[antisinguIarity]

Yes. The EURO emissions regulations will make it essentially impossible to sell a new, purely ICE-powered car in the near future (in Europe). Every new car will be a bloated hybrid, designed entirely to scrape through the emissions and efficiency requirements.

[diebeforei485]

This is a good thing. I am not sure why any new passenger vehicle should be purely ICE powered.

[antisinguIarity]

>This is a good thing.

Why?

[sidewndr46]

Unless it's a plugin hybrid, a hybrid is still powered by an internal combustion engine.

[nixass]

There was a market research in Germany and plug ins are mostly owned by upper class, using it for cheaper/free parking and (ab)using government incentives for co2 grants. Funniest thing is there's very low percentage of owners who drive them in EV mode, they barely bother to charge them, it's being ran in ICE mode all the time. It's purely for playing the system, catch few benefits (parking) and not giving a shit about the environment. Beat me for source, read it few months back

[tecleandor]

When you can get a 455hp (317 ICE + 145 Electric) Volvo XC90 Recharge T8, and qualifies as "zero emission" and gets free parking all around the city... you understand the classification is quite a joke.

Of course, it's absurdly huge (2300Kg, 5 metes long...) and its price is almost 100K€. It's not precisely popular.

[sidewndr46]

Why is such a vehicle considered zero emissions?

[tecleandor]

At least on Spain, they give that category to Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicles with a range of more than 40km in full electric mode.

https://www.dgt.es/nuestros-servicios/tu-vehiculo/tus-vehicu...

[toomuchtodo]

Or electric. Which is good.

[adolph]

It is good for now, given battery powered vehicles' advantage in terms of regulation. My guess is that as they become the majority of vehicles over time there will be an interest in efficiency regulation similar to fuel economy for ICE engines. There is already an interest in taxing electric vehicles differently given the eroding base of road-building taxes based on hydrocarbon fuels.

[antisinguIarity]

Hybrids have a much smaller battery, which will make them cheaper.

[toomuchtodo]

They are the worst of both worlds: anemic, still burning fuel, hybrid complexity and combustion maintenance. BEVs or bust, anything else is window dressing on tech we’re leaving behind.

BEVs will get cheaper faster as battery manufacturing ramps. No need to waste any more effort on combustion technology and infra.

[rsynnott]

They work fairly well for some use cases. I know a few people who have plugin hybrids with maybe 50km battery range; they typically commute entirely on the battery (short urban commutes) and use the petrol engine maybe once or twice a year for long journeys. The plug-in hybrid is, of course, much cheaper than an electric car that could handle the occasional long trips, but most of their driving is on electric.

If you live in a city and mostly use the car for commuting/shopping, this can make a lot of sense, and that's not a small market.

One problem with this usage mode is that it can leave the petrol engine unused for very long periods, which will ultimately lead to problems (I think some hybrids will now deliberately periodically run it for a bit to deal with this).

[antisinguIarity]

How does that make any sense? What those people need is a cheap EV with 50km range, and then rent a lnog-range vehicle for those few annual long trips. Why load your EV with several 100kg of ICE gear?

[rsynnott]

I mean, possibly that's the case, but in reality, I think you'd have trouble selling an EV with 50km range (and in practice manufacturers don't try). People would feel very insecure about that.

[noahtallen]

Actually disagree, plug-in hybrids will run on battery for most short trips in the city. It’s cutting out all the low hanging fruit for pollution. Most of your trips on 20/30mph roads where fuel efficiency is poor. Stop and go traffic. Sitting at a stoplight. If you’re running on battery in those scenarios, I’d say you’re making a huge improvement.

And then you still have gas for a longer trip somewhere with no charging infra. But those trips will hopefully be rarer. And when you’re going 60+ mph on these longer trips, you’re only ever burning fuel at the engine’s better efficiency.

I think there’s a good place for this tech in some lifestyles.

EVs are obviously the future, but intermediate vehicles to help people get into EVs aren’t bad. If someone chooses a plugin-hybrid over gas, but would have chosen gas over EV for range and charging reasons, it’s a good improvement

[chki]

> Actually disagree, plug-in hybrids will run on battery for most short trips in the city. It’s cutting out all the low hanging fruit for pollution.

