Hybrids really are nice, Toyota just doesn't have any stock at all in the vehicles I was looking for.
The key is they have hybrids at "normal car" prices - the basic Sienna is hybrid and comparable in price to the Kia Carnival and other non hybrid minivans; and much cheaper than the plug-in hybrid Pacifica.
The basic model Sienna just doesn't actually exist anywhere for purchase.
My local dealer seems to have a scheme going that leads to them having a lot of very low km (like <2000) Siennas listed for 1.2-2x MSRP. I hope they choke on them.
From the article: "In the U.S., hybrid demand significantly exceeds production capacity, leading to tight inventories at dealerships, Miyazaki said."
I'll further my point about hybrid being such a low-hanging, realistic solution.
The core technology has been there since the late 90s. Every single major manufacture can quickly produce them. This doesn't have to be just daily family cars, the luxury market (Ferrari) and the 4x4 segment can also take advantage of this. There is already a hybrid Tundra available.
Lets take London for e.g. there are about 2.5 Million cars, lets assume if all of all them were to be hybrid, you would have SIGNIFICANT reduction in fuel consumption and costs to the owners, without ANY lifestyle change. You are not giving anything up as there is something available for everyone's taste.
No range anxiety.
I seriously do not understand why governments don't take this seriously.
Preface: I drive a hybrid, and I have since 2002, before they were cool.
The reason government incentives aren’t pushing hybrids now is that government policy is driven off of idealism instead of practicality. In the ideal world, a brand new hybrid is too little too late. A 2024 hybrid will almost certainly still be operating in 2040. By then we really need to be at near-zero carbon emissions if we want to have any hope of avoiding climate catastrophe. On the other hand the status quo means people are just buying gas guzzlers since they can’t afford/can’t practically use BEV.
It's exceptionally disappointing, because there is no reason why you couldn't have a vehicle of type X (whatever type you believe is good and holy or whatever) that is a plug-in hybrid with a certain size battery.
But you could make it so it has different size batteries installable, either by end-user or dealer.
You sell the car with a 30 mile battery, and a year or two later it pops up a note that says "for only $Z you could upgrade your battery to one that would have meant you only filled up on gas once last year".
Plus you can linearly ramp up the BEV powertrain as tech and scale progresses over time while diminishing the ICE side. And eventually swapping in a hydrogen fuel cell is a possibility in the long term. (Not in the same vehicle, of course)
In principle I really like it, use gas for long distance and electric for the other 90%. However aren't you really just getting the worst of both worlds? Under-powered gas engine and limited range ev? Wouldn't it weigh a lot more and have twice as many parts to break down? All the maintenance of a gas engine with the additional cost of a battery/electric?
The reason they are efficient is something like this:
A cars engines efficiency/fuel economy is constrained by its max output. Ie when you have an engine capable of very rapid acceleration, that engine is going to be too big across all other scenarios - ie two cars of the same weight going the same speed , the one with the bigger engine will consume more fuel.
The hybrid lets you take advantage of this in two ways. First it allows you to have a smaller engine because the electric motors kick in when you need the acceleration. So it lets you get away with a smaller engine that is more than enough for your driving and that gives you efficiency.
Then it also uses the fact that even the smaller engine is still oversized for things like coasting or going steady so it uses the extra engine output to charge the battery at the right times. Regenerative breaking is another efficiency play
Curious what will happen to the battery over time but for the past few years the hybrid highlander is great.
They usually turn out more reliable (if built right) because you can remove the transmission entirely, which is a major complicated piece of mechanical engineering that is prone to failure.
They also get to run the engine at a lower duty cycle while it is warming up, which is a big source of wear and tear for a gas engine. They also never have to run a rich mixture because the power gap is made up for by the electric motor.
They are more reliable because Toyota sells a large fraction of the hybrids. Non-Toyota hybrids are less reliable than both gasoline cars and EV's. Maybe that's circular because a large fraction of the non-Toyota hybrids are Stellantis...
The designs of some hybrids are able to remove a lot of parts that normal ICE-only cars have.
The design of most Toyota hybrids is quite simple, there are two electric motors and one gasoline engine coupled by a simple planetary gear set. This eliminates the need for a mechanical transmission -- varied wheel speed is accomplished by simply varying the relative speeds of the electric motors. Contrary to a popular misconception, there is no mechanical cone-and-belt CVT in Toyota hybrids, like people might be familiar with in other CVTs. Also, because the engine is linked to the drive motors, this eliminates the need for a starter motor. And because all of the engine accessories are electric on most Toyota hybrids (because they need to operate when the engine is off) there is no accessory belt.
These components (drive belts, transmissions, starter motors) aren't uncommon issues in ICE-only vehicles, so this does translate to improved reliability and lower maintenance.
Also keep in mind that the electric tends to handle low speed movement which it's just great at (instant torque), while the gas engines tend to handle highway / steady state driving which they are just great at. And overall they are each getting less usage than if they were the only powertrain.
A plugin hybrid can have a smaller range battery (as long as the range meets your daily driving needs). Ideally it would give you at least 60 - 80 mile per day range, not the 20 something miles that a lot of them provide.
