM will be profitable this year and that the strike is only going to cost about a billion dollars, but in what universe does GM not need every cent to survive a future with Chinese automakers expanding in Mexico and Tesla showing no signs of slowing down?
Do I still feel that way a year later? Not quite. GM still hasn’t announced a good hybrid solution here in the United States, but Ultium production has seemingly been addressed. More importantly, it did work from a market perspective. Since writing that post GM’s share price has almost doubled so it’s fair to say that this had the short-term result the company wanted. If GM can improve/maintain its credit position and hold onto these gains then that’s theoretically more money that can be invested.
I also think GM’s plan to avoid the overproduction whiplash effect of trying to earn profits with volume over price is the correct strategy in this market, even if it might not be great for consumers. Ultimately, I think what GM is telegraphing about its decision-making is entirely sound and I look forward to critiquing the company’s application of these ideas at home from the safety of this blog.
Ford Keeps Revising Its EV Plans
I like Quebec. There’s good fishing in Quebec. There’s also a big battery material plant being built in Bécancour (shout out Les Riverains) that Ford was supposed to be an investor in as part of the company’s big EV push.
According to Automotive News, that’s not happening:
Ford Motor Co. has abandoned plans to produce battery material for electric vehicles in Quebec, backing away from a joint-venture manufacturing plant under construction in Bécancour as it slows its rollout of EVs amid high costs and tepid demand.
The reversal will not halt construction on the $1.2-billion ($860 million USD) cathode active materials plant that partners Ford, EcoPro BM Co. and SK On Co. announced in August 2023, but ends the automaker’s direct involvement in the project and makes its role as end customer uncertain.
“After evaluating shifts in EV technology, costs and the needs of our business, we’ve decided not to enter in as a minority stakeholder in this joint venture,” Ford Canada spokesperson Said Deep said in a Nov. 19 statement.
This is part of a pattern from Ford. The company has slowed or outright canceled the development of some of its 2nd generation EVs as it plans for a third-generation vehicle. Ford, like most automakers, got super excited about electrification only to see the market stall. The advantage that Ford had was that it wasn’t as far into EVs as, say, GM, and it also had a robust hybrid tech it could pivot to that GM couldn’t match.
While this isn’t a major Ford project, it is a sign that all the enthusiasm for electrification has been dampened. Ford also announced this week that it’ll cut about 4,000 jobs in Europe due to weakness in the EV market in the UK and Europe.
Stellantis Is Delaying Ram REV and Ramcharger
The all-electric RAM REV will be delayed, which isn’t a surprise and doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me given the market for electric trucks right now. Unfortunately, this also means the awesome Ram Ramcharger EREV will also be delayed until some point next year. Boo.
What’s going on? The company wants to focus on the Dodge Charger Daytona and Jeep Wagoneer S electric SUVs.
I’ll let Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares, pictured above talking to Tom Hanks, explain it via The Detroit News:
“We just do things in a proper way,” Tavares said during a virtual news conference about the STLA Frame platform that underpins the REV and the Ram 1500 Ramcharger, an electric truck with an on-board gas engine charger.
“We don’t want to take risks,” he continued. “In terms of validation, it’s very important for Stellantis to demonstrate that we have all the capabilities and that we master the technology with a high level of durability, and that’s exactly what we are doing right now. So, we don’t want to rush, and as we all know, it’s better to take a few weeks more to validate properly than to rush and then to make mistakes in terms of quality. That’s what we are doing now. We are validating, and we are managing the peak between the products that we have ahead of us.”
I’m going to start using “We just do things in a proper way” to explain everything from now on. I love it. Also, as badly as I want to drive a Ramcharger, this is probably sensible. I don’t think the Wagoneer S will do anything but land with a thud on the market, but a Ramcharger that doesn’t work isn’t a great plan, either.
Lotus Is Back On The EREV Train
No automaker has had more surprising momentum in the last couple of years than Lotus, which has found a small hit in the Emira and the promise of more with new, Geely-backed electric platforms. Then President Biden upped tariffs on Chinese-built cars. Now it’s unclear how Lotus is going to truly compete in the United States, especially after Lotus said it would go full-EV with, mostly, Chinese-built electric cars.
The answer to this conundrum is that Lotus is going to jump on the EREV bandwagon as reported by Autocar:
Lotus will produce hybrid versions of future models in response to the continued reluctance of luxury car buyers to move to EVs.
The switch, confirmed by the brand’s CEO to reporters at recent Guangzhou motor show in China, means the brand is tearing up its current plan to go all-electric by 2028.
Lotus will develop ‘Super Hybrid’ technology with ultra-fast plug-in charging along with a turbocharged combustion engine to extend overall range to 680 miles, Feng Qingfeng said.
My view is that 2024 is the Year of the Hybrid, but that the 2020s are the decade of the EREV, though how successful these will be is an open question as our old pal John Voelcker points out at InsideEVs:
[T]he majority of PHEV makers flatly refuse to disclose data on whether they’re plugged in, how often, and what percent of overall miles are covered using grid electricity rather than gasoline. Some just ignore the plug by dubbing the PHEV a “Hybrid” model, e.g. Chrysler Pacifica. Others start the car in hybrid mode, even with a fully charged battery, meaning the owner must specify EV mode every time it’s turned on if they want all-electric drive.
