The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

I can't make great use of a full EV but would love more AWD PHEV options, of which there are currently few and they're mostly very expensive. A PHEV can be my everything-car that runs entirely on electricity for 90% of trips. I assume there's some reason they're not a more widely-supported option, but damn, I wish they were more common.

Maybe because PHEV are a really dumb idea? You're lugging around two complete powertrains the whole time, a massive waste of energy!

PHEV means two drive trains, more parts and in turn more weight.

Do you really want a plugin car that loses its charge in 30 minutes?

Not really. PHEVs are usually one-and-a-half drivetrains at most. They're almost never as complicated as a separate BEV and ICE drivetrains would be individually.

They aren't more widely supported because they are more expensive and more complicated to manufacture with a higher potential for more stuff to go wrong.

Until the engine that powers a PHEV is nearly drop-in ready for a replacement (for example, going to your local auto parts store and buying a replacement like a battery) then companies need to have service technicians and production lines to support these "engines" (they're fancy generators at this point).

However, that would also require automakers to standardize to some degree or potentially cannibalize their own business.

We've already seen this with batteries/panels in the consumer space in regards to solar. I can buy whatever packs of cells I want, and as long as the voltages match up, I can mix and match to my hearts content. If I can only get service for my Jeep PHEV from Jeep because the drivetrain is a bespoke black box and parts are impossible to get, then we'll keep seeing customers continuing to opt for traditional gas vehicles or full EVs. PHEV is just too complicated to support long term (imo).

If 90% of your trips can be covered by a normal EV, then I would make the argument that you should buy one of those (secondhand even!) and then rent a vehicle for the instances where you need AWD. The fuel and tax savings should likely make up for it in the long run. For that one year that you don't go skiing in the mountains, then you're coming out on top financially!

PHEVs generally weigh much less than a full EV with equivalent range. Doesn’t seem very wasteful to me.

Or, getting at what is actually desired, a car that can be a wall-charged EV for in-town trips and daily commuting but can use the existing gasoline distribution network for long trips or in emergencies. We’re in a transition state, this isn’t an unreasonable ask.

That's more than enough to cover the average worker's commute, especially as most of the time is spent stuck in traffic.

From what I've read most PHEVs tend to have really bad batteries that are unreliable, complicated and expensive to replace. It makes sense that they cut corners when there's a whole other powertrain to mask it.

> Do you really want a plugin car that loses its charge in 30 minutes?

30' are enough to go to work, where I can recharge during the day for the return leg. 30' are enough for any daily errand, too, so that would not be a problem.

Finally, for long trips, I'd use it as a "real" car with its internal combustion engine.

That's not true, it's barely enough to get the average worker to their job https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-...

And you get a big energy win with regenerative braking.

GP's argument can be countered with basically every hybrid getting better mileage than its ICE sibling in city traffic.

> Do you really want a plugin car that loses its charge in 30 minutes?

Yes? Probably half of all my drives are 30 minutes or less, round trip. Some get closer to 40ish minutes of driving on battery, which would cover more like 90% of my drives.

AFAIK it's not (usually?) two drive trains, it's one electric drive train and a generator that's way smaller than a normal gasoline engine.

Yes, I've owned one for 4 years now and I genuienly believe this is what all cars should be, it's just such an obvious idea in hindsight it's crazy that this isn't what everyone is pivoting to. I do all of my daily driving on EV power using zero fuel and the car costs me close to nothing to drive(charging nightly on a cheap tariff), and when I need to drive across the continent to visit family I just put in fuel and go, no bother with charging on the way. And on slightly longer drives the entire system improves efficiency a lot - just did a 100 mile drive this weekend to a holiday cottage, averaged 45mpg both ways, and that's in a 2.2 tonne SUV with 400bhp. That's the kind of number you'd see out of a diesel normally.

I own a PHEV, for almost a year now, as my daily drive. It's not as good a BEV as a true BEV (range is ~20% of one) and it's not as good a HEV as a true HEV (gas mileage on hybrid mode is worse than my in-laws Prius'). But it perfectly fits our current life. We can do all of our normal daily routine (commute/school drop offs) on one charge, and when we head out of town I don't have to worry about it (I live in a Western US state with long drives between population centers- I can get range anxiety just on gasoline as I did not grow up like this). So we've driven it for 18,000 km, and 14,000 of those have been fully electric, just a couple of weekend getaways and one week-long trip around the country have been on gas.