A full electric on the other hand, needs a very huge battery as it need to give you about 300 mile range, to cover the edge cases. That is a lot of battery weight (and expense) you are carrying around. So the tradeoff is do you want to lug around a huge battery that you will mostly not use, or lug around a gas engine that you will mostly not use? About an equal tradeoff (esp. since the gas engine only needs to be enough HP to maintain cruising speed, acceleration can be handled by the battery, or have it set up as a serial hybrid).
Personally I'd rather have the gas engine as my range extender, instead of the larger battery, since I can quickly fuel up in about 3 minutes vs. 20 - 30 at a minimum. But once battery tech improves and recharge times are in the 10 minute range, I'd say that would be the end of gas engines.
These hybrids should be 100m EV range, that is plenty for most trips. The RAV4 Prime gets about 42m from each charge, which is a bit short for my commute but cuts by gas consumption by a whole lot.
There's nothing under-powered about the gas engine. F-150 daily drivers may cringe, but that's a cultural problem not a problem with the vehicle.
That's pretty good for the Rav4. From what I can tell though the highlander only has a 5 mile range at a max of 25 mph when in EV only mode. It's very limited and clearly you are meant to run the gas engine most of the time along side the electric motor.
Call it a cultural problem if you want, but a F-150 is damn useful even if it is not utilized all the time. When you do need it though, it's there and ready to work. There is a reason it's the best selling car in America.
I call it a cultural problem because in forums I am active in EVs are derided as some sort of crazy plot to take away our freedom. I totally agree a truck is useful to have.
Hybrids are very reliable, especially plug-ins like the Volt that essentially have redundancy and will operate with one of the engines completely disabled. Generally speaking it’s far less wear and tear to drive an electric motor with a generator than it is to have a crankshaft / belts / pulleys / transmission / air driven throttle / complex cooling loops / etc, even with the additional parts.
The new Prius puts down horsepower on par with a Civic SI and does 0-60 in 6.4 seconds. I don't think "underpowered" is a given. Turbohybrids have been the state of the art for F1 racing for a decade now too.
> Turbohybrids have been the state of the art for F1 racing for a decade now too.
I don't think "state of the art" is the word when there's no variability or development because that is the engine style mandated by regulations for that time.
Studies show that there's enough studies to claim any type of car is more reliable, usually by (not) adding in people who complain about bluetooth etc. Or lumping expensive EV sports car tyres in with everyone else
Honda's hybrid system is a bit closer to that, but in practice it's not as reliable or efficient as Toyota's - they haven't been iterating on it for as long.
> Honda’s two-motor hybrid system can operate as either a series or parallel hybrid. The majority of the time, the system operates as a series hybrid. Its electric propulsion motor drives the wheels directly, while the gasoline engine connected to the electric generator/starter motor functions as an electrical generator, supplying power to the hybrid battery and/or the propulsion motor. Under certain driving conditions, such as steady-state cruising at highway speeds, the system switches seamlessly to parallel hybrid operation, with the gasoline engine connecting to the front axle via a clutch, and vehicle speed is proportional to engine speed (rpm).
Diesel-electric trains have no battery, though. The Chevy Volt hybrid was pretty close in that the gas engine acted only as a generator to charge the batteries and could supply enough power for the motors in case the batteries died. I’m not sure why Chevy killed it.
The Volt was an _incredible_ piece of engineering, but it was also an incredibly expensive architecture that was basically mandated as part of the government bailout of GM. Sadly it was perceived as a money loser and that was that, traditional hybrids just hit lower price points.
General Motors (GM) has a longstanding issue where what they care about most is global platform sales. They tend to only prioritize platforms that can be used to sell as many vehicles as possible. Regardless of how brilliant and well-engineered it might be, if it's not one of their better sales vehicles (or a halo car like the Corvette), they kill it. Often, they are just impatient, and if they'd take some of these great platforms and developed them and nurtured them, they could've expanded them into one of those global top sellers, but they tend to keep a close eye on shorter timelines.
Diesel electric trains need extreme amounts of torque to pull all that weight. There is no reason at all to assume what works for a train would be a good choice for a car.
Maybe I'm the outlier (mostly newer cars?) but I've never had to do more than take cars in for regular maintenance at service intervals. Most of the costs were for wear items like tires, brakes, wipers, cabin air filters etc. or for suspension things alignment. None of that is any different between ICE and electric cars.
I don't think I've ever had an actual drive-train issue.
IME, dropping off cars for service is a huge hassle, from either waiting a couple hours at the dealer or 2x shuttle pickups / or having someone drop/pick you up.
I did this every 6 months for my Tacoma, which was the required schedule for a new car to maintain the warranty.
I've taken my Bolt in once for a battery recall / cabin air filter in 6 years of ownership.
I often see less maintenance listed as a benefit of EVs. But according to Hertz at least, who have real world experience running large fleets of EVs and ICE cars, EVs end up being more expensive to operate due to lower residual values and higher repair costs. [1]
The key is they have hybrids at "normal car" prices - the basic Sienna is hybrid and comparable in price to the Kia Carnival and other non hybrid minivans; and much cheaper than the plug-in hybrid Pacifica.
The basic model Sienna just doesn't actually exist anywhere for purchase.