In that light, it seems like magical thinking to believe EREVs will be plugged in as designed. Full, comprehensive, aggregated data is the only answer. Anecdotes no longer suffice.
As always, John is a smart guy with a lot of experience and insight, but he’s also probably wrong. I think the lack of PHEV data from automakers could be construed as a sign that a decent number of owners don’t plug in their PHEVs, but we don’t know that for sure. Additionally, I think a RAV4 Prime owner probably is likely to plug in, whereas the Jeep Wrangler 4xe and Pacifica PHEV probably distort these numbers in the other direction.
What I’m fairly sure of is that buying an EREV and not plugging it in regularly is going to be so obviously expensive and counterproductive for EREV owners that most will plug these vehicles in and making the leap from ‘We don’t know what PHEV owners will do’ to ‘This means EREV owners won’t charge at home’ is its own form of magical thinking.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Honestly, I’m listening to Pavement this morning, but I play a lot of that around these parts. Here’s bluegrass band Nickel Creek doing a cover of “Spit on a Stranger.”
The Big Question
Do you think people will plug in EREVs?
Never expected to see Nickel Creek on Morning Dump. I first saw them at a nearby college when they were still teenagers. I keep This Side in the car for sunrise mountain drives as it goes well with the damp misty air and promise of a shiny new day.
Do you think people will plug in EREVs?
That will depend on:
Availability of charging opportunities vs gasoline.
Cost of those charging opportunities vs gasoline.
Range on the gasoline tank vs battery.
NVH of the REX
Shelf life of the gasoline
Weather
I think batteries will get used more in warm weather, less in cold weather.
I cannot imagine buying a PHEV and not actually plugging it in. They aren’t cheap, unless you pull the lease trick to reduce the cost, but even then a RAV4 Prime isn’t far off from a regular RAV4 hybrid.
I hate that I can’t plug mine in right now due to firey death potential… and I know quite a few Jeep 4XE owners who feel the same way.
I plug in my Clarity at home and at work. That electric gallon (40mi EV range) on both sides of my commute let me get 1000 miles on five gallons of gas, and my weekend errands are all electric.
Remote/scheduled climate control is also killer. Shame they discontinued it.
We keep tabs on the EV range of our Rav4 PHEV and try to use the EV as much as possible.
I’m looking forward to an EREV sprinter-scaleish van for camping. Why oh why isn’t there one already?!
Care to share your max, min, avg EV range from the data you’ve collected on your RAV4 PHEV? I don’t have actual data to perform the above requested analysis however my mom has stated she is regularly managing 40-50 miles of EV range on her RAV4 PHEV.
I know I kept data from the beginning, but I have to scrounge around for it, but here is the easy-to-obtain data from the last 3000 miles. I started to notice that after a long trip, the EV range reduces, but slowly rises again.
We’re at 6442 miles right now with 42 mininum, 47 average, and 51 max miles of EV range.
Thank you!
My Volt I plugged in religiously, most of the time the only gas it used was when it had to as the engine hadn’t run in so long, or if it was really cold(which not often in NC). It’s what led me to get my actual EVs as I realized I could go gas free.
We plan on replacing our 1 remaining gas car with a PHEV to continue the gas-free trend, but keep an option open for long trips.
Home charging is one of the biggest strengths of evs/phevs, long distance charging one of the biggest weaknesses, it’s a weird situation.
I have a Pacifica PHEV, and I plug it in as much as possible to run on battery for the majority of my driving. If I don’t go out of town, I can stretch a tank of gas for a month or two.
Great choice on the tunes. I saw Nickle Creek when they were all like 12 years old and they stole the show. Chris Thile is a genius. Check out Chris Thile and Billy Strings playing together in New York. There’s also some bootleg recording which are poor quality but capture the magic of these two playing together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6WDdJClvhg
Thile is indeed a genius: he won a MacArthur Fellowship (“Genius Grant”) in 2012.
One of my other favorite collaborations is when he had Vulfpeck on Live from Here and they did Dean Town together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVyEPAMpwDc
Certainly, people who pay a premium for a plug-in hybrid will plug them in. And anyone who likes money will plug in their hybrids as long as there is a significant savings to be had.
I mean, who is suppressing reports that have positive news about them? Which is not topical at all today, fortunately. /s
At this point I’m not aware of anyone claiming that PHEVs are plugged in as often as they should be. It’s a real problem with my favorite architecture and needs to be addressed. If PHEVs just degrade to less efficient hybrids in real world use then we’re better off pushing people into traditional hybrids instead.
I don’t have the answer, but I hope at some point we come up with one.
Edit: Reading some more comments, it sounds like the whole premise here is just incorrect. There is data showing significant electric miles from at least some automakers. That’s news to me and worthy of its own story IMHO.