That's true in theory. Unfortunately in practice - at least where I live - Hybrids don't get charged at home. People buy hybrids for the tax/other benefits but just park them on public roads. Which means that you get the worst possible state where you have pseudo-green ICE vehicles that run with a lot of extra weight in the form of a basically useless electric motor. (Except for recuperating but that's not worth it)

[pandaman]

Perhaps these people don't have means to charge their vehicles so they would not be able to charge a BEV too? I cannot imagine why anybody who has access to a charger would intentionally leave a PHEV uncharged, what is the point? Are you in an area where hybrid is cheaper to run on gas?

[twblalock]

They are also the only practical solution for many people until the EV charging infrastructure is far more developed.

EVs don’t make sense for people who don't have reserved parking spaces with charging. Until that problem is solved, hybrids are a pretty good idea.

[hedgehog]

I used to think this but on reflection my driving pattern would be served fine if I plugged in once a week while grocery shopping.

[antisinguIarity]

If you're doing ~30 EV miles per week, sounds like a bicycle would be a fantastic addition to your personal transportation plan.

[manmal]

I own an EV (Ioniq) and believe this is the future. But Toyota Hybrids have been known to drive 400k miles without major hiccups. There exist use cases that EVs just can’t fulfill right now. So why not save 30-40% fuel while battery production is ramping, which will take a few more years.

[TacticalCoder]

Disagreeing too... Neighbors here both have plug-in hybrids. 50 km autonomy officially, when they actually do 40. Thing is: when your daily commute is 20 kilometers or less, this means you don't need the ICE. But you have it when you need to do more than 40 kilometers and there's no "range anxiety".

They can go for weeks without turning the ICE on.

I do also think it's not a bad stepping stone to bring people towards full electric cars: they get used to a car that you charge at home. Meanwhile the charging network gets better and better and cities/countries get the time to adapt too (there's no way everybody can charge a full electric car at home without changes to the current grids).

I don't see what's wrong with ICE -> plug-in hybrid -> full electric.

[toast0]

I drive a PHEV (Ford C-Max) and I don't get the claim that it's anemic. It spins the tires just fine taking off, and I've never felt it was short of power except the couple times I tried to quickly get up to highway speeds in 'EV Only' mode. But running in EV Only mode at highway speeds uses the battery too fast anyway. It's better to use gasoline to go fast and electricity to go slow unless I was expecting to have enough electricity to do the whole trip. You can still put it in 'EV Now' which will mostly use the battery but turn on the engine when you need it for acceleration.

Combustion maintenance intervals are doubled on the PHEV vs a conventional gas only vehicle. And the transaxle shouldn't require any service (although Ford had some manufacturing defects and a recently got a new one under warranty).

Battery manufacturing improvements would improve a PHEV too. Smaller batteries would take up less storage space (C-Max design is suboptimal) or allow for a bigger EV range with the same volume.

[twobitshifter]

Disagree. It’s the 80/20 rule, the PHEV will get you to 80% of your destinations on electricity. Paying $20,000 more for a battery for the added range to make those last 20% or trips isn’t worth it. (And with the state of charging, there are probably trips your EV can’t make that a PHEV can)

[sitkack]

I'd rather see those KWHr distributed to as many vehicles as possible, able to prevent 80% of the CO2 emissions that they would generate, then hoard that capacity in a single high end vehicle that won't even tap into it.

Hybrid gas engines should be sized to only operate the vehicle on flat ground at highway speeds, so around 10-15KW tops.

[hedgehog]

The gas engine should be able to handle a mountain pass in hot or cold weather, closer to 150KW. That avoids needing to carry enough battery for that use case.

[sitkack]

> They are the worst of both worlds: anemic, still burning fuel

You should back up these strong opinions with some facts. Hybrid batteries which minuscule compared to EVs, put out 25kw+ instantaneous power. More than enough to beat ICE cars across the intersection.

[antisinguIarity]

>Hybrid batteries which minuscule compared to EVs, put out 25kw+ instantaneous power.

Which is exactly the problem with hybrid batteries - the peak power demanded from them is about the same as a pure EV, but each cell is put under much greater load because there are fewer of them. Those tiny, over-stressed hybrid batteries will not last very long. Not that many people will notice, as they just want a car that can take them where they want to go.

[bittercynic]

I thought so too, and bought a cheap EV, but also kept a raggedy old civic for taking longer trips. Caring for 2 cars got old quick. Sold both and bought a cheap used plug-in hybrid and haven't looked back.

