The $25k car is going extinct?

You can still buy a new subcompact car (like a Renault Clio or Skoda Fabia) in Europe for under 20k EUR.

The more interesting question is why these cars disappeared in the US. And while many of the factors discussed here are true for both EU and US (inflation, interest rates, manufacturer profit margins etc) I am surprised no one mentioned the 'SUV loophole' of US regulations that effectively boosted the SUVs (off-road vehicles are classified as non-passenger automobiles with everything that entails, notably much less stringent emission standards) and made the small cars unprofitable to make in comparison.

> I am surprised no one mentioned the 'SUV loophole' of US regulations that effectively boosted the SUVs (off-road vehicles are classified as non-passenger automobiles with everything that entails, notably much less stringent emission standards) and made the small cars unprofitable to make in comparison.

This has become the irrelevant part because "does it have an electric motor in the powertrain" has become more important to fuel economy than vehicle size. There are hybrid SUVs that get better MPG than non-hybrid sedans, to say nothing of the full electric ones.

Which is another reason the average price is increasing. Hybrids have a lower TCO even though they have a higher initial purchase price. People who can do the math realize that paying more up front for a hybrid or full electric is paying less long-term. But then the market for lower priced new cars declines, because the people who can afford a new car can afford to pay a little extra for long-term savings and most of the people who can't afford to do that were buying used to begin with.

>Hybrids have a lower TCO even though they have a higher initial purchase price.

Is this conclusion based just on fuel consumption? From a relatability standpoint, it doesn’t make sense at first blush because you have to have both ICE and EV parts in series in the drivetrain; the total reliability can’t be higher than the individual components of they’re in series.

Depending on the drive trains being compared, the hybrid drivetrain may be overall mechanically simpler than an ICE. A series hybrid can easily have fewer moving parts, fewer friction spots, less reliance on fluid motion through little channels, etc.

And then you're also keeping the moving parts more in their happy zone of temperature, speed, and load instead of needing them to operate in as wide of conditions.

Could you elaborate further?

A hybrid, by definition, combines an ICE and electric drivetrain. While I understand it could be designed for a more efficient range of operation* how could it negate the downsides of an ICE-only design if it requires an ICE? (Are we conflating EV and hybrid?)

* This also means each segment is less globally efficient, meaning the system is less efficient if it has to limp along if one part is inoperable

The pure ICE transmission is probably far more mechanically complicated than the transmission of a series hybrid.

The pure ICE engine and transmission has to deal with some of the most stressful times the motor can handle, extremely high torque demands coming from a stop. Its far less stressful for an electric motor to generate good torque at such low RPMs.

Just two quick examples.

I think you’re still conflating EVs and hybrids. A hybrid has an ICE that is distinct from the mechanical transmission. Hybrids tend to run off the ICE at high speeds because it’s more efficient and use the ICE to charge the battery.

> A series hybrid

A key part of my original statement.

A series hybrid or parallel series hybrid will often have a far simpler transmission in terms of moving parts and what not. You're right, they'll use the gas motor for power going highway speeds, but they're still a lot simpler. Many hybrids effectively only have a single speed for the ICE motor in their "transmission", some have 2-4, compared to modern ICE transmissions which are like 7+ gears.

Note, I do agree, there are some hybrid drive trains that are more complicated than their ICE counterparts, but it is not a given. Many hybrids are a good bit simpler in the end.

One example of a simpler setup would be Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive. e-CVT's can be radically simpler mechanically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Synergy_Drive

Yes, that’s why I put deliberately put “series” in my original post.

The math is clear: in series, the system reliability cannot be greater than any single part.

So if the claim is that hybrids are more reliable than ICE, there needs to be some sort of discussion about why you think the ICE is more reliable. You keep bringing up transmissions when the main point is related to the ICE.

Transmissions are required for ICE vehicles they aren’t required for hybrids. It’s one of the many failure points that can be removed.

As to in series being more complicated, starter/alternator + battery already has all the mechanical complexity of a barebones series hybrid. You could technically take a standard ICE car change only electronics and get some of the benefits of a hybrid. Obviously for reliability you’d want beefier electric motors, and … before you know it you’re building a more robust system than a pure ICE.

Yes, so the claim is that the complexity electric motors + batteries + planetary gears + all the ICE/electric interfaces are more reliable than a traditional transmission. I’m open to that argument but nobody has really elaborated in detail. Admittedly, I’m slightly skeptical (at least in the case of a manual gearbox) but would like to hear more detail.

> at least in the case of a manual gearbox

Ok, let's say you go stupid simple for the transmission and have a super basic classic four-speed manual.