Getting all of that capability in one car is very convenient. We replaced an 11 year old gas vehicle, and I don't expect that this PHEV one will last us as long. But it was the right car for us in our current situation.

> PHEV is just too complicated to support long term (imo).

PHEV isn't that much more complex than an ICE. The transaxle is typically mechanically simpler, and you have two electric motor/generators instead of an electric motor (starter) and an electric generator (alternator). There's a big battery you need to find room for, and the power wiring. And the engine control is significantly different, but if it doesn't work, swap the ECU works as well for an ICE and PHEV.

Since 90% of my car trips are under 30 minutes, yes that would be worthwhile.

The other 10% are beyond any practical battery range, so a BEV isn't an option.

Nobody wants this, but in an imperfect world, one has to make suboptimal compromises.

You can get an EV, and then have to deal with half a dozen barely competent charging networks each with their own donkey, slow and insecure app, their own quirks and pricing schemes, etc. For some, the tradeoff is worth it, for others it isn't.

You can also get a PHEV, which could allow you to use one car for commuting purely on electric power - even if you are lugging around an entire ICE power train - and then also take the family out to the countryside over the weekend. Without the having to deal with a bunch of annoyed passangers when you are stuck midway through your journey and the charging station you are trying to use is giving you the massively helpeful error message of "Charging failed, please try again later".

Is there somewhere I can find more info on this? Car enthusiast here who is genuinely interested in learning.

My impressions had been that it largely mirrors the EV market: A few early PHEV models (such as the BMW i3) had poor battery management leading to unreliable battery packs. This was fixed in subsequent generations and is not a problem unless you are scraping the bottom of the used market. That's much the same as how EV batteries are generally reliable unless you buy early versions of certain problematic models (particularly the Nissan Leaf).

I think you'll find most normal people find PHEVs extremely attractive propositions that are a perfect compromise between ICE and EVs.

Is it two drive trains? I thought ideally PHEV would be like diesel-electric with electric motors supplying traction and a gas power plant supplying power.

"30 minutes" is pretty misleading, because it's not like the batteries are discharging at a constant rate.

It might be thirty minutes on the highway, as new PHEV cars have ranges in the 30-40 miles range. But if you're driving in the city, 30 miles is enough to get you basically anywhere you want to go and back, even if traffic makes it a 2 hour trip.

I own one and would prefer if my next car purchase was another one. Unfortunately, while the model I've picked for my next car has a PHEV option, they don't make very many, and don't take orders, so if you really want it, you probably need to put your name down at all the dealerships, and the wait for regular hybrid is already long and the vehicle to be replaced was sold in summer. PHEV would be nicer, and we've made due longer than I thought we would, but when our regular hybrid comes in, that will be good enough.

PHEVs are lovely to drive, and availability of gas stations means almost no planning is needed. Fuel low, stop in for 5 minutes and good to go for hundreds of miles (current one does 500-600/tank depending on conditions)

> Among this group, those leaving between 6:00 a.m. and 6:29 a.m. reported the longest average travel time to work at 32.8 minutes.

So, if "30 minutes" was actually how you measured range (and not in miles), the average worker in the longest group would burn fuel for 3 minutes, instead of 33 minutes. This is 90% less fuel than a traditional hybrid car would use in the same time.

The BYD Shark is ~$60k, but it’s being only available in Brazil and Australia. Ford is making a Ranger Sport PHEV, but only for Australia and Europe. CATL launched its Freevoy hybrid battery, competing with BYD. It’s certainly being worked on, but not in the US quite yet.

> My impressions had been that it largely mirrors the EV market: A few early PHEV models (such as the BMW i3) had poor battery management leading to unreliable battery packs.

BMW i3 owner here. The i3 never had such issues and has been praised for its overall great engineering (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjPIuLz5VFI and https://evclinic.eu/2024/11/03/which-used-ev-to-buy-a-beginn...). It is also not a PHEV but an EV that had an option for a range extender.

The Prius gets up to 50 mpg on the highway too, much better than ICE cousins.

These guys do a lot of work on ICE, EVs and Hybrids, scroll to the end where they discuss Hybrids https://evclinic.eu/2024/11/03/which-used-ev-to-buy-a-beginn...

