Now that EVs can go 200+ miles, do we still need hybrids?

In reply to TopNoodles :

Yup! The big difference is the Corolla hybrids use old Nickel Metal-Hydrides instead of lithium for cost.

The NiMH allows it a whole mile of electric range.

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

That's like one step above stop/start. Clever way to trick Corolla buyers into driving a slower, more fuel efficient car. If it was just a Corolla with a 1.3 liter engine and stop/start it would probably have near the same performance and economy and nobody would buy it because it's "too slow".

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

A few points to deal with a bias towards gas over electric. 
Operating cost.  If you drive an EV your fuel costs are a tiny fraction of your gas costs. Since they both vary so much it's pretty meaningless to give percentages. But here in Minnesota's my neighbors with them report monthly costs for their EV's are around $4.50-$5.00 a week versus $45-50 a week for gas. 
 In addition They comment about the need for periodic oil changes and service for their Gas vehicles. I doubt those are cheap considering it's done at dealerships. my Ford would undoubtably be over $120 at the dealership. A BMW, Mercedes, and Caddy? 
The lease payments are perhaps $80 a month different from their SUV although some of that is conjecture since exact details of each lease was never discussed.  ( plus we have Model S , Model X  and a Model 3 in the neighborhood, with a BMW M5 SUV Mercedes-AMG 450 and Cadillac Escalade.  

 

alfadriver said:

Keith Tanner said:

About the "apartment dwellers can't charge" problem - and it's a legit problem - I think the market will solve that. Apartments with charging access will become more valuable, which will encourage building owners to install chargers. Heck, it's not unusual for cold areas to have plugs for block heaters in parking lots because that's something that people value, this is the same basic concept.

So if EV's raise the price of renting, what about the low end of the economic scale?  Seems to me that it lowers the possibility that EV's will become universal.  Lots and lots of people live on the edge of the economy- can't forget about them.

Look at the bigger picture. More EV's = less need for gas, less gas sold = higher cost per gallon to cover overhead. Also fewer gas stations since many are already marginally profitable and rely on snack and drink sales to remain profitable.   Fewer stations = less competition. Again higher gas costs. 

Those with the lowest incomes who barely survive with the $1000 car Gas will become much too expensive. Even with  fracking our oil supply isn't limitless.  

In reply to frenchyd :

Before you even come close to that point, you have to have EV's penetrate a much larger part of the market.  We are not even talking about that- this is about attracting EV owners to places to live by adding charging stations to apartments- which will raise the rent, which will push lower income renters from that apartment.

BTW, last time I checked, when gas demand went down, the price did, too.  It's going to be decades and decades before production will go so far down to make gas more expensive to make.  Again, that's 30-40 years away, and we are talking in the next 5-10.

The core point is that EV technology as it exists today is not low income friendly.  It can change, and I expect that it will do so.  But I have not seen any evidence that it will happen in the next 5-10 years.

TopNoodles said:

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

That's like one step above stop/start. Clever way to trick Corolla buyers into driving a slower, more fuel efficient car. If it was just a Corolla with a 1.3 liter engine and stop/start it would probably have near the same performance and economy and nobody would buy it because it's "too slow".

It's a pretty big step, though- you go from not using fuel when you stop to harvesting energy when you are slowing down....  Hybrids add a huge step in system efficiency compared to stop-start.

In reply to alfadriver :

Well, why should it immediately go to the lowest income bracket? They can't afford to help the company replace R&D. 

Cars didn't when they first came out, no other technology short of processed food or drugs has gone directly to the lower income section of the market. 

Considering our combined annual income is under $40k, I feel safe in saying that I AM the low income mark. While I think the tech is great and I like seeing the new things coming around, I understand it's going to be a long time till I can afford it. And that's perfectly ok. 

Let the rich people deal with the teething problems of new technology. They can afford to walk away when their car catches fire for no reason, they can afford to be the test mules for autonomous driving. Let the rich find the bugs so by the time it's available for the poor it's relatively safe and there is a bit of a parts stock pile in the junkyard or aftermarket so they have a better chance of keeping their vehicle on the road.

Rent is going to keep going up anyway, at least adding chargers are a better excuse than "keeping up with the market".

