[ReactiveJelly]

Plug-in hybrids are strangely missing from online discussions. Are they too heavy or something?

Cause it seems perfect to me. Run electric day-to-day when the weather affords. Run gas for long trips or bad conditions.

No need for a giant 300 mile battery made with minerals from a developing country. Nor a huge ICE, since you can shrink it to a very narrow power band and rely on the batteries for peak power like take-off.

[piotrkaminski]

I have much the same question -- it seems like PHEVs would be perfect for the next 10 years or so, while we improve batteries and build out charging infrastructure. And yet there are relatively few PHEVs on the market, and most of them have <40 miles of electric range, whereas I think you'd really want something like double that number (especially in the context of this article!).

I'm really curious to see what Mazda will do with the MX-30 next year. It's an dismal failure as a pure EV, but apparently they're planning to add a rotary engine as a pure generator to it (i.e., not driving the wheels). If the car keeps the current version's 100 mile electric range that could be a very interesting combo.

[jhoechtl]

Yeah, strangely people talk as if hybrid id a thing of the past although its the best of both worlds.

[Hamuko]

It's also the worst of both worlds at the same time, since you have the issues of both petrol engines and battery electric cars. Your 50 km of pure electric range drops to like 20 km in the winter, and after that you're driving on your cold-ass petrol engine and lugging around a heavy battery.

I drove my mom's BMW 530e plug-in hybrid to the store and back (5 km in each direction). At the end, I think we had 5 km of range left. Granted, it did handle a grocery run just on battery and the heating system worked well, but that was about all that it had. The NEDC rating for the car is 50 km of electric range.

[smiley1437]

A plug-in hybrid, while eminently practical, has the unenviable position of being perceived as a half-measure