>> PHEV is just too complicated to support long term (imo).

> PHEV isn't that much more complex than an ICE.

I've been an owner/operator of two Gen3 Prii for 14 years and agree in practice even though in theory I would agree with the complexity argument. The one maintenance hit for both was for the vacuum pump needed for brakes/etc because the car cannot assume the engine is always running.

Toyota has moved to hybrid only for the Camry and Sienna. This is an indicator to me that technology maturity and US manufacturing is where it needs to be for broad adoption.

I mean, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's a compromise. A pure EV would be much better if the charging infrastructure was great. If it isn't, then you need a compromise...

BMW makes an PHEV X5 50e with about 30ish miles range and the B58 straight six. Most other options get a dinky little engine. The 5 series also has one that is just making its way to the US, 550e.

Typed this before I saw that you said expensive. I’ll leave my comment anyway.

How is that possible? What's it doing that ICE cars can't do on a highway?

No, even if charging infrastructure was perfect EVs still require a significant amount of time to charge compared to refueling an ICE vehicle. There are other esoteric benefits of ICE but that's the one the vast majority of people are hung up on and that will likely not be fixed anytime soon.

People make the rental argument a lot. But having been in a ski house quite a few years back with a lot of New Yorkers who didn't own cars, I saw first-hand what a relative main in the neck it was to rent a car for the weekend (e.g. often having to go out to an airport and planning ahead). That's maybe fine if the economics are compelling but that probably assumes things like you even have a commute by car. And that you're willing to give up convenience to save even a few thousand dollars a year.

I have an ICE but I only fill the tank once or maybe twice most months.

I'd guess it has something to do with its unusual drivetrain. It can operate: 1) fully electric, 2) fully electric but with gas used in generator-mode to supply power to the electric drive train, 3) gas engine mechanically powering the wheels (like a normal ICE car).

I'd expect it operates in mode 2 a lot when at highway speeds, but not accelerating.

I haven’t seen one that is cost competitive with its model’s regular hybrid version. The EV adds thousands of dollars, but only saves you about $3 per day in gas. For example, The Kia niro is $9k more for phev and saves you 0.6 gallons of gas per day so it would take over 10 years for the cost to balance out. The funny thing is, the more efficient the gas engine is, the less gas the phev can save you.

I think you exaggerate about BEVs. I have a friend of mine who has a Boston condo and commutes with his Tesla to his house in Northern Vermont most weekends. I think he charges once along the way and then at home on both ends. That said I'm going to Maine next week and I would certainly have to track down convenient and reliable chargers. And there would probably be some trips--even in the Northeast--where they wouldn't be practical.

(I on the other hand drive into a city about 60+ minutes away so I don't know what the percentage is but I do a fair number of trips an hour+ away.)

Most ICE car engines are massively oversized for highway cruising (so they have power for acceleration) and aren't running efficiently during said cruising. Huge amounts of engineering goes into trying to reduce this effect but it's always there to some extent.

Hybrids use a smaller engine that is running in a more efficient operating range during cruising (i.e. not pulling a huge vacuum and moving lots of parts the whole time). The battery/motor comes in for acceleration.

Unlike combustion engines, electric stuff isn't really inefficient at low load.

> Even if charging infrastructure was perfect EVs still require a significant amount of time to charge compared to refueling an ICE vehicle.

That's just down to charging infrastructure no? Sure, there are physical limits to how much electricity one can move in a given time, but we are nowhere at those physical limits.

So it's just down to infrastructure in the end. If there was infrastructure to quickly and reliably charge EVs, ICE would only have niche advantages.

I believe the Prius is either in mode 1 or 3. Never heard that it has a generator capability, unless newer models have changed?

The ICE engine in a Prius is a special branch of tech that is more efficient at the cost of basically kneecapped performance. Americans cannot stand needing a full ten seconds to get onto the highway, because we all drive like a bunch of roided up chimps who refuse to move over to give the merging onramp any room.

For two decades there has been a roughly free 5% or so in fuel economy available to any ICE car if only we could manage to be slightly more patient drivers, but American car buyers would literally rather spend twice the cost on a V8, gasoline truck, that gets worse fuel economy than it's $8k more expensive diesel variant, worse performance, and often a less reliable engine.