I’m probably not exactly a typical American car buyer (we currently have four cars, for a household of two), but outside of that I’m probably not that far from the (pardon me, GM – or should I say gm) norm, either.
I think people would gladly migrate to EREV vehicles. I wanted to go electric with our last purchase three years ago but the wife didn’t so we ended up with a hybrid. Overnight charging wasn’t an issue, but we make annual cross country trips and charging during that trip wasn’t something she had any interest in, and she didn’t want us getting stranded in the middle of nowhere. An EREV would eliminate those concerns (as would a PHEV, but those were hard to come by during Covid).
The other significant factor is we’re homeowners with a garage and large driveway, so we could add a charger (or two) and generally not have to worry about day to day charging needs. Apartment dwellers and street parkers don’t have that luxury, so for that cohort, hybrid will probably continue to be the preferred option for quite a while.
In either case, the real issue is price. Cars and trucks just cost too much these days. $50,000+ for a Wrangler? No thank you. The Big Three basically abandoned smaller, affordable options somehow thinking they could make bank on the bigger, higher content models. I’d love to meet (and smack) the people who greenlit the 9,000 pound Hummers, and there’s a whole lot more people that could by a $40,000-$45,000 pickup than a $100,000 King Ranch.
Maybe they each thought “we’ll make our money on the high end, and let the other guys have the bottom”, and the net result was they all abandoned the bottom.
Back in the day, the Model T got more affordable every year they made it. Now it’s “how much more can we suck out of the customer this year?” (looking at you, Ford Maverick). They’ve forgotten how to build a cheap car, and if China manages to get through the door, the Big 3 are screwed – not because Americans want to by a Chinese car, but because that’s all a lot people can afford. (Remember that, Elon, when you look back on your “building a $25,000 car would be stupid” statement. Stupid for Tesla, or stupid for people who need affordable transportation?)
They haven’t forgotten how to build a cheaper, they just don’t want to. And apparently most customers don’t really want them either, as long as they get that 84 month loan or ‘cheap’ lease with only $5k down they’re happy to sign on the line for the luxury stuff instead of some $25k econobox without heated airbags and antilock cup holders.
Sadly there won’t be another situation with a foreign automaker coming in with the products people want and eating everyone’s lunch… tariffs and import bans will keep those out this time around to protect the ironically named domestics we’re stuck with now.
Funnily the only one actually lowering their prices like Ford used to is Tesla, still not cheap, but they’re actually doing it, mainly to mess with the competition, but that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Have the prices gotten below where they were before they were jacked up to gouge during COVID yet?
The problem is that you have to sell a dozen basic work trucks to make the same profit as a single $100K King Ranch. And it may very well be that they actually LOSE money on actual stripper trucks. The added tinsel costs very, very little and is basically pure profit.
Given the size of the factories that pump these things out, I would think greater output would lead to better amortization of the capital costs. The margin on the tinsel must be huge to out way the economies of scale you get by maximizing output. But, hey, I do software, so I’ve got no idea how the manufacturing game works. Given all the $80,000+ trucks at the dealerships, you’re probably right, though those high dollar trucks do you no good if you can’t actually sell them.
The old “lose a little on each one and make it up in volume” thing has not been true in decades. Modern cars simply cost too much to develop and produce for that to work anymore, at least if you have a reasonably well-paid workforce who insist on silly things like “healthcare”, “safe working environment”, and God-forbid “pensions”. And doubly-so when you are in a market that prefers to buy vehicles by the pound, as the US certainly does.
The reality is that the only thing that kept the US automakers pumping out cheap dreck was that CAFE effectively forced them to lose money on selling cheap fuel-efficient cars in order to be able to sell profitable gas guzzlers. Footprint-based CAFE made that go away, so cheap cars they lost money on went away as well. They finally learned the lesson that volume isn’t everything.
Point of Order. Nowhere in this article is the acronym EREV spelled out. PHEV as well, but it gets somewhat of a pass because “plug” is frequently adjacent to PHEV. The text “extended range electric vehicle” is nowhere to be found.
Before we start considering hypotheticals about people plugging in their EREVs, someone is going to have to explain to them the difference between a PHEV versus an EREV because I guarantee a salesperson won’t do it well.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed this. I reread through the article a few times, thinking I had missed something.
I still have no idea.
I can’t keep up with all these acronyms.
I see your point. Way too many TLAs. (Three Letter Acronyms.) Though in this case, I guess it would be UFLAs (Unexplained Four Letter Acronyms).
Agreed! Also on the basis that previous EREVs were called PHEV(the Volt). I think the there is a definite distinction in that an EREV is an EV with a range extender vs PHEV is a Hybrid that you can plug in for a little better mpg but not run it completely as an EV for it’s rated electric range.
Like the Jeep 4xe is truly a PHEV as if you stomp on the pedal it fires up the engine, or if you go over a certain speed. But the BMW i3, Chevy Volt are pretty much EREVs as there is minimal to no engine coupling to the drivetrain, and they run pretty much as an EV in most operations, firing up the engine to generate more electrons to charge the battery to power the motors.
Got it! “Extended Range EV”
Thanks!
“Do you think people will plug in EREVs?”