Even a non-plug hybrid isn't really the worst of both worlds. The battery replacement is relatively cheap when it eventually needs it, it's gentler on the gas engine that and ICE car, and won't waste gas running the engine while you're not moving.

As for anemic/not exciting to drive, yeah, true. It's not that important for me to have an exciting car, and I think most people don't see that as a top priority.

[throw0101a]

> They are the worst of both worlds: anemic, still burning fuel, hybrid complexity and combustion maintenance.

As someone who has neither a garage, nor a driveway, I have to park on the street. So I have no convenient place to charge a vehicle at home.

And probably neither does anyone else in a community built pre-WW2:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

[kyrra]

Only if the power charging the battery is cleaner than petroleum based fuels. If we had nuclear everywhere, I'd totally agree with you. But if you in get your power from coal power plants, you will cause more emissions charging an electric car compared to petrol car.

You're also assuming the electric grids around the world can handle this increase in load.

[toomuchtodo]

False. A petrol car burns petrol it’s entire life. An EV is already cleaner burning coal than a petrol vehicle, and the electric grid will only get cleaner over time. You can Google “well to wheel efficiency” to confirm.

With regards to charging infra, yes, I assume at the current global production rate of ~2 million EVs/year built and sold, the electric grid can absorb these new distributed loads (which are roughly the same draw as a large central heat pump, 20-40amps). There are already systems to orchestrate vehicle charging when there is excess clean energy on a local grid (“DER”). Tesla supports this today with a Scandinavian utility, no different then your Nest thermostat shedding AC load during peak power demand but the inverse.

Below is a list of jurisdictions banning new fossil fuel vehicle sales and when the bans go into effect. Everyone has plenty of notice to prepare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...

[kyrra]

Many people will be charging their vehicles in the evening after being out for the day. In the US, this time of day is already a large power draw just as solar power starts to wane for the day. If the cars delays charging until after this peak, solar and wind won't be as prevalent either.

Your heat pump comment makes my point for me. This is additional draw on top of what homes already draw today. Yes, it's just a 20-50amp draw, but this is a new draw and will be there year around, along when a heat pump may also be running.

And while you point out that there is regulation around the sale of electric vehicles, is there regulation around the production of clean energy? What to expect to happen with Russia cutting off natural gas, and the US slowing down or stopping the permitting of new drilling locations of natural gas. Where do you expect all of the energy to charge these electric vehicles to come from as the world seems to push back against fossil fuels for powering our grid. World leaders are still hesitant about nuclear. But they're also fighting fossil fuels at the same time. Solar, wind, and hydro will not be enough to cover this increase demand plus normal growth.

[antisinguIarity]

>An EV is already cleaner burning coal than a petrol vehicle

That is a patently ridiculous claim.

The most efficient coal power stations approach 50% thermal efficiency. Near 15% of that is lost in power line transmission, and another 15% or so in EV charging cycle losses.

Modern diesels approach 40% thermal efficiency.

Also, this completely ignores one of the main benefits of EVs - that is, externalising emissions and pollution away from the point of use.

[toomuchtodo]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/electric-...

> Electric Cars Are Cleaner Even When Powered by Coal

> Emissions from EVs 40% lower than gasoline cars, BNEF says Researcher expects difference to grow as clean energy expands

> That’s the conclusion of research by BloombergNEF, which found carbon dioxide emissions from battery-powered vehicles were about 40 percent lower than for internal combustion engines last year.

https://thedriven.io/2019/12/09/are-evs-cleaner-than-ice-coa...

https://cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/the-climate-change-mit...

[antisinguIarity]

The article you linked makes my point:

"an average ICE vehicle will emit around 69 metric tonnes in its lifetime.

But an EV, in a state like Wyoming which is almost completely powered by coal, will only produce 66 metric tonnes if the vehicle is made by a manufacturer using a grid that is 13% renewables (the US national average)."

My back-of-the-envelope maths shows that fuelling an EV from a coal power source results in about the same thermal efficiency, and thus about the same CO2 emissions, as a modern diesel. Those published numbers show the same thing. I thought saving the planet required truly drastic reductions in CO2 output?

[justoreply]

> bloated hybrid not necessary, Toyota hybrids don't have a clutch or gears, so they have a comparable complexity to a purely ICE powered car

[antisinguIarity]

Doesn't save much space or weight - the car will still be larger and heavier.