Americans will swear that a ten cent increase in gas prices will drive them to financial ruin, and then choose to buy the SUV made out of a terrible truck chassis that gets 20mpg. They did this despite having to learn the hard way back in 2008 what it actually meant for gas to be expensive.

I'm waiting for an EREV midsize SUV. EREV sounds like the ideal layout as opposed to HEV and PHEV which sound mechanically over complicated with too many components that can go wrong. The new Dodge Ramcharger sounds amazing but I don't want a pickup and it's way outside of my price point.

Travel time != travel distance. When you're stuck in traffic, an electric or hybrid car will not consume any energy except for fans/heating/AC. An ICE-only car will have to keep its engine running.

ICE weigh much much less than an EV with equivalent range. It matters what you're optimizing for. Most people seem to optimize cost, many for range and some for GHG emissions. Based on which camp you're in, your judgment of of something being wasteful will be different.

They don't typically have a full transmission or CVT either. Taking the new hybrid Civic for example: it just has a basic planetary gearbox that handles forward, reverse and highway cruising.

Any time you're not at highway cruising speed, it's just in the normal position where the electric motor drives it (the engine only functions as a generator). It's effectively an electric car with a small, far under provisioned in Civic terms, engine that comes on to top the battery up sometimes if regen braking isn't enough.

At highway speeds, the gearbox has the engine drive. And since it's a less powerful engine, it will have better fuel economy than one that has to ever handle acceleration from a standstill.

And the whole thing weighs about 3200-3400lb, far less than any electric vehicle. So you're "lugging" around less.

Vacuum not being reliable has been a thing for decades - diesel engines don't produce vacuum and so vacuum pumps are available off the shelf. If anything those vacuum pumps are oversized for cars since they are mostly used on large trucks.

If you drive an ICE that much you could be saving money vs renting a car when you need one. I've done the math, rental cars are expensive. Between the per day and per mile charges it doesn't take long to make up the cost of a cheap car. (if you insist on a new car of course that is much more expensive than a 10 year old car) I keep wanting to get rid of my truck that I only fill about 4x/year, but it turns out it is hard to rent a truck, as opposed to a truck shaped car. (I have found ways to do this, but those trucks are even more expensive than a car and they are out of the way)

An ICE is typically most fuel efficient at about 2000 RPM and 90% throttle (this is different for every engine of course, but those numbers are close enough for discussion). A typical car can be at 45% fuel efficiency if you can pull that off, but 90% throttle when cruising will bring your RPMs and thus ground speed up. A hybrid can use a smaller engine that can just barely keep your car moving at 90% throttle and use the electric to get acceleration up to those speeds.

That works, but EV chargers are rare enough that you can't just see the charge meter getting to low and get off at the next exit for a fill up like you can with a gas charge. If you don't pay attention you can end up with not enough charge make it to any charging station. People run out of gas too, but most cars the gas light comes at with 40 miles of range left - 40 miles of range won't always get you to any EV charger (and with different charging standards you cannot be sure your car can charge at them all though this is getting better and will likely be solved in a few years as we move to NACS).

Gears are more efficient (assuming you are not stupid in design) than an electric generator and motor. We cannot make gears that will do the job for a train - they wouldn't fit between the wheels while also doing the needed 90 degree turn to the engine. Once in a while someone makes such a car, but it is generally better to use a transmission.

Prius "eCVT" is a special planetary gearset that all gears are powered. ICE is connected to the planets, input and output has the alternator and traction motors. Difference in resistance between two motors is imparted to the ICE, achieving power mix and generation control.

It's a really simple and clever solution. So much so that brain hurts to think about

It's Toyota cheaping out as always. They put a 1.5kWh NiMH pack in the trunk, and charge $5k for replacement. That's almost a big power bank capacity, and using that small of a battery strains it too. Cost for enclosures and control circuits don't scale with capacity so dollar/kWh figure is atrocious.

It works. People hates it. The issues with it are mostly theoretical or matters of preferences. That's hallmark Toyota, isn't it...

Prius uses an Atkinson cycle engine, doesn't it? Inherently more efficient than a conventional engine, albeit at the cost of lower power. You can get that effect with variable valve timing in some power ranges, at the cost of more complexity.

Pure EVs also waste tons of energy, because they lug around a huge battery that you barely use for most trips.