Right off the bat, you've got clutch wear. In that e-CVT, there are no sliding clutches. Everything is connected all the time. Immediately, we see a wear component that will eventually need replacing. Not might need replacing, will need replacing. It is a consumable part, designed to wear.

You now have cable assemblies which will eventually stretch over the life of the car. Those will eventually need adjustment. Once again, these just don't exist at all with the e-CVT system.

Now you have a shifter and gear selector. This will need to slip in and out of other gears. Often this is not a perfect shift, imparting wear on the transmission components. Once again, you don't have a gear selector in an e-CVT, this wear never happens. This wear can cause premature failure of the transmission. This is largely controlled by the skill of the operator, sure.

Just a few quick examples. But this is then also an incredibly basic manual transmission, you won't find such a thing on pretty much any recent mass market car. These days you'll see complicated automatics with servos and what not to control the gear ratios, massively more gear ratios, rely on fluid channels to push things around inside, rely on computers to operate them effectively, etc.

And as Retric mentioned, there are analoges for most of the hybrid components in a pure-ICE car. You already have a DC motor set to drive the car in the starter motor. You already have an inverter, the alternator. You're not really adding a ton of new things, you're just massively upsizing some of the things you already have and massively simplifying a lot of the other components.

>there are analoges for most of the hybrid components in a pure-ICE car.

The error in this is in assuming the analogs have equivalent reliability or cost in each system.* (The original point is about cost of ownership). They don’t. So, while both have batteries, the reliability and cost of each is very different. Same with the ICE component etc. My issue is broad generalizations about reliability without speaking to the nuance.

I’m not set against the idea of a hybrid being more reliable or cheaper, but more against the superficial generalization.

* also the analogs miss some of the complexity. Yes, both have a battery, but a hybrid requires high voltage and auxiliary batteries, meaning the battery system is by definition more complex.

> The error in this is in assuming the analogs have equivalent reliability

The majority of my comment points out how the equivalent analoge on the pure ICE is massively less reliable than the hybrid. Who is ignoring the reliability of the different components here again?

Sure, there is a HV and a LV battery. They're both solid state devices and thus generally pretty reliable when it comes to cars. The LV battery faces far less wear. The overall system is considerably more reliable in the hybrid than the same in the ICE. It's near impossible to generally talk about the prices of something like the HV battery, it varies greatly based on what models you're talking about. One car might have a replacement used battery that's good for many years be $700, another might be extremely bespoke and rare and be $10k. If I were to judge prices of pure ICE transmissions based on extremely rare hyper cars I might say an ICE transmission replacement costs $20k or more. The details matter greatly when judging TCO on potentially low market cars.

If your point is you can’t talk specifics about price of ownership, you’ve wasted both of our time during this entire discussion. That’s what it’s about. A better answer would have just been like the commenter below, who said the information is hard to come by. A hardliner stance where there’s a lot of uncertainty isn’t a great hill to die on.

That’s not quite what they said, in 98% of hybrids sold these components are significantly more reliable than in ICE cars.

He can’t speak to the last 2%, but I doubt your in the market for a hyper car and really this concerned about TCO.

The hyper car argument is really just a digression and it cuts both ways (which I think was the posters point). If you want to compare hyper car prices, you need to compare hyper gas-only to hyper hybrid. But that’s not really germane to the generalizations being used here.

Where is your 98% claim coming from? The other poster made no such claim.

The irony is there is published info on TCO from companies like Edmunds and Kelly Blue Book. We can take umbrage with some of the factors or weighting, but it’s a better starting point in real data than anything bright up so far. A claim could easily be crafted using such information that addresses everything I’ve raised (maintenance, depreciation, different designs, etc). Yet the discussion seems almost wholly based on vibes and near-ideological bias. It reads to me as conclusions searching for data instead of the other way around.

The best I can tell from that information, TCO is largely a wash. For comparable manufacturers/designs, TCO over the first 5-10 years seems to be about the same. You can pick some designs that favor one side or the other, but in general they are roughly within 10% (usually considerably less) of one another. Given the uncertainty due to the variables in question, it seems reasonable to conclude there aren’t strong conclusions on TCO differences between them.

> For comparable manufacturers/designs

That's the thing though, you're lumping all hybrid drivetrains in together and assuming they're all equally reliable and equally have the same TCO math, as if "hybrid" means only one thing. I've been trying to tell you, "hybrid" means a lot of different things and really shouldn't be seen as one technology, "depending on drive trains compared" and all. Which is why I made a big point of mentioning my usage of "series", which flew right over your head.

