[mataug]

What’s even better is less cars and more alternative means of travel. This comes in the form of biking, especially e-bikes, public transport, especially a large variety to serve various needs, and finally better zoning to create walkable neighborhoods and promote movement for going from place to place.

For the remaining trips not covered by the above, aka the exception case, using cars. Most car trips can even be PHEV and our non-freight transportation emissions would be substantially lower.

Even in the worst case scenario of everyone having to drive, PHEVs are a much better option as we transition to a fully society EV. I’m disappointed that most car manufacturers are trying to go through this all or nothing mindset of jumping directly from Gas to EV. A large portion of the population drives less than 50miles a day so a PHEV with ~50miles or range would make a huge dent in our emissions.

Complexity is often cited as the reason for not adopting PHEV, and I think that’s an easy scapegoat, as humans we’ve solved many complex at scale, if we can build massive fleets of Priuses over decades, why can’t we build more of them with a slightly larger battery.

I’ve also heard the economics don’t work out argument against PHEV, and we could say the same thing about EVs, they’re cool now but can we manufacture, and recycle enough batteries to keep up with demand?

EVs are heavy, Can we maintain road infrastructure that was built using fuel consumption taxes, for lighter weight cars?

Taking these concerns into consideration, I feel that PHEVs are awesome and we should all demand more of them, they are lighter than EVs, cause significantly less emissions and are a wonderful bridge technology that improves the car trips that we do need to take.

[dkjaudyeqooe]

PHEVs are the compact fluorescent of cars. We're better off waiting for the BEV market to mature a little and get the full benefits. Battery weight and costs, along with the small size of electric motors, will naturally drive electric vehicles to be much smaller and even less polluting.

There a very good reasons other than environmental to free ourselves from the oil scourge.

[throwbadubadu]

> Complexity is often cited as the reason for not adopting PHEV, and I think that’s an easy scapegoat, as humans we’ve solved many complex at scale

EV reduces really a lot of moving and maintenance heavy parts, it is a game changer on its own. Double complexity and cram both into half the space, making maintainability even worse? I'm not sure, if use case allows would always choose EV by large margin now; we can manage (mostly) everything, but all has tradeoffs, and less complexity always better from lot of perspectives.

(Totally aside, almost every manufacture has both approaches available, not?)

[seanmcdirmid]

PHEVs require two systems, that has to be more expensive than a pure EV if we weren’t considering the need for a smaller battery. As battery tech gets better, PHEVs will be less attractive.

[helij]

For many people battery tech is good enough. What's not good enough in some areas are charging points (UK).

[mywacaday]

A few years ago we had a car fire in a multi story car park that spread and destroyed 20+ cars which caused severe structural damage resulting in the whole structure being out of use for over a year. There has been commentary about the concern with EV weight in multi storey car parks but I can't help wondering what happens with an inevitable EV lithium fire in a confined space. There is a lot edge cases I don't think have been considered yet with the rush to EVs.

[the_gastropod]

Lithium fires are a scary thing to deal with, but electric cars are something like 75x less likely to catch fire than ICE cars. [1]

Regarding weight, yes. Electric cars weigh more than comparable ICE cars. But it’s pretty rich how this is such a large concern when the target is electric vehicles, and not the ever-increasing size of vehicles (especially American) people are buying. A Nissan Leaf is still far lighter than a gas powered F-150—the top selling “car” in the US.

[1] https://www.autoweek.com/news/a38225037/how-much-you-should-...

[dontlaugh]

I was actually looking for a car with 50-100 miles of electric range and petrol for more. The closest thing I found is the BMW i3, but even used it’s very expensive. And it’s so very ugly.

I ended up getting a cheap petrol car instead. I’d still prefer to take the train, but it costs several times more than the petrol.

[pmg101]

Opel Ampera was the answer a decade ago (series petrol hybrid with 50km EV range and 400km petrol range) but they didn't sell well and this architecture was all but abandoned.

[dontlaugh]

Also expensive and far too big, specially for entering a city.

[AstralStorm]

Your country train system is broken, 500 km train ticket here costs 1/3 of the petrol required to travel there standard class, and is still cheaper first class... (Which is typically more comfortable than airplane or car.)

Even using LNG as fuel they're behind.

The only place I see gas cars still winning is short range with hybrids.

[dontlaugh]

Sure, it’s only gotten worse since it was privatised.

My commute is £40 by train and £15 for petrol. With two people in the car, it’s even worse.

[p0w3n3d]

Jumping directly from gas to EV is driven by governments and meta-govt programs like FIT FOR 55

[timbit42]

Consumer Reports claims PHEVs are very reliable.