They shouldn’t be buying one if they don’t have a plan to regularly charge it. They shouldn’t buy a PHEV if they don’t have a plan to regularly charge it either.
I plug my PHEV in nightly. In my 1st Gen Volt, I’d rarely use over 30 gallons of gas a year. In our 330, on average we fill it up (probably 8-9 gallons) every 5-6 weeks, so it’s still well under 100 gallons a year. But if you aren’t charging, a Prius is a better choice than a Volt, and a 330i is a better choice than a 330e.
The EREV is the cure for the crappy public charging infrastructure. You don’t have to charge when you are on a long trip, but you can charge at home and be an EV on all your normal weekly driving. I hope my next truck is a EREV so I can use gas when towing my camper, but use electric on my commute.
EREV means Extended Range Electric Vehicle. I had to Google it.
Too many new, undefined acronyms are a modern-day PITA.
I have a little bit more context to the decision-making process at large corporations as I’ve worked at a few of them and currently work at a large, international electronics manufacturer.
Let’s look at your criteria, Matt. You say that the industry has convinced itself of:
I would change these a bit:
This all goes way, way back to the early parts of this century when Enron doomed us all for a few years and ruined the lives of a lot of people. Congress had to do Something® and gave us Sarbanes-Oxley. That did a lot of things but one was to tie executive pay and bonuses to company performance, i.e. stock performance.
Larger shareholders started demanding growth from a lot of these bigger companies. Having a large revenue stream that was stable and conservatively dependable was no longer acceptable. Being a “growth company” has been a thing at all of these large corporations for a while because that is how they get the stock price to move and get their big bonuses.
The sheer amount of money wasted on new trends today is honestly unfathomable. You would all be surprised. Every new tech trend is research exhaustingly. How does it affect our business? What consultants do we need to hire to develop reports at the cost of millions of dollars?
Nearly all of it just gets filed away but it’s all for one big thing: They will get asked about it at shareholder meetings and they can say with a straight face that they are actively researching it and have plans to address it etc.
I used to work in the food and beverage space. When Amazon came out with all the Alexa speakers and advertised how you could just say, “Alexa, order me some new batteries,” everyone freaked out. “How does Energizer and Duracell handle it if Alexa just ships Amazon Basics batteries?” “What do we do to mitigate this trend?”
Copy and paste for Coke and Pepsi with bottled water since Amazon Basics also sells that.
Then in two years we found out that, of the total people that bought a speaker, about 11% ever used it to order anything. Everyone else just used it to play music or whatever. Of those 11% of people, less than 1% of them ever did it a second time. It was all so much noise, energy and time wasted, not to mention the money spent on something that common sense would tell us is something that would have marginal effects on people’s behavior.
You’re not allowed to think that way.
It would be great if it was different. But that is the game today. Now we are going to see Honda rolling out solid state batteries (also others I assume). So when you start hearing about how disruptive that is or how one manufacturer is going to be left behind (remember Toyota and EVs?) just know that the questions are rooted in this game of always being the forward looking, growth oriented company of the future that is demanded by shareholders. Reality not need apply.
I understand you could look at this two ways:
1) make a list of the companies that didn’t believe the hype and got left in the dust by the market (let’s use my home-town favorite, Kodak, as an example)
2) you can look at the companies that overreacted to the hype and focused on products that no one cared about (freaking out about people using Alexa to order batteries turning out to not be a problem is a great example).
You’re going to find examples of both, and even if you put all of the right people in a room to talk through these big decisions that alter the trajectory of your company, you aren’t going to get it right 100% of the time. But, if you really have the right people in the conversation, you’ll do a lot better than 50/50. Now, as you said, we have to hope that the decision from the experts align with what gets shareholders excited. Some companies make the share-holder stake part of the decision but are less quick to react, some quickly ignore what their experts say and go straight to what the new/hip/exciting trend is. So you end up forcing your people to make something that they aren’t invested in (or actively opponents of) and you end up with a marginal product that wouldn’t have set the world on fire even if the direction was right. Or you get those people on the hype train and burn millions/billions on technology that’s quickly abandoned because it was a dumb idea to begin with.
What I’ve learned is: it’s easier to be in sales than engineering. You get to sell what sells, rather than design what doesn’t.
Very good points. I would add the angle that modern CEOs are convinced (possibly correctly) that share price is life. It might be because of C-suite compensation packages or just how they keep score but every decision (gm stock buybacks, for example) is viewed through the lens of “Will it drive stock price?”.
Tesla got a huge valuation – must build EVs.
Uber stock is through the roof – must do self-driving.
Service companies are valued higher than manufacturers – our cars will be subscriptions.
I do not know how much of this they actually believe and how much is shareholder propaganda but that is how they make their decisions. The cars that fall out the bottom are just an afterthought.
My problem in all of this is just how heavily the attention is weighted to shareholders (or really the stock buyers and sellers who decide for large fund management companies) is that moving the stock price should be the result of good decision making, not the reason for making a particular decision.