My wife currently has a 2019 Rav4 Hybrid and if I had to guess what the next car will be, I'd say probably Rav4 Prime. We get quite a it of snow where we live, so AWD and ground clearance are a concern in the winter. The hatch is perfect for dogs and hauling lots of stuff. Any BEV options that are AWD, even without the hatch are seriously expensive. We also live in a sparsely populated area where it's a several hour drive to any city of 100,000 or more, so charging stations are going to be a problem for anything but commuting. Realistically, we could make do with hers as an electric car as long as I've got a gas powered one, but I want something fun and that's not always great for road trips with 4 people and luggage with room to spare for the inevitable shopping.

In reply to RevRico :

Sigh...

I'm in no way suggesting that low income should fit the bill.  What I am saying is that they can not bear the burden of a shift to landlords adding EV charging and raising rents.  Right now, many cities in the US face a pretty significant housing crisis, where there are a huge amount of working homeless.  What's being suggested is just going to make that worse.

And eventually, if EV's are 100% of the market, they HAVE to be capable of being useful to the low income- that part of the market gets all of their transportation off of the used market.  Even if the fuel cost is almost nothing, having a buy in price that is huge due to the current tech eventually needing a very expensive battery replacement- it makes a significant problem for the bottom end of the market.

I'm just pointing out the realities of the world.  Not sure why people want to pretend that they don't exist.

They do, just like charging rates matter.  

And that the cost of the batteries are currently so high that it makes economic sense to have a much smaller battery, an electric motor AND a gas motor compared to a pure EV.  And it will until a quantum change in battery technology goes away from the current make up.  For now, that's why hybrids will exist for a very long time.

If you want to make billions and billions of dollars, find a better alternative to the current battery materials.  One where cost is MUCH lower and storage potential is higher.  Maybe then adding more batteries will be cheaper than adding an ICE.

There is a lot of talk about the next big jump in batteries, which will be cheaper and more powerful.  And if I can just invent a warp drive engine, the Vulcans will invite us into the federation.

I'm not saying it won't happen...No, actually, I am saying it won't happen.  There  surely will be a better battery created, but the odds of it being cheaper, and made out of readily available materials are exceedingly slim.  

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

If history repeats itself batteries are where micro computers were from  1980 to 2005? The dollar price point of the latest and greatest did not change but the power/features increased. The worm turned and the nominal price decreased. I think we'll find we are in the first era of this scenario.

As an anecdote from 1990-93 I worked for a forestry consulting/GIS company we bought an outrageously large hard drive maybe a terabyte capacity $10000 what would it cost now?

RX8driver said:

My wife currently has a 2019 Rav4 Hybrid and if I had to guess what the next car will be, I'd say probably Rav4 Prime. We get quite a it of snow where we live, so AWD and ground clearance are a concern in the winter. The hatch is perfect for dogs and hauling lots of stuff. Any BEV options that are AWD, even without the hatch are seriously expensive. We also live in a sparsely populated area where it's a several hour drive to any city of 100,000 or more, so charging stations are going to be a problem for anything but commuting. Realistically, we could make do with hers as an electric car as long as I've got a gas powered one, but I want something fun and that's not always great for road trips with 4 people and luggage with room to spare for the inevitable shopping.

Since the useful life of ICE cars is approaching or exceding 20 years.  EV's fundamental simplistically doesn't offer any real durability benefits, However there is absolutely no reason EV's cannot become modular.   Wear or updating could be more or less plug and play. Even body style could be a matter of removal of the 4 door and replace with the convertible version. The 4 door could be shredded and turned into the formal or mini van version. 

In reply to alfadriver :

No doubt regenerative braking is a big help. I'm mostly amused at how people are more willing to accept slowness if it comes with a hybrid badge. "Hybrid" still sounds better than "the same car but with a puny engine and crappy tires".

Didn't someone on this forum get really good highway economy by putting a 1.3 engine in an NA Miata?

alfadriver said:

In reply to frenchyd :

Before you even come close to that point, you have to have EV's penetrate a much larger part of the market.  We are not even talking about that- this is about attracting EV owners to places to live by adding charging stations to apartments- which will raise the rent, which will push lower income renters from that apartment.

BTW, last time I checked, when gas demand went down, the price did, too.  It's going to be decades and decades before production will go so far down to make gas more expensive to make.  Again, that's 30-40 years away, and we are talking in the next 5-10.