When I'm talking about a bespke battery on a low-market car, I'm not talking about some hybrid supercar. I'm talking more about the hybrid compliance car trim levels that are only really sold in small numbers in some markets, like the Ford Explorer Hybrid. You practically won't find them in most states, they were essentially only delivered to a few markets in very small numbers. Its components are far more bespoke and thus expensive to find replacements. Pretty much nobody makes remanufactured batteries for this car. It's a parallel hybrid, so it still has all the complexity and reliability of the traditional ICE drive train. This is pretty much true of a lot of "the same ICE car, but now hybrid!" They're often going to be low production models, bespoke batteries, and probably a parallel hybrid. And I agree, good chance the TCO won't work out in the hybrid's favor in the end.

Compared to something like the Prius or Maverick Hybrid or the new RAV4, which are extremely mass market. These have a much different drive train than that Explorer Hybrid, being e-CVTs. There's a big market for remanufactured batteries since there are so many more out there. Parts are considerably cheaper, and thus they have (or will probably have, the new RAV4s are still new) low TCO.

Its not fair to group the Explorer Hybrid and the Maverick together as one category of "hybrid", since they're such different designs on how they operate leading to radically different outcomes on TCO.

>you're lumping all hybrid drivetrains in together and assuming they're all equally reliable and equally have the same TCO math

I’m not though, you’re just making that assumption. For example, as “comparable manufacturers” if I select Toyota (because it has a reputation for reliability) I can compare the Prius to the Corolla (because they’re both at a similar price point in their respective categories). This “should” favor the Prius because the Corolla has a CVT (which is known to be less reliable) but TCO comes out about 8% lower for the Corolla. I’m not lumping all together, I’m deliberately trying to make reasonable comparisons.

Now I could also pick and choose to go the other way with a similar comparison. The end result seems to be that there is a distribution of differences that are reasonably close, but with enough variance to say it looks like a wash in TCO. Point being, strong conclusions may not be warranted.

>Which is why I made a big point of mentioning my usage of "series", which flew right over your head.

It did not go over my head. In fact, I brought it up in the very first post before you responded. [1] I even reminded you of that [2]. This is why I’m saying it seems like you are reflexively responding without actually reading for comprehension or clarity.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44422207

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44424531

> compare the Prius to the Corolla

That’s not a direct comparison. Toyota sells hybrid and non hybrid corolla’s and the hybrids are cheaper to own @ 5 years here.

https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/corolla/2024/cost-to-own/

https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/corolla-hybrid/2024/cost-to-o...

That’s fair. But looking at the numbers for my locale, the effect size is extremely small: about 0.6% cheaper. So, to piggyback on the points made earlier, if we have high variance and small effect size, we probably shouldn’t be making any strong claims. The more appropriate conclusion is that there is no difference, or not strong enough data to make a claim one way or the other.

It’s not that small of an effect size relative to the upfront price difference. Subtraction of the initial cost of the non hybrid from both numbers is very reasonable because you know what that is for both.

Also, the payback for a more expensive upfront car at year 5 on a car likely to last ~26 years doesn’t mean they are also equal for the next 21 years.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point, but TCO factors in the upfront cost, including financing assumptions. I can’t think of a good reason why you’d want to disregard upfront cost when calculating TCO; it’s probably the #1 determining factor for most people buying a car. (And not to belabor the point, but the original claim was about TCO).

I’m not sure I would use the 25+ life because that doesn’t reflect how long a person will keep it. The depreciation captured by the TCO is a better representation of that effect.

I’m not discarding all costs, I’m looking at the difference in upfront costs.

Suppose I’m paying cash and it’s an extra 2,000$ by my TCO drops by 0.1% over 5 years is that a worthwhile investment? Without knowing what the car costs you can’t tell.

What matters is the difference in cost vs the difference in TCO. You’re buying a car either way.

I don’t think that’s an unreasonable take, but it does move us away from the generalization that hybrid TCO is lower. It’s like instead saying “Hybrid TCO will be lower if you pay in cash and live in a high fuel cost area.”

That’s a more nuanced take by adjusting the assumptions. Sometimes adjusting them is warranted, and sometimes it’s just to game the outcome you wanted.

It doesn’t change if something lowers or increases the TCO, it only scales the impact relative to the costs.

The cash on hand bit isn’t the only take, but if you’re comparing 5 year loans and only keeping the car for 5 years then you can ignore time value of money. Suppose the monthly payment is 50$ more and you save 60$ a month, sure it’s only saving 10$/month but that’s essentially free money.

It’s becoming a tired discussion, but this has already been covered. For someone willing/capable of dropping $30k-$50k in cash, $10/mo. is certainly a small effect size. Under certain cases, hybrid TCO will be lower. For example, if you’re buying an SUV, drive a lot, pay cash, and live in a high fuel cost locale. But that shouldn’t lead to a logical leap that hybrid costs are lower in the general case. (They still may be, but nobody has shown good, generalizable data to that point.)