It is a metric they use as it should be. It is not the only metric or at least not so high above all other metrics in importance as to merit the attention put on it. How should we measure longer term strategies and goals? I’m sure that happens and I don’t want to over-exaggerate here, but in a lot of operations discussions and meetings I’ve had, you never even bother talking about next year if you don’t know what your budget is going to be.
I’m sure there are longer term strategies I just never knew about. But just look at decisions like removing Android Auto/Carplay or Stellantis not developing anything new at all during pandemic pricing to see how a large company tends to operate: Future versions of us will have to deal with that! Or in GMs place, we want all the control and we’ll just convince the consumer that thing they want isn’t as good as our thing!
It’s not so much a belief as it is a way of thinking and a culture. I don’t think it’s a conscious effort.
You need to stop parroting Volker’s BS that is mainly based on an old study done in Europe where PHEVs were purchased as company cars for the tax credits and the drivers had a gas card, but no charging at work. That meant charging at home came out of their pocket but putting in gas was “free”.
Some mfgs have given actual stats on how their PHEVs are used. https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/feu/gb/en/news/2021/08/05/new-kuga-plug-in-hybrid-data-shows-nearly-half-of-mileage-uses-e.html
49% of the miles were from externally charged electrons. For every 100 days of use there were 89 charging events.
Yes the overall utilization is low but that is thanks to the lack of foresight on FCA’s part which led to Stellantis making the PHEV the only version that dealers could order for stock in the states of Californication. Take out those case where people purchased what was available even if they had no way to charge at home. Most people who consciously chose a PHEV actually charge them regularly.
I saw an article that I can’t find again for the life of me where they polled US based PHEV owners and found out that the driver’s of RAV-4 and Prius Prime charged an average of 4 or 5 times per week.
As far as EREVs go I expect very few people will not plug them in. EREV’s are inefficient in pure gas powered use. Those that do buy them and don’t plug them in will find they get worse MPG than a standard hybrid an not much better than an ICE only vehicle.
But lets predict EREV use based on a flawed study about PHEV use.
I think you misread Matt’s comments. He specifically says he doesn’t agree with that opinion, he even goes so far as to say making the leap necessary to reach that conclusion is “it’s own form of magical thinking”.
Oh, interesting. I hadn’t heard that. Honestly, that deserves an article in itself if you ask me.
“EREV’s are inefficient in pure gas powered use”.
Properly efficient ICEs would help, e.g. A two cylinder Atkinson Prius engine.
It has nothing to do with engine efficiency and everything to do with all the losses from converting mechanical energy to AC electricity, from AC to DC, transmitting that DC, converting DC to AC and finally converting that AC back to mechanical energy.
If that were true hybrids would get worse gas mileage that their regular ICE counterparts.
No because hybrids transmit power from the engine to the wheels mechanically. Depending on the vehicle it can be up to 100% mechanical depending on the exact operating conditions at the time, and all but Honda always transmit at least a portion of the power from the engine to the wheels mechanically when the vehicle is in motion. Honda operates in pure series mode only at low speeds while Toyota and FWD Fords only operate in pure series mode in Reverse.
Pure ICE can also transmit their power to the wheels mechanically.
FYI: Honda hybrids can run in pure series mode at all speeds, and frequently do.
They link the engine to the wheels only when traveling at highway speeds, and only when engine load is relatively low. Engine drive mode is the equivalent of an overdrive top gear in a manual transmission. Very efficient, but not for hill climbing or passing.
There’s only one gear ratio available for engine drive mode, so instead of downshifting, it shifts back to series hybrid mode. Decoupling the engine from the wheels allows it to rev higher and avoid lugging when accelerating or going up hills.
How often the engine is directly linked varies by model. More efficient engines tend to use series mode a little more often, and more powerful engines directly link to the driven wheels a bit more often.
Yes I didn’t word that correctly I should have wrote that at low speeds Hondas only operate in series mode. They can and of course do revert to series mode at higher speeds if that is what is required to meet the power demand.
However not all Hondas have only a single gear ratio. More recent CR-Vs have a second gear ratio to provide direct drive at medium speeds and can of course revert to series operation if it needs more RPM to meet the power demand.
I just saw that new improvement shortly after replying to your comment! Honda is making really cool innovations with series hybrids.
While it seemed strange at first to go back to series mode for increased power, it makes total sense when you think it through.
Especially with the addition of the low gear I’d say Honda’s system is the best eCVT or CVT on the market. Because it often operates in pure series mode the traction motor is sized as if it was a pure EV, which makes it perfect for PHEV use. Which of course makes sense as it was designed for the short lived Accord PHEV.
I’m really surprised they haven’t leveraged it in the US more. It seems like a PHEV CR-V for the US is a no-brainer considering the waiting lists for the RAV-4 Prime.
I originally thought Toyota’s system with multiple inputs on a planetary gearset was the best, but after living with Honda’s for a while in the Clarity, I’m convinced that Honda has the better system, even without the new extra gear in their improved system.
I think a possible flaw in Toyota’s system is might be that each power source “fights over the tiller” a bit in certain power bands, so maybe they all have to be little larger than optimal. But if they had a physical brake on each input, it wouldn’t blend as smoothly.