The core point is that EV technology as it exists today is not low income friendly.  It can change, and I expect that it will do so.  But I have not seen any evidence that it will happen in the next 5-10 years.

Yes 5-10 years is about my estimated vision. A Henry Ford will come along and make a model T version and the complex cars of the last decade will become either scrap or a few kept as collector cars. 
As for fuel prices. Perhaps you don't remember the $4.00 a gallon prices of the early to mid  2000's until Fracking really caught on?  
That's what drove prices down, the overabundance of oil as the result of fracking. 

Streetwiseguy said:

There is a lot of talk about the next big jump in batteries, which will be cheaper and more powerful.  And if I can just invent a warp drive engine, the Vulcans will invite us into the federation.

I'm not saying it won't happen...No, actually, I am saying it won't happen.  There  surely will be a better battery created, but the odds of it being cheaper, and made out of readily available materials are exceedingly slim.  

Have you read about Henry Ford?  Before his Model T   cars were only for the very rich. What is to prevent innovations in electric motors to massively increase range?  GM's square wire in their Volt/Bolt is a tiny example.  aren't all electric motors still fundamentally the same?  Who's going to capture the function of a grasshopper or something else equally wild and apply it to power systems? 
THAT's most people's problem.  We need to understand how things function not completely re-create the wheel. Do we need wheels? When is anti gravity machine going to come along?  Or any other out of the box idea?  

Streetwiseguy said:

There is a lot of talk about the next big jump in batteries, which will be cheaper and more powerful.  And if I can just invent a warp drive engine, the Vulcans will invite us into the federation.

I'm not saying it won't happen...No, actually, I am saying it won't happen.  There  surely will be a better battery created, but the odds of it being cheaper, and made out of readily available materials are exceedingly slim.  

Lithium-Sulfur might; it doesn't use rare metals for a cathode, is lighter than Li-Ion while being capable of 3x the energy density. Problem is tho, it's only just hitting the open market and we really don't know it's durability. Solid-State batteries are also in the same position, however their makeup and chemistry changes between manufacturers so there's no "base"- and that's not even getting to John Goodenough...

In reply to Rons:

1TB HDDs can be bought off of Newegg now for $45.00 before shipping.

We forget that right now, most lithium cell production is still centralized in Asia and the new plants for Daimler VAG/ect. haven't yet fired up. Tesla is still reliant on Panasonic for their 18650s. EU manufacturing alone might seriously drive some lower costs from scale alone.

A guy in my office has the perfect commute for an electric only vehicle, drives under 50 miles per day, would work great. He'd love to have one. 
 

He lives in a townhouse with street parking, can't put in a home charger. There's a lot of people in this thread with garages and driveways saying how easy it is just to charge it at home, not everyone has that option, even if they are homeowners. 

We just drove my wife's 2010 Prius from Chicago to Portland, Oregon and back a month ago.  About 3 days out, and three days back.  5 days visiting her son, seeing the sights, and (of course) junkyarding.   That's over 700 miles each day.     400 miles to a fill up.    5-10 minutes to fuel the car.

There is no way to do this trip with an electric car that gets just over 200 miles to a charge.

In reply to Steve_Jones :

Nothing works for everyone. If adoption continues, we'll see adaptations. Curbside power doesn't sound crazy, even if you need to authenticate. It's not hard to imagine a row of townhouses getting a tweak  like that, or first a change to new ones getting that when they're built.

In reply to Cooter :

So? I've had EMS calls where we had to call for other squads in older, smaller ambulances because the duallys couldn't fit up driveways and the like. That doesn't mean the dually is useless- it was just the wrong tool at the time.

Why does everyone resort to "WELL IT WOULDNT WORK FER ME" as an argument? You could say that about 90% of the vehicles on the market right now.

I think that there is still a market for hybrids.  Electrics are still too expensive on the new and used market and used comes with concern about battery replacement.  Personally, fuel consumption is really low on my list of considerations when I buy a vehicle and as a result I've never seriously considered a hybrid.  There hasn't been one with driving dynamics that I was willing to live with at a price I was willing to spend that fulfilled all the other mission requirements when I was shopping.