The battery pack in a Model Y weighs 1700 lbs and provides 330 miles of range. A RAV4 Prime (PHEV) has a 14.5 gallon gas tank, which provides 500 miles of range from 90 lbs of gas - in addition to the smaller 300 lb battery pack providing 42 miles range. The additional weight of the drivetrain components offsets the savings from not lugging around a huge battery. Overall, the vehicles end up with similar weight, but the RAV4 has much longer range. By default, the RAV4 prime runs on EV mode until the battery runs down. With both vehicles, you’re taking an efficiency hit on the average drive for having the option of taking longer trips.

Of course, both vehicles are a big environmental win over old ICE cars, because they will move you more miles per carbon emitted. Which one works better for you depends on your use-case. If you want to lower the environmental impact if you commute even more, ride a bicycle or something.

The latest Prius Prime can do 0-60 in 6.7 seconds. It’s no muscle car but that’s hardly “kneecapped performance.”

> Americans will swear that a ten cent increase in gas prices will drive them to financial ruin

Look, come on. There's no need to turn every comment into a chance to bash a whole country. I bet there aren't many countries you think so poorly of that you'd make sweeping statements about their populations. Gas prices affect all prices due to direct logistics costs and the increases every employee needs all along every supply chain. That's the problem with them.

Pretty much all mainstream hybrids run Atkinson cycle (technically not the original Atkinson design, but an otto-cycle engine that keeps the intake valve open longer, to produce the same effect)

Your average, rather small, gasoline pump 'charges' an ICE at an average speed around 4000 KW, effectively 1200 KW after accounting for moderate efficiency -- hybrids will get better. Good EV charging today is a peak around 300 KW with a much lower average.

Honestly, _averaging_ 300 KW is probably within a factor of 2 of the highest we'll do for light vehicles given economic (how much electric distribution infrastructure can an 8-32 stall charging station have?) and practical (how heavy and stiff can the charging cable be?) limits.

It's unlikely EV charging speed will ever match existing ICEs. Relatively long recharge times are an intrinsic trade-off of BEV technology which needs to be engineered around, mostly by having enormous and heavy batteries.

An SUV version of ramcharger is very appealing

Or you could have drop in batteries? You pull up to a charging station, they take your battery and replace it with one charged to 100%.

Does this require further work? Yes of course. We are definitely not there yet, and we may never get there. But let's not pretend that this is an insurmountable problem.

Battery swapping has so many serious pragmatic problems I don't think we'll ever see it offered at scale for public use. It could be a fit for large private fleets however.

On the engineering side:

- Swapping requires standardization of batteries across models and manufacturers. To accommodate different vehicles the batteries will need to be rather small so most vehicles will need multiple swapped every time

- Requires more space and weight because the battery cannot be structural. This will reduce the overall range of EVs

- Connectors for high voltage, signalling, cooling fluid, and high strength mechanical rated for thousands of cycles in the face of road grime and poorly maintained swap robots will not be small. Cooling system contamination will be a serious concern.

On the financial side:

- Batteries are expensive, how do you track and reclaim them across the entire continent? What about theft? Destruction insurance?

- With swappable batteries the incentive is to store them at 100% then run them 100% to 0%, which is especially bad for battery longevity

- How do you deal with batteries swapped at different 'swap' networks?

On the user side:

- What if the swap station is out of batteries when you need them? Are you always gambling on holiday weekends that you won't need to sit for hours charging (if that is even possible!)?

- Since some batteries will be more worn than others, how do you deal with constant variability of range because maybe last week you got a new set of batteries and next week you'll get an older set with only 80% capacity left.

- Are you allowed to charge at home? How is the wear from that charged?

- Did I buy a battery with my car, or are cars no longer batteries included? If my car came with a battery, how do I know I get it back? Do I get paid for the wear other users put on it? Do I need to retrieve my battery from the same station on the way home after a road trip?

That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others. Most of these issues are solvable with unlikely levels of corporate cooperation or immense levels of excess capital expenditure. However, they all cost money and will reduce the economic viability of battery-swap EVs versus every other vehicle type.

The "S" trim of the current Nissan Leaf (with the 40 kwh battery) weighs 3509 lbs.

https://www.autopadre.com/vehicle-weight/nissan-leaf