Honda’s system of running everything on the electric motor most of the time makes balancing the inputs much simpler.
And clutching the engine in and out in the Honda is much more seamless than I thought would be possible before I actually drove the car. I’ve never noticed the slightest harshness when it happens, because when clutching in, it’s a low power situation, and when clutching out, the electric motor has already taken over power delivery.
I think Honda has already stated or implied that they don’t have the battery supplies lined up for volume PHEV, so instead they’re making all the hybrids their high-end trim. This lets them get the most from the batteries they do have available, and position their hybrid system as a premium feature.
But they do sell a PEHV CR-V in other countries.
The power split style has much smaller motor/generators than the Honda style. They don’t really fight each other except when starting the engine. The starter generator is an output of the planetary gear set except when starting the engine. The rest of the time the starter/generator is an output.
I suspect most people with access to low cost electricity will plug in (home work, etc.). I doubt these people will use pubic chargers unless it’s absolutely necessary such as an EREV with a IC engine incapable of powering the vehicle alone, and they are on a long trip.
For those without access low cost electricty when the vehicle is otherwise parked, it’s tough to say. If it was me I wouldn’t buy an EREV without a way to charge at home, but if I had to, it would come down to the money saved using a public charger vs gas, and the impact of my time waiting on charging. I suspect many won’t unless (again) it’s necessary for the vehicle to work right.
Chad
Depends.
If chargers are aplenty, the chargers are not a PITA to use, and electricity is cheap, I think the overwhelming majority of people will plug in.
Wouldn’t it be great if every grocery store, mall, etc. parking lot was covered in solar panels to keep them shady in summer, dry in winter, and each spot with an electric plug? You could stop at IKEA for lunch, pick up a few cool kitchen and bath items, and leave with a full battery and no inconvenience. Getting a meal out while on a trip results in a fill-up and a fill-up. A fifteen minute break at a roadside rest area nets a top-up, a pause for cause and a few minutes to stretch your legs. Browsing at Best Buy, stopping by the cell phone store or picking up a Chipotle lunch or adds fifty or a hundred miles to your battery. A trip to the Motor Vehicle Department and your cup shall runneth over.
Let’s go, industry, step it up!
As long as we’re dreaming I’ll take a dirt cheap, tiny, lightweight low radiation, explosion proof but massively powerful atomic battery with neo infinite range.
I could see a segment of buyers that buy it just because they like the car on the lot… and it just happens to be a series hybrid. They might not ever plug it in. Especially if they don’t have the capability to charge ready to go.
GM runs from one shiny object to the next. Several years ago all the news outlets and what have you were saying EVs were the future, so GM was “all in” on EVs. Now there has been a slight slowdown in adoption rate of EVs right as the GM EVs are widely available and they are running after hybrids because those are being talked about now. They keep trying to run whichever way the wind is currently blowing and are shocked that by the time those vehicles are ready the script has changed. They plan for what’s hot now which is a shit plan when development cycles take 4-5 years,but planning ahead and executing a plan beyond what the media is saying would take some actual leadership.
GM only has a couple of plays in their book and they just shuffle between the same handful of strategies, been that way since they were nationalized and re-privatized 15 years ago now, trouble is, they’re running out of foreign assets to sell and non-North American markets to withdraw from, so they’ve almost lost some of their preferred go-to ideas. Along with deleting some more details from Cadillac’s logo, they like doing that one as a distraction from more serious problems
After selling Opel and Vauxhall, and killing Geo, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, Acadian, Alpheon, Asuna, Holden, LaSalle, Oakland, McLaughlin, Bedford, Beaumont, Ranger (in South Africa), Statesman (in Australia), Winton, and a dozen or more auto manufacturing companies pre-WW2, GM has just about run out of divisions to shutter.
To be fair, most of those were killed by Motors Liquidation, which went out of business in 2011. General Motors has only been around since 2009
You will take my internal combustion engine from my cold, dead hands.
Literally nobody is trying to take it from you, Kurt.
I’m trying to take it from him. Its not a conspiracy theory if its true.
1/4 of americans live in states planning to phase out the sale of ICE vehicles: https://caredge.com/guides/states-banning-ice-cars
That article is a massive oversimplification of an issue that has been covered on much better sites with the nuance it deserves. Nobody is coming to your house to take your ICE away from you. It’s like the fantasy the gun people made up in their heads to make them feel like freedom warriors.
“In one ad, which the Trump campaign spent nearly $1 million to air in Michigan in the weeks leading up to the election, it said: “Attention auto workers: Kamala Harris wants to end all gas powered cars. Crazy, but true!”
Democrats fought back against that message by pointing out that the new regulations aren’t technically “mandates” in the strictest definition of the word. …
“Nobody’s mandating anything to you,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, told rally-goers in Michigan last month.
…
“Those sorts of word games are exactly why the Democratic brand is in tatters right now,” Hemond said. “You call it a fuel efficiency standard, where there’s only one option, those are functionally the same thing. And for people who do not participate in the discourse—i.e. most voters—they think that’s all bulls–t.”