I'm currently looking for a car to replace my wife's aging S60.  Keith's thread on his Tesla experience has me seriously considering a pure electric.  Not so much for the operating cost saving but for the reduced maintenance effort, good driving dynamics and the ability to avoid having to go to the gas station which is my wife's least favorite chore (mostly because it requires standing still for a few minutes).  I think we're going to buy one more gasoline car however.  My wife doesn't want to spend over $15k and that really limits the electric options.  I think we're going with another gasoline car this time around but I'm hoping that in 10 years when we replace it that we'll be abl e to go electric.

In reply to APEowner :

Would it be possible to get your wife to look at a larger picture?  If the cars you buy last 3-4 years and she's going to be driving for 20-30 more years. Could she see her way to 30,000 instead of 15,000?  

I got a Volt in 2013. It was a way to dip my toes in the EV waters. For an "economy car" it was quick and luxurious, and I did all my commuting and errand running on electrons, only using gas for the long trips up to upstate NY and down to TN. 7 years later, I still have that Volt. No battery degradation, very little fuel used, and I had been toying with replacing it with a fun 1st gen EV with only 100 mile range. You can get Spark EVs and Fiat 500es for under $10k that still have years of use left in them. They are fun to drive, which is very important to me. And then, this month, GM dropped $8500 on the hood of the Bolt. And dealerships here in MD were giving another $4500 on top of that. So my wife and I went and test drove one. And a $25k, 2020 Bolt LT in Oasis Blue followed us home.

The '20s have a 259 mile EPA range. Ours has cloth seats, but the DC fast charge, heated seats/steering wheel, and a slew of driver aids I don't want or need. But the Apple CarPlay is great (no built in Nav in any Bolt, just standard Apple CarPlay and Android auto , so Waze is my default nav on teh center screen)

I LOVE the modern crop of EVs. They are generally quite fun to drive: low CG and agile, quite quick off the line and squirting through traffic. My Bolt reminds me of the old hot hatchs with 200 hp and 260 lb ft of torque delivering all it's torque right at idle. 0-60 might only be 6 seconds (GTI territory) but 0-40 is blisteringly quick and throttle response is INSTANT. It's a little burnout monster! lol. Low CG and near perfect weight balance makes it agile and quite neutral handling (and trust me, I have a LOT of experience with good handling cars. The only thing limiting the Bolt is it's stock Michelin LRR tires). The quiet thrust of the electric motor is quite luxurious and reminds me of a quicker version of my 740i. It really starts to make the average car feel crude and rough in comparison (most cars are 4 and 6 cyl models that don't have great exhaust tones and you can feel the engines vibrate the car).

It has enough range, even in the winter, to drive all over my state. I spent 4 hours in it over the weekend driving all over southern MD and the Chesapeake Bay area and only used up half my indicated range. If I want to go up to my kid's house in Saratoga Springs, NY (up above Albany) it required a gas stop in my gas powered car (two for my Suburban!) and it requires a charging stop in the Bolt. The gas stop involved a potty break, too, and generally took about 10 minutes total. The charge stop takes about 20 minutes, including potty break, so it's not really that bad on a 6 hour trip. And there are multiple choices of charging locations along my normal route, so it's not like I have to go searching.

I've still got the Volt so now both my wife and I commute on electrons. I was going to leave long distance trips to the Volt, but with DC Fast Charge charging stations popping up all over, that may not be necessary. Still toying with replacing the Volt with a 1st gen BEV. I like the thought of a 500e with some suspension and wheel/tire mods. But I'll probably just do coilovers and custom wheels on the Volt. It's still a nice car, just hate to hear the engine run. lol!

A friend of mine in Texas bought a used Leaf for $5k. It has 70% battery capacity and he drives it all over and NEVER charges at home. He only charges at destination chargers. He's going to drive it until the battery capacity is at 50% and then swap packs. New packs are $2500, which is on par with an automatic trans replacement.

GIRTHQUAKE said:

In reply to Cooter :

So? I've had EMS calls where we had to call for other squads in older, smaller ambulances because the duallys couldn't fit up driveways and the like. That doesn't mean the dually is useless- it was just the wrong tool at the time.

Why does everyone resort to "WELL IT WOULDNT WORK FER ME" as an argument? You could say that about 90% of the vehicles on the market right now.

Maybe because the title is 

"Now that EVs can go 200+ miles, do we still need hybrids?"

And I was answering that?

If you want to have a chip on your shoulder and try put other words into my mouth, go right ahead, but nowhere in my post do you see me see say anything about EVs being useless.