[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.