Republicans, he said, essentially turned the conversation into a debate about personal freedom. Even if the Democrats aren’t technically limiting what cars customers can buy, Hemond said, the semantics defense wasn’t resonating with everyday Americans.”
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19112024/ev-mandate-message-may-have-helped-trump-win-michigan/
The semantics defense did not work and will never work because it makes voters feel talked down to.
Hell yeah!
Make it an option across the board. Make it 80’s simple to work on too.
I would change that to “70s simple” based on my experiences with 80’s vehicles and unreliable electronics.
I can go with that.
I just bought a 66 fleetside C10 with the original 250 inline 6 in it. I will be *buried* in this truck
That’s a great choice! It’s a beautiful truck.
It’s really not anything to be concerned about. Absent Norwegian levels of direct consumer subsidies, there is zero chance of any of these mandates actually happening. And that for damned sure will NEVER happen in ‘Murica, no matter who is sitting in the Oval Office. It’s all Political Theatre on both sides. There is going to be a natural level of EV adoption, higher in some places, lower in others, and if it ever gets to even 50% (absent some serious tech advances) I will be *shocked*.
That said, if somebody made a PHEV I could stand, I would buy one. Not holding my breath for that either, being a curmudgeonly Luddite when it comes to cars. Particularly their user interfaces.
Just don’t hold onto it by the exhaust manifold.
GM banned the word “normalization”? E.F. Codd would be very disappointed.
“We just do things in a proper way,” Tavares said.
This man is delusional.
He’s an international exec. he can’t actually straight up tell the truth and say “We are trying to figure out what is the right way to make money in cars today. We don’t know, so we are throwing things at the wall. Once we figure it out, we will discuss in committee if we should actually do so. It is unlikely we will agree about the proper way, and we will continue to fight and struggle until they replace me entirely.” Which I think is more accurate.
It’s so far off base from what they’ve actually done that it’s funny. What manufacturer discontinues the top-selling cars for their brand after they blew up in popularity?
As if Stellantis needs an excuse to NOT launch a new product at this point, I think he would have a bigger issue answering the confused and bewildered questions that would accompany a new model actually arriving in showrooms
If I were to spend the extra to get a PHEV instead of a HEV, I’d definitely plug it in. Otherwise it’s just a big waste of money. I don’t know why this would be any different going from a Toyota to a Stellantis product. If you want to play into stereotypes, “those people” aren’t going to buy a PHEV. I guess my point is that, if one goes out of their way to purchase a PHEV, I can’t think of any logical reason they wouldn’t plug it in. If you’re living in an area without access to cheap electricity, why spend the extra for a PHEV?
The only reason I see is if you really like the car and it’s not one that has both as an option. The Pacifica hybrid gets better mpg than the gas version regardless of whether or not you plug it in. Additionally, you can get the $7500 credit on it right now, so I would go for that over the ICE pacifica in a heartbeat even if I never planned to plug it in. Now for Toyota who offers a standard HEV alongside every PHEV they sell, that would be a different story.
Some people will plug in EREVs, and I’d imagine most *should* given that’s the point of them. They’d be extremely compelling to someone like me who has a drive longer than the range of most EVs around once a month or slightly less on average, but a short commute with free charging. Plenty high SOC for daily stuff despite not having a home charger (I’m renting, can’t put one in) but makes the long drives painless.
That said, I can see several EREV buyers intending to plug in, not having good access, and driving primarily while the ICE is running to charge, with actual charging rare. We just need more of them on the market to find out, and hopefully we get them soon!
+1 for Pavement
What do you base this on, apart from possible stereotypes about the owners of these vehicles?
If anything, I think it’s obvious to say that the less efficient the underlying vehicle is on gas, the larger benefit one sees from plugging in. In that light, the Wrangler and Pacifica owners would be more likely to plug in because they will notice a larger drop in fuel costs, vs the RAV4 that is going to get good mileage either way.
I agree that the vehicle with the worst mileage is more inclined to plug-in. There are two 4xEs at work that battle to plug in first and one guy has told me the benefits from plugging in is the only way he could rationalize commuting an hour plus each way with a Jeep.
I Can’t even imagine how uncomfortable it must be to have a wrangler as a commuter car. Sure it might make sense financially once you plug in for free at work to effectively subsidize half your commute, but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.
Ride quality is only one factor of many factors that will put a smile on a drivers face. And dealing with a long commute, “what makes me smile” becomes outsized against other factors. I drive a shitbox on half blown dirt cheap coilovers. I drive an hour each way to work at high speeds. “Ride Quality” is not something my car has. But my car makes me smile, and I don’t really care it rides rough. So I can totally see why someone would drive a Wrangler. If they made me smile, I would.
An all-weather convertible with an available 6 speed is an unpleasant commuter?
I joke a little, but lots of people commute in solid axle trucks, plenty of people neglect to replace their old shocks or struts, lots of enthusiasts swap suspensions and trade ride quality for handling, etc.
A stock Wrangler isn’t so bad compared to the median commuter vehicle IMO.
The new ones ride quite well but man do the seats suck. My 2010 has very plush seats but an otherwise bouncy and somewhat unstable ride. Frankly though, I like it – I can’t do boring cars, and the Jeep is fun enough that I look forward to my morning commute. Of course, I rarely commute over 45 minutes. I’ll buy a truck once I regularly start driving for over an hour on end.
The new ones are of course better, but I had a coworker that used to do 30 miles each way in Detroit traffic with a TJ. I ran the math to show her that she could get a Prius C and cover the entire cost of the car with just the fuel savings. Having a more comfortable ride and keeping miles off the Jeep were bonuses.
I plug in my Pacifica as much as I can, I wish it had some driving modes like the Volt we own where I can save the battery for later. The good thing is that in 2 hours is charged to 100% on a level 2 charger. I dont worry about it when I am on road trips. Half of the driving we do is electric according to the vehicle.
It makes sense to me, if I don’t plan to plug it in, I would get the Rav4 hybrid instead of the PHEV. The Stellantis models don’t offer both, so it’s either ICE, or PHEV, which would mean anyone wanting to “go green” has to jump straight to the PHEV without the middle option existing.
This has nothing to do with stereotypes about owners. For a good chunk of time, Stellantis was in a legal feud with CARB and stopped shipping non-4XE models to the largest markets in America unless they were directly ordered. This caused dealers in those places to stock up on PHEV models and sell those, so a non-trivial number of people likely ended up with these PHEVs not because that’s what they intended to buy, but because that’s all they could get on the lot (and got a tax credit). Toyota didn’t have this problem so, in theory, almost everyone who bought a PHEV bought it because they thought they could plug it in.
This is good context that I wish had been in the article. Thanks for clarifying.
I should have probably added it.
What crazy to me is that people wanted a Jeep so badly that they spent $10-15K extra for a capability they would never use!
ETA I guess the tax credit would eat a good chunk of that difference, but not all of it.
That’s normal even for non-hybrid Wranglers in terms of off-road capability. What’s really crazy is the people who won’t use either capability and just wanted the “vibe”
Based on my unscientific observation, there is a 95% chance any free charging space is either taken up by a Wrangler 4xe or a Tesla who never bothered to actually plug in.
Based on my unscientific observation, there’s a 95% chance any free charging space is taken up by those you mention, or a Toyota Camry Hybrid (which doesn’t even have a plug), or a brodozer Ford or Ram truck with the charge plug either hanging loose over the gate in the bed or sitting on top of one of the tires.
I live amongst assholes of all varieties.
I think it tracks based on price & availability. RAV4 Prime is the most expensive RAV4 by a long shot, starting $3k more than a hybrid Limited but isn’t comparably equipped – the gap grows even more then. The hybrids are more plentiful, so if you aren’t planning to plug in, you’re fine with just a hybrid. Same I imagine applies to H/K’s PHEV crossovers too, allocations are just smaller there.
By contrast there’s been a lot more 4xe Jeeps out there on lots whenever I look (anecdotal I know, but not more than non-PHEVs and I’m not in a CARB state either per Matt’s reply). They aren’t cheap but they seem to run more in tandem to higher-priced non-PHEV trims, and then throw in the steeper discounts that CDJR generally does that are even greater on the 4xes, it may even work out cheaper than a comparably equipped non-PHEV.
Pacifica vs. Jeep, I would think the former has a higher likelihood of plugging in too. PHEV Pacificas don’t seem to be as common, and even if it was discounts on those would probably just bring it more in line with the few other minivans out there so the plug doesn’t add much if you don’t care about it. Or even be a negative, if Stow-n-Go was a major tipping point toward the Chrysler.
I agree. The balance lies in cost vs. convenience.
A lot of small pack PHEVs can be charged to full overnight on a standard 120v plug. Or at least close to.
Why wouldn’t anyone with easy plug-in access not take advantage? Regardless of the rig they’re rocking.
Anecdotally, I have friends who bought a Pacifica hybrid. The range is enough that unless they’re going out of town, they drive almost completely in EV mode. It’s been a year and they said plugging it in daily has added $8 to their monthly electric bill, but fuel cost has plummeted.
However, if your main gig is either street parking, or an apartment/condo where your parking spot has no access, then you’re probably gonna drive on gas a lot. You’re probably opting for a HEV or a straight gas as the plug-in does not benefit you.
This is exactly me with my Pacifica. Except for the raised electric bill because I built extra overhead into my solar panel array. The 32 miles of range isn’t perfect, but it does cover most of my in-town driving, and the L2 charger that the van came with lets me charge it up in about 2 hours. Even over the Volvo V60 I used to drive, which got decent mileage, I’m spending a LOT less on gas, and it’s a little better on roadtrips, too. Only by 1-3 MPG, but still.
RAV4’s are available as regular hybrids, so the assumption is that people who plan to use them as regular hybrids will buy regular hybrids.
There is no Wrangler hybrid other than the PHEV 4xe, so people buy them to save gas (because hybrids use less fuel, right?) regardless of whether they plan to plug them in.